Down the Hill: The Delphi Murders
Episode 1, Chapter 1: Walk on the Bridge
DTH is hosted by veteran journalists/producers Barbara MacDonald, Dan Szematowicz and Andrew Iden. The Scene Of the Crime podcast was more or less a reiteration of the facts, whereas DTH tells the story from the perspective of those closest to the victims.
The podcast speaks with following individuals in this episode:
Kelsi German - Libby’s sister
Doug Carter - Indiana State Police Superintendent
Becky Patty - Libby & Kelsi’s grandmother and legal guardian
Mike Patty - Libby & Kelsi’s grandfather and legal guardian
Anna Williams - Abby’s mother
Diane Erskine - Abby’s grandmother
Tobe Leazenby - Carroll County Sheriff
Darryl Sterrett - Delphi Fire Chief
Shane Evans - Mayor of Delphi
Erica Gibson - Friend of Abby and Libby
Cynthia Rossi - Friend of Abby and Libby
Todd Ladd (TL) - Pastor at Delphi United Methodist Church
Becky Patty:
“They [the girls] didn’t get up until probably close to 10:00 or so, and they wanted pancakes. So, Derrick made them pancakes for breakfast. And then, later on, Libby come out—she was bored. You know, what can we do? Kelsi came out and said that she was going to, um, her friend’s house and then she had to work.”
Kelsi German:
“And so, I went upstairs and I started getting ready in our bathroom. And I very much remember her opening the door really wide—with Abby behind her—as I’m getting dressed. And she’s like, ‘hey Kels, do you wanna go to High Bridge today?’ And I was like, ‘Lib, I’m obviously getting ready to leave, I can’t take you today.’ And a little while later, I was like, I have really been saying no to her a lot lately, so I went downstairs and I said, ‘hey, if you can find a ride and grandma says yes, I will take you.’ And she ended up asking grandma, and grandma said yes, and then she called my dad to pick her up. And, that’s when I agreed to take her.”
Becky Patty:
“And then she said her dad would pick her up, so I said okay. And, that’s when they were getting ready to leave and Abby was standing at the door. And, that’s when I told her that you—you need to take a jacket. It’s nice, but you know, who knows? You need to take a jacket. And, that’s when she looked at me and said, ‘it’s okay, grandma.’ Gave me that smile and off they went.”
Kelsi German:
“When we left, Libby was sitting up front and Abby was in the back. Neither of them had brought sweatshirts which was really confusing to me. So, I actually ran back inside and got Abby one of mine and Libby had one in my back seat, since she always rode with me. So, I made them take those. And then we turned Heathens by 21 Pilots up really loud. And, they were—had the windows down, and we were singing to it. And, it’s not a super far drive. And so, we got there pretty quick it felt like. And then, we stopped at the entrance to High Bridge, and I made sure they both had their sweatshirts that I told them to take. And, I told Libby I loved her and I watched them walk away.
Becky Patty:
“Kelsi and Libby would go out there a lot. They’ve got all kinds of pictures that they used to go out there and take. So, it wasn’t uncommon and we knew there had been some other kids out there. Because when she had asked, Kelsi had talked to her friend and she’d been—she was out there. As a matter of fact, I thought when they went that she was still there.”
Becky Patty:
“Derrick called, it was about 3:30. He said I’m here at the trailhead and Libby’s not answering her phone. He said I don’t know what’s going on, and that he was going to walk around. He said, ‘you call and see if she answers for you.’ So, I started calling and texting and nothing happened. So, Tara—I said ‘hey, you try’. So, we were taking turns trying, and texting, and calling. And there was no answer or anything, so by a little before 4:00, I said we probably need to go look for them. So, well, Tara said I’ll go on and I called Mike at work and said, ‘Libby—they’re out at the trails, and they’re—Libby’s not answering her phone. We’re gonna go and start looking for ‘em.’ And, he said well let me finish up here and I’ll be there. So, I thought, well, there’s two different ways— if they decided to walk home—that they could’ve come. So, we drove both different ways from there that they could’ve possibly walked. And, they weren’t there. So we got to the trailhead and I parked. There was, at that time, several cars there. And I had to park across the road, in kinda the ditch.”
Kelsi German:
“It was my grandma [calling] and she was freaking out. She couldn’t find Libby anywhere and she wasn’t answering her phone. It was really unlike Libby to do something like that, so I—I think in my mind, I thought ‘oh, she lost her phone or she must have fallen on the other side of the bridge’ because I know that they probably crossed it. Because I know Libby. I didn’t think that Abby would have, so that was a little, um, a little weird to me. But, I was sure that like there was a logical explanation, and it was just some fluke that happened.”
Anna Williams:
“I had seen missed calls, and that was like 5-5:30. It was kind of early in the evening. And she was like, ‘the girls were out on a walk’ and just a whole jarbbled things going on, ‘and we’re down at the sheriff’s department.’ And I’m like, ‘okay, I’m on my way’ and checked out the couple of customers I had. I remember feeling a slight bit like strange but not like overly panicked. I just told them the girls—‘Abby and Libby were out on a walk, and apparently, they’re missing. I gotta go down to the sheriff’s department.’ And she was like, ‘okay, well let us know what’s going on, and you know, just make sure everything’s okay.’ And I’m like, ‘yep no problem, see ya in a little while. I don’t know if I’ll be back tonight, but you know, I’ll see what I can do.’”
Kelsi German:
“Me and Cody crossed the bridge and were looking in the woods, and we couldn’t find them anywhere. That’s when I started to realize that something was really wrong.”
Mike Patty:
“I didn’t realize the urgency of it. You know, it was like okay Libby’s not answering the phone or either it went dead. Or she’s out running around with a bunch of kids, you know, doing whatever. But, I did wrap up and came straight there. I started walking the trails, as well. And then I called the police and literally within minutes—when I said hey, we got a situation here, we need some help—I got back on the trails and started walking back up towards the Freedom Bridge. And by the time I got to the Freedom Bridge, I ran into two officers that was out there walking it as well. So, they reacted, you know, just really quick. And, uh, continued to walk on the trails and then ended up meeting Becky back up at the police station at some point, cause I knew Becky was there.”
Mike Patty:
“We were around town looking. Flash lights were lit up looking up and down in alleys and streets. We went all around looking and went back out to the trails. And as the night progressed, went back up to the police—I think I dropped Becky off. I think her and Kelsi were going through some of the social media stuff—trying to look at computers, or iPads, or iPods, or anything we had, trying to look for any information."
DTH:
“When did you become aware of the Snapchat photos?”
Becky Patty:
“It was that evening. I think Kelsi’s the one who showed me because I didn’t have SnapChat. Because she had gone on to work and then we had to call her back. And so, I think she saw it and she said well I do know this. So, we had seen it while we were at the police station. It was that night.”
DTH:
“What did you think of those two images—the image of the bridge and the image of Abby on the bridge?”
Becky Patty:
“Well, at the time, the only one I saw was the one of Abby on the bridge. So, I-I-I didn’t, so I knew they were at least on the bridge, and you know, over. So, uh, I don’t remember what I thought. I just know that okay they were there; we need to be—we need to be searching from there. Cause we know they were at least that far.”
DTH:
“And when you called police, how did you call—was that a 9-1-1 call?”
Mike Patty:
“No, I called the sheriff’s department directly.”
Tobe Leazenby:
“It was right around 5 o’clock that evening. One of my detectives sent me a text and said ‘hey sheriff, we have two girls missing that are part of—that live in the county and they were last seen just out of Delphi near the High Bridge.’ I honestly was not overly concerned in the beginning because—for a number of years, any time we’ve had a report of a runaway or even a missing senior citizen—I would guess, percentage wise, we’ve probably found or located those runaways or seniors, uh, I’d say 90-95% of the time. And, so that initial thought entered my mind. I thought, well okay we’ll find ‘em. You know, we’ll find ‘em and everything will be fine.”
Darryl Sterrett:
“I deployed people and trucks to different areas. We didn’t know where to look in the initial—they were just missing. So, kinda deployed people to different areas looking for the girls. Driving up and down the street, checking maybe friend’s houses, um, just putting more boots on the ground and doing what we could. And once the guys got out of the station, I was called to the sheriff’s office and we had set up a joint incident command.”
Shane Evans:
“I drove the 25 to 35 minutes up to Delphi [from a meeting]. I can’t remember—I know I talked to the fire department. I went to the jail, talked to some of the dispatch units, some of the city units, um. At one point, I went out there when the fire department was searching for the girls, at that point. Um, got some equipment available. We have—the waste water department has—I wouldn’t call it a 4-wheeler—it’s something bigger than a golf cart and smaller than a Gator. Um, so we made that available to county and city units that were working that night, if anything came up.”
Darryl Sterrett:
“At this point, we started getting a sense of urgency. Now mind you, it’s pitch black. We focused on the creek. We focused on the road side. We focused on everything we could with what we had. We tried to ping the cellphone, and the information that we got was—okay, the cell phone pinged off of this tower. What does that mean? Well, it could be within a two mile radius of this tower. And so okay, I said we need to search all of Delphi, which then includes Deer Creek, the Wabash—I mean, two miles out is a good ways.”
Tobe Leazenby:
“Of course, that particular day was, um, unseasonably warm. But as-as it drew closer to evening, it began to feel a little bit cooler that evening, obviously. And so, being near a stream, the Deer Creek, the temperature of the water during that time period was obviously cold. You know, we have that. Rough terrain, so to say. Very, very rural part of—even though it’s just outside of the city limits—you know, immediately it turned into a very remote terrain area. Um, obviously there’s hills and valleys, and things like that out there.”
Darryl Sterritt:
“In that evening, we could’ve had at many as 100 people searching easily. And as you knock on this neighbor’s door and say hey, then they join the search. And, so the entire town was searching, in their own way. That’s part of being in a small town. Everybody knows everybody, and if you don’t know ‘em, you know of ‘em. And, everybody wants to help. So, we looked, and we looked, and we walked. We were focused on the bridge area, and we had people on 4-wheelers. We had farmers in the area; the community was looking. We searched until maybe 11:30-12:00. And, I had met up with the sheriff and discussed with him—and Chief Mullin—I said look, we have—we have blanketed this area. I honestly think we could probably check it off. And he said, well yeah I agree. And, you know, at some point you have to do that.”
Erica Gibson:
“Everybody was checking different trails in Delphi just to make sure. So, we came up here and we were back there, and we even saw the firefighters back there. And, um, like we talked to them for a while, and then, um, they called off the search. And, so we went home. But, I’m glad we did as I texted Kelsi right before—and I’m like hey I know you guys checked around the bridge, but I know other people have to. Do you need those extra eyes? Kinda glad we didn’t, you know. We were two of Libby’s best friends—the other person with me was one of Abby’s—and so I’m kinda glad we didn’t.”
Cynthia Rossi:
“I think when they started mentioning the police bringing in dogs from Chicago—cause I know—because I know from living there—that a lot of bad things happen there. And, they always have just certain systems set up if something is to go wrong. And it’s a very professional city when it comes to crime and dealing with crime, and they have everything you could ever imagine when it comes to dealing with that sort of thing. So when somebody said they were bringing in dogs from Chicago, I was like oh they’re going to other states—they’re contacting people all across the world to try to find them—that isn’t a good sign.”
Erica Gibson:
“Definitely worried that night—cause I went ahead and stayed with another friend that night because we were going to go to school in the morning. I was terrified; she wasn’t so much. A friend we Facetimed was, but like, they were only terrified because if they’re still out there, they’re cold. They’re scared if one of them’s hurt, and really we just thought they really were just lost and scared.”
Darryl Sterrett:
“I’ve heard good and bad. On that comment—I guess I will say that it was a joint decision that I consulted with many, many emergency response leaders in our community. And so, at some point, I guess what I will—the way I will put it is the organized effort by emergency services was temporarily called off, yes. But, there were still people I know out even though they were not necessarily under out leadership. I’ll—I’ll put it that way.”
DTH Producer:
“Just for people who may be wondering why, you know what was sorta the calculus and the rationale behind that decision?”
Tobe Leazenby:
“The search at that point had obviously not been fruitful. The other thing that was limited at that time were very limited resources. And when I say--basically additional lighting is one thing that came to mind that we didn’t have access to. At least, again, at those hours. And, so um, I would—as I recall, I think a lot of it boiled down to the availability of resources and being able to continue on.”
Darryl Sterrett:
“We were at High Bridge. We had walked High Bridge. And we had walked under High Bridge—had guys climb down to the top of the pillars of High Bridge. I had guys doing things they should have not been doing, but we were going to find something. We had scoured the banks of the creek, the hillsides—the way, you get to a point where, you know, that you’ve walked over two, and three, and four times in that area. You kind of feel like you have to put a checkmark on it. So, we had come to that point. And, it’s like I said, it was a tough thing to do, but as a volunteer department you also have to look out for the individuals that you command. Because they have jobs, they have livelihoods. That’s the tough part of it it because, as a chief, you have to be able to look out for them at some point. And they would stay out there until sunup if you told them that’s what you were doing, but at some point you have to be realistic. We have turned every rock we could think of in this area, and that time of year, you know, the ground cover isn’t now—where you’ve got weeds four foot tall, you know. You could see a good ways even in the dark. We have, of course, we have lights like no other. So, we came to that point where we need to check this spot off and maybe look at coming back fresh in the morning. Let’s see what happens.”
Darryl Sterrett:
“[the following morning] I had a couple come in to do nothing but just register volunteers. I know we were at 300, and then the people that freelance and don’t check in. So, we had people and people and people. Got a call up from Tippecanoe County, offered up a mobile operation center. Uh, and we brought it in and set it up at the bridge area, so that we could more readily coordinate people in that area. And, we covered everything that we had covered the night before, but we covered it in daylight and we covered it with twice as many people.”
Kelsi German:
“The next morning, we all got up—me and my grandma—got up and left about 7:30-ish. And, everybody met up at the fire station. And the fire department separated us into groups, and my family actually all got separated. My grandma and aunt Tara were in one group, and I was in another group with my dad, and my other sister, and a few other people. And my group got sent to High Bridge.”
Todd Ladd:
“I contacted the sheriff who attended my church and asked him where do you want me. He asked me to come down to the command center. So, my role at the command center was basically to talk with people as they came in, as they volunteered. I signed in as a volunteer, of course. But, more to be just connecting, listening, talking to first responders, looking at maps wondering—even spent about an hour with another clergy friend, went and searched another area of the creek and behind some houses, just going over areas that had been checked but wanted to check once again. Many, many people were wanting to come out—even people from other communities nearby. The Logansport, the Frankfort, the Monticello, as well. But, of course, you saw a lot of people that you know because you know many people in this community.”
DTH:
“So, is your mood on Tuesday morning different than it was on Monday night when you were out at the scene?”
Todd Ladd:
“Mood Tuesday morning is like something’s not right.”
Darryl Sterrett:
“So, we had helicopters up, they were searching the creek. We had kayakers on the creek, 'cause some of those areas, you’re not gonna see except for from the water. So, the terrain is rough when you get off of the trail system. For this area, if it’s not a cornfield, it’s a creek bed. So, even on foot in the daytime, it-it was tough to search.”
Tobe Leazenby:
“Obviously, as time continued to go along, I again had that thought in my mind about—ok this isn’t like majority of what we end up with in this county, being able to find individuals. Yeah, at some point I thought, okay yeah I’m not real sure about this one.”
Kelsi German:
“We heard somebody yell up the hill that they found a shoe. And, at the moment, I knew exactly what they were wearing. I couldn’t remember what the sweatshirt was my sister was wearing until later, but I knew exactly what shoes they were wearing. And so they yelled up that it was a black Nike, and I knew that it was Libby’s. And then about thirty seconds later, somebody else said that they’d found them.”
Tobe Leazenby:
“I’ll never forget this part, unfortunately. I know Chief Steve Mullin and I—and I believe the Delphi mayor Shane Evans—um, Fire Chief Sterrett, we were kinda in the back part of the fire department. And, I remember I believe it was Chief Mullin got a call—said we’ve located them, uhhh, and they’re, you know, no longer with us.”
Darryl Sterrett:
“Because of the number of people, we wanted to get authorities to the site before we put out any blanket notice. So, we kinda played coy to protect the people, to protect the scene, um, to protect the family. So, we kinda went downstairs and played coy, and we were waiting to give notice. We wanted the family to not find out from anyone but authorities. Course, then you get people saying we heard this, we heard that. Sometimes you’ve got to lie to people to protect themselves, I’m sorry. Tell them “well you’ve heard more than we know,” and at some point, uh, I believe it was Steve Mullin came down and said we have the scene secured. Let’s go ahead and let people know, so we can terminate—lets get people out of here. I made the announcement that the girls had been found and it was not to a good end, and I thanked everybody that was there. I tried to be that guy, that when all else is tumbling down, somebody’s gotta keep it together. And, when I made the announcement, the entire lot was full of people and there’s a stream of state trooper cars going by, and it’s just surreal. I knew where they were going and I knew what they were facing.”
