Transcript of Richard Allen found guilty on all counts in Delphi double murder trial

Breaking news into CNN. There is a verdict in the Delphi double murder trial of Richard Allen. He has been found guilty.

You'll recall, he's accused of killing two teenage girls and leaving their bodies near a hiking path in the small town of Delphi, Indiana, seven years ago. We're joined by CNN's Jean Cusares now, who's been tracking the case. So, Jean, the jury here, after some 20 hours of deliberation, finding him guilty.

Our affiliate, WTHR, is reporting that The courtroom was quiet. However, the emotion was immensely strong in that courtroom. Richard Allen himself was stoic as that verdict was read. The police superintendent from the county of Delphi, Indiana, according to our affiliate, put his hands to his face and started to cry as that verdict was read. He has been on this case from the beginning. This has been an emotional jury, and this has also been an time for the Delphi community because it was seven years before they were able to charge Richard Allen with this crime. So much had gone on. It was because of the tip of a volunteer who had looked in a box because they didn't know who did this. They found the name Richard Allen, who worked at the local CVS Pharmacy, who had made the copies of photographs for the family before the funerals, free of charge for the families. That's who they then looked at, and that is how the arrest became, and also to this ultimate conviction. Now, of course, the families of the victims, Abigail Williams and Liberty German, they were in the courtroom. And according to our affiliate, the emotion for these families to have some type of, not closure, you can never get closure, but justice, that law enforcement did their job and that they had the right man.

This was a unanimous verdict. This is what the jury believed, and this is a case that had no DNA, had no murder weapon, had confessions, but also had the picture of Bridge guy. That was the picture that Liberty German, and I think we do have that picture, that Liberty German's phone took minutes before it's believed that these two young girls, there it is, that's Bridge guy. That is from Liberty German's phone. The prosecutor said at the end of the closing argument that Liberty German had always said she wanted to help police solve crimes. And that's her picture. And that was Exhibit A in this courtroom.

She solved her own in the end here, perhaps. I want to bring in Mercedes Colwyn, legal analyst and trial attorney, to talk a little bit about this. Mercedes, there was no murder weapon discovered, but there was this bullet that was found near the bodies of the girls, and it was unfired, but Once you had bullets fired through the weapon, the Sig Sauer of Richard Allen, and compared the markings on it, there was a match. Now, there was a defense witness who said that that was nothing conclusive because a bullet that is unfired versus a bullet that is fired. This is comparing apples to oranges. It seems the jury did not buy that.

You're exactly right, Brianna. It really was that ballistics expert that made it clear that there's a strong possibility that that bullet was connected to Richard Allen. But really what was the most damning, and we know that the defense fought so hard to keep those jailhouse confessions out of the courtroom, were those recordings. You can't unhear what Richard Allen said repeatedly to his wife, I killed them, but will you still love me? Those were such, and of course, the defense tried to distance Richard Allen from those confessions and said, We have an expert that says that his conditions were so deplorable in the prison, in solitary confinement, he started to lose reality, and that's why he made those confessions. The jury didn't buy that either. But really, at the end of the day, it was the horrors of what happened to those two young girls and those jailhouse confessions that really brought it home for the families.

And Mercedes, I'm wondering if the defense were to seek appeals here, I imagine they would revert back to the issues that he had when he was incarcerated. He at one point eating his own feces and acting manically, apparently. Is that the most likely route they would go, you think?

That's a great point. Boris, they will certainly look to appeal. They have to. I mean, they have no choice. They'll look, and one of the evidentiary rulings will be number one, those jailhouse confessions. And to your point, the deplorable conditions that the defense brought up during the course of the proceeding, saying that those conditions were so terrible that he started to lose reality. He started to lose himself. He started to become crazy, quote unquote crazy in those circumstances. Frankly, at the end of the day, you have a constitutional life for a fair trial. If you can say and point out that any of these evidentiary rulings If the proceedings deprived him of due process in a fair trial, certainly one will be this tapes. Secondly, would be those conditions. If he, Richard Allen, cannot understand the proceedings, and it wasn't questioned during that course, but we'll see what happens on appeal, They might bring that up and say that might be the basis for an appeal and try to look for a new trial. But it is very difficult, as you know, to overturn a jury verdict, especially one of this magnitude.

Jean, seven years this community has waited. They have been traumatized, a very small community losing these little girls.

Absolutely. That permeates a courtroom. I know from other cases that I've covered, that emotion of wanting justice to wanting this solved can be very strong in that courtroom. I think what Mercedes is saying, the confessions, I think were critically important because of what he said. He gave very specific details in some of those confessions as to what happened, that there was a white van, and that scared him. And so because of that, he didn't commit sexual assault, as was his plan. Well, there was a white van that a resident had that lived a very close distance away from the crime scene. And so the defense argued, well, he had his legal documents in the cell, and he read them. But on the other hand, the specificity, I think, also is something that the jury looked at.

Eugene Cusares, Mercedes Colwyn. Thank you so much for walking us through the details on this breaking news. Richard Allen found guilty in the Delphi double murder trial. Thank you so much for that analysis as.