DELPHI, Ind. – 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 murders.

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 charges of murder by committing or attempting to commit kidnapping.

Here are some key moments from the trial so far:

Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland opened the trial 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 to a secluded area while armed with a gun and slit 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.

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 teens: “ going down the hill.”

Investigators said in an affidavit released about a month later Allen arrest in October 2022 who became a suspect after they went back and reviewed “previous information” and discovered 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.

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.

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.