Blood Spatter Expert explains placement of sticks in Delphi double murder - Carroll County Comet

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Blood Spatter Expert explains placement of sticks in Delphi double murder

January 06, 2025

By Amy Graham-McCarty amy@hurdmedia.com

Seven years after Abigail Williams and Liberty German were killed, Pat Cicero visited the crime scene to determine what happened to the Carroll County teens. One of his conclusions: sticks were placed on the left side of the girls’ bodies to conceal them from being seen by anyone on the opposite side of the riverbank.

Cicero, a Major with the LaPorte County Sheriff’s Office and a Blood Stain Pattern Analyst, said he was contacted by Indiana State Police (ISP) Sgt. Jason Page, a crime scene investigator working the case, to perform an analysis of blood pattern stains from the crime scene. Cicero spoke to Carroll County Deputy Prosecutor Jim Luttrull, Jr. in late February or early March, of 2024, he said.

“I traveled to Carroll County and met with prosecutors. They provided me with a basic synopsis of the case and provided me with the evidence I needed to do my job,” Cicero said once a gag order was lifted in the case. “My focus was bloodstain pattern analysis.”

A 25-year law enforcement veteran, Cicero has spent 20 years focusing on criminal investigations, forensics, and training new investigators. He specializes in instructing crime scene investigators in the investigative approach and management of crime scenes and has been recognized as a forensic expert with bloodstain pattern analysis. In addition to his employment with the LaPorte County Sheriff’s Office, he is an adjunct instructor with the National Forensic Academy at the University of Tennessee where he teaches crime scene investigators the investigative approach and collections of entomological evidence.

His work on the Delphi double murders is “common,” to provide a “reconstruction model of what occurred (at the crime scene) using the blood stains,” he said. Cicero made his determinations on blood found at the crime scene based on reviewing files from ISP CSIs, photographs, lab reports, and autopsy photos, and by visiting the crime scene on Feb. 12, 2024.

“You can provide some insight into the events that took place just by focusing on the blood,” Cicero said. “Other information came out as a result of my role with this as well. I’m just one piece of the pie for the investigation.”

ALLEN

The information Cicero gleaned through his analysis showed the location where Richard Allen, the man convicted and sentenced to killing Abigail Williams and Liberty German, attacked the girls. Libby, Cicero testified in court, likely cried after sustaining wounds to her neck. Cicero noted a streak of moisture and blood running from the corner of the young girl’s eye to her ear. He said in the absence of rain, a tear was the most likely explanation.

7 years later Visiting a crime scene after the fact is not uncommon, Cicero said. “A lot of time we are not allowed to visit because of the property owner. I’ve worked cases much longer (than seven years after the crime was committed). I worked on a case in Lake County that was a cold case from the 80s. In this particular case, it was in my request that I see the scene.

“It is referred to as remote analysis and this can be done because of the nature of blood. Blood is a fluid; it reacts in a repeated and measurable manner when force is applied to it. It has not changed since homo-sapiens and mammals have walked this planet. It has been studied for hundreds of years. So yes, the crime scene was different seven years later. My role was not to look at the crime scene seven years later, it was to look at the crime scene for spatial relationships.

Seeing the topography was important, he said.

“I was able to view the spatial relationship, especially between the small tree, where there were blood stains, and where the ladies were located,” he said. “The elevation changes (at the crime scene) and seeing the scene in the aspect of being able to view the opposite side of the riverbank without any type of leaves as it were during the incident seven years prior. It was very helpful for me to see that.”

Cicero said seeing the crime scene allowed him to conclude that sticks found on the bodies of the girls were used to camouflage the bodies and not as runes. The Defense tried to introduce third-party suspects during the trial, claiming the men practiced Ásatrú, a Norse pagan religion, and the murders of Abby and Libby were ritualist killings.

“I was asked several times by both the defense and the prosecution concerning why I believe the limbs were placed the way they were,” he said. “As I testified, it is my belief it was to conceal the girls from the opposite side of the bank. If you look at the limbs the vast majority are covering the left side of the girls.”

Walking the crime scene provided Cicero with a complete understanding of the location of blood pattern stains and how they happened.

“With photographs, the depth of field is difficult to determine,” he said. “Something that I noted was the slight elevation change where (Abby and Libby) were located compared to the small tree with the blood stain on it. The girls were almost in a little depression. It was not a great drop, but you can’t really see that with the photographs too well.

“That is something with two-dimensional photographs that you lose is the depth of field of elevation.”

The ‘L’ tree The Defense also referenced a small tree from the crime scene that they said had an “F” written on it in blood. The letter, they said, was a rune. Cicero said he believes it is an “upside-down L.”

During the trial, Cicero said the tree is where he believes Libby sustained one, if not all of her injuries. From there, he testified, she was likely dragged to another location before being moved to her final resting spot.

“Initially, I didn’t disagree that it looked like an F, but when you really look at the photographs and when the State Police added a chemical Leuco Crystal Violet that stains only blood it was no longer an ‘F,’ it looked like an ‘upside-down L’ with a transfer stain,” he said. “There was different coloration to the tree bark that people would see that it looks like an ‘F.’

“I still, to this day, don’t know anything about runes. I was just determining what was the mechanism or how that stain was created.”

The blood, Cicero testified, he believed was placed on the tree by Libby’s hand.

“The best explanation is that it was a transfer stain,” he said. “How that transfer stain got there will always be unknown unless (Richard Allen) comes forward. But the best explanation is what source could have done that, and we know that the blood source was Liberty German, and the stain was luminous enough that if you looked at her hands, she had enough dry blood on her hand that a portion of her palm could have created that.”

Analysis In contrast, Cicero said, Abby’s body displayed fewer blood stains than Libby’s.

“In my analysis of the photographs and the clothing itself, we would expect to see blood on the hands or the sleeves of (Abby’s) clothing and neither was observed,” he said. “There could be several different reasons why, and one was that she was unconscious. I don’t know if that was the case. She could have been bound, or the last explanation is that she was restrained from allowing her hands to touch that area.

“Those seem to be the three best explanations, but unless Richard Allen says, we will never know.”

Group effort Cicero said it was a group effort to bring justice for Abby and Libby.

“I will say this until the day I die, it was definitely a team effort, and the State Police did the brunt of all the work out there, so kudos to them,” he said. “My personal belief is that the ISP did an excellent job of providing me with what I needed to render my work.

“It was tough. My role, and even the gentlemen and ladies with ISP and the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office, we may not think about it, but at the end of the day, it is about the truth, and we are seekers of the truth.”