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Delphi Killer's Wife Breaks Silence on Gruesome Murders · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I want you to just take a second and imagine
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: a perfectly normal, unusually warm February day.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just a really nice day.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Right, exactly. You're in a small town. The population is,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: you know, just under 3,000 people.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: A tiny place.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the exact kind of place where everybody knows
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: everybody else. Front doors are routinely left unlocked. And community
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: trust isn't just this abstract idea. It is literally the
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: fundamental fabric of your daily life.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Which is so rare these days.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: It really is. So picture yourself dropping your younger sibling
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: off at a local hiking trail. It's a random day
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: off from school. And it is a scenario that is
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: so incredibly mundane, so thoroughly routine that you wouldn't give
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: it a single second thought.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: You wouldn't even blink.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: No, you'd probably just, I don't know, away from the
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: driver's seat, crack a joke, say something like, have fun,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: be back by dinner. You'd drive away, maybe checking your
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: rearview mirror one last time. But then, you know, dinner
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: time actually rolls around.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: The sun goes down.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: The sun goes down. And they never come home.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: It is just the absolute collapse of normalcy. We inherently
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: build these psychological barriers around ourselves, right? Especially in tight-knit
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: rural communities.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: They really do.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: We operate under this unspoken assumption that... That extreme violence
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: is an urban problem. You know, something that happens on
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: the evening news, happening to other people in other places.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Right. Not in your own backyard.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And when a tragedy of this magnitude pierces that
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: small town bubble, the psychological fallout is just absolute. It
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: doesn't just harm the immediate family. It genuinely traumatizes the
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: entire geographical area.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: It changes everything.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: It alters the behavior and the baseline anxiety of everyone
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: who lives there, honestly, for generations.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Well, we are taking a deep dive today into a
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: case that entirely shattered that illusion. It broke the town
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: of Delphi, Indiana. And honestly, it captured the attention of
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: millions of people who have followed it just obsessively across
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: the globe.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: It really became a global phenomenon.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: It did. We are examining the heartbreaking murders of Abby
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Williams and Libby German. And our primary mission today is
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: to try and untangle this incredibly dense, highly polarizing web
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: of information.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Because it is a massive web.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: It is. We are looking at a very specific, carefully
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: curated stack of source material to guide us through this
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: labyrinth today.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And the material we're dissecting provides this really multifaceted
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: look at the machinery of the investigation and the subsequent trial.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: We are unpacking a pretty comprehensive interview from the Law
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: and Crime Network. It features Anjanette Levy speaking with Andy Baldwin,
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: who serves as Richard Allen's defense attorney.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: A really crucial perspective.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. And we're also analyzing some highly disturbing audio excerpts
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: from police interrogations, the raw audio of jailhouse phone calls,
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: and insights gathered from a Hulu docuseries produced by ABC
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: News Studios.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that series was intense.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: It was. It's particularly notable because it features Richard Allen's wife, Kathy,
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: actually speaking publicly about the whole ordeal.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: So the goal of this deep dive is to look
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: at the mechanics of this case with complete impartiality. We
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: are going to examine what the prosecution calls their ultimate
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: smoking gun.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: Which is heavily debated.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Oh, massively. And we're also going to look at the
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: defense's explosive allegations of ritualistic cover-ups.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that part is wild.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: And we are going to break down the truly bizarre,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: contradictory nature of the physical evidence. Because we aren't here
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: to play judge or jury.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: We are here to understand how the justice system operates...
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: When a case becomes this incredibly complex and this deeply scrutinized.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: So if the digital ghost left on a bridge couldn't
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: catch a killer right away, how do you catch someone
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: who is essentially hiding in plain sight?
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: It's the ultimate question. It is.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: So let's start by looking at the timeline of the
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: tragedy itself, tracing back to February 13th, 2017.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: You know, the environmental context of that day is actually
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: surprisingly important.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Really? How so?
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: Well, it was mid-February in Indiana. That is a time
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: of year when you would typically expect freezing temperatures, gray skies,
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: maybe snow.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Right, typical Midwest winter.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But February 13th was unseasonably warm. It felt like
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: this sunny burst of strength.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: And Abby Williams and Libby German, who were best friends,
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: they had the day off from school. And because the
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: weather was so inviting, they made a perfectly natural decision.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Right, you wanted to be outside.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: They asked Libby's older sister to drop them off at
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: the local trails near the Moon and High Bridge. It's
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: this abandoned railway bridge that crosses over Deer Creek.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: It's the exact kind of innocent request kids make all
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: the time.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Totally normal.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: But the timeline just quickly darkens. A couple of hours pass,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: and when the family tries to call Libby's cell phone
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: to coordinate a pickup, it just rings and rings.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Eventually going straight to voicemail.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And in a town of 3,000, where kids are
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: heavily expected to check in, and, you know, cell phone
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: towers generally provide pretty decent coverage, panic does not take
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: days to set in.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: No, it sets in immediately. Immediately.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: They were reported missing that very evening. The local police
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: and community members initiate a search as dusk falls, but
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: the terrain is rough and visibility drops.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: It's hard to navigate out there in the dark.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: So the search is suspended until morning, and then the
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: next day, the gruesome reality is uncovered.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: Searchers located the girls in a wooded area near Deer Creek.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: roughly half a mile upstream from the Monon High Bridge.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Just awful.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: And the physical details from the crime scene, as detailed
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: in our source materials, are intensely specific and fundamentally puzzling.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Puzzling how?
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: Well, both of their throats have been slashed. But the
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: presentation of the victims was highly unusual. It points to
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: a crime scene that completely defied typical behavioral profiles.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: What do you mean by presentation?
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: So Libby was found entirely nude, and appeared to have
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: defensive wounds. Oh, wow. Yeah, which indicates she actively thought back.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: She was trying to protect her throat and fend off
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: her attacker.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: That's terrifying.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: It is. But Abby's presentation was vastly different. She was
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: discovered wearing Libby's clothes.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Wait, really?
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: Yes, wearing Libby's clothes. And the forensic analysis showed her
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: throat had been cut just once, with no apparent defensive wounds.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: That disparity is just staggering. I mean, one fought for
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: her life, the other was redressed in her friend's clothing.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: It's incredibly bizarre.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: It is an unimaginable level of psychological and physical violence.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: But amidst all that horror, investigators found what they thought
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: was the ultimate investigative shortcut.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: The piece of evidence that caused the entire world to
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: lock on to this case.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Libby, in an act of just profound bravery and
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: incredible presence of mind for a young teenager, had used
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: her smartphone to secretly record a man approaching them on
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: the bridge.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: It really remains one of the most haunting pieces of
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: digital evidence in the history of American criminology.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: Libby captured a short video clip. In it, you see
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: this blurry figure of a man walking toward them on
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: the wooden planks of the bridge.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: The famous bridge guy.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: Yes. He has his head down, hands seemingly in his pockets,
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: wearing a blue jacket. And accompanying this video is a
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: fragmented audio recording.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: The audio is just chilling.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: It is. You can hear one of the girls saying,
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: there's no path. Which indicates they felt cornered or forced
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: off the trail.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: And then you hear a male voice issuing this terrifyingly
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: calm directive. He just says, guys, down the hill.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Guys, down the hill. Four words.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Just four words.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: And that tiny compressed fragment of digital evidence ended up
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: anchoring a five-year international manhunt.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: It did.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: But here is where I have to just stop and
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: ask the question that I think every single person listening
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: to this has screamed at their screen at some point.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: I know exactly what you're going to ask.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Right. I mean, if you have video footage of the
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: killer approaching the victims and you have a clear audio
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: recording of his voice speaking directly to them, how on
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: earth does it take years to find him in a
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: town where the population can fit inside a high school gymnasium?
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: It sounds impossible.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Doesn't a video usually act as the ultimate smoking gun
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: that closes a case in a matter of days?
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: Well, the assumption you're making is entirely logical, but it
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: runs directly into the paradox of digital evidence.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: The paradox.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Human beings are conditioned to view a video or
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: photograph as objective, absolute truth.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 2: We think of camera lenses as mechanical eyes that do
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: not lie.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Right. Seeing is believing.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But a smartphone camera from 2017 zoomed in, capturing
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: a moving subject from a distance... it compresses that image drastically.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was really grainy.
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  Speaker 2: Very grainy. When the quality is that poor, when it's
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: just this blurry matrix of a few dozen pixels representing
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: a human face, it actually becomes maddeningly vague.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: It's not like looking at a portrait.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: Not at all. It ceases to be a concrete identifier
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  Speaker 2: like a fingerprint. Instead, it becomes a pixelated impression.
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  Speaker 1: It basically becomes a digital Rorschach test.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's exactly it.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: If you sit at your computer and stare at this blurry,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: blocky image of the bridge guy long enough, your brain
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  Speaker 1: starts desperately trying to fill in the missing data.
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  Speaker 2: It wants to make sense of the blur.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Right. Suddenly the guy in the video looks exactly like
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: your neighbor or your mailman or, you know, the guy
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: you had an argument with at the grocery store last week.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: The psychological phenomenon at play here is pareidolia, combined with
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: intense confirmation bias.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Pareidolia, like seeing faces in clouds?
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: Precisely. The brain is hardwired to recognize faces. So it
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: forces a face into the blur based on what it
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: already suspects.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: And Andy Baldwin, the defense attorney featured in our source material,
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: he leverages this exact scientific reality.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: What does he argue?
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: He argues explicitly that the voice in the recording and
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: the blurry figure could be his own brother. his neighbor,
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: or virtually any middle-aged male in the Midwest.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, he has a point.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: He does. The tragic irony is that a blurry video
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: in a highly publicized case doesn't narrow the suspect pool.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: It expands it infinitely.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Because everyone sees someone they know. Right.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: The police tip line was flooded with thousands of calls
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: from people absolutely convinced their ex-husband or bizarre co-worker was
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: the man on the bridge. The digital evidence just created
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: an ocean of noise.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: An ocean of noise. That's exactly what it was. So
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: if the digital ghost on the bridge couldn't catch him,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: how do you catch a killer who is essentially standing
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: right in front of you?
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: You have to look past the pixels.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: You look at the paperwork. Because the breakthrough in this
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: case did not come from some NASA-level high-tech video enhancement
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: lab in Quantico.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: No, it definitely didn't.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: It came from a forgotten piece of paper. And this
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: brings us to Richard Ricky Allen.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, to understand the shock of Richard Allen's eventual arrest,
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: we really have to look at the baseline of his
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: life as described by his wife, Kathy Allen.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: What was he like?
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: Well, according to her account in the Hulu docuseries... Richard
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: was a mundane, dedicated family man. He worked at the
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: local CVS pharmacy. He had no criminal record of violence.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Just a totally average guy.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Exactly. On the specific day of the murders, February 13, 2017,
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: she says he simply had the day off work. Oh, okay.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: She recalls coming home that afternoon to find him just
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: lying on the couch.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: Later, as the evening progressed and the local news began
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: broadcasting frantic reports about the missing girls, Kathy says Richard
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: volunteered a crucial piece of information to her.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: What did he say?
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: He told her that he had actually been out walking
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: on the Mooden High Bridge Trail that very afternoon.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: So just put yourself in Kathy's shoes for a second.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: You hear girls are missing on a trail and your
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: husband says, hey, I was walking there today.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: Your heart would stop.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Naturally, she tells him, you need to call the police immediately.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Maybe you saw someone. Maybe you saw the girls. Right.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: It's the right thing to do.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: And here's the thing.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: He does. He does call it in.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: Richard Allen voluntarily drives down to a local grocery store
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: parking lot a few days later. meets with a conservation
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: officer who is helping with the investigation, and explicitly says, hey,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: I want to go on record. I was on the
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: trail that day between 1.30 and 3.30 p.m. He just
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: offers that up. He gives his name, his address, and
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: his phone number, and then nothing happens.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: Nothing.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: Years and years pass. The Allens don't walk on that
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: trail anymore because of the tragedy, obviously, but they just
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: go on living their quiet, small-town lives. He keeps working
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: at the CVS, interacting with the community.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: Hiding in plain sight if he's guilty.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: Right. Until October 2022.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the mechanism of his eventual discovery is a testament
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: to the chaotic reality of large-scale investigations.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: It's wild. Tell them what happened.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: In October 2022, a volunteer clerk named Kathy Shank was
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: assigned to help digitize and organize this mountainous backlog of
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: physical files related to the Delphi case.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Just boxes and boxes of paper.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: Thousands of documents. And while sorting through old boxes, she
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: finds a physically misfiled piece of paper.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Unreleasable.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: It was a tip narrative that had originally been marked
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: with a directive for immediate follow-up, but it had been
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: lost in the physical shuffle of the early chaotic days
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: of the command center.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: It got put in the wrong pile.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Exactly. That misfiled, forgotten piece of paper was Richard Allen's
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: original 2017 statement, placing himself directly on the bridge at
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: the exact time the girls went missing.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: I am genuinely floored by the terrifying fragility of that reality.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: It's scary to think about.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Think about this. You have a five-year global manhunt. You
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: have millions of armchair detectives utilizing state-of-the-art software to analyze
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: every single pixel of that Snapchat video.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: And the FBI is involved.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: The FBI. And the entire thing pivots on a volunteer
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: finding a piece of paper in the wrong cardboard box
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: half a decade later.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: The systemic failure here really highlights the danger of data overload.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Data overload.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah. When a high-profile crime occurs, law enforcement is often
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: paralyzed not by a lack of information, but by an
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: avalanche of it. They receive tens of thousands of tips.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: The challenge isn't just investigating. It is data management.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: So it's an administrative nightmare.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: Exactly. A single human error, you know, a tired investigator
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: placing a critical document in a folder labeled cleared instead
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: of pending, literally derailed justice for over five years.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: It forces us to wonder how many other cold cases
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: are locked in cardboard boxes, just waiting for a volunteer
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: to notice a clerical error.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: Probably more than we want to admit.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: So the paper is found. The connection is made. In
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: October 2022, the police finally come knocking on Richard Allen's door.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: And this changes everything.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: The source material outlines that they interrogate him twice.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: First on October 13th, and then again 13 days later
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: on October 26th, when he goes to the police station
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: to retrieve his vehicle, which they had seized. Right. And
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: it is during this second interrogation that the police slide
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: their smoking gun across the table.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: Up until this point, Allen had consistently maintained that he
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: was on the bridge, but had never seen the girls.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: He stuck to his story.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: He did. But during this interrogation, investigators confront him with
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: highly specific forensic evidence.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: What did they find?
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: They inform him that during the initial crime scene processing
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: back in 2017, technicians recovered an unspent. 40 caliber Winchester
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: round buried in the dirt just inches from Louie German's foot.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: An unspent round?
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: Yes. And the investigators then drop the hammer. They tell
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: Allen that the state's forensic laboratory has analyzed that unfired
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: bullet and determined that the microscopic extraction marks on the
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: casing perfectly match a. 40 caliber Sig Sauer handgun that
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: police seized from Richard Allen's home.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, we need to slow down and explain the how
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: behind this science because this is the absolute crux of
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: the physical case against him.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: It's very technical.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: It is an unspent round. It was never fired. There
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: was no gunshot.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: The mechanical distinction here is vital for any jury and
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: really for anyone trying to understand the evidence.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: So explain the difference.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: Well, when a firearm is discharged... The explosion forces the
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: bullet down the barrel, and the inside of the barrel
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: leaves distinct twisting scratches, known as striations or firing marks,
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: on the projectile.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: That's traditional ballistics, right? Like you see on TV.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But because this bullet was unspent, those firing marks
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: do not exist. Instead, the prosecution relies on extraction marks.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Wait, how does an extractor mark even get on a
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: bullet if the gun is never fired?
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: Good questions. When you load a semi-automatic handgun, like a
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Sig Sauer, you have to manually pull the slide back
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: and let it slam forward to strip a bullet from
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: the magazine and push it into the firing chamber.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Great, racking the slide.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: Inside that mechanism is a tiny metal hook called an
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: extractor claw. It snaps over the rim of the bullet
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: casing to grip it.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'm with you.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: If you then manually rack the slide again without firing,
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: perhaps to clear the chamber or to cycle a jammed round,
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: That metal extractor claw rips the unfired bullet out of
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: the chamber and ejects it onto the ground. Oh, I see.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: The state forensic experts argue that the specific microscopic machining
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: imperfections on Richard Allen's specific extractor claw left a unique
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: fingerprint-like scratch on the brass casing of that unspent Winchester
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: round found next to Libby's foot.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Wow. The science of toolmark identification on unfired rounds is
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: honestly incredibly controversial, but put yourself in that interrogation room.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: The pressure must have been immense.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: We have access to the audio of this exact moment
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: in the source material. The police lay all this forensic
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: science out on the table. They show him glossy photographs
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: of the unspent bullet.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: They're building a wall around him.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: They show him the crime scene photos of where it
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: was found next to the victim. And Richard Allen's reaction
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: is entirely baffling.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: He really is.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: He doesn't aggressively deny it. He just repeatedly mumbles, I
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: don't know how the round got there.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: Almost like he's confused.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: Right. And his wife Kathy is actually brought into the
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: interrogation room. She is frantic, asking him point blank, Ricky,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: how did a bullet from your gun get out there?
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: That had to be heartbreaking.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: And he looks at his wife of decades and says,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: I don't know, honey, I can't explain it.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: The psychological pressure in that room must have been suffocating.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Suffocating!
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: You have the authorities claiming absolute scientific certainty... and his
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: own spouse demanding answers. Eventually, the audio captures Allen buckling
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: into the weight of the confrontation.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: What does he finally say?
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: He tells the police, I'm not making this a roundup, Rick.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: It is what it is. I'm done talking. Arrest me.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: I am struggling to reconcile the behavior of this man.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: How so?
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, if Richard Allen is the monster who slashed
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: the throats of two teenage girls, why on earth did
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: he voluntarily drive to a grocery store parking lot in 2017...
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: hand his name and address to a conservation officer, and
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: put himself at the literal scene of the crime during
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: the exact window of the murders.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: It's a huge contradiction.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: Is that the ultimate form of psychopathic arrogance? Thinking he
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: could outsmart the police by acting helpful? Or is that
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: the genuine, naive behavior of an innocent bystander who just
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: wanted to help the authorities find missing kids?
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: The behavioral analysis of suspects presents a fascinating dichotomy.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Tell me about it.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: On one side of the coin, Seasoned homicide investigators will
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: tell you that it is incredibly common for perpetrators to
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: inject themselves into an investigation.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: Right, like showing up at the search party.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They offer anonymous tips. They show up to volunteer
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: search parties. They attend the vigils. By inserting themselves, they
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: gain a tactical advantage.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: To see what the cops know.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: Yes. They can monitor exactly what the police know, and
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: it feeds a narcissistic sense of control over the narrative.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: They hide in plain sight.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Yes. But on the other side of the coin, if
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: you are completely in it, if you were just a
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: guy taking a nice spring walk on a trail, the
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: moment you see on the news that kids went missing there,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: your civic duty ticks in.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: You'd want to help.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: You would absolutely call it in. You would think, I
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: was there. Maybe I saw a weird car. Maybe the
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: police can rule out my timeline.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: Normal reaction.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Punishing someone for coming forward voluntarily feels like it sets
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: a terrifying precedent.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: The ambiguity of his initial disclosure is precisely the battleground
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: the defense operates on. How does the defense handle this?
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: Attorney Andy Baldwin fiercely contests the physical evidence. He argues
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: that the science of matching extraction marks on an unfired
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: bullet is subjective, quote unquote, junk science.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Junk science.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he says it's highly dependent on the examiner's bias,
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: unlike DNA. It's an eyeball test.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: However, the physical evidence, no matter how contested, pales in
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: comparison to the hurdle the defense faces next.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: This is where things get really bad for him.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Because the situation becomes infinitely more complicated when a suspect's
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: own voice becomes the primary weapon against him. Right. Let's
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: move from the physical evidence to the psychological evidence. Because
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: the Hulu docuseries reveals a truly devastating development for the defense.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: Devastating is the right word.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Richard Allen didn't just maintain his silence after that interrogation.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: Once he was locked away, he made multiple explicit jailhouse
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: confessions to his wife and his mother over recorded phone lines.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: The transcripts and audio of these calls are chilling.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: What exactly did he say?
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: Over the course of several calls, he breaks down and says,
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: I did it. I killed Abby and Libby.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: On a recorded line.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: Yes, knowing it was recorded. And the reaction from his
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: family is immediate, visceral shock.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: How did his wife react?
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: His wife, Kathy, refuses to accept it. She immediately goes
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: into denial, telling him, no, you didn't. There's something wrong.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: They've messed up your meds or something.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: He is desperately grasping for a logical life raft.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: Who wouldn't?
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: She is trying to find any physiological or environmental explanation
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: for why the man she has slept next to for decades...
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: the man who worked at the pharmacy and raised a family,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: is suddenly admitting to slaughtering two children.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: It just doesn't compute for her.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: She insists the prison staff are actively messing with his mind.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: And Andy Baldwin, the defense attorney, doesn't run from these confessions.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: No, he tackles them head on.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: He leans into them, offering a very specific, terrifying explanation
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: for why they occurred.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: Baldwin vehemently argues that these are textbook false confessions, manufactured
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: not by guilt, but by the horrific, inhumane conditions of
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: Allen's pretrial confinement.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: What were the conditions?
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: Baldwin points out a crucial administrative anomaly. Richard Allen, legally
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: an innocent man awaiting trial, was not housed in a
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: standard county jail.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Where was he?
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: He was transferred to a maximum security state prison.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Wait, really? A state prison before trial?
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: Yes. There, he was placed in solitary confinement for months
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: on end, completely isolated from human contact, and heavily medicated
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: by prison psychiatrists.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: I want to focus on the solitary confinement aspect because
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: it is essentially a state-sponsored sensory deprivation tank. But instead
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: of being a relaxing spa treatment, it is weaponized to
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: break your psychology.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: It destroys people.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Imagine being locked in a tiny concrete box for 23
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: hours a day. The fluorescent lights never turn off.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: You never see the sun.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: You have zero stimulation, no windows, no concept of time.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: And you are under immense stress facing murder charges. How
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: long does it take for the human mind to just fracture?
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Not as long as you think.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: How quickly does your brain start hallucinating and accepting false
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: realities simply to make the unbearable internal pressure stop?
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: The neuroscience and psychology behind false confessions are deeply counterintuitive
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: to the general public.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: Because everyone thinks they'd never confess.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The average person firmly believes... I would never, under
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: any circumstances, confess to a brutal murder I did not commit.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: You're right.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: But human beings are biological machines, and every machine has
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: a breaking point.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: That's a great way to put it.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: Under extreme psychological duress, prolonged isolation, and the introduction of
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: psychotropic medications, cognitive function degrades rapidly.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Your brain just turns to mush.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: The brain's survival mechanism kicks in. The desperate need to
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: appease an authority figure or the overwhelming desire to escape
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: an intolerable immediate environment entirely overrides logic.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: So you just agree to whatever they want.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: The suspect transitions from compliance, saying whatever it takes to
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: make the pain stop, to actual internalization, where their fractured
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: mind briefly believes the manufactured guilt.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: And the defense has incredibly strong proof that these confessions
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: were the product of a fractured mind because they point
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: out glaring factual absurdities within the confessions themselves.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: Yes, the details don't match.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: During his jailhouse calls, Alan didn't just vaguely say, I
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: did it. He confessed to specific actions. He confessed to
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: shooting the girls in the back.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: Which is entirely wrong. Right.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: We know from the autopsy reports and from the very
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: beginning of this deep dive that the girls were not shot.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: Their throats were cut. Furthermore, he confessed to killing his grandchildren.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: Which is an incredibly vital point because Richard Allen does
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: not have any grandchildren.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Exactly. He is sobbing over the phone, confessing to murdering
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: imaginary people that do not exist in reality.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: It's a massive red flag.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: If you are a jury hearing that tape, that alone
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: has to make you pause and say, OK, this man's
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: mental state is completely severed from reality. He is living
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: in a terrifying hallucination.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: The defense leverages those absurdities to build a powerful, logical firewall.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: It's a strong argument.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: If a man confesses to crimes that are physically impossible...
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: you know, murdering fictional grandchildren with a phantom gun, how
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: can the state ask a jury to selectively trust the
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: part of the confession that released to Abby and Libby?
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: You can't pick and choose which parts of a crazy
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: statement to believe. Right.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: But Baldwin and the defense team did not stop at
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: simply arguing that the state broke Richard Allen's mind. They
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: took the offensive.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: They really went on the attack.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: They filed a massive, incredibly complex legal document claiming that
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: the state actively ignored a much darker, fundamentally ritualistic reality
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: at the crime scene.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: And this is where the narrative shifts from a standard
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: true crime procedural into something that feels deeply unnerving.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Very dark.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: We need to dissect what the defense refers to as
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: the Franks memo.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: Yet to understand the gravity of this, we first need
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: to define the legal mechanism.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: What is a Franks memo?
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: A Franks memo stems from the 1978 Supreme Court case
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: Franks v. Delaware. is a highly specific motion to suppress evidence.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, so getting evidence thrown out.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: Right. A defense team files this when they believe law
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: enforcement officers deliberately lied or intentionally omitted crucial exculpatory facts
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: in the probable cause affidavit they submitted to a judge
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: to secure a search warrant.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: So they're accusing the police of perjury by omission.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: Yes. If a judge agrees that the police lied to
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: get the warrant... The evidence found during that search, which
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: in this case is the unspent bullet and the six-hour handgun,
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: is thrown out as fruit of the poisonous tree.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: Wow. So the whole case would collapse.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: In the Delphi case, the defense's Frank's memo was not
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: a standard five-page legal objection. It was a staggering 136-page document.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: It's a novel.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: And the absolute centerpiece of this legal Trojan horse is
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: the Odinist theory.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: The Odinist.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Andy Baldwin claims in the memo that the location where
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Abby and Libby were found was not just a random
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: patch of woods. He says it was a textbook ritualistic
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: crime scene.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: And he doesn't just base this on his own amateur observation. Right.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: He brought in an expert.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: He claims this assessment was explicitly supported by a federal-level
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: expert who routinely testifies for law enforcement.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: What did this expert see?
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: This expert allegedly reviewed the crime scene photographs. They noted
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: the specific unnatural staging of branches on the bodies, the
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: missing clothing, the blood evidence, and linked the signatures directly
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: to Odinism.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: And Odinism is a modern pagan religious movement that sometimes
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: misappropriates Norse mythology.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's correct.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: The defense alleges a massive failure of local policing.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: They really go after the local cops.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: They argue that small-town investigators in rural Indiana simply lacked
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: the training to understand what they were looking at.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: Which is plausible.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Because they couldn't decipher the ritualistic staging, they discarded it entirely,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: ignoring a highly viable, deeply sinister alternative investigation involving multiple perpetrators,
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: and instead tunnel-visioned onto Richard Allen five years later.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: But the defense's Odinist allegations extend far beyond the woods
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: of Deer Creek.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: Oh, they do.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: They weave this theory directly into the maximum security prison
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: where Richard Allen was held.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: Hold on. I have to stop you there because I
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: am struggling to buy this next part.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: It gets pretty wild.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: Baldwin claims that while Richard Allen was locked in solitary confinement,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: undergoing this mental breakdown and making false confessions, He was
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: literally being guarded by actual practicing Odinists.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: That is the claim.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: Baldwin alleges they have photographic evidence of prison guards wearing
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: patches on their official state uniforms that read, in Odin
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: we trust, complete with runic symbols.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, patches on their uniforms.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: At what point does a judge look at a 136-page
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: memo alleging small-town pagan cults and say, you're just throwing
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: spaghetti at the wall to confuse a jury? It sounds desperate.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: Well, the skepticism you're expressing... is exactly the reaction defense anticipates.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: And it highlights why this is such a high-risk, high-reward
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: legal strategy.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: It's a huge damble.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: During the interview with the Law and Crime Network, host
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: Anjanette Levy pushes back on Baldwin forcefully regarding this exact point.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Good, she should.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: She reminds him of foundational legal standards. To get a
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: search warrant, the police only need to establish probable cause.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: Which isn't that hard to do.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: No, that is an incredibly low legal bar.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: It merely requires showing a judge that there is a
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: reasonable basis to believe evidence of a crime might be
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: found at a specific location.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: Levy points out that law enforcement does not have a
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: constitutional obligation to present a judge with every single alternative
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: theory or detail every other suspect they investigated. just to
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: get permission to look in Richard Allen's house.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Right. Getting a search warrant is not a trial. You
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: don't have to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: look in a guy's garage. You just have to say
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: he admitted he was there and we think he might
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: have evidence.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: Precisely. From a strictly procedural standpoint, Levy's pushback is rock solid.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: A judge doesn't need to read a dissertation on Norse
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: mythology and ritualistic tree branch staging to decide if there's
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: enough reason to search the home of a man who
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: placed himself at the scene of a double homicide.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: Exactly. However, Baldwin counters that the omission of such a
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: massive parallel investigation into a suspected ritualistic cult murder is
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: fundamentally deceptive.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: Deceptive?
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: He argues that if a judge had known the crime
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: scene looked like a pagan ritual... they would have scrutinized
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: the request to search the mundane home of a CVS
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: clerk much more harshly.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: That makes sense. And Baldwin takes the prison guard conspiracy
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: even further.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: Oh, he goes all in.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: He describes a specific, terrifying incident from April 2023, the
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: very day Richard Allen reportedly had a severe mental breakdown
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: in custody.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: What happened that day?
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Baldwin claims that these specific guards, wearing the Odin patches,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: shackled Allen and walked him down the prison hallway while
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: filming him with an antiquated shoulder-mounted camcorder.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: A shoulder-mounted camcorder, like from the 90s. Yeah.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: He even alleges that during entirely private, legally privileged attorney-client meetings,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: the guards placed Allen in a glass-walled room and aimed
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: that camcorder directly at Allen's mouth.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: Why would they do that?
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: The implication is that these Erdenist guards were trying to
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: read his lips to monitor what he was telling his
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: defense lawyers.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: The optics of that allegation, true or not, are incredibly
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: damaging to the state's credibility.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: It really paints a picture of a justice system that
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: is completely out of control, operating in the shadows.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: But the defense's Frank's memo did not rely solely on
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: the Erdenist cult theory.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Right. They had more conventional arguments, too.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: It also attacked the foundational police work, by pointing out
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: glaring objective discrepancies regarding the physical description of the bridge
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: guy that the police conveniently left out of their sworn affidavit.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: Let's strip away the pagan runes and the prison guards
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: for a minute and look at the actual eyewitness testimony.
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: The meat and potatoes of the defense.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: Exactly. This is where the defense's argument regarding omissions becomes
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: incredibly grounded in traditional criminal defense. Baldwin highlights the witness
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: statements that the police relied on to build their timeline.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: Who is the main witness?
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: The most crucial witness was a woman named Betsy Blair.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: The police used her statement in the probable cause affidavit
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: to establish that a man matching Richard Allen's profile was
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: seen near the trail parking lot.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: But the defense reveals that the police surgically extracted only
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: the parts of her statement that fit their narrative.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: They cherry-picked her statement.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: According to Baldwin, the police left out massive contradictory portions
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: of Betsy Blair's physical description.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: What did she actually say?
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: She didn't describe a middle-aged, balding man in his 50s
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: like Richard Allen. She specifically told police she saw a
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: 20-year-old boy with thick, brown, poofy hair.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: A 20-year-old with poofy hair? That is nothing like Richard Allen.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: Furthermore, she didn't identify Richard Allen's modern vehicle in the
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: parking lot. She explicitly described seeing a 1965 Mercury Comet.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: I want the listener to really picture a 1965 Mercury Comet.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: It's a very distinct car.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: That is a highly specific, vintage car. sharply angular classic
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: American car. It has distinct tail fins and a massive grill.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: It looked absolutely nothing like a modern Ford Focus or
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: whatever standard sedan Richard Allen was driving.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: You don't mistake a modern sedan for a classic muscle car?
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: No. How does a police officer hear a witness describe
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: a vintage 1960s muscle car and a 20-year-old kid with
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: poofy hair and translate that into an affidavit to arrest
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: a middle-aged pharmacy tech driving a modern car?
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: Well, the psychology of eyewitness testimony is notoriously frail. Witnesses
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: suffer from weapon focus or environmental stress that distorts memory.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Sure, but a 1965 Mercury comet is an incredibly distinct object.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: It is, and the discrepancies don't stop at age or
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: vehicle models.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: What else did they omit?
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: Baldwin points out a monumental height discrepancy across multiple witness statements.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: Height is a big deal.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: Several people on the trail described the suspicious man they
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: saw as being roughly 5'11 or even 6' tall.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Okay, and how tall is Richard Allen?
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: Richard Allen is notably short. He stands at 5'5.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: We have to emphasize how massive a 6-inch height difference
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: is in human perception.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: It's a huge difference.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: Being off by a few years when guessing a stranger's
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: age is totally understandable. People are terrible at guessing age.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: But 5'5 minutes versus 5'11.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's night and day.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: That is the physical difference between looking down at the
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: top of someone's head versus tilting your chin up to
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: make eye contact. It completely changes the physical presence, the
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: stride length, and the gait of the suspect.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: In legal proceedings, these physical discrepancies are critical for establishing
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: reasonable doubt.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: Baldwin's core argument in the Franks memo is that if
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: a police officer submits an affidavit to a judge presenting
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: a witness as a positive identification, but intentionally hides the
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: fact that the witness described a suspect who is half
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: a foot taller, decades younger, and driving a vintage car...
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: that officer is committing a deliberate fraud upon the court.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: That's a serious accusation.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: Baldwin argues that any competent judge, seeing the full, unvarnished
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: picture of the contradictory witness statements, would have thrown the
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: search warrant request in the garbage.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: Baldwin is very candid about his ultimate strategy with this
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: massive document.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: What's his end goal?
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: He states in the interview that he is trying to
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: reach the middle lane of the public.
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: The middle lane.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Because the Delphi case has become one of the most toxic,
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: polarizing cases in modern true crime history.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: Oh, without a doubt, the online community is vicious.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: You have the fierce pro-Richard Allen Camp who believes he
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: is a framed scapegoat, and you have the anti-Richard Allen
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: Camp who believes he is an evil mastermind. Baldwin wants
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: to reach the people in the middle who are just
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: looking at the facts.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: This strategy connects deeply to the unprecedented social impact of
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: the Delphi murders. Now so. For over five years, the
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: Indiana State Police and local authorities operated under a veil
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: of total, impenetrable secrecy.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: They kept everything tight.
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: They sealed the autopsy reports. They refused to release the
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: cause of death. They kept the specific details of the
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: crime scene hidden from the public.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: They said it was for the integrity of the case.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: They argued this secrecy was vital to protect the investigation,
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: to ensure that only the killer would know the true details.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: But nature abhors a vacuum.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: And true crime social media doubly abhors a vacuum.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: Exactly. When you have a terrifying mystery, a haunting audio
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: clip of a killer's voice, a blurry video, and zero
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: official answers from the police for five straight years, the
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: internet takes over.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: It became a free-for-all.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: Baldwin notes how bizarre it is that people are following
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: the small-town Indiana case from Australia to Zimbabwe. In the
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: absence of facts, the global public bred massive conspiracy theories.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: It created an intense digital tribalism where people dug into
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: their chosen narratives and attacked anyone who disagreed.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: It's like a spectator sport.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: It serves as a profound sociological commentary on the modern
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: justice system. When institutional transparency is entirely lacking, public trust
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: rapidly erodes.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: So the secrecy backfired.
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: The police's secrecy, while tactically understandable from an investigative standpoint,
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: ultimately fueled a chaotic, unmanageable, parallel investigation by millions of
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: amateur sleuths online. It turned a double homicide into a
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: morbid spectator sport.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: Now, regarding the timeline of how all this chaos funneled
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: into the courtroom.
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: Right. Let's look at the trial.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: The original Sork material we reviewed notes a trial date
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: set for the fall of 2021. However, as we discussed earlier,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: the pivotal clerical error and Richard Allen's arrest didn't actually
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: occur until October 2022.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: Yes, that chronological discrepancy in the reporting perfectly encapsulates the
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: absolute informational chaos surrounding this case.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: The dates are all over the place.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: The timelines, the leaked documents, it has all been a
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: tangled mess. The trial process actually stretched far beyond those
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: initial reports, culminating in late 2024. But looking at the
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: arguments presented, despite the defense hammering the height discrepancies, the
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: vintage cars, and the subjective nature of the video, the
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: jury ultimately had to face the reality of the digital evidence.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: Which is hard to ignore.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: Baldwin argued passionately that the voice on the audio could
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: be anyone, but juries are deeply emotional entities.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Right, you can talk about the mechanical functioning of a
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: six-hour extractor claw for hours. You can debate the historical
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: context of Norse runes. But at the end of the day,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: a jury is sitting in a silent room watching a
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: blurry video of two terrified young girls and hearing a
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: voice say, guys, down the hill.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: It's visceral.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: That visceral emotional impact often bulldozes right over complex legal
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: theories about search warrants and unspent bullets.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: And during the trial proceedings, there was one. deeply significant
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: voice entirely missing from the courtroom.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: Kathy Allen.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: Yes. In the interview, Andy Baldwin expresses profound regret for
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: not putting Richard Allen's wife on the witness stand to
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: testify in his defense.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: Why didn't he?
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: Well, she was the one who originally told him to
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: go to the police in 2017. She could have humanized
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: into the jury. She could have painted a picture of
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: the mundane family man she knew.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: The decision to keep her off the stand highlights the agonizing,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: impossible strategic choices a defense team has to make.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: Baldwin explains the heartbreaking reason why she didn't testify. Richard
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: Allen explicitly forbade it.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: He wanted to protect her.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: He wanted to protect his wife from the trauma of
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: a brutal, predatory cross-examination by the state prosecutors.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: That's a tough spot to be in.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Baldwin reveals that early on in his horrific solitary confinement,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: Allen loved her so much that he genuinely considered pleading
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: guilty to a crime he insisted he didn't commit simply
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: to spare her the agonizing pain of a public trial.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: It forces us to confront the profound human collateral damage
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: inflicted by the justice system.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: The blast radius.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: Yes. The focus is always on the victims and the accused,
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: but the blast radius of a murder trial destroys everyone
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: it touches.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: Kathy Allen is trapped in a waking nightmare.
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: She really is.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: She is living in a small town that almost universally
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: believes her husband is a monster. She attends church, she
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: prays daily, and she states publicly that she stands by
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: him 1,000%.
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: She hasn't wavered.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: She insists he is innocent, and she argues that securing
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: a conviction against the wrong man is not true justice
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: for Abby and Libby. She is forced to reconcile the
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: horrifying allegations with the gentleman she shared her life with.
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: But according to Baldwin... The legal battle is far from over.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: What's next?
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: He mentions that trial lawyers are inherently superstitious about predicting outcomes,
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: but he feels exceptionally confident about the impending appeals process.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: An appeal is definitely coming.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: He notes that the appellate lawyers taking over the case,
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: Mark Lehman and Stacey Olana, are currently wading through mountains
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: of legal issues.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: From the Franks memo to the ballistics.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They are hoping to file comprehensive appellate briefs by
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: the end of the year.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: And Baldwin concludes his interview by lamenting one final crucial
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: aspect of the trial, which is the lack of transparency
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: in the courtroom itself.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: The cameras.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: Judge Gall explicitly barred cameras from broadcasting the proceeding.
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: Which Baldwin hated.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: Baldwin firmly believes that if the public, you know, that
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: crucial middle lane of people who aren't deeply entrenched in
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: Internet theories, could have watched the actual evidence being presented
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: in real time, completely unfiltered by secrecy or media spin...
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: the global perception of Richard Allen's guilt might be drastically different.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: Which brings us to the end of this incredibly dense,
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: deeply disturbing journey.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: Let's just step back and look at the sheer scope
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: of what we have explored today.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: It's a lot.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: We started on an unusually warm February afternoon with a blurry,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: compressed Snapchat video on an old wooden bridge. We tracked
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: how a massive manhunt was stalled for five years until
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: a volunteer found a single tip misfiled in a cardboard box.
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: A single misfiled paper.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: We analyzed the highly debated mechanics of extraction marks on
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: an unspent. 40 caliber bullet found six inches from a
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: victim's foot. We dug into the terrifying psychological deterioration that
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: leads to false confessions in solitary confinement.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: The sensory deprivation.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: And we explored a 136-page legal document alleging Odinist prison guards,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: ritualistic staging, and ignored eyewitnesses describing vintage cars and massive
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: height discrepancies.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: It is a case that stresses every single load-bearing pillar
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: of our legal system.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: It really does.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: It demands that we critically question the reliability of human memory,
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: the subjective interpretation of forensic science, the administrative competence of
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: vast police task forces— and the ethical boundaries of psychological
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: pressure applied by the state during pretrial confinement.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: So if you are listening to this right now, why
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: does all this matter to you? Why spend an hour
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: dissecting the darkest details of a tragedy in a town
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: you've probably never visited?
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: That's the important question.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: Because this case illuminates the terrifying fragility of your own freedom.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: It demonstrates how a simple mundane human error, you know,
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: a tired clerk dropping a piece of paper into the
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: wrong folder, can radically alter the course of history and
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: leave a killer on the street for half a decade.
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: It's sobering.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: It proves that extreme secrecy within the justice system doesn't
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: inherently protect the truth. More often than not, it simply
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: breeds rampant societal division and paranoia.
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: It serves as a stark, unavoidable reminder that the grand
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: machinery of justice is not operated by infallible algorithms.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: It is operated by human beings. And human beings... whether
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: they are witnesses, police officers, judges, or jurors, are fundamentally fallible.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: I want to leave you with a final lingering thought
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: to mull over. In our hyper-connected era, a single blurry
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: smartphone video can instantly launch millions of amateur internet sleuths.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: It happens instantly.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: It can divide the entire globe into warring tribal factions
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: screaming at each other on message boards. Have we as
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: a society completely lost the necessary patience to wait for
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: the whole truth to be discovered?
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: It feels like it sometimes.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: And when the justice system responds to that digital chaos
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: by operating in total secrecy, locking its doors and turning
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: off the cameras in the courtroom, do we have any
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: right to complain when the public inevitably fills that deafening
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: silence with wild conspiracies? It's human nature to fill the silence.
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: Next time you are walking through a quiet, perfectly normal
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: small town on an unusually warm afternoon, take a look around.
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: And remember just how quickly the path you are on
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: can disappear.