The Delphi Murders: First Person: Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland: Part One

Summary

Summary of "The Delphi Murders: First Person: Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland: Part One"

Introduction

In this episode of Murder Sheet, hosts Áine Cain and Kevin Greenlee engage in an in-depth conversation with Nicholas McClelland, the elected prosecutor of Carroll County, Indiana. The discussion centers around McClelland's pivotal role in the Delphi murders case, his professional background, the complexities of prosecuting a high-profile case, and the personal challenges faced throughout the process.

Prosecutor Nicholas McClelland’s Background

Nicholas McClelland hails from Delphi, Indiana, where he was born and raised on a farm approximately five miles outside town. After completing his undergraduate studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, he took a break before earning his law degree from the University of Toledo. Initially aspiring to join the Air Force Academy and become a pilot, McClelland shifted his focus to law, influenced by a desire to follow in his family’s footsteps and inspired by mentors in the defense attorney field.

Notable Quote:
McClelland reflects on his career choice: “I’d always wanted to be an attorney. Just the avenue I took wasn’t what I expected.” [05:25]

Transition from Defense to Prosecution

Before becoming a prosecutor, McClelland operated a general practice law firm, focusing on defense and family law. In late 2017, he was selected by the Carroll County Republican Party to replace the retiring prosecutor Robert Ives. The transition was logistically challenging, requiring him to shut down his existing practice and adjust from defending clients to seeking convictions with the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Notable Quote:
Discussing the shift, McClelland states, “The burden shifts, right? I went from defending to... to having beyond a reasonable doubt.” [08:50]

Early Involvement in the Delphi Murders Case

Upon taking office, McClelland was quickly briefed on the Delphi murders—the tragic case involving the deaths of Liberty German and Abigail Williams. He maintained close contact with the investigative team from the outset, ensuring he was fully informed about ongoing developments and strategies.

Challenges and Critical Decisions

One of the most controversial decisions McClelland made was to seal the probable cause affidavit related to the case. This move was intended to protect the integrity of the trial and ensure a fair jury, given the extensive media coverage and public interest in the case. Although the decision faced significant backlash from the public and media, McClelland stood by his rationale.

Notable Quote:
On sealing the affidavit, McClelland explains, “I was concerned about being able to get a fair jury... to protect the integrity of the case and the integrity of the system, that I had to seal it.” [26:49]

Interacting with Law Enforcement and Building the Case

McClelland emphasized the importance of collaboration with local law enforcement, including Sheriff Tony Liggett and Detective Steve Mullen. Their coordinated efforts were crucial in gathering evidence and following leads that ultimately led to the arrest and conviction of Richard Allen.

Notable Quote:
Reflecting on his teamwork, McClelland remarks, “Tony Liggett and I would often work closely together on all the cases that we had.” [60:06]

Handling Media and Public Perception

Throughout the pretrial phase, McClelland navigated intense media scrutiny and public opinion. He preferred to communicate findings and developments through official channels rather than media leaks, striving to maintain control over the information released to the public.

Notable Quote:
Regarding media interactions, McClelland states, “I was pretty adamant about, I’m not going to say anything... I’m going to do it in the courtroom where I know it’s safe.” [38:56]

Cross-Examination of Experts

A highlight of the trial was McClelland’s cross-examination of Dr. Perlmutter, which was lauded as particularly effective. Drawing on his background as a defense attorney, McClelland adeptly challenged the credibility of expert witnesses, undermining their testimonies to strengthen his case.

Notable Quote:
Describing his approach, McClelland explains, “I just start digging deeper and deeper... She’s not credible because she’s not really given an unbiased opinion.” [53:45]

Managing the Trial Team

Recognizing the enormity of the trial, McClelland expanded his team by bringing in Deputy Prosecutors Stacy Deener and James Luttrell. Their specialized expertise in areas such as ballistic analysis and mental health was instrumental in preparing for the trial's complexities.

Notable Quote:
On team expansion, McClelland shares, “I thought if this trial is going to be three weeks, a month or five weeks, I got to have help.” [40:06]

Impact of Information Leaks

The trial faced further complications when sensitive images were leaked online, including photos of the crime scene and the victims. McClelland addressed the emotional toll this took on the community and the additional strain it placed on the legal proceedings.

Notable Quote:
Regarding the leaks, McClelland conveys his distress: “It’s heartbreaking that this case and the actions of some in this case have now brought us to another death.” [51:06]

Jury Selection and Trial Preparation

McClelland emphasized the importance of jury selection, focusing on building rapport with jurors and ensuring they remain impartial. His preparation involved meticulous organization of trial materials and exhaustive review of evidence to present a compelling case.

Notable Quote:
On jury selection, he states, “You just kinda gotta trust your gut and trust your instincts...” [64:09]

Conclusion

Throughout the episode, Prosecutor Nicholas McClelland provides a candid and comprehensive look into the prosecutorial process of the Delphi murders case. His insights into legal strategy, team collaboration, and handling public pressure offer listeners a profound understanding of the challenges inherent in high-profile criminal cases.

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• McClelland on Career Choice:
  “I’d always wanted to be an attorney. Just the avenue I took wasn’t what I expected.” [05:25]

• On Transitioning to Prosecution:
  “The burden shifts, right? I went from defending to... to having beyond a reasonable doubt.” [08:50]

• Regarding Sealing the Affidavit:
  “I was concerned about being able to get a fair jury... to protect the integrity of the case and the integrity of the system, that I had to seal it.” [26:49]

• On Collaboration with Law Enforcement:
  “Tony Liggett and I would often work closely together on all the cases that we had.” [60:06]

• Handling Media Relations:
  “I was pretty adamant about, I’m not going to say anything... I’m going to do it in the courtroom where I know it’s safe.” [38:56]

• Cross-Examination Strategy:
  “I just start digging deeper and deeper... She’s not credible because she’s not really given an unbiased opinion.” [53:45]

• Expanding the Trial Team:
  “I thought if this trial is going to be three weeks, a month or five weeks, I got to have help.” [40:06]

• Impact of Information Leaks:
  “It’s heartbreaking that this case and the actions of some in this case have now brought us to another death.” [51:06]

• Jury Selection Approach:
  “You just kinda gotta trust your gut and trust your instincts...” [64:09]

Conclusion

This episode offers a detailed exploration of Prosecutor Nicholas McClelland's approach to one of Indiana's most harrowing true crime cases. Through his firsthand account, listeners gain valuable insights into the intricacies of criminal prosecution, the emotional resilience required, and the unwavering commitment to justice in the face of adversity.

Transcript

[Anya Cain]

Content Warning this episode contains discussion of murder, including the murder of two children.

[Kevin Greenlee]

As the elected prosecutor of Carroll County, Indiana, Nicholas McClelland is one of the central figures in the Delphi murders case. Back in 2022, he brought charges against Richard Allen for the murders of Liberty German and Abigail Williams. He shepherded the case through years of pretrial hearings and filings and a trial that lasted weeks. Finally, he and his deputy prosecutors, Stacy Deener and James Luttrell, secured a conviction.

[Anya Cain]

McClelland first became the county's prosecutor at the end of 2017, well after the murders. On Dec. 2, 2017, the Carroll County Republican Party voted to select McClelland to replace prosecutor Robert Ives, who resigned in the middle of a term. After the conclusion of Ives's term, McClelland was elected to the office. Before that, he was a local defense attorney who earned his undergraduate degree from Indiana University in Bloomington and secured a law degree from the University of Toledo. As prosecutor, McClelland kept in close contact with the investigative team on the Delphi case.

[Kevin Greenlee]

We will be the first to say that we are guilty of having underestimated Prosecutor McCleland earlier in our coverage of this case. Around the time of the problem cause affidavit being sealed, we had concerns. The Delphi murders trial was shaping up.

[Anya Cain]

To be a monster and we wondered why is this prosecutor sealing the pca? We pretty much posited on this show about whether or not he was up for the challenge or if the case itself was weak.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Our opinions of prosecutor McClelland started to sharply shift after the safekeeping hearing in June of 2023. In that pretrial hearing, prosecutor McClelland Pretty deftly knocked down all of the claims the defense team had been making. We were impressed.

[Anya Cain]

Since then, Prosecutor McCleland has done most of his talking in the courtroom and in legal filings, a sharp contrast with his opponents and what he's had to say has been compelling. McCleland exudes a down to earth confidence in court, in the trial and at the three day hearing over the summer, he appeared focused, forceful and detail oriented. In this episode, we will interview prosecutor McCleland about the pretrial phase, how he first started tackling the investigation into the Delphi murders, his devastating cross examination of Don Perlmutter, and why he likes to be the underdog.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Now that the gag order is lifted, prosecutor McCleland and others are free to speak about their experiences with the Delphi case. This will be the first of two episodes featuring our interview with the elected prosecutor of Carroll County. They would be released on the same day. So check out the second part as well. These episodes are part of our first person interview series. We will seek to interview as many of the individuals with first hand experience in the Delphi case as possible in the coming weeks and months. If you had a direct role in the case and are open to talking to us, please email [e-mail] this is part of our ongoing efforts to report on the Delphi murders. For many years we have not gotten the chance to hear directly from some of the principal figures in the case. That all changes now.

[Anya Cain]

My name is Anya Cain.

[Kevin Greenlee]

I'm a journalist and I'm Kevin Greenlee.

[Anya Cain]

I'm an attorney and this is the Murder Sheet.

[Kevin Greenlee]

We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews and deep dives into murder cases. We're the Murder Sheet and this is.

[Anya Cain]

The Delphi first person prosecutor Nicholas McCleland part one.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Gene, tell us about your background. Where are you from?

[Nicholas McClelland]

Sure. I'm from Delphi, Indiana. Grew up about five miles out of town on farm, so Carroll County. Born and raised here, obviously went away to college undergraduate, but then I went out into the workforce for a couple years and then came back and went to law school. So I did take about a 2 1/2, 3 year break between undergrad and law school. Went back to law school and you know, when I left here I went to the farthest college of wigs. I thought I got to get out of this small town and I'm, you know, I'm going to do big things and you know, the kind of the small town mentality of some of the small town people, I guess. And then when I graduated law school, all I wanted to do is come back and so I came back and hung a shingle as a defense attorney in 2009. I did that until this spot became available at the end of 2017. At the time, Rob Ives was the prosecutor and he was going to retire a year before his term was up. And so we had to go do a what they call a caucus with the precinct men and women of the county and you go in front of them. I was elected or appointed by them to fill that last term in 2018 and then I ran and then I've been prosecutor ever since, but born and raised here and thought I was going to stay away forever, but came back pretty quick.

[Kevin Greenlee]

What made you decide to go into law?

[Nicholas McClelland]

Originally my plan was to go to the Air Force Academy and be a pilot. And I think that's just what I always wanted to Do. I took some pilot's lessons in high school, and it just came down to me and one other person, and the other person got selected. And so then at that point, I kind of had always wanted to be a JAG in the military. Even after being a pilot, I just kind of liked that, you know, it was a professional career, and they had a lot. Commanded a lot of respect, and I liked the uniform and all those kind of things. And so I'd always wanted to do that. And so when I didn't get in the Air Force Academy, I just basically audibled. I got accepted to Indiana University in Bloomington. I went there and then just went on from there. I did take a break after undergrad. I thought I got a job offer and I thought, I'm going to just enjoy the workforce and travel a little bit, and then just came back. So I'd always wanted to be an attorney. Just the avenue I took wasn't what I expected.

[Kevin Greenlee]

The cliche is that lawyers often start in the prosecutor's department and then go into defense law to make the money. You went the opposite direction. Can you talk about that?

[Nicholas McClelland]

When I graduated from law school, I wanted to be a defense attorney. I wanted to represent people and just defend their rights. That's what I wanted to do. I don't really know why I wanted to do that, but I wanted to own my own business so I didn't have a boss and so I could work for myself and make my own hours. And one of my mentors here has been a defense attorney, and he's been a friend of my family for ever. Went to school with my uncles and my dad, and he was a defense attorney. And so he's kind of my mentor, and I kind of wanted to follow in his footsteps. And so I came back and just hung a shingle. And yeah, I took the opposite route. I made as little money as you could at the beginning and then have increased over the years because my first office I was in, it was on. It was the other half of a business that was here in Carroll county. And the business owners knew me, and they rented me off this other half for $20 a month, just as a favor to get me started. Another friend of the family bought the sign that went on the window. I had a lot of community help because I had zero money. When you're out of law school, you're in debt anyways most of the time. And so I just hung a shingle and started taking public defender appointments and traveling to different counties and just trying to get as Much experience as could had Rob Ives not retired early. I may not be here. The opportunities came up, and it was the right time and took my shot.

[Anya Cain]

What made you want to do that? To shift over to the prosecutor side? Like, what was it about that role that kind of, I don't know, made that shot worth taking?

[Nicholas McClelland]

Having kids. Having kids and then representing the people I was representing, it was a lot easier emotionally, when I didn't have kids. It was a lot easier to shut off the emotion. And so when you represent people who are accused of child molest or rape or those crimes that involve children, battery on a child, it was easy for me to shut the emotion off until I had children. And then it just became much more difficult for me. And I just made a decision. I didn't want to represent those kind of offenses anymore. It just kind of hit too close to home. And again, the right timing, this became available. And so just kind of the. The perfect storm, if you will, of all those things.

[Anya Cain]

And then what was that transition like logistically? And then I guess, strategically, from going from defense to prosecution, the transition was.

[Nicholas McClelland]

Difficult because I had a pretty thriving practice as a defense attorney. But I also did family law. I did wills and estates. We kind of did a general practice type of law firm. And the problem with coming in, Rob Ives retired late in the year. And so the caucus was going to be held on December 3rd. And if you got appointed in, you started January 1st. And so we had three weeks to basically shut down this office where I was doing public defender work and private practice work in Clinton County, White County, Carroll county, and Tippecanoe County. And so to shut. To close all those cases, get withdrawn from them, on top of all the family law cases and the civil cases, all those things, logistically, it was a nightmare trying to get all that wrapped up in those three to four weeks and then come in here and transition in here. And then just to transition from being a defense attorney to a prosecutor, there's a little bit of a learning curve. We use a different system to file cases here. The burden shifts, right? I went from defending to. To no burden, to having beyond a reasonable doubt. And so there's a transition. But I think being a defense attorney helped, in my mind, seeing the other side helped. There was definitely a transition. And in the beginning, it was. It was tough.

[Kevin Greenlee]

You talked about how the community helped you out, you know, cutting you a break on a rent and things of that nature. We hear a lot about that sort of thing in Delphi. It's a place where People do help each other out. Is that part of the reason why you came back?

[Nicholas McClelland]

I don't know if that's part of the reason. I think that when you go away and you spend some time away from home, you want to come back. And part of it is it being closer to family. All my family's from here, so it was being closer to family. It was just being someplace where you're comfortable and you do know other people. Strategically, when you're opening a business, you want to go to where you have some name recognition to bring in business. And so that took, you know, some of my consideration to think, okay, are people going to hire me? People know me here. If they know I'm a defense attorney, where can I get public defender appointments? I had some other job offers and other places, but at the end of the day I just, I had a draw back to here. And what draws someone back to their hometown? I think it's just that feeling of community and family. To me it is.

[Anya Cain]

Anyways, for people who may not be from here, familiar with this area, how would you describe Carroll county to an outsider?

[Nicholas McClelland]

Very rural community. Lots, lots of farmers, blue collar workers. We used to have a couple big factories here. We've now kind of cut down to Indiana packers and so a lot of blue collar factory workers there, a lot of farmers, small business owners. But we're a community of what, 20 to 25,000 people for the whole community. And so it's not unusual to know the person you're sitting next to at lunch at a restaurant. And so there's this very community, small town feel, but so I would say mostly rural community though.

[Anya Cain]

And then what's it like to be the prosecutor here? What kind of cases are you typically looking at?

[Nicholas McClelland]

The main cases we have are operating while intoxicated or what people call DUIs. We have a lot of those drug based cases. Methamphetamine is a problem like it is in a lot of communities. Marijuana is still illegal in Indiana. So that's still a lot of our cases that we have. We have batteries and domestic batteries. The drug related and alcohol related cases are probably the majority of our cases. Stuff to do with methamphetamine. It's just an epidemic that this community struggled to get a handle on. And so that's probably our main cases. We also have all the other cases like murder and child molest and rape and those things. Those aren't. It's not like Tippecanoe county or Indianapolis and Marion County. It's not like those bigger communities we have those. I'm glad. They're few and far between, but we do have those.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Yeah. I remember one case you worked was the Jennifer Dean murder case. Can you tell us about that? That's some interesting wrinkles to it.

[Nicholas McClelland]

Sure. That's the only other murder case I've done. I think you guys reported on that before, and I'm not ashamed to say that. It just is what it is. I'm glad that our community doesn't have a lot of those. I was public defender on a murder case that we had here just before I took office as prosecutor. So I had a chance to work on the other side on the murder case. But I was elected or appointed a prosecutor before that case came to trial. The Jennifer Dean trial was difficult because there were three people involved. It was a felony murder type situation. We convicted two of the people. One person still is awaiting trial. It was difficult because of just the people involved and three people involved. And there were some different wrinkles in there and different things we had to tackle. So. Yeah.

[Anya Cain]

That case that you mentioned that you were working on but then had to switch over to prosecution, that was James Hotz, right?

[Nicholas McClelland]

Correct.

[Anya Cain]

I'm curious. This is backing up a little bit. Just as a member of the community living here, how did you first hear about what happened to Libby and Abby?

[Nicholas McClelland]

It was the day they were found. I can't remember how I was informed whether it was a family member or another member of the community. I remember a friend and I talking about it that day to say, wonder what happened. But it spread through the community pretty quickly. Once they went missing, the next morning when they went missing, that spread through the community pretty quickly. And then when they were found, I think it was just as quick. Again, just very small community and with as many people that were searching and many people that are involved and the fact that that doesn't happen here, it just went through the community pretty quickly.

[Anya Cain]

How did you feel when you heard about the news?

[Nicholas McClelland]

It was tough. It's heartbreaking to. When you find out they're missing, the first thing you think of is, okay, they went to a friend's house or nothing. Nothing bad happened to them. They just, you know, they forgot to call their parents or they stayed the night with a friend and fell asleep. Because in this community, your mind doesn't go to something nefarious just because somebody doesn't come home that night or check in at a specific time. It just doesn't. Or at least at that point in time, my mind didn't do that. I can't speak for other people. And so once they're found and you find out they're deceased, you're almost in shock. How could this happen here? I mean, I think that's the feeling I had. How can this happen? How did it happen? And so I think that's the feeling that I had.

[Kevin Greenlee]

You talk about being a small community. Did you know the girls? Did you know the families?

[Nicholas McClelland]

I knew the families. I knew the girls. I'd seen the girls in the community. Just that different when we go to basketball games on Friday night or out in the community around. And I knew the families. The family grew up with my families, both the Germans and the Patties. So they knew my family. We weren't close or anything like that, but we definitely knew of each other. Some of the Patties went to school with some of the McClellands generation before me. Same thing with Germans. And so we definitely knew each other, I guess.

[Anya Cain]

When you first came on as prosecutor, can you tell us about that, how you kind of got started on the Delphi murders case?

[Nicholas McClelland]

Well, pretty early on I knew that the Delphi case and the Flora Fire case, it's the. How we refer to them commonly. I knew those were the two big cases that this office had when I came in. And so I got debriefed on those within the first month. Who's working on them? What evidence do we have? Where are we at in the investigations? And that was done through PowerPoint. I know that I had ISP do the PowerPoint on the floor fire, I believe. And then also between Carroll County Sheriff's department and ISP did the PowerPoint on the Delphi murders. And so I wanted to know pretty quickly, where are we at and what is our next step? Because I knew those were cases that were open here, and those are the two most publicized cases that we had that were open.

[Kevin Greenlee]

One thing we understand that you did relatively early there was maybe not directly related this case, but you came across some information about Kegan Klein, which you then forwarded over to Miami County. Can you tell us about that?

[Nicholas McClelland]

It came relatively early that there they had found information on his phone or through his electronic devices that was a violation in Indiana criminal code. And that came away pretty quickly, that once they had found that it hadn't been followed up on through some prosecutor's office to file charges. And I don't know the disconnect there. It obviously happened before I was here, but for some reason, it never got over to Miami county to. To look into charges and to file charges. And so we forwarded that stuff to them as soon as we. We became aware of it, that nothing had been done. And that's when they took the reins and took it over.

[Anya Cain]

I'm curious, when. When you came on, did Unified Command, as it sort of came to exist, did it exist at that point or was like, I mean, how did you sort of get, I guess, started with them?

[Nicholas McClelland]

I don't know if it existed as, quote, unquote, Unified Command. I know there was a group. When I came on, there were a group of agency heads that would meet. One from Indiana State Police, Carroll County Sheriff's Department, and there may be multiple people from. From those different agencies. FBI, Marshals, everybody that we had working on it. I know there's. Because when I did the debriefing, the very first debriefing, all those kind of agency heads were there. We're in a big room, and we'd go over together and everybody would put their input into, okay, this. We also have this. We're doing this, and that kind of thing. As it carried on, it got narrowed down to a core group. I want to say there was anywhere from 8 to 10 of us, and it became Unified Command. I don't even know who came up with that name. It just. It might have been there when I came on. I don't remember. I just know there was a core group of us that would meet every week to say, okay, where are we at? What do we have to do this week? What are our goals for next week? And. And we would do that.

[Anya Cain]

And that first time, when you're being debriefed on this, what were your feelings like? Did you feel overwhelmed at all or like, what was that like?

[Nicholas McClelland]

I wouldn't use the word overwhelmed. I think for me, a mix of things. Anger was one. We got to get this guy, girl, whomever it was, we didn't know at the time. We've got to get this resolved. This is horrible. What happened. And then I guess just my next instinct was, okay, so what do we do next? Where do we go from here? What is out there? What have we done? And what do we do next?

[Anya Cain]

And then I'm curious one thing. This is a case where it seems like a lot of people have come up over the years and there was really only probable cause for. For one person in the end. Richard Allen, did investigators, as things were going through, did they ever, like, really push for an arrest for anyone else before you were ready, or did. Was it a situation where you kind of work together to kind of were like, well, it's just not to that point with this guy or this guy or this guy until we get to Richard Allen.

[Nicholas McClelland]

With every tip that we had, within reason, we had some tips that were pretty easy to discredit in our minds. We had a tip that, you know, a family of sasquatches lived under the bridge and did this. Pretty easy to say, okay, we're going to move on from that tip pretty quickly. But with any tip that had any kind of credibility or that needed follow up, we would follow up on it. And we would task 1, 2, 3, however many people it took to follow up on that. And then once their follow up was complete, we'd come back immediately say, okay, what did you find? And like any case, we'd assess it, okay, what is there? Can we prove the elements of the offense? That's what we're required to do. So we'd go through the elements. Can we prove this? Can we prove this? And were there some people that we checked more of the elements than others? Of course, there just always is. Was there anybody that we were able to check all the elements besides Richard Allen? No.

[Kevin Greenlee]

I want to ask you about something I believe that was mentioned at the three day hearing where one of the detectives who happened to be working on a lead about Odinism, he said the prosecutor told him that if this lead has legs, run with it. And it wasn't clear to me if the prosecutor he was referring to was you or Mr. Ives, it was me.

[Nicholas McClelland]

And I would tell them with any lead, not just that one, if, and that's just a term we used, if it's got legs, run. I don't know, it's an acronym or term or catchphrase that came to be familiar with us, meaning if, if it leads you to another person to interview, then do it. Don't leave any stone unturned. It may sound crazy, but if, if it leads you to somebody else, go interview that other person and see if that leads you to another piece of evidence and another piece and another piece. And so we would always say that on any lead, if it's got legs, just run with it and see where it leads you. It may lead you to some piece of evidence that is completely different to an unrelated person, but maybe important. And so I just wasn't comfortable with just saying, okay, just stop there, we're not going to do anything else.

[Anya Cain]

What was it like to be prosecutor? As this thing is kind of remaining unsolved for a number of years and doing all this work on it and it's Such a heinous crime, I guess. Like what, what was that like for you? Was that difficult?

[Nicholas McClelland]

Yes, it's difficult. You go through the, I think I've said this before, you go through the emotional roller coaster and you try not to get pessimistic about it. And we as a unified command and team always tried to stay optimistic. We're never going to stop working on it. You know, we're going to look into this, this is what we're going to do next. And so we always tried to do that. But it is hard as time goes on to stay positive and to be hopeful. And so that was the hardest part for me is to just to stay positive. We're going to solve this. We just got to keep working on it and keep doing what we're doing. But it's hard, it's emotional. I mean, especially when it gets closer to the anniversaries and, and those kind of things. And when you see the family in the public and you know, they want answers and I think the whole community wanted answers. And so it's, it's emotional. There's no doubt.

[Kevin Greenlee]

So one of the key moments in the Richard Allen case, of course, is when Kathy Shang discovered that lead. Do you remember how you got the news about what she discovered?

[Nicholas McClelland]

I don't remember exactly. It had to have been a phone call or Tony Liggett came up and said, hey, Kathy found this. You know, this is the aha moment. This is the, this is the guy we've been looking for. He says that he saw other people on the trail, other people on the trail. This is the guy we believe they saw. There was no follow up done on him. We got to talk to him. And so I'm pretty sure it was Tony Liggett, but I can't remember if he called me or if he came up to my office. I don't remember. He probably called me because as soon as he's seen it, he probably want to get a hold of me right away and said, hey, this is big. We got to follow up on this. And then we started doing what we did.

[Kevin Greenlee]

What did you do? Okay, the fly.

[Nicholas McClelland]

Fair enough. Of course, saw this in the trial. We called him in, interviewed him with Steve Mullen and Tony Liggett and then got a search warrant for his house, searched his house, found evidence, sent that evidence to the lab, had it tested, and then once we got the results back from that, interviewed him, interviewed him again.

[Kevin Greenlee]

So when those interviews were happening, were you getting regular updates? Were you like watching them?

[Nicholas McClelland]

Yes, both. So the interviews, if I had the ability to watch them from a closed circuit tv, I would watch them. If not, I would be getting updates as they're happening. The first one, I don't believe I watched from the closed circuit TV because we didn't have that ability in that interview room. But then I get. Would get updates. I think there's. At one point in the interview, the phone, Steve Mullen's phone rings. That's me calling him. And so, yeah, so that's. I was pretty adamant. If I didn't hear from him in an hour or whatever, I was calling him or texting him, hey, what's going on? Give me an update. And then the second interview, I did watch from a closed circuit TV because we just had that ability in that interview room. And so. But I was obviously, I review every search warrant that I sign off on search warrants. So to make sure. I review and make sure we have probable cause and to make sure they're formatted correctly, all those kind of things. So I was involved in all of that. And when they're doing the search warrant, I'm telling them, you know, what do you find? Call me, you know, all those kind of things. So it was constant updates throughout the process.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And I'm curious, so you were watching this second interview, and it was during that second interview that the decision was made, okay, we have probable cause. What was it that pushed you over to make that decision? Okay, now we're ready for this arrest.

[Nicholas McClelland]

I think the totality of what we had at that point with the fact that we confirmed his story that he was on the trail that day, the fact that we confirmed what he was wearing that day, we found the firearm in his house. It was tested, the lab results were confirmed. And then a big thing for me during that interview was the fact that he said he hadn't loaned his gun to anybody, his ammunition to anybody, he hadn't let his. Another family member borrow it, and he had no explanation of why a bullet would have been found at the scene of where the girls were found. So those were big things for me. And obviously other little things sprinkled throughout that interview that just didn't make sense to me. And so I think once we confirmed that there was no other explanation for how the bullet got there, but that it was from him, his gun, and he had it, that was pretty big for me.

[Anya Cain]

Was there a point that you remember feeling like this might be it?

[Nicholas McClelland]

When Tony called me and said, we have the guy that the girl saw on the trail? Because he confirmed through this interview that he saw those girls as well, the three girls in the beginning, not Betsy Blair or Sarah Carbaugh, but the three girls in the beginning, when he confirmed that we have the guy that saw them, that's a pretty big moment because we all believed that the guy the three girls saw was bridge guy. And so that is a pretty big moment. You try not to get too excited. You try not to jump, you know, from point A to point D. You got to go through all the other steps. But it is exciting when you. Exciting is not the right word. It just does get your hopes up when you hear that to say, okay, this guy is important. What does he have to say? You know, who else did he see? What? What? It's just a big. A big piece of evidence that came out. So I think when I heard that it's just kind of that big moment.

[Kevin Greenlee]

After he is arrested. You made a decision that was controversial in some quarters. This is to seal the probable cause affidavit. Can you walk us through what your thoughts processes were there?

[Nicholas McClelland]

You know, let's be honest, it was contra. You guys didn't like it either? No, I feel like be honest with each other.

[Anya Cain]

And I understand we were pretty mean about it. I'm not going to lie.

[Nicholas McClelland]

I got the clips and I understand. And I mean, you weren't alone. I think a lot of the public and the media were upset about it. It's a decision I had to make. And what I was concerned about and what I was concerned about through all this trial, the reason for asking for the gag order, the reason for asking for things to be sealed is this case had more publicity than any case I've ever dealt with. Head and shoulders, by far. You know, just so much publicity. I was concerned about being able to get a fair jury not only for Richard Allen, but for me, too. I mean, that goes. That cuts both ways. It's not only a fair jury for the defendant, it's a fair jury for the state, too. And I was just so concerned that that wasn't going to happen. I wanted to make sure everything was sealed until we had a plan of, okay, how are we going to address the discovery in this situation? How are we going to address all the things that we have to do to get to trial? And at that time, he was unrepresented. And I just felt that to protect the integrity of the case and the integrity of the system, that I had to seal it. But I know nobody. I had other attorneys that didn't agree with it. I understand that but it's just a decision I made. I stand behind it. I think it was the right one. Yeah, it got unsealed later, but that's after we were able to talk to the court and redact some of the names. I was really concerned about some of the. At the time at this occurrence, a lot of the witnesses were juveniles. Now they weren't by time we filed the charges. But I still wanted to protect their identity. When I first file a case, a probable cause, I don't have the ability to redact those. I don't have that authority to do that. The judge, I can present that to the judge and she can. He or she can accept it. And so I was concerned about that too. Just protecting the witnesses that were in there because I thought they may be harassed if their names got out there. So I know it was unpopular decision, but it's what I did and yeah, it is what it is.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Yeah. I'm curious. Throughout the course of this trial, you had to make a number of difficult decisions and you got a lot of attacks, whether fair attacks or unfair attacks. How do you handle being at the center of the storm?

[Nicholas McClelland]

Well, I mean, there's no roadmap to tell you or book that says, hey, if you have a case that's statewide, nationwide, worldwide known, this is what you do. And this is how you protect not only the record, but protect the integrity of the case so you can have a free trial. There's no handbook for that. When I came in a prosecutor, you don't get a handbook. And so you get attacked and you just have to move past it. I don't. Is not an easy way to handle it. It's not. It was harder on my family and my friends than it was me. I think as prosecutor, I expected to get attacked. I expected to get, you know, viewed under a microscope for everything that I did. I expected that. I expected that the fact that I was a young prosecutor was going to come under attack from attorneys who had been in the business longer. I just expected all that throughout. So it didn't bug me. And it. Obviously when somebody attacks your work or your credibility or anything, it makes you second guess, but you just have to stand behind the decision you make and go with it. So it wasn't easy, but yeah.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Another issue of controversy that came up relatively early on was the gag order, which you asked for. Can you explain what your thinking was then?

[Nicholas McClelland]

Same thinking. I just didn't want this to be, I'm going to use the word sensationalized anymore in the public. I Didn't want the defense or anybody, law enforcement, anybody talking to media where we're disclosing facts out in the public or trying to condition the public. Because I really had a fear that it was going to be difficult for us to get a jury. I just had that fear. The change of venue came really early, and I was happy the judge was willing to keep the trial here. I thought that was important for witnesses and evidence and all those kind of things. But we had a jury from Allen county, and I was just concerned that if the attorneys and law enforcement and people who worked for the attorneys were allowed to talk to the media about the case, we're still bound by the rules of professional conduct. But that doesn't stop you from getting up in front of the media every day and saying various things. And I just thought it would get to the point where it wouldn't get a fair trial. So just keeping all that stuff close to the vest was all for the purpose of having a fair trial.

[Kevin Greenlee]

I'm doing in this social media world. Are gag orders still affected? Do you feel this did more harm than good?

[Nicholas McClelland]

You know, I got a lot of criticism, I think, from everybody, especially in the media, about the gag order and whether it did more harm or good, I don't know. You know, the state, I will say the state, we strictly complied with it, the family of the victim strictly complied with it, and I'll leave it at that. But did it work or not? I don't know. I don't know. Had we not, I don't know what the. What would have happened had we not had it? So it's difficult for me to say. Would it have been more difficult to get a jury had we not had it? I don't know. I don't know.

[Anya Cain]

Had you been familiar with Andrew Baldwin, Bradley Rosie, or Jennifer O.J. prior to this case?

[Nicholas McClelland]

I knew Brad Rosie. He had had some other cases here, not a lot. He primarily practiced in Cass county and Logan Sport, but he had a few cases here. I knew him growing up. I went to Logan Sport for a year, that school system, just because family moved around a little bit. And so I had known him before, but then I knew him because he practiced here a little bit. And I was actually in the court office when I think I remember this right, that he went to the judge and at that time it was Judge Deener and he told the judge he'd be interested in taking the case. And so I knew him. I didn't know him very well. I did not know Jennifer O.J. or Andy. Andrew Baldwin at all. Just too far removed geographically to have anything up here. So I had no idea who those two were.

[Anya Cain]

How did you first hear about Alan making confessions and incriminating statements in prison?

[Nicholas McClelland]

Well, we. We monitor his phone calls from the jail. We do that. That's not uncommon. That happens. That's why the recording is. Is what it is on the front end of the phone call. These phone calls are being recorded. We do that on a routine basis when someone's in jail. We're listening to phone calls for those kind of admissions or additional evidence or any of those things. So we were listening to his phone calls every day. So the first admission he made, I was notified right after they heard it. Hey, here's an email with the phone call. And, you know, getting a call from my investigator. Here's what he said. And then we would have him transcribed so that we could see. Okay, let's have it in writing as well. And so we were getting daily updates about the phone calls.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Not long after the confession started, the defense filed this safekeeping motion. They made a number of really colorful allegations that to a number of people, seemed like it may have crossed a line into falsehood. And I guess. What was your reaction to this safekeeping motion?

[Nicholas McClelland]

My response is out there, and I think my response is pretty clear that I thought some of the accusations they made were just too colorful and to the point where they were untrue. And we had the hearing, and the judge and her order said the same thing, that they weren't able to produce evidence that backed up what they put in the safekeeping hearing. But I thought when I first read it, I just thought, I wonder why they're using this kind of language to try to prey on the emotions of the community. Why can't we just say, typically when we write motions as attorneys, they're very dry and they're very straightforward, and they're based on the law. I don't know why we have to use terms like prisoner of war or dog kennels or those kind of things. I guess I don't see the point in that. And I made that clear in my response. And that's where we're at.

[Kevin Greenlee]

For a couple of months after that was filed, there was a lot of reporting that this basically taking the defense's word for it. And then there was this hearing where you were able to, at least in my view, to pretty much demolish all of their claims very easily. Is it frustrating to wait in silence for months while lies are out there?

[Nicholas McClelland]

Yes, that's the short answer? Yes, I, I. When one side gets to promote their ideas, and when I try to respond, my responses would. I would try not to get sucked into the, you know, the tit for tat type of thing and just keep my responses to the law and as dry as I could. And like you said, there were a lot of. I felt like a lot of people in the community believed everything the defense was telling them. I even got a couple clips from your show that I thought you guys were kind of leaning that way, too, to say, you know, kind of buying into what they were selling. And it is frustrating, but you just got to keep in your mind that you're going to have an opportunity in court to, you know, give your side of the story, and you just got to respect the process. And so you just keep that in mind. But yes, it's. It's frustrating.

[Anya Cain]

Everyone was sending you clips of our show the whole time. That's just.

[Nicholas McClelland]

Well, it just. Like I said, we didn't have. And on top of dealing with Richard Allen, I have to maintain all the administrative duties of this office on top of not all the arrests that come in on a nightly basis, but it's only myself and the chief deputy prosecutor to handle all the criminal cases that happen in Carroll County. And so to do all that, plus, you know, have two kids and, you know, have a house to take care of, all those kind of things. Just didn't have time to listen to all the shows. But we had friends and family. Your show's very popular around here. And so people would send me clips, you know, 90 seconds, two minutes. Hey, listen, this part, they said this. And so we. I would listen to it. I'm at the gym or wherever. And so it was a little frustrating in the beginning to say, I really wish everybody could hear the other side of it before they make opinions. But at the end of the day, you just gotta respect the process and know that you're gonna come to court at some point and be able to give your side of the argument.

[Anya Cain]

So you just got a curated version of us slamming you for months. Thanks, everybody. Stop sending him clips.

[Nicholas McClelland]

But a little bit. But I. I have told other people, I like being the underdog. I like to be underestimated. I don't have a problem with that. And then just, you know, go to court and let's put on our evidence and let's. Who makes, you know, who makes the strongest argument and go forward. So it's okay. I expected it. I think I kind of got off on a bad foot. With you guys anyways, because I sealed and won the gag order and all this kind of thing, so I understand. I, I, you know, I feel like.

[Anya Cain]

You know that meme where it was a stupid thing. I'm sorry, but you know that meme where it was like, sorry, I was unfamiliar with your game. That's sort of how we feel about you. Because I think when we saw you sealing the pca, we're kind of like, okay, like, what's this? And now with more context, we understand that decision more.

[Nicholas McClelland]

But it doesn't help that I'm a young attorney and a young prosecutor and I think I got a lot of people said, well, he just didn't know what he's doing and he's only tried one murder trial and I've tried 30 and I don't know that quantity means quality, I guess. And so I got a lot of that and I expected it. I mean, yeah, I have not done a lot of murder trials. Just we don't have a lot of murders here.

[Anya Cain]

Well, we defended you on that front. Everyone would be like, he's never done a murder trial. And we said, he did one, we know that one, and it was good. We've totally gone off the rails.

[Nicholas McClelland]

I apologize.

[Anya Cain]

In terms of, I mean, one thing that became apparent to us though, over the course of reporting on this, and this was something we did note, as things went on, it became apparent that you were determined to do the talking in court, not through the media, through leaks, or through sort of press release, kind of esque filings. And can you just tell us about, you know, that philosophy behind that?

[Nicholas McClelland]

I respect any order from the court. I think that you have to give that any order from the court, whether you agree with it or not. You have to respect it and give it the respect it deserves because it's an order from the court and the judges orders have to be taken seriously. And so when the gag order came into effect, I was pretty adamant about, I'm not going to say anything, I'm not going to do anything that even toes the line to violating that gag order. And so my responses to my motions, I think I would get flippant on occasion because it's kind of hard not to get sucked into responding in kind. But in my emotions, I would try to keep them as to the point and to the law as possible. And I just knew that all the arguing I was going to do was going to be in court. I knew that wouldn't be in violation of the gag order. I knew that in court. I could say what I had to say to defend my side of the argument. And so I just made it. I was pretty adamant from the beginning. I'm only, I'm not going to get sucked into doing this out in the public. I'm going to do it in the courtroom where I know it's safe.

[Anya Cain]

And then I'm curious in terms of, you know, we talked a bit about this and you alluded to this having the defense background and that being an asset for you throughout this process. Can you talk more about that, about how that may have helped with this case?

[Nicholas McClelland]

I think with every case, not just this one, it helps you, puts you in a position where you can come up with possible strategies from the defense, gives you that firsthand perspective. If I was a defense attorney in this case, what would I do? I think people that have been prosecutors for a long time can do that too. I'm not saying they're a disadvantage because they don't have that public defender or defense background. I think there's a lot of prosecutors and a lot of people in prosecutors for their whole life who can do that as well. I just think it gave me personally that experience where I could say, okay, I've been in cases that aren't necessarily murders but that have these types of evidence, what kind of defense would I put forward? And so I think it just helped me in that respect.

[Anya Cain]

How did your deputies in this case, James Luttrell and Stacy Dehnert sort of come to join this team for the.

[Nicholas McClelland]

First from October of 22. I'm probably going to get this wrong till sometime in 23. It was late in 23, I want to say end of summer, beginning of fall in 23. And I may be wrong on the timing, but it became pretty evident that I cannot do this whole trial myself. There are too many experts at that point. I'd been answering all the motions and doing all the hearings by myself. And it was a lot. And I was just getting to the point where, you know, the a one day hearing on safekeeping took me a lot to prep by myself, a lot to get everything lined up. And I thought if this trial is going to be three weeks, a month or five weeks, I got to have help. And there's some very specific areas of expertise that it's going to be difficult for me to be an expert in all those areas and be able to effectively cross examine their experts and examine our experts. And so I got referred to James Lutcherl by a friend, a former prosecutor in White county, said, hey, I Know, this guy, he's a senior prosecutor. He might be interested in helping me. And it's not an easy task to go ask somebody, say, hey, you know, I've been slammed in the community or in the public for the past nine months. Do you want to come on board, try this case with me? And oh, yeah, it's the, you know, Abby Libby, Richard Allen case and, you know, maybe a month long trial and there's 26 TB information and you're jumping in, you know, you're jumping on the ship, you know, halfway through the voyage. Do you want to do it? Especially a guy who's retired, right? A guy who's in it. He's supposed to be enjoying his kind of retirement years. And so had lunch with him a couple times, was able to convince him to come on. And then at the time, Stacy Deener was doing. She was a prosecutor in White county. And then she had switched over and was doing some defense work and some family law and some other things. And her and I had always just stayed in contact. I was a defense attorney when she was a prosecutor over there for a long time. And so we got along in that respect and we just stayed in touch afterwards. And she had called me at one point and we were talking about something else and this came up and she said, well, if I could come on and help you, I would, you know, close my practice and do that. And I said, absolutely, I think that'd be great. And so I had to get approval to have another attorney because I can't. I have to have approved from the council to be able to pay for it and all those kind of things. And I thought it was necessary to have three. At the time, it was just Andrew Baldwin and Brad Rosie. They didn't have Jennifer O.J. yet. She was still. I don't think she came on until 2024 maybe. I can't remember. But so that's kind of how the evolution. I just realized at some point that, holy crap, I cannot do this all by myself. I need help.

[Anya Cain]

Can you tell us about the deposition process in this case? What was that like? Any interesting moments from that?

[Nicholas McClelland]

No. A deposition is a sworn statement. You're in a room with the defense attorneys and the prosecutor and whomever the witness is, and then a court reporter. And there's not a lot of difference from trial. The defense, typically, if they set up the deposition, they will ask the person questions first, and everything is fair game. You can object, but typically the person still has to answer the question. You don't Have a judge there to rule in the objections and then the state will get an opportunity to ask questions and they'll just go back and forth until the questions are finished. When we set up the depositions, the only difference is we go first and you just kind of go back and forth until you're done with it and it's recorded and then it's typed out by a court reporter and signed off by the witness if they want. I don't know that there's anything interesting. A lot of it was just going through the evidence and following up on statements. A lot of those depositions were submitted through the three day hearing. Lot of depositions that we did.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Was it during the deposition process that you got your first indication they were going with Odinism?

[Nicholas McClelland]

Odinism was an part of investigation that took about a year, maybe two years. We knew that they were going to look at that. I didn't know it was going to be to that length. But we figured Odinism would come up at some point. I mean it's. We had too much stuff there. We had interviewed too many people because we interviewed all the people in Rushville, we interviewed all the people here. We had done all that. And so we knew it was going to come up. Did I know it was going to be one of their defenses? I just didn't know they're going to put so many eggs in that basket.

[Anya Cain]

I guess you, I guess you in a way reacted to it and responded to it in court. But just curious, like what your reaction was when you first saw the Frank's memorandum. What do you think of that defense?

[Nicholas McClelland]

I. The defense is the Franks. How the Franks came up. They filed a motion to suppress and it became evident pretty early on through their motion that they filed a motion to suppress. But they had put in some Frank's issues within that motion. And typically when you file a motion to suppress based on Frank's, what we commonly call Frank's motion, you need to put evidence with that through, whether it be affidavits, a synopsis of what happens, something with that in order to get to the next step, which is a hearing on the Franks. The first step is the judge evaluates and says, okay, is there enough here to even warrant a hearing? So you can't just say, hey, I think it should be suppressed because the officer lied on the affidavit. That would be kind of the basis of a Franks. You got to have more. If that were all you had, the judge would say, you haven't established anything, deny the hearing. So for them to say, well, they wanted the Franks motion and we gave it to them. No, you're required to do that to get to a hearing. Now the Franks motion was 136 pages. I think there were four pages that had to deal with the Frank's motion. I think the rest was just describing the evidence as the defense saw it. I'll leave that comment at that. I guess.

[Anya Cain]

Fair. Did you pay much of any attention to social media throughout this pre trial phase?

[Nicholas McClelland]

Like I said, I would get clips sent to me of different shows, yours included. And so, you know, you would, you would listen to them and just, you've absorbed the information and just take it and just kind of, okay, use it. Just keep it in the back of your mind. Did it influence me one way or, or another to file something or do something? I wouldn't say that. But it, you know, at the end of the day we've got to try this to community members and the public. And so it's interesting to see what the public. It's always interesting for me to see what the public is kind of hanging their hat on. And that can be accomplished through listening to some of the social media and the podcast. But you have to be careful what you listen to. There's some people that are so far out in left field, I'll say that it's just not credible information. So we would take it, but we would take it, I guess with a grain of salt, I'll say that. But it was always interesting to see what people were thinking. And again, these stories and different this is happening and this is happening and how a lot of it was just not true.

[Anya Cain]

This is one of the more, in my opinion, editorializing a bit, I guess, like appalling things that happened sort of in the pre trial phase was just, you know, the leak of images that, that had been, you know, were subject to seal and not supposed to be leaked, obviously. When did you become aware that the, the picture of a bloody tree was, you know, circulating online?

[Nicholas McClelland]

I can't remember if it was and I'm sorry, I can't remember these details, but I can't remember if it was Jerry Holman or Becky Patty that sent me a text with the pictures saying, these pictures are out there. And I, I remember I was at my buddy's house and we were grilling out. I remember when I got the picture or when I got the notice, oh, we were doing something outside and I got the text and I said, how, how, how is this? You just how what, what happened? You know, what, how did this get out there? And then you just start. It's a frenzy to figure out, okay, how did this get out here? And as you guys know, you start to go down the chain of who has these pictures? And tracking who has them on the Internet is one of the toughest things. And scrubbing the Internet of them is an impossible feat. But we did our best to try to do that. But I can't remember if it was Jerry. It was either Jerry Holman. They were very close. I know Jerry Holman. And then Becky, Patty, text me immediately. So they're very close. And, you know, it's heartbreaking to tell the family were looking into it, you know, I mean. And by this time, it was all out. Once it got out on social media, it was like wildfire. Just. I don't know where it got posted first. I can't remember if it was Twitter or some other place.

[Anya Cain]

I think Facebook maybe was that, but it was just.

[Nicholas McClelland]

It seems like everybody had them, and we're reposting them and reposting them. You know, you guys had a big part in that to help us, you know, kind of track down where this was coming from. And so, you know, we appreciate that, but just I had never been in a situation where I have to go track down the source of a picture that is on the Internet, and that I just had no idea what a big feat, you know, what a big.

[Anya Cain]

Task that was, because obviously, it got worse than just the tree photo, which was bad enough, because then it did the pictures of the girls themselves. And, you know, how did you become aware that it was worse than you thought? And, yeah, I think just through the.

[Nicholas McClelland]

Same process, Jerry Holman and I worked on that most of the time and through the family. The family would often times get sent this stuff, or they would see it before I would. We just started digging into it, and, you know, that was the whole point in going forward. The contempt. I was passionate about it enough that I thought the contempt was worth going forward. Absolutely. I could have said, look, I have too much other stuff to work on with the Richard Allen trial. I need to focus on that and put this to bed. To me, it was important enough to put in the time and put in the effort and go through with the hearing.

[Anya Cain]

And I was said very eloquently at the sentencing hearing in particular, again and again about how much this has affected their loved ones and how they are going to have to deal with this for the rest of their lives, and it will never stop. And that is just an added harm.

[Nicholas McClelland]

Yeah, I agree. I agree. I think the family said it best.

[Anya Cain]

As a. As a result of this, this leak, what was it like hearing that another person may have died because of it and possibly taking their own life?

[Nicholas McClelland]

Yeah, I got the call at 3 or 4 in the morning when he passed away. And I mean, I remember the calls from Jerry Holman and he told me what happened and it's heartbreaking and it's just heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking that this case and the actions of some in this case have now brought us to another death. And I'm not saying it's anybody's fault. It's just, it's unfortunate. And when you get a call at 4 in the morning saying, hey, he's passed away, it's. It's shocking.

[Anya Cain]

Lawyers getting kicked off a case. Tell, tell me about that. How. I mean, I guess what was that experience like for you?

[Nicholas McClelland]

That had never happened to me before, but again, never had a case like this before where the crime scene photos had gotten out to the public. So it was a new experience and. It was a new experience.

[Anya Cain]

Yeah. Were you surprised by the Supreme Court of Indiana's ultimate decision on bringing them back on?

[Nicholas McClelland]

I don't know if surprised was the answer. We had talked to the Attorney General's office, I had talked to the Attorney General's office beforehand and we had kind of looked at, you know, the good and bad of the arguments. And so I don't think you're ever really surprised. I wasn't. I guess in that moment I was just hopeful that after they got back on, we could work through it and get the discovery re exchanged. Because that was a big mess where when they got kicked off, we had to gather all the discovery from them, go through it, make sure that it all matched our discovery, give it to the new attorneys, then when they got back on, get it from the new attorneys, make sure it matched all our discovery again and give it back to them. So that was our biggest. As weird as it sounds, that was our biggest concern. Okay, can we got to get this discovery exchanged. We got to go through this process again.

[Kevin Greenlee]

So I think for me, one of the most dramatic episodes in all of this was during the three day hearing, your cross examination of Dr. Perlmutter, which I think at the time I said was like the most devastating cross examination I ever seen, including Perry Mason.

[Nicholas McClelland]

How many of you listeners think you knew that reference to Perry Mason? That's an older show and I'm just curious. I mean, I've seen it a lot of times because obviously you know, he, he always had, somehow he always had that piece of evidence that was able to destroy, you know, the other side's witness. And so I was always, I was curious, how many people in your listeners do you think knew that reference?

[Kevin Greenlee]

Good question.

[Anya Cain]

See, we have a lot of lawyers listening, so I think they.

[Nicholas McClelland]

All right, good.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Anyway, so in that cross exam, you had not just one piece of evidence that destroyed her, you had like dozens that seem. Can you tell us about that? How did you prepare for it? How did it feel?

[Nicholas McClelland]

I prepared for it like I do any expert. You go and you look at their credentials and you look at what they've done. And we, in this case, it was important to also go and look, okay, have they been on any social media or platforms or TV shows, have they said something? And then once you start collecting that and realize that she's making statements about the authenticity of the crime scene before she has evidence, that kind of opens the door and then you just start digging deeper and deeper and deeper. And I think that's where as a defense attorney, it helped me because as a defense attorney, you cross examine state's witnesses all the time and your job, at least in my opinion as defense attorney, is to destroy the credibility of that witness so the jury doesn't believe them. And I think that I just. When I first started being a lawyer, I learned how to ask cross examination questions, not direct examination questions because of the nature of where I was at. I think it's helpful as an prosecutor to help you ask direct examination questions if you have an idea of what the cross examination questions may be. But with her, it just, it, I don't know if it felt anything. It just, I, she. When you paint somebody in a corner where they can only answer one way, and I knew I could do that with her and I knew that there was only. And that's the way I cross examine people. I'm going to ask you questions where you can only answer one way. And so that's just what I did with her. And I mean, it, I mean, it felt good, but I knew that she was going to have to answer this way. There's just no other way she could have answered it. So I knew kind of what, how she was going to answer before I asked the question. And that's, you know, this is a lawyer that's. You don't really want to ask a question you don't know the answer to. I mean, you do sometimes because it's out of necessity, but you really don't want to do that. And so I knew how she was going to answer. And then once you see the clips that she had done online on Court tv, I think, and once you find out these other things, you just realize, look, she's not credible because she's not really given an unbiased opinion. But, yeah, I mean, it feels good. Feels good. When you plan for something, you plan for it to happen a certain way, and it all falls into place and happens that way. It feels good.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Even Bob went afterwards. Compliments.

[Nicholas McClelland]

Sure, sure, I. Yeah, he did.

[Kevin Greenlee]

How did you divide up the work between you and the other attorneys?

[Nicholas McClelland]

Very much a group effort. We kind of all sat down and said, okay, does somebody have a specific area they're interested in or that they want to do? And we kind of just. We were a very group mentality. We. I don't know that we made. Once they were. Once Stacy and Jim came on board, I don't know that we made a decision was made without the whole group talking about it and saying, okay, is this the best move? You know, analyzing it, reanalyzing it? So we divided up where we thought our strengths would play out the best.

[Anya Cain]

So what did that look like? Who kind of got what category?

[Nicholas McClelland]

I took law enforcement from the beginning because I had dealt with law enforcement for the past five, six years at this point, and I just felt comfortable. I knew everything they had done, and it was just going to be easier for me to prepare for them. Stacy took kind of all the trail people, the, the kids that weren't kids by time we came to trial and some of those, and then the mental health stuff, Dr. Walla and Dr. Martin. And then Jim was interested. Well, I don't know if he's interested, but he took the ballistic stuff and the autopsy scene and then Pat Cicero, and those kind of all fit together, kind of the crime. Jim kind of had the crime scene, CSI guys, Pat Cicero, ballistics. Stacy kind of dealt with all the trail people, witnesses, those kind of things. And then I dealt with all law enforcement, and there were a little bit of shootouts, you know, here and there, but that's kind of how we broke it up. And it just kind of naturally fit, I guess.

[Anya Cain]

What does preparing for trial look like for you in this case? And, and, and so can you underscore the amount of work that went into that?

[Nicholas McClelland]

I tried not to tackle this case any different than I would any other case. I, I didn't want the gravity of the case or the, the. I, I guess the, the public. I don't know what I want to Say here, but the fact that it was in the public so much to. To change how I prepare. I do the same thing. I do trial binders. I. I get my. I divide my witnesses up into, you know, separate sections. I go over the questions I'm going to ask them. I go over the evidence they collected and the exhibits I plan to admit through that witness. And I divide him up, divide them up like that. If we have a motion for safekeeping, that gets a section, you know, a motion to suppress. And I do it that way to keep it organized. And in this case, you specifically have to do that because there's so much for us. And Stacy does same thing. She does binders. I don't know what Jim does. He's a little bit older school than me, so I can't really tell you how he organized stuff. But Stacy and I are very much binder oriented where we have to have it, and we have it all very organized, divided by tabs into sections. I mean, this is a trial I have next week. And it just. You divide it up and I do it by witness. And then I put in there all the exhibits, whether it's pictures, whatever it's going to be. Those exhibits are in that section with this one. It's just. It's magnified by, you know, a thousand percent. I mean, you're talking weekends. Every night when you go home, you know, you put the kids to bed at 8, 8:30, you get your computer out, you work on the case. That is the most different thing for me right now is not working on this every spare moment. I mean, the weekends, the nights, it's never ended. I've never put so much work into a case besides that Richard album, that's for sure. In terms of hours, how did you not burn out?

[Anya Cain]

Because that really sounds like a lot.

[Nicholas McClelland]

I don't know. I think for me, I was just focused on I have to do this.

[Kevin Greenlee]

You talked about how you had the relationships with law enforcement. I'm curious. I'm curious to hear more about these people. Who is Tony Liggett? What do you think of Tony Liggett?

[Nicholas McClelland]

Tony Liggett's a sheriff of Carroll county now. He was a detective before that. And Tony and I would work together on a lot of cases because he was one of the lead detectives here in Carroll County. And so he would any. If we had a shooting or if it's fatality of some kind, he would often be the person that was called out in the middle of the night to examine the scene. And he and I Would be on the phone throughout the night saying, okay, what do we do next? What? You know, where do we go from here? So very close relationship. He was a great detective. He's a great officer. Same thing with Steve Mullen. Steve Mullen has been in law enforcement for years and years and years and years. And when I got approved to have an investigator, he's about the first and the only person I went to to try to get him on board as my investigator, because I trust him. He's got a wealth of experience. And so Steve, Tony and I would oftentimes work closely together on all the cases that we had. Same thing with Tobe Lezenby, and he was a sheriff. You know, any arrests that we have, we would just all work very, very close. Family law enforcement and prosecutor's office here in this county. Because it's not a big. I think we have 28 law enforcement officers in the county between the various agencies, you know, Flora pd, Burlington Delphi, Camden, Carroll County Sheriff's Department, dnr, Indiana State Police. So not a lot of people. So just work very close, hand in hand with them. Be on the phone all hours of the night, you know, talking about stuff. So I don't know if that answered.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Your question or not, but you've also mentioned Jerry Holman. What's he like?

[Nicholas McClelland]

Obviously, we have to become very close to try this case. I mean, there's no option. And Jerry Holman and I were friends before because he had worked for ISP and they were involved in other cases. And so I knew Jerry Holman. I knew him when he worked in White county because I was a defense attorney then, and he would be law enforcement on some of the cases I dealt with. So I just knew him from them. And you just become closer to these people because we were meeting weekly before we charge Richard Allen, even after. And then once you're preparing for trial, of course, you know, you spend hours together looking at evidence and getting stuff ready. We would involve law enforcement in. Okay, we're thinking about doing this. What. What's the good and the bad? Tell us the good and the bad about it. So you just all become very close.

[Anya Cain]

How do you prepare a state's witness for a trial like this? And you're working obviously, with law enforcement professionals, so they're perhaps more used to testifying, but sure. What sort of things are you telling them? As we're kind of going into trial.

[Nicholas McClelland]

Like any witness, whether it's a citizen or a layperson or law enforcement, I typically will bring them in and go over the topics we're going to cover, you know, we want to cover this. We want to talk about this. I will explain. If it's a person who's never been in court before, I try to show them the courtroom. I show them where they're going to be sitting. I try to explain the process to them of how, how it works. You know, I'll get asked you questions first and the defense will get asked you questions. I always try to go over with them topics we're going to cover and then I'll always talk about what I think the defense is going to ask them. So they're prepared just like you'd prepare for anything. I try to make them as comfortable because a lot of people that we have as witnesses have never been in court. I mean, never. And it's. Well, even if you're not, you know, the one being accused, just nerve wracking. And we deal with victims. And if you're the victim of a case, take a victim of child molest. Imagine how hard it is for an 8, 9, 10, 11 year old, or even an adult to talk about their last sexual experience in front of 12 jurors, a judge, a prosecutor, a defense attorney. Oh, yeah, and your perpetrator. And so we just try to. I try to prepare them and make them as comfortable as possible in the situation and try to go over everything I can. I always answer all their questions if they have questions about it. But I do that with any, for any case, with any witness. I mean, even law enforcement. I'll. These are the topics we want to cover. Did you read your report? You know, we'll go. If they took pictures of the crime scene, do you remember taking these pictures? What stuck out to you in these pictures? And just that kind of thing. Like you'd prepare anybody. Yeah.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Moving into the trial, we've actually did a whole episode with Tim Sled, who I think is a friend of yours.

[Nicholas McClelland]

Yes. Graduated from Delphi. Yes.

[Kevin Greenlee]

One of our more popular guests.

[Anya Cain]

Everyone loves Tim.

[Nicholas McClelland]

Yep.

[Kevin Greenlee]

He talked about the art of jury selection. So I'm curious, what do you look for when you're in that process?

[Nicholas McClelland]

Oh, gosh, I mean, I hate to. I don't. I didn't listen the episode to Tim. I'll have to. Tim's a very good friend of mine. I, I enjoy Tim. He was a mentor of mine as well. And I almost took a job down in Bloomington. He was working in Monroe county prosecutor's office when I graduated and I almost took a job down there a lot because of him. I Said it not to, but I don't know what Tim told you, but a lot of it's gut. A lot of it is just, you know, do you feel the connection with the person? Do you like the answers that they gave you? Are there any concerns? We have jury questionnaires, so we know a little bit of information about them. This questionnaire in this case was way more extensive than what you usually get. Usually you get their name, their address, where they work, if they have kids, whether they have criminal charges, and whether or not they've been on jury duty before. This one was way more extensive. So we had a little bit more information, but I think you just kind of gotta trust your gut and trust your instincts and, you know, make sure they answer the questions the way you, you know, you want them to answer. And.

[Anya Cain]

Yeah, so, I mean, our observation, and I think this has been borne out, but the jury really liked you in our. In our opinion. How did you do that?

[Nicholas McClelland]

I do that with all the juries. I think I really have difficulty. Stacey will probably disagree with me, but I really have difficulty patting myself on the back or saying I something. And I have trouble taking compliments. But I really think what I do well is talk to people and communicate with people and kind of get on the same level with people. And so anytime I go to pick a jury, I just, you know, fortunately, most of the time I have the luxury of picking a jury here where I know them or their family, and I have this association. I can make an association with them. But even when I've done stuff out of county, I just try to talk to them like we're talking here. I mean, what you want to do in jury selection is get to know the person you want to get to know as much as you can how they think their life experiences that makes them think that way, and then how they're going to interpret the evidence that you're going to present. And so I don't think talking to him in legalese. Kevin's probably heard that word before, or using legal terms is beneficial. I would rather just let's have a conversation about anything. Let's just get you talking. Because jurors are always. Not always. Jurors oftentimes are nervous to be there, and they don't want to talk to you, and they definitely don't want to answer personal questions about themselves in front of everybody else. And so the way I always do it is just try to talk to them like you would your neighbor or a friend.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Thanks very much to prosecutor McClelland. For taking the time to talk to us. We so appreciate it. Thanks so much for listening to the Murder Sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email [e-mail] if you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.

[Anya Cain]

If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at www.patreon.com murdersheet. If you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests, you can do so at www. Buymeacoffee.com murdersheet. We very much appreciate any support.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee, who composed the music for the Murder Sheet and who you can find on the [e-mail] if you're looking to talk with.

[Anya Cain]

Other listeners about a case we've covered, you can join the Murder Sheet discussion group on Facebook. We mostly focus our time on research and reporting, so we're not on social media much. We do try to check our email account, but we ask for patience as we often receive a lot of messages. Thanks again for listening.

[Kevin Greenlee]

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[Kevin Greenlee]

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[Kevin Greenlee]

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[Anya Cain]

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[Anya Cain]

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[Kevin Greenlee]

You've gotten a lot of compliments when you go out wearing these sweaters.

[Anya Cain]

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[Kevin Greenlee]

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[Anya Cain]

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[Kevin Greenlee]

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[Anya Cain]

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[Kevin Greenlee]

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[Anya Cain]

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[Anya Cain]

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