The Delphi Murders: The State's Brief of Appellee: Part Two

0:00The Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports. Right now, the NBA is heating up, March Manus is here, and MLB is almost back. Every day there's a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got to see for yourself. That's why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it's about staying connected to my sports. I could follow the teams I care about, get real-time scores, breaking news, and highlights all in one place. Tell of the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment. I'm Kevin, and we are going to continue to discuss the brief filed by the state in the appellate case of Richard Allen for the Delphine murders. Content warning this episode contains the discussion of the murder of two girls. And I should also say this is part two of our discussion of this brief, so if you've not already listened to it, go back and listen to the first episode. Yeah, as a recap, this is the state responding to the appellate brief from Richard Allen's

1:01appellate team. My name is Ania Cain, I'm a journalist, and I'm Kevin Greenley, I'm an attorney. And this is The Murder Sheet. We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews, and deep dives into murder cases. We're The Murder Sheet. And this is The Delphine murders, the state's brief of appellate, part two. Well, we've both been refreshed, the pause that refreshes.

2:11And so I think when we just pick up right up where we left off, how does that sound? That sounds perfect. We were talking about the confessions in this case, and of course, Mr. Allen's appellate team is arguing that those confessions should not have been admitted into the trial. And they're saying the reason why they should not have been admitted is because they were involuntary. And in our previous discussion, we had the state argue, well, they're allegedly not voluntary because of coercive state action, and the state was saying, hey, there was no coercive action. But as we said in an appellate brief, it's important to argue everything. So now they're saying, well, even if it was coercive, the confessions should not have been thrown out. Ania, can you start reading with Allen's confessions? Yes. Allen's confessions were not caused by the allegedly coercive conduct or a confession

3:13to be involuntary. The coercive state action must be causally related to the confession. The confinement conditions did not cause Allen's confessions. Conditions not become more oppressive before the confession began, nor did they become more benign before Allen stopped confessing. And the state never made any threats or promises regarding those conditions predicated on his cooperation or willingness to confess. Moreover, the confessions were not co-extensive with Allen's period of psychosis. He began confessing before he was psychotic, and he continued to confessing after he was no longer psychotic. Allen was already confessing in early April 2023, but it was not until April 13th that Allen became gravely disabled. In April 14th, the psychosis and manic behavior became significant, and he was involuntary started on an anti-psychotic medication. By May 2nd and 3rd, 2023, Allen no longer exhibited significant symptoms of psychosis, manic behavior, or lack of impulse control, and he never thereafter presented any significant symptoms of psychosis or mania, but he continued confessing.

4:17Allen's most detailed confessions to Dr. Walla occurred on April 5th and May 3rd, before and after his psychosis. His desire to confess was not correlated to either a change in his confinement conditions or the onset of psychosis. In quote, just let's pause there for a minute because I think this is crucial. The Allen defense has consistently said he only confessed because he was mentally ill, and was in a period of mental illness. For one thing, you can look at the confessions themselves and they don't support that thesis, because if you are in psychotic state and you're making statements, they don't make sense, they don't flow. They seem illogical, and the confessions and incriminating statements he made did seem logical and flow. I think the point they're making here, though, is that these confessions happened before the alleged psychotic state and after the alleged psychotic state really demolish the

5:19hollowness of the defense argument. It is so hollow. Thank you. That is the word for it. It's hollow. You have these almost, and we see this in the online discourse. We see this in even people talking about it in the media at times. There's this like, oh, if we boil everything down and have a pity statement, then that sounds good, but then that's never reflective of the reality. Oh, he was mentally ill because he was doing crazy stuff. First of all, many of the people who were mental health professionals who were dealing with him directly thought that he might be mullingering, and it became to a point where if you're mullingering so much that you're not taking care of yourself, at some point it doesn't matter if you're mullingering or not, because you could be harming yourself regardless. But whatever, like in this case, it's just, like, I don't know, when you actually break down the timeline of everything, when you really look at everything in a granular fashion and kind of piece it all together, like, it just doesn't add up to what they're claiming.

6:23The state in this brief presents their view of why he started confessing on a key and start reading with the word moreover. Absolutely. Moreover, the record provides a reason why Alan began confessing in early April 2023 that is nothing to do with the conditions of confinement or their impact on his mental health. First, Alan experienced a markedly stressful event around the beginning of April. He received his legal discovery at the end of March beginning of April, and he had a meeting with his attorneys on April 3rd, 2023. His behavior began to change and worsen immediately after these two events. The discovery materials forced Alan to face the horrifying evidence of what he did to Abigail Williams in Liberty, German images and events he had been able to ignore and repress over the five years in which his guilt had gone undiscovered. He was also confronted by the realization that the state had sufficient evidence for a jury to convict him, and that he was likely going to spend the rest of his life in prison, and he had a confront the realization that his family would be seeing these graphic images

7:24of what he had done. These realizations would be stressful regardless of whether one was already in pretrial detention, the conditions of that detention, or one's mental health. Second, after spending time in Bible study, Alan said he found Jesus and accepted God into his heart on March 21st, 2023. He became preoccupied with religious matters and increasingly concerned about whether he would be reunited with his family in heaven and whether they would still love him. If he had committed the crimes, acknowledgement and repentance of sin is an important teaching in the Christian faith, a new converts fresh concern with the status of his soul and the will of his God would lead to a desire to confess his sins, particularly when the conversion happened in close proximity to the inescapable confrontation with the sin through legal discovery. It is at least plausible, if not more so, that the combined effect of his religious conversion and his receipt of discovery with its co-committant, con-committant realities to be faced is what caused his confessions, not the conditions of his confinement or his mental health.

8:28Let's stop there. Can I just say that was fire, oh my goodness, like, I'm sorry, whoever wrote this part did it really. Tutorials. Dang. Whoa. Go off. I mean, like, it's so true. Like, it's so freaking, like, I can't even, this is all this freaking nonsense and hand-ringing. He wasn't confessing because he was mentally ill, okay? He was confessing because he was, you know, it's all those pictures. He saw what he did to those girls. He saw the evidence. He understood it. He understood what he was facing and, yeah, that did it. Sure. I'm sure the conversation with Rosie and Baldwin, you know, who knows, right? Who knows what was said there? I'd love to know. They'll never say, I'm sure, but I, you know, it's stunning. It's stunning to think of the amount of, like, subterfuge that went on because, and you know what, like, you know, I'm sure, I'm sure he may be sure he never will listen

9:34to this show, but like, you're not going to heaven, you know? You're done. Talk about Richard Allen. He's going straight to hell. Yeah. He's got a burn in hell for what he did. I saw those pictures, too. What he did was so evil to these kids. What he did was so disgusting to these kids. This guy will never see heaven's light. Yeah, I agree. And I think it's worth noting, although I don't believe it's explicitly noted here, that attorneys Baldwin and Rosie did not start complaining about Richard Allen's conditions in prison until shortly after he started making confession. Oh, I wonder. Wow. That's interesting. It's almost like they're totally full of it and just doing it as a strategy in order to manipulate the media and the public, did not believe in what they're lying client is saying. You know, it's so unusual.

10:34It's almost like when you look at the facts and the details of this case, a pattern of behavior of trying of this defense team at the trial level, trying to paper over the cracks, emerges very clearly. I don't think if we need to actually read this next section here, but basically what they're saying is also once he became allegedly psychotic, the state did not try to exploit that to make him continue to confess. So you got him medical attention and things of that. Also everyone he tried to confess to the warden, Dr. Monica Walla, prison guards. No one was like asking him, fault. Everyone was basically like, okay, dude, like whatever, talk to your attorneys is his family was like bullying him on the phone. You know, shut up. Don't say it. You know, they're putting poison in your food. You know, I mean, like nobody wanted to hear this. Nobody was trying to be like, yeah, tell us more. It would give us some details. Nobody wanted to hear it.

11:36If anything, people were trying to push him not to say anything. The idea that these were coerced and that the state was exploiting the situation makes no sense when you actually see how everything went down. One of the best and scariest parts of running your own business is you have to be everything all at once. It's always interesting, but we've got to be your charming hosts, dog at reporters, savvy producers, engaging script writers, diligent marketers, et cetera, all the time, all at once, all the while lavishing attention on our pup Nick and teasing each other incessantly. It's fun, but it's a lot. Fortunately for all small and upcoming business owners, there's Shopify. They can help you wear all the hats at once. They're there to take stuff off your plate so you can drill down and focus on what moves you, what drives you forward, what you're really good at. I really wish we'd been working with Shopify when we first started. We're a game changer, a one-stop commerce platform that lets you do so much fast and conveniently. There's a reason 10% of all e-commerce in the United States alone uses Shopify as well

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14:46And you will. Now available in Canada too. And keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to q-u-i-n-c-e.com slash msheet for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash msheet. I'm no designer, but I know my brand inside and out, and I know a generic looking website when I see one. Wix Harmony has blown me away. It's a website builder that lets me switch back and forth between using AI and hands-on editing tools, so I can create a website exactly the way I pictured it. I even get a personal AI agent that's an expert in web design and helps me out. Try it out for free at wix.com slash harmony. That's wix.com slash harmony. So I think let's skip down to the discussion of harmless error. And I want to talk, first of all, about the concept of harmless error. Everything that is done by human beings in this world by the nature that human beings

15:48are involved in the process is going to be imperfect. None of us are perfect. When I go back and listen to some podcasts, I actually say, um, and things like that. And we get facts wrong sometimes. We make mistakes. We might get like a legal thing wrong. Like we make, I mean, people are often saying, hey, you spelled this wrong on the show notes. You know, I mean, it's. There's always going to be mistakes, including in trials. And so the thing to remember is that a defendant is not entitled to a perfect trial because that simply doesn't exist, but they're entitled to a fair trial where their rights are protected. And so what you want to do is you want to look at the alleged errors that occur in a trial and determine whether or not the error is of such a nature that it would have changed the verdict that, oh, if this thing had been done correctly, perhaps the verdict would have changed.

16:48And if that is the case, then yes, he deserves a new trial. But if it's something relatively minor, then well, that's considered a harmless error because this is an error that did not alter the outcome of the trial. Does that make sense? Yes. I'll tell a silly little story that maybe illustrates this. This is a true incident. Once I and a friend went to, I believe, was North Carolina and we order a lemonade. And I remember thinking, mine lemonade might have been just a little sweet. And that's okay. That's not something that would negate the lemonade. It doesn't entitle me to a new lemonade or the apologies of the shopkeeper. That's just life. It's not a perfect glass of lemonade. Live with it, Kevin. Just deal with it. My companion, on the other hand, had a different experience because when they made her lemonade,

17:51the person making it accidentally mistook the container of salt for the container of sugar. Instead of putting sugar in her lemonade, they put in salt. That is an error that is not a harmless error because that completely changed her lemonade drinking experience. Yeah. I guess she needs a new lemonade. Yes. Does that generally, am I just babbling here? You're not babbling. Can I also just add a silly story of how in college, we were at a frat party. For some reason, we were doing a mixer between the college newspaper and a frat. I don't know how that happened. Anyways, I'm the editor-in-chief, and I'm leading my team, so we're all doing tequila shots. I don't drink anymore, but tequila shots, you put salt on your hand, and then you do that and you do the shot. Somehow, somehow, who knows? I end up giving everyone sugar, and it tasted awful. It was a nightmare. That was another situation where that's not harmless. That's not a harmless error. I don't know why, when you're expecting salt and you get sugar, or when you're expecting

18:56sugar and you get salt, it's not a pleasant situation, so yeah. I bring this up because as we've been discussing, when you're preparing an appellate brief, you don't give a ground on anything, and you make all the arguments you can't. You say, well, they were wrong on this point, but then you also say, well, even if they are right, even if this was an involuntary confession in your opinion, it still shouldn't change the verdict because we're going to say that it's a harmless error. In other words, we're saying that even if these confessions, even if these confessions are found to be involuntary and should not have been admitted, we don't believe that taking the confessions out of the trial would have changed the verdict. And, Ania, why don't you read their argument as to why the confessions did not change the verdict, and it starts with the timeline eyewitness evidence. The timeline eyewitness evidence, including Allen's initial statements to police, alone

20:00creates an overwhelming certainty that Allen was bridge guy and thus the murderer. Allen admitted he parked near the Freedom Bridge entrance, began walking to the trail about 1.30 pm, which was corroborated by the surveillance video, capturing a car matching the appearance of his focus, driving toward the Freedom Bridge entrance at 1.27 pm. He admitted he was likely wearing a dark, car-hard jacket with a hood, blue jeans, and either tennis shoes or work boots, and had a hat with him, which matched the clothing worn by bridge guy, Allen identified himself as the man who walked past the Wilbur Voorhees group on the trail about 1.30 pm. Wilbur and Voorhees both immediately recognized the picture of bridge guy as the man who would walk past them. Allen also admitted that when he reached high bridge, he walked out to the first platform and stayed there for a few minutes. Blair entered the trail of the Mears entrance at or just after 1.46 pm, and when she reached the high bridge, she saw a man on the platform whom she immediately recognized as bridge guy. Neither Blair, Wilbur, or Voorhees saw anyone on the trail who could have been bridge guy

21:04or Allen and Allen acknowledged seeing no one else who could have been bridge guy. As she walked back toward the entrance, Blair passed Abigail Williams in Liberty, German on their way to the high bridge, and by 2.13 pm, the man Blair, Wilbur, and Voorhees saw the man, Allen had effectively identified himself as was following Abigail Williams in Liberty, German across high bridge and ordering them down the hill while armed with a gun. By 2.32 pm, Liberty, German's phone had stopped moving, and by 3.11 pm, Liberty, German was not answering the phone when her father called. She and Abigail Williams had failed to meet him when he arrived to pick them up. Shortly before 4.4 pm, Carboss on man she recognized as bridge guy walking westbound on CR-300 North, i.e. toward where Allen admitted he parked his car. His clothes were covered in mud and fresh blood spatter. Given Allen's admissions, placing him on the trail, and on the high bridge platform, at the right times to be the man seen by Blair, Wilbur, and Voorhees, their certainty that the man they saw was bridge guy, the absence of anyone else on the trail who could

22:05have been Allen or bridge guy, and the tight timeline, this combined evidence, created in connection to the abduction of murders, the only reasonable conclusion to be drawn, is that Allen was bridge guy, the person who murdered Abigail Williams, and Liberty, German. Other evidence corroborated this conclusion, most significantly the un-fired Winchester 40 caliber cartridge found by the girl's bodies, was friendsically matched, having been cycled through Allen's 40 caliber handgun. Allen had an identical, I un-fired cartridge, the only piece of Winchester ammunition found in his house, in a keepsake box. Allen had no possible innocent explanation for how a cartridge that had been in his gun could have ended up at the murder scene. Bridge guy had a gun, and used it to compel Abigail Williams and Liberty German to go down the hill. An ISP trooper who had listened to that over 700 of Allen's phone calls, a pine that it was Allen's voice heard on the video saying down the hill. Although Allen had 12 old cell phones in his bedroom closet, he did not have the cell phone, he had told police he had with him on the trail in 2017, creating a reasonable inference

23:08that he destroyed the phone because he knew it contained evidence of his guilt. Allen also displayed consciousness of guilt by lying to police, although he originally told police he was on the trail from 1.30 to 3.30 pm, and the testimony of Wilbur and Voorhees proves he was arriving at the trail, not leaving it at 1.30 pm. When police re-interviewed him in October 2022, Allen claimed he was at the trail much earlier, from 12 pm to 1.30 pm. Showing he understood the damning implication of the initial timeline he had admitted, what the police executed the search warrant at his house, Allen said multiple times it's over. In the face of this powerful evidence of guilt, the jury did not seem to need to rely on the compessions at all to return its verdicts, end quote. I want to add something, we know for a fact that this is true because we interviewed one of the jurors. Yeah, we know what, yeah, we know what they base their decisions. I want to, I want to make clear, there were jurors who immediately voted to convict, there were jurors who did not, they were undecided, nobody was voting for acquittal folks.

24:12There were some people who were undecided, they were not firmly convinced immediately, they had to talk things through, they had to look at the evidence. The way this juror foreman went through everything was, they were all looking at stuff, but if somebody had a real problem seemingly with a piece of evidence, like most people I take it on the jury were compelled by the firearms evidence. There were people who were like, I don't know, I can't necessarily get there. There was at least one person, I think the juror we talked to who was like, listen, there's some, you know, I'm having some concerns about ballistics and they set that aside. When you look at what they convicted on, when you looked at what they set aside because some of the jurors were not quite convinced and what they had everyone look at it, can we look at what we do believe and see if you could still convict? When you look at that, it's the timeline. It's the timeline. The timeline convicted this man. The timeline which was outlined in the PCA that everybody doubted, you and I included,

25:17that everyone, you know, oh, I don't know about this, that was so compellingly put together, the witness testimony was so compellingly put together, and Alan's own freaking statements were so damning, they convicted on the timeline, the timeline carried the day. And so what they are saying here is absolutely true. They outlined there a very damning case against Richard Allen that is not required the confessions. Yes. I believe the confessions were properly admitted, but I agree they were not needed. And also I would make another obvious point, Nick McLean, the time he decided that yes, we have enough evidence to pursue charges against this man, Richard Allen at that point had not made any confessions. Yeah, he thought it was good enough of a case barring that, which he was correct. He was correct. He was absolutely correct. And you know, I mean, but again, I also strongly think that the confessions were not made because of his mental illness. I also think they were totally properly included because I think all this nonsense about coercion

26:19is nonsense. Yeah, I agree. You know, like I don't know what, you know, if they'd kept him in Carol County, Jailie, probably would have gotten shivered and then it would have been a whole other issue. So I mean, safety first. The next issue is you may recall that the sketches we've all seen of bridge guy, those were not admitted into the trial. I don't know if we need to go into this particular issue in great detail. The defense, a pilot team for Richard Allen, they said, well, it should have been admitted because you know, some, some things in the pictures didn't quite look like Richard Allen. I think basically what it boils down to is the sketches were not admitted, but the people who provided, the people who provided the descriptions that were the foundation for the sketches, they testified. So if you thought is a defense attorney that the sketch doesn't look like them, you can

27:23talk to the people who provided the description that the sketch was based on and you can confront them in front of the jury. So I have no problem with the sketches being excluded. What do you think? Do you want to talk about this issue more? I don't think we need to. This was covered in the final pretrial hearing, right? And then, you know, I mean, what's important about, I mean, the sketches are an investigative tool to try to solicit information from the public, you know, to a large degree. It did not, it did not work at all, actually, the sketches didn't do anything. No one came forward and said, Hey, I think that looks like Richard Allen, you know, I mean, the sketches were ultimately pretty useless. There are also a artist rendering of a, of a witness's fleeting memory that what was important about what the witnesses said was that the witnesses all identified the person they saw, including Carbaugh and Blair, who gave the information that led to the sketches that were released publicly, that they saw Bridge Guy. They saw the guy in and Libby's video, like, the video is what's truly important, not

28:26the sketches. You know, I know from the public's perspective, the sketches were like, what we were all looking at forever, like I get why people would be like, Hey, why wouldn't that be important? I get it. But when we're looking at, like, what's truly important about the witness testimonies, it's that they identify, they both identify, they both describe different guys, Blair is like, things he's younger, the kids who saw, the, you know, the young women who saw him on the trail, think he's older, that's pretty par for the course for witness statements. Frankly, an older woman might see a younger, like, it's just all relative, right, and witnesses are, or give you wobbly, but they were firm on one thing. The one thing that counted was that the guy who was captured on Libby's video, confronting the girls on the bridge is the person they saw. I mean, they didn't use it to identify Alan. They didn't point Alan in court and say, I saw that guy. But it ties back to bridge guys, so yeah, it's, I don't know. Then we can talk a little bit about another issue that was raised is some of the crucial

29:29evidence in this case, rather one piece of crucial evidence in case in this case was the ballistics evidence. This of course refers to the fact that there was an unspent cartridge found at the murder site, and this cartridge was ballistically linked to a gun owned by Mr. Alan, a gun which he basically indicated had not been out of his possession in years. So this is damning evidence against him as it puts him at the murder site as the girls died. It's a very important evidence, and there was an expert who for the state, Melissa Oberg, who testified that yes, this is a match, this bullet came from his gun, and then they had a defense expert named Eric Warren, who said, well, I don't think it was from Mr. Alan's gun, even though Mr. Warren acknowledged he did not personally examine or do any tests on it.

30:31And Mr. Warren's credibility to be blunt was really destroyed effectively in trial through a withering cross examination by James Electro. That's right. And so the jury ultimately, those who were persuaded, you know, tended to favor Ms. Oberg's analysis. The defense also wanted someone named Bill Tobin. Bill Tobin to testify, and his testimony was basically going to be, I'm oversimplifying, but his testimony was going to be the whole, the whole science of Billistix is worthless. And the state, the judge rather did not allow him to testify. And the appellate team for Mr. Alan says, this isn't fair. This was a mistake. This could have changed the verdict. And what the state here says is it is up to the trial court judge using very specific

31:36tests to determine whether or not an expert is qualified to testify. And if a judge makes a determination that the underlying science that the expert is going to be testifying to is valid, then that is sufficient. Because ultimately, if judge goal had determined, you know what, folks, I don't think Billistix is worth anything. Then she wouldn't have allowed Oberg to testify. She wouldn't even have allowed Mr. Warren to testify. She was, I don't believe in the science. My understanding of the legal principles is to how it should be determined whether or not an expert can testify. That convinces me that this doesn't meet the test. But she said, no, I believe it does meet the test. And these Billistix experts should be allowed to testify. And so then there was no reason for Mr. Tolman to testify before the jury.

32:37Because it is not up to the jury to make a determination about an entire body of science. It's not up for the to the jury is lay people to say, you know what, the list is completely worthless. That's not their role. So therefore Mr. Tolman's testimony argues the state would have been irrelevant. Now certainly if there's a case to be made that the way Miss Oberg used that science was flawed. If her analysis was flawed, that's something that could have been brought out by their Billistix expert, the defense's ballistic expert, Mr. Warren. I know there's this kind of confusing, but am I, does that make sense? Makes sense to me. Yeah. So that's what that argument is about. Anything to say to that? No, I think you summed it up pretty well. It seems kind of, yeah. Yeah, I think I, I, some of these things, I'm just like, yeah, you know, I don't know.

33:41Also I admit some of this stuff isn't exactly riveting and that's, that's a problem. That's a problem because throughout the history of this case, the defense team has been very good, frankly, it making riveting sounding statements. Oh, yeah. And because of that, they get a lot of attention and hearing the truth is boring. Yeah. The truth is boring. The truth is complicated. The truth is not sexy. The truth is just, you know, like, oh, okay. And that's a problem because people who view true crime as entertainment are not by, are not entertained by the truth sometimes. And they want to gravitate towards something more entertaining. And they're not using their critical thinking skills, they're not using logic to assess any of this. They're using. I think sounds good in my story head, you know, I mean, it's like, it's stupid, but

34:42it's true. And frankly, the media is susceptible to this. It's been extremely susceptible to this, you know, it's not a criticism of an individual journalist. It's just saying that like, you know, the shiny keys trick that you can use on a baby to entertain them to a certain extent. Also, it goes on to adults because it's like, you know, oh, and it's called in the woods sacrifice. Whoa, it sounds like a pulp novel versus like, I don't know, that's not what happened. Like, I am nullified and this guy doesn't really have a, you know, this, you know, the trial court is allowed to exclude a witness that they don't think is going to be, you know, meeting their standards and relevant enough and, you know, like, that's not sexy. It's just not. And you want it to not be about what's cool or what sounds interesting. You want it to be about what's true. But unfortunately, that's not the reality we live in. The next thing that is responded to here and again, I really say it's not exactly riveting.

35:45There was a video made of Mr. Allen moving throughout the Department of Corrections. And this video includes, you know, video, it also included sound and judge goal after an objection by the state determined that, well, okay, I'll show all of the jury see the video. I don't want them to hear the audio. I don't want to hear what Mr. Allen is saying while he's being moved throughout the Department of Corrections. And the defense of the team, the peleteen from Mr. Allen said, no, that was wrong. That should have been included. And so the reason why it was not included is because of something we've discussed before called hearsay. What is hearsay hearsay are statements made outside of court and therefore are not generally

36:45speaking allowed into court. Why is that? It is because if a statement is made in court, if it's a sworn statement, that means, for instance, it's a sworn statement, you're on the hook for perjury. Also, if it's made in a court or in a court setting or in front of attorneys for the other side, there's an opportunity for cross examination. If you let defendants include hearsay statements, they've said outside of court, if you let them admit those into court, then you're giving them an advantage, basically, or you're giving them an opportunity to game the system. You're giving them an opportunity to get self-serving statements before the court, before the jury without being subject to cross examinations. If Anya was going to be charged with stealing serial boxes, and she decided not to testify,

37:48but she wanted to include an episode of this show called Why I Didn't Do It. That would obviously be unfair because, basically, she would be offering testimony without having to subject herself to cross examination. Does that make sense? It does, yes. So the argument that the state makes here is, well, whatever he was saying on the audio in these videos would have been hearsay. And if there's information that Mr. Allen thought was so crucial for the jury to hear, then no one was stopping him from testifying. And he could have gotten up and said, here's what I was saying in these videos. Here's what was going through my mind at the time. He could have said those things and subjected himself to cross examination. Uh-huh. That makes sense. Makes sense. What's next? Hit us again. Hit us again. Yeah. Again, I understand.

38:48I'm sorry, but it's just, I don't know, it's just endless, and this is the nature of an appeal, right? I'm not criticizing any bunny, I'm not criticizing Allen's appellate team, I'm not criticizing the state, but it's just endless minutia. It's, you know, it's not, it's not a, it's not cinematic, right? It's just, uh, it's just, they're kind of going over this minutia, did the trial court mess up? Did it deprive them of his rights? Should he get a new trial? So it's not surprising, but we're seriously really, we're, I'm in a, and I'm in a world where it's, uh, it's, it's March 26, 26, and we're relitigating Bill Tobin, just kind of, you know, we're, we're back there. We're going back, folks. Now we're going to relitigate the two phone calls Allen made on April 3rd, 2023. Yes, there are, you know, it like, it's sort of like, you know, for fans of, uh, of

39:52Tolkien, right? Like he wrote, you know, um, like, like, there's like minutia and footnotes he has that kind of people debate about, and I just, I sort of feel like we're there, you know, but in a less fun way, because it's about a horrible murder case versus something, you know, fun fantasy and whatever. But it's just like, it's like we're getting so in the weeds here that I'm sure our audience is probably already tuned out, but we're, but we're sticking around because we're, we're, we're getting there. We're almost done. We're fighting through it, folks. So Richard Allen made, uh, I guess three phone calls on April 3rd, 2023. The state presented one of them to the jury. It included some incriminating statements and the defense said, hey, this isn't right because he made two other phone calls that day. And under the doctrine of completeness, all other statements, all of the phone calls he made that day should also be presented.

40:52And what the state argues and, and I find compelling is that under the doctrine of completeness, a complete statement should be offered or in this case, a complete phone call should be offered. A phone call should not be selectively edited or cherry picked in order to create a false impression. And it wasn't a complete phone call was offered. That does not require them to offer into evidence, all other statements he made or may not have made that day and other calls, uh, anything else on that? Nope. Uh, I'm, I'm skimming. Oh, I'm, I'm going to skip down to, uh, Pearl Mudder is testimony. Okay. Oh, God. Not a, okay. Yeah. Fine. And I'm going to turn the, Pearl Mudder, Pearl Mudder, uh, jump scare. So, uh, you're our Pearl Mudder expert. Yeah, Pearl Mudder, I, I don't want to say like I disassociated during that three day

41:56hearing at that point, but I, I, I, I, I just, I just remember being like, like, so angry that our time was being wasted to that extent and the court's time was being wasted in it. Pearl Mudder was, uh, ostensibly an expert, Dr. Don Pearl Mudder, that was, that the defense team wanted to present on the subject of Odinism under some withering cross examination and turned out she was no such thing. She was not, uh, she was excluded from the trial and the defense, uh, uh, a pilot team, the pilot team for Richard Allen said, no, no, no, she should have been allowed in. She's the living embodiment of the meme source. I made it up. I mean, that's who she is as a person. Do you want to discuss? In any of this? Yeah. Happy to quote her not really quote Pearl Mudder's testimony that the murders were real holistic. The, uh, the court, uh, the trial court properly excluded Pearl Mudder's testimony of pining.

42:57This was a ritual killing, proffered in support of Alan theory that this was a ritual killing committed by Odinists, expert opinion testimony is admissible only when it will help the trial. In fact, um, rule, uh, evidence rule, uh, 702, rule 702 is restricted by evidence rule 403, which permits the exclusion of evidence that will confuse the issues or mislead the jury. Third party mode of evidence must establish more than a speculative connection to the crime to be admissible. Pearl Mudder's opinion that this was a ritual killing and opinion she reached before seeing any evidence in the case was too speculative to be admissible as third party mode of evidence. It was a motive in search of a suspect as discussed subsection seven below. No evidence connected any Odinists, the murder or place them at the crime scene. It was a speculative motive. There's no history of ritual human sacrifice and Odinism. And according to an Odinist, the sacrifice of children would be contrary to the principles of the religion, even pro matter acknowledged that apart from the case she had knowledge

43:58of only one other Odinist ritual killing. And that case remained an open investigation with no confirmation of the perpetrator or a motive, which means she actually could not identify any other example of an Odinist Odinist ritual killing. Pearl Mudder also acknowledged that outdoor killings committed with a knife are not necessarily ritual killings. And it was a motive based on inaccuracies with respect to the alleged symbolism at the crime scene. There was no F in blood on the tree. That was a misapprehension caused by the reddest tints in the tree bark. When a chemical was applied that turned the blood white, it was apparent that there was no second horizontal line necessary to form an F. The blood only formed an upside down L, and neither pro matter nor Allen have ever contended that an upside down L is a ruin or Odinist symbol. The blood patterns on the bodies and on the ground were inconsistent with the bodies of it being hung upside down as Odin typically is depicted. The sticks on the bodies were fundamentally ambiguous Professor Turko found it equally plausible that they were not attempted runes at all, and could only offer conjecture as to their meaning.

45:00But if it was assumed our guendo that they were intended to be runes as the arrangement of the sticks did not in any obvious way spell a word. As seen in the crime scene photographs, the sticks were much less suggestive of runes than in the police sketch. He was initially shown with respect to the sticks on Liberty, German, even pro mudder could only say that she believed that they had specific meaning to the offender. She could not identify any ruin or symbol they purportedly formed the FBI's behavior analysis unit was unable to verify or find support for the theory that this was an Odinist killing determining that neither the blood on the tree nor the sticks on the bodies clearly depict capture or present known aspects of Odinism or its symbology, particularly in the absence of any evidence placing any odinist at the crime scene or directly connecting to the one to the crimes. The Schrogg Court acted well within its discretion in declining to admit evidence on a speculative alternative motive that would have confused the issues, turning the trial into a side-show debate over disputed claims of Odinist symbol, symbology, and distracted the jury from the issue before it namely whether the evidence proved Alan committed these murders.

46:03That is especially true because motive was not a basis which the state purported to identify Alan as the perpetrator because motive was not a significant factor in the proof of guilt. The probative value of evidence of an alternative motive was correspondingly low and easily outweighed by the dangers of confusing the issues and misleading the jury. As discussed in section B below the error was harmless, any error was harmless, end quote. That was brilliant. Wow. I'm living for this pro mudder takedown in March 2026, you know, I mean, this was a joke. This woman came on and talked about how like she made up her, I mean, McClellan brought out the cheat gone on court TV before being involved in the case and been like, it's a ritual killing. Why do I think that? Because I get paid to talk about ritual killings, you know, I mean like it's it's like just no intellectual rigor, no intellectual honesty, her home methodology stinks. And a one correction here, or at least I don't know, I'm not trying to be a no at all, but I my understanding was that the behavioral analysis unit that actually worked on this

47:05case was that the United States Marshall service and not the FBI. I mean, maybe that maybe that's wrong. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know, but I'm just pointing that out. So basically they're saying, hey, she would have just confused things. She didn't have anything to add. Also she got stuff wrong. She was acting like, oh, this is meaningful. The defense had every opportunity to call a blood spatter expert or a crime scene expert of their own to say, yes, we think this, this symbol was painted on the tree. They didn't because they couldn't get one because no one's going to lie on the stand for them to that extent. You know, I mean, like that's it, the fact that they brought this woman out there and she's saying all this stuff that's being like debunked by Pat Cicero, the states crime scene expert, you know, it's just like, it's laughable. There's a waste of time then that it's embarrassing that they're still bringing it up. I don't even know what to say. The other thing that they wanted to introduce into the trial, the defense team, of course,

48:08was evidence that Odinus, particularly a man named Brad Holder and a man named Patrick Westfall, were responsible for this crime. They were not allowed to do that because Judge Gold found that they did not offer any evidence suggesting any connection between those people and the crime. And as we've often said, you can't just go into court and randomly accuse people of murder. You have to have a reason. And if you have some sort of a connection between your alternate suspect and the crime, then you are allowed under Indiana law to raise that, but there was no connection. And one of the big problems with their theory that Mr. Holder committed this crime was thanks to the video. We know exactly to the minute when these girls were kidnapped and we know by what time

49:10they were dead. We know that Mr. Holder has a great alibi for that time. He was at work and then he went to a health club in another town. So there is no way that he could have committed this crime. And the defense at different times has said, well, yeah, sure, we have him punching out of work and we have him going into the health club, but isn't it possible someone else punched him out? And so there's a discussion here in this brief saying, no, there's no real way someone else could have done that. And they have the clerk for where he works and she had not changed the record. Quote, she confirmed it would not be possible for him. Mr. Holder to be absent while his time card showed he was present. Only a small number of people work each shift and it would be immediately noticed if

50:12someone was absent or left early in quote, maybe she's part of the oldenest theory. So it's a good alibi. The issues, the defense has tried to raise about it don't really work. And so if he has a good alibi, it's solid alibi, obviously it makes no sense to accuse him of the crime. And then the only reason Mr. Westfall is accused of the crime is supposedly he did it with Mr. Holder, but if Mr. Holder didn't do the crime, then that stands to reason Mr. Westfall didn't do it either because if the whole theory is they did it as a pair, yeah, as a duo. So the argument there is, no, it was properly excluded. Yeah, it obviously was again, people were mad about it. People felt it was interesting, people felt it was just raising questions, but it ultimately did not hold up. Factually, it just didn't, you know, people put a lot of work into it.

51:14They put a lot of effort into making that work and it did not, you know, the judge goal was not under any obligation to include this stuff when they couldn't even, you know, the defense team couldn't even get there factually and really even expand upon the theory other than what, you know, the kind of slip shot job that had been done previously. I would go even further and say she actually was obligated to get it out of there. Yeah, to get it out there. I'm not a judge goal fan as I think I've made clear, but I think she had no choice. This was the only ruling to make. It was the appropriate ruling. If you have evidence, they're going to accuse this man of murder, but we know for a fact he was somewhere else in another town. There's no way any judge in this country would have allowed that in. No, it's absurd. They did it. I mean, fact that they went for Odinism tells me everything about Rosie and Baldwin and what their priorities were, which were to entertain the masses, bread and circuses, right?

52:15Instead of actually make decisions that were putting their client first, you know, and frankly, Todd Click in the people who were behind this theory and pushing it forward. This kind of thing is how wrongful convictions actually happen. You take a bunch of people and you say they have weird beliefs or I think they're sketchy and you try to make a case around that, around wanting them to be guilty because you've already put all this time and investment in it. That's not a way to put a case together. That is how you get wrongful convictions. I think that's bad all I wanted to cover. There's a couple more small things. I don't really think they're worthy. I don't think they're essential. If you want to cover any of them, that's fine. I would say again, generally, I think this was a very well done brief. I think it really demolished. I'll say one thing because this is a little bit. They said, quote, I'll read this part, quote, a mission of a possible explanation for

53:18a cell phone code was harmless. The admission of the Google search was at most harmless defense witness, Stacey Elridge, opine that between 5.45 pm and 10.32 pm Liberty German cell phone registered a code in the knowledge C database of an audio output start, indicated that the headphones or an ox cable was plugged into the phone. She apine that this event required human interaction, which Alan offered to suggest that someone else committed to the murders because Carboss on leave the scene by 4 pm. There was water and debris on the phone when it was found to Elridge's knowledge, water could not affect the plug-in data. The state's two cell phone experts, Christopher Seafsill and Brian Bunner testified that they did not know what audio output start meant. On cross examination, the state asked Seafsill if he had done a Google search to determine if water damage could cause audio output code. Alan unsuccessfully objected on hearsay grounds, Seafsill testified that he found through the search that water damage or dirt within the headphone plug-in could cause the phone to register an audio output. Seafsill acknowledged that he does not normally do Google research and that information on the internet can be wrong.

54:19This information was offered as an alternate theory to the cause of the audio output code, but neither of these theories made it more or less probable that Alan committed the murders. As argued above, Alan's identity was proven through eyewitness testimony, Alan statements to police, cartridge from his gun found between the bodies and his confessions. The health app data showed the phone did not move after 2.32 pm, defeating any suggestion that the phone was returned to the crime scene after 10.30 pm, which in any event would not preclude Alan being the perpetrator. Any suggestion that another person was present at the murder scene at 5.45 pm and 10.32 pm during the height of the search for the girls, inserting unplugging headphones from the phone was implausible. Seven says no bearing on the verdict, so it was a harmless error. End quote. I agree with that. I mean, is it elegant to have your expert be like, well, I googled it. No, it's not elegant. Does it matter? Absolutely not. Does anyone? I've had my phone's headphone jack messed up by water, moisture, whatever, or drop in the phone, and then it gets all wonky.

55:20It's not a compelling argument at all. I think that was supposed to be the defense's aha moment, but anyway, yeah, I can't imagine while people were looking for the girls for the killer to go back to the crime scene and plug in headphones. And how do you do? How do you even plug in headphones? The phone was found under Abigail's body. So and also it only for her body, the blood flow only looks like she was, her head was moved slightly. So how are you getting the phone under her body without moving it at all after 232? It just doesn't make any sense. What's more likely, the thing that happens to a lot of our phones happened or that they somehow are like levitating, like I just, it doesn't make any sense that the whole thing was just stupid. I think you are correct. I think this was a very strong brief. I think it knocked down a lot of the appellate team's contentions.

56:22I just feel like a lot of this stuff is just pretty boring and obvious and self-evident to anyone who's been following the case in any depth. There's nothing here. What will an appellate court do? I don't know. I mean, what will an appeals court do? I mean, they're going to dismiss the appeal. I mean, do you think they're going to hold oral arguments, though? I don't know. The thing to remember is the vast majority of appeals, certainly at the stage of the process, die. Yeah. The state wins. You would only expect to see a defendant win an appeal at this point if they have an extraordinarily strong case. Rich Allen did not have an extraordinarily strong case. And that was apparent on the day the trial ended, frankly. I sat through every day of that trial. I saw how it was conducted. I went to all but one of the pretrial hearings. I saw how they were conducted.

57:24He got a fair trial. He should have had better attorneys, but he got... Well, they tried to give him better attorneys and he said no. So that's kind of a him problem. He got a fair trial. He absolutely got a fair trial. So yeah, the appeals court is going to end up denying Mr. Allen's appeal. And then we'll be on to post conviction relief attempts, which I'm sure will get even more cartoonish and stupid because they'll be trying to introduce new evidence and oh, we didn't know about this before and I'm sure that'll get even more off the rails at the very least the appeal had to kind of be confined to the what was in the trial. But I think we're going to get into even more lunacy later. But I agree. I don't I don't think this is going anywhere. This is all pretty in the state at a good response. I mean, they kind of destroyed some of these arguments pretty readily. I thought so yeah. Well, sorry to bring you guys through all this kind of repetitive information, but hopefully it kind of gives you some insight into our views on the brief and our views on where

58:28this appeal is. And as I say, it's it's important. The defense claims are so flashy and get so much attention. I think it's important to take the time to go through the answers to them to explain the considerable problems with the defense positions. If I defense, you know, I mean, Mr. Allen's positions. Yeah, it's it's nothing. And I think he's going to die in prison as he should. Or what he did to those kids. He's he's never getting out. Yeah, he can dilute himself and his family, but you know, he's going to die alone. He's going to die without ever having been a free man ever again. And that is proper because when you do something this heinous, you do not deserve any sort of consideration. So are we going to we're going to get out of here and go stare at a lake or something? I don't know back in Delphi again.

59:29No, this is good. This is good. This was a well done brief. And it is another step in the process to ensure justice for the girls. Often we tend to think that the story is either with the verdict or with the sentence. It doesn't. The process continues as it should to ensure everybody gets a fair trial and is treated fairly. Well said. This is a part of the process. I believe it is justice for Richard Allen to die behind bars. And when people like the people who wrote this brief, their efforts are important steps to continue the process. They're important steps to ensure that the justice and the results achieved by the hard work of Nicholas McLean, Stacy Deener and James Luttle. This is an important step to ensure that that holds well said very well said. All right. Thank you all so much for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the murder sheet.

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