DELPHI, Ind. (AP) — The trial of a man accused of killing two teenagers in a small Indiana community has reached its midpoint after more than two weeks of testimony about the 2017 slayings.

Prosecutors concluded their case against Richard Allen on Thursday after jurors heard recorded phone calls in which he told his wife that he had killed 13-year-old Abigail Williams and 14-year-old Liberty German.

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

The defense began calling its first witnesses on Thursday. An Indiana Department of Corrections psychologist told jurors Friday that Allen was severely mentally ill when he began confessing to the murders while being held at the Westville Correctional Facility.

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

Here are some key moments from the trial so far:

Opening statements

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

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

Defense attorney Andrew Baldwin told jurors that 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 spot where they were found dead, Baldwin said.

Jurors see photos and videos of the crime scene.

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 away from the hiking trail. The girls, known as Abby and Libby, had crossed an abandoned railroad trestle called Monon High Bridge during their walk.

Some jurors and others in the courtroom gasped or turned away as gruesome images of their bloodied bodies were shown, and the girls’ mothers cried.

Jurors also viewed cellphone video that German recorded just before the teens disappeared that shows a man dressed in a blue jacket and jeans following Williams as he crosses the Monon High Bridge.

In an enhanced version of the video shown to the jury, one of the girls says: “There is no path, so we have to go down here.” Just before the video ends, prosecutors said, the man seen in the video tells the teenagers“Downhill”.

How Allen became a suspect

Investigators said in an affidavit released about a month after Allen’s arrest in October 2022 that he became a suspect after they went back and reviewed “previous information” and discovered that he had been interviewed by an officer in 2017.

Trial testimony has revealed more details about how they targeted the former pharmacy worker.

A retired state government worker who volunteered in March 2017 to help police with the investigation told jurors that in September 2022 she found some documents that caught her attention.

Kathy Shank testified that she found a “lead sheet” that said that two days after German and Williams’ bodies were found, a man contacted authorities and said he had been following the lead the afternoon the girls disappeared. . His name was incorrectly listed as Richard Allen Whiteman and was marked “cleared,” Shank said.

She determined that the man’s name was actually Richard Allen and remembered that a young woman had been on the trail at the same place and at the same time and had seen a man.

“I thought there might be a correlation,” Shank testified, adding that he notified officers of his discovery.

What Allen told investigators in 2017

The girls’ bodies were found on February 14, 2017, the day after they disappeared.

Two days later, Allen contacted authorities and told them he was on the hiking trail the afternoon of Feb. 13, during the period the girls went missing, according to testimony.

Dan Dulin, a captain with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, told the court that he spoke with Allen, who said he was on the hiking trail between 1 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. and remembered seeing three girls.

What Allen told investigators in 2022

After Shank brought Allen to the attention of investigators, they interviewed him in October 2022. Allen told investigators that he arrived at the trail around noon and left no later than 2 p.m., not 3: 30 pm, as he told Dulin in 2017.

Steve Mullin, who was Delphi police chief when the girls were killed and later became an investigator for the county attorney’s office, said Allen told him and another officer that he was wearing a blue or black Carhartt jacket, jeans and a hat on the day of the crime. The teenagers disappeared.

Mullin said he asked Allen if he was the similarly dressed person seen in German’s cellphone video.

“His response was that if the photograph was taken with the girls’ camera, there was no way it was him,” Mullin testified.

Prosecutors also showed jurors videotaped police interviews with Allen before his arrest in which he repeatedly professed his innocence.

Allen’s alleged confessions

On Thursday, the jury heard several recorded phone calls of Allen speaking to his wife from prison in which he told her he had killed German and Williams. In one of the calls he said: “I made it. I killed Abby and Libby.”

The jury previously heard testimony from the former warden of the Westville Correctional Facility, where Allen was previously held, who said Allen claimed to have killed the girls with a box cutter that he later discarded.

Dr. Monica Wala, Allen’s prison psychologist during his stay in Westville, testified that Allen began confessing to killing the girls in early 2023 during his sessions with her. She said he provided details of the crime in some of the confessions, including telling her he slit the girls’ throats and covered their bodies with tree branches.

A report written by Wala and presented to the jury as evidence states that Allen also told him he had planned to rape the teenage girls, but did not do so after he saw a van traveling nearby.

A state trooper testified Thursday that Allen’s comment corroborated a statement from a man whose driveway runs under the Monon High Bridge who said he was heading home in his pickup truck at that time.

Allen’s lawyers have said their client made the incriminating statements under the pressure and mental stress of being locked up and guarded 24 hours a day and being mocked by people imprisoned with him.

During cross-examination, Wala acknowledged that she followed Allen’s case with interest during her personal time even while treating him and that she was a fan of the true crime genre.

An unspent bullet and Allen’s gun.

Court documents released weeks after Allen’s arrest state that tests determined that an unspent bullet found among the girls’ bodies “had been passed through” a gun Allen owned.

Melissa Oberg, a firearms expert with the Indiana State Police, told jurors that her analysis linked the bullet to Allen’s Sig Sauer, a .40-caliber handgun.

Allen’s attorney attempted to cast doubt on the accuracy of the firearms evidence during cross-examination. Oberg said he is not aware of making any identification errors in his more than 17 years of analyzing firearms.

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