Delphi murder trial: Libby’s blood was likely mixed with her tears, expert says
Lindsey Jacobson/ABC News, FILE
(DELPHI, Ind) — A pattern on the body of Delphi, Indiana, murder victim Libby German showed her blood was mixed with moisture, an officer testified at Richard Allen’s trial. The officer said he believes that moisture was Libby’s tears — which led family members watching his testimony in the courtroom to audibly react.
Libby, 14, and her best friend Abby Williams 13, were walking along a hiking trail in rural Delphi when their throats were cut and they were left in the woods on Feb. 13, 2017. Their bodies were found the next day.
Maj. Pat Cicero of the LaPorte County Sheriff’s Department took the stand Monday. Cicero was not at the crime scene in 2017, but he said he studied the scene photos and various reports.
Abby’s mother cried quietly in the courtroom as prosecutors showed close-up photos of the girls’ faces, bodies, hands, feet and legs.
Cicero showed the jury an image of a blood stain on a tree. He explained it was a transfer stain, meaning it was left behind when a bloodied object touched it.
Cicero testified that the blood stains and patterns on the tree led him to him believe the attack on Libby started at the tree, with swipes of a weapon possibly causing the splatter on the tree.
Libby died from her wounds in a large pool of blood while leaning against the tree, Cicero said. He said he believes she was then dragged about 20 feet to where her body was found.
Abby was likely restrained or unconscious when she was killed, Cicero said, because there was no blood on her hands or arms and she was found with her hands raised vertically.
“Her final position is almost like she was boxing,” he said.
Cicero said he’s been to hundreds of crime scenes and described the position of Abby’s body as very unusual. “I’ve never seen it,” he said.
He also said Abby likely didn’t die right away. “This would have taken some time,” he said.
Allen has admitted to being on the hiking trail the day the girls were killed but he denies any involvement in the murders.
(SEATTLE) — Boeing machinists on Wednesday rejected a new contract proposal that would’ve ended a weekslong work stoppage against the embattled aerospace company — and the union said the strike will go on.
Sixty-four percent of workers voted to reject the new contract, according to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), the union representing 33,000 Boeing workers in Washington, Oregon and California.
Representatives for Boeing said Wednesday night the company did not have a comment on the vote.
The proposed contract would have delivered a 35% raise over the four-year duration of the contract, upping the 25% cumulative raise provided in a previous offer overwhelmingly rejected by workers in a vote last month. Workers had initially sought a 40% cumulative pay increase.
The proposal also called for hiking Boeing’s contribution to a 401(k) plan, but it declined to fulfill workers’ call for a reinstatement of the company’s defined pension. The contract would have included a $7,000 ratification bonus for each worker, as well as a performance bonus that Boeing had sought to jettison.
But union leaders said the concessions offered in the proposal were not enough to meet the demands of rank-and-file union members.
“This contract struggle began over ten years ago when the company overreached and created a wound that may never heal for many members,” said Jon Holden, president of IAM District 751 in Seattle, in a statement after the vote. “I don’t have to tell you all how challenging it has been for our membership through the pandemic, the crashes, massive inflation, and the need to address the losses stemming from the 2014 contract.”
The union said the strike will continue as they return to the bargaining table with the company.
Hours before workers cast ballots on Wednesday, Boeing released an earnings report showing the company had lost a staggering $6.1 billion over the most recent quarter due primarily to costs associated with the strike.
“We have some really big rocks that we need to get behind us to move the company forward,” Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg said in a letter to investors on Wednesday.
Ortberg singled out the strike as an issue that must be addressed “first and foremost.”
“We have been feverishly working to find a solution that works for the company and meets our employees’ needs,” Ortberg said.
The company and its workers have faced significant financial losses during the nearly six-week strike.
Union members have received $250 per week from a strike fund, beginning in the third week of the work stoppage. That compensation marks a major pay cut for many of the employees.
Mid-ranking workers involved in the strike typically make $20 per hour, which totals $800 per 40-hour work week, while higher-paid members earn salaries upward of $100,000 per year, or nearly $2,000 per week.
“The question is whether the employees and their union determine that they have the power to get more from Boeing,” Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst at Atmosphere Research Group, told ABC News. “It’s whether they think they can extract more from Boeing, or Boeing says, ‘You know what, this is it.'”
The strike was set to cost Boeing $108 million per day in lost revenue, amounting to as much as $5.5 billion in losses should the work stoppage last 50 days, investment bank TD Cowen said in a report reviewed by ABC News at the outset of the dispute. So far, the strike has lasted 40 days.
In September, Boeing announced furloughs and pay cuts for some white-collar employees in response to the strike. Last week, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg announced plans to cut 17,000 jobs, which amounts to about 10% of its global workforce.
“This is really painful for Boeing,” Richard Aboulafia, managing director of aerospace consulting firm AeroDynamic Advisory, told ABC News.
The most recent IAM strike against Boeing in the Pacific Northwest, in 2008, lasted 57 days. Work stoppages undertaken by unionized Boeing employees in the same region have historically lasted an average of 60 days, a Bank of America Global Research analysis found after examining seven previous strikes, the earliest in 1948.
In the days leading up to Wednesday’s vote, the outcome remained unclear, Jake Rosenfeld, a professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis, who studies labor, told ABC News.
“What are the workers going to do?” Rosenfeld said. “That’s a really tough question.”
(MARCO ISLAND, Fla.) — Marco Island, a barrier island off southwest Florida, is under a mandatory evacuation ahead of Hurricane Milton’s anticipated landfall late Wednesday.
Though not everyone has evacuated.
Michael Sean Comerford, 65, told ABC News he decided to stay and watch his parents’ condo on the 23rd floor of a building while they evacuated to Naples, where his sister lives.
“I’m prepared,” he said Wednesday. “The island is closed. I have food and water for the next two days.”
Comerford said he’s not the only one who stayed behind in the building, which he said is expected to suffer a power outage in the storm.
“I feel like I’m going to survive it,” he said. “We’re not going to get the worst of it, but it’s going to be uncomfortable, given that there’s going to be power outages and it’ll be hot and dark.”
Comerford said he wanted to document what he sees for a book he’s writing about climate change, in which he talks to people on the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts.
Milton is expected to make landfall on Florida’s west coast Wednesday night, likely as a Category 3 hurricane.
The storm is forecast to make landfall farther north of Marco Island, though Comerford said there is still the “fear of the unknown.”
“If it takes a turn here this way, I don’t know what could happen,” he said. “I just don’t know. We’re getting all sorts of alarming warnings, but I think they’re directed at the people north of us.”
Comerford said he is preparing himself for “dramatic” storm surge. Marco Island could see 5 to 8 feet, according to forecasts.
“It’s going to be not insubstantial here,” he said. “The whole island could go underwater.”
ABC News’ Mark Guarino contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Firefighters battling an outbreak of wildfires across the Northeast amid a historic autumn drought could get some relief from Mother Nature by the middle of this week.
A rainstorm on the way is forecast to reach the Northeast by Wednesday evening. The heaviest rain is expected Wednesday night through Friday from Northern New Jersey to upstate New York and New England, possibly bringing 1 to 2 inches of rain.
The forecast also calls for a chance for snow in western Pennsylvania and upstate New York and into New England on Thursday and Friday.
But until wet weather arrives, critical fire danger conditions will persist throughout the drought-stricken Northeast, officials said. Winds of up to 30 mph are expected to kick up across the Northeast Monday afternoon, and relative humidity is forecast to fall 35%.
Monday marked the second straight day that no new red flag warnings have been issued in the Northeast after nearly a full week of the region being under red flag warnings.
The pending precipitation will be a welcome sight to the hundreds of firefighters still fighting the Jennings Creek Fire burning on the border of New York’s Orange County and New Jersey’s Passaic County.
Joe Pollina, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Upton, New York, told ABC on Monday that 1 to 1 1/2 inches of rain is forecast for the area where the Jennings Creek Fire is located.
“It definitely will help when it comes to the fire,” Pollina said of the rainy forecast.
Over the weekend, the fire, which has burned about 5,000 acres, prompted hundreds of voluntary evacuations when flames jumped a containment line near Greenwood Lake and threatened homes in the private beach community of Wah-ta-Wah Park, according to New York State Parks Department spokesperson Jeff Wernick. On Sunday, Orange County fire officials said efforts to protect structures were successful and no structures were damaged.
The cause of the Jennings Creek Fire remains under investigation.
A New York State Parks and Recreation employee was killed earlier this month while helping the battle the Jennings Creek Fire, officials said. The deceased parks employee was identified by the New York State Police as 18-year-old Dariel Vasquez.
On Sunday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered that flags at state facilities be lowered to half-staff to honor Vasquez.
“Dariel was only 18 years old and had a truly bright future ahead of him that has now been unfairly taken away,” Hochul said. “I commend his dedication to serving and protecting his fellow New Yorkers and his bravery on the front lines.”
The majority of the Northeast has seen less than 25% of normal precipitation over the last month.
Many locations are also having their driest autumn on record, including New York City, Philadelphia, Atlantic City and Bangor, Maine. Boston is in the throes of its second driest fall season on record.
Northeast temperatures are also running 5 to 10 degrees above average for this time of year. The added warmth increases the drying of soils and other fuels such as leaves.
Since Oct. 1, New Jersey firefighters have responded to at least 537 wildfires that have consumed 4,500 acres, according to the New Jersey Forest Fire Service, while officials at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said New York fire crews have battled 60 wildfires since Oct. 1 that have burned 2,100 acres.
At one point last week, the National Weather Service had issued numerous red flag fire danger warnings throughout New Jersey and New York. At least 15 New York counties were under red flag warnings last week, including New York City and all of Long Island.
Multiple wildfires broke out across the Northeast, including some in New York City, where one ignited in the Inwood neighborhood of upper Manhattan and another scorched wooded land in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.
The rash of fires in New York City prompted the New York Fire Department to create the first “brush fire task force” in the department’s 100-year history, FDNY Fire Commissioner Robert S. Tucker said.
In the first 14 days of November, the FDNY responded to 271 brush fires citywide — the highest amount in two weeks in New York City history, according to Tucker.
