Delphi killer appeals convictions citing coerced confessions

Richard Allen, a man serving a 130-year sentence for the 2017 murders of two teenage girls in Delphi, Indiana, is asking the Indiana Court of Appeals to overturn his convictions. His attorneys argue that his confessions were the product of a severe psychological breakdown caused by prolonged solitary confinement and that he was unfairly barred from presenting an alternative theory that the killings were part of a pagan ritual. The appeal was heard on Monday, September 21, 2026. Allen was convicted in 2024 for the deaths of Abigail Williams, 13, and Liberty German, 14, whose bodies were found on February 13, 2017, near an abandoned railroad trestle on a hiking trail outside Delphi. The case went unsolved for more than five years before Allen's arrest. During oral arguments, defense attorney Mark Leeman told the three-judge panel that police, driven by confirmation bias, used confessions Allen made while suffering from psychosis. Leeman framed the appeal as a choice between Allen being a killer or police failing to find the right suspect. Prosecutors maintained that the confessions were genuine and that the trial was fair.