Bangert: Delphi murders: Grandfather slowly gains ground on Abby & Libby softball fields Families vow to keep telling the story of Abby Williams and Libby German, Delphi eighth-graders killed while hiking in February 2017. Softball fields meant to do that come along slowly near Delphi

Dave Bangert | Journal & Courier

DELPHI, Ind. – Mike Patty climbed toward the cab of a backhoe he’d borrowed last week from a friend in town and had driven at farm-equipment speed to this spot near Delphi, about a mile-and-a-half north of the Freedom Bridge that hikers use to cross the Hoosier Heartland Highway.

It took him about a half-hour to cover a little under three miles, from home to here. His neighbor said he could keep the heavy equipment as long as he needed during a week’s vacation he took from his job as an engineer at Caterpillar Inc. in Lafayette. So, he won’t have to make the same, slow trip home on a day so hot and thick that he brought a small Igloo cooler to keep his water bottles from cooking the way they did the day before.

Patty took a look across 21 acres of scrub and dirt at the corner of Indiana 218 and Indiana 25 before cranking up the backhoe to prep some ground for culvert pipe he hopes can be set before too long so he can line up a proper entrance to the Abby and Libby Memorial Park.

“Not much to look at – yet,” Patty said. “Eventually, it won’t be all weeds and stuff.”

Things are going slower than he thought they would. Slower than he hoped, too.

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The idea was to be far enough along by this fall to have one of the three softball fields graded, seeded and ready for play. But, he said, you know how it goes when you’re trying to tackle a project he figures will push past $985,000 with volunteer help, loaned equipment “and your own two hands.”

But speed’s not really the point of spending days moving dirt or recruiting companies that he’s quick to credit for hauling rock or doing excavation work.

“This really is all about getting to tell the story, just one more time,” Patty said. “About telling about our girls. About reminding people that we’re one tip – the right tip – away from catching that guy.”

Patty hesitated before settling into the cab.

“Look,” Patty said, “it got you here. Keep telling that story.”

Here’s the story, again: It was 17 months ago this week – Feb. 13, 2017 – that Patty’s granddaughter, Liberty German, and her friend Abby Williams took advantage of a day off school and an unseasonably warm, winter afternoon to hike Delphi’s trails, taking off near the Freedom Bridge. When the two Delphi Middle School eighth-graders didn’t show up that evening to meet their ride home, family and friends traced Delphi’s popular trail system, crossed an abandoned rail trestle called Monon High Bridge and canvassed the woods that lined Deer Creek.

The next morning, Feb. 14, 2017, a group of volunteers in a search party found the girls’ bodies, about a half-mile upstream from the Monon High Bridge.

THE SUSPECT'S VOICE: 'DOWN THE HILL'

INDIANA STATE POLICE ANNOUNCEMENT ON ABBY AND LIBBY

In the days and weeks that followed, dozens of local, state and federal officers and agents mobilized for a full-time investigation into who killed Abby Williams and Libby German. In a command center across from the Carroll County Courthouse, investigators chased leads and sorted through thousands of tips.

Clues filtered out in the weeks and months that followed: Audio taken from Libby German’s phone of a man saying, “Down the hill.” Grainy photos of a man crossing the railroad ties of Monon High Bridge. A sketch of a man assembled from descriptions from someone who’d been on the trail that afternoon. The Delphi Homicide Investigation Tip Line – 844-459-5786 – was repeated on national news and on the “Dr. Phil Show.”

But nearly a year-and-a-half later, police haven’t made an arrest.

“It’s frustrating, I know. It’s one of the biggest puzzles this county’s ever had,” said Carroll County Sheriff Tobe Leazenby. “Believe it or not, we still have tips and leads coming in all the time. It’s a trickle compared to what it was. But everyone is still determined.”

Patty said the holding pattern still weighs on the families.

“We’re hanging in there, wishing this part of it was over,” Patty said. This part, he said, is waiting for an arrest – waiting for the day he can look in the eye of the person who killed his granddaughter and her best friend.

“I know law enforcement is busting its hump,” Patty said. “It’s hard, I know. We’re out telling anyone we can until we get that call that they have someone.”

The Abby and Libby Memorial Park, conspicuous along Indiana 25, is part of that equation.

The project started as a tribute in the months after the homicides. Community and even national fundraisers – from motorcycle rides to school events, church offerings to random checks from several states away – had started to pile up. Patty said the families decided that they would roll that money into youth programs, starting with a set of bleachers for a field where Abby and Libby had played softball.

As contributions grew into the six figures, the girls’ families created the Libby and Abby Softball Park Fund, a nonprofit group managed through the Community Foundation of Carroll County. The money, along with offers to help with materials, equipment and expertise, was aimed at a complex with three ball diamond, an amphitheater, walking path and a reception hall.

Patty in spring 2017 started scouting for land near Delphi big enough and affordable enough to handle the softball complex.

At one point during the investigation, Patty said he and his wife, Becky – who still posts daily on Facebook, “Today is the day” police catch the killer – met with Gov. Eric Holcomb. Patty said the governor offered his cellphone number.

“He was asking my wife if there was anything at all we needed,” Patty said. “My wife said, ‘Yes. Yes, there is.”

In his searches on Beacon, a property records website, Patty had found a decent-sized tract the state owned – left over from the Hoosier Heartland Highway project – at the southeast corner of Indiana 25 and Indiana 218.

“I just texted him,” Patty said. “He said, ‘We’re on it, Mike.’ … He works fast. I started getting calls right away.”

Stephanie Wilson, a spokeswoman for Holcomb, said that once the governor heard about the project, he directed state agencies to make the land transfer happen. The 19.4 acres owned by the state, valued at $31,200 according to Beacon’s figures, was given first to Deer Creek Township in September and then transferred to the L&A Park Foundation in December.

Patty said the rest of the acreage, which will be used for an entrance off Indiana 218, came through the Horn family.

Since then, Patty said work is getting done as he and others can get to it. Companies have checked in to ask what they can do to help. Fox Hauling in Lafayette brought rock for a temporary driveway to the site. T&D Power Inc., a construction company doing power line work in the region, did additional rock work. F&K Construction, an excavation and site work company in Flora, lent equipment.

“It just felt like the right thing to see if we could help out a little bit,” said Chad Kuns, an owner of F&K Construction. “I’m not sure he knows what a big project he has there. He’s done a pretty good job so far.”

During his week off, Patty didn’t get as much done as he’d hoped. After stifling heat lingered through the Fourth of July, two days of downpours kept the heavy equipment out of the field at the end of the week.

This weekend, Patty and his family will spend time at the second annual Libby and Abby Memorial Tournament, a USSSA fast pitch softball event that will draw 47 teams from Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and across Indiana to fields in Battle Ground. Brian Knipp, a USSSA north Indiana regional director, said the tournament field is maxxed out. Knipp said the tournament could grow once any of the fields at the Abby and Libby Memorial Park are ready.

“This tournament is pretty intentional,” Knipp said. “I know Mike and everyone will be there handing out fliers and talking about Abby and Libby. … We have teams from all over. You just never know what could come of it, once you tell new people about why we’re having this softball tournament and then they take that home.”

It’s one reason Patty is determined to keep moving dirt, keep raising money and keep making calls. You never know what could come of it.

Those softball diamonds – hidden for now below the uneven dirt and weeds of a former state highway right of way – will be a reminder that a killer is still out there.

That the killer is one clue away from being caught.

And once the case is solved?

“It will be a tribute to those girls, long, long after I’m gone,” Patty said. “I’m not resting until that happens.”

ABOUT THE INVESTIGATION AND THE SUSPECT: Police continue to look for a white male between 5-foot-6 and 5-foot-10, weighing 180 to 200 pounds, with reddish brown hair. The description was taken from images on Libby German’s cellphone of a man walking across Monon High Bridge that day – wearing blue jeans, a blue jacket and a hat – and from composite done by an FBI sketch artist, based on information from a witness who saw a man fitting that description.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

► Anyone with information about the case may call the Delphi Homicide Investigation Tip Line at 844-459-5786; the Indiana State Police at 800-382-7537; the Carroll County Sheriff’s Department at 765-564-2413; or by email to Abbyandlibbytip@cacoshrf.com.

► Donations to the Libby and Abby Softball Park Fund may be made in care of the Carroll County Community Foundation, P.O. Box 538, Delphi, 46923. Or online at: www.cfcarroll.org.

Reach Dave Bangert at 765-420-5258 or at dbangert@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter: @davebangert.