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In Carroll County, neighbors help neighbors.
That is what Pat Brown did, Tom Mears, and hundreds of others in the community in 2017.
Brown testified Saturday during the trial of Richard Allen that a call from Mears sent him back to the Monon High Bridge trail to help search for Abby Williams and Libby German on Feb. 14, 2017.
Allen has been charged with four counts of felony murder in the girls’ deaths.
Brown found the bodies of the girls a short time after returning to the trails. As he waited for the police, he stood with his back to the girls.
Brown first helped in the search for the girls on Feb. 13, 2017.
“I’ve known Mike (Patty) since high school,” Brown testified. “My oldest daughter is the same age as Kelsi (Siebert, Libby’s sister).
“My wife said Becky (Patty, Libby’s grandmother) posted on Facebook that the girls were missing.”
He said he called Mike, who was at the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office, to ask if the girls had been found. Hearing they were still missing, he went to the Monon High Bridge Trail to help with the search.“It was dark,” he said. “I called Tom Mears and told him to meet me there to help.”
Brown began his search at Morning Heights Cemetery on County Road 300 North; he also stopped at a neighbor’s home to see if he had seen the girls. He had not.
“I could hear people on the (Monon High Bridge) and see lights,” he said.
Brown said he searched the woods, walking along the ridge in the area behind the cemetery and traveling back to the Monon High Bridge. The ridge in the woods is “pretty steep,” he said.
He told Deputy Prosecutor Stacey Diener that the area, particularly walking down to the water, is difficult to traverse.
“In the dark, you’d probably break a leg real easy,” he said. “It’s really steep out there.”
The next morning, Brown said he called off work to continue to help with the search.
“I went to the Stone House (Restaurant) and met Tom Mears and his dad,” he said on the morning of Feb. 14, 2017. “We were drinking coffee, and then we went to the firehouse. They were talking about the search.”
Brown and Tom Mears joined the search teams, searching east of the cemetery, he said. They even checked an old cave but said it had been blasted years before.
The gentlemen returned to their homes. A short time later, Brown got a call from Mears telling him members of the search party had found something in the water.
“He said, ‘Hey, I just got a phone call from Shane Haygood, and they found something in the creek.”
Mears wanted Brown to go back to the cemetery and look past the ridge of the ravine. As Brown was searching, Haygood called him.
“He said they could see something from across the creek,” Brown said. As he made his way down the hill toward the water, Brown ran into Becky Patty’s sister.
“And that’s when we found ‘em,” he said, becoming overcome with emotion.
“I said, ‘We found them,’” Brown said through tears. “I thought they were mannequins.
“I just stood there facing away from them.
Brown said he was standing about 5-feet from the girls. He called Steve Mullin, then Delphi Police Chief and two law enforcement officers showed up quickly, he said.
Allen’s attorney, Andrew Baldwin, asked if “a bunch of policemen in full uniform” came down to the crime scene. “Yes,” Brown said. “With guns?” Baldwin asked. “Yes,” Brown said.
Baldwin attempted to ask if there were “lots of scavenger animals” in the area, but Diener objected. Gull sustained the objection.
For the first time since the trial began, there was a question for the witness from a juror. They asked, “Who was your cell phone provided?” Brown said he had service through Verizon.
Upstream
Searcher Jake Johns testified that his boss heard about the missing girls and asked his staff if they wanted to help with the search. Johns said he and his friend Shane Haygood started their search at Riley Park and followed the Deer Creek upstream past the High Bridge, searching along the bank.
Diener asked Johns if they knew what they were looking for.
“A tie-dyed shirt,” he said. “It took us four hours. He looked at the water, and I was looking at the top side.
“We went under the bridge, and that’s when we saw some clothes in the water. It was the tie-dyed shirt.”
Johns said they could not reach the shirt as the water was waist-deep. They found a firefighter who was also searching and told him they had found a shirt. They also found a Nike shoe, he said.
Haygood called Brown to tell them of their find, Johns said.
On cross-examination, Defense Attorney Jennifer Auger asked Johns if sound traveled near the creek. “Yes,” he said.
Diener, on redirect, asked, “After Pat Brown said the bodies had been found, cold you see (the girls)?
“We could not see the girls, but we could hear Pat Brown,” he said.
Routine Day
He said it was a “routine day” before he heard on his police radio that Abby and Libby were missing. Mullin used a map to pinpoint the locations of the High Bridge, Mears Trailhead, and where the bodies of the girls were found. He said it was a “routine day” before he heard on his police radio that Abby and Libby were missing.
He said he went to the Carroll County Sheriff’s Department to talk to dispatch after receiving the news.
“I wanted to help in any way I could,” he said.
Mullin said he spoke to the principal of Delphi Community Middle School as well as the school’s guidance counselor to help locate friends of the girls who may be able to help identify where they could be
At 2 a.m. on Feb. 14, 2017, Mullin headed home when the search had been called off for the evening.
“I still believed, given time, they would return home,” he said. “I couldn’t imagine anyone had done any harm to them.”
Jurors asked Mullin four questions. Among those, “What was the thought process when looking downstream?”
“That the girls may have fallen off the bridge,” he said. “With the height as such (60 feet), they would have been injured.”
Jurors also asked for clarity on where the bodies were found.
“North of Deer Creek and south of the cemetery,” he said. “The creek runs north and south of Moring Height Cemetery.
Family Moments
Friday, three members of Libby’s family testified: her grandmother, Becky Patty, sister, Kelsi (German) Siebert, and her father, Derrick German.
Becky Patty told the jury what a special girl Libby was. She described her as outgoing, highly involved in sports, and kind.
“She was polite, but if you were out of line, she would tell you,” Becky said. “She had more reason than I did. She was calm. That was her nature.
“She was logical. She loved crime shows. She said, ‘I’m gonna do that someday, or I’m gonna find cures.”
Libby’s great-grandmother died of COPD when she was little.
She said when Libby didn’t show up at the arranged time, she began to worry.
“I knew that wasn’t Libby, so I knew we needed to get to the trails and look for them.”
They drove around the area in case the girls walked home, and she called AT&T to try and get a location on the phone, she said.
As night fell, Becky said it was time to get more help.
“I told (Mike Patty, her husband) we need to do something. It’s gonna get dark,” she said.
The family called the police and then went to the station, where they remained until after midnight.
The next morning, they joined the search with others, she testified.
“We were walking back to our car; a friend came up and said, ‘They found them, they found them,’” she said.
She said she ran to the police and said, “You need to take me, you need to take me to Libby.” It was then, she said, that she saw her sister crying. “All she could say was, ‘I’m sorry; I’m sorry.’
“I remember sitting there, and I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t take me to them. As I was sitting there, I saw the coroner’s truck driving by, and that’s when I knew … they weren’t alive.”
As Becky shared her story, Allen’s wife and mother could be seen crying.
On cross-examination, Baldwin used the same line of questioning for each of the family members of Abby and Libby. “How was her voice?” “Was Libby outspoken?” “How was (her voice) strength-wise?” He then asked about the night of the search and if flashlights could be seen in the woods and where specifically.
Kelsi described Libby as “… more like my best friend than my sister.” “Libby was the outgoing one, she said. “She would find someone who needed someone. She was very brave.”
The girls had crossed the High Bridge before. “I crawled across it,” she said of her first attempt.
Libby had asked her sister to go with her to the bridge on Feb. 13, 2017, but Kelsi said she woke up late.
She said she loaned Abby her jacket, and Libby grabbed a swimming sweatshirt out of the backseat of her car as she dropped them off at the trail.
On Feb. 14, 2017, she continued calling and texting her sister, something she had done the previous evening. She searched with others, specifically below High Bridge.
“We went down (the hill) and to the right, she said. “Not long after, there was someone that yelled they had found the girls.”
She said the women did not know she was Libby’s sister when they shared the news.
Kelsi and Libby’s father, Derrick German, testified that the morning the girls went missing, he had made them banana pancakes before driving to Frankfort for work.
“About halfway to Frankfort (Libby) called and asked me to pick them up at High Bridge on my way back home from Frankfort,” he said. “I told her it would be a couple of hours.
“She said, ‘No problem, we’ll just do some exploring.’”
Derrick was running late and called the girls to let them know. Libby did not answer her phone. He called again when he got to the Bridge. When Libby still did not answer her phone, Derrick said he got out and began looking for the girls.
After police were called to aid in the search, German said he had to go to the police station with the rest of the family. He returned to the trail around 10 p.m. that evening.
“The left trail at High Bridge is pretty steep, so I did not go down by the water,” he said. Instead, he searched by the ravine, which runs south of the cemetery.
“It was pitch black in the woods,” he said.
He searched until 2 a.m. and then returned home. He returned to search the next morning.
“I knew something was up when my aunt came running off the trail screaming,” he said. “I could hear murmurs. “I saw the coroner go by, and I saw about 12 cop cars go by, so I went to find Kelsi.
Diener asked if the area was difficult to traverse.
“It was hard,” he said.
The final family member to testify Friday was Anna Williams, Abby’s mother.
She was emotional but found the strength to smile when Diener asked her if she was Abby’s ‘mom.
She described her daughter as “kind of shy. She was a very kind little girl, helpful, smart, funny. She loved reading.
She said Abby was involved in volleyball and was going to play softball. The Saturday before she was killed, Abby spent time with her grandfather purchasing the equipment she would need for the sport.
On Sunday, she took Abby to the park, where she met up with Libby. On the way home, the girls had worked it out so Abby could spend the night with Libby.
“If she had asked to go across the bridge, would you let her?
“Absolutely not,” she said.
She found out Abby was missing after seeing three missed calls from Becky.
“I told my coworker; they just called me. I don’t know what these girls are up to, but it’s probably nothing.”
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