Found Deceased IN - Abigail (Abby) Williams, 13, & Liberty (Libby) German, 14, The Delphi Murders 13 Feb 2017 #123

[Falling Down]

Because former prosecutor Ives said he would return from retirement to prosecute either this case or the Flora one, when he was re-sworn I think we all got our hopes up. But in MOO he came back on as deputy only briefly to assist with workload issues in the department that were unrelated to either case. The Carroll County Prosecutor's office was looking to hire a permanent third prosecutor (not Ives, they had someone else in mind) and were seeking funding for it. There are news articles out there that detail this.

We all want movement on this case so as usual we read too much into Ives' actions IMO.

Thanks, I probably put more stock in the interviews he's done in more recent times, than I should have.

 

[Falling Down]

I'm not a railroad enthusiast to anything like the extent of those people, but if I'm in the area, I'll drive a bit out of my way to see an interesting bridge or former station or collection of engines or cars. If I had found myself in Delphi with time to kill (waiting for my truck to be loaded, taking a break from a long drive, have some time before my shift starts somewhere, maybe) I would definitely walk over to that bridge, just to have a look.

I do the same from time to time.

One thing I will note here is there is no direct route from Delphi to the bridge, which is technically in Deer Creek Twp.

I checked ;-)

I parked at Riley Park and snooped around, after visiting C.R. 300 and looping around back into town, from the south and east. I was looking for the a trail which may be along the creek, which would have been the most direct route from town to the bridge. There are no trails along the creek from the park to the MHB.

I recommend parking at the parking area at the west end of Freedom Bridge.

 

[Falling Down]

I think, BG learned his future enter/exit-route with these photo shots and the video, and he memorized all very well in the shortest possible time and effortlessly at his home, awaiting "today: Febr 13th 2017 will be the day". MOO Can't sleep well after this video.

Another video shows how to drive from a place in Indianapolis to the spot where the girls were dropped off, so I-65 then IN 25 northbound to C.R. 300.

It was posted in 2016.

I used that video as a reference so I knew what to recognize once I got there during my visit in 2017. It helped a lot, otherwise once I got to the Delphi area the drive would have been confusing, with the Google phone app glitches on my phone. I also used a GPS unit, but that told me only where the bridge was, not how to get to it.

 

[Awsi Dooger]

On the bridge, underneath the bridge. Wonder which one it actually was. If at all.

This topic shows up all the time on other sites. The guy who did the timeline on Reddit insists it was "down by the bridge" and that Becky was the one who inadvertently used the word "underneath," causing that term to improperly become the visual and the focal point.

I tend to believe it was not underneath. From what I understand, both the arguing couple and Flannel Shirt Guy used the 501 trail, not 505. It is extremely difficult and basically not sensible or safe to go down underneath the bridge after taking the direct 501 trail. The reason Derrick took the 505 trail in the first place was that Flannel Shirt Guy told him he just came back from the bridge on 501 and had not seen the two girls. That means it's only sensible for Derrick to check out the 505 trail down to the nature reserve. He knows two adventurous teenagers like Abby and Libby are more likely to wander down there than take the comparatively dull straight line route back to Freedom Bridge.

It is frustrating but understandable when not every reference is perfect. Kelsi and Becky experienced the tragic loss of a loved one. They have no idea the case is going to remain unsolved for 3+ years, or that their early words are going to be dissected toward specific meaning.

I would appreciate Kelsi's "20 people" error if there were some way for me to actually wager on the under on every numerical reference point related to that bridge trail. I concede it drives me nuts every time when people actually believe the high numbers attributed. If we had a full week of video from any time immediately prior to February 13, 2017 it would be quickly obvious that my version of emptiness would dominate the argument.

 

[sunshineray]

Can you access if directly thru youtube?

I just tried it that way and it did work, thanks.

 

[Falling Down]

This topic shows up all the time on other sites. The guy who did the timeline on Reddit insists it was "down by the bridge" and that Becky was the one who inadvertently used the word "underneath," causing that term to improperly become the visual and the focal point.

I tend to believe it was not underneath. From what I understand, both the arguing couple and Flannel Shirt Guy used the 501 trail, not 505. It is extremely difficult and basically not sensible or safe to go down underneath the bridge after taking the direct 501 trail. The reason Derrick took the 505 trail in the first place was that Flannel Shirt Guy told him he just came back from the bridge on 501 and had not seen the two girls. That means it's only sensible for Derrick to check out the 505 trail down to the nature reserve. He knows two adventurous teenagers like Abby and Libby are more likely to wander down there than take the comparatively dull straight line route back to Freedom Bridge.

It is frustrating but understandable when not every reference is perfect. Kelsi and Becky experienced the tragic loss of a loved one. They have no idea the case is going to remain unsolved for 3+ years, or that their early words are going to be dissected toward specific meaning.

I would appreciate Kelsi's "20 people" error if there were some way for me to actually wager on the under on every numerical reference point related to that bridge trail. I concede it drives me nuts every time when people actually believe the high numbers attributed. If we had a full week of video from any time immediately prior to February 13, 2017 it would be quickly obvious that my version of emptiness would dominate the argument.

I could frame this, great post.

I'll add that other than the woman walking her dog on C.R. 300, just east of where the CPS building once stood, I saw no one else walking or anyone driving, from where I turned off IN 25, up Old 25, under IN 25 and on C.R. 300 past RL's house.

Two guys with trucks were fishing at the Wilson Bridge on C.R. 425.

 

[IminSyd]

Picking up on the railway enthusiasts thoughts, found some reviews on Monon High bridge for bridge enthusiasts. Gets some good reviews and suggestions to visit...

Monon - Deer Creek High Bridge

 

[Cryptic]

I'm not a railroad enthusiast to anything like the extent of those people, but if I'm in the area, I'll drive a bit out of my way to see an interesting bridge or former station or collection of engines or cars.

I do the same from time to time.

I also like the idea of a railroad enthusiast.

I think it is evident that perpetrator also had very good knowledge of the area that would need to be learned over time and felt very comfortable there. This could imply several trips to the site by the potential RR enthusiast. This, in turn, may indicate a relatively local enthusiast (say, Indiana and parts of Kentucky, and Ohio?).

Maybe, obtain names of RR enthusiasts from mailing lists for train magazine subscribers, model train hobby show attendees, hobbyists who mail order, Railroad / model train clubs etc? Then, run the names through the RSO data base? Special attention could then be focused on any living relatively near the site.

As a side note, a friend of mine astounded when he met a elderly train enthusiast who had convinced his less than enthusiastic family to guide him on a difficult hike to photograph a remote, but famous (well, famous with in the RR brotherhood) high trestle bridge in the middle of no where, SOCAL.

In short, the sub culture is out there and there are real enthusiasts. Multiple trips to a famous / "famous" site for photos and hanging out is probably not that unusual in the sub culture.

 

[Yemelyan]

I've had a long post that I've been meaning to write regarding the DNA in this case. I wanted to address some of the thoughts often posted here such as, because they haven't announced a hit in CODIS or a familial genealogy hit yet, LE doesn't have DNA to work with. Or that this must mean BG has never offended before (and the host of crazy theories that surround this thought).

First of all, I have not made a secret of my opinion that this was a sexually-oriented crime and so everything I write in this post will have that motive as the background. (This not to say that all sexually oriented offenses will yield a DNA sample, but I believe this one did.) I think that the statistics surrounding abductions/murders of females in this age group and under these circumstances bear this out but if you are of the opinion that they were killed because they knew a secret or because they saw someone cooking meth, then you may not want to read on.

I think the key to understanding the DNA in this case can be found in the following article: An Epidemic of Disbelief

This article is about serial rape and how and why sexual offenders so often get away with it.

I'll paraphrase some points that relate to the Delphi Murders, in my opinion. First of all, there is an epidemic of untested rape kits in the US. This article cites a number of perhaps 200,000 untested kits. Another source says that there are about 4,989 untested kits in Indiana alone. I would be willing to bet that the DNA match to the Delphi case is in one or more of those kits and here's why.

Serial rapists (who sometimes graduate to murder) are more common than previously believed. In 49 out of 50 rape cases the alleged assailant is never prosecuted (for various reasons). According to the article, this means that out of all the violent crimes, rape is the easiest to get away with.

In the article, you can read about how some of these offenders "prepare" for their crimes...by shaving their bodies, bringing condoms, or planning to wash the victims with water. These criminals can be very wise to DNA and prepare accordingly.

In Cleveland, a serial rapist graduated to serial murder (Anthony Sowell). After LE discovered his murders and linked them to the serial rapes, they discovered that none of his previous attacks where women survived had ever been investigated nor the rape kitse tested. Perhaps BG, too, has a trail of untested and unlinked victims that contain evidence as to his identity.

Probably most enlightening thing in the linked article is the info that HOW rapists offend and WHO they select as victims is very different than what our conventional wisdom tells us. Everyone assumes, and I've seen it on this forum many times, that rapists/murderers have a "type" of victim as well as a style or MO preference. Data tells us this is not true.

If you take away nothing else I write here, it's that a predator's reality often falls short of his fantasy. They may hunt for their "type" but who they had in mind and who they ultimately selected may not match at all. In the hunt, only one criteria mattered: she was available. One LE official is quoted in the article as saying "it's no wonder we didn't catch that many rapists because there was no pattern."

Finally, IMO the crime that may ultimately link to BG and Delphi may not be a stranger type abduction/rape. It might be an acquaintance rape, which are notoriously under-investigated. Over 80% of rapes are believed to be acquaintance rapes...which is not to say that Abby and Libby knew their attacker. Historically, investigators thought that the type of person who assaults an acquaintance is very different than one who abducts/rapes a stranger in an alley. New data from the backlog of rape kits tells us that there is not such a gap at all. Testing the acquaintance rape kits turned up links to serial offenses on strangers a high percentage of the time.

To sum up, just like genealogical linkage is imperfect because not everybody opts in, CODIS is imperfect because of all of this missing data from sexual offenses. Hopefully in time that DNA link will turn up. I choose to believe it will. Perhaps a good use of our time would be advocating our local governments for testing the backlog of rape kits in every state.

 

[carbuff]

People who are into hiking less used trails, visiting railroad bridges, and otherwise accessing things that are obscured by time or intent (trying not to be too specific there) get real good at finding hard to find turns, overgrown paths, and tiny parking lots. They get real good at maneuvering on the land--especially if they had been up on the bridge where you would get a perspective on the overall lay of the land.

They also get real good at estimating the lay of the land. Maybe not the details, but the overall ups and downs, which direction a stream is running, which slope is the easiest path down from a steep ledge. Same with the stream. People who canoe or fish can tell where the shallows are from the way the water ripples.

And some people are just better at perceiving the lay of the land and moving around. I'm good at it; I could probably bushwhack across that canyon from the end of the driveway over to the cemetery with only a bit of retracing along the creek looking for the shallow spot. My middlest kid could get lost driving ten miles on a straight road, just about.

I wouldn't go so far as to say BG had to have been there lots of times, but might not have been more than once or twice.

 

[carbuff]

Picking up on the railway enthusiasts thoughts, found some reviews on Monon High bridge for bridge enthusiasts. Gets some good reviews and suggestions to visit...

Monon - Deer Creek High Bridge

Some good pictures there showing just how steep that little canyon is.

 

[Justice101]

Just caught up and read the last couple of pages from the previous thread, plus the 3 pages here.

What dumbfounds me still... is how they can identify a person from a subway in NYC within 5 hours when the video is worse than in this case.. but they can't in this case. Tells me the guy WAS local (or visiting grandparents etc when he was a kid). And therefore is unrecognizable now that he lives elsewhere and (presumably) travels thru town from time to time.

So it still screams person who spent their childhood or teenage years there in the 1980s-1990s.

The clothing is rural poor squirrel hunter hiker type. Nothing newer than 10 years old.

This is why they can't catch the guy. I'd ask around who hiked and hung out there as a kid or teenager.

But what do I know????

 

[Cryptic]

People who are into hiking less used trails, visiting railroad bridges, and otherwise accessing things that are obscured by time or intent (trying not to be too specific there) get real good at finding hard to find turns, overgrown paths, and tiny parking lots.

I wouldn't go so far as to say BG had to have been there lots of times, but might not have been more than once or twice.

Very well said.

I enjoy hiking and have oriented myself before by looking for lines of trees (indicates a wet / dry stream bed in dry areas) or by looking for trails of rain washed gravel, which can indicate that a gradual decline goes all the way to a stream, then a reservoir. Likewise, Southwest Indians really needed water, so most Indian ruins have streams next to them.

I did over state the number of visits that it would take an observant person (and as you stated, a RR enthusiast would probably be observant) to get a feel for the parking, stream, trails and to extrapolate or find probable short cuts through private property.

I agree with your number of required visits- once or twice if an observant person was actively observing the land, a few more times if casually observing it.

 

[Falling Down]

I also like the idea of a railroad enthusiast.

I think it is evident that perpetrator also had very good knowledge of the area that would need to be learned over time and felt very comfortable there. This could imply several trips to the site by the potential RR enthusiast. This, in turn, may indicate a relatively local enthusiast (say, Indiana and parts of Kentucky, and Ohio?).

Maybe, obtain names of RR enthusiasts from mailing lists for train magazine subscribers, model train hobby show attendees, hobbyists who mail order, Railroad / model train clubs etc? Then, run the names through the RSO data base? Special attention could then be focused on any living relatively near the site.

As a side note, a friend of mine astounded when he met a elderly train enthusiast who had convinced his less than enthusiastic family to guide him on a difficult hike to photograph a remote, but famous (well, famous with in the RR brotherhood) high trestle bridge in the middle of no where, SOCAL.

In short, the sub culture is out there and there are real enthusiasts. Multiple trips to a famous / "famous" site for photos and hanging out is probably not that unusual in the sub culture.

I've thought since early on this individual has at least a passing interest in old railroad-related landmarks and artifacts. All I could find when I researched MHB right after the murders were three videos on YouTube, and some web pages devoted to bridges (bridgehunter.com is one of them), one or two of the pages were owned by individuals who had documented railroad history in that part of Indiana.

While it's a bridge which was "well-known" before the murders, mainly it was known by locals (say within Carroll County and the surrounding area), and bridge enthusiasts across some of the Midwest and maybe southwards some.

JMO

 

[Falling Down]

Very well said.

I enjoy hiking and have oriented myself before by looking for lines of trees (indicates a wet / dry stream bed in dry areas) or by looking for trails of rain washed gravel, which can indicate that a gradual decline goes all the way to a stream, then a reservoir. Likewise, Southwest Indians really needed water, so most Indian ruins have streams next to them.

I did over state the number of visits that it would take an observant person (and as you stated, a RR enthusiast would probably be observant) to get a feel for the parking, stream, trails and to extrapolate or find probable short cuts through private property.

I agree with your number of required visits- once or twice if an observant person was actively observing the land, a few more times if casually observing it.

Good post.

When I drove C.R. 200 west towards U.S. 421, after having driven C.R. 300 and C.R. 425, I kept my eyes peeled for possible escape routes south of the bridge area.

When I drove out of Delphi a couple of hours later, I took C.R. 200 east. There it was. The tree line for the railroad right-of-way south of the bridge area, clear as day. It can be seen from Google Satellite and Google Earth. Across the road, the old right-of-way has been filled in.

I slowed down and took note of what the right-of-way looks like north of the road, towards the bridge area. It's terribly overgrown and wet through there, not a way BG could have escaped.

I'm picturing someone (BG) who is observant and is able to take visual notes, so to speak, maybe has good visual/spatial abilities and is really good at studying terrain.

There's no way this guy went there that day, with no familiarity with what I've described above, and the gorge itself.

JMO

 

[Cryptic]

What dumbfounds me still... is how they can identify a person from a subway in NYC within 5 hours when the video is worse than in this case.. but they can't in this case. I'd ask around who hiked and hung out there as a kid or teenager.

But what do I know????

I think the main difficulties with a fast identification of the perpetrator are:

- The actual appereance may not match what is implied by the photos. This could yield an age span of 20 years, and perhaps more.

- The perpetrator is white, and using the older age range and clothing implied by the photos, he could well also be a poor 40-50 year old "squirrel shooter" (descriptive term). But.... there are a lot of white males in that area of Indiana and rural / semi rural poor white "squirrel shooters" are not uncommon.

- Probable local can mean truly local, relatively local, or truly / relatively local in the past.

And... as Carbuff and Falling Down also noted, he could be an occasional, but observant visitor such as a train enthusiast. A disproportionate number of such enthusiasts resemble 'squirrel shooters' to varying degrees, just more literate.

 

[Lass from Yorkshire]

I've had a long post that I've been meaning to write regarding the DNA in this case. I wanted to address some of the thoughts often posted here such as, because they haven't announced a hit in CODIS or a familial genealogy hit yet, LE doesn't have DNA to work with. Or that this must mean BG has never offended before (and the host of crazy theories that surround this thought).

First of all, I have not made a secret of my opinion that this was a sexually-oriented crime and so everything I write in this post will have that motive as the background. (This not to say that all sexually oriented offenses will yield a DNA sample, but I believe this one did.) I think that the statistics surrounding abductions/murders of females in this age group and under these circumstances bear this out but if you are of the opinion that they were killed because they knew a secret or because they saw someone cooking meth, then you may not want to read on.

I think the key to understanding the DNA in this case can be found in the following article: An Epidemic of Disbelief

This article is about serial rape and how and why sexual offenders so often get away with it.

I'll paraphrase some points that relate to the Delphi Murders, in my opinion. First of all, there is an epidemic of untested rape kits in the US. This article cites a number of perhaps 200,000 untested kits. Another source says that there are about 4,989 untested kits in Indiana alone. I would be willing to bet that the DNA match to the Delphi case is in one or more of those kits and here's why.

Serial rapists (who sometimes graduate to murder) are more common than previously believed. In 49 out of 50 rape cases the alleged assailant is never prosecuted (for various reasons). According to the article, this means that out of all the violent crimes, rape is the easiest to get away with.

In the article, you can read about how some of these offenders "prepare" for their crimes...by shaving their bodies, bringing condoms, or planning to wash the victims with water. These criminals can be very wise to DNA and prepare accordingly.

In Cleveland, a serial rapist graduated to serial murder (Anthony Sowell). After LE discovered his murders and linked them to the serial rapes, they discovered that none of his previous attacks where women survived had ever been investigated nor the rape kitse tested. Perhaps BG, too, has a trail of untested and unlinked victims that contain evidence as to his identity.

Probably most enlightening thing in the linked article is the info that HOW rapists offend and WHO they select as victims is very different than what our conventional wisdom tells us. Everyone assumes, and I've seen it on this forum many times, that rapists/murderers have a "type" of victim as well as a style or MO preference. Data tells us this is not true.

If you take away nothing else I write here, it's that a predator's reality often falls short of his fantasy. They may hunt for their "type" but who they had in mind and who they ultimately selected may not match at all. In the hunt, only one criteria mattered: she was available. One LE official is quoted in the article as saying "it's no wonder we didn't catch that many rapists because there was no pattern."

Finally, IMO the crime that may ultimately link to BG and Delphi may not be a stranger type abduction/rape. It might be an acquaintance rape, which are notoriously under-investigated. Over 80% of rapes are believed to be acquaintance rapes...which is not to say that Abby and Libby knew their attacker. Historically, investigators thought that the type of person who assaults an acquaintance is very different than one who abducts/rapes a stranger in an alley. New data from the backlog of rape kits tells us that there is not such a gap at all. Testing the acquaintance rape kits turned up links to serial offenses on strangers a high percentage of the time.

To sum up, just like genealogical linkage is imperfect because not everybody opts in, CODIS is imperfect because of all of this missing data from sexual offenses. Hopefully in time that DNA link will turn up. I choose to believe it will. Perhaps a good use of our time would be advocating our local governments for testing the backlog of rape kits in every state.

Great post. I still can’t believe how long it’s been and to have no one behind bars, but unless that DNA link shows up..

I don’t get the impression this was an acquaintance though, otherwise I don’t think the girls would have felt a need to post the photo of him on social media. They knew something was wrong (in my opinion)

 

[carbuff]

I think the main difficulties with a fast identification of the perpetrator are:

- The actual appereance may not match what is implied by the photos. This could yield an age span of 20 years, and perhaps more.

- The perpetrator is white, and using the older age range and clothing implied by the photos, he could well also be a poor 40-50 year old "squirrel shooter" (descriptive term). But.... there are a lot of white males in that area of Indiana and rural / semi rural poor white "squirrel shooters" are not uncommon.

- Probable local can mean truly local, relatively local, or truly / relatively local in the past.

And... as Carbuff and Falling Down also noted, he could be an occasional, but observant visitor such as a train enthusiast. A disproportionate number of such enthusiasts resemble 'squirrel shooters' to varying degrees, just more literate.

My personal guess is relatively local. Somebody who commutes to the packing plant for work, or comes up from Lafayette for fishing/hunting/hiking/bridge looking.

Or someone who grew up in the area and only rarely comes back for a visit.

 

[Yemelyan]

Great post. I still can’t believe how long it’s been and to have no one behind bars, but unless that DNA link shows up..

I don’t get the impression this was an acquaintance though, otherwise I don’t think the girls would have felt a need to post the photo of him on social media. They knew something was wrong (in my opinion)

No, I definitely don't get the impression it was an acquaintance either. My point (from the article) is that an acquaintance assault against another woman or girl may be what ultimately links BG through DNA. Unfortunately acquaintance types of sexual offenses are rarely pursued by LE so this type of evidence may be languishing somewhere. It was surprising for me to read that a person who assaults an acquaintance may ALSO be the type of person who abducts a stranger. And yet, the data from the article bore this out.

 

[Thelastleg]

Great post. I still can’t believe how long it’s been and to have no one behind bars, but unless that DNA link shows up..

I don’t get the impression this was an acquaintance though, otherwise I don’t think the girls would have felt a need to post the photo of him on social media. They knew something was wrong (in my opinion)

I though the photo posted to social media, Snapchat, was just of Abby on the bridge. I thought the photo of BG was released by LE. Have I got this all wrong?