Richard Allen, the Indiana man convicted in the 2017 killings of two teenage girls who disappeared during a winter hike was sentenced to 130 years in prison on Friday, in a case that's long cast a shadow over the teens' small hometown of Delphi.
Allen's arrest and subsequent conviction in the murders of Liberty German and Abigail Williams were the result of a single volunteer, authorities said.
"The... reason justice was served today was due to one person," Carroll County Sheriff Tony Liggett said at a news conference following Allen's sentencing. "The person that only knows how to give, she has given herself literally, for free, to this investigation in different ways."
Her name: Kathy Shank.
In the years following the murders, Shank spent hours filing, scanning and organizing the thousands of tips received by law enforcement. The volunteer file clerk brought Allen's name back to the attention of police.
She found Allen's file in 2022 under an incorrect name; it had been marked "cleared."
"...Was a time when Kathy was not helping us, when she would come across something that she didn't know, she would always bring that to an investigator," Liggett said. "And every time that she brought us something and said, 'Did you know this?' We knew it, except for the for the tip that she brought us, that got us here today."
Local
Before her retirement, Shank worked for 40 years as a child protective service investigator, according to The Indianapolis Star.
“As soon as I saw (the tip), I just thought this was something we’d been looking for,” Shank said after the news conference Friday. Shank said she was happy to be at the news conference and that there was justice for the families of the victims.
Feeling out of the loop? We'll catch you up on the Chicago news you need to know. Sign up for the weekly> Chicago Catch-Up newsletter.
The dedicated volunteer also received a "thank you" from Carroll County Prosecutor Nick McLeland.
"We would not be here without her..." he said, in part. "...We would not have an arrest, a conviction and a sentence. She was a key part of this investigation, the needle in the haystack, if you will. That brought this investigation to a close, to where we could make an arrest. Kathy Shank, I thank you."
