7. The Trial

Murder in Illinois is a production of iHeartRadio. In August of twenty twelve, five years after the deaths of his family, Christopher Vaughn's case headed to court. Vaughn's initial defense team had been dismantled when its funding evaporated, so he was now represented by a public defender. Here's Bill Clutter.

By the time the death penalty was abolished, it was March of twenty eleven, so we had been investigating the case and learning the case for entire four years, and then once those resources went away, when it was no longer a capital case, the funding reverted to.

The county prosecutors had originally planned to try this case as a death penalty case, but in the five years since the murder, the death penalty has been abolished here in the state of Illinois, and the fund used to pay for Christopher Vaughn's public defenders has been eliminated.

He now has new attorneys.

Something that would have a mixed impact on Vaughn.

The good news is they're abolishing the death penalty. The bad news is they're abolishing the death penalty, which means you don't get the resources to defend yourself before trial and in many cases, prosecutors were making those decisions to file their intent not to seek the death penalty because it would.

Do just that.

The defense that Vaughn ended up going to that courtroom with as compared to the level that the prosecution had at the time, how would you categorize it?

People use the analogy of David versus Goliath, but in this case it was David versus Godzilla.

I'm Lauren bred Pacheco, and this is murder in Illinois.

But you did ja you you.

Do?

To recap Christopher Vaughan was held without bond in the Will County Jail in Illinois, So from the time he was arrested at his family's funeral in two thousand and seven until the time of his trial in twenty twelve, he'd spent the last five years of his life in jail.

Well.

John Rogers and Jerry Killian were both expert lawyers, and they worked very hard on it for four years, and they knew the thing inside and out, and they they were ready to go to trial, but they kept the state kept putting them off. If you're on trial for murder in Illinois, like Chris was, the state pays the

And we couldn't afford I mean, our house wasn't even a fit in a bucket compared to the money that we would have had to provide.

Right, I mean, the lawyers told us that this trial was probably costing the State of Illinois somewhere into the centy of ten to twenty million dollars, and I thought, well, that's a lot for lawyers.

You know, the State of Illinois also drug it out for four years. That's kind of their own fault.

So lawyers just said, hey, look, you know we can't finish the thing pro bono. They offered the State of Illinois like two hundred and fifty thousand If you give us two hundred fifty thousand to finish the case, and the state of Illinois wouldn't do it. But then they hired our public defender and his two associates to get

And Pierre had another issue with Chris's new defense.

Well, and this is my opinion, here's the thing.

The public defender lawyers are paid by the same people who pay the prosecuting lawyers and who pay the judges.

It all comes out of the same check book.

So if you're person signing your check insinuates or let you know that this is the way things should go, and.

What are you going to do?

As mentioned before, Chris also had the misfortune of sharing a courthouse with another high profile case that was happening at the same time, along with the press frenzy that accompanied it.

In just the first day, attorneys agreed on twelve of the eighteen jurors they'll need for the Christopher Vaughn trial. It's a trial taking place by the way, in a courtroom literally next door to the murder trial of Drew Peterson.

Christopher Vaughn's trial unfolded in the same courthouse during the same time period under the same state's attorney, James Glasgow. Here's perr Vaughan.

Jude Peterson was a police officer that had a couple wives go missing, and as it turns out, his final trial came up at the same time Chris did.

So it was a meet a circus. There was Chamers TVs set up outside, there was a drawing for seats.

They had to they had to take a drawing for the reporters to get in and take seats in both both cases. And you know, our our judge said that that Drew Peterson's case would not have any reflection on his judgment, but it did. He was he was interviewed by the press just like everybody else, and he wasn't going to be outdone by Drew Peterson's case, let's put

But he was holding a lot of press conferences.

Oh, yes, yes he was. He was running for election.

At this point, the Peterson trial had garnered national attention. Drew Peterson was eventually convicted of killing his third wife, Kathleen Savio, and his fourth wife, still missing to this day, is suspected to have met a similar fate. The case somewhat overshadowed Vaughn's.

This trial is expected to last about six weeks, and interestingly enough, it's being heard right next to the courtroom where the Drew Peterson murder trial is underway.

Running for reelection, Glasgow was quite vocal about his intention to secure convictions for both Peterson and Vaughn, and his opponent at the time accused Glasgow of manipulating the timing of both trials for political purposes. Here's Gail Vaughan.

He was trying to be re elected and he actually used Chris as one of his platforms.

But that wasn't a new development. Glasgow had been consistent on Vaughn even before his funeral day arrest a week after the murders.

Yeah, their very first news conference already decided he was guilty. When it was mister Glasgow and a police commissioner and they were standing up there answering questions for the reporters. They said, yep, well we'll get it, We'll bring him in. They didn't even give him a chance.

Here's Bill Clutter's take on whether those press conferences had a negative impact on Vaughan.

Oh.

I have no doubt about it. I mean, he was already tried and convicted in the media, and you know, just having to go into will County with all of that intense publicity. He was already convicted in the court of public opinion.

Rounding out the hurdles was the police department's apparent tunnel vision as to Chris's guilt. From the very day of the murder. There never seemed to have been much doubt from the state's attorney side of things that Kim was innocent and Chris premeditated the entire thing, and the media and press followed along.

It's typical in many of these cases, and time after time that I've been involved. You know, it's hard enough when you're innocent trying to prove your innocence. But it's even more difficult when you have to overcome the pre trop publicity that's already made up many of the minds of jurors when they walk into that courtroom.

So Chris headed into court with a five year public perception of guilt and very few supporters. Here's Gail.

There was nobody in his corner except our two lawyers and Bill.

That was it.

And we come from a small family, so we didn't have a lot of people to storm the court or anything.

During the trial, the press made much note of Chris's demeanor. His flat affect in particular, was pointed out by many to be indicative of his guilt or lack of remorse. But there are a number of things that likely played into this perception. One was that Chris Vaughn had been in jail for five years before the trial began, and there was much more to that than the public was aware.

Let me run this past you. How about this situation when you're brought over from the jail house to the courthouse you're brought over in your jail clothes, but before you leave the jail you are strip search naked, which goes back on. Get on the bus, go over to the courthouse. There you're given the clothes that we brought him to. Go into court. There again your strip search, cavity search, your closer search, and then you're allowed to addressed.

Guards during the entire trial.

Well, yes, and every hearing.

He didn't give me your.

Response, I'm speechless.

Yeah, we were too.

When did you find out that that was happening?

He was told and threatened on what to do. We didn't find this out until he was in Thenard for a year.

Manard is Illinois's largest maximum security adult male facility. It's considered the toughest prison in Illinois and where Chris would be sent after his conviction.

We finally got him opened up a little bit because at you didn't have to go through a phone system, and even though they had cameras on you, we were able to talk to him a little more personable than when we had been in Joliette.

On the phone.

When I pressed Chris confirmed his treatment at Joliette and commented it actually prepared him for the reality of man At Joliette, it would seem many of the people responsible for overseeing Chris's well being and captivity did everything they could to make life as unpleasant as possible, particularly during his trial your scale and.

While he was in captivity in joliet they had the night night squad that would come in and intimidate and shake them down and strip them and make them stand outside their cells or in their cells.

And toss theirselves looking for contrabands.

While you had nothing on with another group of guys. I mean, Chris was just pummeled from all directions. Psychologically, he was still trying to understand that his family was no longer there. He's being really viciously talk to, and you know, Chris is very sensitive mentally.

According to Pierre and Gale, that treatment intensified during the trial and.

When he was waiting. If there was a break during court and christ was taken out or he arrived at the courthouse early, they were putting in a cell that was unclean.

It reached.

And was nothing there, just a chair in the middle of a small cell room. Period I mean this kind of had something that duty or psyche just the way they mean him a lot.

Once the trial began, the prosecution presented the jury with their version of how the incident occurred. In their series of events, Christopher Vaughan fatally shot everyone in his family on a secluded stretch of the Interstate fifty five frontage road.

Prosecutors alleged Christopher Vaughan pulled their suv onto a frontage road near Shanahan during a family trip, killing them in shooting himself in the leg, but Vaughn says that his wife was the one who pulled the gun. She shot him in the leg, he told investigators before he ran off. Then he claims she killed their kids and herself.

Jurors paid close attention as Fitzgerald highlighted again how blood evidence at the scene of the family's suv did not support Vaughn's version of events on that morning. In June of two thousand and seven.

Recall that Vaughn told investigators repeatedly during his initial questioning that he couldn't remember exactly what happened. Those gaps were used against him. Highly problematic for Vaughn was the fact that in the initial interrogation he gave the impression that he'd left the car before Kimberly shot herself, but her blood was found on the back right of the fleece he'd been wearing, and there were other damning things too.

Prosecutor's claim it was Vaughan who pulled the trigger and staged his own injuries. They say he was hoping to cash in on a one million dollar life insurance policy he had on his wife. They also planned to present evidence that Christopher Vaughan had gone to a gun range the night before the murders and used the same handgun for target practice that was used in the killings.

The prosecution also uncovered more things about Chris that would prove incredibly damaging to his defense. In October and November of two thousand and six, the year prior to the murders, Chris began online correspondence with a man named Steve Willett on a website discussing outdoorsmanship and wilderness survival techniques. They had nicknames for each other. It was Flee and Vaughn was Flint. Chris never mentioned his kids on that site

Prosecutors say Christopher Vaughan killed his family all because he wanted to start a new life in Canada.

And according to the police, Vaughan had been stockpiling wilderness gear. Officers uncovered a storage unit that Vaughn had rented that was full of camping equipment, sleeping bags, boots, and camp tools, in addition to a jar of peanut butter and a bottle of Jameson whiskey. The prosecution was putting together a picture of a man who had kept tons of secrets and was potentially planning to fake his own death and

I mean, not only were the children adorable, Kim had, you know, a lot of friends, was going to school, worked in the poolhouse.

Chris, as quiet as he was, still was.

Providing for his family. I mean, everyone.

Seemed to say he was a nice guy, just very demure. Then you find out, like all the lies in this like alter life that Chris had been having underneath.

Everyone's nose, finding that out, seeing all.

The camping equipment, talking to his online buddy, and planning everything. When that came out, boom, that was like another shock, a huge shock.

The prosecute intended to make mention of Chris's religious beliefs, which he admitted lean towards Druidism, a modern spiritual movement based on Celtic rooted mysticism that celebrates nature.

Attorneys fort Christopher Vaughan are asking me a judge, to bar any mention of his religious beliefs in his upcoming murder trial. They feel drawers will speculate on whether it's a religion or a cult. Prosecutor said they won't discuss Vaughn's religious beliefs, but may present drawers with postings Vaughan made online on a mailing list.

Police had confiscated books on Druidism from von to home.

He later told police during a videotaped interview that his wife was upset with him over his religious beliefs, Druidism, and his recent admission of an afair he had during a business trip to Mexico a year earlier.

Here again is Erica Wurst for me.

One of the big eye opening things was when they brought up the gentlemen from Canada I believe, who Chris had been corresponding with about their great walk into the wild. There's a whole mission here, there's a whole goal here, and not one of those planned missions or goals entail your family or your child. He was lying to people about being married, he was lying to people about having child. That was a big one hearing this guy talk about how he had no idea.

That Chris had a family and he thought that they were going to go do this.

Steve Willett testified at the trial, and the defense walked through all the various messages between him and Vaughn. Here's Bill again, I've.

Read the emails years ago between him and Chris.

So this is the guy Chris found on a wilderness website and he was kind of like an email pen pal, exactly right.

But I mean, the thing about this is they used his testimony to try to establish the narrative that Chris wanted to get rid of his family by killing them so he can go hiking off into the wilderness with his friend that he met online. His testimony was presented and they walked him through the various email communications. Was used to paint Chris in this awfully bad light, you know, just the grind of He got a guy that looks like he's living the American dream. He's got this big

But then there were the strippers. Chris had spent almost four thousand dollars and the weeks prior to the murder in strip clubs.

As many as four exotic dancers are expected to testify that Vaughn frequented strip clubs in Chicago and the suburbs. Months before the murders. He told one of the strippers he was single, and even made bizarre statements about ancient souls.

Chris Vaughn wasn't exactly coming across as a sympathetic defendant. Here's journalist Jojosey, editor of the Herald News.

I don't think anybody really bought into his version of events. And then anything started to come out, with his online relationship with the guy in the Yukon and faking his dad so he get away from his family and they will get the life insurance or whatever it was, the strip clubs and dropping several thousand dollars in a couple weeks on one of the women.

Prosecutors will also show the jury a cryptic poem allegedly found in Vaughn's jail cell that made references to a dancer named Maya that Vaughn had met at the Chicago strip Club.

I'm not mistaken the poems. What were they written in Celtic or something. I mean, that's a unique detail and it's strange. But when you're in jail for murdering your family and you're writing poems about a stripper and running, that's probably not a great optic. So, I mean, the stuff that was coming out, it didn't look good.

Here again is Erica worst When the poem that was written to Maya was read out loud, that was a little disturbing because it showed.

This illusionment of love and less knowing that like his wife's anniversary was like Inja and that was just kind of that betrayal there that she wasn't even aware of what's happening.

So that kind of stufted thousands of dollars he spent on these girls. Granted he didn't get dances from them or have sex with them, but I think just going there and I don't know, sort of like a retrieve for him, get away from his house's going on, all the scouting trips that he lied about. I don't know, tell me what of that is an evidence.

At this point, one might ask why Chris would have gone through all of this trouble when if his marriage was supposedly so bad, he could have just gotten divorced. During Chris's interrogation, the police asked the same question, and then Chris gave the response that would do him zero favors in the courtroom. Divorce is not an option. We'll come back to that. And then there was the murder itself.

They had a large projected screen.

It had to been by foot by.

Seven foot.

I mean it was a huge showing screen, and they had pictures bigger than life.

On this end.

They were awful.

During the display of these photos, the jury focused on Chris, his demeanor, the look on his face.

When the prosecutors put up a seventy two inch big screen and showed all the pictures of the truck, the crime scene, the bodies, every little thing that was involved in it.

You know, they called it evidence.

They showed them all the parts of the crime scene, but they didn't put it all together to make it a crime. And you know, they had this big elaborate thing. They had three or four lawyers on their side. And when our guy got up there to the public defender got up there, he brought up a laptop and set a laptop and a table, you know, with a little to each screen in front of a jury of eighteen people and expected them to be able to see what he was talking about.

The prosecutors put up a big shock and awe performance.

They showed pictures of the children lying dead in the seats, They showed pictures of Kimberly. They just showed pictures to make you feel really shocked.

I mean, it was, it was terrible.

And the whole time the screen was just for the jurors, so the people on.

The defense did not see what they were seeing, but the jury could also see Cress.

The jury was scaring at Chris the whole time, and our our defensive attorney, mister Lenard, had talked to Chris about this before, and Chris had told him, please, I don't want to see those pictures. So when they thought Chris was looking at it on a on these little laptop screen, there was nothing there. We were not seeing the pictures that the jury was, and they based a lot of Chris's emotion on, Wow, he's looking at those and he's looking at a fingernail, or he's staring at

So while the jury believed Chris's lack of reaction was to the pictures of his dead children, he was in fact seeing nothing and he was doing exactly as he was instructed by his lawyer. But what the rest of the court was seeing was horrifying. Here's Erica worst.

They were horrible.

They were horrible.

You have little babies with you know, bullet wounds that were zooming up on and seeing and Kim with her hand like slouched like owned by the Center Council kind of.

And she's got her wedding ring on.

That's one that's like seered into my head just because you know, it's so sad there's a wedding ring, there's blood. It's just something hard to look at, you know, even to see the kids clothing and Kim's clothing. Every part of it just shouldn't have happened. Then when you see that it actually did and it's real, you know, it takes it to another level. Blake, Casandra and Abigail, we've seen them alive and smiling in pictures. Oh, I seriously

So Blake was behind Kimberley, Cassandra was in the center, and Abigail was behind the driver's seat.

Uh huh.

And was was Abigail holding a Harry Potter book?

You know, there was repower book.

They had a little.

Mickey mouse tissue thing. Pretty sure there was like a Charlotte's web in there somewhere. They had blankets. They got up at four in the morning, you know how they were just probably groggy and still asleep. And you know, you find Blake with his hands up and a defensive motion.

That's another thing, is that just makes me lose my breath. Is like he's looking at either one of.

His parents holding.

A gun to him.

And then the other two girls are watching what happened to the next one. And I always think about that they're stuck in that back car and they're watching their siblings get killed one after another, knowing their next and.

The fear and the terror.

Remember the emotion, and even the recollection of those photos will come back to it later.

And then to see Kim in the front seat, in her seatbelt of courses of and you see where the gun is, but she's leading. That's hard to see. And then you see Chris with a womb to.

His sky and they risked.

So yeah, there's no comparison. There's no comparison. Don't five people, one in the car, one left.

The prosecution also pointed out that Chris's behavior after the shootings did not line up with someone whose family had just been killed. The medics who attended to Christopher, Bond and the ambulance were called to testify. They said Christopher never made inquiries about Kim or Abigail, or Cassandra or Blake, but one medic recalled Chris Vaughn expressed concern about his cowboy boots.

Now, while in the emergency room after the shootings, he reportedly was upset about blood on his cowboy boots. Taken all together, certainly this is evidence that seems difficult to overcome.

Chris had sustained non life threatening gunshot wounds, which the prosecution contended could easily have been self inflicted. To help his case, here's Erica worst again.

In the ambulance. He is yelling at them about cutting off his boots and not ruining his jacket because he got it in the Yukon and.

It's just so narcissistic.

I was like, Holy, how is that your main concern right now?

Is that your main concern?

And they're like, maybe he doesn't know his family and kids are killed down the road, Like I wouldn't have blessed my family and kids killed down the road. I don't know, that's the thing. It could have dreams about it every day.

The defense did not have experts who could counter that perception in terms of Chris's psychological or dissociative state.

Here's Pierre Well, at that time, Chris didn't know his family was dead. All Chris knew was that his wife shot him.

And his blood was on his boots.

And when he got into the ambulance, rather than pull his boot off, they were going to cut the boot off, and at all he did was ask them not to cut the boot off, just take the boot off. And somehow this guy all construed around that he didn't care for his family.

The defense made the case Kim had been experiencing erratic behavior leading up to the incident, and again tried to argue the culprit for her rapid swing in behavior could have been one of the medications she was prescribed for her migraines, Topomax, which was flagged by the FDA after the killings. Here's Gail.

Nearly two years passed before the FDA issued new warning labels and medication guides for Topamax. The warning labels inserted into the medications advised patients to immediately call their health provider if they were experiencing new or worse anxiety, feeling agitated or restless, having panic attacks, new or worse irritability, and unusual changes in moods or behavior. This was documented from one of her doctors after one of her visits.

Was that discussed in the case in court.

Not really, It was kind of skirted around.

We had a specialist, doctor Healey, who was supposed to talk about this, but the judge disallowed him because he said doctor Healey would only be giving his opinion, not facts. This entire investigation was a tunnel vision and it infected the entire group, and they only saw Chris as the villain. They didn't seek Kim as a person that was asking for help.

The testimony of other possible expert witnesses for the defense, like doctor Terry Kellyan, who diagnosed Vaughan with dissociative amnesia, was also dismissed as opinion. And then there were other issues that play. Chris's sister in law, Rachel, was called to testify about a phone call she'd received from Kimberly Vaughn shortly before the killings. Here's her take on the team defending Chris.

All I can say is I know they were not very organized with me. I remember the lawyer called me once before the trial started, and he said that will probably call you to talk about your phone call. The trial's coming, but I don't know if I'm going to be called or when. So I finally called him and I said, am I supposed to be coming? Because I have to make plans. I have three children at that point and no family in town, so I need to know what's going on. And he finally said, well, we're

In cases of this level, witnesses are usually walked through their testimony and prepared for possible cross examination. Rachel took the stand without the time to even revisit a statement she'd given five years before, one in which Kim confided about two emotional outbursts she'd had in recent months, one with Chris's parents, the other involving an issue with one of the children's schools.

I remember talking to Bill Clutter and him saying, I'm going to write down what you are saying, and I said, okay. Well, five years later, I'm sitting outside a courtroom and they hand me a piece of paper and say, this was your statement. At that moment, I didn't remember giving a statement. I had never seen it. I had no idea, and so I cannot remember if the incident at school, because she just said something happened. I was with either a

Apparently the defense had wanted Rachel to also testify about a comment Kim made on that call about her doctor, but in the end it wasn't allowed.

I only know this because I could hear them talking to the judge. But they were trying to get me to be able to say what Kim said about her doctor and what her dad thought about her doctor and that kind of stuff. But then they were, you know, hearsay, and it was too many layers in the chain there, and so they didn't allow them to ask that question. I told my husband that when I was done testifying and I walked out of the room, my very first thought was he's going to be convicted. It was in

The prosecution made their closing arguments and the jury came back with the decision in fifty minutes. Here's Pierre.

But they came into the court room at nine o'clock and for some reason, the prosecution was running along and they asked the jurors if they wanted to take a break for lunch, and they said no, they wanted to get the thing done and over with because it was a Friday, six weeks everybody was tired of it. And then we listened to the prosecution's closing statement that lasted three hours and went through all the evidence, but never

Here's Erica Wurst's take.

I was surprised at how fast it came in. That's going to be one of the fastest I've been in. I don't even think they got to lunch time yet before it was thrown back, you know. And if it did take any longer than that, it was because they were sitting in their back having loans.

But you know, it was a swift verdict, and that was the shocking part to me. But it just meant that they had their minds made up and that there wasn't a whole lot of tits for ted or questions coming back or anything. So they seemed pretty confident in their verdict.

The reaction in the courtroom was about what one would expect. Here's Jojosey.

Was anybody surprised with the verdict?

I don't.

I don't think anyone was surprised at all by the verdict.

And the emotion Erica worst remembers came from the Phillips side.

It was crying on Kim's side.

Chris got up and I just, you know, read my notes the other day and it was like he got up and he didn't even look back at his.

Family while he was being taken away. And I just remember thinking that was that because he felt bad and he didn't want to look.

At your mom?

Is that because it was too hard to look at your mom? Is that why didn't he look back? So that that was weird. It's always a Chris cross of jubilation and utter heart breaks. But Kim did have a lot more people on that wanted justice served.

Christopher Vaughan was found guilty on four counts of first degree murder of his wife and three children, and sentenced to four life sentences. A decision Erica Worst, who covered the entire trial, agreed with when we first started speaking about the case.

I believe with.

Ninety eight point nine percent, Shorty.

That Crusher Vaughn chilled his wife the early and freak.

I don't know so that you can show me anything outside of a confession that would prove otherwise. I mean, lots of convicts maintain or innocence. It's not unheard of. I'm not surprised that he's maintaining his innocince. I don't think I'll ever admit to killing his children in his life. It was Kim then guess why she can't tell us now?

Are there a couple of.

Things maybe you guys can find out or stick in or poking? Sure, no trial is invalluable.

Here is the Will County State's attorney James Glasgow, at a press conference after the verdict.

What this guy did here was a diabolical atrocity, and he's a heartless, soulless psychopath. That's the bottom line. That's what he is, without any compassion, without any empathy for other human beings. There isn't a punishment that fits this crime. You could lock them up for five hundred lifetimes and it would not compensate the victims in this case or the family members.

Fourteen years after the tragedy and nearly a decade after that statement, Bill Clutter remains deeply frustrated by the verdict.

We had experts that were prepared. We had the world's leading expert on medications causing homicidal and smicidal behavior, and that expert never testified. The jury never heard from that expert. We had two experts working on that issue. We had an expert in psychology working on dissociative amnesia to explain that to the jury. That wasn't done.

Clutter believes it could have made a difference.

The defense presented its theory of defense that this was a murder suicide. Obviously it was ineffective, but how so what else could have maybe turned their decision? Maybe hearing from key experts had never heard from.

Here's attorney Keith Altman, who would have been one of those experts.

That the available evidence was not presented to a jury and for them to have made a decision based.

Upon the evidence, that's what superior.

If the evidence was given to a jury properly and they decided to convict him anyway, then at least he had his day in court.

So that's not what happened, and that's just it. There was evidence given by the prosecution with regards to the crime scene that simply didn't and still does not align with expert opinion, and based on new revelations, not all the circumstantial evidence holds up to scrutiny. If all the evidence were presented fully, what would it have shown?

Money of black Oh, the same shape and side.

The nice indeed them.

The sense of vision.

He going Garrio, She.

Just changed Nzo roads.

On the next episode of Murder in Illinois, will carefully re examine the issues that remain regarding the crime scene.

She would have protected her kids like she was a mama bear.

And explain inconsistencies and key elements of the prosecution's version of events.

I didn't see any good psychiatric analyzes in.

These and scrutinize the way evidence was handled and.

That's completely contrary to the initial belief of the state's attorney.

To see if combined these things could have raised reasonable doubt. Murdered Illinois is a production of iHeartRadio. Executive producers are Lauren bred Pacheco and Taylor Chackoyine written by Lauren bred Pacheco and Matthew Riddle, story editing by Matthew Riddle, editing and sound designed by Evan Tyre and Taylor Chackoine, featuring music by Cicada Rhythm and new compositions engineered and mixed by Van Tyre and Taylor Chackoine. Archived news reports provided