Attorneys for Richard Allen, the Indiana man accused of killing two teenagers on a hiking trail in 2017, abandoned their client Thursday in an “unexpected turn of events.”
Defense attorneys Andrew Baldwin and Bradley Rozzi are withdrawing from the case after vital information about the murders of Abby Williams, 13, and Libby German, 14, including photographs of the gruesome crime scene, was leaked from their office.
The shocking move comes just a month after the duo revealed their bizarre defense claim that the girls were “ritually sacrificed” by a racist pagan sect and not by their client, who is accused of attacking them after he found them walking alone on the outskirts of her hometown. from Delphi more than six years ago.
“We have had an unexpected turn of events,” special judge Fran Gull said during a hearing scheduled for Thursday.
Gull did not say why Baldwin and Rozzi fired Allen, 51, however, the dismissal comes on the same day it was revealed that a trove of court documents were leaked from Baldwin’s office.
An attorney representing Baldwin said in a memo Thursday that authorities are investigating three alleged “disclosers” who “betrayed” Baldwin and gained access to documentation related to his case that was kept “under lock and key in a room or in a fireproof filing cabinet.
“Attorney Baldwin did nothing wrong. He was deceived and abused,” Baldwin’s representative, David R. Hennessy, said in the memo.
Richard Allen was left unrepresented after his two attorneys withdrew from his murder case Thursday. AP Libby German, 14, and Abby Williams, 13, were killed on a hiking trail outside their hometown of Delphi, Indiana, in 2017. Indiana State Police
The attorney’s withdrawal leaves the timeline for Allen’s case up in the air.
Gull said he would appoint a new public defense attorney for the alleged killer and hopes to hold a hearing scheduled for Oct. 31, but does not anticipate being able to keep the Jan. 8 trial date that was originally set.
“I don’t think that in the coming months a lawyer will be prepared to try a case of this magnitude in January,” he said.
The retirement of Andrew Baldwin and Brad Rozzi comes on the same day it was revealed that information related to the case was leaked from Baldwin’s office.WTHR
Allen was charged in October 2022 after an analysis concluded that a .40-caliber bullet found between the bodies of Williams and German came from a gun he owned.
He confessed to the murders in prison multiple times through phone calls to his wife and mother, according to previous court documents.
However, Allen’s former attorneys claim he was “surveilled, intimidated and mentally abused” at the Westville Correctional Facility by correctional officers who were Odinists, the same sect that Baldwin and Rozzi claim were the teens’ real killers.
The white nationalist cult may have targeted the girls because one of their parents was in a mixed-race relationship and left several pagan symbols at the crime scene, including the way German’s body was positioned, the former team claimed.
“Nothing, absolutely nothing, links Richard Allen to Odinism or any religious cult,” Baldwin and Rozzi wrote in a September document.
With postal cables
Categories: Trending
Source: vtt.edu.vn