Cops release audio in Ind. girls’ death investigation

Delphi, Ind. — One of two teenage girls killed last week in northern Indiana recorded a suspect’s voice, authorities said Wednesday.

Indiana State Police played a clip of a man’s voice saying “down the hill” during a news conference where officials appealed for more tips from the public and announced that $41,000 in reward money had been raised.

The audio came from 14-year-old Liberty German’s cellphone, Capt. David Bursten said. Liberty also captured an image released by police last week of a man walking near the hiking trail outside Delphi about the time she and 13-year-old Abigail Williams disappeared Feb. 13, Bursten said.

The girls’ bodies were found the next day in a rugged wooded area off the trail some 60 miles northwest of Indianapolis.

Bursten said investigators aren’t certain the voice was that of the photographed man who investigators are calling the main suspect in the deaths. That man hasn’t been identified and no arrests have been made.

Officials declined to release more information about how the girls were killed and what else Liberty might have recorded on her phone.

“She had the presence of mind to have the phone on and to capture video as well as audio,” Bursten said.

Greg Massa, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Indianapolis Division, said as many as 20 FBI agents have been assisting state and local investigators.

The girls’ bodies were found about a quarter-mile from an abandoned railroad bridge that’s part of a trail system where the teens planned to go hiking during a day off school in Delphi, a rural community of about 3,000 people.