By Donnie Burgess
Network Indiana
DELPHI — Confession details and prison conditions continued to be the theme for day eleven in the Delphi murders trial.
Dr. Monica Wala served as suspect Richard Allen’s psychologist throughout 2023. She was called to the stand during session one of Wednesday’s testimony to speak on her observations of Richard Allen, his health, condition, and the verbal confessions he made in prison.
Wala says Allen claimed, verbatim, to have killed Abigail Williams and Liberty German, saying things like, “I killed Abby and Libby. I’m sorry.”
Wala recounted Allen’s many statements, including his “intentions” with the girls were “sexual” in nature, that Allen believed the girls were anywhere from 11 to 19, alluding to being a sex addict and reading Playboys at a young age, claiming to have molested his sister, and admitting to being an alcoholic.
She says Allen claimed to have taken God into his heart in March of 2023, that Allen wanted to give his Bible away to the victim’s families, was happy he did not kill himself and hoped the family would forgive him.
Wala said Allen would often cry, ramble, rapidly switch from disorganized to coherent, would go on tangents and never come back, and was often suicidal.
Allen often spoke of his idea to climb his prison cell sink, jump off of it head first, land and break his neck.
She says Allen once admitted to “seeing his parents on February 13th, 2017, having lunch, drinking beers, bundling up and headed to the (Monon High) bridge, fumbled with his gun (which is where Allen claimed to have dropped the bullet), ordered girls down the hill, planned to rape them but got spooked by a nearby car, made the girls cross the creek and killed them”
Allen apparently said, “I just want to sign my confession.”
Allen would later say, “I didn’t do everything I said I did, but I did kill Abby and Libby. I want the electric chair.”
Despite all of this, Wala said, in her estimation, Allen would appear to fake some of these mental illness episodes and would bounce back and forth from bizarre to coherent behavior.
On cross-examination, Wala admitted to the jury that she was a true crime fan and enjoyed following the Delphi murders case. She enjoyed it so much that she joined several Facebook discussion groups and listened to podcasts, and would then bring those discussions back to Richard Allen.
She also admitted that she never told the Indiana Department of Corrections about her fascination. She did tell them once Allen left Westville Prison, and now Dr. Wala is under investigation by the IDOC.
The prosecution intends to tie it to security footage on County Road 300 North on the day of the murders, which entered the frame of security footage at 1:27 p.m. that day.
Brad Weber, who lives off a private lane southeast of where Abby and Libby were found, testifies he drove his Ford EconoVan home after getting off work at 2:02 p.m. at SIA, 25 minutes away in Lafayette. Weber is another individual the defense team pointed to as a person of interest in their opening statements from October 18th.
When challenged by the defense that he made stops that day, Weber denied it. Defense attorney Andrew Baldwin handed Weber a subpoena before court wrapped up at around 4 p.m.
Prosecutor Nick McLeland told Special Judge Fran Gull to expect two hours of audio Thursday without specifying what that audio would contain. More confessions are expected to be analyzed before the State wraps up its case and the defense takes over.
