Link to notes by
@Choochoobella on April 28, 2019 re: the Best Case Worst Case Podcast featuring Jim Clemente and Maureen O:
Listen to the Best Case Worst Case Episode - 122 | Worst Case Scenario: The Delphi Murders on iHeartRadio | iHeartRadio
April 26, 2019
Found Deceased - IN - Abigail (Abby) Williams, 13, & Liberty (Libby) German, 14, The Delphi Murders 13 Feb 2017 #95
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Posts by
@Choochoobella :
“As mentioned earlier, the podcast, "Best Case Worst Cast," discussed the murders of Abby and Libby.
122 | Worst Case Scenario: The Delphi Murders Best Case Worst Case podcast
The regulars on this podcast are former FBI profiler Jim Clemente and former state and federal prosecutor Francey Hakes. There were two guests on the Delphi murders podcast, both retired FBI special agents, Bobby Ciccone and Maureen O'Connell.
We’ve gone round and round speculating about so many topics. Since we have input on this podcast from 3 FBI agents, I thought it might be interesting to summarize what they said about various topics we’ve been discussing and hear your thoughts. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to put this summary together.
I’ve broken the topics up into different posts that were covered so you can only read about whatever you are interested in.
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What would motivate someone to kill these teenage girls?
Jim Clemente gave three possibilities:
The majority of perpetrators who would do something like this are sexually motivated. That's probably the most likely motivation in this case.
Another motivation in child abduction/homicides is greed, where someone is murdered because that person is in the way of a relationship. (They cited Chris Watts' murder of his family because he wanted to be with a new woman as an example of this.)
Finally, some people have a lust for murder, and these are murders without a motive other than the desire to kill.
Later in the podcast, Jim Clemente said that even if this crime was sexual in nature, there may not have been DNA found. Jim clarified that when he said he thought this assault was sexually motivated, he doesn’t mean that it was necessarily a traditional sexual assault that would have produced semen for a rape kit. He discussed that there are many things that are sexual in nature for the offender but may not involve semen. Even if this offender had the intent to rape, he may not have been able to consummate the rape.
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What about the difficulty of controlling two teenage girls?
Jim thinks the girls were likely controlled by the perpetrator having a weapon. Jim noted that professionals see shapes and forms that could be a gun or some other kind of holstered weapon in analyses of the pictures of BG.
Further, Jim thinks the killer used the victims' own politeness and social graces to put the girls into a vulnerable position (the girls' natural deference to do what an adult tells a younger person to do). On the other hand, the fact that Libby took the pictures and recorded the audio says that Libby was fairly certain that something bad was happening.
Maureen O'Connell discussed the discrepancy between BG's seemingly thin legs and upper-body bulkiness. To her, it was clear he had a lot of stuff packed into his jacket in addition to the fanny pack he was wearing. She thought the bulk had an impact on his gait. Maureen thought he possibly had a kill kit or something similar in his jacket.
Jim thought BG was clearly trying to disguise himself, hide his identify and hide whatever he was going to use to threaten the girls. Bobby said that Libby's grandfather imagined Libby shot the photos/audio thinking there was something wrong with the guy and intended to show this to her family when she got home. They all believe Libby surreptitiously recorded the video/audio so the perp would not know she was doing so.
Jim commended Libby on her situational awareness, her instinctive recognition that something was wrong with this guy. They think it was obvious the perpetrator never realized Libby had a phone and had recorded him. As Jim said, thankfully, because of Libby's instincts, we have some leads on this case; otherwise, we'd have almost nothing.
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Why hold information back from the public?
Reasons for holding back information: protecting the integrity of the investigation; holding back information to suss out false confessions; and not releasing anything that does not aid the investigation.
Maureen said LE must also be careful about what is released to the family. The family understands that some information is withheld from them in order to not hurt the prosecution down the road. Of course, families get frustrated if the investigation goes unsolved for years and years.
Maureen said the biggest leaks in investigations usually come from family members because family members are so emotional. For that reason, LE doesn't tell the family everything because they don't want them telling other people certain facts and compromising the prosecution down the road.
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Why a press conference two years later with a new sketch?
In answer to why the new sketch was released now, Jim Clemente said "the arrest of that one guy who fit that description very well a couple of days ago, that may have been LE finally ruling him out as the killer and so now they have more confidence and it is the perfect time to release the other sketch of this other person that has now become the primary suspect in this case and from what the cops said, they probably have some other reasons to suspect him as well."
Jim said the guy that was arrested (the guy we’ve been referring to as Old Bridge Guy or Sketch #1) was sexually interested in children and has had multiple arrests for it.
^^We don’t yet have a mainstream media citation for what Jim Clemente said, but the FBI agents discussed it on the podcast like it is known information that the original BG sketch was of a sexual predator that was recently apprehended.
Bobby said releasing a sketch is a huge responsibility and that it would be irresponsible of LE to release a new sketch unless they have a high degree of confidence that this is the right suspect. Releasing a new sketch always leads to a whole host of people that look like the sketch getting harassed. Francey suggested LE might need to release the new sketch because they’ve run out of investigative avenues.
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What makes investigations like this so challenging? How would you have overseen this crime scene investigation?
This would have been a difficult crime scene. Francey cited these facts: the crime was in an outdoor area, subject to environmental conditions; it was a ½ mile off the trail; and it was February and therefore cold and possibly wet in Indiana. Francey mentioned that although we don’t know the COD for Abby and Libby, she speculates there was a sexual element to the crime. She said “the girls were left in such a state that there is likely to have been some DNA left on them.” She then added the caveat that sometimes there isn’t even touch DNA left in violent crime scenes.
Francey asked Maureen to talk about what her goals would have been if she had overseen this crime scene investigation.
Maureen said she would cordon everything off and pay particular attention to the pathway taken down to where the perpetrator led the girls. They would be looking for boot prints, shoe prints, and would try to figure out the position the girls were in as he led them down the hill. They would also look for clues to the perpetrator’s egress route (his path out).
Maureen’s gut tells her the girls were left posed or staged based on the press conference. Bobby and Maureen worked on the L.A. case of Samantha Runyon whose body had been posed and that was another time she saw a hardened, seasoned homicide detective cry. “So it’s that type of thing, it’s the victimization on top of victimization, the piling on that these people do for their own personal gratification.” In a situation like that, there’s going to be a lot of evidence that must be carefully collected and maintained.
Maureen and Bobby also said the FBI has software that allows them to deal with the massive number of tips that come in. The software divvies up the tips to investigators and allows LE to track the leads property.
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Discussion of Elements of the Crime Scene
Jim Clemente said that when an offender moves victims, he moves them to a place of greater privacy and control. The offender may have had a lair set up to which he directed Abby and Libby. Maybe he was waiting for a girl to walk by, but it just happened to be two girls that were there, and so he took them both. Jim doesn’t think the perpetrator could have known the girls were going to be there; they couldn’t have been targeted victims. The perpetrator set up his trap and Abby and Libby fell into it, but he needed to get them to a particular place so he could have privacy to do what he wanted to do.
Maureen said part of the perpetrator’s sexual gratification could have been building a lair and taking the girls to it. Moving the girls says a lot about this person. “Everything he did, every move he made, is another signature and these signatures add up.”
Francey noted that we don’t have the information to answer many questions we have: Did Delphi LE have the kind of crime scene unit they needed? Did they call in the FBI immediately? Were the state police immediately involved? She hopes it was as thorough a forensic crime scene investigation as is possible.
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Additional Steps of the Crime Scene Investigation
Bobby was asked what additional steps would be taken by the crime scene investigator (in addition to those Maureen already cited).
Bobby said he would be looking for witnesses, looking at every car in the parking lot, finding out who was hiking there and who regularly hikes there. He would find out if there is a volunteer group that maintains the trails and ask them what they’ve seen. He’d find out who is posting on the park bulletin board and talk with as many people as possible to find out who is regularly seen there (go as far back in time as possible).
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What does the location of this crime tell you about the offender?
Jim said the perpetrator is probably from around Delphi and spends a significant amount of time there. Whether he grew up there or landed there from somewhere else, we don’t know, but Jim said the offender knew that this was a place where little girls who fit his fantasy could be. Jim’s profile of the offender: He’s the kind of guy who fantasized a great deal about doing this. This was not impulsive. This is something that he had planned for. It didn’t go exactly as he planned, but he had thought about this, he was compulsive, he had played this fantasy out in his mind over and over. He took steps to carry it out: preparing a place to carry out the crime, figuring out how to threaten and control the victim, and preparing a place where he could be unseen until a victim arrived. He has some level of criminal sophistication that only comes from having committed precursive crimes. He might have exhibited peeping behavior, he might have broken into residences to go through underwear drawers, etc. He gets off on the excitement and thrill of being in a place you’re not supposed to be and looking at people’s intimate things. He almost certainly did these things, but we don’t know whether he was caught for these misdemeanor crimes. He seems to have some forensic sophistication because it doesn’t seem as though he left much forensic evidence behind.
Maureen thought it likely the perpetrator has been stalking the trail. She thought it was likely that in the 18,000 tips LE got in the first four months after the crime, some tips were probably from people who had seen this guy at some point in the past on the trail. She thought it was likely some people had called in tips on the perpetrator since LE is very sure that this guy has been living in the town or his family lives in the town or he works there or plays there.
Jim Clemente called this trail/bridge a “target-rich environment.” He likened it to the area in which Hannah Graham of UVA was abducted before being murdered. He talked about how Hannah was walking around, inebriated, and a guy who claimed to be a good Samaritan had started following her. While that guy was following her, Jesse Matthew (Hannah’s killer), showed up and put his arm around Hannah and walked off with her. Jim questions the motive of “the good Samaritan.” He thinks that guy might have wanted to sexually assault Hannah too. On video, we can see that “the good Samaritan” was lying in wait, stepping into the shadows as he followed Hannah, but Jim said that guy was following Hannah so slowly that the other guy was able to overtake her first. He gave that example to describe another target-rich environment. When there are vulnerable victims around, these guys are drawn to these target-rich environments. Jim said that in these environments, predators are looking for vulnerability, availability and desirability. Sometimes desirability may simply be a combination of vulnerability and availability. Abby and Libby were in a target-rich environment and happened to fall into this guy’s net. Jim also cited Israel Keyes as a predator who set traps and chose victims that were vulnerable and available; there was not a desirability factor in who he killed. Israel buried kill kits across the nation and set traps He killed the first vulnerable, available person or people to come by. Jim said there are offenders who get off on the kill itself.”
