Found Deceased IN - Abigail (Abby) Williams, 13, & Liberty (Libby) German, 14, The Delphi Murders 13 Feb 2017 #136

[TTF14]

Abby's mom has talked in more than one interview (the Hebert one linked upthread, also Scene of the Crime and Down the Hill podcasts, possibly others) about how sure she was that the girls were just misbehaving - evidently nothing nefarious crossed her mind about abduction or murder while they were missing. She relates that she said to many people the night that they were missing, "these two are going to be so grounded" "I can't wait until we can talk to these two grounded girls" etc (I'm paraphrasing her words). So that's another Delphi resident for whom serious crime wasn't on the radar compared to all the known hijinks that kids get up to. I'm not passing any kind of judgment on her attitude towards likely outcomes; she lives there and it was her experience that the community was safe.

She said that about discovering Abby was on the bridge. And then later when she found out about her Facebook she wasn't supposed to have. I don't recall her saying anything in any interviews about them misbehaving.

 

[Falling Down]

When I read his answer to the "twist" question in the Comet Q&A it blew my mind because I never would have guessed that was what he meant by it. Then shortly afterwards I re-listened to the Down the Hill podcast, and TL also explains what the twist is in one of his interviews. It was, I believe at the end of episode 2 when he is discussing finding out that their bodies were discovered and the outcome was not what he expected. That was the "twist" - he expected to find them alive. His thoughts on that had already been out there for over a year and I never even realized that he had explained it before.

In recent times I've thought the same. The "twist" is the fact that the girls were found deceased. That's what I'm going with. It went from they had no idea where the girls were all night and into the 14th, to a recovery and investigation.

 

[sunshineray]

Abby's mom has talked in more than one interview (the Hebert one linked upthread, also Scene of the Crime and Down the Hill podcasts, possibly others) about how sure she was that the girls were just misbehaving - evidently nothing nefarious crossed her mind about abduction or murder while they were missing. She relates that she said to many people the night that they were missing, "these two are going to be so grounded" "I can't wait until we can talk to these two grounded girls" etc (I'm paraphrasing her words). So that's another Delphi resident for whom serious crime wasn't on the radar compared to all the known hijinks that kids get up to. I'm not passing any kind of judgment on her attitude towards likely outcomes; she lives there and it was her experience that the community was safe.

A parent of the missing child would ALWAYS keep hope until there was none.

A seasoned veteran LE officer, a county Sheriff would/should entertain many other outcomes. JMO

 

[Finlay]

In recent times I've thought the same. The "twist" is the fact that the girls were found deceased. That's what I'm going with. It went from they had no idea where the girls were all night and into the 14th, to a recovery and investigation.

Depending on how far you maybe stretch the word twist, there are a few things here that might apply. I was surprised to hear that LE considered it a twist that the case resulted in a dbl-homicide to start with. After that, one might consider it a twist to have audio/video from the victim's phone. It might also have been a twist/surprise to them not to have found (if we assume they didn't) any good, solid, usable DNA evidence from the killer. (That's MY opinion anyway - but I don't think it's ever been directly stated that way.) ...or at least any DNA evidence that hasn't resulted in any kind of match even this many years later. It could be considered a twist that even though LE believes the killer was local & familiar with the area, and even though they have actual images & audio from him, the public hasn't been able or willing to identify the guy. I'm not sure it was ever directly stated that the girls were posed so this may be only my interpretation of things but, I had gotten the feeling that the victims were posed in some manner as well. So if that's true, it could be considered a twist of sorts as well. Obvious all of those things I listed may not have been known in the first days of the investigators so, depending on when the references to twists (plural) was made, perhaps all of these things weren't known yet ... but (to me anyway) all things considered, I'm not going to spend too much time wracking my brain about what else LE might be considering a twist in this case.

 

[steeltowngirl]

Who was murdered when Sean Evans was in HS?

Shane Evans graduated from high school in 2008, which would put him in high school approximately 2004-2008. I would imagine there were a lot of unsolved homicides in Indiana during those years. I checked specifically for listed cold cases in Carroll and Tippecanoe Counties, nothing from those years. ISP: Cold Cases by County

 

[MistyWaters]

Who was murdered when Sean Evans was in HS?

He didn’t say.

 

[Yemelyan]

She said that about discovering Abby was on the bridge. And then later when she found out about her Facebook she wasn't supposed to have. I don't recall her saying anything in any interviews about them misbehaving.

She did say this about discovering that Abby went on the bridge and about the forbidden Facebook, that's true. But she has ALSO said that when the girls were missing, her mind assumed they were just doing what they were not supposed to do (misbehaving was my word for it), not to the possibility of murder.

In the podcast Scene of the Crime, episode 2, when AW describes Becky calling her at work to tell her that the girls were missing and that she was supposed to go to the sheriff's department, she says that she let her co-workers know what was going on and gathered up her stuff, and before she left her co-workers said "let us know how it turns out." Her response was, "Absolutely, I’ll probably be back in a short time. We’ll find them, and light them up about not being where they’re supposed to be and all that." This is from minute 11:50. "Light them up" implies that the girls will be getting in trouble for not being where they were supposed to be. So, where were they not supposed to be? From this same interview, we find out that the Snapchat photo was NOT known to the parents at this time - it was discovered later in the evening while family members were at the sheriff's office. Therefore, the "light them up" in this instance is not about the bridge per se, it's about not showing up when Libby's dad arrived to pick them up. She would not have said "we'll find them and light them up" if she thought that they were missing through no fault of their own, like an accident or someone trying to abduct and kill them. And she didn't yet know about the bridge.

From the same episode, around minute 20, AW says that while at the sheriff's office she was under the assumption that the girls had just gotten distracted and lost track of time. Parents and LE were trying to brainstorm for logical reasons the girls would not have shown up where they were supposed to be. AW says she remembers an officer saying to her, "The late movie gets out in Logansport in about 20 minutes. If you're going to be grounded for the rest of your life, what's a movie?" AW says, "I kinda had that thought...oooh, she has no idea [how much trouble she is in]. But, we've all been teenagers and we've all done stupid things, and lessons were going to be learned when she and Libby got back. That's what I remember thinking." Again, this is not about the bridge specifically or about the Facebook - it's about the possibility of them running around town or perhaps going into the city without letting parents know.

So to me, this shows that she assumed that Abby was going against family rules in not showing up where she was supposed to be (again, my word for that is misbehaving) and it was about the situation of not doing what you are supposed to do in its entirety, not specifically about the bridge or the Facebook. JMO though. Source: Scene of the Crime: Delphi on Stitcher



."

 

[MistyWaters]

A parent of the missing child would ALWAYS keep hope until there was none.

A seasoned veteran LE officer, a county Sheriff would/should entertain many other outcomes. JMO

Sheriff’s don’t speculate on outcomes without any evidence. And we know there was no evidence of foul play that night because the official search was called off at midnight. The hindsight and all the the should’ve’s I’m certain everyone directly involved now dearly regret but as the past can’t be rewritten, there was nothing to indicate foul play occurred at the time including no 911 calls by eye-witnesses reporting a violent crime occurring. JMO

 

[Yemelyan]

Shane Evans graduated from high school in 2008, which would put him in high school approximately 2004-2008. I would imagine there were a lot of unsolved homicides in Indiana during those years. I checked specifically for listed cold cases in Carroll and Tippecanoe Counties, nothing from those years. ISP: Cold Cases by County

JMO but I'm not sure the ex-mayor was referring to the last unsolved homicide/cold case, just the last homicide he could remember (could also be a solved one).

I do know that in 1991 and again in 1998, there were double murders in Carroll County. In both cases grandsons murdered their grandparents. Double homicide in Carroll County is not first to have been committed

 

[Laura456]

I'm thinking of the movie/book "The Lovely Bones", I just get a similar sort of vibe here for some reason. Could the attacker have hidden in a bunker underground while the search was going on? A long shot I know

 

[news buff]

County Sheriff answers double homicide questions from readers | Carroll County Comet
Q. Can you elaborate about your reference to this case as having a “twist” that you have never seen before? Is it something more than Libby audio recording and videotaping their assailant(s)?

A. One of the main “twists” is that Carroll County has had a high success rate of finding missing persons. For this case to have the initial outcome was nothing we, even as seasoned veterans, expected.

Twist in that the girls did not take the video, but it was placed on the phone? That someone else was with the girls perhaps and ran away? That an very important person had two innocents killed to redirect attention? All kinds of scenarios are possible.

 

[MistyWaters]

She did say this about discovering that Abby went on the bridge and about the forbidden Facebook, that's true. But she has ALSO said that when the girls were missing, her mind assumed they were just doing what they were not supposed to do (misbehaving was my word for it), not to the possibility of murder.

In the podcast Scene of the Crime, episode 2, when AW describes Becky calling her at work to tell her that the girls were missing and that she was supposed to go to the sheriff's department, she says that she let her co-workers know what was going on and gathered up her stuff, and before she left her co-workers said "let us know how it turns out." Her response was, "Absolutely, I’ll probably be back in a short time. We’ll find them, and light them up about not being where they’re supposed to be and all that." This is from minute 11:50. "Light them up" implies that the girls will be getting in trouble for not being where they were supposed to be. So, where were they not supposed to be? From this same interview, we find out that the Snapchat photo was NOT known to the parents at this time - it was discovered later in the evening while family members were at the sheriff's office. Therefore, the "light them up" in this instance is not about the bridge per se, it's about not showing up when Libby's dad arrived to pick them up. She would not have said "we'll find them and light them up" if she thought that they were missing through no fault of their own, like an accident or someone trying to abduct and kill them. And she didn't yet know about the bridge.

From the same episode, around minute 20, AW says that while at the sheriff's office she was under the assumption that the girls had just gotten distracted and lost track of time. Parents and LE were trying to brainstorm for logical reasons the girls would not have shown up where they were supposed to be. AW says she remembers an officer saying to her, "The late movie gets out in Logansport in about 20 minutes. If you're going to be grounded for the rest of your life, what's a movie?" AW says, "I kinda had that thought...oooh, she has no idea [how much trouble she is in]. But, we've all been teenagers and we've all done stupid things, and lessons were going to be learned when she and Libby got back. That's what I remember thinking." Again, this is not about the bridge specifically or about the Facebook - it's about the possibility of them running around town or perhaps going into the city without letting parents know.

So to me, this shows that she assumed that Abby was going against family rules in not showing up where she was supposed to be (again, my word for that is misbehaving) and it was about the situation of not doing what you are supposed to do in its entirety, not specifically about the bridge or the Facebook. JMO though. Source: Scene of the Crime: Delphi on Stitcher



."

I agree, “getting grounded” has often become an expressed threat by parents due to lack of any other appropriate consequences. I think Anna spoke of “grounding”, her way of confirming she was a responsible parent who wouldn’t normally allow her daughter to run wild.

It breaks my heart that the family members have been asked over and over again about that evening. As nobody was screeching “they’ve been murdered!!!!” the insinuation is clearly there that the family members didn’t care enough about the girls’s well-being. Judgement by strangers is often unduly harsh and cruel. But anyone who’s a parent dealing with the unknown whereabouts of their teenager, the absolute LAST thing on one’s mind is the ultimate most morbid scenario - that they must dead. If that’s where one’s mind went, we’d all be basketcases long before they left home. It’s also why parents of missing children often desperately cling to the glimmer of hope their child will still be found alive even after many years have passed by.

JMO

BBM


Why have police not found man who teens filmed before their murder?
“We called friends, knocked at houses and posted on Facebook to see if anyone knew where they were. I was pacing the sheriff’s office thinking: ‘She is so grounded’. At that point I was certain they’d got lost. They were good kids – they didn’t take off without telling anyone.

As the night wore on, my main worry was that they’d got lost or hurt. Neither of them were great with directions. They hadn’t eaten, they were both in flimsy clothes and not prepared for the drop in temperature that night.

"I went back to the house and grabbed Abby’s jacket because she was going to need it when we found her.”…….

“Everyone was getting more upset, but we still didn’t have evidence that anyone else was involved. No one saw them talking to anyone. No one saw a vehicle in the area,” remembers Anna.

“I went out with a search party and they used flashlights to look in the river that ran under the bridge. I told them: ‘We are not looking for bodies, we are looking for two grounded little girls’.”

As if to reemphasize, Anna mentions Abby’s poor sense of direction more recently -

Delphi murders: Four years later, unsolved case haunts teens' families
It’s the everyday stuff," Anna Williams said of the void left by Abby's death. "We're not planning college. And we’re not driving cars."

Anna hesitated, confessing her reservations about what kind of driver Abby would have been.

She had a terrible sense of direction," Anna quipped — the kind of parental joke that causes teens to roll their eyes. "She couldn’t figure out how to get us from Monticello to Lafayette or Delphi if she had to, and she’s been that way a million times. I think she would have gotten lost a lot.”….”

 

[Falling Down]

I'm thinking of the movie/book "The Lovely Bones", I just get a similar sort of vibe here for some reason. Could the attacker have hidden in a bunker underground while the search was going on? A long shot I know

Great movie.

 

[Yemelyan]

I agree, “getting grounded” has often become an expressed threat by parents due to lack of any other appropriate consequences. I think Anna spoke of “grounding”, her way of confirming she was a responsible parent who wouldn’t normally allow her daughter to run wild.

It breaks my heart that the family members have been asked over and over again about that evening. As nobody was screeching “they’ve been murdered!!!!” the insinuation is clearly there that the family members didn’t care enough about the girls’s well-being. Judgement by strangers is often unduly harsh and cruel. But anyone who’s a parent dealing with the unknown whereabouts of their teenager, the absolute LAST thing on one’s mind is the ultimate most morbid scenario - that they must dead. If that’s where one’s mind went, we’d all be basketcases long before they left home. It’s also why parents of missing children often desperately cling to the glimmer of hope their child will still be found alive even after many years have passed by.

JMO

BBM


Why have police not found man who teens filmed before their murder?
“We called friends, knocked at houses and posted on Facebook to see if anyone knew where they were. I was pacing the sheriff’s office thinking: ‘She is so grounded’. At that point I was certain they’d got lost. They were good kids – they didn’t take off without telling anyone.

As the night wore on, my main worry was that they’d got lost or hurt. Neither of them were great with directions. They hadn’t eaten, they were both in flimsy clothes and not prepared for the drop in temperature that night.

"I went back to the house and grabbed Abby’s jacket because she was going to need it when we found her.”…….

“Everyone was getting more upset, but we still didn’t have evidence that anyone else was involved. No one saw them talking to anyone. No one saw a vehicle in the area,” remembers Anna.

“I went out with a search party and they used flashlights to look in the river that ran under the bridge. I told them: ‘We are not looking for bodies, we are looking for two grounded little girls’.”

As if to reemphasize, Anna mentions Abby’s poor sense of direction more recently -

Delphi murders: Four years later, unsolved case haunts teens' families
It’s the everyday stuff," Anna Williams said of the void left by Abby's death. "We're not planning college. And we’re not driving cars."

Anna hesitated, confessing her reservations about what kind of driver Abby would have been.

She had a terrible sense of direction," Anna quipped — the kind of parental joke that causes teens to roll their eyes. "She couldn’t figure out how to get us from Monticello to Lafayette or Delphi if she had to, and she’s been that way a million times. I think she would have gotten lost a lot.”….”

Thank you for finding these references. It really gives a feeling of what was going through the minds of the family members. Was it an accident? I think BP leaned this way at first. Or were they looking for "two grounded little girls?" I think this was the way AW leaned at first. Both were dealing with it in their own way, it's understandable.

 

[Yemelyan]

Twist in that the girls did not take the video, but it was placed on the phone? That someone else was with the girls perhaps and ran away? That an very important person had two innocents killed to redirect attention? All kinds of scenarios are possible.

All kinds of scenarios are of course possible, but the person who first said this has explained twice that the "twist" he referred to is that these missing girls were found murdered, whereas the typical missing person in Carroll County is found alive (presumably with no foul play involved).

It's curious how we wonder what the "twist" is and when we get the answer in MSM (in this case we got it twice), we don't accept it. His answer was a wicked let-down, I'll give everyone that.

 

[MistyWaters]

Twist in that the girls did not take the video, but it was placed on the phone? That someone else was with the girls perhaps and ran away? That an very important person had two innocents killed to redirect attention? All kinds of scenarios are possible.

Libby was heralded as a hero for taking the video. IMO the scenario that’s most possible is LE could never have predicted this case would go unsolved for more than four years and meanwhile every word they spoke represented the potential of being twisted into some sort of code talk. JMO

“State Police called Liberty "Libby" German "a hero" for thinking to record the suspect while the crime was happening.

"This lady is a hero. There is no doubt. To have the presence of mind to activate the video on her cell phone," ISP Sgt. Tony Slocum said…”
Delphi murders: Four years later, unsolved case haunts teens' families

 

[steeltowngirl]

JMO but I'm not sure the ex-mayor was referring to the last unsolved homicide/cold case, just the last homicide he could remember (could also be a solved one).

I do know that in 1991 and again in 1998, there were double murders in Carroll County. In both cases grandsons murdered their grandparents. Double homicide in Carroll County is not first to have been committed

Ok, and the dates would have been further back then I previously noted. Maybe more like 2002 - 2004, if his memory is serving him correctly. I found the article where he said it and it was quoted as middle school, not high school.

“The mayor, 27, said the last homicide there that he could remember happened when he was in middle school.”

Town of Delphi, Indiana, left heartbroken and rattled by murders of 2 teenage girls

 

[sunshineray]

Sheriff’s don’t speculate on outcomes without any evidence. And we know there was no evidence of foul play that night because the official search was called off at midnight. The hindsight and all the the should’ve’s I’m certain everyone directly involved now dearly regret but as the past can’t be rewritten, there was nothing to indicate foul play occurred at the time including no 911 calls by eye-witnesses reporting a violent crime occurring. JMO

There was BP saying she knew Libby would never not call. I'm sure AW felt the same about Abby. They knew their girls. I'm sure Kelsei was saying no way Libby nor Abby would make us worry like this, somethings wrong.

I disagree that LE doesn't speculate in a situation with two young teen girls missing, heading into a cold Winter's night. Of course they were speculating on where they were, that's part of tracking them down.

The official calling off of the search, I will never understand. It didn't last long though. The Sheriff called the Fire Chief in the wee hours of the morning (IIRC 2am-ish?) to get lighting equipment down there because Libby's phone was pinging there somewhere by the trails. and they wanted to find it.

 

[MistyWaters]

Ok, and the dates would have been further back then I previously noted. Maybe more like 2002 - 2004, if his memory is serving him correctly. I found the article where he said it and it was quoted as middle school, not high school.

“The mayor, 27, said the last homicide there that he could remember happened when he was in middle school.”

Town of Delphi, Indiana, left heartbroken and rattled by murders of 2 teenage girls

Thank you for your clarification! Hardly an extensive history of homicide cases in Carroll County.

 

[MistyWaters]

There was BP saying she knew Libby would never not call. I'm sure AW felt the same about Abby. They knew their girls. I'm sure Kelsei was saying no way Libby nor Abby would make us worry like this, somethings wrong.

I disagree that LE doesn't speculate in a situation with two young teen girls missing, heading into a cold Winter's night. Of course they were speculating on where they were, that's part of tracking them down.

The official calling off of the search, I will never understand. It didn't last long though. The Sheriff called the Fire Chief in the wee hours of the morning (IIRC 2am-ish?) to get lighting equipment down there because Libby's phone was pinging there somewhere by the trails. and they wanted to find it.

Even though LE had no basis to suspect foul play, what do you think should’ve happened that would’ve made a difference? We’ve been told by LE the girls were murdered minutes after the video was taken, which would’ve been well before the missing persons report was filed @appx 5:30pm.

BBM
New 'Face' of the Delphi Murder Suspect
“This is the face of the suspect that goes with body of the video captured on Liberty German's cell phone minutes before she and Abigail Williams were murdered.”