King Charles III's visit rekindles Australia's debate on ending ties to the British monarchy

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — King Charles III and Queen Camilla arrived in Sydney on Friday for the first Australian visit by a reigning monarch in more than a decade, a trip that has rekindled debate about the nation’s constitutional links to Britain.

The Sydney Opera House's iconic sails were illuminated with images of previous royal visits to welcome the couple, whose six-day trip will be brief by royal standards. Charles, 75, is being treated for cancer, which led to the scaled-down itinerary.

Charles and Camilla were welcomed in light rain at Sydney Airport by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, New South Wales state Premier Chris Minns and the king's representative in Australia, Governor-General Sam Mostyln.

Charles is only the second reigning British monarch to visit Australia. His mother, Queen Elizabeth II, became the first 70 years ago.

While the welcome has been warm, Australia's national and state leaders want the royals removed from their constitution.

Monarchists expect the visit will strengthen Australians' connection to their sovereign. Opponents hope for a rejection of the concept that someone from the other side of the world is Australia's head of state.

The Australian Republic Movement, which campaigns for an Australian citizen to replace the British monarch as head of state, likens the royal visit to a touring act in the entertainment industry.

The ARM this week launched what it calls a campaign to “Wave Goodbye to Royal Reign with Monarchy: The Farewell Oz Tour!”

ARM co-chair Esther Anatolitis said royal visits to Australia were “something of a show that comes to town.”

“Unfortunately, it is a reminder that Australia’s head of state isn’t full-time, isn’t Australian. It’s a part-time person based overseas who’s the head of state of numerous places,” Anatolitis told the AP.

“We say to Charles and Camilla: ‘Welcome, we hope you’re enjoying our country and good health and good spirits.’ But we also look forward to this being the final tour of a sitting Australian monarch and that when they come back to visit soon, we look forward to welcoming them as visiting dignitaries,” she added.

Philip Benwell, national chair of the Australian Monarchist League, which campaigns for Australia’s constitutional links to Britain to be maintained, expects reaction to the royal couple will be overwhelmingly positive.

“Something like the royal visit brings the king closer in the minds of people, because we have an absent monarchy,” Benwell told the AP.

“The visit by the king brings it home that Australia is a constitutional monarchy and it has a king,” he added.

Benwell is critical of the premiers of all six states, who have declined invitations to attend a reception for Charles in the national capital Canberra.

The premiers each explained that they had more pressing engagements on the day such as cabinet meetings and overseas travel.

“It would be virtually incumbent upon the premiers to be in Canberra to meet him and pay their respects,” Benwell said. “To not attend can be considered to be a snub, because this is not a normal visit. This is the first visit of a king ever to Australia."

Charles was drawn into Australia’s republic debate months before his visit.

The Australian Republic Movement wrote to Charles in December last year requesting a meeting in Australia and for the king to advocate their cause. Buckingham Palace politely wrote back in March to say the king's meetings would be decided upon by the Australian government. A meeting with the ARM does not appear on the official itinerary.

“Whether Australia becomes a republic is ... a matter for the Australian public to decide,” said the letter from Buckingham Palace.

The Associated Press has seen copies of both letters.

Australians decided in a referendum in 1999 to retain Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. That result is widely regarded as a consequence of disagreement about how a president should be chosen rather than majority support for a monarch.

After visiting Sydney and Canberra, which are 250 kilometers (155 miles apart), Charles will then travel to Samoa to open the annual Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.

When his mother made the last of her 16 journeys to Australia in 2011 at the age of 85, she visited Canberra, Brisbane and Melbourne on the east coast before opening the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in the west coast city of Perth.

Elizabeth's first grueling Australian tour at the age of 27 took in scores of far-flung Outback towns; an estimated 75% of the nation’s population turned out to see her.

Australia then had a racially discriminatory policy that favored British immigrants. Immigration policy has been non-discriminatory since 1973.

Anatolitis noted that Australia is far more multicultural now, with most of the population either born overseas or with a overseas-born parent.

“In the ’50s, we didn’t have that global interconnectedness that we have now,” she said.

The Sydney Opera House sails show photos of Britain's King Charles and Queen Camilla soon after their arrival in Sydney, Australia, Friday, Oct. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

The Sydney Opera House sails show photos of Britain's King Charles soon after his arrival in Sydney, Australia, Friday, Oct. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

The Sydney Opera House sails show photos of Britain's King Charles and Queen camilla soon after their arrival in Sydney, Australia, Friday, Oct. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Britain's King Charles and Queen Camilla arrive in Sydney for the start of a five-day tour to Australia, Friday, Oct. 18, 2024. (Dean Lewins/AAP Image via AP)

Britain's King Charles meets Ms Sam Mostyn, Governor-General of Australia, on his arrival in Sydney for the start of a five-day tour to Australia, Friday, Oct. 18, 2024. (Brook Mitchell/Pool Photo via AP)

Britain's King Charles shakes hands with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on his arrival into Sydney for the start of a five-day tour to Australia, Friday, Oct. 18, 2024. (Brook Mitchell/Pool Photo via AP)

FILE - Britain's King Charles III and Queen Camilla wave to the crowds as they arrive by carriage in the parade ring on the third day of the Royal Ascot, horse race meeting, traditional known as Ladies Day, at Ascot, England, on June 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)

Britain's Queen Camilla arrives in Sydney for the start of a five day tour to Australia, Friday, Oct. 18, 2024. (Brook Mitchell/Pool Photo via AP)

Britain's King Charles III and Queen Camilla arrive in Sydney for the start of a five day tour to Australia, Friday, Oct. 18, 2024. (Brook Mitchell/Pool Photo via AP)

DELPHI, Ind. (AP) — A murder trial in the 2017 killings of two teenage girls was beginning Friday in the small Indiana town where the teens and the man charged with killing them all lived.

Richard Allen, 52, is accused of killing 13-year-old Abigail Williams and 14-year-old Liberty German. Their deaths had gone unsolved for more than five years when Allen, then a pharmacy worker, was arrested in the case that has drawn outsized attention from true-crime enthusiasts.

Allen had been there all along in Delphi, living and working in the community of about 3,000 people in northwest Indiana. He faces two counts of murder and two counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping. If convicted, Allen could face up to 130 years in prison.

Nearly two years after his October 2022 arrest, opening statements are scheduled to begin before a special judge in the Carroll County Courthouse, just blocks from the pharmacy where Allen had worked. A panel of jurors has been brought in from nearly 100 miles (160 kilometers) away. They'll be sequestered throughout what's expected to be a monthlong trial, banned from watching the news and allowed limited use of their cellphones to call relatives while monitored by bailiffs.

The judge also barred reporting from the courtroom while trial is in session.

Prosecutors said during this week’s jury selection in Fort Wayne that they plan to call about 50 witnesses. Allen’s defense attorneys expect to call about 120 people. The 12 jurors and four alternates will receive preliminary instructions Friday morning before hearing opening statements.

The case has seen repeated delays, some surrounding a leak of evidence, the withdrawal of Allen’s public defenders and their later reinstatement by the Indiana Supreme Court. It's also the subject of a gag order.

The teens, known as Abby and Libby, were found dead on Feb. 14, 2017, in a rugged, wooded area about a quarter-mile from the Monon High Bridge Trail. The girls went missing the day before while hiking that trail just outside their hometown. Within days, police released files found on Libby’s cellphone that they believed captured the killer's image and voice — two grainy photos and audio of a man saying “down the hill.”

Investigators also released one sketch of a suspect in July 2017 and another in April 2019. And they released a brief video showing a suspect walking on an abandoned railroad bridge, known as the Monon High Bridge. After more years passed without a suspect identified, investigators said they went back and reviewed “prior tips."

Investigators found that Allen had been interviewed in 2017. He told an officer he had been walking on the trail the day Abby and Libby went missing and had seen three “females” at a bridge called the Freedom Bridge but did not speak to them, according to an affidavit.

Allen told the officer that as he walked from that bridge to the Monon High Bridge he did not see anyone but was distracted, “watching a stock ticker on his phone as he walked."

Police interviewed Allen again on Oct. 13, 2022, when he said he had seen three “juvenile girls” during his walk in 2017. Investigators searched Allen’s home and seized a .40-caliber pistol. Prosecutors said testing determined that an unspent bullet found between Abby and Libby’s bodies “had been cycled through” Allen’s gun.

According to the affidavit, Allen said he’d never been to the scene and “had no explanation as to why a round cycled through his firearm would be at that location.”

Allen County Superior Court Judge Fran Gull, now overseeing the Carroll County trial, has ruled that prosecutors can present evidence of dozens of incriminating statements they say Allen made during conversations with correctional officers, inmates, law enforcement and relatives. That evidence includes a recording of a telephone call between Allen and his wife in which, prosecutors say, he confesses to the killings.

Allen’s defense attorneys have sought to argue that the girls were killed in a ritual sacrifice by members of a pagan Norse religion and white nationalist group known as the Odinists.

Prosecutors have not disclosed how the teens were killed. But a court filing by Allen’s attorneys in support of their ritual sacrifice theory states their throats had been cut.

Decorated stones bearing the names of Abigail Williams and Liberty German, who were killed in February 2017, are placed at a memorial along the Monon High Bridge Trail in Delphi, Ind., Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

Decorated stones bearing the names of Abigail Williams and Liberty German, who were killed in February 2017, are placed at a memorial along the Monon High Bridge Trail in Delphi, Ind., Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

FILE - Grandparents of victim Libby German, Becky Patty, left, and her husband Mike Patty, speak during a news conference for the latest updates on the investigation of the double homicide of Liberty German and Abigail Williams on Thursday, March 9, 2017, at Carroll County Courthouse in Delphi, Ind. (J. Kyle Keener/The Pharos-Tribune via AP, File)

The Soldiers and Sailors Monument on the grounds of the Carrol County Court House is shown in Delphi, Ind., Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

FILE - Officers escort Richard Allen out of the Carroll County courthouse following a hearing, Nov. 22, 2022, in Delphi, Ind. Allen, of Delphi, is scheduled to go on trail Oct. 14, 2024 for the slayings of two teenage girls, Liberty German, 14, and Abigail Williams, 13, who were killed while hiking in 2017 near their small community in northern Indiana hometown. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings, File)

A Delphi Police Department vehicle drives under the Monon High Bridge Tail in Delphi, Ind., Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)