(Carroll County, IN) - A couple of La Porte County connections have factored into the Delphi double murder trial.

 

Following a three-day pretrial hearing this week, accused killer Richard Allen will be moved from a state penitentiary to a county jail. Allen, who is blamed for the murders of teenagers Abby Williams and Libby German in 2017, spent about a year at Westville Correctional Facility in La Porte County before being transferred to a similar prison downstate last April. Allen’s defense lawyers were successful in convincing special judge Frances Gull that maximum security confinement was not necessary.

 

Most of this week’s proceedings involved the admissibility of some 60 statements, allegedly confessions, which prosecutors say Allen made while in custody in Westville. His attorneys have alleged that Allen was treated inhumanely there and was intimidated by prison guards.

 

According to WTHR, also at issue was whether Allen’s lawyers will be permitted to offer at trial theories of “alternate suspects.” An expert witness called by the defense testified that she believed the murders to be ritualistic in nature, based on crime scene evidence. This fuels suspicions that a group involved with a pagan cult known as Odinism was behind the crime.

 

As evidence, defense attorneys point to an imprint, allegedly of the letter F, made with the blood of one of the victims on a tree near the murder scene. According to IndyStar, on Thursday an officer from the La Porte County Sherriff’s Department, Maj. Patrick Cicero, testified as a forensics expert. He said the bloody marking was likely a transfer stain from a victim’s hand, and could not have been intentionally drawn, as has been suggested.

 

Judge Gull is now considering the motions presented to her in preparation for Allen’s jury trial scheduled to begin October 14 in Carroll County Circuit Court.