GUILTY Abby & Libby - The Delphi Murders - Richard Allen Arrested - #216

[mrjitty]

A snip from your post:
And I'm willing to bet that there will be no appeal from Allen and his team.

If I was a betting person, I'd love to take you up on your bet. Attorneys Rozzi and Baldwin have been laying the foundation for appeal almost since day one. There is still a lot of doubt regarding his guilt. MOO

I think they've made some significant blunders with appeals in mind.

1. Why didn't they raise psychosis properly at the safekeeping hearing in summer '23? Failing to put that in front of the Judge seems a giant own goal now.

2. If the FBI SA Horan really developed significant CAST evidence that supports the D case, why didn't they make this argument at the motion in limine hearing? Or an offer proof at trial? Now there is no evidential record about this.

3. On the confessions, why didn't they take an itemised approach at the 3 day hearing as to why each individual confession should be ruled involuntary or too prejudicial based on psychosis? Instead they made their strange argument about coercion and agents of the state ....

I think they might have already blown it myself

MOO

 

[Megnut]

I thought the same i.e. RA waiting to make sure both were dead.

Yes, Dateline is all true crime. This happened on June 22, 2012 in Violet Andrews Park in Portland, Texas.

I emailed Nick M. about this just to let him know about this episode and how it aired ten days before RA committed these crimes.

Good work finding this. It gives an eerie glimpse into what might have been happening between 2:14 and 2:28. The marks without adhesive. So many similarities, the wooden dock/bridge, trapped. Perhaps Richard Allen intended to shoot his victims too, and would have if not for the interruption.

JMO

 

[ClearAhead]

A snip from your post:
And I'm willing to bet that there will be no appeal from Allen and his team.

If I was a betting person, I'd love to take you up on your bet. Attorneys Rozzi and Baldwin have been laying the foundation for appeal almost since day one. There is still a lot of doubt regarding his guilt. MOO

Have R&B really been laying a foundation for appeal all along or has the matter been raised so many times hoping the public will get the perception the case against RA has been rigged since the very beginning and he was unjustly accused? That one juror who was supposed to cause a mistrial never came to be.

The only positive coming from the continual threat of appeal was the defense acknowledgement they had no defense of RA and he’d be convicted because he was guilty, which indeed proved true.

Very revealing was the fact the D avoided stating to the jury that RA was innocent of the murders of Libby and Abby during their closing arguments.

JMO

 

[Boxer]

Yes the Jury didn’t fall for the horse and pony show that the defense were selling. The arrogance that they thought their lies and conspiracies would work is laughable when you look at the facts of the case.

Their client on the bridge didn’t see anybody else out there and remarkably dressed like the killer moments before the girls crossed the bridge.


But Odins did it

He on second interview years later he tried to change the time he was on the trail to have himself be gone before BG was video'ed.

Problem: people were on the trail during that second time, and no sign of him. Hence no alibi whatsoever AND a lie to try to change the time frame.

 

[sunshineray]

A snip from your post:
And I'm willing to bet that there will be no appeal from Allen and his team.

If I was a betting person, I'd love to take you up on your bet. Attorneys Rozzi and Baldwin have been laying the foundation for appeal almost since day one. There is still a lot of doubt regarding his guilt. MOO

A jury of his peers didn't agree about there being a lot of doubt that RA killed Abigail and Liberty. They convicted him BARD, after careful consideration. The things his defense wanted to bring in were just speculation with no proof of a nexus to the murders. I think the appeals courts will see it the same way. AJMO

 

[FrostedGlass]

I think they've made some significant blunders with appeals in mind.

1. Why didn't they raise psychosis properly at the safekeeping hearing in summer '23? Failing to put that in front of the Judge seems a giant own goal now.

2. If the FBI SA Horan really developed significant CAST evidence that supports the D case, why didn't they make this argument at the motion in limine hearing? Or an offer proof at trial? Now there is no evidential record about this.

3. On the confessions, why didn't they take an itemised approach at the 3 day hearing as to why each individual confession should be ruled involuntary or too prejudicial based on psychosis? Instead they made their strange argument about coercion and agents of the state ....

I think they might have already blown it myself

MOO

I can't answer your questions because I wasn't there and I don't know which ones of the numerous versions are the truth.
We'll have to wait until sentencing to see where this case is headed.

 

[Megnut]

I wonder how many profiler boxes checked.

He changed plans that day, skipped out on lunch with family.

Was it a regular work day? Did he go to work the next day?

We know he changed his appearance.

Did he change how he dressed?

I think I knew the answer to this one -- did he suddenly get aggressive about not wanting to be video recorded and photographed?

Was he obsessive about car washing? Big into laundry?

Changes in behavior, changes in habits...

New phone, hello.

Secrecy around devices, hidden accounts.

Odd encounters.

I wonder if stories will trickle out.

JMO

 

[Tealgrove]

I wonder the same thing. Now that he has been found guilty, will he express remorse and apologize to the families? Even when I ask a question, it feels strange to make an argument for someone who confessed to the murders over 60 times. If he does express remorse and apologize to the families then any lingering questions I have about this case will finally be put to rest.

If he wants to appeal, he can’t say anything. He’s still playing the victim and saying that his confessions were made due to psychosis.

Time will tell I guess.

 

[WildHuncher]

Details that only the killer would know> How can that be?

Fact Sheet | False Confessions

• According to the Innocence Project, 25% of wrongful convictions overturned by DNA evidence involve a false confession and many of those false confessions actually contained details that match the crime-details that were not made to the public.

So the confessions might be false; the timeline might be wrong; the witnesses can be portrayed as inconsistent; lots of other people could resemble that video; there’s no direct physical proof BG was the actual killer anyway; people can have innocent reasons for changing their memories about where they were and when; there could be innocent reasons why there’s no record of his phone being present or active when his story demands such; that cartridge match may not be absolutely unique in all the world.

But nobody else in all the world has all those things pointing to them.

 

[Tealgrove]

does this answer your question? -

"She told the jury that when investigators were moving their headquarters she came across some handwritten tips, one of them said a “Richard Allen Whiteman” had “self-reported being on the trails and girls had seem him at the same time.”

That tip was dated Feb. 16, 2017.

Shank said she pulled the written tip about Allen being interviewed in 2017 and changed the file name to “Richard Allen.” She told the jury she made this discovery on Sept. 21, 2022."

Delphi Murders trial: Day 6 live blog

Delphi Murders trial continues with testimony from Dr. Roland Kohr and Sarah Carbaugh. Allen accused of murdering Abby Williams and Libby German.

wishtv.com

So up until that point LE was just spinning their wheels and had NOTHING.

They had him within days of the murders. Tip #74.

All those agencies and they had their man.

SMDH

MOO

 

[Tortoise]

Details that only the killer would know> How can that be?

Fact Sheet | False Confessions

• According to the Innocence Project, 25% of wrongful convictions overturned by DNA evidence involve a false confession and many of those false confessions actually contained details that match the crime-details that were not made to the public.

That’s the beauty of a circumstantial case. Richard Allen was convicted on a whole raft of evidence, not merely his confessions –

1. He unexpectedly cancelled plans to have lunch out with his parents and sister. He opted not to adduce evidence as to why, when something clearly disrupted the civilized course he headed out on that morning. He made that relevant. No one wanted or needed to know what he was doing four hours before the crime, but that’s where it started for him. Something went wrong that morning when he left his parents and went and purchased beers.
2. He went home, got a coat on and headed to the bridge that the girls were abducted from. He does not deny that his car with distinctive wheel rims is captured on CCTV at 1.27pm, which tallies with his Feb 16th account of arriving at 1.30pm. Had that been him leaving, driving westbound, that would mean he had been parked somewhere east of the CCTV camera, yet he introduced no evidence of an alternative old building with parking space. Therefore, the CCTV corroborates his original account, which means he drove a very long and unusual quiet country route to get to the trails, which tallies with someone wanting to avoid being spotted driving through town.
3. He parked his car in an obscure location next to a disused building, which fits with not wanting his car to be noticed by others who came to park their cars and walk.
4. He entered the trails not via the trail head, but via lesser-used tracks leading from the disused building.
5. He changed his times of arrival and departure by two hours, five years later, with no explanation for why he now had a better memory of his timings, which is distancing from the time of the crime. He would not have known if police would find evidence of him being on the trails from other witnesses’ photos or recordings, or trail cams, so he avoided being caught in a lie when he first came forward.
6. With his original timings, his path would have crossed with Abby’s and Libby’s. He would have seen them given the time that he was there but he denied seeing them, which is distancing behavior.
7. He did not see bridge guy on the bridge, which he would have done, with his original timings.
8. His phone at the time was the only phone missing from his collection of old phones.
9. There was no outright denial from him that the bridge guy photo was him.
10. His range of attire included the same clothing worn by bridge guy.
11. His build and frame were comparable to bridge guy’s.
12. After the murders he didn’t come forward for three days to say he had been on the bridge that afternoon. But we know he was keeping an eye on the news, because he contacted police on the fourth day, the day after they released the bridge guy photo. He also admitted he had thought about it a lot since 2017; leakage.
13. He opted not to have police come to his house in Feb 2017, which could be seen as not wanting to alert his neighbors at a time when police were asking if people recognised bridge guy.
14. He changed his height and weight on his fishing licence 2 months after the murders.
15. His wife did not testify that she didn’t recognize it to be his photograph, his build, his stance, or his voice.
16. His wife offered no alternative narrative of what he’d told her about his day. Even during his period of torment, she didn’t reassure him and remind him of his first ever alibi to her. She revealed doubts about him in the interview room in October 2022.
17. He knew about a van appearing and being visible from the scene of his intended rape that the police weren’t even aware of. According to the FBI (apparently) they thought the van wasn’t there at that time. The timing according to the van driver who had no knowledge of Libby’s phone movements fits with RA being spooked and then Libby’s phone moving. That timing in his confession couldn’t have been in the discovery or on internet forums because police only investigated it after his confession, and RA indeed adduced no evidence of that either.
18. He had box cutters, a blade that matched the depth of the wounds, and the same ammo as that found at the crime scene.
19. He wasn’t seen leaving the bridge on the trails by anyone. Ergo he hid in the trees, as he said he did.
20. His detailed confession included what he planned, felt and saw, reasoning, logical sequence, as well as humility and self-awareness, as opposed to being I did this, this and this. The false confessions expert put on by the defense identified those as the distinguishing features of a real memory.

The quoted info in your post originates with an organisation (Innocence Project) who will know exactly how many cases involving false confessions have been overturned with DNA evidence. Yet they don’t divulge the number of cases, while making reference to a percentage of them. It could be 25% of 12 cases, or 100 cases. The numbers matter, so why hide the exact figure and give a meaningless percentage?

Then there is willy-nilly language of “many” of an already meaningless percentage of cases where false confessions involved crime-details not made public. Again, they will have the hard numbers, so why hide how “many”? They chose not to state the number, so one should question if the number of cases would not really be that impactfull.

Drilling down deeper, are their figures (that they chose not to make public) based on really old convictions dating back say fifty years, or more recent? Do they reflect times when police were able to get away with more dubious practices and recording of interviews was not commonplace? Did the police divulge the information to the confessor? Was the confessor a career criminal already serving time for the same type of offense? How nuanced was the information gathered? - “I think I shot him”, or more comparable to “I was disturbed by a van and so I immediately moved my victims”? - corroborated by phone movement and later by police investigating the time the van arrived

It looks very much like hyperbole to me.

I don’t doubt that they have done some invaluable work, but this new industry of promoting false-narratives that every other high-profile case is a far-reaching conspiracy against the defendant, is not only nonsensical when one stands back and sees it for the trend it has become, spilling over from social media onto the streets outside courts so that juries have to be shielded from it, it’s ignorant of the harm it brings to the victims’ families, and is hugely damaging to society, devaluing law enforcement and disrespecting the jury system.

This jury spent time away from their own families and considered and rejected the defendant’s case over many days that his 60+ confessions were false and a product of mental illness and maltreatment, from top to bottom and sideways, with hours of video evidence, and there is no indication that they did not understand the meaning of a reasonable doubt.

JMO

 

[TallCoolOne]

Do I hear an Amen?

 

[pseudo_hum]

Snipped for focus

I don’t doubt that they have done some invaluable work, but this new industry of promoting false-narratives that every other high-profile case is a far-reaching conspiracy against the defendant, is not only nonsensical when one stands back and sees it for the trend it has become, spilling over from social media onto the streets outside courts so that juries have to be shielded from it, it’s ignorant of the harm it brings to the victims’ families, and is hugely damaging to society, devaluing law enforcement and disrespecting the jury system.

JMO

Agreed. IMO, this is precisely why Judge Gull chose to control her courtroom as she did.

 

[scapa]

I thought the same i.e. RA waiting to make sure both were dead.

Yes, Dateline is all true crime. This happened on June 22, 2012 in Violet Andrews Park in Portland, Texas.

I emailed Nick M. about this just to let him know about this episode and how it aired ten days before RA committed these crimes.

Is this the Mollie Olgin case? Complex case, plenty of ramifications.

Murder of Mollie Olgin - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

There will be an appeal, no doubt IMO. I don't expect much to come of it, especially not the end of conspiracies surrounding the case. If we anything about how those originate and persist, we know that they're immune to facts and rational explanation.

There's likely to be folks ready to proclaim RA's "railroading" for years to come, including his D team, nodding sagely in a mocked-up law office or moodily lit empty warehouse that still believe in Rick and that they "have an idea" of who's "really responsible" in the inevitable true-crime documentaries to come.

 

[Megnut]

That’s the beauty of a circumstantial case. Richard Allen was convicted on a whole raft of evidence, not merely his confessions –

1. He unexpectedly cancelled plans to have lunch out with his parents and sister. He opted not to adduce evidence as to why, when something clearly disrupted the civilized course he headed out on that morning. He made that relevant. No one wanted or needed to know what he was doing four hours before the crime, but that’s where it started for him. Something went wrong that morning when he left his parents and went and purchased beers.
2. He went home, got a coat on and headed to the bridge that the girls were abducted from. He does not deny that his car with distinctive wheel rims is captured on CCTV at 1.27pm, which tallies with his Feb 16th account of arriving at 1.30pm. Had that been him leaving, driving westbound, that would mean he had been parked somewhere east of the CCTV camera, yet he introduced no evidence of an alternative old building with parking space. Therefore, the CCTV corroborates his original account, which means he drove a very long and unusual quiet country route to get to the trails, which tallies with someone wanting to avoid being spotted driving through town.
3. He parked his car in an obscure location next to a disused building, which fits with not wanting his car to be noticed by others who came to park their cars and walk.
4. He entered the trails not via the trail head, but via lesser-used tracks leading from the disused building.
5. He changed his times of arrival and departure by two hours, five years later, with no explanation for why he now had a better memory of his timings, which is distancing from the time of the crime. He would not have known if police would find evidence of him being on the trails from other witnesses’ photos or recordings, or trail cams, so he avoided being caught in a lie when he first came forward.
6. With his original timings, his path would have crossed with Abby’s and Libby’s. He would have seen them given the time that he was there but he denied seeing them, which is distancing behavior.
7. He did not see bridge guy on the bridge, which he would have done, with his original timings.
8. His phone at the time was the only phone missing from his collection of old phones.
9. There was no outright denial from him that the bridge guy photo was him.
10. His range of attire included the same clothing worn by bridge guy.
11. His build and frame were comparable to bridge guy’s.
12. After the murders he didn’t come forward for three days to say he had been on the bridge that afternoon. But we know he was keeping an eye on the news, because he contacted police on the fourth day, the day after they released the bridge guy photo. He also admitted he had thought about it a lot since 2017; leakage.
13. He opted not to have police come to his house in Feb 2017, which could be seen as not wanting to alert his neighbors at a time when police were asking if people recognised bridge guy.
14. He changed his height and weight on his fishing licence 2 months after the murders.
15. His wife did not testify that she didn’t recognize it to be his photograph, his build, his stance, or his voice.
16. His wife offered no alternative narrative of what he’d told her about his day. Even during his period of torment, she didn’t reassure him and remind him of his first ever alibi to her. She revealed doubts about him in the interview room in October 2022.
17. He knew about a van appearing and being visible from the scene of his intended rape that the police weren’t even aware of. According to the FBI (apparently) they thought the van wasn’t there at that time. The timing according to the van driver who had no knowledge of Libby’s phone movements fits with RA being spooked and then Libby’s phone moving. That timing in his confession couldn’t have been in the discovery or on internet forums because police only investigated it after his confession, and RA indeed adduced no evidence of that either.
18. He had box cutters, a blade that matched the depth of the wounds, and the same ammo as that found at the crime scene.
19. He wasn’t seen leaving the bridge on the trails by anyone. Ergo he hid in the trees, as he said he did.
20. His detailed confession included what he planned, felt and saw, reasoning, logical sequence, as well as humility and self-awareness, as opposed to being I did this, this and this. The false confessions expert put on by the defense identified those as the distinguishing features of a real memory.

The quoted info in your post originates with an organisation (Innocence Project) who will know exactly how many cases involving false confessions have been overturned with DNA evidence. Yet they don’t divulge the number of cases, while making reference to a percentage of them. It could be 25% of 12 cases, or 100 cases. The numbers matter, so why hide the exact figure and give a meaningless percentage?

Then there is willy-nilly language of “many” of an already meaningless percentage of cases where false confessions involved crime-details not made public. Again, they will have the hard numbers, so why hide how “many”? They chose not to state the number, so one should question if the number of cases would not really be that impactfull.

Drilling down deeper, are their figures (that they chose not to make public) based on really old convictions dating back say fifty years, or more recent? Do they reflect times when police were able to get away with more dubious practices and recording of interviews was not commonplace? Did the police divulge the information to the confessor? Was the confessor a career criminal already serving time for the same type of offense? How nuanced was the information gathered? - “I think I shot him”, or more comparable to “I was disturbed by a van and so I immediately moved my victims”? - corroborated by phone movement and later by police investigating the time the van arrived

It looks very much like hyperbole to me.

I don’t doubt that they have done some invaluable work, but this new industry of promoting false-narratives that every other high-profile case is a far-reaching conspiracy against the defendant, is not only nonsensical when one stands back and sees it for the trend it has become, spilling over from social media onto the streets outside courts so that juries have to be shielded from it, it’s ignorant of the harm it brings to the victims’ families, and is hugely damaging to society, devaluing law enforcement and disrespecting the jury system.

This jury spent time away from their own families and considered and rejected the defendant’s case over many days that his 60+ confessions were false and a product of mental illness and maltreatment, from top to bottom and sideways, with hours of video evidence, and there is no indication that they did not understand the meaning of a reasonable doubt.

JMO

Excellent synthesis!

On Point 12 -- he said he thought about it a lot... I can't help but wonder if he meant he thought about why he called the tipline. Without it, would he ever have been arrested?

He says KA told him to.

I'm going to read been his lines. Were these his choices? Either call in as a way to convince KA 'there's nothing to see here, would I call if I had anything to hide?' OR not call and have her question what I might be hiding?

She must have been standing right next to him. Standing right over him. Because why wouldn't he just say he would call or he did call. I can almost picture her dialing the number for him...

It's really Libby's phone that convicts Jim.

Without her phone, there's no confirmation for where the abduction started, for who was following them, for what was used to control them (a gun), for the elevation change and creek crossing, or the 2:32 which memorialized Abby last movement. (One thing to consider is that, whatever was happening to her, how ever it was happening, she was frozen -- surely in fear -- but also quiet possibly to give the phone hidden.) We really don't know what time they were attacked and then succumbed to their injuries, but it was well within his self-reported 1 to 3, corrected to 1:30 to 3:30, and fits with his final sighting at 3:57.

I wonder if LE was able to review CCTV into the evening. Because I wonder if RA walked home (because he was muddy and bloody) and retrieved his car after dark. At that point CCTV might only show headlights, no detail. Still, walking home would account for a clean car and no CCTV of his car around 4 pm.

I don't think Richard Allen had issue with describing what he was wearing (or identifying himself initially as the man in the photo) because he knew he'd been seen but he would have been 100% that only Abby and Libby knew he was the murderer and he made sure they were dead. Never could he have imagined, at the time he called in the tip, the photo came from Libby and was a frame from a video. He thought he was safe, as just a visitor to the trails, dressed as he was. Some mystery killer came along after he left. (Which is of course an angle the Defense tried to draw but failed at because of Libby's phone, which remained on but showed no steps, no movement, and was found under a victim. There's just no way to build out a story to account elsewise for the raw data.)

I bet he kicked himself a lot for calling himself in. And wouldn't have if he'd known where that photo came from. He didn't know his victims (with the evidence on the phone) called in their own tip.

JMO

 

[FrostedGlass]

That’s the beauty of a circumstantial case. Richard Allen was convicted on a whole raft of evidence, not merely his confessions –

1. He unexpectedly cancelled plans to have lunch out with his parents and sister. He opted not to adduce evidence as to why, when something clearly disrupted the civilized course he headed out on that morning. He made that relevant. No one wanted or needed to know what he was doing four hours before the crime, but that’s where it started for him. Something went wrong that morning when he left his parents and went and purchased beers.
2. He went home, got a coat on and headed to the bridge that the girls were abducted from. He does not deny that his car with distinctive wheel rims is captured on CCTV at 1.27pm, which tallies with his Feb 16th account of arriving at 1.30pm. Had that been him leaving, driving westbound, that would mean he had been parked somewhere east of the CCTV camera, yet he introduced no evidence of an alternative old building with parking space. Therefore, the CCTV corroborates his original account, which means he drove a very long and unusual quiet country route to get to the trails, which tallies with someone wanting to avoid being spotted driving through town.
3. He parked his car in an obscure location next to a disused building, which fits with not wanting his car to be noticed by others who came to park their cars and walk.
4. He entered the trails not via the trail head, but via lesser-used tracks leading from the disused building.
5. He changed his times of arrival and departure by two hours, five years later, with no explanation for why he now had a better memory of his timings, which is distancing from the time of the crime. He would not have known if police would find evidence of him being on the trails from other witnesses’ photos or recordings, or trail cams, so he avoided being caught in a lie when he first came forward.
6. With his original timings, his path would have crossed with Abby’s and Libby’s. He would have seen them given the time that he was there but he denied seeing them, which is distancing behavior.
7. He did not see bridge guy on the bridge, which he would have done, with his original timings.
8. His phone at the time was the only phone missing from his collection of old phones.
9. There was no outright denial from him that the bridge guy photo was him.
10. His range of attire included the same clothing worn by bridge guy.
11. His build and frame were comparable to bridge guy’s.
12. After the murders he didn’t come forward for three days to say he had been on the bridge that afternoon. But we know he was keeping an eye on the news, because he contacted police on the fourth day, the day after they released the bridge guy photo. He also admitted he had thought about it a lot since 2017; leakage.
13. He opted not to have police come to his house in Feb 2017, which could be seen as not wanting to alert his neighbors at a time when police were asking if people recognised bridge guy.
14. He changed his height and weight on his fishing licence 2 months after the murders.
15. His wife did not testify that she didn’t recognize it to be his photograph, his build, his stance, or his voice.
16. His wife offered no alternative narrative of what he’d told her about his day. Even during his period of torment, she didn’t reassure him and remind him of his first ever alibi to her. She revealed doubts about him in the interview room in October 2022.
17. He knew about a van appearing and being visible from the scene of his intended rape that the police weren’t even aware of. According to the FBI (apparently) they thought the van wasn’t there at that time. The timing according to the van driver who had no knowledge of Libby’s phone movements fits with RA being spooked and then Libby’s phone moving. That timing in his confession couldn’t have been in the discovery or on internet forums because police only investigated it after his confession, and RA indeed adduced no evidence of that either.
18. He had box cutters, a blade that matched the depth of the wounds, and the same ammo as that found at the crime scene.
19. He wasn’t seen leaving the bridge on the trails by anyone. Ergo he hid in the trees, as he said he did.
20. His detailed confession included what he planned, felt and saw, reasoning, logical sequence, as well as humility and self-awareness, as opposed to being I did this, this and this. The false confessions expert put on by the defense identified those as the distinguishing features of a real memory.

The quoted info in your post originates with an organisation (Innocence Project) who will know exactly how many cases involving false confessions have been overturned with DNA evidence. Yet they don’t divulge the number of cases, while making reference to a percentage of them. It could be 25% of 12 cases, or 100 cases. The numbers matter, so why hide the exact figure and give a meaningless percentage?

Then there is willy-nilly language of “many” of an already meaningless percentage of cases where false confessions involved crime-details not made public. Again, they will have the hard numbers, so why hide how “many”? They chose not to state the number, so one should question if the number of cases would not really be that impactfull.

Drilling down deeper, are their figures (that they chose not to make public) based on really old convictions dating back say fifty years, or more recent? Do they reflect times when police were able to get away with more dubious practices and recording of interviews was not commonplace? Did the police divulge the information to the confessor? Was the confessor a career criminal already serving time for the same type of offense? How nuanced was the information gathered? - “I think I shot him”, or more comparable to “I was disturbed by a van and so I immediately moved my victims”? - corroborated by phone movement and later by police investigating the time the van arrived

It looks very much like hyperbole to me.

I don’t doubt that they have done some invaluable work, but this new industry of promoting false-narratives that every other high-profile case is a far-reaching conspiracy against the defendant, is not only nonsensical when one stands back and sees it for the trend it has become, spilling over from social media onto the streets outside courts so that juries have to be shielded from it, it’s ignorant of the harm it brings to the victims’ families, and is hugely damaging to society, devaluing law enforcement and disrespecting the jury system.

This jury spent time away from their own families and considered and rejected the defendant’s case over many days that his 60+ confessions were false and a product of mental illness and maltreatment, from top to bottom and sideways, with hours of video evidence, and there is no indication that they did not understand the meaning of a reasonable doubt.

JMO

Great post, thanks.

All I really wanted to know is: How can this be? "Many of those false confessions actually contained details that match the crime-details that were not made to the public."

 

[WildHuncher]

Great post, thanks.

All I really wanted to know is: How can this be? "Many of those false confessions actually contained details that match the crime-details that were not made to the public."

Even a blind hog will find an acorn once in a while.

 

[Tortoise]

Great post, thanks.

All I really wanted to know is: How can this be? "Many of those false confessions actually contained details that match the crime-details that were not made to the public."

There is a paragraph within my post addressing this.

Did the police divulge the information to the confessor? Was the confessor a career criminal already serving time for the same type of offense? How nuanced was the information gathered? - “I think I shot him”, or more comparable to “I was disturbed by a van and so I immediately moved my victims”? - corroborated by phone movement and later by police investigating the time the van arrived

 

[Megnut]

Great post, thanks.

All I really wanted to know is: How can this be? "Many of those false confessions actually contained details that match the crime-details that were not made to the public."

In cases where there are false confessions, isn't the statistic high for really young suspects, in the face of extreme interrogations where the interrogators are supplying the details?

There's even an individual in this case who might qualify for that, perhaps impressionable, absorbant, intimidated or even agreeable.

And often, it's only the (false) confession linking a suspect (an innocent suspect) to a crime. In this case, it's not just details of the crime that Richard Allen provided; it's the reasoning, and that's unequivocally something only the murderer could know, insight into the how and why, and when that is corroborated by the evidence, that's a good confession.

JMO

 

[Boxer]

That’s the beauty of a circumstantial case. Richard Allen was convicted on a whole raft of evidence, not merely his confessions –

1. He unexpectedly cancelled plans to have lunch out with his parents and sister. He opted not to adduce evidence as to why, when something clearly disrupted the civilized course he headed out on that morning. He made that relevant. No one wanted or needed to know what he was doing four hours before the crime, but that’s where it started for him. Something went wrong that morning when he left his parents and went and purchased beers.
2. He went home, got a coat on and headed to the bridge that the girls were abducted from. He does not deny that his car with distinctive wheel rims is captured on CCTV at 1.27pm, which tallies with his Feb 16th account of arriving at 1.30pm. Had that been him leaving, driving westbound, that would mean he had been parked somewhere east of the CCTV camera, yet he introduced no evidence of an alternative old building with parking space. Therefore, the CCTV corroborates his original account, which means he drove a very long and unusual quiet country route to get to the trails, which tallies with someone wanting to avoid being spotted driving through town.
3. He parked his car in an obscure location next to a disused building, which fits with not wanting his car to be noticed by others who came to park their cars and walk.
4. He entered the trails not via the trail head, but via lesser-used tracks leading from the disused building.
5. He changed his times of arrival and departure by two hours, five years later, with no explanation for why he now had a better memory of his timings, which is distancing from the time of the crime. He would not have known if police would find evidence of him being on the trails from other witnesses’ photos or recordings, or trail cams, so he avoided being caught in a lie when he first came forward.
6. With his original timings, his path would have crossed with Abby’s and Libby’s. He would have seen them given the time that he was there but he denied seeing them, which is distancing behavior.
7. He did not see bridge guy on the bridge, which he would have done, with his original timings.
8. His phone at the time was the only phone missing from his collection of old phones.
9. There was no outright denial from him that the bridge guy photo was him.
10. His range of attire included the same clothing worn by bridge guy.
11. His build and frame were comparable to bridge guy’s.
12. After the murders he didn’t come forward for three days to say he had been on the bridge that afternoon. But we know he was keeping an eye on the news, because he contacted police on the fourth day, the day after they released the bridge guy photo. He also admitted he had thought about it a lot since 2017; leakage.
13. He opted not to have police come to his house in Feb 2017, which could be seen as not wanting to alert his neighbors at a time when police were asking if people recognised bridge guy.
14. He changed his height and weight on his fishing licence 2 months after the murders.
15. His wife did not testify that she didn’t recognize it to be his photograph, his build, his stance, or his voice.
16. His wife offered no alternative narrative of what he’d told her about his day. Even during his period of torment, she didn’t reassure him and remind him of his first ever alibi to her. She revealed doubts about him in the interview room in October 2022.
17. He knew about a van appearing and being visible from the scene of his intended rape that the police weren’t even aware of. According to the FBI (apparently) they thought the van wasn’t there at that time. The timing according to the van driver who had no knowledge of Libby’s phone movements fits with RA being spooked and then Libby’s phone moving. That timing in his confession couldn’t have been in the discovery or on internet forums because police only investigated it after his confession, and RA indeed adduced no evidence of that either.
18. He had box cutters, a blade that matched the depth of the wounds, and the same ammo as that found at the crime scene.
19. He wasn’t seen leaving the bridge on the trails by anyone. Ergo he hid in the trees, as he said he did.
20. His detailed confession included what he planned, felt and saw, reasoning, logical sequence, as well as humility and self-awareness, as opposed to being I did this, this and this. The false confessions expert put on by the defense identified those as the distinguishing features of a real memory.

The quoted info in your post originates with an organisation (Innocence Project) who will know exactly how many cases involving false confessions have been overturned with DNA evidence. Yet they don’t divulge the number of cases, while making reference to a percentage of them. It could be 25% of 12 cases, or 100 cases. The numbers matter, so why hide the exact figure and give a meaningless percentage?

Then there is willy-nilly language of “many” of an already meaningless percentage of cases where false confessions involved crime-details not made public. Again, they will have the hard numbers, so why hide how “many”? They chose not to state the number, so one should question if the number of cases would not really be that impactfull.

Drilling down deeper, are their figures (that they chose not to make public) based on really old convictions dating back say fifty years, or more recent? Do they reflect times when police were able to get away with more dubious practices and recording of interviews was not commonplace? Did the police divulge the information to the confessor? Was the confessor a career criminal already serving time for the same type of offense? How nuanced was the information gathered? - “I think I shot him”, or more comparable to “I was disturbed by a van and so I immediately moved my victims”? - corroborated by phone movement and later by police investigating the time the van arrived

It looks very much like hyperbole to me.

I don’t doubt that they have done some invaluable work, but this new industry of promoting false-narratives that every other high-profile case is a far-reaching conspiracy against the defendant, is not only nonsensical when one stands back and sees it for the trend it has become, spilling over from social media onto the streets outside courts so that juries have to be shielded from it, it’s ignorant of the harm it brings to the victims’ families, and is hugely damaging to society, devaluing law enforcement and disrespecting the jury system.

This jury spent time away from their own families and considered and rejected the defendant’s case over many days that his 60+ confessions were false and a product of mental illness and maltreatment, from top to bottom and sideways, with hours of video evidence, and there is no indication that they did not understand the meaning of a reasonable doubt.

JMO

The jury was the tryor of fact. Any further appeal about the trial process itself, not evidence.
Richard Allen has been convicted BARD by an engaged and careful jury.