DEPUTIES RACED DOWN the white marble staircase of the Allen County Courthouse. A quarrel had broken out between two middle-aged YouTubers, one an aspiring courtroom sketch artist who had been previously incarcerated and the other a bar bouncer. They were both there in Fort Wayne on March 18, 2024, on the fringes of the pretrial hearings for an accused killer, sharing a mutual fascination with a case the world had come to know as the Delphi murders.
The YouTubers were not alone in their fixation, of course. The story of the two girls in Delphi had been lingering in the collective consciousness for years, the details of their murder a grim refrain we knew by heart. On February 13, 2017, 14-year-old Libby German and 13-year-old Abby Williams went for a walk on the forested trails of their small, close-knit community at the seat of rural Carroll County. They hiked across the Monon High Bridge, an abandoned railroad trestle that spans Deer Creek. For many Delphi teenagers, crossing this rickety, creaking remnant of rail’s Golden Age was a rite of passage.
A man followed the girls out there. We know this because Libby surreptitiously filmed him as he approached her and her friend, lifting her phone to capture his heavy gait and his voice as he ordered them “down the hill.” We know the remaining details of this horrific crime through information from court testimony: He marched Abby and Libby across Deer Creek and, at some point, forced them to take off their clothes. Then he cut their throats, covered their bodies with sticks, and left them in a small clearing beside the creek…