Trial in 2017 killings of 2 teenage girls in Indiana reaches midway point as prosecution rests

DELPHI, Ind. — The trial of a man accused of killing two teenage girls in a small Indiana community has passed its midway point following more than two weeks of testimony about the 2017 killings.

Prosecutors rested their case Thursday against Richard Allen after jurors heard recorded phone calls in which he told his wife that he killed Abigail Williams, 13, and Liberty German, 14.

Allen’s trial began Oct. 18 at the Carroll County Courthouse in Delphi, the girls’ hometown. Jurors have been sequestered since the begining of the trial, which is scheduled to run through Nov. 15.

The defense began calling its first witnesses Thursday. A psychologist for the Indiana Department of Correction told jurors Friday that Allen was seriously mentally ill when he began confessing to the killings while housed at the Westville Correctional Facility.

Allen, 52, faces up to 130 years in prison if he is convicted on two counts of murder and two additional counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping.

Here are some key moments in the trial so far:

Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland opened the trial by telling jurors they would see and hear evidence, including incriminating statements Allen has made, that will convince them he forced the girls off a hiking trail into a secluded area while armed with a gun and cut their throats.

Allen was the person seen on cellphone video German recorded on the day the girls disappeared and an unspent bullet found between their bodies came from Allen’s gun, McLeland said.

Defense attorney Andrew Baldwin told jurors Allen is innocent. Baldwin said the jury would hear witness statements and forensic evidence that would raise “reasonable doubt” that Allen is not the killer and said the state’s timeline does not match the evidence in the case.

Someone else may have kidnapped the teens and returned them early the next day to the scene where they were found dead, Baldwin said.

In the first full week of the trial, jurors were shown photographs of the area where the teens’ bodies were found in a wooded area off the hiking trail. The girls, known as Abby and Libby, had crossed an abandoned railroad trestle called the Monon High Bridge during their hike.

Some jurors and others in the courtroom gasped or turned away when gruesome images of their bloody bodies were shown, and the girls’ mothers wept.

Jurors also viewed cellphone video that German recorded just before the youths vanished showing a man wearing a blue jacket…