Photo shows man arrested over Delphi murders with police sketch of suspected killer in background
A photo has revealed how the local man arrested in connection to the 2017 Delphi murders posed for a smiling selfie in front of a police sketch of the suspected killer.
The photo shows Richard Allen, 50, smiling alongside his wife Kathy in a local bar in Delphi, Indiana – the small, closeknit community where he has lived for more than 15 years and where victims Libby German and Abby Williams lived with their families before their brutal killings.
On the wall behind him is a police sketch released by Indiana State Police in 2019 of the man suspected of murdering the teenage best friends. Mr Allen bears some likeness to the drawing.
The selfie was posted by Mr Allen’s wife on Facebook in December 2021 – the same month investigators issued a fresh appeal urging members of the public to come forward with information about an online catfishing account thought to be tied to the murders.
Now, 10 months later, Mr Allen has been arrested in connection to Libby and Abby’s brutal deaths.
The 50-year-old from Delphi was taken into custody on Friday and booked into Carroll County Jail. He has since been moved to a state facility for his own safety.
It is currently unclear what the accusations against Mr Allen consist of but law enforcement sources have described it as a “major development” in the high-profile case.
Family members of Libby commemorated the news by writing “today is the day” on social media, with her grandmother Becky Patty writing that they are one step closer to a conviction.
Before his sudden arrest, Mr Allen’s name was never publicly linked to the case.
As a married pharmaceutical technician who worked at the local CVS store, local residents told Fox 59 that he always seemed “just like a normal guy”.
Mr Allen appears to have no prior criminal record though jail records list him as also going by the alias of Craigh Ross Rentfrow.
Indiana State Police plan to hold a press conference on Monday morning to provide an update on the case that has gone unsolved for more than half a decade.
On 13 February 2017, Libby, 14, and Abby, 13, set off on a hike along the Monon High Bridge Trail in their hometown of Delphi.
During the walk, Libby posted a photo of her best friend walking along the Monon High Bridge. It was the last known photo of Abby before she was killed.
Later that day, the teenagers were reported missing when they failed to return to a spot where a family member was picking them up.
The next day – Valentine’s Day 2017 – their bodies were discovered in a wooded area around half a mile off the trail.
For the last five years, no arrests were made and police remained tightlipped about the crime scene and how the girls died.
Investigators have long been searching for a man captured on Libby’s cellphone before she died.
A grainy video shows a man dressed in blue jeans, a blue jacket and a cap walking along the abandoned railroad bridge.
Investigators released a still image from the video and a chilling audio of the man telling the two girls: “Go down the hill.”
Prior to Mr Allen’s arrest, other names have fallen under suspicion but no one has ever been charged.
Investigators zeroed in on local man Ronald Logan back in 2017, according to a search warrant application filed by an FBI agent back then before being obtained by podcast The Murder Sheet and shared with The Independent this May.
The partly redacted document reveals law enforcement wanted to carry out a search on Mr Logan’s home which was just 1,400 feet from where the girls’ bodies were found.
He had also allegedly lied about where he was at the time that the teenagers disappeared, claiming he was out of the area with a friend when cellphone location data actually placed him in the area around the trail.
The document gave further details about the brutality of the murders, revealing that they were believed to have been killed elsewhere before the murderer moved and staged their bodies at the scene.
The girls had lost “a lot” of blood during their deaths and had been killed by some type of weapon – with the word redacted – the document states.
The murderer would have been covered in the victims’ blood in the aftermath of the slayings due to the “large amount of blood was lost by the victims at the crime scene”, it reads.
The killer was also believed to have taken some sort of souvenir from the scene.
Mr Logan was never charged and he died in 2020.
In December, investigators also honed in on Kegan Anthony Kline, a 27-year-old man with addresses in Kokomo and Peru whose home was searched on suspicion of child porn charges just two weeks after the 2017 murders.
Kline had allegedly confessed to investigators to using the fake social media account @anthony_shots to groom underage girls online and get them to send him nude photos and to arrange to meet him.
The account is believed to have been used to contact one of the victims around the time of her death.
Kline denied any involvement in the murders.
Indiana State Police announced details of the fake account to the public and urged anyone who had communicated with, met, or attempted to meet the individual posing as @anthony_shots to come forward with information.
It is not clear if this is tied in any way to Mr Allen’s arrest or what may have led to his arrest now – more than five years on from the 2017 slayings.
