INDIANAPOLIS (HATE) — Wednesday is Day 17 of Delphi murder suspect Richard Allen’s trial in Carroll County Court in Delphi.

Allen, 52, is charged with murder and murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping in the deaths of 13-year-old Abigail “Abby” Williams and Liberty “Libby” German, aged 14 years. The girls’ bodies were found near the Monon Bridge near Delphi on February 14, 2017, a day after they went missing.

Allen was first investigated in 2017 and again in October 2022. After a second police interview, he was taken into custody.

The trial began on October 18 and was expected to continue until mid-November. Sixteen Allen County residents were originally on the jury in the case, but one juror was dismissed on October 25.

Cameras are not allowed in the courtroom.

Go to News 8 and follow our daily live blogs throughout the process for the latest developments.

NOTE: The times listed in the blog headers are the times the entries were added. Specific times for courtroom events will be listed in the entries, if available. These notes are compiled from photos of written notes provided by courtroom reporters and emailed to the WISH-TV news desk.

For a brief summary of Day 16 of the Delphi Murders trial (Tuesday), scroll to the bottom of the page.

To see all our previous trial coverage, click hereand follows News 8’s Kyla Russell on X while she covers the process live from Delphi.

9 a.m.: Court in session for Wednesday

Brief summary of Day 16 of the Delphi Murders trial

Tuesday’s first testimony came from Betsey Blaira witness who told police he saw “Bridge Guy” on the Monon High Bridge in Delphi. She said she went on the trails twice on February 13, 2017, but left for good around 2:15 p.m. She told the jury she left through the Mears driveway, turned left and saw a vehicle in the CPS lot. It was placed in the back of the parking lot and was not a bright color, according to Blair.

She told the defense she only saw the side of the vehicle and couldn’t tell if it was a hatchback like Richard Allen’s vehicle. After a brief examination, Blair told the jury that the CPS building was abandoned, so it could not have belonged to an employee or someone inside.

Next on the stand was Dr. Stuart Grassian. Grassian is Harvard-educated and has been a professor at Harvard Medical School for 25 years. He said he has a particular interest in what isolation does to someone’s mental health. He interviewed hundreds of people under those conditions.

Grassian reviewed reports from Allen’s psychologist in Westville, Dr. Monica Walaand said Allen met the requirements for slipping into psychosis and given his background and lack of mental stimulus. He also said that isolation can cause behaviors noted by Allen, such as fecal smearing and sexual behavior. He also said conditions can always impact memory and define the difference between solitary and protective custody. He later told the jury that a normal person could become absolutely psychotic after being in solitary confinement for more than 6 months.

Grassian left the stand and the defense called Dr. Eric Warrena Memphis-based instrument marking specialist.

He said he was asked by the defense to review the findings of the tool made by Melissa Oberga former firearms analyst who examined the bullet found on Libby and Abby’s bodies and Richard Allen’s gun. He described the various characteristics of a bullet, including class, subclass, and individual, and explained the difference between cycling and firing a bullet.

Warren then confirmed that Oberg used a fired cartridge to compare the cycled cartridge, which he said was incorrect because it was not repeatable and reproducible and also produced different markings on the cartridge.

Prosecutor James Luttrell began his cross-examination by asking if Warren only looking at the report and photographs and not the physical evidence would impair his ability to draw conclusions. But Warren disagreed.

He said Oberg did not examine the actual extractor from the gun to determine if there were potential subclass features.

Defense attorney Brad Rozzi then showed Warren a picture of triangular marks on the cartridge, which are ejector marks. He says that these were “the distinguishing mark of the characteristics of the lower classes.”

After a short pause, Rozzi continued to question Warren, asking about the characteristics of the firearms, including the force of the slide, whether there was any research on the integrity of the slide over time, and the quality of the Sig Sauer. He said the slide force is a “characteristic of the model” and Sig Sauer should maintain its integrity over time.

Luttrell began his cross-examination by asking Warren about the characteristics of the cartridge. After discussing the cartridges, in which Luttrell “discusses with Warren why he did not request or physically examine the cartridge and the gun,” Rozzi asked if Warren had written a report. He said no, but he said he was available for the defense when they wanted to impeach him, but he was in Morocco.

The jury asked Warren 16 questions. Here are a few:

• Would individual markings be different depending on who cycled? Warren says that “Oberg’s documentation does not support the conclusion.”
• What are the chances that the spot cartridge will match the test bullets? Warren says, “higher likelihood of guns only in Indiana.”
• Would removing, cleaning, disassembling change the individual characteristics of a firearm? Warren says, “No, only if there was some kind of damage.”

The next witness was Stacy Eldridgecomputer information management expert. She examined Libby German’s cell phone after the Indiana State Police investigation.

She explained what tools she used to examine the phone in the first place Axiom against the ISP’s use of Celebrity. She told the jury that there are three level 6 extractions you can do to extract data, each extracting a different amount of information. Libby’s draw from early 2017 only covered the basics.

Eldridge said ISP had the ability to do a full extraction in early 2017, but didn’t do it until later that year. She said this caused problems and caused the loss of “current power log” data, which remains saved between turning the phone off and on.

Eldridge says the log can also tell if the phone has gone into airplane mode. She said her priority was to find out what was going on with the phone at 4:34 am on February 14, 2017 to get the phone to receive more text messages.

After a brief sidebar from Judge Gull, Eldridge left the witness stand to discuss her report on Libby’s phone. She said she generally agreed with the state expert’s examination, but there were things she disagreed with about Libby’s examination. She disagreed with some of the hours, texts, calls and FaceTimes delivered between February 13th and 14th.

Eldridge said Libby’s phone was last connected on Feb. 14 at 4:33 a.m. and before that, 5:45 p.m. on Feb. 13, and said there was evidence the messages were not received during that time. Some texts were timestamped but were not received until February 17th.

Eldridge said he didn’t know why the phone didn’t ring in that time frame, even though it was under Abby’s back and stationary. She said, “I can only conclude that something external happened to the phone,” meaning it could have been moved, stuck in metal or stuck in the tower.

She said she now knows that from 5:45 p.m. to 10:32 p.m. on February 13, the phone had the wired headset connected.

At 3:09 p.m., prosecutor Nick McLeland begins cross-examination. He asked Eldridge about her training on pulling the cell phone. She said it’s the first time she’s testified about the cellphone being pulled, except for July.

She said she mainly focused on the phone’s health data and also reviewed the Bridge Guy video. She said the phone would not have recorded the movement if it had been in a car and she could find no evidence the phone had been turned off. Libby’s phone seemed to “go in and out of service”. She added that moving the phone to plug in the headphones could have been recorded as health data, but she hadn’t tested that and there could have been a signal jam on the phone.

The jury asked Eldridge six questions, including whether she wrote her own timeline for cellular data, whether she could be connected to Libby’s iPad and whether she could review Allen’s location timeline if she was using a phone. She said she didn’t have time to make a timeline, the iPad and phone weren’t synced, and she could watch Allen’s timeline if it was available.

The final session on Tuesday began with Gull berating the jury for speaking out and saying he would throw out anyone who spoke in court.

The last two witnesses were ISP First Sergeant. Chris Cecil and ISP Lt. Brian Bunner. The defense asked Cecil to explain an “audio output activation,” but he said he didn’t know and also didn’t have the knowledge to explain why a cell phone would or wouldn’t connect to a cell tower.

McLeland began his cross-examination, beginning by saying he had Googled a question the jury had asked Eldridge. They asked if a phone came into contact with water, would the phone register it as motion? According to Google, a phone could register water or dirt in the headphone port as having headphones connected.

The defense redirects, asking Cecil if he Googles things while conducting a criminal investigation. Cecil said he didn’t and normally looks at peer-reviewed research.

The defense asked, “You and the state had 7.5 years to investigate this?”

“That’s right,” Cecil said.

Brian Bunner came to the stand and also said that he didn’t know what “turn on audio output” was and that he hadn’t done any Google searches.

Court was adjourned at 4:25 p.m