Lawyers for Richard Allen, the Indiana man accused of killing two teenage girls on a hiking trail in 2017, are no longer representing the defendant, in an “unexpected turn of events.”
In the Carroll County, Indiana courtroom, Judge Frances Gull ruled that Andrew Baldwin and Bradley Rozzi were no longer allowed to work on the case as pro bono attorneys, after they both left the case quickly following a leak of grisly crime scene photographs from one of their law offices.
“We’ve had an unexpected turn of events,” Special Judge Fran Gull said.
The shocking move comes just one month after the duo unveiled their bizarre defense claim that the girls were “ritualistically sacrificed” by a racist pagan cult and not by their client, who is accused of attacking them after he found them hiking alone just outside their hometown of Delphi more than six years ago.
An attorney representing Baldwin said in a memorandum Thursday that authorities are investigating three suspected “disseminators” who “betrayed” Baldwin, and who gained access to his case-related paperwork that was kept “locked in a room or a locked fireproof file cabinet.”
According to The Murder Sheet podcast, journalists Áine Cain and attorney Kevin Greenlee told The Independent in an interview earlier this month that, on the morning of Oct. 5, a source sent them a “number of graphic crime scene pictures and other images that are part of the discovery in the case”.
“We were very disturbed by what we saw,” Ms Cain told The Independent.
“The discovery is under a protective order by the court so that it can’t be leaked or disseminated in any way. So it’s not only disturbing to see these images but it’s disturbing in terms of what it means for the case.”
Unsure of the source of the leak, Cain and Greenlee contacted both Mr. Allen’s lawyers and the Indiana police about the photos. They eventually learned that someone with associations both to Mr. Baldwin and to Mr. Rozzi had shared them with their source. This individual was reportedly a friend of Mr Baldwin’s, and had worked at his law firm once, but had never been involved in the Delphi case, and had left many years ago. The man reportedly took his own life after law enforcement started looking into the leak.
At the hearing, the judge granted a one-year extension of the trial for the high-profile case involving the murder of teenagers Libby German and Abby Williams. As it stands, the girls’ families will have had to wait for over seven years before they can get justice in this matter. Originally set for Jan. 24, 2024, the trial has been delayed until Oct. 15 due to Mr. Allen’s attorneys claiming they would not be able to adequately prepare with only three months to go through all the evidence.
The trial has now been pushed back to Oct. 15, 2024, after Mr. Allen’s new attorneys raised concerns that they would not be able to get up to speed with the wealth of evidence in just three months’ time.
They were only appointed by the court on Oct. 27, after the prior legal team quit.