Defense attorneys who reportedly withdrew from representing the man accused of killing two Delphi, Indiana, teenagers have been told they can’t defend the suspect, even pro bono.
The attorneys were representing Richard Allen, 51, who is accused of murdering 13-year-old Abby Williams and 14-year-old Libby German in a case that has attracted national attention.
Defense attorneys Andrew Baldwin and Bradley Rozzi filed paperwork stating their intent to represent Allen pro bono. They appeared in court on Tuesday with Allen but were told by the judge that they couldn’t represent him at all, even for free, Fox 59 reported.
“I cannot and will not allow these attorneys to represent you,” Judge Fran Gull said at the hearing.
Baldwin responded to the judge by saying, “Allen has asked us to represent him,” while Rozzi added, “We’re on a different page on how we acted.”
Prosecutors told the judge their concern was for Allen to have a fair trial.
In court filings, Baldwin and Rozzi claimed Gull met with them in chambers and read a prepared statement with a list of issues she had about how the attorneys had been handling Allen’s case, which she called “gross negligence.” The attorneys claimed she then gave them the choice to withdraw from the case or have that statement read in open court before she disqualified them.
Gull announced during an October 19 hearing that they had “voluntarily” withdrawn from the case. The reason for the withdrawal was suspected to be an evidence leak from Baldwin’s office.
Rozzi, according to new court filings, pushed back on the judge and called for her to be disqualified by the Indiana Supreme Court, saying she had shown a prejudice against defense counsel.
Rozzi also reportedly said he and Baldwin were not allowed to defend themselves in open court because it would lead to reputational damage and could taint the potential jury pool.
Allen wrote in a letter that he wanted Baldwin and Rozzi to represent him.
“I want Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Rozzi to continue to represent me until this case is resolved, one way or the other. I believe they are acting in a manner that is in my best interest,” he wrote in his letter to Gull.
Judge Gull issued an order restating that Baldwin and Rozzi were dismissed as attorneys and their names removed from the court docket. Gull has already appointed new public defenders to represent Allen.
Those public defenders requested that Allen’s trial be pushed back from January 2024. The trial is now set to begin in mid-October 2024.
Baldwin and Rozzi had 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.
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The attorneys said 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.”
