Delphi: The Investigative Failures That Started on Day One and Never Stopped

A misfiled tip sheet, a "cleared" lead, and the five-and-a-half-year gap the jury was never told about.

Hidden Killers w/ Tony Brueski

May 23, 2026

In September of 2022, a volunteer sorting through old case files in Delphi, Indiana, pulls a tip sheet out of a box. It’s been misfiled under the wrong name. Stuffed away. Forgotten. For five and a half years, this piece of paper sat in a box while two murdered girls waited for someone to do their job. The tip was from a man named Richard Allen, who walked into a parking lot two days after Abby Williams and Libby German were found dead and told a conservation officer named Dulin that he’d been on the Monon High Bridge Trail that afternoon. He came forward voluntarily. He answered their questions. And when the interview was over, his lead was marked “cleared,” the report was filed under the wrong name, and Richard Allen went home.

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For the next five and a half years, while law enforcement was losing recorded interviews, declining to collect firearms from suspects, refusing to verify alibis, and marking tips “nothing further” without lifting a finger — Allen just lived his life. He didn’t sell his car. Didn’t destroy his clothes. Didn’t dispose of his gun. Didn’t move away from the small community where everybody knew everybody. He went back to his job, back to his wife, back to a life that looked exactly like it had before February 13, 2017. That is not the behavior of a man who abducted and murdered two children in broad daylight in a small town and got away with it for half a decade. That is the behavior of a man who went for a walk.

But this story isn’t really about Richard Allen. Not yet. This is the story of how every institution involved in the Delphi murders investigation failed Abby and Libby from almost the very first day. How tips were ignored, suspects were waved through, interviews were destroyed, evidence was mishandled, and a crime scene that screamed for serious investigative work was met with a kind of institutional laziness that should make your blood boil. Allen becomes part of this story later. He becomes the man they needed when they couldn’t find the man they should have been

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This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.