Abigail Williams, 13, and Liberty German, 14, were a pair of friends in Indiana who went on a hike in 2017. The hike was near the historic Monon High Bridge in Delphi, Indiana, on February 13, 2017.

German had been taking pictures of the hike and her friend Abigail. She was supposed to meet her father at 3:15pm that day, and did not show up. She last posted a picture to Snapchat at 2:07pm, so the murder likely took place in that hour window.

For unknown reasons, German took a video of a man approaching her on the Monon High Bridge around that time, possibly because he was scaring her in some way. Police recovered that video from the Snapchat servers, but it is grainy, and the sound is somewhat garbled. They distributed this image of the man thought to likely be responsible for the murders:



They also released audio of the man saying something sounding like "Guys, down the hill", in an effort to get someone to recognize his voice.


For over five years, various leads turned up, but none really panned out. One of the most notable ones suspects was child kidnapper and rapist James Brian Chadwell II, who kidnapped a 9-year-old in April 2021, locked her in his basement, sexually assaulted her, and beat her badly when she fought back. The girl survived, but supposedly has major injuries from which she may never recover (not to mention the psychological ones). Chadwell has always been a really awful and violent guy, and should have still been locked away, but unfortunately he was free. Heavy.com did a very complete profile of Chadwell, who is an evil and deranged individual.

Chadwell, 42, was sentenced last year to 90 years in prison for the kidnapping and attempted murder of the 9-year-old, and will likely not be released during his lifetime.




There's no doubt that Chadwell is an awful dude, but did he kill the two girls? He lived 20 miles away from Delphi at the time of the murders, but there's no evidence tying him to those murders. However, a creepy link was found in one of his tattoos. Chadwell had tattoos of crying girls on his body. One of them looked a lot like the picture of Liberty German which was distributed after her disappearance:



Is it possible that he killed German and was essentially commemorating the crying girl in her last moments via a tattoo? Is it possible that he was simply fascinated with the murders and got this tattoo despite not having to do with them? And is it possible this is just a coincidence, as some people have claimed that they saw Chadwell with this tattoo before the girls vanished? It's hard to say.



Inside Edition later attempted to analyze the audio of the "Guys, down the hill" video, and compare it to James Chadwell's voice. The results were inconclusive.





However, Chadwell wasn't the only major suspect in the investigation...