Abby and Libby, as their friends called them, were last seen together on February 13, 2017, when they were 13 and 14 years old. A murder inquiry was launched when their corpses were found the next day near Delphi, Indiana.
Abby and Libby were best friends who, on the day they died, went on a little trek over an abandoned railroad track. If they didn’t come back to a designated area to be picked up by an adult, an alert was made. Their rapid disappearance sparked a lot of discussion. Their extraordinary trail of evidence caused a stir in the media.
After the corpses of Abby and Libby were discovered, investigators provided this information in increments. A audio recording of the primary suspect was published first, followed by a still image, and finally a short video clip. The fact that Libby’s mobile phone was the source of the evidence only piqued public curiosity further: there was nothing known about the person or people responsible for the girls’ deaths, but it seemed that Libby, perhaps feeling danger, had recorded the probable offender.
The Indiana State Police finally conducted the news conference that had been planned for five years on Monday (October 31). It was confirmed that a suspect had been apprehended. The previous Tuesday, 50-year-old Richard Matthew Allen was arrested and later charged with two charges of murder.
Little information is available concerning the reasons for Allen’s arrest or the evidence against him. Most of the lines during Monday’s press conference focused on this obscurity. Information on Allen, or anybody else, may still be sent to the investigation’s tip line. As a result, investigators are keeping the details of the case mostly secret. Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter addressed the media on Monday, “While I know you are all anticipating definitive information today surrounding this arrest, today is not that day.”
County prosecutor Nicholas McLeland characterized sealing the charge paperwork and probable cause affidavit as “rare,” meaning that such materials are often made public in the county. When a reporter there pressed McLeland more on the topic, he said, “the investigation is still underway, and although all cases are significant, the nature of this case has some added scrutiny with it.” A public hearing will be held to determine whether or not those documents should stay hidden.
There has been much conjecture due to the mysterious nature of the press conference and the secrecy surrounding the papers themselves. The fact that the tip line is still active and the word “anyone else” was used implies that authorities are open to the idea that others were involved in the killings. It’s also likely that law enforcement is proceeding cautiously because of the case’s widespread media coverage.
To me, it’s not just morbid curiosity that has people wondering about Allen’s arrest. Even when considering actual crime tales, there is nothing intrinsically evil about the public’s insatiable need for knowledge. The public was asked to assist law enforcement in solving this case. The first image of the man police believe to be the main suspect was published shortly after the killings. He can be seen in the image strolling on a bridge with his head down and his hands in his pockets. They also published a brief video of the suspect walking, apparently to enable the public identify him by his stride, and the aforementioned audio recording, in which someone can be heard stating the words “Down the hill.” Some have dubbed the deaths in Delphi the “Snapchat murders” as photos of the girls on their trek that day were sent on Snapchat before they vanished.
This information quickly went viral, reaching audiences well beyond Delphi, Indiana, and the United States as a whole. We were enough informed to be completely engrossed. Innumerable groups of individuals started analyzing the film meticulously, frame by frame. In addition to the main subreddit, DelphiMurders, which has just under 73,000 members, there is a smaller community, DelphiMurdersTimeline, which has over 5,000 members and is focused only on establishing a strict chronology of everything that transpired on that day.
