The Delphi Murders: Three Days of Pretrial Hearings: Day Two

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[00:01:44] discussion of the murder of two girls. So this is day two of the three days of hearings, pretrial hearings in the Richard Allen case. This is a course also known as the Delphine

[00:01:57] Murders case and you of course Ani and I went. We were there at 5 a.m. and we were there until the close of the session which I think was around what 6 30ish? Correct. Long day. Yes.

[00:02:11] Now, usually what we do is we just keep it simple. We just start at the beginning and work our way through the entire day in chronological order. We're going to do things a little bit differently

[00:02:25] today because frankly, I think roughly 90 to 95% of the stuff you'll be talking about tomorrow was in the last witness of the day and maybe 0% of what you'll be talking about tomorrow was in

[00:02:43] the first witness. Yes. So it doesn't really make sense to start there. So we're going to start with the last witness and then do the other two afternoon witnesses and then we jump back

[00:02:56] and do the morning because of course we're very, we're all about the details even the ones that aren't super interesting. It's the minutia sheet for you. Yes, but we are going to start with the

[00:03:07] last witness of the day. So stay tuned. My name is Anya Kane. I'm a journalist and I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney and this is the murder sheet. We're a true crime podcast focused on original

[00:03:22] reporting interviews and deep dives into murder cases. We're the murder sheet and this is the Delphi murders three days of pre-trial hearings day two. Oh my goodness. Okay. Wow. I mean, like literally I felt like in the last testimony from the last witness, Detective Brian

[00:04:28] Harshman, the people observing some people had already left at that point and I feel bad for them because the stuff that was mentioned here really gets into actual details of the crime and not only the crime but frankly the investigation into Richard Allen who is accused

[00:04:43] of murdering these days. Absolutely devastating for the defense. Absolutely devastating for the defense. This witness was presented by Stacy Deener who did a masterful job with it and I should also mention that prosecutor Nick McLean also works with a gentleman named James Luttrell who did a

[00:05:02] splendid job yesterday. Yes, he does. Yeah. This is a very strong prosecution team and this was a very strong prosecution team led by Nick McLean who also does fine work. So this witness

[00:05:13] was presented by as I say, Stacy Deener. You may not have heard the name Brian Harshman. Yes, right. The testimony opened by talking a little bit about his background. Do you want me

[00:05:27] to cover that? I can cover it. So he's been with the Indiana State Police for 30 years or he will have been with them for three decades on December 4th of this year and 17 of those years were

[00:05:39] spent as a detective. So he's been doing a lot of work in the early part of 2020. He was assigned to the US Marshals Task Force and in addition to looking into fugitives, part of the work he

[00:05:50] also did was also on Delphi starting in 2020. As he described it, he kept on asking now Lieutenant Jerry Holman to put him on the Delphi case eventually Holman relented and he's been working on that. So the reason he's relevant today is because he is the detective who

[00:06:07] is largely in charge of going through the different audio and video recordings of basically Richard Allen in prison. He described himself, I think at one point as the caretaker of the phone calls. So this is the guy who is listening in on the recordings of every phone call

[00:06:28] that Richard Allen makes and in addition to that he is watching the video that is being taken of Richard Allen in his cell. There's a camera in the cell 24 hours a day. He's watching that. He is watching

[00:06:41] footage of whenever Richard Allen has moved from one location to another location within the prison that is videotape and so Detective Harshman is watching all of that. He is watching everything and he's hearing the phone calls and in these phone calls he gets to hear Richard Allen talk

[00:07:03] about his perspective on things. And also in addition to that of course Detective Harshman gets to see how the guards treat Richard Allen as they're transporting him from one location to another and he says that in his view their professionalism and the way they treat him

[00:07:21] is over the top. But he also goes on to say of course we should keep in mind these officers are not stupid and they know they're being recorded so of course you would expect them to be on

[00:07:32] their best behavior. Harshman was very blunt in a lot of his delivery but I think it was also very compelling because it wasn't really sugarcoating things but it just was kind of a frank

[00:07:43] assessment of what was going on. In addition to that he's also been reviewing the companion door sheets. So the companions is the name given to other inmates originally and then I believe it

[00:07:55] was guards who took over the role. Yes these are people who basically stand outside the cell. They keep an eye on Richard Allen to make sure he doesn't harm himself and then they on these door sheets they record anything of interest so some of these door sheets

[00:08:13] end up containing some confessions. And as I say he also is the caretaker of the call so he's reviewed all the calls and he said he's reviewed a total of somewhere between 650 and 670

[00:08:27] calls made by Richard Allen for a total of somewhere between 150 to 170 hours. So just the sheer magnitude of the amount of material this man has had to consume is immense. So he was able to identify some patterns regarding Richard Allen. Should we talk about that or what

[00:08:51] do you want to do? I mean I don't even know where to start with this. I think he started with the pattern. Yeah. What happened to Richard Allen in March of 2023 right before he started making all

[00:09:01] these confessions. Right before Allen started making all these confessions on March 21st 2023 that exact date is what he brought up. That is the date that Richard Allen at least for the time being found Jesus Christ and God and he became concerned and this revealed itself over

[00:09:19] the course of the calls and over the course of video recordings of his transport to and from different medical appointments and and to and from other facilities because the as you know the

[00:09:32] the prison staff films out on a camcorder for legal reasons it sounds like. And after that you know religious revival he became very concerned about going to heaven. He wanted to go to heaven

[00:09:47] with his family once he dies because he says he recognizes that his circumstances are such that he may never be with his family living with his family again in this lifetime but he

[00:09:59] wants to be with them in heaven and so and to be clear in his intake it was revealed that he described himself as not a religious person when he was first arrested. But reading the Bible

[00:10:11] in prison changed that changed that so if he wants to go to heaven to be reunited with his family he has to make things right and he's off Richard Allen has conceded in these phone

[00:10:25] calls that he's not sure that after what he's done he can even get into heaven. Yes. But the confession started around this time because it was an effort to make things right so

[00:10:36] he could go to heaven to be with his family and Detective Harshman said there are a number of different types of confessions or incriminating statements yes but he says the number of actual direct confessions from Richard Allen to this crime are over 60 and that is a conservative

[00:10:57] estimate by his count. And some of these confessions are specific and I have it here in my note that he mentions that some of them contain details of the crime that only the killer would know.

[00:11:12] Yes he talks about the crime very specifically so not only is he saying I did this specific crime but he has details that nobody else should know. Yes. This is I mean I don't this is this is devastating

[00:11:26] this is when I was listening to him say this my mouth was hanging open I think I just I was just you have to understand he comes at the end of a very long day I was kind of like this is it

[00:11:38] we're going to be going home soon and he comes out with this and I was shocked. And if Ani reacted this way you must be wondering how did Richard Allen's mother and wife react and according to Detective Harshman who again has heard all of these recordings.

[00:11:54] What do you mean you mean not in the courtroom you mean when he he was first calling them to make these confessions after he found Jesus. After he found Jesus and he called them they were extremely upset his mom was saying things like they're messing with you they're

[00:12:12] messing with your mind his wife Kathy said stop talking I'm going to call Brad and then hung up the phone herself presumably to call Brad Rosie who of course is one of Richard Allen's defense attorneys.

[00:12:26] As time went on and he would continue in his conversations with them to bring up the fact that he was actually guilty of the crimes which he had been charged with they would just try to

[00:12:38] change the subject. Yes they would they would essentially say you don't know what you're saying use the same excuses although Harshman noted that there were sort of religious discussions between the three and indicated that the family as a whole is quite religious so that's somewhat

[00:12:55] interesting. Richard Allen in these calls indicates that he delayed confessing because he was worried by how his family would react and in fact there apparently were periods of time even extended periods where he went without communicating with his family at all and Detective Harshman

[00:13:18] indicated that Richard Allen repeatedly expressed some concern over whether his family will still love him no matter what happens in the trial. So the tenor of some of these conversations was Richard Allen essentially asking again and again would you still love me will you still be there

[00:13:38] even even if I did this do you still love me can you say you love me begging for their love despite what he says he did to these two children. And also we hear we just said he finds Jesus

[00:13:56] in March of 2023 and then begins making these confessions but there were other interesting things that he said prior to that let's go all the way back to the second week of November of 2022. This is not that long after Richard Allen has been arrested and charged with these murders

[00:14:18] and at this time he tells Kathy Allen if all of this becomes too much for you just tell me and I will talk to the detectives and tell them what they want to know. So I guess that not that the

[00:14:32] actual quote if this becomes too much for you I'll talk to the detectives and tell them everything I know yes now what they want to hear what I know I know so this would fall into the category

[00:14:44] of we've heard we hear some things are confession we hear some things are incriminating statements I think that would qualify not as a confession but as an incriminating statement correct yes that's not saying I killed Libyan Abbey that is saying

[00:14:56] that strongly indicating that you killed Libyan Abbey. Richard Allen in phone calls also expressed concern about how his family would react when they would see what he had done namely how they

[00:15:08] would react once they saw the crime scene photos. Yes at trial he did not he this is what Harshman said he did not want them to see what he had done to the girls. He also indicated yeah once his family started reacting very very negatively

[00:15:31] to all of this the confessions slowed down. They in fact did not necessarily indicate that they loved him no matter what they in fact stopped communicating with him at times and would

[00:15:41] tell him that he was either wrong or out of his head and that they didn't want to hear it so after he's rejected by his family essentially he goes from confessing a lot from April of 23 to

[00:15:55] June slash early July of 23 to slowing down but he did not entirely stop concerning statements continued to pop out of his mouth. So in January of 2024 in a conversation with his mother Janice

[00:16:10] Allen he wanted he indicated that he wanted to tell the truth but he didn't want to hurt his family. Then February of 2024 he indicated to a corrections guard I believe that would have been

[00:16:23] is that after he moved to Wabash Valley? I believe so. From so this is not in Westville this is his new prison he indicated to a corrections guard and apologized for killing Libby and Abbey.

[00:16:36] So these statements did not stop entirely but they were mostly congested around that moment where he thought that maybe he could unburden himself after finding God and go to heaven and go to heaven with

[00:16:54] his family and and perhaps do the right thing as a Christian and as his family continued to indicate that that is not what they wanted to hear he he stopped for the most part but not entirely.

[00:17:10] Then the whole point of all this testimony was because the defense was trying to get these confessions thrown out we're talking about that more a little bit later and one of their arguments was that these confessions basically shouldn't count because Richard Allen had been

[00:17:24] somehow been coerced or induced into making these statements and so it is very worthwhile to know the Detective Harshman who of course has seen all this video listened to all this audio said he

[00:17:36] never has seen in any of that any indication that Richard Allen had been coerced or induced to make any confession whatsoever. Yes now Harshman did indicate that Richard Allen feels like he's been tortured and he also got into what he means by that and he indicated

[00:17:54] that it was mental torture not psychological not physical not physical torture but he feels like the fact that it is very loud in the unit where he is that the other prisoners make noise

[00:18:06] that that is a form of psychological torture and that the lights are in his view on all the time and it's hard to sleep is physical torture or is a psychological torture and to be clear

[00:18:18] those those are things that in certain settings can be psychological torture but it's interesting because it's not entirely clear to me from other testimony whether the light issue is even in issue because some people indicated that they felt that the inmates had control over

[00:18:35] the lights in their cells but as for the noise it is pretty well known that a lot of prisons can be loud places and that can be stressful for people to hear that. Harshman also has spoken

[00:18:46] with the guards who work with Richard Allen these guards it's worth noting have not received you know psychological training or any of that. Yes Brad Rosie made sure to object a lot over this point

[00:18:59] to clarify that these are guards and not psychologists but these guards by and large believe that Richard Allen was faking his extreme behavior or Brian Harshman called Richard Allen's behavior Richard Allen's antics he said that he the Harshman said he talked to 10 officers or

[00:19:22] door companions and roughly eight out of 10 of them thought that Richard Allen was faking. Yes eight out of ten guards say he's millingering so these yeah oh man I guess next in my notes I

[00:19:37] have Brad Rosie's cross examination. Yes Rosie attempted to turn things around with a cross examination and we're going to talk I'm going to praise Rosie a little bit for this today later on but

[00:19:49] but in fairness to Rosie it's hard to cross it's hard to cross this it really is. There really wasn't much to do he just kind of said oh so you're listening to all of his phone

[00:19:59] calls I guess Richard Allen who of course is incarcerated I guess he has no privacy. It's like yeah he doesn't have any privacy he's in prison and also if he was in jail we would also be listening to his phone calls that's just kind of how it works

[00:20:15] and so I thought it was really interesting that he kind of just basically resorted to what was sort of a pretty ineffective tactic of repeat the facts but in a disapproving tone

[00:20:25] like Kevin's like we have ice cream today we have ice cream today you know it's like okay you know it that would that didn't work. And he was like oh so you the camera's on him in

[00:20:35] the cell 24 hours a day I guess you could even see him going to the bathroom and Harshman said well I don't enjoy it but yeah I can see it. Yes and also the one big thing that they

[00:20:44] Brad Rosie kept asking is like well have you has this ever happened before to anyone and the answer is yes but oh has it ever happened to a like a pretrial detainee specifically. You're in solitude. In solitary confinement. Westfield.

[00:20:56] Name Richard Allen from the town of Delphi Indiana and the answer is no but the answer is yeah this actually does happen and also we found out more about pretrial stuff we'll talk about that later it's not it's not as important as this.

[00:21:12] I think this testimony is game changing. Yeah this really you know and Rosie tried to pull out the like well were any of the guards that you knew interviewed wearing patches that say I hate people or having Odin the symbols. Harshman indicated no these are other

[00:21:33] these are other prison guards and you know that's uh that's not really an issue here. So yeah so again the motion under discussion today was whether or not these confessions can be

[00:21:53] admitted. Oh can I just say can I just say one thing that Rosie tried to go with at one point when talking about how in November of 2022 Allen basically offered to his wife that he

[00:22:05] tell detectives everything he knew if that would make her feel better and Rosie indicated that that was just taking a chivalrous approach with his wife you know like confessing to her. Yeah Anja finds nothing more romantic than if I offered to make a false confession. Yes

[00:22:22] yes as if that and and I just thought at Harshman at one point it was just like very bluntly like well that's your assumption. Yeah like you know it was just it was really hard it was

[00:22:32] really hard to spin when confronted with the sheer amount of evidence from Allen's own mouth and to hear the diversity of it and the fact that we knew that Allen's one of his statements with

[00:22:45] his wife and mother were recorded but it sounds like there's a lot more audio and video than anyone knew. Over a hundred hours. Before we talk about the afternoon the other two afternoon

[00:22:57] witnesses which were Jerry Holman and Dr. Monica Walla I want to quickly note that when we all came back from lunch we were a little surprised to see that Andrew Baldwin was not in court in

[00:23:12] fact he was not there for the afternoon session. Not entirely clear why Brad Rosie told the judge at one point that Baldwin had some professional commitments elsewhere. Some people were like oh

[00:23:24] why would Baldwin leave in the middle that is not awful and that person was me but the fact of the matter is it's not a big deal when you're working on a team like this and the ball

[00:23:37] is being carried by someone else being carried by Brad Rosie if Andrew Baldwin did have another professional commitment elsewhere it's no big deal for him to go and fulfill it because had he been

[00:23:50] there he probably would have just been a spectator watching Brad Rosie handle it. That makes sense. Brad Rosie actually did handle all of the witnesses in such this afternoon. It makes sense

[00:24:01] and I feel about my initial reaction was literally like what the heck does he have a date somewhere but what Kevin said made a lot of sense and sometimes something that can seem unusual to an

[00:24:09] outsider when you actually talk to people on the inside it's like oh okay that actually does make sense so I withdraw my earlier shock and all. Thank you for that. So now that we've finished that

[00:24:21] why don't we go oh Anya is making the signal that she has a rare in episode correction domain. This is actually really sad and upsetting one to be honest because I realized looking at

[00:24:32] my notes and talking you know just thinking about it I earlier said that in a statement referenced by Detective Harshman that Alan indicated that he was sorry for killing Abby and Libby but looking at this it actually just said Abby so it was not for both girls his

[00:24:57] his a sorryness or his apology was not for both girls it was just for Abby and so I imagine that given that Libby's family was here today that that was very upsetting to hear and so I apologize for

[00:25:09] the error. I just wanted to throw that out there because I guess I just assumed it was both girls but looking at my notes it only says Abby. Right so with that said the first witness

[00:25:21] after lunch maybe we're doing this in a strange order first witness after lunch was Jerry Holman and again the issue being discussed today was whether or not the confessions are going to be

[00:25:34] allowed into the trial and in order to argue they should be thrown out the defense was trying to claim that they were coerced or induced and Jerry Holman is one of the leaders of the

[00:25:47] investigation and also has a familiarity with the circumstances so to speak of Alan's detention and so he was called by the defense actually and so he indicated yes I'm familiar with the detention uh Brian Harshman has been monitoring Richard Alan's phone calls and of course we

[00:26:08] would hear more about that later and uh Holman indicated that once they started to receive the information about Richard Alan making the confessions they tried to get more information including some of the videotapes and then one thing I thought was interesting and worth pointing out

[00:26:36] is that uh Brad Rosie they say you shouldn't ask a question that you don't know the answer to and Brad Rosie said well did you ever do you heard these so-called confessions did you ever try to

[00:26:50] follow up on any of the information that was in them and Holman said well yes I can give you an example and this example is a little bit upsetting he said that in one of these confessions

[00:27:02] Richard Alan actually identified the murder weapon he indicated that the murder weapon was a box cutter he had been issued at CVS and that after the murder he had thrown it into a

[00:27:15] dumpster there and so uh Lieutenant Holman went to CVS confirmed they did indeed use box cutters but of course all these years later any box cutter that was thrown in the dumpster in 2017

[00:27:29] is long gone yeah that was really shocking to hear after so long where people wondered you know just before we even knew how the girls died what the murder weapon was then when we found out

[00:27:40] that they're you know that they had been killed with a sharp edged weapon where what happened to that how was it possibly disposed of was it thrown in a river somewhere was it you know buried

[00:27:50] somewhere and what Alan apparently has said is that it was a box cutter it was a work box cover from CVS and that he had disposed of it as Kevin said in the dumpster outside

[00:28:02] of his work and other angles that kind of were a little bit less perhaps grabbing but intrigued me were talking to I guess friends of his daughter in the past other avenues based on things that he

[00:28:17] has said in prison confessions and incriminating statements that he has made they have tried to interview friends of Alan's own daughter and in addition to that one thing you may be wondering

[00:28:29] just around the kind of well if they're listening in all all his calls I was about to mention this I think this was really important to clarify because so one thing as a as the wife of a lawyer I guess

[00:28:41] that that that doesn't really qualify me to talk about anything but it's just something I was like I'm wondering I know Kevin's thinking this are they recording his calls with his lawyers because that would obviously be a huge breach and apparently the way this system that they have

[00:28:56] set up I think it was called a GTL is that I guess certain numbers are plugged in and those are listed as attorney's numbers and those are not recorded no one can listen to those those are

[00:29:09] not picked up by the system those are completely private I'll admit hearing that confirmed and brought out made me feel better yeah well I was just like oh that seems kind of like that would

[00:29:18] be risky because like what are we just trusting them to delete it but those are actually just never recorded in the first place so I felt like that was important to state additionally one thing

[00:29:27] that I think I don't know if you mentioned this already Kevin so I apologize if I'm being repetitive but it says when the calls are being recorded when on both the inmate side and whoever's calling

[00:29:39] them the family members say there's a sort of a pre-recorded message saying this call is being recorded this it there's it's not a surprise later on that's what it says yeah they're not hiding

[00:29:50] no it's very clearly with with jail this is often the case too where there's no expectation of privacy when you're doing you know oftentimes uh jailhouse calls make it into the record when it comes to

[00:30:04] different cases because there's not that expectation of privacy that you would have if you were a private citizen at home not incarcerated and so it's always surprising when you hear as you so often do that people incarcerated making incriminating statements or confessions over phone

[00:30:23] calls they know are being recorded well in this case it sounds like he wanted to confess because he found god thought it was the right thing to do and wanted to be certain that his wife and mother

[00:30:35] to his most important people in the world to him from the sounds of it still loved him at the end of the day and he did not get that he did not get what he wanted but it was not some

[00:30:45] sort of mistake where he just slipped up and said oops I oh no now I admitted it this was a this was an attempt to gain some kind of acceptance by saying here is what I have done please love me

[00:30:59] anyway and he was told you're wrong you're being brainwashed and manipulated get off the phone we need to call your lawyer he was met with a brick wall yes was there anything else he wanted

[00:31:12] highlight from lieutenant holman's woman like harshman I thought the state police had a good day on the stand today just when I look at this sometimes strategically I think like how does this witness

[00:31:21] come across he and harshman came across very well just kind of very matter of fact so that was something when you see a witness struggling as we may talk about in a moment then you know it

[00:31:33] kind of underscores you know both for the defense and the prosecution what what does a good witness look like what what's important can can this person be persuasive to a jury it's it's definitely notable that the defense has especially taken a lot of swings at holman

[00:31:51] and in an effort to undermine his credibility but I guess I still think um I don't know if they've really landed that much on him I think the witness you alluded to is our next witness

[00:32:03] dr monica wow this is the psychologist who works at westville and who treated richard allen and as we will hear as we've heard before she was the recipient of some incriminating statements and confessions from richard allen called by the defense and I'll

[00:32:24] say it's quite a wild ride because yes thank you because there were times when brad rosie is acting like dr walla's his best friend and there's times when he's acting like dr walla

[00:32:37] is a disgrace to the profession i'll give i'll give rosie this i'll give rosie this and and i actually thought if the if the hearing had ended earlier i would probably give today's

[00:32:47] win to rosie i would say he did the best job out of anyone here i'll explain why that ended up not happening later but i think he had the closest thing they've had in a while

[00:33:00] to the kind of perry mason moment what i mean by that is of course perry mason is a work of fiction but oftentimes you know he's very much a pillar for people who you know follow everyone expects a

[00:33:12] perry mason moment where it's like something dramatic to happen on the stand or perry mason turns around and says no you're lying and then the person's like yeah you're right i did it

[00:33:20] so that that obviously didn't happen but this had a lot of drama it had the ups and downs it was very theatrical he had a lot of shaky moments as we i'm sure we'll discuss oh yes and then he went

[00:33:31] and there was a break and after the break he came back and he rosie did a fine job after that with his one witness yes but let's talk about the where it maybe started so we can understand

[00:33:42] where it went you take us away i'm gonna thank you yeah so dr walla is a westville psychologist we already knew that from some of the filings and she was brought on um she's had a number of years

[00:33:57] of experience and she was essentially she actually has worked there since 2017 and has been working with richard allen during his incarceration so from the beginning she described it so it with the beginning of her testimony she was essentially there to give us a sense of richard

[00:34:14] allen's mental state throughout his stay at westville and she also gave some interesting details about what is it like to receive mental health care at westville and some of these details

[00:34:30] were quite interesting to me uh you would you would often get a chance to visit with your patients be they richard allen or someone else in their cell during what she called rounds

[00:34:42] and you would try to speak to uh prisoners in this particular unit at the front of their cell at least twice a week but that is not a face-to-face meeting because there is a metal door it's not

[00:34:58] like bars is a metal door uh to the cell and that's not open so you really can only see them maybe a little bit through a crack in in the door which i think is used to deliver things like

[00:35:12] yeah food and so then basically in these rounds sometimes your visit with the the prisoner you're treating only lasts a few seconds or a few minutes you ask them how they're doing you ask if they're

[00:35:27] thinking of doing self harm because one of the big issues in mental health in prison as we heard today was it is very important to know if the prisoner is thinking of harming themselves yes indeed

[00:35:40] and so with dr wall she described how when he came into the prison he was immediately on suicide watch this was because he was deemed at a special risk due to being diagnosed with issues around

[00:35:53] depression and the fact that bc was actually put on suicide watch even before he arrived he actually was you know you're right you're right i misstated that at the diagnostic sort of reception center where they essentially process all of the prisoners he came into them essentially stamped

[00:36:11] with this suicide watch thing and so they took orders from that initial treatment facility that was essentially just there to say here's here's what you're getting and they and they

[00:36:21] went with that in terms of the suicide watch and that means that as somebody who is on sort of in a restricted housing session section as he was in westville he had a lot of restrictions they're

[00:36:34] basically trying to make sure that he does not die by suicide and it's what we what what goes on from here is things like he has to wear sort of a smock a suicide smock that um brad rosie at

[00:36:48] one point described as a caveman outfit and he also very interestingly said maybe a little bit grossly said that this when you're wearing one of these caveman garments one of these suicide smocks it's a detriment to going out and enjoying some vigorous recreation because your genitals can be

[00:37:06] easily exposed to view and that led to some deter where he was asking dr walla a bunch of questions about recreation time and then uh sacy dener the prosecutor i think she spoke for a lot

[00:37:21] of people in the courtroom at this point where she objected and said wait a minute this is a psychologist why are we talking about wreck time yeah she's not his gym coach um and so rosie

[00:37:32] moved on yes there was a lot of detours to be honest the the dr walla section of this whole thing felt like it lasted two days if i'm being honest that's just my personal opinion

[00:37:43] obviously my opinion is that it felt like it lasted two months yeah it was it was really rough and um you know but eventually at some point allen was off suicide watch he was doing better

[00:37:54] he was exercising in his cell he was having a better outlook on on his situation um a lot of people have a lot of trouble adjusting to a prison environment as you can imagine especially

[00:38:05] one as drastic as this because let's not forget he's in their maximum security unit he's on you know he's very isolated by this whole thing he had a window in his cell though but the window was

[00:38:16] scratched up so he couldn't see outside and so dr walla arranged for him to get a replacement window so now he can look out and see a barbed wire fence rosie mentioned that uh when uh richard

[00:38:33] allen was in his cell he was fighting with bugs that was the phrase he used odd phrase that was an odd phrase and he also mentioned something about mice in the cell and then he kind

[00:38:42] of like looked off uh camera or whatever and said well you know those sorts of things can make a guy go crazy that was really corny i don't know why he did that because he obviously he wants us to think

[00:38:53] they drove richard allen crazy and then dr walla replied by saying well that depends on what you mean by crazy she really didn't like like many mental health professionals she really did not like someone using the word crazy in such a casual way it's seen as very derogatory

[00:39:08] you don't have a lot of mental health professionals who are going to agree yeah that's totally crazy man because i mean they they know firsthand the stigma that mental people with mental health issues can face uh she talked about other inmates yelling at richard allen to kill himself

[00:39:24] baby killer calling him for to commit suicide and and in yelling insults although she did not mention anything about anyone yelling i'm going to kill you which kind of came up later

[00:39:34] she also talked about some of his own uh mental health issues and and so physical health issues and physical health issues so um heart problems uh he has to take medication for his heart in addition to that generalized anxiety disorder but that's a that's a level of anxiety

[00:39:53] that that some people face it's that's more extreme and and can disrupt your daily life in addition to that i believe it was a major depressive disorder which she indicated goes back to early adulthood and she indicated he was hospitalized for this for over a week back in 2019

[00:40:11] yes that's significant for years we've heard rumors that at some time allen went into either a rehab or some sort of mental health facility after the murders at in order to you know deal with

[00:40:23] whatever he had to deal with and so this confirms that something like that happened in 2019 and one thing that also i thought was interesting she she said that there were signs of something

[00:40:35] specific but she didn't confirm it she can't she she didn't diagnose him that was that was not her job it was just more of like looking at things that maybe indicated they that he had an issue

[00:40:46] with uh but i believe it was was a dependency disorder dependent personality disorder which apparently means that a person gets some sort of uh trauma or gets upset uh in an unusual way if

[00:41:03] they get separated from a particular person that they're close to okay so she said that she based that on his relationship with his wife kathy allen and this is what i'm reading just going through

[00:41:19] some basic information online is a personality disorder that's considered in the cluster c of personality disorders which uh can have to do with different anxieties so this is when you are you

[00:41:34] know so close with someone that you were dependent on them and if you're removed from their presence you have a lot of traumatic responses there so you know one thing with walla that i think it

[00:41:48] was you know and we'll get more into how things later went later but you know i think a lot of rosie's criticisms were interesting but i was looking at it through the lens of is is anything

[00:41:59] affecting allen specifically or these maybe issues with the overall way we treat mentally ill or potentially mentally ill people in prison systems like you're you know like basically like what's unusual here versus what is just kind of bad news for everybody does that make sense so that

[00:42:18] makes and also what's bad news for everybody but maybe it's effective richard allen worse because he's here not a jail you know when i was looking at that from the phone uh angle i was thinking well

[00:42:30] perhaps uh if he was in a jail his phones would be also being listened to so like that's not really that much of a change versus the prison but with with something like mental health resources

[00:42:41] we've heard things like cast county jail does not have any sort of extensive mental health program or team it's much more on a sort of occasional basis so something like westville has more but then there's maybe drawbacks like the sense of isolation from suicide watch yes

[00:42:58] in a maximum security cell yeah and also the so-called companions who are watching a person to make sure that there's no self-harm they're supposed to follow certain rules for one thing they're not supposed to uh talk to the inmate about that their case and certainly not supposed

[00:43:17] to share any info may that they get with other inmates but some of these inmate companions for richard allen wrote those rules got information from richard allen about his case shared it

[00:43:29] with other inmates and called family members as well uh allegedly uh rosy at one point said well is it accurate to say you can't trust the companions because of their backgrounds and quote that was

[00:43:43] kind of rich coming from like someone i know these felons how dare they but i mean i got what he was saying at the same time he was emphasizing that some of the uh inmates in these companion

[00:43:53] programs they're in jail for they're imprisoned for things like fraud or theft crimes of dishonesty crimes where somebody is essentially doing something dishonest or lying so can we really trust them to do this got some more still more details about therapy in prison when richard allen

[00:44:12] got his therapy outside of his cell it was in a special cage which was roughly three feet by three feet and it was in the shape of a triangle dr walla indicated he never did any therapeutic

[00:44:26] testing on richard allen that was usually i guess not the sort of thing that happens at westville but she did give him a handouts about depression and anxiety she gave him a book called man's search

[00:44:40] for meaning she i think gave him crossword puzzles and she also gave him colored pencils and crayons yes one bizarre incident happened in march 2023 when a forensic psychologist from the state police i guess was sniffing around named dr r goldenberg and wanting to yeah well that was first

[00:45:01] brought up what was that that was first brought up it was brought up in a confusing way i did not understand what was going on for a minute i was like wait the who so it was really what

[00:45:11] basically what it is what it came out to be was this doctor from the united states police apparently wanted to talk to dr walla about richard allen and dr walla was told well you can only do that if

[00:45:24] richard allen gives his permission richard allen didn't give his permission so the conversation never happened also dr walla indicated that she told him i don't think it's a good idea for

[00:45:34] you to give me permission to do this so she was negative about it too basically this this is not what we should do most likely so it sounds like they were in agreement there but she did check

[00:45:44] with him one thing that they ended up making a big deal about was that during the sessions the dr walla has with her patients sometimes she takes notes and then subsequently she might type

[00:45:59] up those notes and enters them into the system and then after she does that she shreds the notes she took originally and so rosie is tried to make a big deal about that because or the notes

[00:46:14] you took originally aren't they the best evidence and now they're lost forever but she said well i didn't want to have like an extra copy of the notes and basically i was just typing the

[00:46:25] notes up and entering them in the system like such a non-issue i was surprised that he made such a big deal of it that was one of his weaker points in this whole setting because it was like

[00:46:34] it seems like it would also be a huge issue to have a bunch of loose notes floating around a prison where you know people can get ahold of them and maybe that's not so good what are you going

[00:46:44] to do with all those papers also dr walla indicated that that is just business as usual he tried to make a sort of like uh well that's against the guidelines and best practices of the profession

[00:46:54] argument there but i guess i just did not find that super compelling it's probably a completely different kettle of fish uh i'm not a doctor i know we have a close relative where's a doctor who

[00:47:05] can probably tell me i'm completely confused here but i know oftentimes if i go to see a specialist i have i see them have a little notepad out and they'll take notes and then they will type those

[00:47:16] notes up and then later i might see a typewritten copy of those on my computer system and so that just seems like the normal thing to do and then why would you keep a physical copy floating

[00:47:27] around yeah it just seemed like if it has the same information then who honestly cares one other thing that came out is that actually dr walla does not work technically for westville i

[00:47:38] know i said that in the beginning she's working at westville but she technically works for a third party contractor called i was it interior or centurion centurion centurion it they they switched subcontractors over a few years but essentially it is a a medical firm that

[00:47:54] services prisons like westville so she's technically working there they have their own set of rules practices things like that that could be considered a little bit separate from westville in this point they started talking about richard allen's health at certain points and so i think i'll just

[00:48:14] read through some of these and then if you think any are worth further discussion we can discuss them uh in march of 2023 according to dr walla richard allen said he was not feeling right and

[00:48:26] he was struggling with stuff in his brain on april 4th 2023 his mental health in her judgment was poor in deteriorating he was having delusions and fantasies he thought death would bring relief also struggling with self-esteem on april 12th he was banging his head on the

[00:48:47] wall exhibiting bizarre behavior on april 13th had a grave disability also on april 13th he was consuming his own feces on april 21st dr walla expressed the concern that richard allen might be incompetent to stand trial because his thoughts were disjointed and he was saying bizarre things

[00:49:11] on may 3rd 2023 he said he wanted to confess to the crime and actually began discussing the details of how he did the crime on may 17th 2023 he exhibited an increase in his disorganized thinking

[00:49:28] and paranoia and it wasn't until uh july 11th of 2023 that she saw some science's mental health was being restored yes so he started off again good and then he became sort of a critical case

[00:49:46] around this time and she noticed things like his eyes would often be bulging out of his head and at times though she talked about that she thought that he might be faking symptoms at times at other times they thought maybe he has some sort of temporary psychotic disorder

[00:50:10] he again some of those symptoms line up with things like psychosis but other things he'd be claiming to like have memory loss and then be saying things that indicated that he did not

[00:50:21] have memory loss so you had a level of deception that the experts were perhaps noticing or at possible deception where they're looking at that and saying is this guy suffering from something

[00:50:33] real or is he play acting to have a desired outcome yes and yeah so that was a lot of it I'll note this one thing just speaking of Richard Allen's sort of demeanor and health

[00:50:52] I always watch him at these hearings and I never really we can't know what's in his head we can't know what's in anyone's head unless they're telling us but in his case he can't tell us

[00:51:04] he's not gonna he's not gonna testify he's not gonna get up and talk about what what's going on here but um you know I've noticed in these last two hearings like there has been like kind of a

[00:51:16] he will like stare out at the crowd and glower at people I locked eyes with him I held his stare he's like you know he's scowling and I don't know again whether that is him squinting

[00:51:27] and just looking upset and he's not really feeling that way or if he's trying to stare people down but it's very unsettling and I noticed at one point I don't know whether he was looking directly

[00:51:36] at Liberty's family who is in sort of the front row of the opposite side of the court room of us but he seemed to be glaring their way that's what it looked like to me from my angle again

[00:51:47] maybe that was not intended as sort of an angry intimidating stare but I think that that is how it looked from the outside so you have this guy who continues to be sort of staring down people

[00:52:01] in this setting it's off-putting it's very odd he doesn't his sort of head is shaved his sort of beard is shaved he looks a bit different but he he looks like he's lost weight but not

[00:52:13] not as concerning as he once looked he's he's dressed in an orange jumpsuit from the cast county jail and I think I saw him one smile once during this whole thing he seemed to be listening to something

[00:52:24] that a deputy and I think somebody who I believe to be defense investigator Matt Hoffman we're talking about behind him he seemed to be sort of smiling and nodding along but for the most part

[00:52:35] he either looks dazed or angry I would agree with that and again it's like this eye bulging bizarre angry look that he just hits everyone with and it's just it's it's odd I wonder what a jury will make

[00:52:49] of that because you wonder is this a man who's angry because he feels like he's being gawked at and he's wrongfully accused and whatnot or is this possibly the last thing that Abby and Libby

[00:52:58] saw yeah that's horrifying there was a sub extended discussion about whether or not Richard Allen should have been classified with serious mental illness or SMI and if he was classified that way he shouldn't have been kept in solitary confinement for over 30 days even though there are some

[00:53:19] lawsuits even though there are some exceptions to that but it was noted that he didn't even qualify to be classified that way because he was in there for his own safety's what they call a

[00:53:31] safekeeper and and I also will note that there was a lot of discussion of like the DSM for versus the DSM five here and people who were in the audience with us and and sort of looking it up

[00:53:40] and actually Dr. Wall at one point indicated that Rosie did not have updated information about what the DSM currently says and seem to be confused on a few matters around that so may have gotten some of that information wrong it's possible that it was accurate more at the

[00:53:55] time of what he's talking about but it's not clear to me that he was sort of right when he was talking about what should be diagnosed or what should be labeled as a serious mental disorder then we

[00:54:07] have the break and after the break Brad Rosie started talking about Dr. Walla's activities on social media so let me just let me just set this up for the past you know however long

[00:54:19] this questioning went on for Dr. Walla in some ways is a very useful witness for the defense because she's talking about how hard life is in Westville regardless of how you feel about

[00:54:30] Richard Allen and his guilt or innocence you have to admit that going from a normal life where you're a CVS you know sort of in a managerial role with a family and living on the outside to

[00:54:41] suddenly suicide watch um isolation on this uh sort of restricted housing unit in Westville really tough prison where people are yelling at you and calling you baby killer that is that is a huge and traumatic shift that's there's no denying that so Walla speaks to that

[00:54:58] and I felt she often spoke of Richard Allen with a real profound sympathy I felt like this was a woman as the defense sort of led her through these questions these very kind of friendly

[00:55:08] questions in the beginning she is talking about sort of how she she and others at the prison really tried to go above and beyond to treat him to help him to help him acclimate and to talk to him and

[00:55:20] so I felt like that's where we started and then we come back from break it's a totally different circus because now he's talking about her following social media about the case and the

[00:55:33] implication is this is very wrong and so it comes out that Dr. Walla has listened to podcasts that cover the Delphi murder she's followed the case on Facebook she was so interested in the Delphi

[00:55:50] murders that a year before Richard Allen was arrested Dr. Walla and her boyfriend made a special trip to Delphi to visit the Monon High Bridge she followed the case even more intently after the

[00:56:04] arrest of Kagan Klein and still more intently after Richard Allen was arrested it was noted that she regularly listens to true crime podcasts on her commute to work which is the 90 minute compute

[00:56:20] and this was interesting there is a case management system that she can access through her work called Insight and she used that case management system to access information on Kagan Klein and particularly she accessed his pre-sentence report which was full of all sorts of personal information about

[00:56:46] Kagan Klein that was by no means intended for the public to see and she did not access this for any professional reasons it was entirely to satisfy her own curiosity and so almost certainly was a

[00:57:01] violation of policy that really shocked me I was really surprised by that and I just for if anyone's curious I'm sure you're all wondering were we one of the podcasts listed well there

[00:57:12] were no podcasts listed at this hearing but they did enter into evidence a screenshot of her explaining what her preferred podcasts and YouTube channels are and we were not on that list but what is interesting that she also during the course of her treatment of Richard Allen

[00:57:31] she spoke to him about the fact that she followed the case on social media and she made a point of telling Richard Allen that he had supporters out there she isn't believing in this

[00:57:42] violated any policies she felt that she was able to she was able to compartmentalize the information she got from the podcast from how she performed her treatment of Richard Allen yeah to give you

[00:57:58] a sense it's like he would be expressing despair about life and she would be telling him no no don't give up there are so many people online who are rooting for you who support you who are

[00:58:11] bolstering your cause and so she's almost like feeding him information from the social media churn to make him feel like he can kind of keep fighting it almost sounded like she's almost acting as

[00:58:24] an internet cheer like a cheerleader from him who's like taking that from the internet and bringing into into her real life practice so she's actually literally saying like no this is what people

[00:58:34] are saying they're on your side that was really fascinating to me because we've often covered the case from the lens of how is the social media world impacting the case and frankly it may be my

[00:58:46] least favorite angle because I just it makes me feel like blah like I don't want to get into this like it's so often just nonsense and but I think it's important to cover that's the reason

[00:58:58] why we do it because this the internet has had an impact on this case people's obsessiveness and obsessions have had an impact on this case and nowhere was that more clear than when we have

[00:59:10] the accused psychologist turns out to have been involved in this community to a certain extent was even bringing it into her practice by letting Richard Allen know about it a prosecutor Stacy Deener objected saying the defense was trying to discredit Dr. Waller

[00:59:30] for the way she was doing business but this in no way had any connection to whether or not the statements that Richard Allen made to her were voluntary or whether or not they should be

[00:59:42] admitted yeah I'd be curious what is your take on this because I'm of several minds of this and I think maybe what I would prefer to do is I'll kind of share my opinions now maybe you can

[00:59:52] share some but I want to have a caveat is I want to talk to some mental health experts as well and get their take on it and talk to some folks who maybe are mental health experts who

[01:00:02] have testified in cases just to kind of get more of a sense there of what people are saying because I guess I just see it through a few different lenses of nuanced takes on this my take is

[01:00:18] what's at issue is the statements he made that were confessions or incriminating statements so let's draw a circle around those and let's look at the circumstances in which those statements were

[01:00:29] made and if there's a trouble there if there's a problem there maybe we can throw them out if not we don't have to do an entire x-ray of Dr. Waller's entire career and her entire social media

[01:00:41] profile I concur I concur with you strongly now just as a layperson it does make me somewhat uncomfortable I hope that this maybe is maybe for folks who are into true crime and may have

[01:00:53] jobs that touch upon sensitive issues you know maybe keeping in mind because one thing Waller said was that why she didn't feel like she violated any policies she would have done it

[01:01:03] differently if she could do it again so maybe this is a reminder that you will you know if you do something that's even close to the line you will get raked over the coals by defense

[01:01:10] attorneys later on or the prosecution who knows and that's good to keep in mind and does it make me somewhat uncomfortable someone following the case and then being directly involved in it this way if I'm being honest it does make me somewhat uncomfortable

[01:01:23] I'm sure that I mean it didn't sound like it sounded like she was very much trying to support him in terms of giving him hope about some of this stuff but I also kind of feel like I don't know

[01:01:35] that that seems like getting so interested in the case and then being directly involved I could see where I could totally see why the defense has some pretty serious issues with this so I can kind of see both sides but do I think it impacts the confessions

[01:01:51] no and here's why there's nothing in there to indicate that she's just making stuff up to have him say something I mean again and again I mean also let's just be let me just be so

[01:02:02] blunt let me be blunt we talked about the mountain of evidence that harshman referenced I mean they could throw all this to the curb and they still have dozens of other confessions including other ones containing specific information about the crime so I don't know

[01:02:19] how much this ultimately matters I can see why the defense wants it out I think I think that is a reasonable request for them but I also don't necessarily see that Dr. Monica Wall

[01:02:31] is tainted to that extent based on what we heard today what do you think I agree I agree completely and again like I also I don't want to sound too harsh I mean people can be interested in

[01:02:44] crime one thing I will say in Dr. Wallace defense is that the only post they shared was her saying oh I listen to these people you know these are my favorite youtubers or whatnot there's nothing

[01:02:57] of her going around and saying I think Richard Allen is guilty of sin I hope he goes to hell like there's nothing nothing like that in terms of opinions on the actual facts of the case

[01:03:06] or leaking information about her patient or going out and telling people yes he's my patient here's what he's saying so I mean it's it's definitely concerning but there's nothing really truly egregious about what she was actually doing other than being aware of the case and one

[01:03:23] might argue that in this informational environment where we're in kind of a post newspaper a lot of people get their news through things like podcasts to things like Facebook communities

[01:03:33] you can say that's good or bad but ultimately I don't think in the past you would have raked a psychologist over the coals for reading a local newspaper even if that local newspaper was doing

[01:03:45] a lot of detailed coverage of a crime you wouldn't you just wouldn't but with this you know there's more of a hyper specification I do get that I just I don't necessarily think this is going to be

[01:03:56] a huge deal at first I was like oh geez wow that sounds really bad then as I kind of listened more to the details of what was actually done I was like yeah I see both sides to a certain extent

[01:04:09] so the cross examination was done by Stacy Deener a member of the team of prosecutor Nick McLean she had a terrific day today I'll just quickly go through some of her cross the point she made

[01:04:22] she had it brought she brought out from Dr. Waller the fact that if there was something in her written notes she would then enter it into the system so nothing was really being lost as we

[01:04:32] indicated she was basically just creating a secure copy of it she also got Dr. Waller to discuss that whatever she never she wasn't there to talk to Richard Allen about the case she was just there

[01:04:48] to help him cope with mental health issues so it wasn't like any social media stuff was really polluting how she was handling the case she wasn't like interrogated him and trying to get him

[01:05:03] to spill the beans so to speak in fact in one notable occurrence she was actually trying to get him to stop talking just as much as his wife and mother were trying to get that to happen

[01:05:16] that was in a situation where he asked her to help him reach out to his wife do you want to talk about this now or do you have a little bit later okay okay i'll save that but that's coming up

[01:05:28] we then got a little bit more context on some of the mental health issues and stuff that had been brought up earlier in the direct examination from brad rosie let me just quickly go through some of

[01:05:40] these in April of 2023 Richard Allen's thought process and speech became disorganized this occurred just after he'd had visits from his attorneys and so dr wallo wondered if the visit from the attorneys

[01:05:56] could have been a trigger for this bizarre behavior so that is that is interesting uh Richard Allen as we mentioned indicated he found god during his incarceration and uh dr wallo mentioned that

[01:06:13] whenever she talked with Richard Allen she would not begin by asking about the crime she would just make vague statements like how are you doing what's on your mind and then she would follow his lead

[01:06:28] and it got to the point where his lead often took them to the crime and it was suggested that there was a connection between Richard Allen finding god and deciding that he wanted to confess and when

[01:06:44] this was mentioned i look at Richard Allen for whatever it may be worth it may not be worth much he was shaking his head at that point he was often shaking his head and then at times

[01:06:53] nodding his head he definitely was uh moving around a lot not a lot of expression other than going between angry and wide-eyed in my view but but definitely a lot of head movement uh there was

[01:07:08] a lot of concern from dr wallo that he was faking his bizarre behavior uh he indicated at one point in may of 2023 that uh he would people were telling him to kill himself but he was too much

[01:07:26] of a coward to kill himself he was going to kill himself by uh standing on top of a sink i believe and and like jumping off i don't know it it was it was a bit confusing to kind of bounce around

[01:07:39] from from here and there okay i think this is the point where you are referring to where Richard Allen uh asked for help from dr wallo to reach his wife so he does this she complies at that point he

[01:07:56] had smashed his tablet so she needed to get him a cordless phone and then helped him dial his wife and then i believe left the room for some privacy comes back in he says can you read dial it

[01:08:11] and she does and he says at that time uh stay here i want you to hear this yes essentially i want you to hear my confession to my wife so that you understand so that you understand and then he

[01:08:25] proceeds to confess to his wife on the phone while dr wallo is there and again uh we know how that we know how that confession went over and uh Richard Allen apparently told uh dr wallo

[01:08:44] that he was in a place where he was being forced to choose between god and his family and he could not choose god over his family right because his family again did not want him to confess

[01:08:58] and accept the consequences yes actions presumably god would would want him to take accountability for what he did what he says he did to those kids and to be honest and truthful but you know

[01:09:14] what started perhaps as an attempt to ensure that he would enter heaven with his family and be reunited with his loved ones ultimately after taking accountability then became an either or thing because his family essentially shunned him to a certain extent until he complied with

[01:09:34] what they wanted which was to fight and to try to get free and to not confess anymore i think that's all i wanted to say about dr wallo were there were there more things you wanted to say before

[01:09:48] we move on i would just say that i feel like brad rosy did a good job he's he's very aggressive he really ripped her apart on the stand in an effort to impeach her i don't know how ultimately

[01:10:04] successful that will be given that i don't necessarily think that her actions when you look at them closely actually aligned with what he's saying although i don't know i mean it's possible that

[01:10:13] they're you know this is this could be looked upon badly for her in terms of her you know conduct i really you know she indicated that there's not been any repercussions for her

[01:10:23] at westville so it's it's possible that this was looked at as a person who is too interested in this case and maybe made some mistakes but ultimately really didn't do anything egregious and i think

[01:10:35] that very if she was not sharing information about him with others online i don't necessarily see this as a huge deal but i think rosy did a good job he was animated he was energetic

[01:10:44] if it ended there i would have said he had some of the best moments even though he he definitely floundered a bit he had some floundering but he also had some really you know zingers and whatnot i just think that everything that came after you know it honestly

[01:10:59] it felt like a microcosm of the cycle of this case because it's like you know the defense comes out with something just wild and then like two minutes later facts come out that end up kind of

[01:11:10] overshadowing that so it was sort of interested to see that boiled down into a single hearing so let's go all the way back to the beginning and cover the least interesting parts of the day no

[01:11:21] disrespect to the witnesses i i'm gonna fly through this if i go too fast or if there there's things that you think i'm missing please stop it was very repetitive kevin it was very very

[01:11:38] boring it was very boring it was really really boring i just felt it was like day one redux where we're getting nothing new which is all the stuff from the filings a billion times more

[01:11:50] i will say that usually i don't mention things on the podcast that either i don't witness or ann yet did witness but someone and i apologize to this person because i don't remember who it was

[01:12:03] it's been a long long day but someone says they overheard Baldwin go up to uh Kathy Allen before court began today and told her you know just so you know there's gonna be some bad stuff

[01:12:18] coming out today yes and there was there definitely was that was correct so when the court session began there was a bit of a surprise because as i said all these motions were about whether or not

[01:12:31] the confessions would be admitted into the trial but i'm sure all of you were saying well what about the other motion that you said was going to be heard today and this was the motion the defense

[01:12:42] filed to suppress the statements that Richard Allen made in his second interview with the police this was the interview that was conducted by lieutenant jerry holman and at the beginning of court today brad rosie announced they were withdrawing that i was surprised by that because

[01:13:00] they made a really big deal about it about how oh he was interrogated and he was in custody and jerry holman was you know a big guy and scared him a lot because he's a little guy and

[01:13:10] then that one nowhere so i think one person sitting next to me indicated like that must have been a press release and i that's what the feeling i got was that this was essentially something they wanted

[01:13:21] to put out there to attack law enforcement to kind of go on the offensive but then when it came to the actual legality of it it was pretty obvious that it was not a custodial

[01:13:31] situation he was there voluntarily and therefore there was very little that could be done based on based on that it was a weak legal argument so i think it was probably you don't want to see them

[01:13:42] doing that i'd rather things be more like by the book but i also you know i think it's probably better to withdraw that than to kind of carry it out and speaking of custodial interrogation stacey dener at the beginning before any testimony was heard today she said this

[01:13:58] motion this other motion is a complete waste of time because the defense is asking for every single confession to be thrown out because they say all of them were done in custodial interrogation situations where like state actors or the situation was like coercing

[01:14:17] or inducing richard allen to make confessions so that they should all be thrown out and she said no these weren't interrogation situations they don't mean the definition of interrogation nobody was interrogating him and you can't be so general if you have a problem with like one or two

[01:14:36] specific confessions we can look at the circumstances around them and make a decision but this is just too broad it's not specific enough for us to respond to is kind of a waste of time can i have

[01:14:48] a little bit of a non sequitur here because i feel like dener was completely on the money here i mean i i i i complimented uh some of what rosie did today but this this whole thing was

[01:14:58] completely overly broad and and to a ridiculous degree i think based on what the actual law says gull would have been well within her rights to throw this out i don't think she would have

[01:15:08] because i think that she wants to establish that she's going to hear them out and is going to essentially move forward with a clean slate for this defense team and let me just say this

[01:15:16] over the past two days we really have seen a clean slate i think from in fairness from both the judge and the defense i don't want to act like oh this is a this is a new dawn for everyone

[01:15:27] but i felt like the defense has been a lot more uh kind of polite uh not aggressive with the judge solicitous uh you know very much towing the line a lot more in terms of how they're engaging

[01:15:41] with things i think the judge has been you know less snarky um there's been times where you know the prosecution has said well the defense said this and and gull's like no no no the defense said this

[01:15:53] and they're correct she's it's just interesting to see like i didn't expect that because there's been so much bad blood but i really feel like we have seen a bit of a reset at least over the

[01:16:02] past two hearings and i think judge gull has actually done a quite a good job of i mean listen this one went on forever but she's heard them out she's letting them do their thing

[01:16:14] she's not really putting a lot of limitations on them i think what the couple of times when things have just gone so far afield she has stepped in but it just feels like it's a bit different so

[01:16:23] i mean it's good to see because you want to see everyone working together and the system working so happy to see that so the first witness was the former warden of westville whose name

[01:16:33] i always have trouble pronouncing it's john gallapo john gallapo and i have several pages of notes here but basically he said things he said before describing the circumstances of the detention at westfield talking about these companions outside the door one thing that

[01:16:54] got some attention was that he was asked oh is there some sort of a system where people can use to look up information about people who are in your prison and he said i'm not aware of such a

[01:17:10] system and basically rosie was fishing because he wanted the warden to talk about the insight program which was the program used by mental health professionals such as dr walla in order to access that kind of information i'm even sure the warden would have any reason

[01:17:33] yeah that's that information a lot of people were intrigued by that they're like was the warden lying and i get that i think that's a reasonable question and listen i'd like to know more too

[01:17:42] but i i definitely felt that i don't without knowing more about what the warden does day to day and what systems they use versus what a third party contractor that does mental health uses

[01:17:52] i'm not willing to say oh my gosh they purge he purged it himself because frankly it's not really a good reason to purge yourself i mean like you know if there's a system that

[01:18:01] everyone uses they're probably going to figure that out so i i didn't i thought that there was probably either a miscommunication there or just perhaps that he doesn't use the same stuff

[01:18:11] the others do uh i've got pages of notes here i don't really want to go through them all i'll pick one thing out at random it was like oh his bed mat is on the floor and the warden said well yes

[01:18:22] his bed mat is on the floor because when a person is on suicide watch you don't want them to be in a position where they can hide under a bed so there's a lot of these things that sound kind

[01:18:33] of bad then you get some context and it's like maybe life in prison is bad not necessarily specifically for richard allen before everyone and especially on suicide watch on a uh on a

[01:18:43] segregated uh restricted housing ward and please correct me if i'm wrong on you but i kind of feel like a lot of that testimony including the detail about the mat on the floor i'm pretty sure we heard

[01:18:56] that back in the last yes it is bad for richard allen in prison the defense contends it's extra bad the prosecution contends it's just it's probably better than most people on that

[01:19:06] ward because he gets a lot more privileges but he also is at times suicidal and we kind of have to deal with that as best they mean the prison has to deal with that as best they can

[01:19:15] so pages and notes but it's basically stuff that was talked about last June is there anything you wanted to say about it other than what i've now i think we can move on

[01:19:25] the next witness of the morning was uh and uh i apologize the morning was not good for me in witness names uh it's uh keneva maps keneva maps i believe so she is an investigator for westville

[01:19:41] prison she works as a police officer but specifically for the prison and she would do things like essentially investigate aspects of this so she was part of chain of custody as far as um one

[01:19:55] thing we should probably mention that i can't believe we didn't mention but one of one of the things that came up was that allen wrote a letter to warden gallapo saying yeah how did

[01:20:05] we forget that this was like the most important thing our brains are fried and we do apologize if we miss anything big we'll try to cover it in future coverage just forgive us because

[01:20:13] we've literally been up and since like four in the morning and uh it's just it's been a time but allen wrote a letter to warden gallapo saying i would like to confess to you apparently

[01:20:27] and warden gallapo did not meet with him he instead turned the letter over to the west phil's internal affairs division and gave it to them to deal with and that was probably a very

[01:20:37] smart move you might be wondering why wouldn't he just go get the confession but that would not really be appropriate he'd be acting as a state actor on behalf of the police right and again i

[01:20:48] apologize because there's so much overwhelming stuff in the afternoon i think the warden did say that times though when he was like walking around the area the unit there were times he would talk to allen through the door and allen would spontaneously confess yes say that he committed

[01:21:03] the murders so he was confessing to everyone and it also came out that a chaplain had possibly been confessed to as well so i mean this guy was telling everybody again we focused on the

[01:21:14] stuff that came later because we felt that the afternoon witnesses get us a lot closer to the truth get us a lot closer to what the evidence is against allen it's more interesting than relitigating the safekeeping order a thousand times but you know that's kind of that's kind

[01:21:33] of how it went down so to reiterate i mean are we ready to reiterate or are there other facts that we want to have in here i think we're ready to reiterate let's reiterate allen has confessed

[01:21:43] or made incriminating statements that have been i think over 60 times over 60 times i think fashions because harshman said over 60 confessions and this includes were these untied forget were these entirely recorded or were these just general and some of them are

[01:22:00] recorded i think they're not entirely recorded because some of them were things that were said to the suicide companions who then wrote them down and documented okay so some are recorded

[01:22:10] and then some are documented in writing on these logs one thing that came out was this idea that well did he get details wrong was he saying the girls were shot when they were really killed with a you

[01:22:21] know sharp-dedge weapon and one thing that came out was that it's possible that the suicide companions wrote things down or recounted things incorrectly later on so you have a game of telephone going which makes a lot of sense when you think about it but he's made over 60

[01:22:36] confessions a lot of these are recorded on video and audio he's talking to people like his wife and mother who he's begging to still love him even though he killed two kids and they're telling him

[01:22:48] to shut up and that he doesn't know what he's talking about and i mean it it's awful i mean the whole thing is just it's horrifying it's horrifying for everyone involved i don't know

[01:23:01] how the families of these two kids sat through today's session especially at the end there because it's just it's sickening to think about it just it made me very sad and i just i don't know

[01:23:17] i i i think it would be i think it will be very very very difficult for the defense to come back with anything even if they successfully impeach walla even if they get some of these confessions

[01:23:28] knocked down this is a wall of evidence that is going to be really hard to scale because you can say that somebody was having a hard time in solitary confinement and lost their mind but

[01:23:43] frankly these attorneys haven't even made any sort of motion to declare him incompetent to stand trial so i don't really know what their mental health argument could be at this point they could argue that he has mental health issues but you know if someone kills two kids

[01:23:57] and then gets away with it for like six years then i that's a hard argument to make because they were smart enough to not tell anyone seemingly and and then as for other things i mean again they

[01:24:10] could get some of the confessions thrown out but we have to think about what is a jury going to feel hearing him talk about this and possibly give details at times details that only the

[01:24:23] killer would know how is a jury going to walk away feeling about that on top of the bullet on top of him placing himself there i can understand now perhaps better than ever why the defense team

[01:24:36] has taken some of the strategies that they've taken where they're throwing mud at law enforcement they're throwing mud at the wall they're desperately trying to change the subject because the second we actually get to what richard allen is doing it's devastating he is he is a

[01:24:51] nightmare client because he will not shut up and because at one point in in his time there for it for a time he was on a mission from god essentially to expunge his sins in his mind

[01:25:07] and tell everybody about what he did and maybe he changed his mind since maybe he thinks that maybe he's been told that he needs to fight that he needs to keep this going but

[01:25:17] but the damage is done and it's going to be it's going to be difficult they have a tough they have a tough road ahead and tomorrow will be interesting and thank you all for listening

[01:25:28] and we're talking again tomorrow thanks thanks so much for listening to the murder sheet if you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover please email us at murder sheet at gmail.com

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