The Delphi Murders: The Odinism Theory

Summary

Murder Sheet Podcast Episode Summary Title: The Delphi Murders: The Odinism Theory
Host/Authors: Áine Kane (Journalist) and Kevin Greenlee (Attorney)
Release Date: November 26, 2024

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of Murder Sheet, hosts Áine Kane and Kevin Greenlee delve deep into the controversial Odinism Theory related to the tragic Delphi murders of 2017. The episode meticulously examines the defense's alternative theory, scrutinizes the evidence presented, and evaluates the integrity of the investigative process.

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Content Warning

[02:21]

Áine Kane: "This episode contains discussion of the brutal murder of two girls."

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The Odinism Theory: Overview and Origin

The Delphi murders, involving the tragic deaths of Abby Williams and Liberty German, have been the subject of intense scrutiny and various theories. The defense, led by attorneys Andrew Baldwin, Bradley Rosie, and later Jennifer Roget, introduced the Odinism Theory as an alternative explanation for the crimes.

Kevin Greenlee explains:

[02:49] "We're talking about the Odinism theory, especially as it was presented in the so-called Frank's memorandum in the Richard Allen case. It laid out what the defense contends actually happened to Abby Williams and Liberty German on February 13, 2017."

Áine Kane summarizes:

[03:10] "The defense posited that Richard Allen did not commit the murders; instead, a group of men they dubbed Odinists, who worship Norse paganism, were responsible for sacrificing the two victims in the woods."

The theory suggested that these Odinists conducted ritualistic sacrifices, diverting suspicion from Allen. Despite initial media fascination, the theory was dismissed by Judge Francis Gull and never brought to trial.

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Third-Party Defense: Legal Framework in Indiana

To establish a third-party defense in Indiana, the defense must demonstrate a connection between the proposed third party and the crime. This legal nuance is critical in understanding the shortcomings of the Odinism Theory.

Kevin Greenlee elaborates:

[12:24] "Before evidence of a third party is admissible, the defendant must show some connection between the third party and the crime. If there's no connection, accusing someone is slanderous and wastes the court’s time."

Using a simplified analogy, Greenlee illustrates:

[10:23] "If you present an option that the jury doesn't find plausible, they may reject your entire case."

This underscores the importance of credible evidence when proposing an alternative explanation for a crime.

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Defense’s Evidence and Interpretation of the Crime Scene

Central to the Odinism Theory is the defense's interpretation of the crime scene, particularly the placement of sticks on the victims' bodies, which they claimed were runic symbols.

Áine Kane points out:

[22:06] "Both Abby and Libby's bodies had sticks placed atop them. The prosecution concluded these were attempts to conceal the bodies or signs of 'undoing.' The defense interpreted the sticks as Norse runes."

Kevin Greenlee critiques the lack of expert validation:

[25:15] "They did not produce a single credible expert who said these sticks are definitely runes. It's just a vibe."

Áine Kane concurs:

[25:41] "They just look like sticks. If experts had corroborated the runic interpretation, it would have been more compelling."

The absence of expert testimony supporting the runic claim significantly weakened the defense's position.

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Examination of Defense Testimonies: Experts and Witnesses

The defense's reliance on questionable expert testimony further undermined the Odinism Theory. Notably, Dawn Perlmutter, presented as a crime scene expert, failed to provide credible analysis.

During cross-examination, Kevin Greenlee exposes the flaws:

[53:20] Kevin Greenlee questions: "What training do you have specifically to recognize when a crime scene is part of an Odinist ritualistic killing?"
[54:04] Dawn Perlmutter: "No, I haven't done this for a long time."
[54:27] Kevin Greenlee presses: "Have you had any training specifically on Odinist ritualistic killings?"
[54:40] Perlmutter: "No."

Kevin Greenlee concludes:

[57:08] "She connects symbols to Odinism without credible expertise, merely based on vague observations."

Additionally, the defense's chosen witnesses, such as Amber Holder and statements from Elvis Fields' sister, lacked credibility and failed to substantiate any concrete links to the crime.

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Critique of Defense’s Investigation Complaints

The defense aggressively criticized the investigative process, alleging negligence and bias against the Odinism Theory. They contended that law enforcement failed to pursue this line of inquiry thoroughly.

Áine Kane observes:

[86:31] "Defense accused investigators of ignoring the Odinism angle, but actual evidence shows investigators were encouraged to explore all leads."

Kevin Greenlee counters:

[85:44] "They committed intellectual dishonesty by suggesting a conspiracy without evidence."

The hosts argue that the defense's accusations were unfounded and intended to discredit reputable investigators rather than present a viable alternative theory.

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Intellectual Dishonesty and Misrepresentation by Defense

The Odinism Theory not only lacked substantial evidence but was also marred by misrepresentations and logical fallacies.

Kevin Greenlee states:

[102:14] "Defense had a predetermined outcome and ignored evidence that contradicted their theory."

Áine Kane adds:

[123:16] "The defense twisted expert testimonies and fabricated connections, planting false impressions without substantiation."

Examples include the flawed testimony of Dawn Perlmutter, who failed to identify Odinist symbols convincingly, and the misrepresentation of Professor Jeff Turco's findings, leading to further discrediting of the theory.

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Hypothetical Evidence that Could Support Odinism Theory

For the Odinism Theory to gain traction, credible and tangible evidence would have been necessary. The hosts outline what such evidence might entail:

Kevin Greenlee suggests:

"If there were credible witnesses who saw Odinists at the crime scene or concrete evidence linking Odinist symbols to the murders, it would have been compelling."

Áine Kane echoes:

"Presence of multiple individuals executing a coordinated ritualistic act without leaving trace evidence would lend some plausibility."

However, no such evidence was ever presented, rendering the theory speculative and unsubstantiated.

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Conclusion and Insights

Áine Kane and Kevin Greenlee conclude that the Odinism Theory was fundamentally flawed due to its reliance on weak evidence, lack of credible expert support, and the defense's misrepresentations. They emphasize the importance of adhering to factual evidence and legal standards to ensure justice is served accurately.

Kevin Greenlee affirms:

"A murder trial is a very serious thing. We owe it to the victims and the defendant to take theories presented by the attorneys very seriously. This is garbage."
[132:50]

Áine Kane concurs:

"It's irresponsible to promote unfounded theories that undermine genuine investigative work and disrespect the victims' families."
[134:20]

The episode serves as a critical examination of how alternative theories, when not rooted in solid evidence, can derail justice and perpetuate misinformation.

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Key Takeaways

• The Odinism Theory lacked credible evidence and expert validation.
• The defense's approach demonstrated intellectual dishonesty and misrepresentation.
• Effective defense must focus on factual evidence rather than speculative theories.
• Upholding legal standards ensures the integrity of the judicial process.

Notable Quotes:

• Kevin Greenlee on third-party defense requirements:

  "[12:24] 'Before evidence of a third party is admissible, the defendant must show some connection between the third party and the crime.'”

• Áine Kane on defense strategy:

  "[123:16] 'The defense consistently misrepresented the truth, which hurt their credibility with us and many others.'”

• Kevin Greenlee critiquing the theory:

  "[132:50] 'This is garbage.'”

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Final Thoughts

Murder Sheet provides an incisive analysis of the flawed Odinism Theory in the Delphi murders case. By dissecting the defense's approach and highlighting the absence of substantiated evidence, the hosts reinforce the necessity of rigorous standards in criminal investigations and legal defenses.

For listeners seeking in-depth true crime analysis and thoughtful legal discussions, this episode stands out as a testament to the importance of evidence-based conclusions in the pursuit of justice.

Transcript

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[Anya Kane]

Content Warning this episode contains discussion of the brutal murder of two girls. So let's talk about Something that we've spent maybe a year on. We've all obsessed about it. The press ate it up. The defense attorney for the Delphi defense, attorneys David Hennessy called this a work of art. And then Judge Francis Gull deemed it unfit for court. So what are we talking about, Kevin?

[Kevin Greenlee]

We're talking about the Odinism theory, especially as it was presented in the so called Frank's memorandum in the Richard Allen case. It laid out what the defense contends actually happened to Abby Williams and Liberty German on February 13, 2017.

[Anya Kane]

So concisely, this theory put out there by defense attorneys Andrew Baldwin and Bradley Rosie, and then of course Jennifer Roget later joined their team, posited that what if Richard Allen did not commit the murders? What if they were instead committed by a group of men that the defense dubbed Odinists and certainly, you know, worshiping Norse paganism. What if they sacrificed the two victims in the woods and that's what really happened? So that's to boil it down, this was their main theory. We covered it from its origin onwards. And one thing, the reason why we're talking about it now, even though it was dismissed and it did not come up a trial, is because what I've observed is what I would essentially characterize as like a sort of a lost cause esque movement going on where people start saying things like, well, if only Odinism had been allowed in, then maybe, just maybe Alan would be home today. And it's honestly one of the joys of my life right now is to see these like very somber creators and journalists tell us why Odinism could have, could have been the winning ticket here. It's a very good litmus test to see who has any idea what they're talking about, frankly. But you know what the, what the kind of the narrative is now is that Odinism was unfairly dismissed by Judge G and this is going to be a salient issue on appeal.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Yeah, that's what the claim is. And I think it's also worth noting a lot of people tend to, when you explain this theory to them either even in the broadest strokes, will have the immediate reaction, well, gosh, that's stupid and that's an understandable reaction. But I think it is very important when you have a situation where certainly before a trial you don't know what happened on a particular date, when a crime occurred. You have to be open to possibilities, you have to take things seriously because until you know what happened, you don't really know what didn't happen. And as we will note, this is A theory that was taken seriously not just by the defense, but by the original investigators. And it was looked into thoroughly at the time.

[Anya Kane]

Yes. And so what we're trying to determine in this episode is did Judge Gall unfairly withhold a hot theory from the defense that could have saved the day, disadvantaging them and violating their clients rights? And is a, is a very successful appeal around this coming, or did the defense's inexplicable adherence to stupid nonsense that would get most people laughed off of Reddit in 2019 put their client at a disadvantage? I guess we're going to find out. But let's echo the Carroll. Let's echo Carroll county prosecutor Nicholas McLeland, who it came out in one of the summer hearings that he told Kevin Murphy, a then Indiana State Police trooper, you know, if this theory has legs, run with it. So let's treat it like it has legs and run with it. My name is Anya Kane. I'm a journalist.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney.

[Anya Kane]

And this is the Murder Sheet.

[Kevin Greenlee]

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

[Anya Kane]

And this is the Delphi Murders. The Odinism Theory. So to discuss the Odinism theory, there's so much to talk about and we don't want to be here for five hours. So what we try to do is organize our thoughts into five different sections that we'll kind of go through and I'll just kind of give you a heads up of what's coming. We're first going to talk about what you need to have a third party defense In Indiana. Third party defense means those other guys did it. So Odinism is a third party defense here. Then we're going to go over the defense's stated evidence connecting Odinism to this case. Then we're going to jump into the defense's complaints about how the police handled the investigation into possible Odinist links. We're going to jump then into the frankly deceptive claims that the defense has made throughout this process around the Odinism saga. And then we'll kind of end with talking about, you know, things that would have perhaps made us give a second look to the Odinism theory.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Yes. So let's start by talking about what you need to make a third party defense. And even before I get that to that, let me also make an obvious point that we've made before. It's worth mentioning often if you are on trial for a criminal offense, if you've been charged with a criminal offense. You do not have any obligation to do anything other than basically fold your arms and look at the, the prosecution and say prove it. You, you want them to prove their case. You don't have to offer up your own solution to the crime.

[Anya Kane]

Can I ask you a question?

[Kevin Greenlee]

Please do.

[Anya Kane]

What is, what is the advantage and disadvantage to putting on your own case when you're the defense?

[Kevin Greenlee]

Well, the advantage to putting on your own case is sometimes the flaws in the prosec executions case against you are not readily apparent. And maybe there's something they haven't brought up that would help you. If, if for instance you were charged with stealing cereal and, and they thought they had a pretty good case against you, you might want to put me on the stand to say, well the time she was stealing cereal, she was with me. Things of that nature. A disadvantage of putting on your own defense. Let's say you are charged with stealing cereal. There's a pretty strong circumstantial case against you. And you get it into your head that you want to put on an offense that the steer the serial was actually stolen by a shape shifting alien who looked exactly like you.

[Anya Kane]

I knew it.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And if you put that defense on, you would basically be offering the jury a choice. Which of these two options do you like? And sometimes if you do that, even if you may be innocent, the choice you offer them may be one that they don't like as well as the prosecution case. Does that make sense?

[Anya Kane]

It does.

[Kevin Greenlee]

So if you present an option that they don't find plausible, they may then just reject your entire case. So there are some risks involved in it. But you don't have to offer your own defense. If you're charged with a crime, it is not on you to solve that crime. It's only thing up to you to do is say prove it. And you can just sit back and try to poke holes in their case. That's all you need to do. Now when we talk about the law we often have all these fancy sounding Latin words and special terms and stuff that can be hard for laypeople to understand. And I recognize that and I think some of that's deliberate because lawyers like to confuse people a little bit because that way you keep on hiring us to do it for you, to take care of things for you frickin lawyers. But in this case, when it comes to third party defenses in Indiana, you find that the language around it is pretty clear. I want to quote from the Peli v. State, which is an Indiana case and it says the widely accepted principle that before evidence of a third party is admissible, the defendant must show some connection between the third party and the crime. That's pretty clear language. Yes, I mean, I don't think I really have to explain that.

[Anya Kane]

Interpret this, Professor.

[Kevin Greenlee]

If I want to get into court and accuse someone of committing a crime that I'm charged with, I have to show that that person has some sort of connection to the crime. If I don't do that, if I am just willy nilly accusing a person of doing a crime when that person has no connection to the crime, I am slandering that person's reputation with no evidence. And I am also wasting the court's time and I'm wasting the jury's time. It is a waste of time for the jury to ponder whether or not someone is guilty of a crime if there is no connection between that person and that crime.

[Anya Kane]

So to give a more serious example than our usual serial theft antics, like if you have the case of a murdered woman and her, her secret lover is on trial for killing her, but you know, maybe she was having extreme issues with her husband and maybe she had a feud with her boss that was turning really heated and there was evidence he was in near her house that night. Those would be two people where a third party defense would make a lot of sense because they'd both be potentially really directly connected with what was going on. They'd have a motive, maybe they'd have opportunity. Right?

[Kevin Greenlee]

Yeah. Maybe there's even in your scenario, maybe there's security camera footage of some of these people going into the apartment building where this person lives, then you could rationally say these people have a connection to the crime. Let's look at them. Maybe I, the person who am accused of the crime did not do it, maybe one of these other people did.

[Anya Kane]

But if you said, hey, across town there's kind of a weird guy and like, you know, he doesn't have any connection to the crime, but like a lot of people say he's pretty weird.

[Kevin Greenlee]

What do you think?

[Anya Kane]

Cuz that that's not enough.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And there's, there's. Other than wasting the court's time, it's also an important principle. You really do slander a person's name and reputation if you bring them into a case and start making accusations against them. And before you do that, you really need to make sure that there is a reason for it.

[Anya Kane]

Or a nexus.

[Kevin Greenlee]

A nexus, we talk about a nexus. A nexus is also just basically a fancy word for some sort of connection between this person and the crime.

[Anya Kane]

So if suddenly, then you found video, as you mentioned, surveillance footage of the weird guy going into the apartment building that day. And then it turned out he was telling all these people obsessively about the case. Maybe you do have something, but him just being kind of a weird dude on the other side of town isn't enough.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And so we're saying all of this because this Odinism theory is a theory in which the defense is saying Richard Allen did not commit the crimes of which he was char with the crimes of which he was later convicted of. They were actually convict, they were actually committed by these other people. So in order to reach the level where they could bring that into court, they needed to convince the judge here is evidence that shows there is a connection between these people and the crime. And so to be clear, they don't have to show a connection beyond a reasonable doubt. They don't have to reach that high standard. They just have to show there is a connection.

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[Anya Kane]

Can I ask you something? Because one thing I hear again and again from laypeople, understandably, is, well, yeah, maybe you have a weak third party defense, but, I mean, what's the harm in just putting it on? I mean, like, why would the judge not, you know, if it's not good, it'll fall apart. Put it in the marketplace of ideas. Let's all debate about it. Almost like, why not just do it? You know, if that's what they want to do and it's not good, then the jury will see through it. So what's the harm?

[Kevin Greenlee]

Well, as I mentioned before, it is a waste of time, for one thing. And it would also be unfair to the people whose reputations are being slandered. And also, if we start changing the rules of evidence and start allowing in a lot of evidence that we now consider to be inadmissible, trials could easily go on forever.

[Anya Kane]

Okay.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Because if we have a situation, well, there's no connection between this evidence and the crime, but we want to talk about it anyway. What's to stop us from talking about anything? You know, why don't I talk about, you know, many people got their mail late on the day of the crime. Let's delve into that.

[Anya Kane]

Where was the postman? Yeah, no, it's, it's. I think people need to understand that it's not. It's not a trial is not a free for all. There's, there's rules about what comes in and what can come in, and a lot of those are actually to protect the defendant's rights. But in addition to that, it's to avoid wasting the court's time and frankly, you know, dragging in innocent people who are going to be, you know, chewed up and spat out by the process.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Let me say it this way. A criminal trial is not a thread on Reddit, and I think that's good. I think having rules and strong moderation about what can come in and how it is discussed is good.

[Anya Kane]

So are you saying Judge Gull is like a really strict mod?

[Kevin Greenlee]

And I think having rules ultimately helps the person who is on trial. If we start loosening up the rules about what is and is not admissible, I think that would ultimately cause more harm to the defendants than to the state.

[Anya Kane]

I agree. I think that's important to stress. Should we move on to our next section, which is evidence that the defense in this case said connected the Odinist to the cr.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Why don't we do that.

[Anya Kane]

What are you smiling about?

[Kevin Greenlee]

I'm not smiling. I'm not smiling.

[Anya Kane]

It's just wild to me that, I don't know, sometimes dealing with the revisionist history in this case, when it really just happened in a way, is just kind of wild to me. But let's in good faith talk extensively about sort of main pieces of evidence that the defense brought forward. I don't know if this is going to be fully comprehensive just because there's, there are so many little things that the defense has sort of thrown out there about Odinism over the years. But I think that we could avoid getting bogged down in all the minutia and instead focus on what are maybe the most salient, interesting points that they're raising with this theory is that that's good.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And before we get into it, I also want to make a point that it is shocking how little evidence, and I put the word evidence in quotation marks. It is shocking how little, quote, evidence there is connecting Odinus to the crime. When we think about the things the defense claimed about their ownness theory, much of it was not about the crime itself. Much of it was their allegations about how the later investigation was handled. And that'll be what we cover next. But when I went back and reread the Frank's memorandum with you the other day, I, I was, I was surprised to be reminded of how little evidence they were able to produce.

[Anya Kane]

Yes. Now, to start off with, we're going to be talking about something that is frankly disturbing to talk about. It's the crime scene. So maybe skip ahead a few minutes if you don't want to hear that. But this is, for me, this is the, I guess the central point of, you know, I think the crime scene and the defense's interpretation of the crime scene is really the central point of their Odinism theory. I think everything else is kind of, kind of circling around this, orbiting around this, but without their interpretation of the crime scene, you don't really have a theory. So in we are people who have unfortunately seen images from the crime scene.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Both images that were sent to us last year by a leaker. And also in the courtroom itself, we actually saw much more graphic photos.

[Anya Kane]

Yes. So we're, we're speaking based on that. And one hallmark of the crime scene, I suppose you could say, is that both Libby and Abby's body, bodies had sticks placed atop them. So what the prosecution and the state and police and the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit concluded was that somebody was either trying to conceal the Bodies, maybe they didn't. I mean, they weren't very well concealed, but they were also in a shallow depression. So, you know, there may have been some attempt to kind of make sure no one could kind of come by and see them. Maybe it was interrupted or whatever. And. And. Or what the BAU called undoing, which is almost like.

[Kevin Greenlee]

What's the BAU again?

[Anya Kane]

The Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI. These are profilers, you know, the kind of traditional profilers that you think of when you think of the FBI. They're coming around. They're. They assess crimes and sort of give their thoughts on. On the psychological profile of the killer. To. To boil it down, we. We. You know, the Consult is a great podcast sort of about that, and we'd recommend it. But it's. It's a situation where they, you know, they thought this was undoing, which I. I take it to mean almost like the killer maybe regretted things and just kind of wanted to almost make it like this hadn't happened. So you cover up the body in some way. And what the defense's interpretation was was that these sticks were put on the bodies in a specific way to mimic Norse runes. Those are sort of, I guess, to boil it down in a stupid way, like letters, ancient Norse letters that kind of have different meanings.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And let me make this point. When you are an investigator or when you're studying something, this is a point we will return often during this discussion. The evidence, you should be like a dog on a leash. And the person holding the leash should be evidence.

[Anya Kane]

What a weird. What a weird analogy.

[Kevin Greenlee]

You need to go where the evidence takes you and nowhere else. And I think often in this theory is. Again, we would. We would talk about time and time again, there is a desire to just twist the evidence or to arbitrarily decide that something means something that it may not mean at all. And Anya is talking about these sticks on the body and about the defense, saying, well, obviously these were runes. And some people online who have seen the pictures say, oh, yes, obviously they're runes or whatever. But what is interesting to me is they did not produce a single credible expert who said, these sticks are definitely runes. It's just a vibe.

[Anya Kane]

It is a vibe. And that's. That's one thing where we'll talk more about this in our last section. But had they had a number of Norse experts come out and be defense experts and say, okay, we're pretty sure these are runes. Here's why, then I would certainly find that more compelling. Now, having seen it myself, I I think they just look like sticks.

[Kevin Greenlee]

I think that's fair. And I, I also think at the time this Franks memorandum was written, which I believe was In September of 2023, the defense had no Odinism expert.

[Anya Kane]

That's correct.

[Kevin Greenlee]

They just, they just looked at these sticks, googled some things and said, oh, they're runes. It's a vibe. What do you think folks? That was it.

[Anya Kane]

That was it.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And I'll tell you, I think they are sticks. I think they're sticks. When I first saw the leaked crime scene pictures last year, I think I said on the show, if you have a preconceived notion that there are runes there, you can convince yourself they are runes. If you have a preconceived notion that they are just sticks in a random pattern, that's what you will see. So there's nothing clearly there indicating runes. And I think if you were making a claim that they are runes, you need to have some evidence to back up that claim. And they don't have it.

[Anya Kane]

That's why I said, like I'd be open minded to an expert telling me, no, there are runes. Here's exactly what they spell out and this is why they'd have meaning. And here's other situations where you might like something, but they just. It was, as you said, it was just all vibes. And that's personally not enough for me. There was, you know, there was a. For a long time there's been discussion of the bodies being positioned and what we learned at the three day hearings, three days of hearings over the summer from Major Pat Cicero, who is a crime scene expert and analyst for the prosecution, was more on what that means in his testimony. He said Libby was dragged a ways away, not, not super far, just kind of like maybe a few feet really. And also at trial it came out the leaves and blood on her and sort of the blood on the leaves beneath her suggested this as well. And this was perhaps to put her in a lower place in this depression that the girls were in, to make her less visible to people across the creek. So it's not like positioning of the body in some kind of ritualistic, bizarre way. It's, it seems to be again, like, for, for lack of a better term, more of a practical decision on the killer's part. And he also testified that at trial that Abby was barely moved after her death, that it, that the evidence strongly indicated she was killed wearing the clothes she was in, that she took a while to die, unfortunately, and that she may have been moved a little bit Almost as if the killer was checking to see if she was dead, but not in some sort of bizarre positioning way. So again, I feel like the Franxx memorandum kind of includes stuff about, oh well, you know, they were positioned and all this stuff. It makes it sound super like ritualistic and bizarre. But when you actually hear. And again, if we just heard that from Major Cicero, you'd be forgiven to say, well, okay, but maybe the defense expert has a different interpretation, but they did not put on anyone to counter that.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Yes. And there was also talk, as you may recall, about some blood on a tree which the defense again claimed it was a rune. And this is basically a repeat of the stick thing because they say, oh, this blood on the tree, obviously it was painted there, obviously it was a rune. No credible expert testified to that. And in fact the only credible experts who testified indicated that it appeared is if that so called rune was actually came from. Came from Libby's bloody hand. Is she leaned against the tree as she was dying.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, it's to kind of go over a few logistical things. So Odinism came to a head at the three day hearings over the summer. That was sort of the chance that the defense had to say this is a serious theory that can and should be presented at court. Judge Gull gave them a whole mini trial essentially to put on their experts and say things that would have helped them out and would have gotten them there.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Yeah, that was their chance to lay out all of their Odinism evidence. This is when they should have produced credible experts and they didn't. And in our discussion of the crime scene, basically what the defense did was they made some unverified, unsupported assertions about what they believe the crime scene showed, whether it's blood on a tree or positioning of sticks, didn't offer any credible evidence to support it. So that's not impressive.

[Anya Kane]

And I'm. I know, Kevin, that you often say that lawyers are princes among men and certainly the finest people alive, but.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Well, I think that's generally accepted.

[Anya Kane]

But I think you'll agree that while lawyers are very smart and well educated people, they are not necessarily experts in everything. None of us are. So having people who can kind of go based on more than vibes when discussing a crime scene or the existence of possible runes seems like that would have been a really good thing for them. Because I don't feel like I trust Baldwin and Rosie's interpretation of this based on what seems like some googling.

[Kevin Greenlee]

So again, I conclude from that what they presented from the crime scene doesn't really establish anything. They had a suspect.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, they had a couple.

[Kevin Greenlee]

The. The. The. Their prime suspect was a man named Brad Holder. And as we discuss him, I want to stress the fact that despite the best efforts from the defense, there is no reason to believe that Mr. Holder had anything to do with the tragic events of February 13, 2017.

[Anya Kane]

Yes. Brad Holder was a man whose son seemingly had some sort of friendship or relationship with Abby, one of the victims. That's not been. I've not seen that disputed anywhere, so that seems fair. But of. I mean, and that. That is some kind of social connection. But obviously, I think you're going to need a little bit more. So let's talk about what the defense put forward about Holder and why they felt he was a viable suspect versus their client.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Right.

[Anya Kane]

They. There was a lot made of Brad Holder's Facebook social media output now that included photos he took of what. You know, so what they alleged with Holder is that he practiced Odinism. More on that later. But that he worshiped Norse paganism. We're going to talk more about all the terms later and how wrong those are. But so they. They say that this is his religion and he takes photos on his Facebook of runes that kind of occur in nature. So, like, you might. If you're a Christian and you see, like, twigs forming kind of a pretty cross in the forest, maybe you take a picture of that and that's meaningful to you. It's something like that, but with runes. Because he's interested in Norse paganism. In addition to that, one of the. You know what? One thing that the defense got from some sort of Internet sleuth was at one point, Holder had published a picture on his Facebook of clothed women lying on the forest floor. There are branches around them and also showing that he. He kind of cuts his own rune symbols into that picture.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Let's talk about that picture. They. They refer to this as a mimicked crime scene photo taken before the crime. And they tried to describe the photo in ways that make it sound similar to the murder scene. And I don't think it's all that similar. The women in the photo are adults, as you say. They're both fully.

[Anya Kane]

I don't know how old they are.

[Kevin Greenlee]

They look like adults to me. Okay, they're adults. They're grown women. They're fully clothed. I don't think the arrangement of sticks on them is at all similar to what's in the actual crime scene.

[Anya Kane]

It's not.

[Kevin Greenlee]

To me, it's not much different from if I posted on Facebook A picture of Anya eating cereal and say, no, some people stole some cereal. Here's a picture of Anya with cereal. Maybe it's worth mentioning, but it's not a bombshell, and it's not considered evidence.

[Anya Kane]

I think if there was a lot of evidence against him and then you wanted to break this out, you might be like, oh, okay. But, like, it. This is the kind of thing that would help go towards, like, totality at best. It wouldn't. It wouldn't be something I would, like, break out as, like, the opening kind of razzmatazz. It's just. It's like, okay, it looks kind. It looks different to me if I'm being generous and I'm saying, okay, well, maybe just, you know, sticks and people. Females lying down. It's like, you don't. I wouldn't want this to be the centerpiece of anything.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And. And let's be honest. A lot of people post vaguely creepy things on their Facebook.

[Anya Kane]

Yes.

[Kevin Greenlee]

I'm not naming any names.

[Anya Kane]

Calling out all your Facebook friends. No, it's. It's true. I mean, like, I. Like, I can. The thing with Holder, and you're gonna. You're gonna learn this in the investigation setting, but a lot of people tipped him off because of his Facebook presence. And I don't. I don't think those are super helpful tips, to be honest, because a lot of people are just kind of weird on social media. But I don't know.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Tell us about his wife, Amber.

[Anya Kane]

So Brad Holder had a former wife named Amber. And this is something that the defense made a very big deal about. They first received this information from what they called the ODIN Report, which was written by former Indiana State Police trooper Kevin Murphy, who was one of the sort of investigators digging into the angle around Holder. And this is what she first told Murphy in sort of their initial interview, that Brad Holder had a friend named Patrick Westfall who lived in the Delphi area, and that once when Holder was intoxicated, he said he and Patrick got into a fight. And they no longer spoke to each other after that because the fight occurred because they were in the woods near a river doing a ritual. And then one of them said or did something that the other did not agree with, and they stopped talking to each other. The river was near Patrick Westfall's house. Okay, so you may be wondering, well, who cares? And that's fair. But let's go on to the second and more bombshell statement from Amber Holder. And this occurred when she interviewed Indiana State Police interviewed with Murphy the second time. So Like I'm going to say something about that, but I'll read this first. She at that point told him, Murphy that her husband or ex husband had become very nervous, told her that she needed to stay away from Westfall or she would end up dead. And in addition to that, that Westfall and quote his crew were responsible for the murders of the quote, girls in Delphi and a fire that killed two girls. And she claimed then, in response to Murphy's question, not to be familiar with the Flora fire that killed four little girls also in 2017. And then she also said that Brad Holder told him her that they had friends in many states and they had no problem killing race traders. And she defined that as people who mix with other races. So one thing that's confusing in the document is that traitor instead of like traitor T R a I T O R it's traitor likes day trader. So I don't, I don't know who got that wrong, but this is, this is kind of what she had to say. Do you find it odd that this came out on the second interview with Murphy?

[Kevin Greenlee]

I do. And I also. I'm going to choose my words carefully here. There are unverified rumors or reports that a relative of one of the victims may have had some sort of a romantic relationship with a person of color, which I guess would under this terminology be considered being a race traitor. But there's no indication that these people are saying let's kill the relatives of race traders. And there's no indication that Libby or Abby had any sort of a romantic relationship of that nature. So I'm not even sure even if you buy this theory, why would you kill the relative of the race traitor?

[Anya Kane]

I like we're going to get into later on Odinism, white supremacy, Asatru and all the various Norse pagan things you need to know in order to understand how off some of this stuff is. But yes, you raise a good point. Let me just say we heard from Amber Holder in the three day hearings. She was a terrible witness to the point where she didn't remember when she was married to Brad Holder.

[Kevin Greenlee]

That's a big thing to forget.

[Anya Kane]

I'm not trying to be mean. I'm just saying she was a terrible witness and I did not find her credible. I like I'm. Maybe she thought she was helping with Murphy here. I don't know. But frankly the, the whole thing raised my eyebrows. Like you're talking to someone about the Delphi, you're talking to a detective about the Delphi murders and then you kind of mention. Oh, it was a vague argument. It just seemed like the kind of thing where like I would, if I were an investigator that would really like raise my hackles in terms of like, okay, is someone telling me what they think they want me to hear? Like, we go from they had a falling out to like, oh, they had a falling out over Delphi and Flora. It's like, you know, what, what is it like? And the Manson murders. I mean, what's next? You know, it just, it, it. I, I mean again, I not, I'm not trying to be mean, but it, it. There felt like there were some serious credibility issues here.

[Kevin Greenlee]

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[Anya Kane]

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[Anya Kane]

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[Anya Kane]

Say, but there were more alleged incriminating statements involving other people in this group of men that the defense was accusing. Now to be clear with this, with this group of men, there were a couple, Patrick Westphal and Brad Holder, who were more up in the Logansport Delphi area, which is kind of up in like, I don't know, what would you say, like central north Indiana kind of somewhere? I don't know.

[Kevin Greenlee]

I'm not, I'm not, I'm no map maker. I'm not Christopher Columbus.

[Anya Kane]

Geez, thank goodness for that. And so with, with, with that. But then there's also a southern contingent and this is based in Rushville, which is more towards the south. And they're not close. These areas are not close together. But there appears to be some sort of like mutual friends in these, in these groups. But the, one of the men in the Rushville contingent is a man named Elvis Fields. And what we know about him from the defense's own filings is that he may have sort of the mental capacity of a child, may have some, some disabilities there.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Yes.

[Anya Kane]

And you know, he, he also had some sisters who said that he made incriminating statements to them. So one of the Mary Jacobs claimed that on February 14, 2024, the day the bodies were found, that he claimed he was present at the killings and that he had a brother and was part of A gang and that he was rambling hyper and borderline incoherent. When he said this, he said he was on the bridge with two girls that was killed. He, he said someone, one of the victims, Abigail, was a pain in the ass and a troublemaker and you know, he tried to give her a blue jacket. So all of that is pretty interesting, right? On the surface you're kind of like, whoa.

[Kevin Greenlee]

For the investigator this was said to, as you've mentioned, was Trooper Kevin Murphy. He indicated that when he was interviewing her, he became concerned that there were likely mental health issues at play. And when he was in her residence, he saw a number of mental health related medication and he thought he was being kind of jerked around.

[Anya Kane]

He thought that he, he thought that she was lying and that there were credibility issues. Yeah.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And this comes from the investigator who receive this information from her personally.

[Anya Kane]

And you might be wondering, well, what kind of person would lie about something like this? And the answer is a lot of people, either due to mental issues or wanting attention, we've gotten lied to by people who made all sorts of ridiculous claims about what in this case. I mean, you don't hear about them on the show because we don't run them. But it's not, it is not an uncommon phenomenon in my opinion, for, for someone to be trying to insert themselves into the case of I have the answer. It's my weird brother.

[Kevin Greenlee]

You know, we've been lied to about the Burger Chef case too. I'll just know.

[Anya Kane]

People have a lot of issues and they kind of try to work through them with true crime cases. And it's kind of, it's unfortunate, but it does happen.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Elvis also made an interesting comment to Kevin Murphy.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, this was one thing that again, like, and some of the stuff I'm like, this is interesting potentially, if you have more. It's not like I'm, you know. So Murphy took a sample of his spit to kind of like, you know, at that point, you know, at one thing that kind of came out in the trial is that they had, they thought they had male DNA at one point and it turned out to be a lab employees. And so that kind of makes you wonder like if they were kind of almost like, we're getting close, let's take everyone's DNA. And then it turned out it was nothing. But they took, they took Elvis's spit sample for DNA. And then as Murphy was dropping him back off at his home, he sort of turns back and said, you know, if my spit were found on one of the girls. But I had a good reason for it. Would I be in trouble? So Murphy has since sort of indicated that that was a huge shocking moment for him at the time. It seems like he also felt like he was being jerked around by someone who was having, you know, maybe again, mental health issues. I guess so, I don't know.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And again, he had just given a saliva swab.

[Anya Kane]

I think it's interesting, but I, again, I would need a lot more than that. It's again, it's like when you can kind of wave it away by being like, well, some people have like a lot of issues. The other thing that would be if you had some kind of indication that saliva was on one of the bodies.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Yeah, that would be interesting.

[Anya Kane]

Now, given the proliferation of blood and the kind of how that cancels out other DNA, maybe it wouldn't work out, but certainly you'd want to look for that. So again, I think there's something here where I can very much understand why there were investigations into these people.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And I want to stress something that was once told me by an investigator in another case, investigator in the Burger Chef case. He said that without evidence, a confession is just a story. And I can tell you in the Berger Chef case that there were people who told me, oh, I left bodily fluids on one of the victims and they were lying. And you can make up whatever story you want about your involvement in a crime, but without evidence, it's just a made up story. Now if there is evidence, that's another kettle of fish. And when Richard Allen made his confessions, they were supported by evidence outside of the confessions because there are a number of reasons and there's a number of bits of evidence to prove he was there. And there is no such evidence about these people, which we'll talk about later.

[Anya Kane]

But I want to ask you, when it comes to like hearsay, when it comes to like, I, I'm saying that you told me something. How valuable can that be in this, in this instance? Like, I mean, like, is it hearsay or is like, I mean, like, what, what would, what would have had to happen for, for the Mary Jacobs thing to be in court?

[Kevin Greenlee]

I would be in. Is she herself credible and is the, the information supported by other evidence? There's all sorts of exceptions for hearsay. You could say it's a declaration against his interests or something, I suppose.

[Anya Kane]

Okay, so he. That could have been allowed in, but I would have ridden a lot on her credibility or lack thereof.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Yes.

[Anya Kane]

And one thing that was interesting and we're going to talk about, we're Going to. This is a nice segue into the three day hearing which is where I felt Odinism sort of finally collapsed. But one thing that would have been helpful would to have been to hear from some of these people. We heard from Amber Holder, although again, that was not, that was not great testimony in my opinion. There were. We also, like, I'm not picking on her. It just, she, she just seemed kind of unsure, you know what I mean? And it's like she almost seemed like she didn't want to be there and like, I don't blame her, but it wasn't like she wasn't there being like, I know he's involved. It was just kind of like, well, you know, I don't know. And then when it came to, we didn't hear from Mary Jacobs or no. Or Elvis Fields other sister. So if she'd come and testified and seemed super credible and like sincere, that would have helped a lot.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Let's talk about this three day hearing. But this is a three day hearing again over the summer where it was time for the defense to put up or shut up. They needed to offer whatever evidence they had supporting the veracity of this Odinism theory because if they were able to convince the judge that there was a connection, then it was going to come into the case. And if they couldn't do that, it wouldn't come into the case. As you just mentioned, there's a number of witnesses they didn't bring forward. I talked earlier about how, oh, they didn't have a credible expert on this or that. And I chose my words carefully saying credible expert because they did at that three day hearing they did offer the testimony of someone purported to be an expert. And we are going to talk about that now.

[Anya Kane]

Yes. So the expert that was supposed to sell us and the judge on the Odinism theory once and for all was somebody who I guess was touted as a crime scene expert and like a expert on cult ritual murders. And this is a woman named Dawn Perlmutter. She is the director of something called the Symbol Intelligence Group and wrote some books on ritual homicide and claimed to do trainings with government agencies. And she touted like this bizarre methodology of like how to analyze symbols at crime scenes. And if you, if you want to hear more about it, listen to our coverage of the three day hearing. But we're gonna.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Basically she was a disaster.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, it was, it was, it was unmitigated.

[Kevin Greenlee]

She made. Anya has been saying that Amber Holder was a poor witness. This woman made Amber Holder look like an incredible witness. This woman was an unmitigated disaster. She was one of the worst witnesses I've ever seen. I think I said on the show at the time that Nick McLean's cross examination of her was the most devastating cross exam I've ever seen. Even including fictional cross exams on television. This was the best they had. And it was awful. It was awful.

[Anya Kane]

Not only did her analysis fall short, and, and so her. Her take was this very vague methodology where it's like, well, a lot of ritual crimes involve knives, and a lot of ritual crimes involve the outdoors. And so if a crime occurs outdoors with a knife.

[Kevin Greenlee]

What do you think? Huh?

[Anya Kane]

What do you think, folks?

[Kevin Greenlee]

Vibes. Vibes.

[Anya Kane]

It's all about the vibes and it's all about the symbols. And it's sort of like, you know, like, it was just ridiculous. It felt. I felt. I felt insulted. I felt like my time had been wasted. And like, I don't. Most witnesses do not leave me feeling that way because I usually feel like, okay, well, I understand why they called this person. Even if, maybe, maybe they overstated this or that. But, you know, that's fair in this case. It was just like, do you just think everyone here's a idiot? I mean, seriously, it was out. It was one of the most infuriating things. The cross examination, as Kevin said, was completely brutal.

[Kevin Greenlee]

So we're going to do something which we haven't done in a while, which we're going to read some excerpts from this cross examination. I think the last time we read some excerpts from a transcript, Anya was the aggressive bad guy.

[Anya Kane]

No, I wasn't the bad guy. I was Detective Dave Veto and U.S. marshall Clinton.

[Kevin Greenlee]

But you were the one that was the aggressor in the transcript. And people.

[Anya Kane]

I got to yell at you, you.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Got to yell at me. And people thought you were mean, and they sympathized with me, even though I was playing the role of.

[Anya Kane]

We got so many. I was so mean that we got so many emails with people saying, Team Klein. Like, it was like, what?

[Kevin Greenlee]

Yeah, I think audio's performance convinced people that Keg and Klein had nothing to do with them.

[Anya Kane]

I was so mean as the detectives.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And, yeah, so at audio's request, we were reversing it. I'm going to be the aggressor, and Anya is going to be the hapless person forced to respond to questions. So in other words, I'm going to be reading some of the questions asked by prosecutor Nick McLeland, and Anya would be reading the answers given by Don Perlmutter. Who again was the purported expert proffered.

[Anya Kane]

By the defense because we can say all we want that we thought it was a disaster, but I think it's actually just easier to show you.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Okay. Shall we begin?

[Anya Kane]

Let's do it.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Okay. What training do you specific. Okay. What training do you have specifically to recognize when a crime scene is part of an Odinist ritualistic training? I haven't done this for a long time. I haven't done this for a long time. Okay. What training do you have specifically to recognize when a crime scene is part of an Odinist ritualistic killing?

[Anya Kane]

The training I have is to identify different symbols and rituals that occur. So it's a process of elimination and in this case, that's what identified it as.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Okay, well, let me back up. Any of the books that you've written. Have they dealt exclusively with Odinism?

[Anya Kane]

Not ex. No.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Okay. Any of the training you've given to any kind of government department, have they dealt exclusively with Odinism?

[Anya Kane]

Not exclusively, but I have. They're definitely part of the one day training I do on RMVs.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Have you had any training specifically on odinous ritualistic killings? That narrow field. Exclusively?

[Anya Kane]

No. And I don't know if there is any training on that available.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And so when, if that's true, which I think it is, that there is no training, how do you educate yourself about a discipline?

[Anya Kane]

Well, it comes from doing research, going to a lot of conferences. I've, you know, go to gang conferences. I trained, I've done lectures at those conferences. I did have another homicide case. It's an open investigation, but it clearly has similar types of symbolism.

[Kevin Greenlee]

We'll get to that part.

[Anya Kane]

Okay.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Do you agree there's a difference between a ritualistic killing and a gang killing?

[Anya Kane]

They're not always mutually exclusive. Depends on which gang and what they're doing.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Well, let me ask you this. If I'm in a break off Gang of Odinism, say the Hammer skins and I murder somebody, does that mean the murder scene is an odinistic ritualistic killing?

[Anya Kane]

No.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Okay, so there's a difference, right?

[Anya Kane]

Yes.

[Kevin Greenlee]

If it's a gang killing and I just kill somebody and I'm an onist, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a ritualistic killing, correct?

[Anya Kane]

No, it doesn't.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Okay.

[Anya Kane]

And especially since they usually use firearms.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Let's say they don't. Let's say they use a knife. Just because they use a knife doesn't mean it's an odinistic ritualistic killing, correct?

[Anya Kane]

No.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Okay.

[Anya Kane]

It's just, it's a combination of Just.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Okay, we'll get to that. But just because it's done outdoors, does it mean it's a ritualistic killing?

[Anya Kane]

No.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Okay. In these odinistic, ritualistic killings, through your research, who is typically sacrificed? What human or what kind of human is typically sacrificed in these ritualistic killings?

[Anya Kane]

It has meaning to the offender.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Okay.

[Anya Kane]

With the white supremacy groups, they target minorities, right? Yes.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Have you ever seen a racist odinistic group target two young white females?

[Anya Kane]

They will do that if they can.

[Kevin Greenlee]

It's a yes or no.

[Anya Kane]

No.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Okay. By the name itself, racist, that would mean some minority group. Correct.

[Anya Kane]

Or race traitors.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Yes or no?

[Anya Kane]

Yes.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Okay. And so if a racist Odinist group killed a white female child, that would be. That would go against the racist part of their group. Correct.

[Anya Kane]

But it could also be an indicator of other things.

[Kevin Greenlee]

But through your training and experience and what you've seen, you just testified, never in your experience have you seen a racist group kill a white child. That would be against what you've learned and what you've seen, correct?

[Anya Kane]

Correct.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Okay. To be a ritual, the name alone, at least to me, implies that it has to be done over and over and over. In these odinistic ritualistic killings. Have you seen that? Are these killings done over and over and over?

[Anya Kane]

That's not a correct definition of a ritual.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Okay.

[Anya Kane]

That's not how I would define a ritual at all.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Well, let's back up. How many Odinist ritualistic killings have you seen in your career?

[Anya Kane]

There is the open investigation that I. The other homicide case, and that was in 2020.

[Kevin Greenlee]

So there's an open investigation on that case.

[Anya Kane]

Yes.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And so I assume with the investigation being open, that whether or not it's an odinistic ritualistic killing is still open as well.

[Anya Kane]

Yes. Correct.

[Kevin Greenlee]

You Talked about various ODNAs have general symbols they share, but the rituals are particular to the individual person. Is that correct?

[Anya Kane]

Yes.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Are there any symbols in the ritual that are the same across the board?

[Anya Kane]

They use the hammer, they wear the pendants. Those are the general type symbols. They get rune tattoos, raven tattoos.

[Kevin Greenlee]

I guess I didn't ask the question very well.

[Anya Kane]

Oh.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Are there any symbols left at ritualistic crime scenes that involve Odinism that are universal across the board?

[Anya Kane]

Universal? No.

[Kevin Greenlee]

When, whether it be the state or the defense team, when someone asks you to examine a crime scene, what evidence do you typically look at?

[Anya Kane]

I typically look at any kind of symbolic or forensic evidence. So the scene, the crime scene, autopsy, social media, computers, anything that falls within my areas of expertise.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Those you typically does the party hiring you, do they Typically give you all the evidence and let you sort through it or do they handpick which evidence you look at?

[Anya Kane]

They give me, I guess, pretty much give you everything and I review it.

[Kevin Greenlee]

So when you're reviewing these things, is it important to look at the other people that were investigated?

[Anya Kane]

Yes.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Is it important to look at their background and any evidence that the law enforcement or defense may have on that person?

[Anya Kane]

Yes.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Would it be important to look at any depositions anyone's given that?

[Anya Kane]

Yes, it could be.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Would it be important to look at the suspect's deposition?

[Anya Kane]

Yes.

[Kevin Greenlee]

If someone, if you come into a case after someone's arrested, is it important to you to look at the defendant's statements?

[Anya Kane]

Yes, it can be.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Is it important to look at any.

[Anya Kane]

Alibi evidence that again might get outside of the realm of what I, what my area is?

[Kevin Greenlee]

So if you were looking at social media posts of a person that was a suspect, it wouldn't be important to you to see if that person has an alibi?

[Anya Kane]

Again, that's not my area. I look at the symbolism, the forensics, the language that's used, the. That is nothing. I've never looked at that type of evidence before. All right, so now we're going to take a break from that pearl Mudder went on to.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Let's talk a little about. Okay, well, yeah, so she's indicating there's. She hasn't known, hasn't had any exclusive training on onism. Not much information on it out there. But in her experience she's never seen an odinous killing that looks like the murder of Libyan Abby. Yes, but even though she's never seen a murder connected to Odinism that looks like this, she is for some reason connecting convinced that this is the first such murder.

[Anya Kane]

Well, she looks at the symbols, Kevin. Also, for what it's worth, there's no indication of Hammer's impendence at the Delphi crime scene. So I don't even know what she's talking about there. She's also noting this is, this is to me the most infuriating part. You know, she's talking about, you know, there's no universal really way to designate Odinist ritualistic killing scenes. So then what the heck are we talking about here?

[Kevin Greenlee]

Yeah, she's saying each person has symbols unique to them. So there's no universal way to look at something and say this is Odinism. So yeah, what are we talking about?

[Anya Kane]

It's like if we all like called colors different things. Like how, like what are we supposed to do with this? This is just Meaningless. It's just nothing. It's basically a farce dressed up in academic sounding language to fool the rubes. I mean, like I don't understand, like it is just, it is, it's shocking.

[Kevin Greenlee]

She's saying there's no way basically to tell if it's Odinism or not because there's no universal symbols.

[Anya Kane]

Then why are you here? You know, like I, like I really was just. This was just so empty. And the fact that this was. The defense expert was just for. It was telling for me. But let's kind of go. I don't want to read this whole thing, but we're going to read a couple portions that I think are most salient.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Well, you want to talk about. She looked at some of Holden's.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, she, she went on to admit that she never looked at Brad Holder's interviews, you know, even though he's the guy they're saying did it. So you'd think at the very least she never looked at his interviews, his Facebook page, deposition, evidence about where he was that day. She didn't look at the evidence against Richard Allen. Admitted that she only saw what the defense gave her, including side by side images that mocked up things from Brad Holder's social media with crime scene pictures. Back to this, back to the methodology.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Let's go back to the transcript. Okay. When you're looking at evidence, are there. I don't even know if there's an industry for what you do, but are there industry standards of what things you're to look at when you're examining a crime scene?

[Anya Kane]

Well, that's why the methodologies are so important. I mean that's why I have crime scene training to go to the crime scene conferences. There are, the methodology is all those types of that I listed, place, date, holiday, just all of the different, the causes of death, things like that.

[Kevin Greenlee]

So those are the industry standards, those place of death, date of death, cause of death to you, Those are the industry standards that someone in your position would look at to determine whether or not this was a ritualistic killing.

[Anya Kane]

Well, they're also the FBI standards. I mean they have the same victimology, they have categories under that they have out. They may call it different things, but it's the same homicide manual that I've, you know, I've studied that too, I'm familiar with. They're the same things that everybody looks at except I go more specific into the symbolism.

[Kevin Greenlee]

So out of the things that you listed place of death, date of death, cause of death, murder weapon, which is.

[Anya Kane]

The most important so Perlmutter went on to say that cause of death and body positioning were the most important for her. And the McLeland went on to drill down on cause of death in particular.

[Kevin Greenlee]

That doesn't mean every killing where there's a knife wound to the neck is a ritualistic killing.

[Anya Kane]

No.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Right.

[Anya Kane]

Absolutely not.

[Kevin Greenlee]

That doesn't mean. If someone's an Odinist and they kill somebody with a knife wound to the neck, that doesn't mean it's a ritualistic killing. Correct?

[Anya Kane]

Correct.

[Kevin Greenlee]

It's all very personal to whoever did the killing. Correct? Correct.

[Anya Kane]

But it's in combination with all of the other things.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Well, let's go back to that. You said several times, it's all personal to whoever did the killing. So you're just guessing what these symbols means because only really the killer knows, right?

[Anya Kane]

I wouldn't say guessing. They. It's significant that somebody did a symbol in blood. It's consistent with other ritual homicide cases.

[Kevin Greenlee]

But it's significant to you. It may not be significant to the killer. And you don't know that. Correct.

[Anya Kane]

I guess that's one way of saying it.

[Kevin Greenlee]

So what, what does that mean?

[Anya Kane]

It's. I mean, it's a. It's. Here's the thing. Any expert witness, they're not going to be able to get inside the killer's head, whether they're working for the defense or the state, maybe the people who come closest or are people in the mental health space who've analyzed the killer or the defendant or whatever, when you want to say. But at the same time, you know, a crime scene expert who actually is an expert in crime scenes will at the very least be able to, like, make some educated statements and guesses and kind of take the, the, you know, the jury through things or take the judge through things. And in this case, there's, There's a concession here that, you know, that she.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Certain things at the crime scene may be significant to her and to no one else, may not be significant to the killer, may not be significant to anyone else. That's not what you're looking for in an expert witness. You want. If you have an expert witness on ballistics, you don't want them to say, oh, you know, there's markings on that bullet. You know, some of them mean something to me. They may not mean anything to anybody else. You want an expert to say, this is what this means, and it has a meaning that other people would see as well.

[Anya Kane]

And you know, what, one way of doing that is, is sort of being able to have some repetition so in a. In a universe, this is not the case. This is not the universe we live in, but in a universe where Odinist murder sacrifices are commonplace or at the very least occur with, you know, and are documented, then being able to say, well, this has the hallmarks of one of those types of killings, because this, this and that. And we've seen those in these other cases that are similar. That. That works. You can do that. I mean, I like I. But they can't because this is not. This is not a thing that happens. So it's just stupid. So the. You know, there's a kind of a portion where McLean and Perlmutter get into it. Perlmutter starts saying that Abigail had to be redressed. And then McLeland was questioning how she determined that to be clear. Pat Cicero testified that the blood saturation in her clothing and based on the lack of blood smears, she was killed in the garments she was found wearing. So Perlmutter was just simply wrong on that front. And the defense never had anyone counter that.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Let's get back to these excerpts. And what are you basing that on?

[Anya Kane]

I'm basing it on. It doesn't appear to be a natural. It just. The sticks were placed on her. It.

[Kevin Greenlee]

No, no, no. We're not talking about the sticks, just her body. What gives you the indication that her body was positioned in that way?

[Anya Kane]

It's just, in my opinion, it's that if you're going to dressing someone, then when you're putting pants on, that your leg is not going to cross over. I think, you know, just the fact that in combination with the other body being positioned.

[Kevin Greenlee]

But for that assumption to be correct, you. You're assuming that someone dressed her after she died and positioned her body that way while they either while they were dressing her or after they dressed her.

[Anya Kane]

I'm not saying she was redressed after she died.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And again, how do you know her body was. We're talking in circles here, and I'll go all day if you want.

[Anya Kane]

Later on, McClelland got Perlmutter to say that she first looked at the evidence in this case from the defense in April of 2024. That became significant in the following exchange.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Ms. Perlmutter, you talked some about the exhibits of Facebook posts from Brad Holder. Those Facebook posts alone, does that mean that Brad. Can you tell from those Facebook posts alone that Brad Holder participates in Odinist ritualistic killings?

[Anya Kane]

I can tell that he practices Odinism and believes in magic.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Okay.

[Anya Kane]

And magical thinking.

[Kevin Greenlee]

I appreciate your answers, but it's going to Go a lot quicker if you just give me. You answer my questions. From those posts, can you tell that Brad Holder participates in Odinist ritualistic killings?

[Anya Kane]

No.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Okay. Can you tell from those posts that Brad Holder participated in this killing?

[Anya Kane]

No.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Can you tell from those posts if Brad Holder does animal sacrifices is part of his Odinist belief?

[Anya Kane]

No.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Can you tell that he does human sacrifices as part of his Odinist belief?

[Anya Kane]

No.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Is there anything in those posts that places him at the scene of the crime?

[Anya Kane]

No.

[Kevin Greenlee]

The symbols that you talk about seeing at the crime scene, and I'm trying to wrap my head around this, but when you go in to participate and examine a crime scene, you go into it with a mindset of, okay, I'm specifically looking for what symbols I recognize.

[Anya Kane]

No, not at all. I go in with an open mind to see if it's a symbol at all. If it's a, you know, or what I go in with, I go in very open minded.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Okay. If someone were to give you a picture of a symbol before you looked at a crime scene to say, I'm kind of, I'm trying to equate this to looking at cloud formations. If someone, you know, if I go outside and they said, oh look, I see a train in that cloud, it's hard for me to unsee that. If someone gives you a picture of a symbol before you look at a crime scene and says, hey, I'm looking for this symbol, do you see it in this crime scene? Do you think that affects the way you look at a crime scene?

[Anya Kane]

No.

[Kevin Greenlee]

You're able to separate that.

[Anya Kane]

It's actually part of the methodology. It's called bracketing. You have to bracket it out. It's something that you train to do.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And so when someone gives you a side by side photo, that's part of the, of the method, methodology of examining.

[Anya Kane]

A crime scene, you as a professional, you look at it individually and I have thousands of symbols that I compare things to.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And you talked about some of that evidence you used, maybe not all every time, but that evidence you used to make a determination of whether or not this is, I think you used the term classic or textbook ritualistic killing. Is that correct?

[Anya Kane]

Yes.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And is it important for you to examine that evidence before you make the finding?

[Anya Kane]

Yes.

[Kevin Greenlee]

How important?

[Anya Kane]

It's important to examine the evidence.

[Kevin Greenlee]

I mean, common sense says it's important to examine that stuff before making an analysis. So that your analysis is correct?

[Anya Kane]

Yes.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Is that fair?

[Anya Kane]

Yes.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Back on September 19th of 2023, did you appear on Court TV?

[Anya Kane]

Yes.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And you gave an Analysis of this killing at that time, Is that correct?

[Anya Kane]

Yes.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And prior to giving that analysis, had you observed any evidence from this case?

[Anya Kane]

I just read a Frank's memo.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Did you observe any of the evidence from this case?

[Anya Kane]

No.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And on that television show. I hope I get this quote right. But you told them that this is a classic ritual murder, correct?

[Anya Kane]

From the description? Yes.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And you told them that before examining the evidence the defense had given you, Correct. Now, you're in the business of consulting and testifying in these type of cases. You testified to that, that you get paid to do these things, right?

[Anya Kane]

Yes.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And so if you were there on Court tv, a national program, and say, this is a classic ritualistic murder, then you change your story. That may hurt your business, Correct.

[Anya Kane]

That is not what happened. I reviewed the report, which was very specific, and I gave my opinion. And looking at the evidence, if it was different, I would have changed my opinion.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Is it in your practice when you're examining crime scenes to look at motions filed by the defense to make an analysis of a crime scene?

[Anya Kane]

That was given to me by the Court TV people.

[Kevin Greenlee]

I understand that. Are there any other cases where you've examined a crime scene where you've looked at a motion from the defense to make an analysis of whether or not that crime scene is a ritual killing?

[Anya Kane]

That was. No, no, that was.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Goes out. Goes outside your standards, correct?

[Anya Kane]

Yes. Yes.

[Kevin Greenlee]

I don't have any other questions, Judge. Okay, so there's a couple of things I want to highlight there.

[Anya Kane]

What a mess.

[Kevin Greenlee]

I guess. I guess at the end. First of all, he is making very clear the point that she reached her conclusion on this case before she looked at any evidence. The only evidence she looked at before she went on Court TV was not actually evidence. It was a motion by the defense.

[Anya Kane]

And to be clear, the reason that is significant is because what he made it clear is she gets paid to do this, so it could be harmful to her business to then come out and be like, hey, I was just running my mouth on Court tv. I was totally wrong.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And the other thing that I think is worth making clear is that a little bit earlier in our discussion, we talked about some of the Facebook posts from Brad Holder, and we indicated, well, these may have a creepy vibe. They don't. Don't indicate any sort of a connection to the crime. Now, we know that is not just Anya's and Kevin's opinion. That's also the opinion of their expert witness. So even their own expert witness is saying in that testimony that we just read that the. The Facebook posts from Holder are not enough to prove a connection.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, it's shocking. I mean, I. And to give you some context, this is from reporting we did. You know, we. We have. We've had on the program before a lovely person, Lauren Crow, who's the president of the Troth. The Troth is a heathen organization. Heathens believe in Norse Germanic paganism, but they're. They're inclusive. They're not racists. They're not white supremacists. They're just normal people, and that's their religion. And she's the president of that. And we know that she was getting a call from Andrew Baldwin, one of the defense counsel in this, to be an expert for the defense shortly before, you know, within April. So it seems like she. She declined, but it's. She was getting calls around the same time as Perlmutter. Now, the thing with Lauren is that she actually knows what she's talking about in terms of heathenry, and she's not an expert on murders, but she could have provided some valuable insight. But it seems like they were kind of just kind of flailing at this point, calling everyone they could think of.

[Kevin Greenlee]

But again, their own witness says that the Facebook evidence is not enough to connect him to the crime.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, this is. This was a mess. I mean, I. I hope I just.

[Kevin Greenlee]

It.

[Anya Kane]

It also. This is not a real methodology. This is. This is not. This is not something I respect or. Or think is good. When you're basically being paid to go find symbols, it's going to be. It's going to be very easy to just kind of come to the conclusions that your clients want you to tell us about.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Some of the other witnesses at this.

[Anya Kane]

Hearing, the only two ones that I found particularly significant were Kevin Murphy and Todd Click. So these two, along with Greg Farrancy, were investigators. Kevin Murphy was an Indiana State Police trooper who worked with an FBI task force. Ferency was, I think, based in Terre Haute as a police officer and also working with an FBI task force. And they both focused on, I think it was like domestic terrorism on this task force. And then Todd Click was the former assistant police chief down in Rushville, Indiana, and they sort of formed a trio where they were investigating the sort of Brad Holder, Elvis Fields connection angle of the crime. And the defense loved these guys. They salivated all over them throughout the Franks memorandum. Listen to this quote. Murphy Ferency and Todd Click's dogged pursuit of the truth is what we citizens and those accused of crimes should expect out of law enforcement. These honorable Law enforcement officers were knocking on doors and conducting interviews, going wherever the evidence led them, end quote. So the defense loves these guys. They're the ones who kind of put together this. This theory in large part. Todd Click, in particular, wrote a letter to Nick McCleland expressing concerns that he hadn't gone with their particular theory and instead arrested Richard Allen. And that seemingly kind of kick started a lot of this for the defense. When they got that letter, they became very intrigued and whatnot. You know, both of them on the stand admitted that basically the investigation went nowhere. They were not able to establish a nexus. They were not able to put people like Elvis Fields in town that day in Delphi on the day of the murders. And so that ultimately is what carried the day. I should note that unfortunately, in the time before the trial, Click experienced some pretty severe challenges to his credibility just from a completely separate source. He was working with the Department of Child Protective Services in Indiana, and he's been charged with forging documents related to that, essentially putting children at risk. So that those charges are still. You know, that's still going on. But that's something that. Had Odinism been allowed in days before the trial, the defense would have to contend with essentially losing one of its star witnesses.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And also, again, the defense says Murphy and Click are such wonderful investigators, honorable men. At the. The hearing, they each testified that they're. They worked very hard on this particular investigation and were unable to develop any evidence that even placed Holder in deli on the day of the murders or Fields in deli on the day of the murders. So their investigation went nowhere.

[Anya Kane]

I'm going to just be blunt here, because I. It feels like they. Based on their. Based on the. Their testimony on the stand, it feels like they both became very emotionally invested in this particular theory. And I question that when it comes to this, because I think getting blinders on to that extent is not super helpful. And there's enough here where I understand why they were interested in it, and I commend them for going down the avenue. I think that's necessary. But when it comes to. I was concerned by some of the things that I saw, especially with Kevin Murphy was like breaking down on the stand at points and, you know, like, you could tell he really wanted to get these guys. And, you know, it's not about getting anybody. It's not about getting a specific person. It's about getting to the truth. And I don't. I have concerns about the way this whole thing was conducted, frankly.

[Kevin Greenlee]

I think these guys actually did a great job of debunking the Odinism theory in the course of their investigation.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, but it's like, I don't.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And so they did honorable work there. And I think it's just also worth noting that to believe this, we have to believe that all these Odinists were somehow in the woods by this trail and no one saw them.

[Anya Kane]

Well, we'll get more into that later. Okay, But I'm gonna. But I'm gonna say this, like, no, no, actually, no, we'll get into that now. But I want to say this before we move on. I understand the human impulse for someone like Murphy. You. You put so much work into something and. And you start to. You feel like maybe it's coming together and you never quite get there. I understand how frustrating that would be to work on something like that, but I just think it's important to remove. Remove that. It's like, it's not about. It's not like a competition, and it just. It's not. It's about, like, what. What do we get probable cause for? And then what can we bring to court? And it's. It just. I. I feel like for the many problems with unified command and different things involving the investigation, you know, if they had had blinders on, then, you know, Kagan Klein would have probably been charged because that was something they put a lot of effort and resources into and they never did because there wasn't enough evidence there. And then you just let it go.

[Kevin Greenlee]

So this is it, right? This is their evidence? The Facebook posts that even their own expert witnesses say is not enough to prove a connection. Their vibes about what things at the crime scene mean that no credible expert supports and some testimony from mediocre witnesses like Amber Holder or Elvis Fields's sister. That's their evidence, right?

[Anya Kane]

Well, Elvis Fields, the sister, never testified, just gave a statement to. Please.

[Kevin Greenlee]

But that's it, right? That's. That's their evidence.

[Anya Kane]

Let me give you a sense of how weak the. The connection even was, because we're talking about men who all live in different places. And it seems like Holder and Westfall are certainly friends, but they seem to both be. Fields and Holder seem to both be linked in some way to a guy named Johnny Messer. So there's a potential mutual friend connection there. And in addition to that, this was what the defense said. They basically took Fields Facebook and Holder's Facebook and said, look, they're both pictures taking pictures of arrowheads. So Fields must be spoofing his hero, Holder. And I'll include a link to this Episode. We did an episode with a wonderful true crime researcher, Thomas, who broke down all of that. And I'm not convinced that Holder and Fields even knew each other based on that. The. The posts that they're talking about of being. As being identical are not. And like, I don't. I think it's very likely that Fields and Holder knew simply the same people. But do I, like. Is there any evidence that these guys were all hanging out? No, I think this was weak. There was a lack of nexus. They were unable to establish these men as having been in Delphi at the time. And then you started to say this earlier, and I wonder if you can reiterate what exactly they're claiming here.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Basically, that a large group of men coordinated this ritualistic meeting which would take place in broad daylight near trails that have people on them all the time. And they did this, and no one ever saw them in the woods. Basically, no witnesses ever reported anything like this. And none of their cell phones ever appeared in any tower data, so they didn't have their phones to coordinate with one another. And then after this ritual concluded, they all again vanish from the scene without anybody seeing them, even though we know there were other people in the vicinity, including witnesses that the defense themselves called later. So this is weak.

[Anya Kane]

But, you know, it's not all about. As you said at the beginning, it's not just up to the defense to solve the crime. So one thing that it's really important for defense attorneys to do is beat up on the police for making mistakes. And this is something that should be expected and should be. That's their job. They have to do this, you know, and it's important for them to do it because police are certainly capable of mistakes. So for me, even though their. Their theory is, you know, I thought, you know, as more information came out, it just became obvious that it was terrible. You know, one thing that you have to keep an open mind about is that, well, maybe it's terrible, but maybe they. They raised some good points about mistakes police made around it that could at least raise the reasonable doubt, kind of specter of like, well, if police messed it up this badly, maybe there would have been more evidence, or maybe they messed up other things that make us believe that Allen shouldn't be convicted. So, like, that's the. That's what we're going to talk about now. The defense's complaints into the investigation around Odinism. And this is actually, there's a lot more information that they include about this than their actual theory of the crime.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Yes, they they really get into something close to character assassination. They really are very vicious in their attacks on law enforcement officers who in their mind did not take this week theory seriously.

[Anya Kane]

So, yeah, they're. They're beating up on the police for abandoning the Odinus theory. We mentioned earlier. Let's just give a couple of. Of. Of notes here. We mentioned the Click Ferency Murphy investigation. They came into things, I think around 2018, and they were sort of running around with that for a while prior to that. In 2017, actually, shortly after the murders, tipsters brought in stuff about Holder saying, this guy has a creepy Facebook page look into him. And. And this was looked into. So, you know, we had that looked into and, you know, it was investigated, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.

[Kevin Greenlee]

The prosecutor encouraged the investigators to run.

[Anya Kane]

With this, and a lot of this discussion to me, feels like I'm, you know, it's. It. You know, we find out that the prosecutor told them to run with it.

[Kevin Greenlee]

We.

[Anya Kane]

We find out that they were looking into it, but what the defense is saying is that they never should have left it. And it's sort of at a certain point because, like, okay, I get that that's your opinion, but, like, what else were they supposed to do it? Like, you know, if I love Macintosh apples, if Kevin comes back from the grocery store without them because they're not in season anymore and they're not in any area grocery stores anymore. And I'm claiming, you know, making all sorts of allegations about how he doesn't care about me because he didn't get my favorite apples and he abandoned the apples. You know, it's like, what's he supposed to do? You know what I mean? Like, like, go steal an apple tree. Like, that's not how, like, at a certain. Like, it's unreasonable at a certain point what they're saying. And so, like, I can, I can. I think it's smart to underline actual mistakes. One. One mistake that was made is early interviews with Brad Holder were essentially. I don't know how the technical term is, but like, you know, kind of recorded over. There was a glitch in the Delphi Police Department's recording system, and they lost something early. With Brad Holder, that's a mistake. And, you know, you can kind of say, does that raise questions about, like, you know, the technical competence here? They made a big deal about that. I think they went a little far with it, but I also kind of understood it from a logical perspective. It makes sense to kind of highlight that. But. But a Lot of the other ones aren't really mistakes. They're just like, you didn't care as much about Odinism as we do. And then others are like, they. I mean, yeah. Do you want to go on to Turco, this kind of Jeff Turco?

[Kevin Greenlee]

You are the one between us who. I think you're more the Turco expert.

[Anya Kane]

Jeff Turco represented a roller coaster for me personally, because it's like, who is Jeff Turco?

[Kevin Greenlee]

Why is he important to the case? Lay it on us.

[Anya Kane]

Okay, so Jeff Turco, this poor man is a professor at Purdue University who has some sort of specialty in, like, Norse history and, I think, culture and literature, things like that, you know, so he. He's a guy who might know his way around Arun. And early on in the investigation, it came out in depositions between, I believe, Lieutenant Jerry Holman of the Indiana State Police and the defense that early on they had talked to a Purdue professor who was, quote, out of the country at that time. And we did not release the photos, but we released a sketch of the sticks, how they were laid, and some other information. So this Purdue professor reviewed that for them and then came back concluding that, quote, it was not Odinism or any type of cult worshiping or any type of a group that would have conducted the crime. So this Purdue professor looked at this stuff and said, I don't think this is a Norse culture. And then this turns into this whole in, like, just wild saga where the defense started accusing Holman of hiding the Purdue professor. At first, it seems like Holman didn't remember his name because it was like, a very minor moment in the early days of the crime and was kind of like, eventually he, you know, interviewed the guy again and got him to the defense team, but the defense team was super mad that he didn't give it to them immediately. But it's this. This turns into, like, a lot of allegations about lying, hiding professors. And then the defense comes out with sort of some bombshell filing saying, okay, well, we actually talked to Professor Jeffrey Turco, and it turns out Holman lied. It turns out that Turco totally agrees with us in our interpretation of the sticks. And, you know, and Holman was trying to cover that up, and it was.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Like, what a shocking bombshell. It's a bombshell, but there's more to the story.

[Anya Kane]

Oh, really hit us. Oh, gosh. So McLeland responds at some point with a filing where he explains the whole thing. He notes that Holman interviewed Turco in September 2023 at the request of the defense. After they found him after the deposition and, and he also indicated. So let's see. I'm going to quote from this. Lieutenant Holman did a follow up interview of Professor Turco at the defense's request. Professor Turco's initial report from 2017 clearly states in the introductory summary, it is not self evident that these markings are runic inscriptions, nor is it immediately clear what they would mean if they were. However, the argument that these markings constitute an inscription inspired by Norse runes or modern recreations thereof is quite plausible. The following are conjectures based on the working assumption that these lines do in fact constitute a rune, runic or runicly inspired inscription. As McClellan notes, clearly Professor Turco was asked to assume the lion formations are runes. So the defense accusing Holman of lying and obfuscating here was obviously ridiculous because he starts out by saying, I don't necessarily think these are runes, but let's pretend for a minute like they are. Here's what they might say. Is that, Is that fair?

[Kevin Greenlee]

Yeah. So Holman and the investigators did not lie. And Turco basically came out at some point and indicated that he felt that Holman's summary of his findings was accurate and what the defense was suggesting about his findings was not accurate.

[Anya Kane]

This is what he said in the same filing. And this is paragraph 22 refers to it, part of a defense filing. Quote. Professor Turco went on to state that paragraph 22 does not accurately reflect his opinion at all. Professor Turco stated in his deposition that is not clear that the sticks found on the girls represent Germanic runic script. The professor went on to debunk all the statements that the defense put in their motion, including that this was a ritualistic sacrificial killing. He stated that nowhere in the recorded history of Odinism has a sacrificial killing of children occurred. And if by some slight chance that this is that it would be the only one in recorded history and goes against the definition of a ritual, since a ritual is something that is done over and over again. The defense outright lied in their motion and misrepresented the true findings of Professor Turco. Lieutenant Holman reported the truth in his statement that Turco's findings were inconclusive was correct. The defense's statements that Lt. Holman somehow was misleading in his report is entirely false, end quote. So they had this expert, this the defense team, and they basically seemingly alienated him by totally either exaggerating or outright lying about what he said. Yeah, it's a good way to, you know, get, get some good experts on your Side, I think you mentioned this, but one thing that I was struck by with a lot of their, you know, here. Here's another kind of smaller piece that they kind of criticized the investigation for. They made a big deal about how in depositions with former Carroll County Sheriff Tobe Lezenby, he indicated that he thought there might be more than one killer and how this was different than what now Carroll County Sheriff Tony Liggett and Holman were saying and like, oh, someone's lying. But like, I don't know, like, whenever you kind of look into this, it just seems like everybody was open to it being one or more like, which seems reasonable. I don't know. This was the thing they made a really big deal about. So I just wanted to note that. What do you think about, like, can you talk a little bit just from a defense attorney? Like, like, when you're a defense attorney, why is it so important to go after law enforcement? And why is that an important part of your job?

[Kevin Greenlee]

Well, law enforcement are the ones who have assembled the evidence against your client. So it's not unusual for the defense attorney to suggest, oh, they assembled the evidence in an unfair way or they didn't get all the evidence they should have. They neglected this piece of evidence, which throws an entirely new light on things. Or this person maybe is dishonest or is part of an onus conspiracy.

[Anya Kane]

Well, those are some different levels. Is it mean or bad or rude to do that to some extent, or is it important and necessary?

[Kevin Greenlee]

It's important and necessary.

[Anya Kane]

Yes.

[Kevin Greenlee]

It's part of the process.

[Anya Kane]

You have to ensure that the state is doing the right thing. Police are human beings, which means they're very much capable of mistakes. Even a successful investigation will include a lot of mistakes. And sec, if those mistakes are severe enough, then those need to be talked about.

[Kevin Greenlee]

It's part of the whole. The whole idea of a trial is that not just the prosecutor, not just the defense, but also the prosecution gets to critically examine every piece of evidence. The idea is, if you put up a piece of evidence and one person says, oh, it means this, and the other person, no, it actually means something else. And if you hear the arguments and points from both sides, then that is a way for an independent observer or a jury member to evaluate the arguments and get to the truth.

[Anya Kane]

That being said, all of that being said, I felt like a lot of the defensive strategy around here was to really specifically and in a strangely personal way undermine specific police investigators. Like, to the point where at times it was sort of implicitly implying, like, Direct corruption and, like, to the point where it's like, frankly, to believe some of this stuff, you'd need to believe that Carroll county and state authorities, along with prison authorities, were all colluding with federal authorities and adjacent county authorities looking the other way to cover up something to protect a group of random guys from Logan's Port Delphi in Rushville, which is nonsensical. I mean, it kind of almost opens the door to a vast Odinist conspiracy.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Which, again, is nonsensical. That's really all I can say about it. I don't understand why so many people be prepared to lie and sacrifice their careers and their integrity to try to protect a couple of randos.

[Anya Kane]

I think generally, I think the filings specifically seem to target.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And they don't need to go that far.

[Anya Kane]

No, they don't.

[Kevin Greenlee]

It's more effective to make your criticism as limited as possible. If I were to say to you, Anya has been accused of stealing cereal. And I think the detective investigating it. Very busy man, full of integrity. I think he might have. Because he's busy. He might have had an oversight and missed a couple of details that I think are important. You may think, okay, that's plausible. I could see that. But if I say no, the detective that is investigating the case is an evil man who has a grudge against Anya and her family and has sworn to destroy them. You can say that's harder to believe.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah. Is there any evidence for that?

[Kevin Greenlee]

The smaller the accusation you make, the more plausible it is. And they went way, way over the top to the extent that they really, again, committed something close to character assassination. Saying horrible things and making horrible implications against certain individuals that had no evidence whatsoever to support them. Yeah.

[Anya Kane]

Like something where you're, like, you're not saying. Oh, we interpret Turko's words differently. Like, you're. You're outright accusing Holman of, like, concealing it and lying and all this stuff. And. And it seems. Well, I don't know. What do you.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And they really go against Tony Liggett a lot.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Who's now the sheriff of Carol County.

[Anya Kane]

They're mostly going after Liggett and Holman, and. And I have some thoughts on why that is, but love to hear them. Well, I. I feel like, frankly, it's like, you know, Holman Ligard are central to the case as investigators, and it. They're. It's like, if we can kind of knock them down, then maybe the jury will believe that. And there's also, like, frankly, there's. It feels like, calculated to Whip up conspiracies and hatred against specific people. Like, I really do think that, like, you know, most of these filings felt more like they were written for the press than the court. And I think the perception was supposed to be like, you know, well, if people hear that Holman and Liggett are Satan personified enough, then eventually they'll just start saying, well, if there's a lot of smoke, this fire. I think that kind of feels like what it was. It was almost like just make the situation as toxic as possible for everyone involved in order to kind of taint a jury pool. Because if you're like, look, these cops are evil, then maybe eventually people just start kind of saying that. I don't know. I felt it was very unfortunate and sort of unnecessary. I. I feel like if you want to criticize people's work, that's fine. And also, there's cases where there are corrupt police officers, and then you absolutely should be calling that out. I mean, like, like, like, let. Let's not be naive here. There are instances where you could. We could see, and there's usually, like, some evidence of that. Kind of a weird thought. I felt this was a calculated move more for. For the social media sphere than anything else, which, again, why are you doing things? Why are defense attorneys doing things in a way to kind of capitulate to social media lunatics? And I don't know. But that's what happened again and again here, so.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And it's very much worth stressing again, that even these dogged investigators, Click and Murphy, they never indicated that they were told not to follow these leads. In fact, just the opposite. They were encouraged. If this lead has legs, run with it. And you would think if they were, if the law enforcement was engaged in such a conspiracy, they would do everything they could to shut down the investigation done by Click and Murphy. Another man named Greg Farnse was also involved in the investigation. Unfortunately, he was murdered a couple years ago.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, A horrible, horrible situation. But it's. Yeah, they did look into it, and I guess for me, it's just not a particularly good theory, but they did give it its due. Do you want to move on to our next section?

[Kevin Greenlee]

Yeah. This is some of the intellectual dishonesty Anya criticized my. My little metaphor earlier where I said, it's like you're a dog on a leash, and the leash is held by reason, and you just gotta go wherever reason takes you.

[Anya Kane]

And if that's ironic because our dog Lanny just pulls you around, like, anywhere we go on a walk, she's the boss on the walk.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Completely untrue. I think there are a number of instances in their development and presentation of this theory where they so clearly have a predetermined outcome that they want to believe in that they try to work it around the evidence. So instead of following the evidence, they try to have the evidence follow and fit their conclusions. A couple of examples of this come to mind. The person they want to paint as the big bad guy in the murders is Brad Holder. Brad Holder has a really, really good alibi. He clearly was not at the crime scene when the girls were kidnapped. No doubt about that whatsoever. And so they take that to mean. Well, obviously that means that Brad Holder is a Charlie Manson type who just influences his followers to do all of these things.

[Anya Kane]

Can I read this quote, quote, so again, as Kevin said, he clocked out at 2:45. The girls had been abducted at 2:13. This is what they said. Quote, Charles Manson did not serve a prison sentence for actually being the person that stabbed Sharon Tate 16 times. Manson's minions committed the heinous acts. Was it ever considered that Holder had devised a plan to kill those girls and used others to do his bidding? End quote. What? Also, why is this written like a rejected Dateline script or something? It's. It's like sub dateline. It's like just. It's. It's lurid and bad. But yeah, that's a.

[Kevin Greenlee]

That's an instance where another instance is Elvis Fields, another one of their suspects. On the day of the murder, his phone was in Rocheville all day. And so it's like, well, obviously he was told to leave his phone behind. And isn't that suspicious? And this is not the way you get good results.

[Anya Kane]

You don't think so?

[Kevin Greenlee]

No. Go where the evidence takes you.

[Anya Kane]

They. They talked about, you know, they talked about in their Frank's memorandum, almost implying that Allen had been threatened. Well, we need to talk about the guard situation.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Talk about the guards.

[Anya Kane]

And to talk about the guards, we have to first talk about Odinism and heathenry and asatru. Okay, so the defense uses Odinism as a blanket term, seemingly, especially in early documents, to talk about all forms of Norse paganism. And that's not correct. They even refer to these people as Odinites, which is, as we mentioned, Lauren Crow, who we talked to of the Troth, notes that that is a mineral. It's not a person. It's not. The term is Odinist. And Odinism. Let's.

[Kevin Greenlee]

So the fact that they can't even use the correct term might Be a bit of a subtle hint. They're not intimately familiar with the topic.

[Anya Kane]

No, let's. Let's start off with the. The blanket umbrella thing. So Norse Germanic paganism in the United States is referred to as heathenry. And these are people who worship the old Norse Germanic gods. Kind of a lot of different types, but in the United. We're talking about the United States. In Europe, it's different. The terms are different. I believe in Europe, or at least in Scandinavia, asatru can even mean just religion in general. But when we're talking about the United States, heathenry is. Is just something anyone can practice. It's. It's inclusive. It's not white supremacist. It's. It's very chill. And it just. People. People have that religion. They worship those gods, and that's it. And that's sort of what we mentioned earlier with Lauren Krove. The truth. That's the strain she belongs to. And there's nothing wrong with that. Just to be clear, there's nothing bad about this religion. It is just people doing their thing. Another form of it in the United States called asatru. And people can find this one more objectionable because this one does have sort of the exclusionary aspect of it, where I think it's. It's considered, you know, that non whites are not welcome, things like that. They. They're trying to keep it more white, exclusive. And again, understandably, people find that objectionable, and there can be a, you know, bit of a kind of exclusionary factor. But the thing about that is it's not necessarily linked to any sort of, like, crimes. You know, there's something that. There's something that could be objectionable, but it's not like they're going around killing people, if that makes sense. And then the. The other thing is Odinism. Odinism is, as Lauren described it, and we're gonna link to our episodes with her, but that's more of like a. Something that came out of, like, prison gangs. And that's a. That. That's a staunchly white supremacist violent gang that has clustered in prisons. They've been. They've been linked to murders. But when we talk about that, we're not talking about ritual sacrifices of children. We're talking to. About gang violence. We're talking about politically motivated assassinations. And so when Rosie and Baldwin are saying, without evidence that people are odinists, that's. That's not at all fair, in my opinion, because they've not in any meaningful way linked any of These people to Odinism, they've linked them through social media posts to pagan Norse worship. I mean, that's fine, but to call them Odinists and to imply that they're part of this violent gang is, is kind of ridiculous in my opinion. They, they speculated that some of them might be Vinlanders, which is another gang. I don't feel like they kind of came close to really concretely making any of that happen as far as proving that or even really like having a lot of evidence for that. You can be interested in pagan Norse Germanic gods and, and that sort of thing. And you can be Asatru and you can be heathen and, and not involved in anything violent. And you know, throughout they would talk about like creepy. Oh, this is a, this is a quote from, from the Franks memorandum. Quote. As the court can see, Brad Holder painted what the defense would call a very creepy serial killing looking image of a naked man hanging from a tree. End quote. So that is Odin hanging from the tree of life. That is a popular symbol within Norse paganism. And this is the God Odin. He hangs himself from the tree in order to gain knowledge. And you know, to somebody who's not familiar with the religion, that might look a little bit ominous. But guess what, I'm Catholic and you know, in all of the churches I've gone to, we have a image of a man nailed to a cross. You know, out of context that might look kind of horrifying. In context, it's beautiful, you know, like it's just somebody's religion, you know, like just because they don't understand that does not mean it's a creepy serial killer looking image. And frankly, what a ridiculous way to describe it. They talk about getting like article. This is quote, in addition to the white supremacy component that exists in Odinism, there seems to be an additional dark demonic component to Odinism at least if articles concerning odinous human sacrifice and imagery found on the Internet, coupled with imagery and language found on Brad Holder's Facebook page are to be considered. End quote. So there's a dark demonic component to.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Odinism, at least if you trust the random articles you find on the Internet. And Jesus that's so problematic because there's a lot of stuff on the Internet. You can find shocking things about a number of topics on the Internet. And the only problem is they're not true. And one thing about courts is we have certain rules to order to ensure the information we get is true. Like having experts. So just saying, oh, I saw this on Google or I saw this on Reddit that's not good evidence that's going to convince anybody of the merits of whatever it is you're pleading.

[Anya Kane]

I just want to say we interviewed a great author, Stu Wexler. He wrote America's Secret Jihad, and that was about religious terrorism in the United States. He was a great guest, and he talked about this kind of Odinism, and he talked about, you know, some of the murders that they've been linked to. And. And what he noted is that, you know, there. There's. There's not a history of these white supremacists, Odinists sacrificing white children in rituals. That's just not something that anyone's ever seen before. So, you know, that doesn't mean there's a first time for everything. Right. But, like, when you. When you see people who are motivated by white supremacy, you know, killing white children is sort of antithetical to their whole deal. Like going after minority victims, going after perceived political opponents. Maybe you have something there, but Abby and Libby would not be the. The. The. That just doesn't make any sense. So it's. It's not a. It's not a. Some. It's not something that really kind of flows logically.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Did you want to talk about the guards?

[Anya Kane]

Now we get to the guards. So Richard Allen was sent to Westville after it became clear that Carroll county felt they could not keep him safe in their facility from other inmates. Westville is a prison. Westville is a scary prison by all accounts. And one thing that the defense kind of tried to, like, make a big deal about was some of the guards at Westville. They note that there were two in specific, two in particular. Sergeant Jones and Sergeant Robinson, who wore patches on their uniforms that said things like, in Odin, we trust. And the defense made a huge deal about this, talking about how he must have been threatened by the guards, and they all belong to the same cult as the real killers. And. And. And just to kind of put a. Put a stop to this is. You know, I've seen. I've seen affidavits from. From these guards, and they know they're not Odinists. You know, it's okay to be heathen. Like, somebody worshiping Odin doesn't make them a bad person as long as they're not part of some violent white supremacist group. It's just, you know, that. That's. The Odinists have, you know, adopted the Norse paganism, but that doesn't mean that everyone who follows that is bad. Does that make sense?

[Kevin Greenlee]

That makes a lot of sense.

[Anya Kane]

Like, you know, God, they, they, they, they make a big deal. They're wearing these patches and then they stop wearing them. And then they say this. The defense attorneys write this quote. It was almost as if someone had alerted, oh, Knight Robinson that the gig, the gig was up because the lawyers knew about the links to Odinism. So lose the patch and pray the defense attorneys have never noticed the patches on prior visits. End quote. There's a lot of very self aggrandizing language in this whole thing. I mean, is that like, am I being too mean?

[Kevin Greenlee]

No, you're not being mean.

[Anya Kane]

It's like, I don't know, this isn't written like a normal legal filing.

[Kevin Greenlee]

No, it's not.

[Anya Kane]

Yeah, that they talk about. At one point they kind of, I guess hypothesize that Allen was threatened, his family was threatened in order to get him to confess because they have to.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Deal with the confessions. And well, the Odinism theory is just sitting right there. Why don't we fold it into the confessions? And they tried to posit, well, the only reason that Richard Allen is making these confessions, which we contend are false confessions, is because these Odinism minded guards are threatening him and his family in order to make him do so. So this is an attempt to explain away the confessions. But it also has the two problems. One is that there's absolutely no evidence to suggest that such threats from the guards ever took place. And the other problem is it makes the Odinism conspiracy even bigger. Because now we don't just have local law enforcement in Indiana, State Police, police involved in this massive conspiracy to frame Richard Allen to protect Brad Holder, but now you also have prison guards involved in it. And the bigger your conspiracy is, the more people, and the more agencies that are involved in it, the more evidence you would expect to find of said conspiracy or the more likely you would expect some member of the conspiracy to break down and say, yes, yes, we did all these things, we lied and covered up all these things just because we wanted to hurt Richard Allen and protect Brad Holder. And also the bigger the conspiracy is to protect Brad Holder allegedly, the more you have to ask yourself, why would all of these powerful people, and why would all these people in these crucial positions in the government, why are they so determined to protect Brad Holder? And no real reason was ever proffered for that.

[Anya Kane]

This is one space where for me, I think this put a serious crack in the credibility of the entire document when they, when they alluded to the, these alleged threats. And then footnote 15 came in, came in hot and said, the following quote, to be clear up to this point, Richard Allen has never spoken these words to his attorneys. Point is that the Westville guards have made the privacy needed for Richard to have that type of private conversation with his attorneys very difficult. Perhaps not worth the risk if you are Richard Allen.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And we should explain that when they say, Rich Allen has never spoken these words to his attorneys, they're referring to Richard Allen saying, oh, the confessions are fake.

[Anya Kane]

The confessions are fake. I was threatened by the guards to say it.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And Richard Allen, they're conceding, never even made that claim to his attorneys. But that is not stopping the attorneys from positing that such threats were made.

[Anya Kane]

So, I mean, like, when you see something like that, you made this comment, and I completely agree with it, you have to look at that if you're an attorney who's been educated and realize no judge would ever fall for this nonsense. So who is this for? Why did they do this for the.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Public, you and me? Odinism is, for lack of a better word, it's a sexy theory. The murders were done by some religious cult that's mysterious and bizarre. People like that. It's interesting.

[Anya Kane]

The press loved it. They ate all of this stuff up without any sort of, frankly, regard for whether or not it even sounded plausible. People loved it in the media, in social media, members of the public. And it gave the case the epic feel that everyone wanted to have, because the idea that some troubled CVS employee just freaked out one day was not interesting enough. And it became something. We need more. We need something vast. We need. We need the police to be part of the conspiracy. We need something truly epic. And this gave. This gave the case that for a lot of people. But, yep, they talked about. I think. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but footnote 16 and the Frank's memorandum was equally stupid, where they're talking about how, you know, as a defense team, we're strategizing and we need. We needed more time to really investigate the Odinism. That's why we didn't mention it at the June 15, 2023, hearing to move Richard Allen possibly out of prison. And we tactically decided to keep the knowledge to ourselves. And I think it's like they're talking about how they basically didn't want to rush it. And, like, frankly, this whole thing feels like a rush job.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Yes.

[Anya Kane]

Geez. I don't know. I think what you said. One of the main problems with Odinism as a theory is that it did grow up to try to solve too many Problems at once. Whether it was the confessions, whether it was the guards are evil, whether it was police corruption, whether it was just providing an alternate third party. You know, it was trying to do so much. The big top tent was flying into the sky. Like, this was. This was out of control. It was like. It was like trying to build like a massive tower on marshy ground.

[Kevin Greenlee]

You talked about intellectual dishonesty. I believe one indication of that that you often cite to me is this whole business about the Behavioral Analysis unit of the FBI. What am I talking about?

[Anya Kane]

So, oh, my gosh. The bau, as we mentioned, came into this case and this is something that the defense wrote about it in one of their filings, quote, according to this. So Todd Click apparently mentioned it in a letter to, you know, like in some kind of letter. And this came out in discovery. So, quote, according to the summary of Click's investigation that he attached with his letter, the Behavioral Analysis Unit, or BAU of the FBI determined that the individuals responsible for the homicides were involved in Nordic beliefs. This was news to the defense as no member of the Unified Command in charge of the investigation revealed this information to the defense during recent depositions. Includes Trooper Holman, who told the defense that he didn't remember if the FBI's BA unit determined one way or another whether those with Nordic beliefs had been involved in this, in the murders. So, as we mentioned, we've. We've interviewed on our show Julia Cowley from the Consult. She's a former FBI agent and profiler. She worked with the bau. And I remember, I think we kind of raised some of this with her in our episode. And she noted that doesn't really sound like something that the BAU would do. They wouldn't be like, hey, we looked at the crime scene and now we know that Nordic beliefs were involved. They'd be like, they'd be more general. They'd kind of make observations and kind of talk about like, it wouldn't be like a conclusion so much as a road map for investigators to use. So I've always been highly suspicious of that. And then it came out in the three day. Was it the three day hearing? Yes, the three day hearing that, you know, actually in the. In the back and forth with Don Perlmutter, that the BAU had not, in fact concluded anything around Nordic beliefs and instead felt this was not a ritual homicide and that the sticks were just incidental.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And the defense, again, they phrased it in such a way in their memorandum that they weren't actually lying. They were saying oh, Todd Click told us that. No, Todd Click said it. We didn't know about it. Hey, what do you think, folks? So they, they are planting false impressions in people's minds?

[Anya Kane]

Yeah. And I mean, like, I, I just, I don't know it. When you, when you rely on so many, like when there's so many collapses in, in, in sort of credibility. It's just it, it, it gets hard for me to kind of take any of this super seriously because it, it doesn't feel like the defense has been. It just feels like there's. They're not really thinking. It felt like they never were really thinking long term about how to establish credibility. It was more of like thinking one day ahead. And, and you know, if, if basically putting out something that's not true gets us a momentary win will do that, even though eventually it'll be found out.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Is that more you wanted to say here? You want to go to our final section?

[Anya Kane]

I think, I think we can go to our final section.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Final section is we've been very critical of some of the evidence that was offered by the defense in support of this theory. So the question becomes what hypothetical evidence could have been presented that would make us think there's something to this Odinism business? Off the top of my head, I would tell you that if there were credible witnesses on the trails or in the vicinity of the crime scene around the time of the murders, who said, I saw a bunch of guys there who meet the descriptions of these onus. These men were in trees, they were near the bridge. That would be something I would find compelling. No such witnesses exist or even just.

[Anya Kane]

A large group of men, like in the distance. You don't even have to see their faces. Just like, give me a group of men.

[Kevin Greenlee]

So why were these people seen? If they were actually there, where were they?

[Anya Kane]

How did they get there? Did they just teleport there? Where were the vehicles?

[Kevin Greenlee]

I would have liked to have seen actual experts, actual credible experts who would have said, oh yes, these sticks are definitely runes. Oh yes, people following heathen heathenry have a history of sacrificing children. I would have liked to have seen other instances where people following this faith, for lack of a better word, committed crimes like this. I would have been interested if there were other instances where a sacrifice had happened, even in deli.

[Anya Kane]

I would be interested in if this particular group accused by the defense, did they have a history of trying to lure in other kids to their rituals? Did they have a history of violence towards children or any sort. Like, was there any Thing predating that where there would be some kind of like, oh, well, I. Even if it's not a thing with heathenry or Odinism, maybe it's the thing with these guys particularly, but, you know, that never came up.

[Kevin Greenlee]

I would have been interested if there was any evidence placing any of these individuals in deli that day. Patrick Westfall lived in Delphi. But other than that, investigators were unable to place any of these people in the town of Delphi on the day of the murders.

[Anya Kane]

For Brad Holder, evidence that he faked his alibi, evidence that he did have someone clock out for him, or that he didn't really go to the gym afterwards. I mean, like, does a buddy come forward later and say, oh yeah, he asked me to do that? Is, is there any, any indication of that? Is there, is there cell phone evidence that like, give us something?

[Kevin Greenlee]

Elvis Field supposedly suggested he may have spit on one of the bodies? I would have liked to have seen. Is there anything that makes us think there's any evidence of any spittle on the bodies?

[Anya Kane]

I would be interested. And this is a little bit more secondary, but it still would have meant something to me. You know, we heard very strong testimony from Major Cicero and others about how they, how the state believed this crime occurred. We didn't hear anything like that from the defense. Most of the defense during trial seemed to be focusing on like, you know, how sad Richard Allen was in prison.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And in the three day hearing, no evidence presented about how they think the crime took place.

[Anya Kane]

So push back. Give us some crime scene experts who say, no, the state is wrong. They were removed from the scene and abducted, brought elsewhere and then brought back. Or no, they were ritualistically posed. And Cicero's interpretation is wrong. You know, don't, don't, don't. Just give me, oh, one guy couldn't have done all this. It had to be a group. Give me an expert who experiments and at least, if they can't prove it, at least strongly indicates, show us how hard it would be. Show us. Don't just say that. You know, have an expert explain how a group of men leaving no usable offender DNA at the scene makes, makes sense. But one guy not leaving any DNA is totally wild and unheard of.

[Kevin Greenlee]

In order for this theory as we understand it to have taken place, a number of people, including FBI agents, members of the Carroll County Sheriff's office, prison guards, Lt. Jerry Holman of the Indiana State Police, others in the Indiana State Police, all of these people would have had to have made a conscious decision to cover up and frame cover up for Brad Holder and frame Richard Allen. Give us some sort of evidence or reason for why they would do this. Are they all Odinous? Is there some other reason why they are so anxious to protect Brad Holder? Give us a reason.

[Anya Kane]

Another thing would be give us a reason why Kevin Murphy, Todd Click and Greg Farenthy never even got to probable cause with their investigation. One thing that we heard Murphy say was that I believe it was McLeland. Right. Told him, if you think this theory has legs, run with it.

[Kevin Greenlee]

It wasn't clear to me if it was McLean or the previous or Robert Ives. He said, the prosecutor told me this and from the time of the murders to now, there have been two people in the prosecutor's office.

[Anya Kane]

So maybe it was Robert Ives. But, but basically the prosecutor said, I'm open to this, go for it. Was there, was there some higher up cover up? Oh, don't look at Odinism anymore. That if, if so then it would have been malpractice not to bring that out on the stand when they had the chance. You know, and frankly, people eventually becoming less enthusiastic about a theory because it's going nowhere. And like you've already spent a lot of time and resources running this down and gotten nowhere. That's not a cover up. That's just, that's police work. You, you can't just keep like hounding people and getting nowhere. That, that's the kind of blinders on police work that you don't want to see. So, like I'm talking about actual roadblocks.

[Kevin Greenlee]

I would have liked it if the defense had indicated they really understood the topics they're discussing. They obviously don't understand the difference between Odinism and Assatru or much of the other nuances of these topics.

[Anya Kane]

Yes. And frankly, them, you know, we can, we can have conversations about whether we think it's appropriate for prison guards to be wearing any sort of religious patch. I'm not really addressing that so much as I am saying that if you saw a guard in a prison wearing a cross patch and assumed that he was part of the white supremacist Christian identity movement, that would not. That's a logical leap. I mean, maybe you want him to be part of that because that means he's bad, but it's also possible he's some other fa. You know, he's a Lutheran or something. I mean, you just don't know. You don't know without investigating further and assuming that just because you see the symbol. Symbol is not, is not fair. And frankly, it Denigrates an entire faith needlessly. And I think one of the most irresponsible and unfortunate parts of this whole Frank's memorandum, including everything else, is that I think this was a lot of people's introduction to Norse paganism. And while there's certainly, you know, things that are white supremacist should be condemned and whatnot, but there's a whole, you know, part of the faith that. Not that way. And they're just normal people trying to do their jobs and live their lives and raise their families and, you know, conflating them in with everyone else who's bad is not, it's not fair. And I feel like it kind of set off like a satanic panic esque situation for them. And I, that, that, that's. That shouldn't have happened. If they'd done that, their research, it needn't to have happened because they could have spoken more expertly and exactly about the topics. So it's unfortunate. And then I just think the defense, if the defense had not consistently misrepresented the truth in what was said, had they kind of been more straight with people about the Holman Turco thing. If they'd been, if they'd, you know, they, like they omitted Kevin Murphy's initial reaction to Felix, which was this guy's lying. If they, if they hadn't twisted around the BAU stuff, there's, there's any number of times where, you know, they kind of said something and it got them a momentary positive headline and then it would come crashing down in two days and a lot of people would not remember. They'd just kind of go on to the next thing. But we would. And it hurt their credibility with us. I think it hurt their credibility with a lot of people. And the only people who frankly seem to buy any of this Odinism stuff are people who are either like very emotionally invested in it or people who have no idea about any of it and just sort of think it's just a normal theory, normal reasonable theory, which.

[Kevin Greenlee]

We have to take things seriously. We have to approach things with an open mind. I believe that was what the investigators have done. That's what Anya and I tried to do with Odinism. Not just in the last two plus hours, but ever since we've heard about this theory, we've really tried to take it seriously. Because a murder trial is a very serious thing. We owe it to the victims and we owe it to the defendant to take theories presented by the attorneys in these trials very, very seriously. And so it's not something I say lightly when I say this is garbage.

[Anya Kane]

I'm, I'm.

[Kevin Greenlee]

This is garbage.

[Anya Kane]

But going forward and just, just, just. I'm not going to pretend like it's not garbage. It's garbage. The emperor has no clothes on and I'm pretending otherwise is a, is a disservice to the public and, and it's a disservice to the truth. This was nonsense. I'd like to think that they all could have done a significantly better job. And frankly, the fact that these attorneys still think thought they had a shot with Odinism coming back in well into the trial was shocking and disheartening because it's like, was the whole strategy, like, save Odinism as opposed to like, do a good job with what you have? This was disappointing. I don't, personally, I don't really like kind of conspiracy theories and all that nonsense, but even, like, even as far as those things go, I think this was inelegant and poorly, poorly argued and poorly lawyered. I just think this was a heap of trash. And I, it, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's kind of just awe, gobsmacking to see people run with it like it was some sort of, like, you know, great. I don't, I don't know, great work. Work of art, as a Dave Hennessy famously put it.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Well, we've now talked about it for over two hours and it's my earnest hope that we never have to talk about it in this level of detail again.

[Anya Kane]

Oh, I'm sure we will, but yes.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Don't threaten me, Anya. Don't threaten me. How dare you.

[Anya Kane]

Oh my gosh. Well, thank you all so much for listening. Hopefully this gave you some more insight on all the ins and outs of the Odinism theory and when, why it fell apart and why it should have not been allowed by Judge Gull because it would have been incredibly irresponsible to let something this week in and it would have been frankly egregious to do so. But, yeah, that's all we got. All right, thank you so much. Bye bye.

[Kevin Greenlee]

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 www.patreon.com murdersheet if you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests. You can do so at www. Buymeacoffee.com murdersheet we very much appreciate any support.

[Kevin Greenlee]

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

[Anya 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.

[Kevin Greenlee]

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

[Anya Kane]

Yes.

[Kevin Greenlee]

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 conversation sometimes because he really has a good grasp of different complicated quotes to.

[Kevin Greenlee]

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 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.

[Kevin Greenlee]

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. 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.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Podcasts, wherever you listen to podcasts. Very easy to find.

[Anya Kane]

Absolutely.