Richard Allen's attorneys argue that solitary confinement made his confessions unconstitutional. The state says a timeline and Allen's own words prove his guilt.

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One of Indiana's most high-profile murders was back in a courtroom Monday morning, as the man convicted of killing two teenage girls in Delphi almost a decade ago asked for a new trial. Richard Allen is facing 130 years in prison for the 2017 murders of 14-year-old Liberty (Libby) German and 13-year-old Abigail Williams.

Allen's case went to trial in 2024, and he was convicted. Now, attorneys are asking the Indiana Court of Appeals to overturn that conviction and grant him a new trial.

A reminder of what happened

Libby(left) and Abigail (right(

Libby and Abby disappeared on February 13, 2017, after Libby's sister dropped the girls off to hike the Monon High Bridge Trail near Delphi. The girls never made it to the meeting spot where they were supposed to be picked up later that afternoon.

Image released from Libby's phone

Libby's phone captured chilling video and audio of a man- dubbed "Bridge Guy"- before the girls were found dead the next day. The case went unsolved for more than five years, fueling national attention and armchair theorizing, until Allen, a local pharmacy technician with no criminal record, was arrested in October 2022.

The defense's core argument: solitary confinement broke him

Richard Allen

Allen's appellate attorney opened by calling the case "unprecedented, unfair, and unconstitutional," arguing Indiana had, for the first time, taken a pretrial detainee directly into what's known as "the Hole"- extreme isolation- and kept him there as he "descended into psychosis and became gravely disabled." The defense argues that Allen denied killing the girls for months, only confessing after his mental health took a turn for the worse.