Attorneys for the man accused of killing two teenage girls in Delphi, Indiana, in 2017 have withdrawn from the case after a security breach.
Defense attorneys Andrew Baldwin and Bradley Rozzi will no longer represent Richard Allen, 51, after confidential information pertaining to the case was leaked from their office, the New York Post reported. The leaked information contained photographs of the crime scene where the bodies of 13-year-old Abby Williams and 14-year-old Libby German were found.
The lawyers are withdrawing just one month after the pair introduced a 136-page motion explaining that a racist pagan cult killed the girls because one of the mother of one of the victims was in a mixed-race relationship.
The withdrawal came as a surprise, as Special Judge Fran Gull said during a scheduled hearing on Thursday.
“We’ve had an unexpected turn of events,” she said.
The judge did not explain why the attorneys dropped their client, but they reportedly withdrew the same day the court learned about the leaked court documents.
On Thursday, an attorney representing Baldwin said in a memorandum that authorities were investigating the leak and that there are three suspected “disseminators” who “betrayed” Baldwin. Those three allegedly gained access to the case documents, which were kept “locked in a room or a locked fireproof file cabinet.”
“Attorney Baldwin did nothing wrong. He was snookered and abused,” said David R. Hennessy, Baldwin’s representation, in the memo.
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Allen’s trial was set to begin on January 8, but it no longer looks like that will be possible due to the change in representation.
“I don’t believe counsel will be prepared within the next couple of months to try a case of this magnitude in January,” Gull said at the hearing on Thursday, adding that she would appoint a new public defender for Allen.
Allen’s previous attorneys set forth an alternate theory of the case, suggesting the girls were murdered by a group known as Odinists, a pagan Norse religion taken over by white nationalists.
Allen, a CVS worker and father, is accused of forcing Abby and Libby off of a trail they were hiking and into a wooded area, where he allegedly killed them both.
The defense team, however, said the girls were killed by “[m]embers of a pagan Norse religion, called Odinism, hijacked by white nationalists.”
“Richard Allen has zero connections to any pagan cult or pagan cultists, and furthermore no forensic evidence (such as DNA) or electronic evidence links Richard Allen to the girls or to the crime scene – i.e., he is a completely innocent man” they wrote.
The attorneys wrote in the filing that two groups of Odinists, one from Delphi and the other from Rushville, Indiana, were investigated for their possible involvement in the murders. As evidence the girls were murdered as part of a ritual sacrifice, the attorneys point to ritualistic symbols allegedly found at the crime scene, which include the strange way young Libby’s body was positioned.
A March 2017 search warrant request from the FBI noted that the girls’ bodies looked as though they had been “moved and staged.”
The filing also notes that investigators didn’t further investigate the alleged ritualistic symbols left at the crime scene, which included sticks and tree branches placed on the girls’ bodies that mimicked certain Norse runes. At least one branch appeared to have been cut with an electronic device, suggesting premeditation, the defense argues. Libby’s blood was also used to paint a rune on a tree that was identified as a calling card of the pagan religious cult, they added.
Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland dismissed the theory as a “fanciful defense for social media to devour.”