DELPHI, Ind. — The murders that shook this town permeated even the door to a drafty room connected to the Carroll County Courthouse, identified as a museum. The designation might suggest a place of the past, of preservation.
On Thursday, the room — not museum-like at the moment, its wood-and-glass cabinets emptied of artifacts and mint-green wall paint crumbling — filled instead with the present, with the temporary.
It echoed with the footsteps of out-of-town news reporters, whose two dozen cameras formed a loose semicircle. A banner at the front of the room bore phrases like “Murder tip line” and “Angels in heaven.”
And, for the first time since the double murder that made a national news story of this quiet town of 2,900, a family member spoke publicly about the lives that could not be preserved.
“This horrible crime has torn a hole in our family that will never heal,” said Mike Patty, the grandfather of 14-year-old Liberty German, whose body, along with that of her 13-year-old friend Abigail Williams, was found last month in woods near Delphi, Indiana.
The girls went missing Feb. 13 on a hiking trail near the Carroll County town. A day later, a search party found their bodies, and the day after that, authorities deemed their deaths homicides.
In the month since the murders of German and Williams, as law enforcement has released a trickle of information, the crime has drawn substantial attention. More than 25 law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and Indiana State Police, are working on the case. Last month, police released a grainy photo and audio snippet of the suspect, captured on Libby’scell phone before her death, and the story appeared in outlets ranging from the Washington Post to the Daily Mail.
Tips and donations both skyrocketed. As ISP Sgt. John Perrine said during Thursday’s press conference, 11,000 tips have come in, and a reward fund for information leading to an arrest has reached $224,000, including a nearly $100,000 donation from Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay and former punter Pat McAfee.
The tips and donations — some of which also went to a fund Patty said the family hopes to use to found a park in the girls’ memory — have been part of a community effort Patty said has kept the families afloat.
“It’s overwhelming,” he said. “The support that we’ve received from friends, the schools, law enforcement ... It’s overwhelming.”
In the press conference, Patty became the first family member of either girl to speak publicly since the murders. Joined by his wife, Becky, who did not speak, Patty read a statement from Abby’s family, which reiterated the teenage friends’ love for each other and thanked media organizations for respecting their privacy.
In a prepared statement and a question-and-answer session that followed, Patty reiterated his thanks to law enforcement, the media and the community. But he also reflected on the void left by the murders.
The families feel it in the small things, he said. Family meals without the girls’ voices. The unmet expectation of them walking in at the end of a school day. The softball season they’d been preparing for just the day before they were killed, and for which they’ll never take the field.
He remembers it in the last thing he said to Libby, the thing he has always said to her and every other family member before parting.
“In our house, it’s always, ‘I love you,’” he said. “Every time.”
He remembers it as he looks and re-looks at the grainy picture, listens and re-listens to the audio snippet, every day. Patty said he believes Libby would want people to take the time to look at the picture and listen to the audio, to call in any tips they have.
“Somebody knows something,” he said. “Somebody has to.”
As for what police know, Perrine said he had no significant updates for the public. Every tip is investigated, he said. 2,000 have already been cleared, while 1,500 are yet to be assigned to an investigation.
He also addressed a handful of rumors that have floated around social media and tabloid websites about the case. Ideas have circulated about connections to the double-murder in 2012 of two pre-teen cousins in Iowa, and while the crimes bear some similarities, investigators have no evidence connecting the cases.
Asked about rumors tying the murders to occult practices, he said he knew of no specific investigation into the occult, but investigators are casting a wide net.
“We’re looking into everything. We’re open-minded,” he said. “If it’s possible, we’re looking into it.”
The visible marks left in the community by the murders are small and colorful. Around downtown Delphi, signs in the windows of local businesses encouraged people with information to come forward. A flier in the window of the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce advertised a local campaign to “Light Up Delphi Until Its (sic.) Solved,” by way of the distribution of orange light bulbs.
Ribbons of green, blue, purple and pink were tied around lampposts, banisters, trees — essentially anywhere they could be tied — and blew in the breeze.
The rear window of a Hummer urged, in green and purple writing bookended by hearts, “Fly High Sweet Angels.”
The details reflected the community support Patty said he and the families needed to keep going as they wait for a justice that’s yet to be served.
“All we have right now is optimism,” he said.
