At the upcoming Delphi Trial, one person will be responsible for solving a double murder, or freeing a wrongfully accused man… and she passed away 8 years ago. Liberty German, one of the two teenage victims at the center of this tragic case, concealed her cellphone to record a short video of a man approaching her and her best friend, Abigail Williams, as they walked across a 70-foot-high abandoned Monon Railway bridge on February 13, 2017. Moments later, this man would force the girls off the bridge (reportedly while brandishing a gun), down a steep hill, and across a creek into a wooded ravine, where he brutally murdered them with an unknown edged weapon.
When searchers and law enforcement arrived at the scene the following day, something unexpected had survived the treacherous journey down the precipitous bluff and through the icy waters: Liberty’s iPhone.
The 46-second clip captures only a brief “full body shot” of the killer from approximately 70 feet away. Likely due to Liberty’s efforts to conceal that she was filming, the video is shaky and highly pixelated, offering few discernible features aside from a blue jacket and jeans.
Because the ‘Bridge Guy’ is nearly faceless, many have speculated that the video will offer little value in court for visually confirming whether Richard Allen is the man in the footage. However, I believe Liberty’s video will be the single most crucial piece of evidence in the entire Delphi trial, possessing the potential to establish with nearly 99% certainty whether Richard Allen is a double child killer or a wrongfully accused man.
‘Photogrammetry.’ This is the term to watch for at trial, and it’s a subject both the prosecution and defense should have nearly mastered after two years of trial preparation.
Photogrammetry is the science of measuring a person’s …
