Down the Hill

1

The Day Everything Changed

When Kelsi woke up on the morning of Monday, February 13, 2017, it seemed to be a day just like any other—well, almost. The unusually warm winter in Delphi, Indiana, had brought in fewer snowstorms than administrators had predicted earlier in the academic year, leaving unclaimed snow days in its wake, to the joy of teachers and students alike. On this snow-free “snow day” Monday, the morning rippled with glimmering promise and endless possibilities—a free day with no classes, volleyball practice, or softball.

And yet the day would forever be etched in young Kelsi’s mind for a very different reason, with every choice, every step, every hint from her senses playing repeatedly in a torturous, menacing loop. It was the last day she would ever see her sister alive.

Thinking back on that morning now, years later, Kelsi is haunted most by the sounds that she once took for granted: the merry noises of her younger sister, fourteen-year-old Libby, running down the stairs with her best friend, thirteen-year-old Abby, while her grandmother Becky was in the kitchen working; the slight whispering and girlish giggling as the two young teens gossiped at the kitchen table as Kelsi and Libby’s father, Derrick, made the girls breakfast.

It seems almost cruel now, the simplicity of this former morning routine, carried out by a loving family unaware that their lives would never be the same. Her grandfather Mike had already left for work by the time the rest of the house woke up, but he didn’t give it a second thought; he was comforted by the parental confidence and sense of ease that he’d get to see Libby and hear all about her day with Abby later on at dinnertime, as he had every evening before.

With the afternoon quickly approaching, Libby and Abby debated how they should spend the rest of their long weekend. There were plenty of options; they had friends they could call, to laugh the rest of the day away; they could hang out with Kelsi, if she wasn’t too busy; and, of course, they knew all the local hangout spots and trails they could wander.

In the end, Libby and Abby arrived at a solution that many other teens just like them have turned to countless times: they would create an adventure for themselves.

Their lips curling with mischief and unadulterated delight, the girls built up the courage to ask Becky to drive them to the local trails. Becky responded that she couldn’t take the girls right away—she was too busy working through her daily to-do list—but added that they could help her by completing some quick chores before they headed out for the afternoon. After cleaning up a bit, Libby and Abby asked Kelsi whether she wanted to go with them as they explored a popular local hiking trail nearby.

Although she was seventeen and already had a social life and responsibilities of her own, Kelsi took her role as a big sister seriously and enjoyed spending time with Libby and her friends. Feeling slightly guilty, since she had been saying “no” or “I’m busy, sorry” too often lately, Kelsi readily agreed to give the girls a ride to the trailhead, but she unfortunately couldn’t join them this time—she had to work.

The girls jumped up and down gleefully. Libby grabbed her sister for a big hug, and she’d thank her from the kitchen, through the front door, and all the way to Kelsi’s car. In the background of this exchange, Becky, like generations of doting grandparents before her, reminded Libby, “Take a sweatshirt!”

Libby shrugged it off, and Becky repeated, “Libby, it might get chilly. Take a sweatshirt!”

“Grandma.” Libby smiled back at her lovingly. “It’s OK.”

“OK. Be safe,” Becky replied with an exasperated sigh. “I love you.”

“Love you too! See you later!” Libby cried with a toothy smile streaking across her rosy cheeks.

Becky shut the door behind them, chuckling to herself, already thinking about what the girls might like for dinner that night when they got back. Their family always said I love you in place of goodbye. Every single time. Just in case something happened. Of course, they never expected anything actually would happen; it was almost as if this precaution could shield them from misfortune.

Overjoyed by the sea of possibilities in front of them, Libby and Abby jumped into Kelsi’s car—Libby in the front, Abby in the back. They rolled down the windows and turned on the radio as Kelsi drove down Delphi’s main road, toward High Bridge.

“Turn it up!” Libby yelled. “This is my favorite song!”

“Heathens” by Twenty One Pilots blasted through the speakers as Libby sang along with the melody:

The car ride was a quick one, with barely enough time to even finish the song; after all, the start of the Monon High Bridge Trail was only about five minutes away from their home. Kelsi slowed the car down to a halt as Libby and Abby clamored to undo their seat belts and bolted out of the car.

As the two girls headed toward the trail, Kelsi reminded them to stay warm, yelled out a quick goodbye, and told her sister she loved her. Watching as they scampered down the path, she couldn’t help but smile, wishing she could be as young and carefree as her younger sister when she was already bogged down with work and assignments for school. As Kelsi plays the day over in her mind, this memory cuts off abruptly somewhere around a quarter to two, when she pulled her car back out and drove away—1:49 p.m., to be exact.

Now, whenever she thinks of her sister, she’ll remember watching Libby and Abby grow smaller and fainter in the rearview mirror, perfectly preserved for just a moment in time.

AFTER LIBBY AND ABBY SET OFF ON THE TRAIL, MUCH OF THEIR FINAL HOURS REMAINS A MYSTERY. For those who are unfamiliar with the rough terrain of Delphi’s woods, the trail might appear to be a labyrinth with a monster or some other untold danger lurking in the shadows, nestled within a thick cover of ancient trees and malevolent, mangled branches. But all Libby and Abby saw before them was the start of an exciting day. They knew the twists and turns of those trails like the freckles and scars on the backs of their hands; the forest had never posed a threat to a local before, and it seemed unlikely today would be any different. Their final conversations with each other are deeply embedded in those same woods, secret murmurings that echo wordlessly within the hollows of tall sycamore and cottonwood trees.

When the girls reached the Monon High Bridge, they stopped to take a snapshot of the massive structure, much like dozens of other locals had done before. The bridge was a common feature in pictures taken by teens who’d grown up in the area; it had even gained a reputation as a popular backdrop for high schoolers posing before senior prom. Though the slats were old and the beams weathered with age, local kids knew that crossing the bridge was easy, really: just follow a few simple steps, walk slowly, and keep your eyes on the old rail bridge below your feet so you don’t fall through one of the many sizable gaps.

For a visitor approaching it for the first time, however, High Bridge would appear terrifying. Looming 63 feet above the ground and spanning 1,300 feet in length, with a creek running beneath it, the course of split boards feels weary, old, uninviting. It seems near impossible that the rusted train tracks atop the bridge could carry the load of a full train if it were commanded to do so today; the old iron beams that hold the structure true seem to tremble beneath your feet, daring you to misstep.

But again, Libby and Abby—buoyed by the boldness of youth—felt no fear, and so, at 2:07 p.m., Libby took a quick picture of her best friend boldly walking across the bridge on her Snapchat app and posted it, as if unknowingly declaring to their whole social network that they were young and invincible.

In the moments after that image was uploaded, the girls were approached by a strange man. From the start, his demeanor was troubling, his stature stocky and almost hunched. His face was covered by an old hat, and he walked with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his worn blue jacket. Alarmed, Libby began to secretly record the man using her phone, hidden within her clothing. This layer of static shrouds the recording to this day, taunting us and whispering in the cracks of the last conversation between the soon-to-be murderer and the girls.

A little after 3:00 p.m., Libby’s father, Derrick, pulled into one of the parking areas and waited for the girls to emerge from the trail. After waiting for a bit, he called Libby’s cell phone at 3:11 p.m. No answer, no response. By 3:30 p.m., knowing it wasn’t like Libby to ignore his texts and calls, Derrick exited his car and began searching along the trails for her and Abby, worried one or both of them might be injured. Reaching the point where the trails intersected, Derrick spotted a man in a flannel shirt and stopped him to ask whether he’d happened to see two young girls. He said he hadn’t, but he mentioned that he’d seen a couple on the bridge not long ago.

Derrick continued down the trail to the creek and called his mom, Becky. He was growing increasingly concerned after not being able to find or even reach the girls via phone. On his way back up the trail, Derrick tried not to run through all the nightmare scenarios in his mind, but he still wondered aloud where the girls were and what could have happened to them. Reluctantly, Derrick started his car and backed away from the pickup spot, checking his rearview mirror in hopes that Libby and Abby would run up, waving for him to turn back—that he was making a big deal out of nothing.

Meanwhile, Tara, Libby’s aunt, was with her mother, Becky, around the time Derrick had called. Both Tara and Becky started repeatedly calling and texting Libby. As four o’clock approached, Becky and Tara grew more and more anxious and decided to head over to the trail to help look for them. As Tara later recalled, there were two different paths that Abby and Libby could have taken if they’d attempted to get home on their own. “So we drove both routes that they could have taken… and no girls. By this time, we were really quite concerned because we had [covered] the whole trail area where they should have been.”

Becky called her husband, Mike, who was at work in Lafayette, to let him know what was going on. Immediately, Mike clocked out of work early and drove to the trail to help Becky, calling Kelsi along the way. Kelsi called out of work as well and headed straight to the trail.

Now sick with worry, the family members volleyed theories back and forth: Had the girls decided to go somewhere else? Were they at some other friend’s house? Had something happened to them while on the trail? Could one of them have possibly fallen off the bridge? Delphi was a simple, uneventful town; nothing happened there. It was unfathomable that something—or someone—more sinister was to blame.

A little after five o’clock that evening, Mike contacted the police. As he remembered it, within ten to fifteen minutes of his call, the entire town of Delphi was lit up with flashlights. Abby and Libby were now officially reported missing, and their loved ones’ worries continued to escalate. Desperate for answers, Becky called AT&T and begged them to get someone to ping Libby’s phone so that they could find the girls more easily—to no avail.

Becky had also been trying to get ahold of Anna, Abby’s mom, and was just about to drive over to her work when Anna finally answered and learned that her baby girl was missing. By six o’clock, the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office, the Delphi Fire Department, and the Delphi police were all involved in the investigation. Eager to add more eyes and ears to the search effort, family members reached out for aid across social media, and what seemed like the entire town of Delphi showed up to pitch in.

The trails and surrounding streets lit up with flashlights, scouring each and every corner, behind every rock and tree. The group continued looking for hours, until the sheriff finally called off the official search at ten o’clock, saying that he did not want to expose his men to the difficult terrain in the dark. The temperature had also dropped considerably, and he was worried about exposure to the elements. Even so, many stayed behind to continue to look for the girls—in vain.

By the next morning, Indiana State Police made an official statement that they were on the lookout for two young girls in Delphi, a small town north of Lafayette, Indiana. Word spread fast. The fire station became a gathering point for volunteers. Between the families’ first call to police and the first local search, Abby and Libby’s disappearance had caught the attention of several news outlets. Their disappearance was beginning to capture much more attention than Kelsi and her family could have possibly anticipated.

That morning, helicopters, state troopers, the FBI, and even a K-9 unit ranged across the area in which Libby and Abby had last been seen. Exhausted after a sleepless night, the girls’ families still held out hope that the teens would be found alive—maybe battered and injured, but at least alive. By now, hundreds of people—perhaps more—were on the hunt for the girls.

As one hour bled into the next, the search efforts bubbled with more energy than ever before: they were one step closer to the girls. Kelsi was so confident that Abby and Libby would be found that she even packed a backpack with granola bars, water, and blankets, thinking the girls would be hungry when she saw them again.

That cautious optimism was quickly shattered when one of the members of the search crew first discovered a shoe. Kelsi had just crossed the bridge with a small group after spending more than thirty minutes looking underneath it. The man who made that discovery used his phone to look across the creek and cried out that he’d spotted two bodies.

Kelsi’s heart sank deep into the depths of her stomach, but she tried to stay hopeful. She mulled over the man’s use of the word bodies, convinced that “he would have called out that he found ‘the girls’ if he had come across them.” But as the minutes dragged on, she felt a pang in her gut: a part of her knew, even if Abby and Libby had been found, they weren’t coming home that night.

Kelsi started to feel weak, with concerns for both the girls and their other family members, like her grandpa, who was looking nearby and had suffered heart problems in the past. She then quickly caught the eye of another volunteer, a woman who worked at the middle school and had lost her own brother in high school. Kelsi fell into her arms. The woman tried to comfort her, but she also convinced Kelsi that they didn’t know what they would find and it was best to turn back.

But as more and more firefighters arrived at the tragic scene, followed by a member of the coroner’s office, it became quite apparent that their search was coming to a tragic end.

At two o’clock on the afternoon of Tuesday, February 14, officials announced that the bodies of two young girls had been discovered along the trails where Libby and Abby had been reported missing. Twenty-four hours later, the bodies were identified as fourteen-year-old Liberty German and thirteen-year-old Abigail Williams. They said the matter was now being investigated as a crime and they suspected foul play.

For the public, the news was shocking and disturbing, but for the girls’ families, the crushing weight of the announcement felt suffocating, utterly inconceivable. Expressing heartfelt regret, the local police force reassured their fellow citizens, confident they’d solve the heinous crime within forty-eight hours.

I WAS ON SET AT THE CNN CENTER IN ATLANTA WHEN DETAILS FROM THIS DOUBLE HOMICIDE STARTED to emerge. I’ll never forget the day of February 14, 2017: the first time I saw images of the girls. Not knowing the ties that I would form with the families. How close I would get. How much I would come to care for them and for their community.

I’ve spent more than twenty-five years covering heartbreaking and harrowing stories from the field and in a studio as a journalist—from smaller stations and local affiliates of ABC and NBC to the very headquarters of CNN and HLN. There was even a five-year span in my career, when my daughter was very young, that I spent about fifteen hours a day inside the CNN Center in Atlanta—by design. I wanted to be there. I anchored an afternoon show on HLN until 4:00 p.m., then I’d go home at 5:00 for forty-five minutes, and then I’d drive back to CNN for Anderson Cooper’s 8:00 show, AC 360. I was on the B block of the 8:00 hour, then again at 11:00 p.m., usually in the D block, which meant I was there until midnight. Looking back on that time now, I’m so grateful for my parents, who came to help me during that period. But I also realize that the intensity of those five years was a real crash course in compartmentalization.

I’m often asked whether it ever gets easier, reporting on the darkest depths of humanity, and I wish I could tell you it does, but I’d be lying. No matter how many crimes you cover, no matter how many people you interview, no matter how many gruesome details you hear about, it never gets easier. You just get better at pretending that it does.

Here’s what makes it possible:

Moving fast: You are forced to move on. Once your mic turns off, once you hear that “all clear” from a producer, or a director, or a photographer, you’re already on to the next story or assignment.

Story count: There is no shortage of horror to cover—and it’s your job as a journalist to get the story out there, so you gather up the facts, interview those involved, and move on. Never linger.