A state’s witness testified that she saw a man, who later came to be known as “Bridge Guy,” covered in blood and mud on the day of the Delphi murders, but became combative during a tense cross-examination as the defense pointed out discrepancies between her testimony and her previous statements to police.
Local resident Sarah Carbaugh took the stand for the prosecution on Wednesday in the trial of Richard Allen, 52, who faces two counts of murder and two counts of felony murder in the deaths of teenage best friends Abby Williams and Libby German who were killed near the Monon High Bridge in February 2017.
Carbaugh, who said she walked her dogs on the trail daily, told the court that she saw the man believed to be “Bridge Guy” walking on County Road 300 North around 4 p.m. on February 13, 2017, the day the girls went missing. Their bodies were found the next day. Their throats had been slit.
“I’m going to label him ‘Bridge Guy’ because that’s what I know him by,” she said on the stand Wednesday, explaining that she recognized the grainy image of the man on the bridge that was later released to the public of the man sought in connection with the girls’ deaths.
Carbaugh described the man’s demeanor as “sketchy” and said he was hunched over and had his hands shoved in his pockets. He did not make eye contact with her, he said.
“I saw a man covered in mud and blood,” she testified, according to Fox59.
The man’s clothes had blood and mud on them, with blood visible on his lower legs, feet and ankles, she said, adding that it looked like he had fallen down a hill or into a muddy creek.
But Carbaugh did not report what she saw to the police until three weeks later because she was scared, she testified.
In a tense cross-examination, Allen’s defense attorney Andrew Baldwin pointed out that her statement to police in 2017 consistently said the man was “muddy” and not “bloody,” Fox59 reported.
He told Carbaugh that she mentioned the word “mud” 11 times during the first interview and 13 times during the second interview but that the word “blood” was not in the transcript of her interview.
Carbaugh responded that she did mention blood to police, but that they didn’t write it down. She also said her videotaped interview was lost due to problems with the police’s recording system, Fox59 reported.
When Baldwin gave her a transcript of an interview and told her to point out the word blood, she said: “I do not see it in here, but I do remember talking to the officer about it.”
However, in her third police interview, which took place in 2019, Carbaugh reportedly mentioned the word “blood” 16 times but not the word “mud” or “muddy.”
“I understand you’re doing your job,” she told Baldwin in court on Wednesday. “I saw a man on the side of the road with mud and blood, and that’s that.”
When Baldwin claimed some of her other statements were not consistent, she replied “I guess not.”
He pointed out that Carbaugh had initially told police the man she saw wore a tan coat, but later changed her story after the video of the “Bridge Guy” wearing a blue coat was released.
Before Libby was killed, she managed to capture grainy video on her phone of a man dressed in blue jeans, a blue jacket and cap walking along the abandoned railroad bridge. In the footage, the man who is believed to be the killer, can be heard telling the girls to “go down the hill.”
Carbaugh retorted that she possibly thought the coat was tan because he was covered in mud.
As the cross-examination became more intense, and the defense again brought up the inconsistencies in her statement, Carbaugh appeared to become more frustrated.
Her frustration was apparent during cross examination, becoming combative and sarcastic at times in response to the defense’s questions, it was reported.
When asked by the defense why she waited three weeks to talk to police, she replied, “Cowardly liar here. Just a chicken.”
Carbaugh also told police that “Bridge Guy” had “effeminate” eyes, the defense claimed, but Carbaugh said she did not recall making the statement and asked if Baldwin was “romanticizing” her deposition. When he asked her to check the transcript, she replied, “No, I’m good.”
At another point in the cross, Carbaugh told the court that she remembered seeing a “funky looking hat” on “Bridge Guy” and that she had been presented with so many examples that “it was like a Tinder profile of hats.”
For years, the case dubbed the “Delphi murders” has gone unsolved. In 2022, Indiana State Police announced the arrest of Allen, who prosecutors claim to be “Bridge Guy,” the man believed to be the one who allegedly forced the girls to walk down the hill before killing them.
Allen told investigators he was on the bridge trail the day the girls vanished but he has pleaded not guilty to the charges. His family home is less than a five-minute drive away from where the bodies of Libby and Abby were found.
Before testimony got underway on Wednesday, Allen’s defense attorneys once again attempted to push an alternative theory that suggested the teenagers died at the hands of a white nationalist pagan cult, and that they were killed as part of a “ritualistic sacrifice” by a group of Odinists.
In the motion, they requested to “admit certain evidence” previously denied from being shown to jurors citing testimony heard earlier this week during the trial as the reason for their request.
The judge has not yet ruled on the motion.
