Delphi murders: After 3 years with no arrests, police say case isn't cold

Three years ago, a crime near Delphi, Indiana, terrified and fascinated the nation.

Media reports, true-crime podcasts and social-media postings have speculated on how Liberty German, 14, and Abigail Williams, 13, were killed in February 2017 while walking on the Delphi Historic Trails, who may have killed them and what police know.

But three years later, no arrest has been made in the slayings — and police have remained mostly tight-lipped about the case.

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Doug Carter, superintendent of the Indiana State Police, which is leading the investigation, has insisted repeatedly that the Delphi slayings are not a "cold case."

Sgt. Kim Riley of the Lafayette Post of the Indiana State Police agrees.

"We're still working very hard on this case. It's not something that we've put off. It's not a cold case," Riley said. "We're still getting tips … at least one a day on average.

"We've told the family that we're not going to give up until we've run out of information to look at. That's kind of where we're at right now."

Riley said investigators have received over 40,000 total tips in the case. Investigators also have released police sketches and suspect descriptions as well as images, audio and video taken from the cellphone of Liberty, one of the victims.

Riley couldn't say how much time or money has been spent investigating the slayings.

For the first six months afterward, there were more than 25 police agencies — mostly from Indiana — "that were assisting in this case in one way or another," Riley said.

Three years later: What we know

Three years later, there are two state troopers, two Carroll County sheriff's deputies, a Delphi city police officer, and someone from the prosecutor's office working regularly on the case. And the FBI "still assists us," Riley said.

What is a cold case?

Despite the assertions of the State Police to the contrary, the lack of new leads may lead some people to think that the case has gone cold.

A 2018 examination of 8,000 homicide arrests across 25 U.S. cities conducted by The Washington Post corroborated what police have long said — that the passage of time hurts efforts at solving a crime. The Post said that an arrest was made within 10 days in half of the cases they reviewed. Two-thirds of arrests were made within a month. However, in cases that were unsolved after one year, only 5 percent led to an arrest.

A 2012 national cold case study conducted by the Rand Corp. with funding from the U.S. Department of Justice also found low success rates for cold-case investigations.

Only about one in five cold cases were cleared and only one in 20 resulted in an arrest, the Rand study said. Of that number, only one in 100 cold-case investigations ever led to a conviction.

Elaine Pagliaro, a forensic scientist and assistant executive director at the Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science at the University of New Haven, said a cold case is when there are "no significant leads to follow up on, no additional investigative information to pursue."

"It can be a short period of time or a very long period of time, depending on when the information has sort of petered out and they have to try a different approach or wait for additional information," said Pagliaro.

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With an unsolved case that is three years old, such as the Delphi slayings, even with the use of DNA "you're not going to get a solution to a case, unless somebody is in the database," Pagliaro said.

State Police officials won't say whether they have collected DNA samples from the Delphi crime scene.

However, the advent of DNA testing, evidence databases, artificial intelligence and still-emerging crime-solving techniques, makes it more possible to solve cold cases, Pagliaro said. In one famous case, Joseph DeAngelo, the suspected "Golden State killer," was arrested in 2018, decades after those murders, after investigators matched his DNA with that of a relative found on a genealogical website.

"Even a case that's very old can ultimately be solved," Pagliaro said.

"If additional information goes into one of the databases, then there could be a hit and it could solve the crime. If there's additional information gained through new technology, then you may be able to solve a crime."

Few crime scene details

Investigators in the Delphi slayings have been reluctant to release detailed information from the crime scene, such as whether DNA or other evidence was collected, how the two girls died and when the slayings likely occurred.

Riley, of the State Police, said it's "kind of like a poker game. You don't want to throw out all your cards at the start."

"We don't want to put out any more information than we feel the public needs to know," he said. "When we have the person we want, we want to know what they know about the case. … That's why we've held back on the information that we've given out."

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Pagliaro said that approach is common in homicide investigations.

"The police certainly in an investigation are going to balance the information the public needs to know to be safe, but in terms of releasing information about the manner of death, those details that really aren't going to help public safety, there might be details that investigators might want to be kept private."

One area where State Police have been unusually forthcoming is in their belief that the suspect or suspects in the Delphi slayings is familiar with the town and the trail area.

"That is one of the theories that we have, that either the person is from the area, or visits frequently, that he's been to the area more than once," Riley said.

"It's probably one of the stronger theories that we have at this time, based on the terrain and the location. We have a strong suspicion that the person is either from the area, has visited there before or has lived in the Delphi area for a number of years."

How Delphi is coping

Delphi residents are hurting but still hopeful that the slayings will one day be solved, said Rev. Todd Ladd, pastor of the Delphi United Methodist Service, who presided over the funeral service of Liberty.

"We're frustrated, but we're also firm, firm in our belief that law enforcement is doing the best they can," Ladd said.

Ladd said many people in the community know that patience is key.

"It's human to say everyone wants it solved already, but we also know that doesn't happen in real life."

Ladd said fear is still present in Delphi, but it's not preventing people from living their lives.

"We're suspicious, but we're still moving forward," Ladd said. "We're going to complete the park for Abby and Libby. We're going to keep our eyes open. But we're going to keep moving forward."

Ladd was referring to the Abby and Libby Memorial Park, which is being built in Delphi in memory of the eighth-graders, who were avid softball players. So far, family members have raised more than $200,000 in donations for the park.

Contributions for the Libby and Abby Memorial Park near Delphi may be made to the L&A Park Foundation, P.O. Box 431, Delphi, IN 46923.

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Call IndyStar digital producer Dwight Adams at 317-444-6532. Follow him on Twitter: @hdwightadams.