KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM HLN ‘DOWN THE HILL’ INTERVIEW:

• A female high school student on the trails prior to Abby and Libby’s arrival may have spoken to the suspect known as ‘Bridge Guy’. 
• Unreleased portion of Libby’s video is short & does NOT contain additional audio or video of the killer.
• Criminologist does not believe killer knew the girls and agrees with investigators that he is local & follows the case.
• Contrary to social media speculation, there is no indication that police have narrowed in on a specific person of interest & still hope for ‘the’ tip.

To accompany HLN Down The Hill – The Delphi Murders television special, viewers were encouraged to submit questions about the case which were answered during a round table discussion on YouTube. 

True Crime Live host Mike Galanos sat down with HLN documentary producers Barbara MacDonald and Drew Iden, along with criminologist Dr. Casey Jordan, to respond to viewer’s queries and share their insight into the Delphi Murder investigation.

In an ongoing effort to document interviews and newsworthy material related to the unsolved Delphi Murders, we have transcribed the panel discussion (titled Who Killed Abby and Libby? HLN Investigates Your Questions about “Down the Hill) below.

Viewer questions will be highlighted in yellow. There are some interesting bits of information included within the discussion. Over the past year and a half, Barbara MacDonald and Drew Iden have been dedicated to investigating the Delphi Murders case (including spending time on the ground in Delphi for the “Down the Hill Podcast” / two-part documentary), and have developed solid relationships with both family and police. 

While reading the transcript, you can follow along by watching the Q&A on Youtube here: Who Killed Abby and Libby? HLN Investigates Your Questions about ‘Down the Hill’.

[Begin HLN ‘Down The Hill’ Transcript: Who Killed Abby & Libby?]

MIKE GALANOS [Host]: Let’s get to it you guys. Again, comments and questions from our viewers. Here we go, number one:

Q: Why don’t we have an approximate height or weight of the suspect?

BARBARA MACDONALD: We do have a range of height: 5’6” to 5’10”, 180-220 pounds, reddish brown hair, Caucasian male. After that it gets real messy. We know he was wearing a blue jacket and blue jeans but nobody knows for sure what’s on his head. Is that a hood from the hoodie he might be wearing? Is it a hat he’s wearing? Is it something else? We just don’t know.

MIKE GALANOS [Host]: Casey, when you hear the description, is that a treasure trove?

CASEY JORDAN: I think the reason they’re keeping it very broad and very vague is so that we don’t get pigeon-holed or tunnel-visioned for a particular height or weight or age. They’re trying to keep the basket of possible suspects and the description of him as open as possible. Let’s remind everyone, they have as far as we know, no living witnesses of what this man looked like at that exact moment. We have that screenshot from the video, and the police know as much as we do. It is as grainy to them as it is to us. And they’re afraid if they start to limit it and and say “it’s definitely a British cap” we might ruled out somebody that has puffy hair that’s cut short on the sides. Or if they say “it’s definitely a brown hoodie” we’ll rule out that it could be something else. They’re trying to keep it really open but I would argue that the very best way that we can try to figure out the identity of that person is to continue studying the images that we have over and over and over again. Nailing it down to a particular age, height, weight, clothing is just going to miss possible suspects.

MIKE GALANOS:

Q: Does the case need a fresh set of eyes? Should an outside team be brought in?

Drew, what about that? Aren’t outside sources helping now?

DREW IDEN: Well, when you talk to the folks that are working on this case they’ve said to us a number of times “We ask other people in our agency for assistance. Hey, you look at the file. Tell me if there’s something I missed.” I think that these law enforcement agencies —and many law enforcement agencies across the country—will tell you nobody’s too proud to ask for help, and so I think the way they characterize it is “Look, we will take the file to someone else at the Sheriff’s Department, or someone else with Indiana State Police and say ‘Hey, give this a look. Can you tell me if there’s anything I’m missing?’” And the other thing is that Doug Carter, the Superintendent of the State Police says “Look, we go through all of these leads, we go all the way to the very end, to the very last one, and when it’s time to go back to the beginning, we go back to the beginning.” So whether it needs fresh eyes, I think that’s for the law enforcement to answer. But I think that there are other people that are helping cross-reference this case file.

MIKE GALANOS: Barbara, I see you nodding your head. So it is Carroll Country Sheriff’s, the Indiana State Police… what’s the FBI’s involvement? Let’s start there.

BARBARA MACDONALD: The FBI has been involved from the very beginning. We know they have offered up every resource they have available and from what we understand every test, every resource that this investigation has needed from the FBI has been given to them. Like Drew, my understanding is that they do bring in fresh sets of eyes and investigators. I know they have presented it to the FBI in Quantico to a class of agents. They are doing a lot, but I think also—and Casey can talk more about this—that this might sort of indicate that this is a random crime. These victims were not known to this perpetrator because he’s been able to show up, committed the crime and leave and we still don’t know who he is despite the video evidence.

MIKE GALANOS: Casey, what about a fresh set of eyes? Is it always helpful, or can you have too many cooks in the kitchen and it gets a little messy?

CASEY JORDAN: Well it can be. I’m going to argue you make that decision on an ongoing basis depending on how the case is progressing. Now that four years have passed, I can’t believe that it would hurt. I think it would absolutely help. Sometimes what you have to do is get out of the law enforcement eyes and bring in other people. I’ve been asked for several cold cases to join in, very confidentially on cold cases, to give the criminologist perspective, the behaviorist perspective. If we don’t have anything from DNA, from the audio, the video..which is so rare that we have that…if we hit a brick wall with that, then you really do need to bring in people who have worked similar cases from a behavior standpoint instead of an evidentiary standpoint and basically say “Okay, where might this guy have gone? Would he still be living in the area? Have we looked at all the probation, the parole rolls, to see if anyone fits this?” and just keep it going. You’d be shocked how many of these cases are solved because somebody does remember something—even four, five years later—and calls it into police. But you have to know which buttons to push to get that new information, to get people thinking. And honestly, keeping it in the media is our best hope.

MIKE GALANOS: Barb, isn’t that happening? That kind of cross referencing and things like that that Casey is talking about?

BARBARA MACDONALD: From what we’ve been told, yes — that is happening. They are constantly going over the evidence they have, the information they have, and looking at it from different angles and asking themselves “What have I missed?” The Sheriff told us that he has the video on his cell phone and he pulls it up and when he’s sitting at home to listen to it, to go “What did I miss? Do I know this person?” They certainly say that they’re using every resource available and we don’t have any evidence to the contrary.

MIKE GALANOS:

Q: Have police already identified who the suspect is, and are just waiting on one more piece of evidence to secure a conviction?

Drew, do you get that sense?

DREW IDEN: I don’t. I don’t get that sense. We have talked to the Sheriff of Carroll County, Tobe Leazenby, who’s mentioned having a couple of names rolling around in his head. I think that there may be some thought of some individuals, but I don’t think it’s contingent on one piece of evidence to come in. I think there is an element of ‘we’re waiting on a tip that can push us across the goal line, here.’ Whether that tip leads to evidence or whatever it is, I’m not quite sure. 

MIKE GALANOS: Casey, what could that one piece of evidence be?

CASEY JORDAN: I really have to believe at this point that they’ve checked everything having to do with DNA and physical evidence. I don’t think they have one particular suspect. I think that it’s going to come from a phone call—a tip—of somebody who comes in and says “I’ve just remembered that my fill-in-the-blank: brother, uncle, dad that day was absent from work, didn’t pick me up from school, fill in the blank.” And I think at this point, even though I do believe that it is most likely that the culprit lived or lives in the area, I think they really need to start expanding it out geographically and start looking in neighboring states and nationwide, because if it really hasn’t pinpointed to somebody in that geographic location, it’s really time to expand with a vengeance.

MIKE GALANOS: And Barb, I gotta get your take. You don’t think they’ve narrowed it, do you?

BARBARA MACDONALD: I think like Drew they’ve got a few names in their head of people it could possibly be, but I don’t think it’s just one person that they’re like “We just need to get that last tip on that one person and we’ll make that arrest.” I think what they have isn’t that much of a slam-dunk yet. Hopefully that changes, soon.

CASEY JORDAN: It would have happened by now. You have to believe that. 

MIKE GALANOS:

Q: Is the suspect local or not?

Drew, from all we’ve seen, aren’t authorities confident that this person is local [to the Delphi, Indiana area]?

DREW IDEN: They are, and whether he still lives there or not is probably up for some debate. But obviously having been out there and knowing the geography and topography of where these girls were found, all indications would be that the perpetrator of this crime at least is familiar and knows that area because if you don’t know that area, frankly you’re not going to really be able to find it. I do think that they still believe he’s local. 

BARBARA MACDONALD: And worth noting here Mike is that the trail system where the girls were doing their hike that afternoon, it ends at the bridge. So the bridge is not part of the trails. And where we believe the girls were encountered by this perpetrator is the South end of the bridge. So definitely in territory that most of the people using the trails…they’re not venturing out to that area. And then he took them to an area even more remote and off the trail system onto private property. So he seems have known the area well and known where he was less likely to be encountering other people.

MIKE GALANOS: Ok, so give us context, Barb. You said the South end. That’s the far end?

BARBARA MACDONALD: Yeah, so if you’re looking at an aerial map of the area, the girls entered the bridge in the northwest corner of that map and walked down to the bridge. We don’t now their exact route, but they made it to the bridge and across the bridge. They were probably intending to turn around and go back, that’s what most people do. We think he might have already been on that South end because it’s further away from the trails, less likely to be seen, even in winter when the leaves are off the trees. There’s a lot of tree cover in that part of the bridge. We think he knew that was a perfect spot to approach.

MIKE GALANOS: And Drew, you guys have been there. You almost would have the be a local to know this area, know kids go there, it’s part of the thrill of walking across a bridge… which would lead to planning this out.

DREW IDEN: Right, in fact the first time I went there with Barb, Barb had been there once or twice prior, and I was driving and she kind of had to direct us where we were going. Even being right there along the road that’s where you access the trail, you couldn’t see anything. So even when you’re right up on the trail, it still looks like you’re just out in the middle of rural Indiana. It would be difficult for someone who’s not from the area to just randomly pick this spot and know where all these places are.

MIKE GALANOS: Casey, does this say ‘local, planned it, kids go there— I’m going to find my victim on the bridge’?

CASEY JORDAN: Absolutely, but I really want to push the idea that it’s somebody that grew up there that has since left and was returning to the area. For this kind of homicide, usually you see… this one’s relatively spontaneous, I don’t believe it was planned, most people don’t. But the key is if you didn’t go there specifically to plan it, was he revisiting something from his youth, from his childhood? Was there some kind of trigger there? I just want to really say he definitely knew the area, but maybe he has since moved on and was back revisiting for that day.

MIKE GALANOS: Casey, on the behavioral front, is this guy sitting in his home in Delphi watching our two-part documentary? Watching all the coverage? Watching law enforcement?

CASEY JORDAN: You better believe he is! And a lot of people want to speculate and they keep throwing in the whole serial killer theories. I don’t think he had killed before. I guarantee you if we continue to cover this, it will put a huge damper on those fantasies, on that trajectory that could lead to a repeat of that pattern. The fantasy, the abduction and so on. He’s watching, and our coverage chills his future thought pattern because as long as we’re covering it, he is afraid of getting caught. So that’s another reason apart from catching him… it might, if he’s still suffering from those fantasies of hurting little girls, we might actually be having a role in keeping that from happening. 

MIKE GALANOS: On the power front though, authorities—Doug Carter especially— is playing back and forth with this guy at press conferences, right? Like “You’re watching, we’re gonna get you.”

DREW IDEN: We use the phrase in our Delphi Bureau about him ‘engaging in a dialogue’ with the killer. There is no doubt that when you watch that new direction press conference [April 2019], he is speaking directly to him. I mean, he says it. I think that on some level they were waiting for a response from the killer. Whether it was verbal, a letter, some sort of action or something… clearly they were starting a dialogue.

BARBARA MACDONALD: When we started the podcast I remember asking Superintendent Doug Carter “Do you feel like this killer has responded to you or has sought out communication with you?”, and at that time he said he didn’t think so. It would be interesting if that dialogue has begun since then. It’s not an unusual move for killers of this type to engage in that communication. Certainly the police and investigators are ready for it.

MIKE GALANOS:

Q: Have they sent the DNA they do have to a genealogist?

You flat out asked this, so number one, they have DNA—correct?

BARBARA MACDONALD: They do have DNA. They have not indicated what type of DNA or whether or not they have a full profile. The answer I got from the Sheriff [Tobe Leazenby of Carroll County Indiana] said that they are aware, they have discussed the forensic genealogy and that this time they have decided to stick with other testing.

MIKE GALANOS: Because Casey, we see, okay, you have DNA, it’s being tested, we’re solving the case! It’s not that easy, is it?

CASEY JORDAN: It’s not that easy. And we don’t know the state of the DNA, whether if the profile—as Barb pointed out— is indeed complete. But by the time they did that cat and mouse game two years ago with their presser, I’m very sure they had run as much of the DNA as they could on anyone they suspected. And maybe they were hoping to provoke somebody new that they could pursue. I personally wish they would be little more forthcoming about what they’re doing with the DNA. I don’t think there’s a downside to it. But one of the big things that we want to consider is whether or not familial or family tree DNA could be the direction in solving this case. There’s been a number of cases where that’s helpful narrowing down the suspect pool by finding out through a big database like 23andMe or Ancestry.com whether or not there are matches, familial matches, in the area. 

MIKE GALANOS:

Q: Why didn’t the girls run when they saw the suspect?

First off, let me say this, we’re not second guessing the girls. They showed incredible courage to get on a phone and get evidence, so let’s say that. But Drew, again we’ll lean on your context of the lay of the land, what kind of escape route was there potentially? 

DREW IDEN: What we don’t know is obviously what happened from the point of the South end of the bridge to where the girls were found. They very well may have run. In fact if you think about it, one of the things that lead investigators to where they were found was the black Nike shoe Libby had been wearing that day. So, it’s entirely plausible that came off her foot in some sort of a sprint effort. We don’t know. They may actually have run. The other thing is we’ve talked to both of the families who have expressed their belief that Abby and Libby were very, very close. It’s chilling to think about, but they both kind of talked about neither one of those girl would have left the other. So, there perhaps was mutual decision to “We are going to deal with this together. I’m not going to leave you”, whether it was Abby or Libby. As far of them running… we don’t know. They very well may have, actually. 

MIKE GALANOS: Just to ask, and I think even my emotions begin to stir when you think of what they went through and the courageous heart of these young girls in these moments.

BARBARA MACDONALD: Obviously they knew something wasn’t right as he made his approach. To think about them going to that realization that this is a serious issue here that we need to do something about, and they didn’t have a lot of options for where to go. They could run, but they’re running down a very leaf-covered, rough terrain hill and across a cold creek if they did in fact run that distance. They didn’t have a lot of options. I think about even being an adult woman in their position, and I think this guy took control very quickly and they didn’t have many options.

CASEY JORDAN: I think that we presume that he probably showed or brandished a weapon of some sort. They’re 13, 14 years old. They’ve really been taught to obey adults and they don’t think like we think. They’re probably thinking if they do whatever he says, they’re going to live. It wouldn’t be the first idea to separate and run.

MIKE GALANOS: Yeah, watching you in that area near the crime scene… that’s some tough terrain.

BARBARA MACDONALD: It is, it’s very difficult to walk. It’s muddy because it’s an area that floods a lot from the creek and gets covered in snow that melts. Depending on the time of year it can be very muddy there. The terrain can be very uneven, even in places where it looks flat, it’s very uneven. I think all of that also goes to this man’s familiarity with that area to know that that was the place to take them.

MIKE GALANOS:

Q: Could police see which phones with pinging on the same tower at the time of the abduction?

Again, cell pings. We think alright, evidence. Drew, not that easy when you’ve got a small community and who knows what phone’s pinging where. 

DREW IDEN: Yeah, cell towers are somewhat ubiquitous at this point, they’re pretty much everywhere. I think the short answer is yes, you can kind of ping those phones off of which towers, but because it’s a small community that doesn’t necessarily mean the person with that phone was right there. I mean, they could have been across town. It’s not as simple as kind of a silver bullet free pass into knowing who is where at all times.

MIKE GALANOS: Barb, do we know whose phone pinged when and where?

BARBARA MACDONALD: We don’t. We know that Libby was the only one that had a cell phone out there, according to family members Abby didn’t have a phone. We know that Libby’s phone is the one that pinged late at night and got law enforcement back out after the official search had been called off where they looked for the phone. I don’t know when exactly the phone was found. We know it was found in the same general area as the girls, but that’s also a pretty big area.

MIKE GALANOS:

Q: Have police searched and tried to match the signatures at the scene with other crimes in the area?

So Casey, when we talk about signatures, that’s like a calling card of a crime. Further define that so we’re all on the same page.

CASEY JORDAN: Sure, so think of this as something that’s very specific. I wouldn’t argue ‘unique’, but very specific to the culprit and it reflects kind of a ‘leakage’- the inner workings of their brain. Sometimes we call it a ritual, but I don’t like that word because it indicates a repetition. This is the behavioral satisfaction—maybe arousal—that they’re getting that leads them to behave in certain ways before, during, and after the crime. This can very often be sexual but sometimes it’s something as simple as pulling the shirt over somebody’s face because you don’t want to see their face, which would usually indicate somebody who is familiar with the victim. But they can become very unique and sometimes so extreme that people are literally leaving written messages. The police admit that they have 2 or 3 things, holdbacks that we don’t know about, that they would categorize as signatures. Something very specific to that offender that you would see repeated in similar crimes. I, the criminologist, would obviously love to know what they are, but they’re afraid of tainting the prosecute-ability of the case if they let that out. But you can be sure they are consulting with criminologists, people from the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, to try to discern what those signatures mean, and they’re certainly looking for them in similar crimes. But if this were the first homicide this perpetrator committed, those signatures are going to be something that emerged during that event. And if he doesn’t commit another homicide like this, you won’t see them repeated. So they could just be a tempest in a teapot and go nowhere.

MIKE GALANOS: Barb, they confirmed to you specifically, yes, there are two or three signatures?

BARBARA MACDONALD: Two to three, yes. The retired prosecutor, the man who was the prosecutor in Carroll County when this crime happened and for nine months after, Robert Ives, was the one who told us about it in the podcast and the Sheriff conferred that he agreed that yeah, that does exist at the crime scene. They don’t want to really release the details. I think it’s easy for us on the outside to sit and say “they should release all of this because we can help solve this” – that doesn’t make that true that we can help if we had all of the information. One of the points that I think gets overlooked sometimes is that they really are looking at the long game here of a prosecution and conviction, and not just naming a suspect or making an arrest—that’s just the beginning. The current prosecutor Nick McLeland said when we talked to him that “Don’t get excited when there’s an arrest because that’s just an accusation – we haven’t proved anything yet. At the point that we go to trial and get a conviction, then we know who did this.”

MIKE GALANOS: Hey Drew back to the signatures, what’s the hope here? That you’re comparing the signatures in Delphi with something somewhere else and you get a match, right?

DREW IDEN: Right, I think the basic kind of short answer would be the signature would give you the opportunity if this crime or if the offender did something somewhere else. It’s an easy match to make. Part of the difficulty with that though is getting the information from other agencies. The FBI VICAP, which is the Violent Crime Apprehension Program, they have a database and that database is designed for every law enforcement agency in the country: local, state, all if them — to basically dump into this bucket all of the unsolved, violent crimes that they have. So what you can do is then go search that database and type in, you know, ‘double murder with these kinds of elements’, the theory being they can run a match and be like “Oh, well something like this occurred in Connecticut.” The difficulty is, there’s an article in 2015 from ProPublica which basically said of the 18,000 law enforcement agencies in America, only 1,400 are really using that database. So it’s only effective if everybody uses it.

MIKE GALANOS: And Casey, why not? It seems like this great place for law enforcement to go to compare notes and solve crimes?

CASEY JORDAN: Well because you’ve got to really devote personnel to doing what you would consider the typology breakdown, and getting all of those variables and feeding them into the database is very labor labor-intensive. A lot of PD’s are just overwhelmed with every day crime fighting to start with, and unless they have an elevated and educated detective unit that’s willing to do the breakdown of those variables and factors and enter them into the database, it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Again, it’s only going to help if the person has been arrested before and is in VICAP. It’s definitely worth looking at, but there are other things. Let’s assume the perpetrator has never been apprehended for the similar crime…. I’m not going to say he’s never committed it, but maybe he’s not in the database because of that. You would want to just come up with variables from known, similar crimes that you would look for in your unknown subject or ‘unsub’. I don’t know enough about the signatures to guess, but things that typically show up on this list are consumption of child pornography, collection of weapons, those sorts of things. I would really hope law enforcement is looking at those in connection with behavioral analysts to figure out what kind of variables they’re looking for. 

MIKE GALANOS:

Q: What evidence or type of evidence could police be hiding? 

We just laid that out there with the signatures… Casey, why not? Why not get that out there? You mention it could hurt the prosecution of the case. Explain that to us.

CASEY JORDAN: They have to have holdbacks. Let’s use the word holdback instead of “hiding’” because they want to make sure that when they get the perpetrator, that person can tell them things that are unique to that case so they know they have the right person. Remember, if they make an accusation or arrest against someone that turns out not to be the perpetrator, not only did they ruin that person’s life, they risk the liability of getting sued. A lot of people probably remember John Mark Karr, a man who came forward and self-confessed to the murder of JonBenét Ramsey. Everybody was so excited, and it turned out that he was just making it up. He just wanted his 15 minutes of spotlight. They want to discourage anyone from coming forward claiming responsibility for the crimes. Unstable people will do that and it can absolutely send an investigation down the wrong rabbit hole and waste a lot of time and resources. So those are the holdbacks. Frankly, I’m going to vote that after four years they give us a little bit more. I think a little bit more out to the public won’t compromise the case, but could keep us really interested in moving in the right direction.

MIKE GALANOS: And Barb, one of this places would be the phone. If you have more, why not a little bit more? What do they tell you?

BARBARA MACDONALD: They’re telling us the video’s nowhere near as long as a lot of people think it. People online have speculated it is several minutes— 8, 9 minutes long. The Sheriff tells me it’s not anywhere near that long and that there’s nothing else from the suspect on it. He doesn’t say any other words on it. And Casey, I think you speculated awhile back that Libby probably put the phone into her pocket to hide it from him and there could be more audio. We do know they still are doing testing on that cellphone to see if there’s anything else on it… if there’s anything else within that video. They’re exploring “items” I think was the word the Sheriff used, within that video. But going back to the evidence we don’t know, we don’t know the case of death and we don’t know if it’s the same for both girls. We don’t know what kind of weapon was used if one weapon was used or if more than one weapon was used and whether they have that weapon. I know a lot of blue jackets have been turned in to law enforcement. They tell me they don’t have ‘the’ jacket, but they’ve had a lot of people turn in blue jackets. 

MIKE GALANOS: And Drew like all the crimes we’ve covered, usually we know cause of death. That’s not a holdback.

ANDREW EDEN: Right, right. We talk about the questions in this case, that is the one that is asked of… people ask me that all the time when it comes to this case. What is the cause of death? I think, like Casey said, there has to be holdbacks. Is it because the cause of death has some sort of connection to the signature? I don’t know. But if it does, that would be an example of why they would want to hold that back. But yeah, you’re right. That’s one of the million dollar questions here that I think everybody is scratching their head about.

MIKE GALANOS: And Casey, to holdback cause of death. Does that surprise you at all?

CASEY JORDAN: It does. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say I can’t imagine circumstances under which letting that out at this juncture would compromise the case. I think it might actually spur new interest in that case and keep things moving forward and tips coming in. If they wanted to let one thing out at this point, I would say cause of death would be really important. 

MIKE GALANOS: And again Barb, you’ve been to the crime scene. We have no idea how the bodies were left. That’s another holdback.

BARBARA MACDONALD: No, exactly. We don’t know. We know that they were near each other in this small area of this private land next to the creek, but we don’t know exactly how they were left. We do know that it was obvious to everyone immediately that they had been victims of a homicide.

MIKE GALANOS:

Q: What about the owner of the land where the bodies were found? What’s his status?

You made a connection— Barb, clarify for us.

BARBARA MACDONALD: Yeah, so he still owns the land, Ron Logan. He’s owned it since the 1950’s. He raised his family there, he lives there alone. He’s got a bunch of animals: goats and a horse and he feeds the birds. He’s got a lovely piece of land there and it’s really unfortunate that this happened on his property. We can only assume that he’s been looked at really hard. He’s never been named a suspect in the case, he’s never been charged with anything in connection with the case. So you know, I think it’s just unfortunate that this happened on his property. 

MIKE GALANOS:

Q: Who are the witnesses that enabled police to make the sketches?

That’s one like yes, there have to have been people that were out there! They’re not speaking… right Drew?

DREW IDEN: We talk about this being out in the woods, and I think a lot of times there is a feeling it is completely isolated and remote, but there were people out there like you said. There were people walking those trails. Those witnesses have not come forward, you can understand why, there’s clearly a killer still on the loose [NOTE OF CLARIFICATION: By “not come forward” he means they have not spoken or shared their accounts with the public. They obviously have come forward to police, which is how the sketches were created & physical characteristics gathered. It’s also fair to assume law enforcement has asked them to remain quiet since there is a very good chance their testimony will play a crucial role in a future trial]. These sketches, that there has been so much discussion about, we have some kind of vague understanding of who they are, but they haven’t come forward and haven’t spoken yet, so I don’t know when that will happen, it may be a long time. There is really a tangible fear I’m sure that they feel, considering this guy is still on the loose. 

MIKE GALANOS: And Barb, any indication that any witness spoke to the suspect?

BARBARA MACDONALD: Yeah, we understand that one of the witnesses was fairly young, still in high school when this happened and that he [the suspect known as ‘Bridge Guy’] may have said a few words to her and she was able to turn around and go in another direction. We don’t know how long he was out there looking for his victims. Had he been out there all day? Had he been out there the days prior? This is all stuff that we don’t know either from investigators because they don’t have that one suspect. We don’t know where he came from that day and where he went to when he was done, but he sure has managed to stay out of sight from people.

MIKE GALANOS:

Q: That’s not an 18-year old’s voice. Why did the sketch age get so low?

Barb, did the voice lead to that second sketch and the potential of the suspect being younger? Explain that.

BARBARA MACDONALD: I think that the voice by itself… there’s not enough of it there to give you much information about who that person is or what age they are. Drew did quite a but of digging into this area. 

DREW IDEN: I spoke to a gentleman early on in our research who works in audio forensics… or used to work in the FBI and audio forensics. My initial question to him is what can we glean from this audio? Can we glean age? Can we glean dialect, you know, the way people speak? And his response to me was essentially “That’s not enough, there needs to be more.” I think that’s obviously one of the frustrating parts of this case. We’re so close to getting something there, but to determine any kind of makeup of who this person is from just that audio recording, even the experts are like no, it’s pretty difficult. There’s not gonna be a lot there.

MIKE GALANOS: Casey, weight in on that, the audio forensics we have here.

CASEY JORDAN: Well we’ve all heard it over and over again. I have my own views on the gap in between “Hey guys”, blank-blank-blank, “Go down the hill.” I’ve listened to it hundreds of times probably, and I think he probably said “You need to go down the hill.” They can’t just come right out and say that because it might take everything in the wrong direction. I honestly do think the original description of this person was probably more like 30 to 45 and was where they started. But then as you find out, there were some witnesses who did run into him in the area. The problem is that eye-witness recall can be very biased according to who we are. Let’s say a witness says “You know, I did see a guy and maybe he did look like that, but I thought he was more like 18 to 25”. They immediately need to just go with that theory and make a sketch that presents that same image, but younger to see if that jogs anyone’s memories. They’re basically just covering every possible base so that they don’t pigeonhole our suspect into a specific age group, and that keeps us considering all options. It’s not a bad thing, except that agin after four years we really haven’t gone in any specific direction.

MIKE GALANOS: And Casey, I know it was pointed out in the documentary that if I’m older than I perceive the suspect to be then I’m going to call that suspect 18. [This refers back to a point Becky Patty made in the HLN documentary. She believes the two sketches are likely of the same person, yet look opposed because of the varied ages of the witnesses who saw him/provided descriptors for each sketch “…when you’re a young person everyone looks old, and when you’re old everyone looks young”].

CASEY JORDAN: Yes, very much. Apart from the fact we know old people always under-calculate the age of younger people, likewise younger people can sometimes overestimate the age of people who are older than them. Beyond that… little triggers. Let’s say the guy was wearing a British cap, or like a Carhartt hoodie. We would associate that cap with someone we know who has a similar cap and align their age with that person, or a Carhartt hoodie or just a brown hoodie and say “That would be a teenage thing to wear” or “The cap would be an old person’s thing to wear.” That’s all based on our specific biases and people we know who have the similar characteristics. So you have to take all of it seriously, but also with a grain of salt. 

BARBARA MACDONALD: And also, I wonder if those are even his clothes or if those were clothes he selected to disguise himself that day? So, it doesn’t say much about his age based on what he was wearing, I think. 

MIKE GALANOS:

Q: Why was this random person walking in the woods? Did he know the girls? Was he truly a complete stranger?

Barb, any indication he knew the girls before? 

BARBARA MACDONALD: We don’t have any evidence that says he knew these girls. It is a small town if he is somebody from the town as is suspected, it’s likely that he or his family knew of the girls or their families, but that doesn’t mean that they know each other. I don’t believe that he knew these girls.

CASEY JORDAN: I don’t believe at all. I’m sure that after four years, they have really a very exhaustive list of everyone in that area who might be familiar with these girls or their family, and they have gone through it and they have disposed of all of them. But, this whole idea they’re ‘hiding in plain sight’, I keep going around with the possibility that it’s somebody who is very familiar with the area, but may have left and come back on that particular day. So maybe what they need to do instead of looking geographically, is look temporally, going backward at people who lived in that area over the last 20 years.

MIKE GALANOS: We’ve danced around it; Drew, what are you getting from authorities? Did this suspect hang out there all day–maybe days—waiting for the opportune moment?

DREW IDEN: I don’t know about “days”, but it’s funny; you mention opportunity. I think— and we’ve covered a lot of these cases where we talk about crime of opportunity where the location is set— maybe the method is set, maybe everything is there except the actual victims and they just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s very possible that this is a scenario that fits under that umbrella. 

MIKE GALANOS:

Q: Someone knows who it is. They’re covering for him. Who would do that? Is it someone else in town?

Superintendent Carter, Barb. He’s pretty confident someone knows something—

BARBARA MACDONALD: —and I agree with him on that. I think somebody does know. But you know, this man did something really horrific to two young girls in broad daylight out in the middle of a public area and he’s dangerous. The person who knows could be scared. There’s a lot of reasons why someone might not come forward and give that information. It’s sad. I wish they would, but they could be scared and that is something the investigators have all told us countless times, that they can protect the person. The person can remain anonymous and provide the information and they do have ways of protecting them for coming forward with this information. This person, in my opinion, will probably act again… or they at least want to. So he’s a threat, if for no other reason than that, it’s time to come forward.

MIKE GALANOS: Drew, do you agree with that?

DREW IDEN: Yes, and I wanted to point out that the question says “Why are they covering for him?”— it may not be a situation where they are “covering” for, lying for him. It may be a situation where perhaps it’s a mother, a sister, a brother who for four years has not been able to convince themselves that their friend or family member is capable of this. Who are we to try to figure out how that must feel to try to get there? That’s a hard thing to reconcile with, if you think there’s someone who might possibly be capable.

MIKE GALANOS:

Q: What would tip that family member over the edge to say “I’ve got information”, and they’re going to come forward?

CASEY JORDAN: Drew nailed it, and I’ve actually done research on what I call ‘the pall of denial’. It stemmed from a serial killer who had six bodies in his house, which he lived in with his family, and they never knew! And people are like “of course, how could they not know?!?” They were in the attic, they were in the basement. If you climbed the stairs or went down in the basement you would know… but they just didn’t go there. The brain is an amazing thing in the interest of self-preservation. When it’s information that they know they can’t handle, they just don’t go there. So ‘the pall of denial’ is literally like a steel gate that closes on the brain and just doesn’t go down the path that could lead them to realize “my nephew, my uncle, my son, my husband might be this culprit.” Because deep, deep inside the subconscious is extremely complex. They won’t be able to handle that truth. What will that mean about them? What will it mean about having to turn this person in? So very often something has to actually trick that brain, and it’s a trigger that makes everything kind of slam into their heads and go “I have to say what I know!” But who knows what’s going to do that? Maybe that information hasn’t reached them that, maybe something new will come forward that will literally just bring that truth slamming into their head, and that ‘pall of denial’ will be crashed. That’s why we have to keep talking about it. 

MIKE GALANOS:

Q: What about Derrick German [Libby’s dad], Carrie’s [Libby’s mother] ex-husband? 

Derrick is Kelsi and Libby’s father if I’m not mistaken. Was Derrick German ever a suspect in the Delphi murders? Tell us about it.

BARBARA MACDONALD: We know that all of the family members have been checked out, and the word that the Sheriff uses is they are “covered”. Does it mean they are cleared? No-one is technically cleared in this investigation thus far. But Derrick was supposed to pick the girls up from the trails that day. He got out and did some searching. He’s the one that called all the family members, alerted everyone and got the official search going. We know family members have given DNA, have been interviewed, so we can assume he’s been checked out as well. He’s somebody that does not want to tell his story publicly, he does not talk [publicly] and from what we understand, that’s just the kind of person he is. 

[NOTE: Kelsi German, in a February 2021 interview with Gray Hughes, discussed her father and why he does not feel comfortable speaking publicly. You can view that portion of the interview here. Derrick German will likely do an interview with Kelsi in the near future].

MIKE GALANOS: We’ve hit a lot, you guys. Seems like five minutes. I’ll give each of you a chance… just some final thoughts as we wrap up. We’re keeping this story out there, and hoping and praying for a break and justice for these precious girls. Barb, just your thoughts as you have done such incredible work on this.

BARBARA MACDONALD: Thank you, Mike. Abby and Libby were just regular girls out having a good time. They were good girls. They weren’t doing anything wrong and they didn’t deserve what happened to them. I certainly hope that if somebody is listening to this and knows, that they’ll be motivated to send in that tip. Don’t post information like that on the internet. A lot of people do. Send it to law enforcement. There’s a lot of different ways you can get that information to law enforcement, and that’s where it should go!

DREW IDEN: I’ve had a lot of conversations with Mike Patty over the course of working on this story, and I always think of one that jumps out at me. A year and a half ago or so we were at their house, they were having a cookout and he and I were in the garage. He said to me, unprompted, “Drew, we had plans,” meaning he and Becky—his wife. “We had plans before all of this for retirement, cashing in a 401K, sending the girls off to college. Me and Becky were going to go ride across the country with an RV.” They had a whole plan moving forward. And he’s like “That’s all gone now. Left turn. Completely gone.” And so, the reason I bring this is up is because I think we oftentimes forget as we talk about these forensics and all the science and stuff… we forget the human element here sometimes. And we should remember that.

CASEY JORDAN: I’m going to go out on a limb and appeal to law enforcement to trust that our interest is so sincere that they kind of need to throw us a bone. And going back to the pall of denial- I do believe someone out there does know something, but they don’t know they know it. If they could just give us something more, like cause of death, a little bit more evidence, the whole video because they said there’s just not much more than that… so why don’t you give it to us? I think that the trigger that we just talked about, that could get someone who knows something to have that crashing moment and make that phone call, to put that tip into police… it could happen if they just gave us a little bit more. I think they should sit down, figure out what they can give away safely, and keep out interest piqued by trying to send that trigger out there.

MIKE GALANOS: And that’s what we are hoping for. That’s what we’re really pushing for and we know you as well as a viewer with an interest in the case. That break that will lead to an arrest, that will lead to justice for Abby and Libby.

If you have a tip regarding the unsolved murders of Abigail Williams and Liberty German, contact the Delphi Tip Line by email abbyandlibbytip@cacoshrf.com or phone (844) 459-5786. You can remain 100% anonymous. There is a $250,000 reward.

[ End HLN ‘Down The Hill’ Transcript: Who Killed Abby & Libby?]

Related Links & Articles:

– CrimeLights interview with Superintendent Doug Carter & Delphi 4 Year Update

–HLN ‘Down The Hill’ Transcript: Robert Ives Reveals “3 Signatures” Were Left at Crime Scene

–Delphi Murders: 2019 Press Conference Transcript – ‘A New Direction’