ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Richard Allen — the man convicted in the Delphi murders — arrived at Westville Correctional Facility in October 2022 weighing roughly a hundred and eighty pounds. He was a CVS pharmacy clerk with depression and anxiety. He had no criminal record. He had voluntarily told police in 2017 that he was on the trail the day Abby Williams and Libby German were killed.
The state of Indiana placed him in a maximum-security segregated unit. Solitary confinement. A cell measuring twelve feet by eight and a half. Twenty-four-hour surveillance. Three showers a week. Chains on his hands, feet, and torso every time he moved. He was the only pretrial detainee in the unit.
Inmates in adjacent cells called him a killer. They told him to end his life.
By April 2023 — roughly six months in — prison psychologist Dr. Monica Wala noted a "grave disability." Allen had begun consuming his own waste. He was rolling on the ground. He was banging his head against concrete walls. By May, Wala diagnosed brief psychotic disorder.
It was during this period that Allen began confessing. More than sixty times over approximately two months. To guards. To the warden. To inmates assigned as suicide companions. To his wife and mother on recorded phone calls.
The prosecution played those confessions for a jury and presented them as the words of a guilty man unburdening his conscience.
The defense presented them as the words of a man whose mind was destroyed by his confinement. And there was something else Allen said during that same period — something the prosecution did not present. Something that came from the same mouth in the same cell during the same psychotic break.
Allen was convicted. He is serving a hundred and thirty years. His appeal is pending.
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This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.
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