FORGOTTEN BUSINESS. The Abby and Libby case, these missing teenagers remembered by Snapchat

It was just four years ago. On February 13, 2017, Abigail Williams and Liberty Germantwo 14-year-old girls, ask her older sister, Kelsi German, to drop them off near the Delphi Historic Trails, a well-known path to trace the history of the city of Delphi, Indiana. Abby and Libby go for a walk and at 2:07 p.m., the latter posts on Snapchat a video in which her friend walks on the tracks of the Monon High Bridge. The two teenagers appear calm and carefree. However, this is the last time they will be seen alive.

Around 3:30 p.m., Liberty’s father is surprised not to find his daughter at their meeting place. He reported the disappearance of the teenage girls around 5:30 p.m., but neither the family nor the police found their trace. Until the next day. On February 14, 2017, around noon, the bodies of Abigail and Liberty were discovered on the banks of Deer Creek, about 700m from the Monon High Bridge. Quickly, a witness tells Indiana State Police that he saw a suspicious man walking on the bridge around the time of the teenage girls’ disappearance. A grainy snapshot is unveiled to the public, but the Caucasian man it represents does not appear clearly enough to be recognized.

On February 22, the investigation made a more conclusive advance. In Liberty’s phone, the authorities discover a recording taken by the teenager at the alleged time of her attack. We hear the voice of a man pronouncing the words “Girls…” and “Down the Hill”. A composite portrait of the alleged attacker is published in parallel, then a second in 2019, but none of these tracks unfortunately gives results.

Four years of mystery

Since the murder of the two teenage girls, several suspects resembling the composite sketch have been thoroughly investigated. In July 2019, a certain Paul Etter, accused of raping a 26-year-old young woman in Tippecanoe County, is suspected of being linked to the disappearance of Abby and Libby. But hunted down by the police, the man commits suicide. Daniel J. Nations, a sex criminal arrested in Colorado, Thomas Bruce, a former pastor accused of killing a woman and raping two others, and Charles Eldridge, a pedophile, are also suspected. In vain.

On December 9, 2021, the investigation takes a new turn. The authorities are on the trail of a user who created fake Snapchat and Instagram accounts to solicit photos of a sexual nature from underage girls. The account, “anthony-shot”, is said to be that of a certain Kegan Kline, a man already indicted on numerous counts of child exploitation, pornography and synthetic identity deception. If we do not know for the moment how the authorities made the link between him and the disappearance of Abby and Libby, they hope that this new part of the investigation will allow them to finally offer answers to their family. “One day someone will do the right thing. It could be the killer himself, or someone who knows him.“Indiana State Police Chief Doug Carter told Fox News in 2020.

For their part, the Williams and German families also remain hopeful of one day knowing the truth. “Each time the police make a new revelation, it is a little hope that is born. We are all hopeful that this information leads to something and we will continue to release whatever the police ask us to release.“, assures Kelsi German, Libby’s sister.

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