Volunteer Gets Her Due for Helping Crack Delphi Case

It took police five years to make an arrest in the double murder of young teens Abigail Williams and Liberty German in Indiana. It may not have happened at all if not for a volunteer clerk in Delphi named Kathy Shank. Upon the sentencing of Richard Allen on Friday, authorities in Delphi praised Shank for her role in helping crack the case, reports the Indianapolis Star. In 2022, the retired state government worker was going through a box of tips on the case—she had volunteered to help organize them—when she came across the file for a "Richard Allen Whiteman."

Shank took a closer look and determined that the name was incorrect: It should have been just Richard Allen. And though his name had been marked as "cleared," she pulled his file and suggested to investigators that they re-examine him because he had acknowledged being on the same hiking trail as the girls that day in 2017.

"Without her, we would not be here," Carroll County Prosecutor Nick McLeland said at a news conference. "Without her, we would not have an arrest, conviction, and a sentence." Shank testified during Allen's trial about her discovery, notes the AP. "I thought there could be a correlation," she told the court. On Friday, Shank reiterated the point to the Star: "As soon as I saw (the tip), I just thought this was something we'd been looking for." (More Delphi stories.)