Down the Hill — The Delphi Murders and the Trial That Answered Everything Except the Why

On February 13, 2017, fourteen-year-old Libby German and thirteen-year-old Abby Williams went hiking on the Monon High Bridge — an abandoned rail trestle spanning Deer Creek outside Delphi, Indiana. Libby had the instinct, in the worst possible moment, to hit record on her phone. The forty-three seconds she captured became the most scrutinized piece of evidence in a case that consumed the country for nearly seven years. This episode traces everything: the crime, the five-and-a-half-year investigation, the clerical error that let the suspect live in plain sight, and the landmark 2024 trial that generated seven distinct legal battles — from gag orders and jury selection to prison confessions and an alternative-perpetrator theory rooted in Norse mythology. With Richard Allen convicted and serving 130 years, the story is now in a new courtroom: his appeal, which is heading toward oral arguments at the Indiana Statehouse on September 21, 2026.

If you follow true-crime cases closely, the Delphi murders need almost no introduction — but this episode is designed to be a complete account, walking through each layer of evidence and legal controversy in sequence. The focus is on the courtroom mechanics: what a gag order actually does, why a venue change matters in a small-town case, how sixty-one prison confessions were admitted as evidence, and why an unspent cartridge found between two victims became both the prosecution's physical anchor and the defense's main target on appeal. The appeal itself is live — each development this week was drawn from reporting published in the 22 hours before this episode was recorded.