Witness recalls chilling moment he found lifeless bodies of teen Delphi murders victims

A longtime family friend of two teens murdered in Indiana tearfully recalled the horrific moment he found their lifeless bodies nearly eight years ago — during heart-wrenching testimony on the second day of Richard Allen’s murder trial.

Patrick Brown told jurors Saturday that he joined a search party on Feb. 14, 2017, to help find Liberty German, 14, and Abigail Williams, 13, a day after they went missing, according to local reports.

After learning German’s shirt was found along Deer Creek, he went to search the north side of the stream when he tragically stumbled upon the girls’ corpses.

“At first, I thought they were mannequins,” said an emotional Brown, who asked for a moment to collect himself, according to the Journal & Courier. 

“I turned around and I yelled out we had found them.” 

Brown recalled turning away from the bodies and never getting within 5 feet of them, when he called the police chief to report the grim discovery, the outlet reported.

Allen, 52, is on trial and charged with two murder counts and two counts of murder while kidnapping in the Feb. 13, 2017, slayings.

Prosecutors told jurors on Friday that Allen was armed with a gun when he came across the victims near a hiking trail in Delphi before forcing them off the path and slitting their throats, AP reported.

The two teens, who had been dropped off at the trail earlier that day, were reported missing by their families when they didn’t meet for a planned pickup in the afternoon and several calls went unanswered — igniting a community-wide search.

German’s corpse was found naked and covered in blood, while Williams was clothed in German’s sweatshirt and jeans, with other clothing dumped in the creek, prosecutors said, according to AP.

“The last thing the girls saw was Richard Allen’s face,” Carroll County prosecutor Nicholas McLeland told jurors in his opening statement.

And they heard his “chilling words: ‘Girls, down the hill,’” while Allen was wielding a gun, McLeland said, adding that the girls complied out of fear.

The case went unsolved for years, until Allen, a pharmacy technician, was arrested by Indiana police in October 2022 — more than five years after the tragic deaths. 

McLeland said an unused .40-caliber casing from a gun that belonged to Allen was discovered at the “gruesome” scene between the girls’ bodies, and his grainy image and voice were captured by German on her phone.

A short video released in 2019 that also came from German’s phone showed a suspect walking on Monon High Bridge that prosecutors say was Allen. 

Allen’s defense attorney argued there is reasonable doubt in the case and challenged the state’s timeline alleging that his client wasn’t on the trail at the same time as the girls, according to AP.

The trial will resume on Monday.