The Delphi Murders: Richard Allen on Trial: Day Fifteen: Allen's Family Speaks

Summary

The Murder Sheet Podcast Episode Summary
Title: The Delphi Murders: Richard Allen on Trial: Day Fifteen: Allen's Family Speaks
Release Date: November 5, 2024
Host: Áine Cain and Kevin Greenlee
Description: In this episode of The Murder Sheet, hosts Áine Cain and Kevin Greenlee delve into Day Fifteen of Richard Allen's trial for the brutal murders of Abigail Williams and Liberty German. The focus is primarily on testimonies from Allen's family members, psychological evaluations, defense strategies, and challenging jury questions.

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1. Housekeeping and Acknowledgments [03:32 - 05:14]

• Áine Kane begins by expressing gratitude to the podcast's lifesavers: Kay, Sierra, and Julie, who risk adverse conditions to provide continuous coverage of the trial.

  [03:39] Áine: “Thank you so much to the lifesavers from today, specifically K, Sierra, and Julie. You guys saved our lives...”

• Kevin Greenlee highlights the growing challenge of securing seats for afternoon sessions due to increased public interest.

2. Overview of Day Fifteen [02:00 - 02:34]

• Brad Weber and Áine Kane introduce the day's proceedings, indicating multiple family members of Richard Allen testified, providing critical insights into Allen's background and mental state.

3. Psychological Evaluation of Richard Allen [07:20 - 27:51]

• Brad Weber and Áine Kane discuss Dr. Polly Westcott's testimony, a neurological and forensic psychologist hired by the defense. Dr. Westcott's comprehensive report spans over 100 pages, analyzing Allen's mental health history and its potential impact on his behavior.

  [16:24] Brad: “...she generated a report on Richard Allen that was actually in excess of 100 pages.”

• Key Findings from Dr. Westcott:

  1. Fragile Egg Metaphor: Allen is depicted as "a fragile egg" with a long history of mental health issues, making him highly susceptible to stressors.

     [23:28] Áine: “She said, quote, essentially, he's a fragile egg...”

  2. Dependent Personality Disorder: Allen exhibits traits of this disorder, relying heavily on his wife, Kathy Allen, and his mother for emotional support.

     [20:20] Áine: “...he feels very worthless. He really relies on Kathy and to a lesser extent, his mother, Janice, to tell him that he's worthwhile.”

  3. Cognitive Decline: Evidence suggests a deterioration in Allen's cognitive functions, such as handwriting quality and fragmented communication.

     [30:28] Brad: “Dr. Westcott wanted to indicate that she feels there's been a decline in the quality of Richard Allen's handwriting.”

• Defense Strategy: The defense aims to portray Allen as mentally unstable, potentially reducing his culpability by attributing his actions to mental health issues.

4. Cross-Examination and Jury Questions [29:35 - 50:34]

• Cross-Examination of Dr. Westcott:

  • Stacy Diener, the prosecutor, challenges the comprehensiveness of Dr. Westcott's report, questioning why only 30 to 50 of Dr. Walla's (another psychologist) notes were reviewed.

    [37:32] Brad: “...rose admitted she saw only 30 to 50 of Dr. Wallace reports. Why such a limited number?”

  • Controversial Findings: Dr. Westcott notes that Allen's confessions, such as attributing the murders to Satan, are incompatible with the facts, raising concerns about his mental state during these admissions.

    [38:23] Brad: “...she noted confessions that were incompatible with the facts of the case.”

• Jury Questions:

  1. Feasibility of Faking Psychosis:

     [46:35] Juror: “If Richard Allen had the common sense to fear for his safety, would he have the common sense to fake psychosis?”
     [46:35] Áine: “He was more scared in the lead-up to his psychotic episodes, but that predated some of his most extreme behavior.”

  2. Impact of Childhood Depression and Anxiety:

     [47:00] Juror: “If someone has depression and anxiety as a child, could it cause them to commit crimes as an adult?”
     [47:00] Áine: “It depends on the person. In Richard Allen's case, he was more passive and subdued.”

  3. Dr. Westcott’s Review of Police Interviews:

     [47:34] Juror: “Did you watch the police interviews of Richard Allen?”
     [47:34] Dr. Westcott: “No, those interviews show a different personality.”

5. Defense Witnesses and Strategy [50:34 - 99:55]

• Max Baker's Testimony:

  • Witness Presentation: Max Baker, a young man working for the defense, presents edited cell videos of Allen showing erratic behavior such as head-banging and eating feces. The defense argues these behaviors depict Allen as a victim rather than a perpetrator.

    [51:21] Brad: “...max Baker presented videos showing Allen in distress inside his cell.”

  • Cross-Examination Challenges: Prosecutor Nicholas McLean questions the selection of clips, suggesting they are cherry-picked to evoke sympathy.

    [53:38] Brad: “Max Baker was trying to show different aspects of Allen’s life in prison, but McLean accused him of curating these clips to curry sympathy for Allen.”

• Family Testimonies: Britney Zaponta and Jamie Jones:

  • Jamie Jones (Allen’s Half-Sister):

    [59:21] Jamie clarifies that Richard Allen never molested her or touched her sexually, reinforcing Allen's non-violent nature towards family.

  • Britney Zaponta (Allen’s Daughter):

    [61:07] Britney states she was never molested by her father and expresses love but refuses to lie for him, adding credibility to her statements.

• Shelby Hicks' Testimony:

  • Evidence Presentation: Shelby Hicks recounts her presence at the Monon High Bridge on the day of the murders, providing an alibi for her boyfriend, Daniel Pearson.

    [67:13] Shelby and her boyfriend arrived at the bridge, met with someone named Dave McCain, and reported their presence to law enforcement promptly.

  • Defense Strategy: The defense attempts to introduce alternative theories, such as online speculation about a white van presence, to create reasonable doubt.

    [74:21] Brad: “...the defense tried to suggest that social media references to a white van might imply another suspect.”

• Brad Weber's Own Testimony:

  • Cooperation with Law Enforcement: Brad emphasizes his cooperation, detailing his interactions with police and clarifying discrepancies in his statements.

    [85:07] Brad: “I went home and didn't say anything unusual until prompted by law enforcement later.”

  • Cross-Examination Tactics: Prosecutors attempt to undermine his credibility by highlighting inconsistencies, but Brad maintains composure, reinforcing his reliability.

6. Judge's Rulings and Procedural Insights [50:34 - 106:19]

• Objections and Sidebars: Multiple objections are raised regarding the relevance and certification of evidence. Judge Gull maintains strict oversight, ensuring only pertinent evidence is presented.

  [77:04] Áine: “Judge Gull emphasized that without seeing the evidence, she couldn’t rule on objections.”

• Offer of Proof Incident: Prosecutor Andrew Baldwin attempts to introduce statements from Kevin Murphy regarding the investigation's direction towards multiple suspects, but Nicholas McLean objects, questioning Murphy's affiliation with the Unified Command.

  [101:00] Brad: “Andrew Baldwin tried to assert that Kevin Murphy represented the Unified Command's beliefs, which McLean disputed.”

7. Analysis and Insights [99:55 - End]

• Defense Performance Critique:
  Áine and Brad express disappointment with the defense's performance, noting a lack of compelling evidence and reliance on weak alternative theories. They highlight moments where the defense seemed to struggle with effective strategy, such as the mishandling of witness testimonies and overreliance on unrelated anecdotes.

  [101:13] Áine: “If the defense hoped Judge Gull would change her mind on Odinism, they did their client a disservice.”

• Strength of Prosecution's Case:
  The hosts commend the prosecution for maintaining focus on substantial evidence, effectively countering the defense's attempts to sow doubt through unrelated or minimally relevant information.

• Final Thoughts:
  As the trial progresses, Áine and Brad emphasize the importance of presenting solid evidence and maintaining credibility. They express skepticism about the defense's strategies and anticipate a concluding phase where the prosecution's case remains strong.

---

Notable Quotes

• Áine Kane [03:39]: “Thank you so much to the lifesavers from today, specifically K, Sierra, and Julie. You guys saved our lives...”

• Áine Kane [23:28]: “She said, quote, essentially, he's a fragile egg...”

• Brad Weber [46:35]: “If Richard Allen had the common sense to fear for his safety, would he have the common sense to fake psychosis?”

• Jamie Jones [59:21]: “I was never molested by my father, Richard Allen.”

• Britney Zaponta [61:07]: “I love my father, but I would not lie for him.”

---

Conclusion

Day Fifteen of Richard Allen's trial presented critical insights into his mental health and familial relationships. The prosecution's robust evidence and effective counter to the defense's strategies have maintained the momentum of the case. Family testimonies and psychological evaluations paint a complex picture of Allen's character, potentially influencing the jury's perception. As the trial nears its conclusion, the focus remains on substantiated evidence and the effectiveness of both prosecution and defense in presenting their narratives.

For listeners seeking in-depth coverage of true crime cases, The Murder Sheet continues to provide detailed analyses and expert insights, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of ongoing trials and their broader implications within the criminal justice system.

Transcript

[Anya Kane]

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[Kevin Greenlee]

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[Anya Kane]

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[Anya Kane]

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[Anya Kane]

Content Warning this episode contains discussion of the brutal murder of two girls, as well as mental health issues, including suicide.

[Brad Weber]

Well, quite a lot happened in the trial of Richard Allen today for the murders of Abigail Williams and Liberty German. We heard from several witnesses, including a couple of members of Allen's own family. So we'll get into everything they had to say in just a moment.

[Anya Kane]

My name is Anya Kane, I'm a.

[Brad Weber]

Journalist and I'm Kevin Greenlee.

[Anya Kane]

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

[Brad Weber]

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

[Anya Kane]

We're the murder sheet and this is the Delphi Murders. Richard Allen on trial, day 15. Allen's family speaks.

[Brad Weber]

Well, as we have been doing lately. Let's start with some housekeeping. Anya, can you tell us about the newest lifesavers?

[Anya Kane]

Yes. Thank you so much to the lifesavers from today, specifically K, Sierra and Julie. You guys saved our lives and you just have our eternal appreciation. Thank you for doing this and braving the elements and braving the rain to help us get into trial every day. That's our goal, to try to cover this as much as we can. And we would not be able to do that and bring you any of this information if it weren't for Kay, Sierra, Julie and all the other lifesavers. So thank you.

[Brad Weber]

Yeah. People literally start lining up for the next day's session before the previous days end. So we couldn't do it without the help of people like you. And our gratitude is eternal.

[Anya Kane]

Yes.

[Brad Weber]

Before we get into the substance of the day, let's also talk about the fact that the line situation has grown to the extent that it is now becoming more and more of a challenge to get into the afternoon sessions as well.

[Anya Kane]

And it's unlikely that we'll be able to consistently get in at this point anymore.

[Brad Weber]

At this point, I'll tell you that actually today in line, someone was like, mouthing off. Is that fair to say?

[Anya Kane]

Well, someone was pretty mad. Yeah.

[Brad Weber]

And they were removed in order not to return to court.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, there was. There was a conflict. I don't like conflict. I don't like being immersed in this. I really don't.

[Brad Weber]

And Anya actually left the morning session before it ended to try to secure us a spot in the line and she wasn't in time. So Anya would not have been able to get in to see the afternoon session were it not for the fact that, and this may surprise some of you, Anthony Greeno gave up his seat so Anya could see what happened in court.

[Anya Kane]

It was. It was really kind and I just want him to know greatly appreciate it and thank you. Yeah, it was. It was rough today with the line. It seems like people are telling people to come earlier and earlier. Some people are arriving and only staying for like five minutes and then leaving. And then those seats don't fill back up. You know what I mean? Because the deputies are not. The deputies goals are to keep everyone safe. They're not to make sure that the maximal seating is optimized. So if people are intending to only show up for a few minutes. We would just ask you consider that there are a lot of people who've been trying to cover this robustly, and those seats could maybe be put to use for them rather than, you know, it's just not necessarily a good use, I think, when you have people trying to get into the public access issues and actually report on this, including journalists from, you know, mainstream outlets who are also getting back in line so that they can cover it as robustly as possible. So I'm just, you know, just a. Just a note there.

[Brad Weber]

Yeah. I'm actually surprised by the number of people, including people who say they've traveled from other states and who stand in line for hours and then who only attend a half hour or less of the hearing.

[Anya Kane]

No shade. Because, like, I get it, everyone's curious. It's just that a lot of people are really trying to get in to actually cover it all day so that others can have information. And I feel like that's maximizing the utility here. And again, when you leave, no one's coming rushing in to fill that seat. It's just going to be empty. So just something to consider.

[Brad Weber]

Well, with all of that said, should we just get right into the first witness of the morning?

[Anya Kane]

Sure. Let's see. So, Brad Rosie called Dr. Polly Westcott to the stand.

[Brad Weber]

And I want to say, generally speaking, I thought he did a great job with this witness.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, 100%.

[Brad Weber]

And I would say this witness, in my opinion, is probably the strongest witness that the defense has produced so far, even though there were some interesting things about this witness that we were discussed.

[Anya Kane]

I'll say this, though, Kevin, I thought Dr. Dwenger was great, but she was a great prosecution witness. Based on what she was saying and the facts she was laying down, she was very good. She was a very professional, competent woman. But what she had to say tended to favor the prosecution in my mind.

[Brad Weber]

And I thought Rosie, by and large, did a great job with this witness. But one thing that I thought was a little interesting, and maybe there was a reason for this that somehow escaped me that you will be able to elucidate and help me understand the first or second question he asked this woman, this neurological psychologist, he asked her how old she was.

[Anya Kane]

Oh, I mean, they've been asking that of different people. Yeah. No, if you've missed that. Well, sometimes they ask them how to spell their names, and then sometimes they ask them, like, and their age, but that's not okay.

[Brad Weber]

This is the first time I noticed it. Maybe I.

[Anya Kane]

There's been a Couple of other ones. I wasn't surprised by that, but no, yeah, I think that that was something he's been asking different people, maybe, maybe with a nod to the news because sometimes the news likes to put how people whole, how old people are.

[Brad Weber]

So would you like that if I said, Anya, how do you spell your name and how old you are?

[Anya Kane]

I'm not embarrassed about my age. I mean, I don't, I don't think there's anything to be made of that. I think, Rosie, to expand upon your point, I think he did a good job laying this out. I think he did a good job sort of asking questions to tell a story, to direct the witness. And we've been hard on Rosie in this trial. There's been times where we've been sort of unimpressed with his performance. But I think today he did a really good job and I wanted to give him credit for that in terms of kind of laying it all out.

[Brad Weber]

He had a clear road map with this witness which he followed in a way that was easy for everybody to follow. And also because of that, the witness was relatively brief. I think maybe under two hours.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, it was like, you know, and like we got the information and I want to say about it feels that.

[Brad Weber]

The Rosie of two weeks ago, this would have been an all day witness.

[Anya Kane]

I think Rosie, like Rosie for the cross examinations, he's like, gets to expansive in his goals and it kind of just goes overboard. But when he has a specific mission for a direct examination, it was good. It was, it was a good, good job. And this of course is a neuropsychologist who is based in the sort of Carmel, Indiana area.

[Brad Weber]

She's also a forensic psychologist. And what the devil does that mean?

[Anya Kane]

Well, I mean, like kind of her definition confused me a little bit. So if you have anything to bolster but like something about kind of understanding mental health as it pertains to legal concepts as well. So she's basically coming into, you know, determine if someone's competent to stand trial or if they're feigning symptoms. Is that kind of how she defined it?

[Brad Weber]

Yeah, basically.

[Anya Kane]

I don't know if that's like the technical definition, but she sort of defined it as far as like how it serves her in court. And with the neuropsychologist element, she talked about how it's almost like the science and bridging the gap between med, the medical world and the mental health world. Like almost understanding how neurological function can influence one's behavior.

[Brad Weber]

And Dr. Westcott was hired by the defense team in May of 2023 and she is charging them $450 an hour for her work.

[Anya Kane]

But you know, that's, that's probably pretty standard, I would imagine when you have experts coming in, they're going to need to get paid. And it was, it was smart for Rosie to ask that upfront so that the prosecution didn't ask it and be like, make a big deal about, or make it sound sketchy. This is, this is standard. So he's basically saying he's kind of a, you want to kind of get ahead of stuff like that where you don't want anyone making it sound weird.

[Brad Weber]

And it's also worth noting that she has a great deal of experiencing testifying both in depositions and in court courtrooms. She says that she has testified a total of 72 times and about 25 of those times are in court. And she indicated that she has worked at times for the prosecution and other cases just for the defense. That's something a lawyers like to bring out because if someone comes across as an expert, sometimes people assume, oh, this is just a person that the defense always calls.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, they pay them to say whatever they want and saying, no, sometimes I work for the prosecution. And in fact she even did contract work at times for the Indiana State Police. It just shows that she's not just saying it because someone's paying her.

[Brad Weber]

Yes.

[Anya Kane]

And that's a fair thing to bring out. And yeah, we kind of went into her CV and then we started getting into this sort of process that she does in terms of looking at, I guess, people when she's trying to like do a neuropsychology analysis on them.

[Brad Weber]

Yes. And what was that process?

[Anya Kane]

I wrote down like the numbers. Hopefully I got all of them. One, she looks at their mental health history to understand the context of who the person is. Number two, she does a neuropsychological examination. And three, she author offers her opinion on the breadth and context of the person in this case, Richard Allen, and looking at his decline. And she also wanted in this case to look at the context of his confessions in terms of how he was doing while incarcerated.

[Brad Weber]

So, yes, and she actually indicated that she felt that she got an unusual amount of information about Richard Allen because so much of his life is being documented, or at least it was being documented while he was at Westville. So much of his life is being recorded on video in one form or another. And also he was on suicide watch a big chunk of the time, which meant that he had these so called suicide companions who as you may recall their entire job was basically to be outside his door, keeping an eye on him and reporting on any unusual or disturbing behavior. So she says that she had access to much if not all of that material, which she used to help her form some sort of a preliminary view about Richard Allen. But then of course she did more than that because she actually went to Westville to meet Richard Allen in August of 23 and she did an evaluation there. The process took I think about seven hours, she said, and it was done over two days.

[Anya Kane]

Two hour interview and then testing five to six hours. Is that what you got?

[Brad Weber]

Yes.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah. And so two days sometimes. Yeah.

[Brad Weber]

And then at some point after that she went and talked to Kathy Alice.

[Anya Kane]

Yes. And she said she learned about his mental health, his childhood, and I guess we'll get into what she, she kind of went over the summary of think of his mental health history. Next.

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[Anya Kane]

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[Brad Weber]

I-Y-O.com yeah, and she indicated that she generated a report on Richard Allen that was actually in excess of 100 pages.

[Anya Kane]

And so she was going to kind of refer that and discuss her findings with the jury as directed by Rosie. So we start out with Richard Allen as a child. She said that he was a very anxious and fearful person from early childhood. She later on indicated that Richard Allen's biological father abandoned the family.

[Brad Weber]

Yes. And she also which may have helped engender some rejection and abandonment issues. He also Had a lot of anxieties about school as a child. He would fear when he went to school, he would worry that he would never be able to return home. And also he would worry that while he was at school something terrible could happen to his family. So you just worry both ways.

[Anya Kane]

Sounds like almost some sort of pretty extreme separation anxiety for a child. I mean, like, he's upset about being separated from his family. That's a big part of this. Oh, go ahead.

[Brad Weber]

I think she also indicated that he was very, very worried about what others thought of him. And we got some indications of that also in some of the police interviews, I believe.

[Anya Kane]

Yes, he, he indicated that he very is concerned about what other people think of him. He often thinks people think badly of him and that makes him more of a closed off person. She said that when he got to adulthood, he actually at times was medicated for his anxiety, but that his anxiety ultimately led to bouts of severe depression.

[Brad Weber]

Which would make him feel worthless. And she indicated that when he experienced external stressors, he would crumble and fall apart. She said he had a lot of anxiety about failing at work, and she felt that that was largely not based in reality because over the course of his life, he basically has three jobs, each of which lasted for a long time. But one problem he would have is that when he would be promoted at work into like a managerial or supervisory position, it would then fall on him, of course, to like, give orders to other people and tell them what to do. But that would give him anxiety, that they would resent him and just give him more and more worry about everything.

[Anya Kane]

And, and she indicated a number of times since she said this, it would end a lot of these things. These stressors would end up with him, quote, curling up in a ball, crying, end quote. And that when that happened, sometimes he would really fall apart at work and it would, it would fall to his wife, Kathy Allen, to really put him back together and support him during that time. And what would typically happen would be he would get demoted from the managerial position. But they liked Richard Allen and so they wouldn't fire him. They would just bring him back down to whatever position he'd be in. But that would also worsen his feelings because it was like, I, I'm failing, I'm not providing for my family enough. I, I kind of rise to this part and then it come crashing down. So all of this was kind of a, kind of a pattern of behavior where he's concerned about how he's doing and, and external stressors that may not be an external stressor for you and me. Like, I think for a lot of people, if you get promoted, that definitely adds a lot of stress, but it's not necessarily something that's going to knock you down so hard as that in every situation, barring specific circumstances.

[Brad Weber]

I suppose you kind of mentioned something a second ago that the doctor returned to you, mentioned how he would crumble and then he would need Kathy basically to put him back together again. She talked about Richard Allen as having dependent personality disorder. Can you talk about what that means and especially the role Kathy plays in that?

[Anya Kane]

Well, what she indicated is that for someone with dependent personality disorder, this is a personality disorder which is a. Which is a type of mental illness. And what it. What it kind of gets into is alone, quote, he feels very worthless. He really relies on Kathy and to a lesser extent, his mother, Janice, to tell him that he's worthwhile. It's like this is her a quote, quote. It's like they can't function alone, end quote. So this is a situation where people with this really need someone else really need. You know, there's feelings of possible abandonment. She likened it to a vein, I believe, bringing nutrients to sustain somebody, and indicated that this kind of came into fruition at one point, because at one point Richard Allen was living far from his wife for work reasons, and she and her. The daughter Britney would come visit him on the weekends and whatnot, but it wasn't enough, and he ended up completely collapsing over that, too, at some point. And so it's. It's very much a real personality disorder. She's saying Richard Allen had that and that Kathy was the center of that. He was. She was the person he was dependent on.

[Brad Weber]

One thing that complicates that for me, and that wasn't. This is something that was not specifically discussed in court today, but it has been discussed previously. There have been references to Richard Allen cheating on his wife.

[Anya Kane]

Yes, there are.

[Brad Weber]

And I'm just curious about how that would play into this dependent personality disorder. I know you don't have an answer to that because we're not experts, but I'm curious.

[Anya Kane]

I'm really curious, too. I'll also be curious, and I don't know the answer to this. I don't. I think the answer is probably no. But does this mean that Kathy Allen would possibly have dependent personality disorder? I don't think. I don't think it. I don't think him having it means that she does. I know people have kind of talked about, like, codependency and stuff, but I Think that might be a separate thing. So I don't think we should assume anything with. With Kathy Allen. Just because he may have had this doesn't mean that she was necessarily as dependent on him. And without knowing more about the nature of their relationship, it's just interesting to kind of get more. The dynamics. We had said in some of his video interviews with law enforcement, he kept saying, well, I need to ask my wife. I need to ask my wife. At the time, that seemed kind of performative to me, because then when she comes onto the picture in the interview with Jerry Holman, he's telling her what to think. You know, I know, you know, I didn't do this. And it seems sort of like, okay, like he's. He's saying, I need to check with my wife for everything. But then he's also basically telling her, like, it's. It doesn't really seem like she's in a dominant role there, but it's possible that this can just look different across. I mean, like, I don't know. I mean, we're not psychologists, so it could look. It could look different at different times or, you know, it's. But it's one angle where this. This professional is saying, yeah, I feel like that is. Is the case. And the. The next part was she talked about the conclusions of her report. And I thought this was a very interesting quote.

[Brad Weber]

I think I know what you're about to say.

[Anya Kane]

She said, quote, essentially, he's a fragile egg. She talked about Richard Allen being a very, very fragile egg. He came into this world a little egg, and his shell is not very strong, and he's basically, you know, getting to the point where he is, you know, having some. Having some struggles, I guess, and the stressors just tend to really knock him out.

[Brad Weber]

Right.

[Anya Kane]

So the one. The first part of her conclusions was that the fragile egg, in essence, was that, number one, Alan has a long history of mental health issues. He's a fragile egg. That's point number one.

[Brad Weber]

Point. Number one.

[Anya Kane]

Point number two is that she wanted to get into lying, exaggerating, malingering. And what she indicated was, through her work, there are certain, I believe, objective tests that can be done. Is that the phrase that they kept using?

[Brad Weber]

Yes.

[Anya Kane]

Where, you know, like, there's. It's like assessments where you can basically see in the way the questions are answered if someone is either under reporting exaggerating or feigning behavior. And, you know, she looked through the records, the audio and the videotapes as well, to try to look for inconsistencies. And things like that. And they kind of just like, like I think Rosie, like we kind of ended this. But she later went back and said that she in the tests did not see any evidence of feigning or malingering. So when he's doing those cognitive tests, when he's doing those psychological tests, he's answering things in a way that seem consistent to this expert, that don't seem like he's just saying it to like seem crazy or whatever.

[Brad Weber]

Then the third part of her conclusions weren't that more about his ways of thinking. She kept on saying that Richard Allen is slow to think or to understand. She said, quote, his thinking is slow, his problem solving isn't great. He has a tendency to obsess over the same thing for a long time. He has a hard time jumping from one thing to another. He tends to ruminate a lot. He has a constant fear of failure. It just keeps worrying about things. He decides he's a bad person and just obsesses over it. Is that basically what this third point was about?

[Anya Kane]

Yes. And I kind of got the sense, and I don't know if this was explicitly stated that whatever slowness he was having got a lot worse in prison, although I did. It doesn't ness like she's not able to say she can't go back in time and talk to pre prison Richard Allen. But she was saying he was functioning at a very low level in terms of some of that stuff. Four, she's looking at the decline in his physical and mental health, his suicidal ideation, the mumbling he does, possible psychosis, hallucinations, delusions, which are false beliefs and things where he's just kind of staring off, defecating and eating it and drinking in the toilet and banging his head. So at this point, I believe it was Stacy Diener who was doing the cross, made some sort of objection and Judge Gull kind of indicated, you know, to the jury that whatever they were talking about wasn't substantive. But I think, you know, the basically kind of his, his downfall 5 was all about the totality, I guess, and, and finding that this, this Westcott thinks that he has major depressive disorder and that when that hit, when someone with that hits a severe level of stress and, you know, depression, that that person can go into psychosis. So major depressive disorder. With psychosis, he's not, he doesn't have schizophrenia. He doesn't have a psychotic disorder. He has something else that can lead to psychosis. It sounds like when there's situations where someone's not Taking care of themselves and is kind of spiraling.

[Brad Weber]

Yeah. And what I'm curious about, and which I think wasn't really addressed, or maybe it was, and I missed it. If he now has this major depressive disorder and is capable of having stress which can lead to psychosis, is this something that she believes only developed after he was incarcerated? Or does she believe that the Richard Allen who suffered from depression and stress his entire life, was he always capable of having stress which would lead him into psychotic episodes even prior to his incarceration? And if so, could he have committed acts of violence while in one of those psychotic episodes?

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, that was kind of where. Yeah, I think you put it very bluntly, and I think it's. That's an area where I thought this was a great witness. But there's some of her conclusions that certainly in. I think the jury questions reflect this, certainly kind of get to the point where, like, okay, yes, but can a mentally ill person do a bad crime? And I think everyone knows the answer is yes. And if this guy is basically falling apart constantly over minor work issues because. Because of his mental illness, because of his issues, because of his personality disorder, then is it possible that he could have been set off years earlier and possibly done something horrible? And the answer, again, seems to be that the jury think that the people in the jury were kind of asking about things.

[Brad Weber]

And we'll get to that.

[Anya Kane]

We'll get to that. But it's like, it's a fair point. So something like this is like, what I was really looking for is, is this witness going to be able to knock down the confessions more? So. But there's one more thing. Six was factors, you know, like him being higher stress, being very dependent on his wife, and solitary confinement. So those were, like, all the things she was sort of looking at. She said, quote, all of those factors, all those facts impute. Richard Allen basically says, I can't even read my own handwriting. But basically, could all these things kind of change his brain chemistry? And her finding was, yes. Like, if she's. If he's going through all this, it can. It can lead to some bad stuff happening for him.

[Brad Weber]

And you mentioned your bad handwriting, which kind of flows neatly into the next topic.

[Anya Kane]

Because I want Dr. Westcott to tell me what the heck is wrong with me based on my handwriting. I think she'd just look at it and just, like, run. I mean, like, I. It's really bad.

[Brad Weber]

And yes, yes, it is. There's. There's no excuse for it.

[Anya Kane]

Like, this woman just went through a High stress, terrible incident. It's like, no, just living my life here.

[Brad Weber]

I'm not gonna lie and say it' Handwriting.

[Anya Kane]

Well, you know what. What?

[Brad Weber]

Shabbat. So Dr. Westcott wanted to indicate that she feels there's been a decline in the quality of Richard Allen's handwriting. She talked about back shortly after his arrest in November of 2022. He wrote a letter to the court asking for help with a public defender. And of course, more recently, he has written confessions indicating he's guilty of the crime he's charged with. And she feels that there is a decline in the quality of the handwriting. It has deteriorated. And she also indicates that his writing seems to be more fragmented and not as coherent.

[Anya Kane]

And they actually used as an example is November 9, 2022, letter to the court asking for help, asking for. To get attorneys. And Stacy Diener was very adamant that that not, you know, they don't like go over that too much aside from the handwriting. So they did that. There was a sidebar. Then I wrote down at this point, very well spoken, best defense witness for the defense. Slash their goals so far. Because I was impressed with Dr. Westcott. I thought she was informative and reasonable and just sort of well spoken on the stand. I just thought she did a good job breaking down all that she had done and the work. And it. It seems like, you know, I feel like she was definitely good. Although there were some stuff on cross that not. Not her fault, but I think just kind of. There was the process. The state got some knocks in here, but. But I thought generally she did great.

[Brad Weber]

You want to jump to cross?

[Anya Kane]

Is there other stuff? They kind of went over the letter. I'm trying to look. They went over the objective tests. I want to go over this a little bit. They talked about personality tests. So they went over the. I think it was the ncmi. Is that right?

[Brad Weber]

Yeah, I think so.

[Anya Kane]

She talks about several different testing and comprehension. And these are supposed to be objective tests that look for personal. Both personality disorders and also personality features. These are like lifelong traits. So, you know, whether or not you're an introvert or an extrovert, or if you have a mental health issue like bipolar, depression, anxiety, and also malingering and under. Under reporting. And I believe she. This got into a big debate with Diener, who's very much kind of ready with the kind of objections today and sort of saying, you know, you're going to talk about this one test, but you wouldn't give us, the prosecution, all of the tests. And this went back and forth A lot where the. Where Rosie was like, well, we gave you this other thing. And Diener's like, yeah, but you didn't give us all the tests that we asked for. And he's like, well, you could have deposed Dr. Westcott. And she's like, whether or not we want to depose Dr. Westcott's irrelevant. And I think Gull at one point was like, that's a discovery issue. Discovery goes both ways.

[Brad Weber]

Yeah.

[Anya Kane]

I mean, so there was a. There was some. Some back and forth there. In all fairness, discovery is mutual and not exclusive, said Judge Gaul. And then they ended up kind of doing something a bit different. But some things. On his personality tests, Richard Allen keeps to himself. Richard Allen is extremely dependent. Richard Allen avoids conflict and confrontation. Richard Allen fears rejection. Richard Allen tends to be quiet. Richard Allen pulls away. So these are some different. You know, he's not very resilient. He has a lot of. He's got a lot of issues. And I was just kind of thinking one thing about the. She really emphasized passiveness, lack of confrontation. And I think I'm. You know, I don't doubt this expert, obviously, but when we saw the video of him interacting, especially with Liggett and Mullen, I didn't get the lack of confrontation there.

[Brad Weber]

No, I didn't.

[Anya Kane]

He literally walks out of the room yelling that Mullen is an asshole. After what I felt was Mullen being pretty quiet and calm. It's not like Mullen gets in his face. He's. He's getting pissed. I could see the lack of confrontation in that. He takes a long time to actually leave, whereas I feel like a lot of other people will be like, get me out of here. But he. He. He seems to be voicing anger, frustration, things like that pretty readily. So, yeah, I mean, did you. Did. Did. Did. Her findings reflect sort of some of the things you've seen from Richard Allen in terms of these videos that we've watched?

[Brad Weber]

I would agree with you. He does not seem passive in that video.

[Anya Kane]

Not at all. Nor does he seem passive in his conversation with Kathy during the aforementioned Holman video, where, you know, he's telling her what to think. He's immediately kind of telling her, here's how. Like, I would have almost expected a more passive, subservient man to be like, kathy, what do I do? I'm so scared, like, and, like, let her take care of it. But he's immediately telling her, I know you don't think I did this because I. Because you know me.

[Brad Weber]

I know you know me.

[Anya Kane]

I know you know, me. And I couldn't do it. And so I just. That didn't I be. I wish they had drilled down on that a little bit more just to kind of like, give us more of a sense, like, what does passive mean? What does submissive mean? Like, could that mean different things for different people or for a man versus a woman? I don't know. Just a thought.

[Brad Weber]

So let's get into this cross examination.

[Anya Kane]

This was a great cross examination.

[Brad Weber]

Stacy Deener is very good at what she does. So she started off by talking about. Oh, you talked about how he was in sensory deprivation and was so isolated. But, you know, isn't it true that he saw Dr. Walla, for instance, every day? And he also had wreck periods every day or five days a week, I believe. And all this other stuff of showers, going to the showers, going to the showers. And so isn't all that true? And, and Dr. Westcott conceded it was. And then Stacy Deener made an excellent point in the direct examination. At one point, when Dr. Westcott was discussing the records she used to form her evaluations, she said that she believed she had examined 30 to 50 of Dr. Walla's notes about her sessions with Richard Allen. And Stacy Diener pointed out, we know she saw him every day. There should have been a heck of a lot more than 30 or 50 of these. Why do you suppose he only saw such a small percentage of them?

[Anya Kane]

She said, quote, who decided what notes you got, end quote. That was pointed.

[Brad Weber]

Yes. It's certainly creating the impression that she was just given limited materials, perhaps by the defense, in order to get whatever diagnosis they wanted. She also talked about how in the direct examination, Dr. Westcott had indicated that Richard Allen's window was cracked and so he couldn't see outside. But Stacy Dean pointed out Dr. Wallace intervened and got that window replaced.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah. And. And so it wasn't like he was dealing with it the whole time. It was like an issue that was then resolved. She also indicated that Dr. Westcott was. Was in her report, noted confessions that were incompatible with the facts of the case.

[Brad Weber]

Yeah, she's saying that Richard Allen made confessions that were incompatible with the facts of the case. And so Stacy Deer said, well, how would you know whether or not the confessions were incompatible?

[Anya Kane]

Did the defense attorneys tell you about the facts of the case? And she said.

[Brad Weber]

Westcott said, no, no, not at all. And her. Her explanation is apparently in one of the confessions, Richard Allen says that Satan killed the girls.

[Anya Kane]

So, I mean, that's fair to say.

[Brad Weber]

I mean, like, it's Fair to say what?

[Anya Kane]

Well, I don't know. I mean, like, I could understand a psychologist looking at and saying, well, that's not what happened. A human person killed the girls.

[Brad Weber]

But I don't know if a person says that if they are speaking literally, if, you know, I eat too much Captain D's and get sick, and you.

[Anya Kane]

Say Satan ate the Captain D's, then I'm going to be very concerned about you, so please don't say that. And then. But I would also say that, like, one thing that was kind of. Well, they got more into, like, the confessions and. And maybe what Dr. Westcott knew or what she didn't know about that. But. Yeah, it seemed like that would be an overstatement if that's all she's basing it off of.

[Brad Weber]

Yeah.

[Anya Kane]

But I also. I don't know what Dr. West got reviewed, and it seems like she did review an awful lot with all the video and audio, but there almost seemed to be some gaps in what she was talking about that I found interesting, given what Diener sort of revealed on her cross.

[Brad Weber]

Yeah. I shared Diener's curiosity about how much material Dr. Westcott was given. Then Diener started talking about dependent personality disorder. And she made some interesting points, one of which is if you have this situation where you're dependent on another person, it tends to be a person you really, really highly trust. And that made me think, of course, of the fact that if Richard Allen is in this dependent personality disorder with his wife and his mother and he highly trusts both of them, those are the people to whom he confessed.

[Anya Kane]

Yes. And then I would also say Diener drilled down, though I don't want to skip over this diner drill down on. You say that there's, quote, neither. There's no evidence for deception or malingering on the test that Allen did. But note the words that on the test. So it, like, I would be curious, did she see any malingering or feigning in conversations or, like, I mean, like, the test is one thing, the test done in August 2023, but obviously the behavior is something ongoing.

[Brad Weber]

Well, I want to get back to what I was saying about the dependent personality disorder, because not only was he allegedly in this with his wife and his mother, whom he trusted and whom he gave confessions to. Apparently there were times when Diener says it sounded like he was transferring some of those issues to Dr. Walla. He told her that he trusted her and that she was, quote, like his wife. And if he did indeed transfer some of those feelings over to her and Trusted her and had the dependent personality disorder with her. She also is someone to whom he confessed.

[Anya Kane]

He said, quote, you're like my wife telling me what I want to hear. And quote, please don't leave me, quote, quote, there's things I need to talk about and then basically with people I trust. So, yeah.

[Brad Weber]

And then Diener said, well, you know, you got to see all these reports after the fact, but why should your opinions matter more than the opinions of Dr. Martin, Dr. Walla, who had a lot of contact with him in real time when all of this was happening? And then Dr. Westcott said, well, you know, I not only looked at their reports, but I also looked a lot at the notes that were kept by the suicide companions who were monitoring him. And so Stacy Deener said, oh, so you give a lot of weight to the notes kept by the suicide companions.

[Anya Kane]

Oh, I noted that, yeah.

[Brad Weber]

And Westcott said, yes. And that is also interesting because of course, he made a lot of confessions to the suicide companions.

[Anya Kane]

There was debate about brief psychosis, or I shouldn't say debate, but clarification that I think brief psychosis kind of comes up in the DSM 4, whereas we're now on the DSM 5, which was introduced west got thought around 2015. And so now I think it's just psychosis.

[Brad Weber]

Yeah.

[Anya Kane]

So the idea that it's brief psychosis, it's more of like he would have major depressive disorder with psychosis. I will say this. I thought this was kind of interesting. Kind of. We were in an angle where we could see Richard Allen's facial expression somewhat, and I noticed that he kept glowering at Diener when she was talking.

[Brad Weber]

I noticed that too.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, I don't know if he. I don't. I don't know if I've ever seen him. I don't like. I don't know if I've seen him glower at one of the prosecutors that much, but this time I definitely noticed it. I may have just not seen it, or maybe he doesn't do it, I don't know. But he looked very angry. They was talk about disorganized speech and how that can be a sign of psychosis where someone's kind of just jumping.

[Brad Weber]

Diener also brought up again, kind of returning to the topic of the fact that she only references. She only says she saw like 30 to 50 of Dr. Wallace reports. And it seems by, I guess a coincidence that a number of the reports that she fails to mention in her reports are the reports. Let me say. Let me try that again.

[Anya Kane]

You got this.

[Brad Weber]

So a number of the notes from Dr. Walla that Dr. Westcott fails to mention and discuss in Dr. Westcott's reports are reports that Dr. Walla made about confessions that Richard Allen made.

[Anya Kane]

So specifically, Dr. Wall's reports from April 5th and May 3rd, and those get into detailed confessions. And what Diener is pointing out is that her report does not have much scrutiny or examination of those, if they're mentioned at all, was my understanding. Obviously, we don't have the report in front of us, so we can't, like, go and see, like, what was mentioned, but just sort of noting. Noting that. And it almost sounded like at one point, Westcock conceded a little bit. So, quote, my job is to. Almost like, she's more focused on looking for the breadth of the symptoms and the context of the symptoms than, like, whether or not his confessions are true. And so she's noting that, like, as a professional, she's more concerned with the whole mental health context of this person. But really, what kind of came out in this cross is that she's not somebody who's going to be able to evaluate necessarily. She did cast some down on Walla's, you know, kind of written confessions. What of what Richard Allen was saying was like, these sound more coherent than some of the other things I was hearing. But it also sounds like she wasn't necessarily. It just like. Like, almost like this sounds more like a coherent story. But some of the other things he was saying was a lot more random. So it was kind of. She was kind of throwing some doubt on that. But then Diener was throwing some doubt on how much she was really even grappling with those things.

[Brad Weber]

Are we ready to move on to jury questions?

[Anya Kane]

These jury questions were completely brutal for the defense.

[Brad Weber]

Let me tell you the first one. So we've heard, of course, that while Richard Allen was in his cell, he could hear other inmates yelling terrible things to him about how he should die or kill himself, and that Richard Allen was scared of this. And so the first juror question was, well, if Richard Allen had the common sense to fear for his safety, would he have the common sense to fake psychosis?

[Anya Kane]

She said that was a really good question. And she felt that he was more scared in, like, March in the lead up to his psychotic episodes. But that predated some of his most extreme behavior.

[Brad Weber]

Next question. If someone has depression and anxiety as a child, could it cause them to commit crimes as an adult?

[Anya Kane]

And she basically indicated it depends on the person she said that in. And she felt that in Richard Allen's case, he was more passive and subdued, or at least that's what her assessment was.

[Brad Weber]

But, you know, next question is, Dr. Westcott had mentioned all these things she had watched and reviewed to prepare her report. And a juror wanted to know, did you watch the police interviews of Richard Allen?

[Anya Kane]

That's what I wanted to know. And she said, no. Those police interviews show a different guy than what she was describing. In my opinion, yes, a very different personality. And I just wonder, like, is that a mask that he would wear? And then maybe the anxiety and the depression and all that other stuff was kind of behind it. I can imagine that. I think a lot of people do. As somebody, myself, I have pretty, I've generalized anxiety disorder. And like, that's not necessarily what you're putting out to the world. And sometimes people are surprised that you might have that. But so I'm not, that's not like a saying, oh, it's deceiving or anything. It's just like, you're not, you don't necessarily want to lead with all your, with all your anxiety. But it's, it's something to note because I feel like it would have been great if she'd been able to contextualize some of his behavior in that.

[Brad Weber]

Is this is the next jury question. Is he diagnosed with major depression, with psychosis, or with a psychotic disorder?

[Anya Kane]

And she was cleared the former. The latter is something more like schizophrenia. And this would be the former.

[Brad Weber]

And then Stacy Deener asked a couple of questions, essentially saying, so you're saying that these are episodes of psychosis instead of a lifelong thing. And she indicated that psychosis can ebb and flow with the depressions.

[Anya Kane]

Yes. People wanted to know, I think, about the objective tests. And she, she said that those are very well accepted. And they're even like cookbooks where you can quote, unquote, cookbooks, where you can almost look and see, this is a sign that somebody has this, or this is a sign that someone's malingering. They talked about, were there medical records of his. This is a question from the jurors. Were there medical records of Richard Allen's that had previous objective tests? And she said, generally, no. Most of his symptoms were all like self reported. He wasn't doing those in depth cognitive tests. People wanted to know about delusions versus delirium. Delusions are like a false belief. So you might think, hey, I'm the President of the United States. Whereas delirium is more of like, you don't have any idea who you are, where you are. She quoted. She described it as almost like being in a fun house. You like up from down. You don't know. There was a sidebar and then a.

[Brad Weber]

Break and then another sidebar.

[Anya Kane]

Sidebar.

[Brad Weber]

A sidebar, of course, is when the attorneys and the judge talk about something that the gallery is not privy to.

[Anya Kane]

Us proletariat in the gallery left out in the cold. No, it's like they gotta, you know, they gotta talk about something and they don't want. Don't want us to hear it, don't want the jury to hear it.

[Brad Weber]

So the next witness was Max Baker. This is the young man who works in Brad Rosie's office. And he presented some videos of real Richard Allen the other day as he was being transported from his cell to other things. And so today he was presenting some videos of some of Richard Allen's activities inside his cell. And just like the other day, the monitor was arranged in such a way that the members of the gallery and the press included could not see what these videos showed. So we saw the back of a tv and you could see Brad Rosie sitting by it. And every once in a while he would say, I'm advancing this. Two minutes at the readout, a timestamp, and there was no sound.

[Anya Kane]

No sound. I. This time we could see the jurors a lot better.

[Brad Weber]

What did you think of them?

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, it's hard to say. I felt like I saw people looking solemn and stony faced. I didn't see a lot of reactiveness. Nobody looked happy. It was just kind of solemn, stony face. Hard to read. Hard to read what they're seeing in that. If they're, oh, my gosh, this guy's being tortured, or if they're saying this guy has a lot of issues and maybe, maybe that makes sense given what happened. So I. It's really. You can't really project anything onto them. They just look vaguely disturbed, but not as reactive as I've seen them at times. So Baker talked about how he, like, edited this down from like, many, many hours, and he. They sped it up fast enough not to corrupt the video. Him and this guy named Steve Bauer, who he kept mentioning, they did not want to corrupt the video, but they also wanted it to go faster. And this was all introduced despite the state's objection. So this is a situation where it's being let in by Judge Francis gull over Nicholas McLean's objection. And I think the first one was April 12, 2 to 7pm does that sound right?

[Brad Weber]

Yeah.

[Anya Kane]

And then the one after that, let's see, was, I Think it was in May. May 25, 2023, 8am to 10am so the first hour and 12 minutes. And the second one was less than that. Although I don't. Do you. Do you have the second one written down?

[Brad Weber]

I don't. Do you want to talk about the cross examination?

[Anya Kane]

And also they sped it up so it didn't like we weren't sitting there that long. But there was a lot of jumping around. The cross examination got really heated. I mean, is that fair to say?

[Brad Weber]

That is extraordinarily fair to say.

[Anya Kane]

Oh, man. I was like, whoa, okay. Was not expecting this one to be the one where things start popping off. So. Yeah, why don't you talk about it?

[Brad Weber]

Well, Nick McLean was like, you know, you say you watched all these hundreds of hours. You chose 15 clips the other day, you chose two clips today. Did you just choose the ones that you thought would be most likely to curry sympathy with the jury? And Baker said, I just wanted to show different aspects and of Rick's life in prison. And McLean kind of hammered down. You, you want to create sympathy. You want to Curry Sympathy for Mr. Allen with the jury. You did this to try to show the jury that Richard Allen is the victim in this case. And Baker said, I don't think I'm trying to victimize him.

[Anya Kane]

He was getting heated back.

[Brad Weber]

And McLean said, Richard Allen is not the victim in this case, is he? And Baker said, no.

[Anya Kane]

Rosie is objecting relevance.

[Brad Weber]

McLeland is saying thing. Why did you think these two incel videos today are important? And Baker was like, well, they show him banging his head and eating, eating feces. And McLean is saying, you think that's important for the jury to say? To see.

[Anya Kane]

So one thing they were, they were.

[Brad Weber]

Raising their voices at each other.

[Anya Kane]

Baker was getting flustered and saying, you know, you could have not objected, basically. Like you could have just let us let in all of the stuff, including, I guess a lot of boring cell video of him doing nothing. I felt like, you know, it must be, it must be like kind of nerve wracking or flustering to kind of be, you know, kind of like talking too intensely on the stand, I guess. But he seemed to kind of, it kind of got to him and I think he started kind of getting flustered. Was. Is that fair to say?

[Brad Weber]

Yes, he got flustered. And again, he is a young guy.

[Anya Kane]

He's a very young guy. He's just out of college. So I mean, like, I don't blame him. It's just, it's just that was something to Note. And it kind of. It kind of, I feel like, ended up like, with the impression that they're just kind of cherry picking a bunch of stuff in order to curry favor and make him look like the victim. I guess that's kind of.

[Brad Weber]

Because again, basically that's what it kind of. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Anya Kane]

So, I mean, I. But, I mean, but he's saying no is we just want to give everyone a kind of a glimpse of his time in prison. And I think Rosie was like, did the whole thing about the truth, was that during the jury questions or was that. Was that at the end of this?

[Brad Weber]

What do you mean truth?

[Anya Kane]

Remember at one point, like, Brad Rose is like, why do we pick these videos? And like, was it to show the truth? And Max Baker's like, yeah, it's like, okay, yeah.

[Brad Weber]

One of the jury questions was a juror said, since you work for the defense, did the defense team prompt you to choose the worst videos?

[Anya Kane]

Oof.

[Brad Weber]

And Baker said, oh, they trusted me to use my discretion.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah. And Brad, Rosie, you know, basically, we. We gave you. We gave you discretion. And then McLeland was like, did you kind of compare it and contrast with the court phone calls? Were there. Were any of these videos from the days where, you know, in times when he was giving confessions, Baker claimed to not know. And then what were the other ones? That was a. That the questions, I really don't feel were good for the defense today. But, yeah, at one point, I know Rosie asked him, like, why did we pick these? And it was like, to show the truth. And I was like, I just, I don't think these defense. I don't think these jury questions have been good for them recently in general.

[Brad Weber]

I would agree with that completely.

[Anya Kane]

So then afternoon, I guess we. So this is where the Allen's family came in. And it's a. It's a troubling subject. So I just want to give an extra content warning. It gets into sort of molestation. And before we get into family abuse. Okay, okay.

[Brad Weber]

There was a talk of, of a police report or something coming in, and the judge, Judge Gull said, oh, we can't really bring this in because it's totem pole hearsay.

[Anya Kane]

What the heck is that?

[Brad Weber]

And I was sitting next to an attorney, and she leaned over to me and said, what is totem pole hearsay? And I said, I was going to ask you the same thing. So apparently. And I'm googling this even as we speak. And totem pole hearsay is multiple hearsay. So if there would be. If it would be hearsay for me to go on the stand and say, oh, Anya told me she was going to steal cereal. It would, I guess, be hearsay within hearsay if I said, oh, I talked to Anya's friend Susie, and Susie told me that she said that she thought Anya had said it.

[Anya Kane]

Did Susan Hendrick snitch on me? Is that what you're saying right now? Oh, God. Not happy about this. No. Yeah, that's.

[Brad Weber]

And I'm just explaining. I'm just looking this up in real time. So if I got that wrong, I apologize.

[Anya Kane]

Then you're just spreading misinformation because I.

[Brad Weber]

I, I have in my notes, look this up before recording that didn't happen. And I could have just artfully just skipped over it because you were ready to do that. And I said, no, Anya, let me embarrass myself.

[Anya Kane]

That's what you're saying to me every day. Yeah. So, yeah. So this next part's, you know, disturbing, but albeit brief, nothing graphic, but just, you know, getting into things like molestation and family abuse and stuff like that. So Jennifer O.J. was handling this direct examination. She called Jamie Jones, a woman who is Richard Allen's half sister, to the stand. Jamie clarified that she and Allen share a mother, Janice, and they have different fathers. So I believe Jamie is the daughter of Marvin Allen, who's Janice's husband.

[Brad Weber]

Richard is five years older than his wife, Jamie. Richard Allen. He left home at 18 to go into the military.

[Anya Kane]

Got married his sister Jamie, not his wife, Jamie. I think you just said, okay, good.

[Brad Weber]

What did I say?

[Anya Kane]

I thought he said his wife, Jamie. I may have misheard you. I apologize.

[Brad Weber]

He is five years older than his sister Jamie. They lived together as kids. He left home at the age of 18 to join the military. Shortly after his return, he got married. And she says he never molested her or touched her sexually. She says that she loves her brother, Richard Allen, but she would not lie for him. The prosecution was handled by James Luttrell, and he asked her about growing up with Richard Allen. And he said, oh, there were lots of neighborhood children in Mexico, Indiana, where they grew up together. And she agreed with that. And he said, do they have names like Chris?

[Anya Kane]

And she said, yes.

[Brad Weber]

And then the other side, Ms. O'Shea, objected, and that ended the cross examination, and that ended this witness's time on the stand.

[Anya Kane]

Why did Luttrell mention Chris?

[Brad Weber]

Why do you think?

[Anya Kane]

No, I mean, I'm assuming, you know, I'm setting you up to answer that.

[Brad Weber]

Was Chris one of the names mentioned.

[Anya Kane]

In the confessions, Chris and Kevin were people that Alan mentioned by name as having molested. So. Yeah. So, I mean, it seems that Jamie confirmed that they knew a Chris, but whether. What the. What the. You know, what the truth is there is obviously not clear. So next up was Britney Zaponta, who is the daughter of Kathy Allen and Richard Allen.

[Brad Weber]

I was really struck by how much she resembled her mother.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, definitely. And she's, you know, she obviously grew.

[Brad Weber]

Up in the house with Richard and Cassie Allen. She went to Ball State for a year when she was 18, then went to Indianapolis, and she moved out of the house for good back in 2015. She says she was never molested by her father, Richard Allen. She says she loves him but would not lie for him.

[Anya Kane]

I noticed I didn't have quite as good an angle on Alan, but he seemed to be smiling a lot when she was on the stand, at least for a time, like, very much smiling deeply. Is that kind of what you saw?

[Brad Weber]

This was the part of the. This was after lunch. And all the confusion at lunch had Anya and I ended up actually sitting separately.

[Anya Kane]

We're actually sitting as far away apart as you can.

[Brad Weber]

Yeah, I was sitting on one corner of the courtroom. She was on the other. This is why, as I mentioned, I was sitting next to an attorney, which Anya certainly is not. And she was sitting on the far side. So I wasn't really in a position to see Richard. Well, I. I felt I had a great view of the jurors.

[Anya Kane]

I could be totally wrong, but I. I thought he was smiling at times, and I think at one point I saw him mouthing, it's okay to her. She was very, very upset. She was doing a good job of remaining calm and not, you know, like she was. I'm not saying she was freaking out. It's just more of, like, you could tell she was fighting back tears. This was obviously a very upsetting experience for her, and I'm sure that was more so she kind of ended up being on the stand for a lot longer than her Aunt Jamie. And, you know, with. With this. Yeah, he was. He seemed to be reactive to his child on the stand, but it went on from there.

[Brad Weber]

Cross examination done by James Latrell Lutril. Lutrel.

[Anya Kane]

Yes.

[Brad Weber]

And he asked, did you and your father go to the trails often? Objection. Outside the scope of direct examination sustained by Judge G. Did you and your father go to the Monon High Bridge? Objection. Outside the scope of direct examination sustained by Judge Gull, did your father's appearance change from when you left for ball State until 2022, or did it remain the same? She said that it remained the same. He showed her some. Four pictures of Richard Allen asking, is this how he looked after you left College up till 2022? There was a sidebar after which Jennifer OJ established that we don't have the dates that those particular pictures of Richard Allen were taken. Therefore, it. You can't really say if this represented how he looked in February of 2017.

[Anya Kane]

But. But Lettrell went on to be able to ask her about a number of those pictures, right?

[Brad Weber]

Yeah.

[Anya Kane]

And he asked if this is how he appeared in February 2017 for four images in particular.

[Brad Weber]

Yeah.

[Anya Kane]

And she said yes to all of them. That is how he appeared in 2017. And I believe there was one point where OJ was. Was objecting to things being beyond the scope while Latrell was going. And. And this happened a couple of times with Gull today, where she got very irritated and saying, like, I don't know, like, I can't rule on your objection or sustain an objection if I don't have what you're talking about in front of me.

[Brad Weber]

Because. Yeah. The objections were about specific pieces of evidence which the lawyers had temporarily neglected to share with the judge. And of course, any good judge does not make any decisions about evidentiary things unless she knows what the evidence is. And Judge Go pointed that out to the attorneys many times today.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, many times. Electrol published the photos to the jury. So now they have what his daughter says he looked like in February 2017. That seemed like something that the prosecution wanted to get in earlier by saying, like, we got these off his phone from an extraction. I don't know if they're the same images, but, like, they were like, here's pictures of him from February 17th. And, like, then they're like, the judge was like, no, those can't come in. So it seems like they got in images of what he would have looked like back then.

[Brad Weber]

Anya, you said they published it to the jury. What does. What does that mean?

[Anya Kane]

They gave it to the jury after.

[Brad Weber]

Having admitted each of the jurors has, like, a really big almost.

[Anya Kane]

Which is like, accordion folder. Yeah.

[Brad Weber]

Where they are given copies of so many reports and exhibits and stuff. They put them all in these accordion folders. And so when we say something is published to the jury, it basically means they get a copy of it.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah.

[Brad Weber]

Juror questions.

[Anya Kane]

Brutal.

[Brad Weber]

Okay.

[Anya Kane]

He sees. Remember what l asked Britney that then was shot down by Gull, which is.

[Brad Weber]

Did you visit the Monon High Bridge.

[Anya Kane]

With your Father, of course. What is the first question from the jury? Did you visit the Monon High Bridge with your f in your teens?

[Brad Weber]

And the answer was yes. And l said, well, did you cross that bridge? And she said, yes.

[Anya Kane]

With your dad? Yes.

[Brad Weber]

Yes. Were you scared? And she said, I was scared of.

[Anya Kane]

The bridge indicating not her dad.

[Brad Weber]

And she said, we crossed it maybe once or twice in her life.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah. So the jury there, what I saw is one of the jurors was doing, was basically saying, the prosecutor asked that question. I want to know the answer to that question. And so they went for it. That would be concerning to me if I were on the defense.

[Brad Weber]

Yeah. Next witness presented for the defense by Andrew Baldwin. It is Shelby Hicks.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, we're back to the 2019 Reddit posts.

[Brad Weber]

Oh, and I guess this, this blows up what I said earlier, because they also asked what her age is. She's 30 years old. She now lives in the. She's, she's originally from the nearby town of Monticello, Indiana. It looks like Monticello, but it's pronounced Monticello. It's a lovely little community. So back in February 13th of 2017, she had a car. She took it to get fixed in Lafayette, and after she got it, it was a pretty good day out. So she and her boyfriend, her then boyfriend, she and her then boyfriend, Daniel Pearson, decided to go together to the trails. If you've been following this case for a long time, you might recognize the name Daniel Pearson. He is someone who. There was a large contingent of people online on some of the social media sites who, with very little reason that I could, I could discern, decided at some point that he was the killer. And they publicly accused him of that. And it was one of the big theories online for a while. And again, it was totally, totally baseless.

[Anya Kane]

Everyone owes him an apology because it turns out, according to Hicks today, he was the one who immediately was like, we were on the bridge that day. We need to go to law enforcement now and tell them what we saw or didn't see and answer questions.

[Brad Weber]

We're getting just a little bit ahead of ourselves.

[Anya Kane]

But, but I just want to note that this young man did the right thing and was basically then crucified for it online.

[Brad Weber]

So she and Daniel Pearson arrive at the trails around 2:30 ish. They park at what's called the mirrors lot. They start walking towards the highway and then turn around and walk towards the Monon High Bridge. As they walk, they see an older man with a camera. We know that's Dave McCain.

[Anya Kane]

Dave McCain.

[Brad Weber]

Yeah, he actually testified the other day. She sees a couple of other kids. She also sees two friends from school.

[Anya Kane]

That's Shelby Duncan and Cheyenne Mill, although they had, I think Mill had different last name. No one. Just the, the kids thing. We don't know who the kids are. That never comes up, that, that they never clarify who the, the other kids that she saw are. Is that fair to say?

[Brad Weber]

That's fair to say. Some people outside were speculating that those kids were actually Abby and Libby, but I think if she saw Abby and Libby, the defense would have pointed that out.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, it's not Abby and Libby. Also, by everyone's contention, Abby and Libby are either being abducted in a car.

[Brad Weber]

And driven away or have already been murdered.

[Anya Kane]

Or have already been murdered.

[Brad Weber]

So she runs into her friends, Cheyenne. Cheyenne and another person named Shelby. Cheyenne has already testified. They go and hang out on the bridge, and after spending about 30 minutes on the bridge, go home the next day. Daniel Pearson says, oh, we should go to law enforcement and tell them that we were there. And they do. Law enforcement does not extract her phone. They only talk to her twice, but it seems like she was there. Whether you believe the defense theory that the girls were kidnapped and transported elsewhere or whether you believe the state's theory that the girls were already murdered, Shelby is there. After that's happened.

[Anya Kane]

Well, after that's happened.

[Brad Weber]

Well after it's happened. So it's not surprising that there's not a lot of interest on the part of law enforcement to say, oh, let's extract her phone. Let's talk to her hundreds of times. She's, she's a, a fine young woman. She and Danielle Pearson did the absolute correct thing to come forward, but they did not really have anything relevant.

[Anya Kane]

No, they did not. I mean, like, that's the thing. And I, I, I commend them for doing the right thing. Good for them. They're like young people who wanted to do the right thing and help out. And that's wonderful. And I. The fact that they got any nonsense online just disgusts me. But the thing is, like, law enforcement can't be running around doing, you know, like, extracting phones of young women who happen to be there. Like, well, after this is all over, judging from the evidence, like, that's just not, that's not a reasonable expectation. And they didn't see anything. Even Shelby herself on the stand indicated that she only recalled the day rather vaguely. So I feel like this is just, I think this is the defense attempting to confuse the jury. And I don't Find it. I don't find it compelling. As someone who's followed this case for a long time.

[Brad Weber]

Well, one thing I often think about, I think I've mentioned this on the program, is after I hear a defense witness, I ask myself, if everything this defense witness says is true, does it alter anyone's understanding of what may or may not have happened on the bridge on February 13th? And if everything Shelby says is true, it doesn't change anything the state put forward about what happened that day. And even if anything, everything Dr. Westcott says is true, that doesn't really change anyone's understanding of what the state contends happened that day. I'm hoping at some point the defense puts forward a witness who actually talks either about or who talks about the events of that day and tries to build a case, or rather tries to create reasonable doubt that Richard Allen does what the state alleges he did.

[Anya Kane]

I agree. That's what's, I think, necessary at this point for the defense to do. And a lot of this just feels like, I don't know, like. Like, I don't. I mean, why would they. Why would a defense team do this? But, like, getting the. Getting the YouTubers excited of. Oh, Daniel Pearson. I remember that name. Oh, and it's like, you know, like, why, like, who's your audience? Is it the jury or is it, like, the online sphere? I just don't understand it. There was one question, one juror question, and it was, again, telling, in my opinion. Was the man with the camera old? Yes.

[Brad Weber]

Support Dave McCain.

[Anya Kane]

Oh, yeah.

[Brad Weber]

He's. He's. He's seasoned well. You know, he's in the prime of his life.

[Anya Kane]

He seemed great, and I like that he was into all the historical stuff, but it's like, you know, was the goal for the jury to be like, maybe the guy with the camera did it? Like, no, we already heard from. It's Dave McCain.

[Brad Weber]

I have actually another juror question. Oh, did you arrive at the Monon high bridge around 3pm and she said, oh, maybe.

[Anya Kane]

And then Andrew Baldwin. Could it have been later? What about earlier? Yes, maybe. Like. But the thing is, Cheyenne's experience kind of does date all of this later. It forces the timeline back. The timeline's not working in the defense's favor at this point, in my opinion. And so this didn't add anything. You're right. There were two. I had that down, too, but it's just. I don't know it. Okay, I guess next is Steve Mullen again done by Andrew Baldwin.

[Brad Weber]

You take the lead on this one.

[Anya Kane]

Just seems like, bring in Mullen and then just jump around to different stuff. So I guess they tried to do something similar to Holman recently where it seemed like that McLelan got wind of it and, like, preemptively shut it down by asking a bunch of very strange questions at the start that then made more sense later where, you know, they got Melissa Oberg, the firearms examiner, to say, oh, I was talking about, like, paternity tests and results and percentages with a bunch of investigators. And, you know, this is what I said. And then suddenly McClelland's asking Holman about that, and Holman saying, yes, we had that conversation. I misunderstood it and repeated my misunderstanding in a deposition. And I think the goal with that was to prevent Baldwin from basically being like, aha, we've got you, you liar. So I think. I think that that's what they sort of did to Mullen today. Does that feel fair?

[Brad Weber]

Yeah, that feels fair.

[Anya Kane]

So what happened was they're like, remember, indirect. Well, we'll get to that. But that's going to be one of the things. Remember in direct examination with McLeland, when you looked at the Ford Focuses for Ford Focus, I don't know. And different types and, like, weren't there similar body types or some. And Mullen indicated from 2011 to 2018, they can look similar frame wise. And then they submitted some BMV thing saying, here's all the ones registered in Cass, White, Carroll, Howard and Tipton counties, 2020-11-2017 models, similar bodied. And like, you know, there's a. There's a bunch more that look similar, I guess was kind of it. But then it all kind of went to hell because McLeland objected because it wasn't certified. And then the judge was like, wait, this isn't certified. There's no certification. And then Baldwin was confused. I was confused. I didn't know what was going on. Did you follow any of that?

[Brad Weber]

Basically, a document to be admitted into evidence has to be certified, which is basically the agency or whoever is saying this is a fair and accurate copy, because I'm not accusing the defense in this case of doing this. But in theory, you know, I could go online, or I could go to my computer and I could dummy up a fake list of anything and take it to the court and say, hey, look at this. And so that's why you want things to be certified by, you know, responsible people who say, yes, this is a true and accurate report. Does that make sense?

[Anya Kane]

Yes. Next we jumped to the. The. The interviews that got erased, that were done in 2017. And there was a long discussion of, like, you know, did you catalog the. Did you do a log of all the people whose interviews got loss? And what Mullen said was, quote, we attempted to catalog the names of persons who were interviewed, end quote. Obviously attempted being a key word there, because, you know, if they forgot somewhat something, you want to cover your bases, I guess. And then Baldwin brought up on March 18th in a hearing, and he kind of like, smacked a paper on a desk. Was that. Did I. Like, was I hallucinating that at that point, or did that happen?

[Brad Weber]

That happened.

[Anya Kane]

That happened. And then he actually apologized to Judge Gall. It was very. It was a little bit theatrical, for sure. I don't know how effective, because I just. Again, at this point, maybe my seat was bad, but I was just like, what is going on? And then McLean asked for a copy. Baldwin gave him one. And then Baldwin said that Steve Mullen basically lied to the court back in March. And basically what Mullen had said then, I guess, was that we didn't have logs of people who were. Who we tried, you know, we thought we interviewed, but then lost. And then Mullen on the sand said, clarified and said, there are logs. Like, I've just since found them. And now we know that there are some logs that we did. So what a Perry Mason moment. Like, wow. I'm like, I'm sorry. Like. Like what? This is minutia. One guy forgetting about a log that's like, oh, my gosh.

[Brad Weber]

It's worth getting to the bottom of.

[Anya Kane]

It's worth getting to the bottom of. But it. I think it would have been better to just handle it by the book instead of trying to, like, slam papers and act like suddenly, like, oh, you know, like, I just, like, felt like it was. It's like, just calm down. You know what I mean? This is. I don't know. What am I. Am I underplaying it too much? Did you think it was a bigger deal than I did?

[Brad Weber]

You seem to be thinking, like, it's absolutely meaningless.

[Anya Kane]

I don't think it's meaningless. I just think when you put, like, a big flourish on something that kind of isn't that big of a deal, it looks more meaningless than it should.

[Brad Weber]

Yeah, I would agree with that. And I had more sympathy for this issue than what came next because he was then started talking about how he says that Brian Harshman said that there was no social media reference to a white van in connection with the deli murders. Quick review. Richard Allen says he was interrupted in the course of his crimes against Abby and Libby by the appearance of a white van driving on this access road. And there is a man named Brad Weber, who we'll hear more from in a moment, who says he was the driver of that van just going home. And the fact that Brad Webber was driving on that access road during the time of the murder is a fact that would be known only to the killer. And so it becomes very important for the defense to try to debunk that claim. And one way they're trying to do that is by trying to suggest the stories about white vans in connection with the Delphi murders were out there already and people were talking about them. And perhaps Dr. Wallach, who we know was interested in social media in connection with this case, may have seen some of these references to a white van and told Richard Allen, hey, why don't you put a white van in your story? That's basically what they're trying to do. And so they were trying to suggest, well, there were social media references to a white van. Therefore, for all we know, Dr. Walla had him put that detail in. But the problem. The problem for me is everything under the sun has been mentioned in connection with the Delphi case.

[Anya Kane]

We had a woman talk to us for, like, an hour about how there were dolls and the trees and all this stuff. And I still want to. I still want to call her back up and say, what the hell is wrong with you? But also, yeah, I mean, everything.

[Brad Weber]

Everything has been mentioned in connection with it. Anya mentioned earlier, Daniel Pearson, an innocent young man. He is accused. Anya and I have been accused seriously, of being odinists who are trying to cover up the crime.

[Anya Kane]

Oh, don't mention that. We need to edit that out, then. Yeah.

[Brad Weber]

So I would be less concerned by white. A white van being mentioned in social media. What I would want to see, I'd want to see this white van being mentioned in a police report that is given to Richard Allen by his attorneys as part of discovery.

[Anya Kane]

Yes.

[Brad Weber]

Or I would be interested in seeing a reference to a white van on social media that describes, oh, hey, everybody, a white van drove by at the time of the murders, therefore helping to trigger the crime. And there is no indication that anywhere on social media anyone has suggested that a white van drove by as the crime was being committed. So, therefore, any other mention of a white van in connection with this crime is a lot less compelling to me. For instance, later on, Baldwin says, oh, you know, I found a post on social media which said there was a white van miles away at A bus stop offering candy to kids. And it's like, what relevance does that have to what happened in Delphi?

[Anya Kane]

What was embarrassing about that is that he said it in a really dramatic way and then somebody asked him to repeat it and they kind of like said it a more halting, oh, he has a cargo van and candy at a bus stop. It was like, I mean, and the.

[Brad Weber]

Thing is embarrassing, this wasn't even in a police report. This is just something that was mentioned on social media. So we have no idea, first of all, that it even happened. It could just be someone's imagination.

[Anya Kane]

People lie on the Internet, believe it or not.

[Brad Weber]

And even if it did happen, we don't know that it happened on the day of the murders, and we don't know that it had any connection whatsoever to the murders.

[Anya Kane]

It also sounds a little bit different, frankly, from the murders.

[Brad Weber]

Yeah, even if there was somebody in a van offering candy to children at a bus stop miles and miles away from Delphi, what does that have to do with Brad Weber driving home from work in a van during the time of the crime?

[Anya Kane]

You know, maybe that day somebody got shot in Indianapolis. Maybe that's related. I mean, like, at what point? Like, it's just, it's like, I don't know, like again, it's like the friggin Reddit posts of 2019, the greatest hits. And I'm, I'm just, what are they doing?

[Brad Weber]

So I found that angle less compelling, but it is. If they want to create reasonable doubt, they really need to knock down Brad Webber and the white van story.

[Anya Kane]

I appreciated. At least they were going to try to do that there.

[Brad Weber]

Yes.

[Anya Kane]

Because it's like that is the relevant issue that you should be focusing on.

[Brad Weber]

And so should we move on to the next witness who in fact is Brad Weber?

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, well, I think one thing the jury asked was why would anyone discuss the van prior to Richard Allen's confessions? And you know, basically Mullen was like, I don't even know what these social media posts are. So yeah, let's go to Brad Weber. So Brad Weber comes in and Andy.

[Brad Weber]

Baldwin was like, oh, you were pretty upset with me the other day. And Brad Webb said, well, I was upset because you tried to tell me what I did when I got off work. And basically what you said wasn't true. I just went right home and.

[Anya Kane]

And then he said, well, what about what you told about age of FBI Agent Pool and Christopher Goatee? And Brad Weber said, quote, who are those guys? And it came out that in the days after the murders, it sounds like Weber was interviewed by law enforcement, different law enforcement officers, multiple times, generating multiple different reports. And so it seems like that one was just one of many where he was being asked about that day.

[Brad Weber]

Yeah. And Baldwin at one point said, you told those officers that you stopped on the way home to do some work on your ATM machines. And Webber said, I don't recall saying that.

[Anya Kane]

They asked him. Baldwin asked him, you know, you went to Arizona for a week before the murders. And Weber said, no, I didn't go for a week. I went for a three day trip, got back Sunday, right?

[Brad Weber]

Yeah.

[Anya Kane]

And that comes up later with the ATMs. The whole trip thing was about the ATMs, because the whole trip was like you were gone for that long. Maybe you needed to come back and service the ATMs.

[Brad Weber]

Right. Excuse me.

[Anya Kane]

Oh, my God. Are you okay?

[Brad Weber]

Yeah, I'm fine.

[Anya Kane]

Oh.

[Brad Weber]

Andy Baldwin got into so much detail about the ATM business with this man that I feel Anya and I could leave podcasting and go into the ATM business.

[Anya Kane]

At this point, I was thinking that I was like, we should get an ATM.

[Brad Weber]

He went into so much detail about where the ATMs were located in this. And McLeland was frequently objecting. How is this relevant?

[Anya Kane]

We went into like a. How did. It was like an. Like. Kind of like one of those, like, YouTube things, like start your own business, but about ATMs with Brad Weber. So we had ATMs throughout central Indiana at gas stations, restaurants, taverns, variety of places. And I will say this, Brad Weber had seemed very irritated with Baldwin at the last thing where he appeared. He was very calm. He answered the questions today. He really didn't seem to be too flustered or upset about anything. So whatever. Whatever sort of explosions people might have expected did not come. He was very calm, and I felt respectful. And at times he was just like, I don't know, like, kind of like more of baffled of like, you know, I. But. But generally. Is that your impression of how he did?

[Brad Weber]

Yes. And he kept on insisting because he. Baldwin would talk about all this ATM stuff and then he'd go baggoed, what'd you do that day? And Weber would just insist very calmly, I went home. I went home. And I think one thing that at least in my mind gave Weber some credibility there is that this is a very, very precise witness. He made it clear that exact words and such mean a lot to him. Oh, yeah. Anya mentioned a minute ago, oh, you visited Arizona for a week. And he's. And he said, no, I didn't and he said, well, huh? He said, well, I visited just for three days.

[Anya Kane]

Yes.

[Brad Weber]

There was a moment, another moment where he says, Andy Baldwin said, oh, you had a call with some investigator earlier this year asking you to come down to the police station to talk about something. And Weber said, no, that never happened. And Baldwin's like, taken aback. And it turns out that Weber did get a call from an investigator asking him to come down and talk about something, but he did not ask him to come literally to the police station.

[Anya Kane]

I think we've all experienced this. For whatever reason, you've met someone, or maybe you are someone like this who is very, very literal, very, very precise. They don't, they don't use terms of like, metaphors or like similes or whatever. It's like everything is very specific, very precise. And Brad Weber definitely comes across that way where he's. He's going to tell you, no, that's not true. Here's the truth. And it's going to be a lot more honed down than whatever you.

[Brad Weber]

So I thought that lent him some credibility.

[Anya Kane]

It did. It certainly did.

[Brad Weber]

He talked about how he does not recall telling law enforcement anything different other than the fact that he just went home. And he stressed that what happened was he got home that day on February 13, 2017, probably around 2:30ish. He said he likely smoked a cigarette and then took a nap. And then he was awakened by someone from law enforcement knocking on his door around 5 5:30 ish to ask that the law enforcement officer, sheriff, was asking for permission to search his property for the girls, which Weber agreed to. And of course that sheriff's deputy testified.

[Anya Kane]

Earlier in the trial, Baldwin made a big deal at one point of like, I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I just. You mentioned the search of the property. Did you give them permission to look at your outbuildings? Almost implying that Weber hadn't. But then it turned out later that nobody had asked him until later, and then when they did, he said yes and also let them look at his whole house.

[Brad Weber]

So he gave them permission. He didn't, he just didn't give them the permission on the 13th because they hadn't yet asked.

[Anya Kane]

But I feel like Baldwin was trying to act like, oh my God, this suspicious was something going on in the outbuildings, but just nobody had asked him.

[Brad Weber]

And he, yeah, and he gave them permission to search his house and he gave them permission to search his outbuilding.

[Anya Kane]

He gave them his gun.

[Brad Weber]

He apparently, he said he talked to them almost every day. There For a while. And. And frankly, that's what you would expect and hope that someone who lives so close to where the girls were discovered, you would imagine that law enforcement wouldn't want to take a hard look at them. And appears they did indeed.

[Anya Kane]

He seems incredibly cooperative with this investigation. He did not get offended and say, you think it's me? Or, like, from what we heard, like, it was just like, look at, like, clear me by. By any means and then move on, and I will give you access to everything without complaint. That bolstered his credibility with me. He seemed like a man who had nothing to hide. He did. He did acknowledge that at times he's gotten mad at trespassers who've come on his property and has confronted them. But, I mean, he didn't seem to have any problem acknowledging that.

[Brad Weber]

No. So then Nick McLean does the cross examination, and he says, oh, wouldn't you agree that a person's memory of an event is better, closer to the event? So my birthday is on December 6th. If you ask me what I did for my birthday, I'd probably be able to give you a really great account on December 7th, maybe even December 14th. Maybe. If you asked me on June 6th, I probably won't remember quite as much. And so it turns out that Weber actually gave a statement to police prior to this statement he allegedly gave to Goatee and Paul, and.

[Anya Kane]

Which was on that one was supposed to be on February 19th.

[Brad Weber]

He gave a statement also on February 17th, and in that statement, he said he came straight home from work.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah.

[Brad Weber]

And. Yeah. Oh, you. And you're talking about him being cooperative. They said it also came out that he even agreed to take a lie detector test, which.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, I want. I mean, when we see Richard Allen in his little videos, we see a guy who won't let them look at his phone, doesn't want them at his house, I presume. Did not do a polygraph. All of that's his. Right. I'm not saying you should do any of that, but there is a contrast there.

[Brad Weber]

Yes.

[Anya Kane]

And I felt like Baldwin didn't really, when Webber was on the stand, didn't really do the full. Like, he had been kind of almost implying that Weber might be the killer in previous appearances today, it was. It was. It was more relaxed on Baldwin's pride. Didn't feel like he was necessarily like, oh, you're the real killer, like, on the stand, you know, like, trying to. Trying to have this Perry Mason moment.

[Brad Weber]

But I feel like that's your second Perry Mason.

[Anya Kane]

Well, I'm just Like that would have been a real. It's a classic Perry Mason staple that you get some other guy to confess on the stand and then that's how you clear your client. Because the audience wants someone to be guilty. They don't want just your guy to walk. They want someone to be punished. Perry Mason 101. But the, I guess, like I felt he toned that down today. I don't know whether it would. Because it would have been too awkward or what. But did you notice that?

[Brad Weber]

I did in redirect.

[Anya Kane]

Oh, I will say. Can I say one thing Baldwin made a big deal about at one point they. Weber mentioned, like, I don't know whether I got called or texted by the police. McLean made it clear that people sometimes text people out there because that they know they'll get it. Whereas calls get dropped a lot. And that's not always going to be good for calling people out in that area. But he at one point referred to like, oh, maybe like, like, like, was it Steve Mullen who contacted you? I don't know, maybe it was Steve. And then Baldwin started sort of, oh.

[Brad Weber]

You call him Steve.

[Anya Kane]

Oh, your friend Steve. Steve. He's mad about Steve.

[Brad Weber]

Steve.

[Anya Kane]

Also, Baldwin has hilariously adopted one of the jurors verbal ticks where one of the jurors always in her questions writes if you know and then question. And Baldwin now is consistently saying that I think to. To mirror the juror, presumably.

[Brad Weber]

So in redirect, Andrew Baldwin says, well, you, you apparently told the police that you drove straight home on the 17th, but you told Pol and Gotee something different, didn't you? And Weber said, according to you, should we get to the jury?

[Anya Kane]

The fact that goatee is not like backing it is also bad for the defense because he came in, it was just like, I don't remember. Who knows, you know, like fog of war. When they're all running around, you know, like immediately after the murders without it being taped, it's really hard to assess because you can also see situations coming up where they're like, what do you normally do when you come home? Or he thinks they're asking that and they're actually asking, what did you do that day? Like, like without a, without a tape, it's hard to say. And if he's in repeat in. In other. In like most of the other things, consistently saying one thing and then that's an outlier. You know, I think the jury should pay attention to the outlier. But I, if he's basically like, I don't think I said that. That's not what happened then. That's obviously compelling too.

[Brad Weber]

The jury wanted to know more about the business of ATMs. The first question was, would ATMs have photos of when you service them? Actually that's a very relevant thing because if there was a photo of Brad weber servicing an ATM at 2:30 on February 13th, 2017 it would blow his story out of the water. But apparently no such photos exist.

[Anya Kane]

He said that some of the places might have had videos like a gas station, but that, that like the ATMs don't have like some sort of internal video that he had.

[Brad Weber]

Another question was, well, when you need to replace cash in an atm, you have to order it from a bank, which he explained earlier.

[Anya Kane]

And he would get it from regions, shout out to regions, I guess.

[Brad Weber]

How far in advance do you need to order cash for the ATMs?

[Anya Kane]

Well, the problem is in cash. See this is how literal he is. He was like, cash, you don't have to worry about cash coins now that's the problem. And then I thought he wasn't, I was worried for a second. He wasn't going to elaborate on that. But he, he would say that he would often order them a week out, which seems like this seems like a, a ATM tune up cash coin refurbishment situation would not have been done on the fly.

[Brad Weber]

Yeah, he told us so much.

[Anya Kane]

He told us so much.

[Brad Weber]

I feel that you and I could. And maybe we should, after this week we should hang up our podcasting hats and go into a mom and pop ATM business with Brad Weber. No.

[Anya Kane]

Oh my God.

[Brad Weber]

He explained it also.

[Anya Kane]

He also said that he used to have maybe 35 an estimate and now he only has 15. So maybe it's not as easy a business as well, I guess now that.

[Brad Weber]

I think about it, people don't use cash as much. They use cards now.

[Anya Kane]

Yes.

[Brad Weber]

So maybe this ATM business isn't all as cracked.

[Anya Kane]

It doesn't sound like it, but yeah, geez. And also like he wouldn't in fairness only have to go replace. He said basically the things he'd have to replace are the coins, the money in there. He. No, no, let me tell. No, I'm not stopping. They need to hear this. No. So he put money in, the clients take the money out, he gets a surcharge. But the other thing he'd be replacing is the tape for the receipts. And at one point Baldwin was like, well if there's no money in there then you don't get paid. And he's like, yes. And if there's no Receipt tape, you don't get paid. And he's like, I don't care about that.

[Brad Weber]

I feel we have blundered into this ATM rabbit hole and we need to climb out of it.

[Anya Kane]

I just trying to educate and just kind of enlighten.

[Brad Weber]

Learned a lot about ATMs today. So another question. We know that Brad Weber clocked out at work on at 202. So a juror said, well, what is the process of clocking out?

[Anya Kane]

Imagine if there's some long process where he has to do a bunch of stuff, then that could be like, well.

[Brad Weber]

You know, so basically it's like similar to getting on a subway. There's a turnstile and he has a badge, and he just puts the badge in.

[Anya Kane]

The turnstile opens and then was the driveway. He used the access road under the bridge. Would that have been the one he used that day? And he indicated. Or was there another one to use? And he said, yes. And have you ever used that? Yes. So that there's two ways onto his property. One's the access road and the other's another one. And then would you have driven under the high bridge that day? I would have, yes. And then would you typically go home from work pretty much immediately? I think he said yes. Right?

[Brad Weber]

Yeah.

[Anya Kane]

No further witnesses today. The defense ran out of witnesses.

[Brad Weber]

Ran out of witnesses, which is another reason I. I think we're in the last days of this trial.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, they ran out of witnesses. They, you know, they made some good points today. I think they had some good. One good. One good witness. And I guess the family saying that, you know, vouching for Allen is. Is also good for them.

[Brad Weber]

But. But don't stop listening because the defense wasn't done yet. So the jury is dismissed for the day. And then Andy Baldwin stands up and says, since the jury is out of here, let's have some offers of proof. He said, earlier in the day, Kevin Murphy from the Indiana State Police or retired from the United States.

[Anya Kane]

I had seen in the Rotunda a few times. I kind of like that Kevin Murphy. And they're like, no one's answering. I'm like, I'm pretty sure that's Kevin Murphy.

[Brad Weber]

It was indeed Kevin Murphy. He was one of the investigators who was responsible for really developing and working the Odinism lead. And try as he and his associates could, they were never able to develop a probable cause sufficiently to lead to the arrest of anyone connected with Odinism for any crimes connected with the death of Abby and Libby. And that's because apparently no such evidence existed. They Tried. They worked it. They couldn't find enough information.

[Anya Kane]

I mean, they didn't even get to probable cause.

[Brad Weber]

That's what I'm saying. They did not get to probable cause. So he was there today to offer an offer of proof, but apparently he left before this point.

[Anya Kane]

Wait, he left?

[Brad Weber]

Well, didn't they say he was no longer available? Or maybe, I don't know, maybe McLeland. Well, he wasn't there.

[Anya Kane]

Well, they didn't call him in.

[Brad Weber]

At least they didn't call him in. And what he was going to say in his offer of proof was that. So this. This investigation was being run by people who represented several different agencies, and the leaders of the investigation from all those agencies together were called the Unified Command.

[Anya Kane]

Yes.

[Brad Weber]

And so he wanted to do an offer of proof and tell the court that he believed that Unified Command always believed that two or more people were.

[Anya Kane]

Involved and it may be five or six.

[Brad Weber]

Yes, he believes this is what Unified command believed. And McLean objected and said Kevin Murphy was not a part of Unified Command. So any of his beliefs about what Unified Command believed would be just speculative.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, and also, I mean, one thing that's been made pretty clear by the investigators who have been interviewed, Arab have testified so far is that at various times, everyone was very much open to it being at least two people. It didn't sound like. I mean, it's not like some big secret, like, oh, my gosh, like, do you know what I mean? Like, it's sort of like they have to go where the evidence goes. So if they kind of get the vibe it's maybe more than one person, that's fine. But ultimately, you know, they have to be able to, I don't know, have evidence and prove things. Like. Like, it's like, I guess it's just like. I don't know, this whole thing is just like, what do you make of this? They've said like. Like all of them have said, like, well, yeah, at times we were like, maybe it's more than one person. And then we found evidence on one person and he confessed to doing it alone. And that kind of wrapped it up. Having Kevin Murphy be like, yeah, every time I came in, they'd say it was, you know, 14 people. It just. Just. It's like, I don't know.

[Brad Weber]

It's silly. It doesn't add anything. It was a waste of time. But Angie Baldwin wasn't done yet. As you all may or may not remember. There's this anecdote where Elvis Fields.

[Anya Kane]

Asked Kevin Murphy. So he. He gave his saliva To Kevin Murphy, right?

[Brad Weber]

Yes.

[Anya Kane]

Then he asked Kevin Murphy, if my spit ended up on the Girls and I had a good reason for it, would I be in trouble?

[Brad Weber]

And so Andrew Baldwin said, hey, Judge, I have a really cool idea. Why don't I get Jerry Holman, who was one of the lead investigators on this case? I'll get him on the stand and I'll say, holman, if Richard Allen made that comment about spit, would you be using that as evidence in this case? And he said, after that, I may ask about some of the evidence against Brad Holder and the others. I may say, if that evidence existed against Richard Allen, would you, Jerry Holman, the investigator, use that as evidence against Richard Allen and McLean. McLean, I think, symbolically, must have slapped his forehead. He didn't actually do that, but I kind of felt that. And he said, but the evidence against Elvis Fields was not enough to charge Elvis Fields. Like this spit thing, that's not enough to charge him.

[Anya Kane]

Someone saying some weird, disturbing stuff is not enough. And also, don't forget, he brought in Brad Holder's the stick picture on Facebook, all that stuff.

[Brad Weber]

He said this evidence was not enough to bring charges against Elvis Fields. But it's a completely different kettle of fish with Richard Allen. If that was the only evidence against Richard Allen, no, it wouldn't have been used in court because there would have been no charges against him.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, he would have been charged.

[Brad Weber]

But now we have a situation where there's a bunch of other evidence against Richard Allen. And if this other evidence also existed, well, maybe it would be brought in, maybe it wouldn't, but it's all speculative. And by the way, Lieutenant Holman is a gifted investigator, but he's not the prosecutor. And that's the decision a prosecutor would make.

[Anya Kane]

I love. Did you write down judge goals quote on this? I didn't, because I was trying to get out of there.

[Brad Weber]

She made a comment about how like.

[Anya Kane]

Like Jerry Holman stays in his lane. Like, he's not. He. You can't bring McLeland up here and ask him why he didn't charge Fields. So you're not going to do that with Holman. It's not Holman's decision. He's staying in his lane.

[Brad Weber]

And Baldwin started talking about how he believed there was evidence against these other people worthy of bringing charges against them.

[Anya Kane]

And she said, you misunderstand me, Mr. Baldwin. Like, there's no nexus.

[Brad Weber]

She said, we've had this discussion a thousand times.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, we have.

[Brad Weber]

That's what I wrote down. We have had this discussion a Thousand times.

[Anya Kane]

Feels like it, maybe more.

[Brad Weber]

And I think we're approaching the end of the trial, so I not think, I do not think we will have the discussion another thousand times.

[Anya Kane]

Well, I hope not because it's a stupid discussion. And, and you know, like, I mean, if they really came into this thing hoping that like, somehow, like, they'd really impress Judge Gull so much that she'd change her mind on Odinism, you know, and for all the people who send us angry emails, why does the judge get to decide? It's the same rule that prevents the defense from just accusing you randomly of the crime. They have to have, they have to reach a threshold in order to bring it in. Okay? It's a court. It's not like just a, it's not a YouTube comment section. And, and so like having a situation, you can't just bring in random people, okay? You have to have a nexus. It has to, it has to link up. They couldn't even get to probable cause with these guys, despite, you know, these investigators seemingly being very emotionally invested in doing so, which I think should raise concerns about like, tunnel vision perhaps, you know, which. Which again, like, doesn't seem to have affected Unified Command given that they, like, waited seven years and like, looked at all these other people in the meantime. So, like, there's a problem there. And I don't even know where I was going with this. It's just like, oh, here's what I was saying. If they were hoping that Judge G would suddenly randomly change her mind on this and that they were just going to roll the dice and go for that, then they have done their client a serious disservice because that was never going to happen. Odinism fell apart in that three day hearing. We witnessed it, we told you about it. It was not like, stop trying to make Odinism happen. Like they, and if they knew that, I mean, like, just get another theory then, or maybe just do a, you know, maybe a more workman, like, but perhaps more effective, some might argue, attempt to knock down the state's case, point out all the mistakes and hope for the best. You know, they were so desperate to have like a fun, interesting narrative of like a sacrifice and like lurid things from like a 1940s pulp magazine that they didn't stop to ask themselves, like, anything else about strategy here. Like, and I just don't understand that it's not effective. I've been disappointed with their performance so far. There's been a couple of bright spots here and there that we try to highlight desperately try to find and highlight for you. But like, it's been, it's been rough to watch, frankly. It's, I, it's been surprisingly bad, I guess, to be blunt, and I don't know what I mean. They have, I'm assuming they have the bullet. They're going to have a bullet expert. I'm assuming they're going to have maybe a phone expert, maybe bring back Holman and ask what his lane is and bring back Mullen and beat him up and Liggett and whatnot. I'm sure there'll be more of that, but I don't know. I don't. As far as I see it, they have not really dislodged the important and pertinent stuff that the prosecution has put out there so far.

[Brad Weber]

No.

[Anya Kane]

And they're going to need to. They're going to need to.

[Brad Weber]

So we're going to do our best to get in tomorrow for morning and afternoon.

[Anya Kane]

No guarantees.

[Brad Weber]

No guarantees. Meanwhile, thank you so much for continuing to put up with us and listen to these episodes. I know we're putting out a lot of content.

[Anya Kane]

Thanks everybody. We appreciate you.

[Brad Weber]

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 Kane]

If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at wwpatreon.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.

[Brad Weber]

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 Kane]

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. Thanks so much for sticking around to the end of this Murder Sheet episode. Just as a quick post roll ad, we wanted to tell you again about our friend Jason Blair's wonderful Silver Linings Handbook. This show is phenomenal. Whether you are interested in true crime, the criminal justice system, law, mental health, stories of marginalized people overcoming tragedy, well, being like he does it all, this is A show for you. He has so many different conversations with interesting people, people whose loved ones have gone missing, other podcasters in the true crime space. Just interesting people with interesting life experiences. And Jason's gift, I think, is just being an incredibly empathetic and compassionate interviewer where he's really letting his guests tell their stories and asking really interesting questions along the way, guiding those conversations forward. I would liken it to, like, you're kind of almost sitting down with friends and sort of just hearing these fascinating tales that you wouldn't get otherwise, because he just has that ability as an interviewer to tease it out and really make it interesting for his audience.

[Brad Weber]

On a personal level, Jason is, frankly a great guy.

[Anya Kane]

Yes.

[Brad Weber]

He's been a really good friend to us. And so it's, it's fun to be able to hit a button on my phone and get a little dose of Jason talking to people whenever I want. It's a really terrific show. We really recommend it highly.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, I think, I think our audience will like it. And you've already met Jason if you listen consistently to our show. He's been on our show a couple times. We've been on his show. He's a terrific guest. I, I say this in one of our ads about him, but I literally always, I'm like, oh, yeah, I remember when Jason said this, that really resonated. Like, I do quote him in, in, in conversation sometimes because he really has a good grasp of different complicated quotes.

[Brad Weber]

Me all the time.

[Anya Kane]

I do. I'm like, remember when Jason said this? That was so Right. So, I mean, I think if we're doing that, I think, and, and you like us, you, you. I think she'd give it a shot, give it a try. I think you'll really enjoy it. And again, he does a range of different topics, but they all kind of have the similar theme of compassion, of overcoming suffering, of dealing with suffering, of mental health, wellness, things like that. There's kind of a common through line of compassion and empathy there that I think we find very nice. And we work on a lot of stories that can be very tough, and we try to bring compassion and empathy to it. But this is something that almost can be like if you're kind of feeling a little burned out by true crime. I think this is kind of the life affirming stuff that can, can be nice to listen to in a podcast.

[Brad Weber]

It's, it's compassionate, it's affirming. But I, I also want to emphasize it's smart people. Jason is, is a very intelligent, articulate person. This is a smart show, but it's an accessible show. I think you'll all really enjoy it.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah. And he's got a great community that, that he's building, so we're really excited to be a part of that. We're really, we're fans of the show. We love it it. And we would strongly encourage you all just check it out, download some episodes. Listen, I think you'll, you'll understand what we're talking about once you do. But anyways, you can listen to the Silver Linings Handbook wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Brad Weber]

Wherever you listen to podcasts. Very easy to find.

[Anya Kane]

Absolutely.