Richard Allen is blaming psychosis from solitary confinement for his repeated confessions to killing two Indiana teenagers.
The 54-year-old former drugstore clerk, sentenced to 130 years for the 2017 murders of Abigail Williams, 13, and Liberty German, 14, appeared in court Monday as his appellate attorney fought to overturn the conviction. Mark Leeman argued the judge should never have allowed Allen’s confessions to reach the jury.
“We want to make sure we got it right,” Leeman told the court.
“We do not have a reliable verdict,” he continued, adding that he didn’t believe Allen, who had no criminal history, could have committed such a horrific crime.
Leeman’s central claim is that Allen became severely mentally ill while locked in solitary confinement before trial. According to filings, Allen smashed his head against cell walls, bathed in his toilet, ate paper, and covered his face and cell walls in feces during that period. He repeatedly confessed to prison guards and psychologists, as well as several times to his wife, Kathy, in person, phone calls and letters.
“I did it. I killed Abby and Libby,” Allen stated frankly in one of many phone conversations with his wife played for the jury during his four-week trial.
“Yes, I did,” he assured her when she tried to challenge his confession.
Prosecutor Ellen Meilaender with the Indiana Attorney General’s Office pushed back hard. She stressed that Allen’s confessions were voluntary and not forced, and not part of his interrogations. She noted Allen was only in solitary confinement for his own safety, and that he had a tablet — replaced when he broke it — plus regular meetings with a chaplain and mental health professionals.
The conviction did not rest solely on the confessions, Meilaender emphasized. Allen admitted in 2017 — years before his arrest and confinement — that he was on the Monon High Bridge Trail at the same time the girls are believed to have been killed. When investigators followed up years later, he changed his timeline.
The eighth graders, close friends who often spent time together, were last seen alive on February 13, 2017, on the trail just outside Delphi, about 78 miles north of Indianapolis. Prosecutors said Allen encountered them there, forced the pair at gunpoint off the trail, and threatened to rape them. He changed plans only when a van passed by, then forced them down a hill and cut their throats about a quarter mile from the trail, where their bodies were found the following day.
Allen was found guilty in November 2024 and sentenced the following month to the maximum term of 130 years behind bars. His attorneys are now seeking a new trial, with Monday’s hearing focused on whether his mental state during confinement tainted the evidence that helped convict him.