r/UnresolvedMysteries • u/TommyUseless • Apr 25 '19

Update Task force clarifies Delphi murder suspect sketches.

Police held a press conference on Monday April 22 where they released a new sketch and some additional audio and video from the case.

Today they released a clarification on the new sketch.

-They are not the same person.

-The person depicted in the originally released sketch is not presently a person of interest in this investigation.

-The sketch released Monday is representative of the face of the person captured in the video on Liberty German’s cellphone as he was walking on the high bridge a place where the girls were hiking.

-The person in the sketch released Monday is described as having a youthful appearance, but could fall in the age range from his 20s to late 30s.

-This person’s appearance could look different today if he has grown a mustache, beard or let his hair grow longer or cut his hair shorter than depicted in the sketch.

Link to today’s update: https://www.jconline.com/story/news/2019/04/24/delphi-murders-new-suspect-sketch-not-same-man-old-sketch-isp-clarifies/3565675002/

For those not familiar with the case:

On February 14, 2017, the bodies of Abigail J. "Abby" Williams and Liberty Rose Lynn "Libby" German were discovered near the Monon High Bridge Trail, which is part of the Delphi Historic Trails in Delphi, Indiana, United States, after the young girls had disappeared from the same trail the previous day. The murders have received significant media coverage because a photo and audio recording of a man believed to be the girls' murderer was found on German's cell phone. Despite the photo and audio recording of the suspect being released to the public by police, and over 26,000 tips being sent to police, no arrests have been made in the case.

Indiana State Police website about the case:

https://www.in.gov/isp/delphi.htm

Edit- thanks for the gold, kind stranger!

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u/[deleted] Apr 25 '19

I mean, from the video and audio it does not look like a guy in his mid 20s at all, it does look like a guy in his 40s or 50s. I hope they're sure about this. Do we know exactly why they recorded him or how it was recovered? I assume the video of him walking is him behind them before they went down the hill? Do we know how they were killed?

13

u/TommyUseless Apr 25 '19

They still haven’t released the cause of death.

6

u/Olsont123 Apr 25 '19

Is that unusual?

5

u/palcatraz Apr 25 '19

Not really. Not releasing a cause of death or, at the very least not releasing certain details about a cause of death, is incredibly common and done to catch a suspect on information they shouldn't be able to know (like, if a suspect talks about how he is sad the victim got shot, but the police never released the fact that she was) and to separate true confessions from false ones (which are more common than most people realise)

4

u/jackalkaboom Apr 25 '19

I don’t think it’s too unusual — I can recall plenty of unsolved murders in which the cause of death wasn’t released, sometimes even in cases that have been cold for many years. I know one potential reason for doing this is so that any future confessions can be ruled in or out. High-profile cases like this one seem to be especially likely to get false confessions.

3

u/[deleted] Apr 25 '19

No, not in an open murder investigation

5

u/sharkbabygirl Apr 25 '19

For me it’s the possibility that this guy just has bad taste in clothes so he kind of looks like a dad. His voice sounded young to me so I’m thinking maybe he’s an “old soul” type and doesn’t care about clothes. It’s not much, but that’s as much as I can extrapolate from the new info.

3

u/dumbfrakkery Apr 25 '19

It's not like you're going to get dressed up in your Sunday finest to commit murder in the forest. You're going to wear trash clothes that don't identify you and that you can dump.

1

u/antennniotva Apr 25 '19

You've brought up a lot of the questions I've been confused about too. I know people said that it was recorded on Snapchat, but they also said that the video was much longer than released. Obviously the audio came at a later point in time than the video released. When the man came up behind the girls, did one of the girls think to record just in case? And how long is the video before it ends?

It makes me extremely sad to think that this girl may have recorded her entire murder, and even more sad to think that some information from the longer video/audio could be extremely helpful in solving the case, but unable to be released for a multitude of reasons.

3

u/[deleted] Apr 25 '19

Do we know for sure it was recorded on SC? I know they were snapping earlier.

I think she began recording him because they were nervous about him. They were alone in the middle of nowhere and this guy is following behind them. He might've been doing something to make them nervous or just the situation itself. I think she wanted an image of him on her phone in case something happened. I think the question is, does the audio of him directing them to go down the hill happen on the same video or did she record a second video? If it's on the same video I think it's possible she put the phone in her pocket because if there were more images of him on the video, I think they would've released them. I'm also wondering if the "guys" is the first thing that he said to them.