Delphi murders update- Kegan Anthony Kline
On Valentine’s Day 2017, the bodies of two missing teenage girls from Delphi, Indiana, 13-year-old Abigail Williams and 14-year-old Liberty German, were found at the foot of a hill in the woods in Carroll County, Indiana.
The previous day, on February 13, the girls were dropped off by Libby's sister, Kelsi, on County Road 300 North at around 1:35pm. They wanted to go hiking together on the Monon High Bridge but failed to meet Libby’s father at 3:15pm as they had planned. Their families searched for them to no avail and eventually reported the girls missing at around 5:30pm that same day.
Although foul play was not initially suspected in their disappearances, that all changed when their bodies were discovered at the foot of a hill. Police did not release details pertaining to the cause of death but announced that the girls had been victims of foul play and released a grainy image of the main suspect in the double slaying. The image was a still from a video captured on Liberty German’s cell phone which she had uploaded to snapchat - a move police believe was a deliberate attempt to capture an image of her killer for them to later discover. The man in the video appears to be a Caucasian male wearing a newsboy hat. His head is down, and his hands are in his pockets, and he commands the girls, saying: “Down the hill.”
A sketch of the suspect was quickly drawn up and circulated by the girls’ family.
Later an updated sketch was released by police, showing a significantly younger and clean-shaven Caucasian male. They added that age-wise he could appear to be from anywhere in his late teens to his early forties.
Although there have been several persons of interest over the years, including Paul Etter in 2019, who died by suicide after being cornered by police for a kidnapping and rape, sex offender Daniel Nations who had been threatening people with an axe along Monument Trail, Ex-pastor Thomas Bruce who sexually assaulted women and murdered one, and child molester Charles Eldridge who was known to police and bore similarities to the original sketch of the Delphi suspect. So far no one has been arrested for and charged with the murder of Williams and German, however, a new suspect in the case became known this week- 27-year-old Kegan Anthony Kline of Indiana.
An affidavit was recently released detailing charges against Kline for Child Solicitation, Child exploitation, possession of child pornography, synthetic identity deception and obstruction of justice.
The document states that Klein, an adult male, was soliciting young girls via social media apps to send him explicit images and videos. He would lure the juveniles using a now deleted catfish profile, Anthony_shots, and from there ask the girls to add his snapchat. He registered the snapchat account in 2016 and used stolen images of a more attractive male for his profile pictures. Klein was in his twenties at the time. The man in the pictures, a police officer and model who was not identified by name in the media to protect his identity, was shocked and saddened to hear that his pictures had been used to lure victims.
Klein’s habits stretched back even further, with the affidavit detailing that the suspect chatted with a child of 12 - 13 years old in the summer of 2015 from a Samsung device.
Indiana State police executed a warrant on February 25, 2017, where they found and questioned Klein, who admitted to the accusations. He confessed that he had communicated with fifteen girls, all of whom were underage. When asked if he was aware that the girls were underage, he said he was, and that he had saved around one hundred explicit images of them to his device. He added that he had twenty videos of the juveniles, which were sexual in nature, and around six devices were retrieved from the suspect’s home. The images of the females were geo-located to areas local to the suspect in Indiana, such as Bunker Hill, Galveston, Indianapolis, Kokomo, Monterey, and Royal Centre.
Multiple child sexual abuse materials were found across the retrieved devices and included images and videos of female victims aged 12 – 17. Downloaded videos of female victims aged 3 – 11 were also discovered as well as personal pictures taken by the suspect of a handgun and what is believed to be drugs or drug paraphernalia.
Klein also posed as a young girl on KIK, using the username emilyanne45.
Emily Ann is the name of Klein's stepsister. He would use the Emily Ann profile as a separate account to talk with young females on various chat apps. According to documents, in one of these conversations, Klein, posing as Emily Ann, said she had sexual intercourse with both the suspect and the suspects father at the same time.
Multiple related online searches performed by Klein were listed in the document, however the terms were redacted.
The suspect is currently in jail, and has been since August 2020, awaiting trial in Miami county, Indiana on child pornography charges, including child exploitation and possession. Those charges are not connected to the Delphi murder case.
According to news reports, police believe the anthony_shots profile may be linked to the Delphi murder case, but so far, have not specified how.
Indiana State Police recently put out a release asking for anyone who may have interacted with the anthony_shots profile in 2016 or 2017 to come forward.
