A court ruled on Wednesday that a man accused of killing two teenage girls should remain imprisoned in a facility in northern Indiana because he is receiving better care there than other inmates.
Richard Allen’s attorneys asked Special Judge Fran Gull to order him removed from the Indiana Department of Correction’s Westville Correctional Facility due to what they claimed was his deteriorating health and subpar living conditions there. Richard Allen has been detained there since last November.
Allen must wear the same clothes every day, including soiled, damaged, torn and frayed pants, according to his lawyers, who also claimed that Allen hasn’t had a chance to see his wife or other family members in the last five months. Allen also sleeps on a pad on a concrete floor. According to his counsel, his living circumstances are “similar to those of a prisoner of war.”
In contrast, the judge found that “the evidence presented demonstrated that the Defendant is treated more favourably than other inmates housed at the Westville Correctional Facility,” according to online court records, without going into further detail.
Liberty German, 14, and Abigail Williams, 13, were killed in 2017, and Allen is charged with two murders.
They were handed off by a relative at a hiking route near the Monon High Bridge outside of Delphi, some 60 miles northwest of Indianapolis, in February of that year. The following day, their bodies were discovered in a rough, densely forested area close to the trail.
Police have never revealed how the two people died or what evidence they found, despite the fact that the killings were considered a double homicide.
Allen has entered a not guilty plea to the murders.
Delphi, a town of roughly 3,000 people, where Allen lived and worked at a nearby pharmacy, has been tormented by the crimes.
