An Indiana judge has dismissed five child porn charges against the man behind the catfishing account tied to the Delphi murders – just days after another man was arrested and charged with murder in the infamous case.
Kegan Anthony Kline was tied to the 2017 murders of teenage best friends Libby German and Abby Williams last December when investigators urged the public to come forward with information about a bogus online profile named @anthony_shots.
Kline, 28, allegedly confessed to using the fake profile to groom underage girls, get them to send him nude photos and their addresses, and try to get them to meet him in person.
In a 2020 police interview, a transcript of which has been seen by The Independent, Kline admitted that he had communicated with 14-year-old Libby on Instagram and Snapchat through the catfishing profile before she died.
The transcript revealed that he had exchanged photos with the teenage girl and that Libby had communicated with the fake profile on the very day that she and Abby, 13, were murdered.
On 25 February 2017 - less than two weeks after the two girls were brutally killed – police carried out a search of Kline’s home in Peru.
Kline has never been charged in connection to the murders.
In 2020, he was arrested and charged with 30 child sexual abuse and child exploitation felonies over the @anthony_shots account. He has been held behind bars ever since.
According to an affidavit, Kline allegedly admitted that he had received about 100 sexual photos and about 20 sexually explicit videos from at least 15 underage girls through the profile.
Now, court documents, filed on Friday and seen by The Independent, reveal that five of the 30 charges in his child porn case have been dropped.
Miami Circuit Court Judge Timothy Spahr agreed to drop five counts of possession of child porn and has scheduled a date of 22 December for a court hearing on a motion to amend information in the case.
Prosecutors had filed a motion last Wednesday asking for the charges to be dropped, saying that “there is insufficient evidence to prove said counts beyond a reasonable doubt at trial”.
They also filed a request to downgrade several of the remaining charges from a level four to a level five felony or a level five to a level six.
The state gave no further details about the request or the timing of it.
However, the request came just two days after Indiana State Police announced that a man had finally been arrested and charged with Libby and Abby’s murders almost six years on from the slayings.
Richard Allen, a 50-year-old local Delphi man, was taken into custody on 26 October and charged two days later with two counts of murder.
Mr Allen, who is said to be refusing to cooperate with investigators, pleaded not guilty to the charges and is being held without bond.
It is not clear if the move to drop charges against Kline is connected in any way to the case against Mr Allen.
Law enforcement are remaining tight-lipped about what led them to arrest the 50-year-old now, with the probable cause affidavit being sealed by a judge.
However, in a somewhat surprising move, officials indicated that there could be other individuals still out there who were also involved in the murders of Libby and Abby.
“If any other person had any involvement in the murders in any way, that person will be held accountable,” Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter said in a press conference last week.
Members of the public have been urged to continue to submit tips – not only about Mr Allen but about any other information regarding the case – with officials insisting that the investigation is far from over.
The timing of what marks the first arrest in the 2017 case comes as newly-unsealed court records reveal that Kline was released into the temporary custody of Indiana State Police (ISP) back in August.
Days later, ISP officers were spotted carrying out a search of the Wabash River near his home in Peru.
Journalist Áine Cain and attorney Kevin Greenlee, creators of The Murder Sheet podcast, told The Independent at the time that the search was connected to the murders of Libby and Abby.
During Kline’s 2020 police interview, he denied having any knowledge about who killed the teenagers. But, detectives said he failed a polygraph test on those statements.
At another point in the interview, a detective confronted Kline with a message about Libby that @anthony_shots sent to another user days after the murders.
“yeah we were supposed to meet but she never showed up,” it read.
Back on 13 February 2017, Libby and Abby set off on a hike along the Monon High Bridge Trail in their hometown of Delphi.
During the walk, Libby posted a photo on Snapchat of her best friend walking along the Monon High Bridge. It was the last known photo of Abby before she was killed.
Later that day, the teenagers were reported missing when they failed to meet a family member who had arranged to pick them up.
The following day – Valentine’s Day 2017 – their bodies were discovered in a wooded area around half a mile off the trail.
For the next five years, no arrests were ever made and no suspects formally named.
A 2017 search warrant application, which surfaced earlier this year, revealed that the victims were killed with some sort of weapon and lost “a lot” of blood – meaning the assailant would have been covered in their blood following the attack.
Libby and Abby were believed to have been killed in another location before the murderer moved their bodies and “staged” them at the crime scene. The killer was also believed to have taken some sort of souvenir.
Investigators have long tried to identify a man that Libby managed to capture on her cellphone before she died.
In the grainy video, the broad-set man is seen dressed in blue jeans, a blue jacket and a cap walking along the abandoned railroad bridge.
Investigators released a still image from the video and a chilling audio of the man telling the two girls: “Go down the hill.”
Kline is due to stand trial on the child porn charges in January.
