DELPHI, Ind. — It was February 13, 2017 when 13-year-old Abby Williams and her best friend, 14-year-old Libby German, went on a walk on Delphi’s historic trails. A family member was on their way to pick the girls up but couldn’t get a hold of Libby.
“She calls her several times and her Aunt Tera called several times and then we knew something wasn’t right,” Libby’s grandpa Mike Patty said. “That’s just not like Libby not to have that phone with her all the time.”
Libby’s grandparents Mike and Becky Patty along with other friends and family went looking for the girls, but they were nowhere to be found. “As the night progresses it just continually got more worried that something’s not right here,” Mike said.
The following day, police along with hundreds of community members scoured the deeply wooded area looking for the girls. Becky was in a group searching when she got a phone call that would change everything.
“One of my friends that was with me hunting… her husband was in another group that was going along on the southside of the creek,” Becky recalled. “He called his wife and then she come running out and said ‘hey, they found them’. They found them.’”
“We went running and we got in the car, and I remember looking over and saying, ‘Are they okay?’ you know I hadn’t…and she wouldn’t answer me,” Becky said. When Becky arrived at the trail head, she saw her sister sitting on a trailer sobbing.
“I walked over and said, ‘What’s wrong?’ and all she could say to me was ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,’” Becky said. “About that time the coroner’s van came by and that’s when it became real.”
The girls had been murdered. Details about how they were killed have never been released publicly.
“Everything kind of stops and you go numb,” Mike said. “You almost lose sense, at least for me, I almost lost sense of what our reality was going on. It was hard to fathom what we were going through.”
The murders shocked the small community and garnered international media attention. It set off a massive police investigation involving local, state and federal officials. Within a week of the murders, investigators released evidence they recovered from Libby’s cell phone.
That included a picture of the cold-blooded killer and a chilling recording of him saying “down the hill.”
More than 5 months after the killings, police released a sketch of the killer in July 2017. The tips flooded in, but the police still didn’t have the answers they wanted.
In April 2019, more than two years after the murders, investigators decided to take the investigation in a new direction. “The result of the new information and intelligence over time leads us to believe the sketch is the person responsible for the murders of these two little girls,” Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter said in a news conference at the time. “We also believe this person is from Delphi–currently or has previously lived here, visits Delphi on a regular basis or works here.”
Indiana State Police put out a new sketch that looked very different from the original sketch they released. At the time Carter said they believe the killer to be younger.
Cops also released a video that was taken on Libby’s cell phone and an extended audio clip with the killer saying “guys…down the hill”.
Over the last five years, several suspects have emerged but still there have been no arrests in the case. The most recent suspect came in December 2021 when Indiana State Police asked for information about a social media account with the username ‘anthony_shots.’
That account used fake pictures of a male model to solicit nude photos of teenage girls between 2016 and 2017. The account was tied to 27-year-old Kegan Kline who was arrested and questioned by police about a week after the girls were murdered.
Kline told police he’d used social media accounts to talk to underage girls, contacting both people he knew and didn’t know. He told police he would find girls on Instagram and then ask them to talk to him on Snapchat.
According to Kline, he exchanged messages with more than a dozen underage girls and received pictures from them. Kline said he had about 100 pictures of underage girls that were sexual in nature, in addition to about 20 sexually explicit videos. However, Indiana State Police has not said how or if the ‘anthony_shots’ account is related to the murders of Abby and Libby.
“Hard to speculate what the future will bring to us,” Supt. Carter said. “There will be a 10-year anniversary, but I also hope there is an individual serving a life sentence in prison for this.”
For Mike and Becky, going five years with no answers is frustrating. “We’re stuck at February 14, 2017, when we found them. We’re still there. We don’t get to move on and grieve because we don’t know why,” Becky said. Libby would be freshman in college this year and should be standing next to her big sister Kelsi when she gets married this summer.
“In three years would be her graduation from college…you know someday she would’ve gotten married,” Becky said. “There’s always going to be milestones that should have been.”
They say all they can do is wait and hope someone comes forward with information. Even 5 years later, after an unimaginable loss, the one thing they still have is hope.
“Once he’s caught and we know that he can’t hurt anybody then we can start grieving then we can maybe figure out how to move on with our lives,” Becky said.
If you know anything about the case or the “anthony_shots” social media account you’re asked to contact the police tip lines. You can email tips in at abbyandlibbytip@cacoshrf.com or call in a tip at (765) 822-3535.
