There is one piece of evidence from the Delphi murders that millions of people have seen.

A man walking across an abandoned railroad bridge.

Blue jeans.

A jacket.

Hands near his pockets.

His face blurred by distance and movement.

Then a voice.

“Guys.”

“Down the hill.”

The video lasted only seconds.

But it was recorded by 14-year-old Liberty “Libby” German shortly before she and her best friend, 13-year-old Abigail “Abby” Williams, were killed near Delphi, Indiana, in February 2017.

For years, the unidentified man in that video became the face of one of America’s most closely watched unsolved murder investigations.

Police warned that the killer might be hiding in plain sight.

Then, more than five years after the murders, investigators arrested Richard Allen.

He was local.

A husband.

A father.

An employee at a CVS not far from where the girls disappeared.

In 2024, a jury convicted Allen of murdering Abby and Libby.

He was sentenced to a total of 130 years in prison.

For many people following the case, that verdict looked like the ending.

It wasn’t.

Now Allen wants a new trial.

And the fight over whether he should get one has returned attention to some of the most controversial parts of the prosecution against him.

His confessions.

His mental condition while incarcerated.

Evidence the jury was not permitted to hear.

Alternative-suspect arguments the defense says it was prevented from fully presenting.

And a fundamental appellate question that is very different from the one jurors answered in 2024.

The jury decided whether the state had proved Richard Allen guilty.

The appellate judges must decide whether the process that produced that verdict complied with the law.

That distinction matters.

An appeal is not simply a second jury trial.

Appellate judges do not ordinarily sit down and ask themselves whether they personally believe the defendant committed the crime.

They examine claimed legal errors.

Was evidence improperly admitted?

Was evidence improperly excluded?

Were constitutional rights violated?

Did the trial court apply the correct legal standards?

And if an error occurred, was it serious enough to affect the conviction?

According to the supplied interview, those questions produced an unusually tense appellate hearing.

Susan Hendricks, who had followed the Delphi case for years and attended Allen’s trial, was inside the courtroom for the arguments.

She described a deeply divided atmosphere.

Inside, observers reacted quietly to questions from the judges.

Outside and in overflow areas, supporters of Allen could reportedly be heard cheering at moments they interpreted as favorable to his appeal.

The division surrounding the Delphi case had followed Allen from the investigation to the trial and now into the appellate process.

But the loudest argument was not occurring in the hallway.

It concerned what happened to Allen while he was incarcerated before trial.

And what he said while he was there.

Allen confessed.

Not once.

According to the source, the defense says there were more than 60 confessions or incriminating statements.

That sounds devastating.

The prosecution argued that some of Allen’s statements contained details consistent with evidence in the case.

The defense’s response is not simply that the statements never existed.

Instead, it attacks the circumstances under which they were made.

Allen, the defense argues, was suffering from psychosis.

That changes the question.

Instead of asking only:

Did Richard Allen confess?

The appellate fight asks:

What was Richard Allen’s mental condition when he made those statements, and what should the jury have been allowed to know when deciding how much weight to give them?

According to the interview, both sides acknowledged that Allen experienced some form of psychosis during portions of his incarceration.

The disagreement centers on what follows legally from that fact.

The defense argues that the confessions should not have been admissible.

It also contends that evidence illustrating the severity of Allen’s mental deterioration should have been available to the jury.

The state maintains that the confessions were meaningful evidence and points to details it says aligned with other evidence in the case.

The conditions of Allen’s confinement therefore became central.

He was held in a maximum-security state prison before trial.

That was unusual.

He had not yet been convicted.

Legally, he remained presumed innocent.

According to the source, jurors were shown or confronted with evidence relating to disturbing behavior during Allen’s incarceration, including periods when he was naked in his cell and engaged in behavior involving feces.

But the appellate argument described in the interview focused on whether jurors received enough context about statements Allen made during periods of apparent mental deterioration.

The source describes statements unrelated to the actual facts of the murders.

Claims that did not make sense.

References to things that apparently could not have occurred.

Disorganized behavior.

One appellate judge reportedly questioned why certain material illustrating that mental state had not been admitted.

That question matters because confessions are powerful.

Possibly too powerful.

Once jurors hear a defendant say, “I did it,” every other piece of evidence can begin to look different.

A confession can become the lens through which the entire case is interpreted.

But a confession made by someone experiencing severe mental illness raises a different evidentiary problem.

Was it reliable?

Was the person accurately describing reality?

Were other obviously false statements made during the same period?

Did the jury receive enough information to evaluate that?

Those are the kinds of questions Allen’s appellate attorneys are asking.

They are not automatically answered merely by proving that Allen experienced psychosis.

Nor does psychosis automatically make every statement false.

The timing and context of each statement matter.

And according to Hendricks, one confession in particular stood apart from the rest.

A recorded telephone call.

Allen was speaking with his wife and mother.

His voice, in Hendricks’s description, sounded calm.

Then he said:

“I did it. I killed Abby and Libby.”

The women immediately rejected what he was saying.

They told him he had not done it.

They suggested something was wrong.

For Hendricks, who personally heard the evidence during the trial, that statement was particularly powerful.

But Hendricks also explicitly acknowledged something important.

She is not a doctor.

Her perception that Allen sounded calm does not establish his psychiatric condition at that moment.

That distinction must remain intact.

A listener can describe how a voice sounds.

A clinical conclusion about psychosis requires something more.

That is one reason the appeal cannot be reduced to:

He confessed, case closed.

Nor can it be reduced to:

He experienced psychosis, therefore every confession was meaningless.

The appellate court has to deal with the actual record.

Which statements were admitted?

When were they made?

What was Allen’s documented condition at those times?

What evidence concerning his mental state was excluded?

Why did the trial court exclude it?

What instructions did the jury receive?

And under the governing law, did any evidentiary ruling deprive Allen of a fair trial?

Those are legal questions.

They are less emotionally satisfying than deciding whether someone “looks guilty.”

But that is precisely what appellate courts are supposed to examine.

Then there is the second major controversy.

The third-party defense.

Allen’s lawyers wanted to present evidence suggesting other people might have been responsible for Abby and Libby’s murders.

The supplied interview focuses particularly on a man referred to as Brad Holder.

During the appellate hearing, according to Hendricks, defense counsel went far enough that she felt the attorney was trying to retry the case rather than focus on appellate law.

The defense referenced a sketch and identified Holder as an alternative suspect.

The state pushed back.

According to the interview, the trial judge had previously considered the proposed third-party evidence and found it insufficient.

But during the appeal, at least one judge reportedly asked whether the timeline truly excluded Holder from reaching the bridge.

That does not mean the appellate judge concluded Holder committed the murders.

It does not mean the court accepted the defense theory.

And the source itself should not be used to accuse Holder of murdering Abby and Libby.

He has not been convicted of these murders.

The legally relevant question is narrower:

Did the trial court improperly prevent Allen from presenting admissible evidence supporting an alternative-perpetrator theory?

That is a very different claim from saying the alternative person actually committed the crime.

This distinction is particularly important in true-crime coverage.

A defense lawyer can argue that another person should have been investigated.

A defense lawyer can argue that evidence points elsewhere.

A defendant can argue that jurors should have been allowed to hear a third-party theory.

None of those statements establishes the guilt of the third party.

Appellate review concerns the defendant’s right to present a defense.

Not the internet’s right to declare a replacement suspect guilty.

The judges also confronted another unusual aspect of Allen’s pretrial incarceration.

Why was a man who had not yet been convicted being held in a maximum-security prison rather than an ordinary county jail?

According to the state’s argument as described in the interview, safety was the answer.

Carroll County is small.

Delphi is small.

The murders had generated enormous publicity.

Anger was intense.

Officials were concerned Allen could be attacked if he remained in the county jail.

Moving him to a more secure facility was presented as protection.

But the defense says that protection came at an enormous psychological cost.

The interview describes Allen’s confinement as effectively solitary for significant periods.

He had access to certain privileges, including an electronic tablet at points.

But his lawyers argued that the environment contributed to his mental collapse.

Then came one of the sharpest lines described from the appellate hearing.

The state argued that officials were trying to protect Allen.

A judge responded, according to Hendricks:

“You protected him all the way into psychosis.”

It is only one line from an oral argument.

A pointed judicial question is not a ruling.

Judges often test both sides aggressively.

They may ask a skeptical question precisely to understand the limits of an argument.

So the remark should not be treated as proof that the court has already decided the appeal.

But it reveals where at least one judge saw a serious issue.

If the state placed Allen in unusually restrictive confinement for his own protection, and that confinement contributed to severe mental deterioration, what legal consequences follow for statements he made while deteriorating?

That is far harder than asking whether officials intended to harm him.

Intent and consequence are different questions.

Hendricks came away believing a new trial was possible.

She also offered another opinion.

If Allen received another trial, she believed he would be convicted again.

Those two beliefs are not contradictory.

Someone can believe the evidence points strongly toward a defendant’s guilt while simultaneously believing the defendant’s trial contained a reversible legal error.

That is what due process means.

The fairness of a trial is not important only when the defendant appears innocent.

It matters most when the evidence appears powerful, because otherwise courts could excuse procedural violations whenever judges personally believed the defendant probably committed the crime.

But Hendricks’s prediction about a second trial remains exactly that.

A prediction.

The appellate court has not yet granted a new trial merely because judges asked difficult questions.

And no future jury outcome can be known in advance.

What can be examined is the evidence that made the original case against Allen persuasive to the prosecution and ultimately to the 2024 jury.

One crucial fact was Allen’s own acknowledgment that he had been on the trails that day.

The man police spent years trying to identify had been captured on Libby’s phone.

Allen had placed himself in the same general area.

According to the interview, when investigators later questioned him about what he had been wearing, Allen described blue jeans and a blue or black Carhartt-style jacket.

That description attracted obvious attention because it resembled the clothing visible on the grainy “Bridge Guy” image.

But caution matters again.

Many people can own blue jeans and a dark jacket.

Clothing similarity by itself is not individual identification.

The prosecution’s case did not depend on a single generic outfit.

The evidentiary significance came from how multiple pieces fit together.

Location.

Timing.

Statements.

Witnesses.

The video.

The audio.

Allen’s own accounts.

The confessions.

And other physical and circumstantial evidence introduced at trial.

The jury evaluated that collection.

It convicted him.

Then there is Libby’s phone.

For years the public knew only fragments of what it contained.

The blurry figure.

The words “down the hill.”

During trial, people inside the courtroom encountered more of the recording.

Hendricks described the experience as devastating.

The girls sounded young.

Afraid.

The recording captured a transition from an ordinary afternoon into danger.

That is what makes the evidence uniquely difficult for Abby and Libby’s families.

For everyone else, the recording is evidence.

For them, those are voices they knew.

Libby was not creating a true-crime artifact.

She was 14 years old.

She apparently sensed that something was wrong and used her phone.

That decision created evidence that would dominate the investigation for years.

The man on the bridge became “Bridge Guy.”

Police released his image.

They released audio.

The public studied his gait.

His clothing.

His voice.

Tips poured in.

Still, years passed.

And one question continued haunting Delphi:

How could the man police were searching for have remained unidentified in a town so small?

That question remains significant even after Allen’s conviction.

According to the source, Allen had approached an investigator shortly after the murders and acknowledged that he had been on the trails that day.

If that information was available early, why did his arrest take more than five years?

Hendricks repeatedly returns to the size of Delphi.

A population of only a few thousand.

A finite pool of men.

A known approximate time.

A known location.

A video image.

A voice.

People who had been on the trails.

In hindsight, it can appear obvious.

But hindsight compresses investigations.

Investigators do not begin with the name eventually printed on a conviction.

They begin with possibilities.

Witness accounts can conflict.

Tips accumulate.

Descriptions are imperfect.

People wear similar clothing.

Timelines have gaps.

Evidence has to establish more than suspicion.

And the supplied interview does not provide enough of the investigative record to explain definitively why Allen was not identified earlier.

The appropriate conclusion is therefore not that police “should obviously” have arrested him in 2017.

It is that the delay remains one of the most consequential questions surrounding the investigation.

Allen lived locally.

He had placed himself on the trails.

Yet the arrest did not come until 2022.

That deserves examination based on the investigative record rather than hindsight alone.

The appeal adds another layer to that history.

If the appellate court upholds the convictions, Allen remains imprisoned under the existing judgment.

If the court finds reversible error, the consequences could be much larger.

A new trial would force everyone back into evidence that took years to bring before a jury.

The video.

The confessions.

The mental-health evidence.

The disputed third-party theory.

The timeline.

Witnesses.

Expert testimony.

And for Abby and Libby’s families, another courtroom process centered on the worst event of their lives.

Hendricks described seeing members of Libby’s family during the appellate argument.

Her grandfather taking notes.

Her grandmother listening.

Details of the murders being spoken aloud again.

This is another feature of appellate litigation that legal terminology can hide.

To lawyers, a record is a record.

To appellate judges, facts may be necessary background for resolving legal questions.

To a victim’s family, those same facts are memories of someone they lost.

The appeal does not reopen the physical crime.

Emotionally, it can reopen almost everything else.

That may help explain the intensity outside the courtroom.

The Delphi case has developed camps.

People convinced Allen is guilty.

People convinced he is innocent.

People who believe he may be guilty but did not receive a fair trial.

People focused on alternative theories.

People focused on alleged investigative failures.

People who distrust law enforcement.

People who distrust online speculation.

The source describes supporters cheering in response to questions from appellate judges.

It also describes hostility directed toward the victims’ families by some people involved in the broader online debate.

Hendricks is careful not to accuse everyone who supports a new trial of behaving that way.

That distinction is important.

Supporting appellate review does not mean disrespecting Abby and Libby.

Believing Allen’s conviction should stand does not mean every decision made during the investigation or trial was flawless.

Those positions are too often collapsed into teams.

A criminal appeal is not a sporting event.

The question is not which side can cheer louder in the hallway.

The question is whether the conviction was obtained through a legally valid process.

The lack of a simple motive adds to the unease.

According to the interview, prosecutors never established a motive that made the crime psychologically comprehensible to observers.

That does not necessarily create a legal defect.

Motive and proof of the charged offense are different concepts.

But people naturally want a why.

Especially in a crime involving two children.

Why those girls?

Why that day?

Why that bridge?

Why would a local middle-aged man with a family allegedly do something like this?

The interview eventually moves into speculation.

Possibly fantasies.

Possibly thoughts developing over time.

Possibly a decision made that day.

But the speaker explicitly identifies portions of that discussion as speculation.

There is no responsible way to convert that speculation into fact.

What matters more is a statement attributed to Allen himself during his incarceration.

According to the source, Allen gave a prison psychologist an account describing what he said he intended to do.

The narrative says Allen described lying in wait.

Seeing other girls first.

Then encountering Abby and Libby.

Ordering them down the hill.

Beginning to make them remove clothing.

Seeing a white van.

Panicking.

Moving them across the creek.

Then killing them.

If accurately represented in the trial record, that statement is obviously significant.

But it returns the case immediately to the central appellate dispute.

Allen’s mental condition.

The defense says his confessions emerged during psychosis.

The state says some included details consistent with the crime evidence.

Therefore the importance of a detailed confession does not eliminate the mental-health issue.

It makes the issue more important.

If the confession is reliable, its detail can be devastating evidence.

If severe psychosis compromised its reliability, jurors needed sufficient context to evaluate it.

The appellate court must decide whether the trial process gave them what the law required.

That is the story now.

Not whether social media believes Richard Allen is guilty.

A jury already answered the guilt question under the evidence it was permitted to consider.

Not whether one journalist who attended the trial believes the right man was convicted.

Hendricks clearly says she does.

That is her assessment.

Not whether people outside the appellate courtroom cheered.

They did not decide the case.

The question now belongs to judges.

Were Allen’s confessions properly handled?

Did the jury receive adequate information about his mental condition?

Did the conditions of his pretrial confinement create legally significant problems?

Was the defense improperly restricted from presenting evidence pointing toward another possible perpetrator?

And if the trial court made an error, was that error serious enough to require another trial?

Those questions can produce an uncomfortable result.

An appellate court can order a new trial without declaring a defendant innocent.

It can conclude that legal rules were violated without deciding another person committed the crime.

It can uphold a conviction even while acknowledging that aspects of the investigation or incarceration were imperfect.

That is why reading judicial questions as predictions is dangerous.

One judge challenging the state does not mean the defense has won.

One judge challenging defense counsel does not mean the convictions will be affirmed.

Oral argument is testing.

The written decision is the decision.

According to the interview, that written ruling may take months.

Until then, Allen remains convicted.

The 2024 jury verdict remains in force.

And Abby and Libby’s families remain where they have been for almost a decade:

waiting for another legal process connected to two girls who went for an afternoon walk and never came home.

That is where every discussion of this appeal should return.

Abby Williams was 13.

Libby German was 14.

Libby’s phone captured something extraordinary because a child recognized danger and had the presence of mind to record.

For years, investigators asked the public to identify the man she captured.

Eventually prosecutors told a jury that man was Richard Allen.

The jury agreed.

Now Allen is asking an appellate court to determine whether the road to that verdict was legally fair.

Those are two different questions.

Who committed the murders?

And did the state obtain its conviction in a way the law permits?

The first produced a guilty verdict.

The second is being litigated now.

Whatever the appellate court ultimately decides, one fact should not disappear beneath arguments about confessions, psychosis, alternative suspects or online factions.

Before there was “Bridge Guy,” there were two best friends.

Before there was Richard Allen’s appeal, there was an afternoon on the Monon High Bridge trail.

Before millions of people analyzed a few seconds of video, Libby was simply trying to understand the man approaching them.

Then she raised her phone.

Seven years later, a jury convicted Richard Allen.

Now the defense wants another trial.

And the judges considering that request are not being asked to solve the Delphi murders from the beginning.

They are being asked something narrower, but enormously consequential:

Did Richard Allen receive the fair trial the law required before the state sentenced him to spend the rest of his life in prison?

Until those judges issue their written decision, that question remains open.