Murder in Illinois is a production of iHeartRadio. On September twenty first, twenty twelve, a Will County jury consisting of eight men and four women deliberated for less than fifty minutes before convicting Christopher Vaughan of killing his wife and three children in the family's suv in two thousand and seven in a bid to start a new life in the Canadian wilderness. Over the course of five weeks, jury foreman Dan Lachet and his fellow jurors heard from nearly
ninety witnesses and saw more than seven hundred exhibits. Afterwards, Lachet expressed his interest in writing a book on the case and told press there was no doubt in the juror's minds of Vaughn's guilt, and they never even considered the defense argument that Vaughn's wife committed the murders. He also referenced Vaughn's flat demeanor, saying, quote, if you watched him throughout the trial like we did, I think you'd
come to the same conclusion as we did. In this episode, we'll break down the circumstantial and forensic evidence that possibly led to a conviction based on what could be emotional and confirmation bias. I'm Lauren brad Pacheco, and this is murder in Illinois. Let's start with two words. You've almost heard more in this podcast than Christopher or Vaughn. Tunnel vision.
In legal terms, it's defined as a tendency fueled by bias and pressure that leads actors in the criminal justices to single mindedly focus on a suspect and build a case for conviction while ignoring evidence that points away from guilt. Bill Clutter believes it was in play throughout the case against Vaughn.
This really is a text book case of tunnel vision and confirmatory bias. Because each fact that they would discover and learn about Chris his secret life of going to script clubs, Aha, you know, just reinforces you did it because he already started with that assumption.
Clutter characterizes the combination of tunnel vision and confirmation bias as something Vaughn referenced in their first jail house meeting, a perfect storm.
Every time they would find a new bad fact for Chris that you're spending thousands of dollars on script clubs. You went to the gun range the day before. You've got this fantasy of hiking into the Yukon and never coming back and leaving your family. I mean, these are
all bad facts in terms of painting character. So it was almost a piling on effect that every time they would discover some fact like that, it just reinforced their belief that he did it without really conducting the type of objective investigation that the crime scene investigator Bob Deal was urging them to do. Followed the evidence, followed the CSI rather than your gut instincts.
You've also heard Bob Deel's name a bunch. The former Illinois State Police crime investigator played a role in both high profile cases that unfolded in the Will County Courthouse in twenty twelve. So even as he was trying to raise flags in the handling of Vaughn's case, Deal was being maligned for his handling of the Drew Peterson case. Deal, along with others, had initially ruled out foul play in the bathtub drowning of Peterson's third wife, Kathleen Savio. In
pursuing their case against Peterson. Prosecutors laid blame for that ruling on the former Illinois State Police crime investigator, which also made it easy to discredit Deal's thoughts on the Bond case unfolding across the hall. Here's clutter.
Let me say something about Bob Deal and his defense, because this also runs along that same argument, because when Chris is being tried, it's simultaneous to the Drew Peterson case. And Bob Deal wasn't the only one that assumed that Peterson's wife drowned in this bathtub. It was also the medical examiner that determines cause of death. So it's not like they can point to one case where he got it wrong and therefore disregard everything you say about this other case.
In his initial crime scene report, Bob Deal listed Kimberly Vaughan as suspect number one and Chris Vaughn as suspect number two. In his deposition, Deal contends his removal from the Vaughn investigation was because his processing of the crime scene did not dismiss the possibility that Kim Vaughn may have in fact killed her children, shot Chris, and then
committed suicide. Because Deal's opinion was at odds with the Illinois State Police and the Will County State's Attorney, Deale believes he was removed from anything to do with the case. In fact, he was asked to never process another crime scene in will County. Deal felt investigators retrofitted the evidence to fit their theory that Vaughan was standing outside the passenger door when he shot his wife and kids, a theory that Sergeant Gary Lawson came up with the day
of the tragedy. In his deposition, Deal says he told Sergeant Lawson that based on the crime scene evidence, that was quote friggin' impossible. Back to Bill Clutter, how did the jury react to Deal's allegation of tunnel vision an immediate bias against Vaughn, Well.
They didn't get to hear that evidence. The judge wouldn't allow a Deal to testify to the judge denied it.
The judge wouldn't allow him to testify about the call he received from Ken Kopis, who was the commander of the investigation unit of the only state police, that they felt that the husband did it, and wouldn't allow Deal to testify about his participation in the major case review that included the entire investigative team, including the state's attorney James Glascow, where Glascow offered his opinion that Kim was
an angel. There's no way she could have done this, and Deal told him that the crime scene evidence can't eliminate her as having done this. In fact, much of the forensic evidence supports that she did, and they weren't willing to listen to the objective, basically, the science based evidence.
It struck me when I was rereading Deal's deposition that he claims that Sergeant Gary Lawson came up with the theory of Vaughn standing outside the passenger window with the gun, killing Kim and then the kids the same day as the murders.
That's right, and Deal had him demonstrate his theory with an unloaded gun, and then he went about demonstrating to Lawson why the bullet trajectory evidence didn't support that theory. And you know that's significant.
Looking back now. Was there an unwillingness to examine the evidence objectively? And how does the prosecution's case against Christopher Vaughn hold up. Let's start with Vaughn's time and money spent its strip clubs, the first of multiple damning revelations that would make headlines after the murders. Here again is Bill Clutter.
It's a tactic of the prosecutor. The goal is to get the jury to hate the defendant, and there's a lot of ways they do this. In this case, they did it over the fact that he had visited Scores strip club on two occasions dropped I think almost five thousand dollars over the course of two nights. That was a character assassination. And you know, there's millions of people go to strip clubs. They don't go home and kill their wife and kids.
During the trial, the prosecution leaned heavily on morality, portraying Vaughn's visits to strip clubs in the weeks before the murders as incriminating. Was the money spent on strippers anything more than circumstantial? And was it utilized as character assassination to sway a jury without hard evidence. Being unfamiliar with the field, I turned to an expert on the sub Chase, Kelly.
I have been stripping for thirteen years and working.
In strip clubs since two thousand and one.
I am pretty well versed in.
The strip club world.
I also coach entertainos for a living, so I pretty much have spoken to somebody in every club in the country and some internationally as well.
So from your experience in terms of working with your clients, your regulars, what percentage of men and I know this isn't a scientific answer, but in your opinion, what percentage of guys who come in are married?
Let's say it's probably around sixty five to seventy five percent. This is a married man sport.
While she's not involved in the Bond case, Chase is an authority on the types of clubs he visited. Because Vaughn had gone to strip clubs and he'd spent five grand, they made this sleep that he wasn't a family man.
That somebody would suggest that because somebody is going to a strip club that they don't love their family. That's crazy to me, crazy, and I have been working in these clubs for twenty years.
The prosecution and press focused on the thousands of dollars and time Bond spent at clubs as indicative of his level of betrayal. To quote the prosecution, he's not serious about working on his marriage. If he was, he would be in bed next to Kimberly. Here are Chase Kelly's thoughts.
I think if a man wanted to cheat, he would do it for free or cheaper. If a man wants to sleep with somebody else, he's going to go and do that. If you want to preserve your marriage, you don't want to cheat.
You go to a strip club.
There's no cheating because there's no release, there's no physical contact on that level. It's somebody to listen to you, talk to you, somebody who make you laugh, a break from your life. You know how many great husbands and amazing fathers I've met that has spent five thousand dollars on me with not a question.
To be asked about a five thousand.
Dollars is a normal amount of spending a club. Some people might say, oh my gosh, that's crazy. That's a crazy amount of money. But somebody spends five thousand dollars in my club every night.
How does that bill get wrung up?
That's two hours, five thousand dollars, two hours in a private room.
Again, that money wouldn't be buying what many have assumed. Contact is not allowed.
The lapdance is what twenty thirty forty dollars depending on where you are, that you're just getting the boobs in the face right when you start spending that bigger money. Generally, what we see is that the clients become less sexual and more pockative, comfortable, relaxed. They can melt into the chair and you can ask them questions, and that's how you keep a guy m VIP for two hours.
So the two women that Vaughn met in clubs, a woman named Maya and a woman named Crystal. I've had a lot of trouble tracking them down because of the nature of the crime, but they testified and they both said he was an absolute gentleman and that he just wanted to talk.
Don't see why they would have any reason to lie about that. It's very, very common for a guy to go into a club and just have a laugh and leave it behind for a minute, although many people do use clubs as therapy because of the amount of anonymity that they are granted.
Anonymity played into the case against Vaughn with the strippers as well as Willett. Vaughn's wilderness pen pal Chris did not share that he was married or had children, but that too can be viewed through a different lens. Back to Chase, do you think that it's odd that he told one of the women that he wasn't married and he didn't have kids. No, in what sense.
It's a fantasy world, right, So he gets to, you know, dissociate from his wife for a little bit and get to be somebody else. When I go into the club, I change my name, I change my voice, I changed my hair, I change the way that I walk, I change the way that I smile. It's a fantasy. Some people need it as escapism and some people need it as a space of acceptance. Right, So both are valid.
So we create a place.
It's harmless fun. We are performers, and honestly, I think if more wives knew how we conducted our business, they say thank you to us instead of quilifying us so much.
I really do agree or not.
This does offer a perspective the places what was circumstantial evidence in another life. Another focus of the prosecution was the Wilderness Forum Vaughn joined. There is a specific quote from Henry David Throw that Vaughn posted. If you are ready to leave father and mother and brother and sister and wife and child and friends, if you never see them again. If you have paid your debts and made your will and settled your affairs and are a freeman,
then you are ready for a walk. This was presented as evidence Vaughn was ready for that walk but held back by his family. In addition to the forum posts and emails to Steve Willett, focus was placed on a storage locker that Vaughn had rented and filled with camping equipment. The locker wasn't registered to Chris's home address, but rather a private PO box, and the alternate contact was Larry Vaughn, not his wife. To the prosecution, this was more evidence
of murderous intent. Here's reporter Erica Wurst's recollections.
Fantasizing that was and I described before is maniacal. He was of set the storage unit like not in the fact that he didn't store any of it in his empty basement while you're clearly hiding something. That whole thing, I mean, if you're looking for motivation. In his emails, he was sending to his little homeboy talking about wanting to leave all of his obligations and take the walk, and he had to tie things up at home first.
And you could look at all that both ways though, if he wants him to have the money, or it could just be like I'm going to tie things up at home first. You gotta look at it all.
But if one's decided someone is a murderer, everything they do can seem like a sinister act. That is confirmation bias. So let's suppose just for a minute that the storage locker full of equipment wasn't for Chris to run off into the wilderness. Then why did he have it? I wanted to know what Chris's parents thought. Can you guys explain to me your understanding of why Chris had that storage facility?
We are going to try to go to Canada, Pierre and I and Chris and his family, and he was starting to accumulate the stuff the family and he was going to need, and we were starting to talk about it, and we weren't going to do it until the following August, sometime after between when the black flies start and cold weather in.
We hadn't really.
Penpointed it, but he figured he'd just start getting things together so that.
When we said, okay, this is what we're going to do, he would have it.
Okay, did he have that storage facility before they moved into the house. Is it something they had when they were in the apartment.
I don't know when he got it, actually, but he did tell us that he was starting to put stuff in the storage facility units so that I would get mixed in with the basement full of stuff.
There's a photo of Vaughn wearing a cowboy hat standing outside that storage facility. There's snow on the ground, and it's not a selfie. He appears to be holding his cell phone and or his BlackBerry in his hand.
And we don't even know where this picture came from.
Somebody had taken but.
We don't know who.
They didn't know who Larry Vaughn was either. When I emailed Chris for clarification about the storage facility, he referenced that picture without prompting quote. The storage facility was rented after we moved into the house. We did have extra storage space in the apartment, but that was moved into the basement at the house. The plan was to sort through the basement, get rid of stuff, and place the
remainder in the new facility, which was smaller. Needless to say, it was a task that was easy to put off to next month, so I had not gotten around to it. Kim had been at the facility with me. There's a picture on the website she'd taken of me in front
of the Orange Doors. Unquote, Vaughan explained the po box belonged to the company he'd started in Washington Stonebridge because he thought he could write it off as a business expense, and that Larry was a name he made up on the spot when the worker at the facility insisted he provide an alternate contact, not living in the same residence. If all that's true, the storage facility wasn't a secret stockpile, but a mixture of things from previous and future camping trips.
Keep in mind, Chris definitely came from a family with an unusual passion for extreme outdoor activities. Here's Pierre.
That's one thing Chris wanted to do is show his kids, you know, how well they have it by taking him out in the wilderness and having them experience the wilderness life versus everything served to you, my inconveniency, a lot of modern conveniences.
They made a big deal of the storage unit in the trial. Did the defense ever explain it the way you guys just explained it to me?
No, there was all one side of the defense never defended it at all.
As far as I could.
Recollect, I have obtained both the pobox contract and the receipt from the storage facility. The Oswego PO box is in fact clearly attributed to Stonebridge and was used for mail forwarded from Bond's Washington consulting firm. In addition, it was specified to receive items addressed to both Christopher and Kemberley vonn and the contract is dated December twenty ninth, two thousand and five, coinciding with the family's move to Illinois.
The storage facility receipt is marked with the address of that PEO box in our emails. Here's how Chris characterized his communication with Willett and the Wilderness website quote, Hiking and camping was a hobby I truly enjoyed. In Washington, the kids and I spent a lot of time hiking the nearby trails. We loved our outdoor adventures. I had hiking trail books for western Washington. The kids and I spent nearly as much time selecting and planning trips together as we actually did.
Hiking.
Camping in Washington was regulated to the backyard, but we spent a lot of time in the tent or the treehouse we built out back. Kim occasionally came hiking, but never joined us camping in Illinois. The kids were more occupied with school and their own activities, so hadn't got back to hiking yet. Plus it was Illinois. I continued to take time here and there to get outside, still very much interested. My trips grew in scope, but I
was never serious about wilderness survival. That was online boasting among other enthusiasts. I liked I could take a trip to the woods and then return to my comfortable life with modern conveniences. If Vaughn's desire was to escape those modern conveniences and his marriage, he also seemed to be
making contradictory efforts to salvage it. During Vaughn's initial interrogation, he was asked multiple questions about his relationship with Kim Chris never spoke disparagingly about her, and in fact spoke actively about their future plans. He also mentioned attempts to reconcile things with his wife. You've heard this exchange during the police questioning before, but it bears repeating.
Let's take there on a honeymoon this weekend. We're going to go back to Herman where we had our first honeymoon. Two things all over again.
Who's going to launch kids.
My mom and her sister heaven out on Friday, So yeah, they're coming to the house to watch the kids for the weekend. Believe Kim and I, it was a surprise. I didn't want her to have to worry about any details or anything like that. So I set up and I told her parents. I told my parents to kind of coordinate the details.
But uh, I was gonna take her cause.
So your mom and your sister, No, my mom and my aunt her sister. Yeah, we're gonna come up Friday. When were they supposed to show up around dune or so maybe something? And and Kim had no idea they were coming.
I was gonna tell her later today.
What if she would have said, I going ain't gonna happen.
I don't know why she would have said that, Like this is it was gonna be good.
Do you think one the weekend of sex with your wife is gonna make her forget that you've been having sex with all these other women?
You think it wasn't all these other world cup it's just one time of Mexico and it was a start.
Well, we do know Vaughn did make those herman reservation and plans. Kim apparently had found out about something because she had put in for time off from her pool job. That was used against Vaughn, but others knew and could have tipped her off as to the surprise. The marriage and the last minute nature of the water park trip also came up in Vaughn's initial questioning over the.
Last couple of months, I've been trying to work to make things better than that was what the honeymoon was all about. And you know, I'd looked into Emmy. She'd mentioned spend more time with kids. Were off for summer break, and I thought, well, we're gone on Friday, We're not going to be back until Sunday, and the next weekend her parents are coming up, and then a couple of weeks after that, the kids are going to be in Saint Louis for.
A couple of weeks.
So we didn't we don't have any like the five less family time. So I said, fine, you know, let's let's.
Go to a water park.
And you know, one of the things that had come up is one of the water parks that we passed in Springfield when we met her parents there, and you know, and I said, Dad, and She's like.
Fine, you know, want's do that, but we're last minute trips unusual for Vaughn and his family. I asked a former neighbor from Illinois named Barbara. Did the family do strange things like take last minute trips when you knew them in the apartment.
Yeah, they took trips quite a bit because they had this it was like a luggage wreck on the top of their car, and they would take it off and put it back on. Yeah, they would go to water parks and on different trips.
Yeah, it was kind of flagged as you know, this last minute trip. But then speaking to to other family members, they did quirky trips all the time. Last minute.
Yeah they were. That's not the first trip that I've seen them go on. They've gone on quite a few because I remember because of the longa trip. So no, that wouldn't have been like, you know, just one trip that they chose that was last minute. They went often to you know, different places.
In addition to being an aunt of Alexa, the friend of Abigail we met in a previous episode, Barbara was close to Kim and offers insight into her personality and mothering.
I felt she was pretty adjusted and then I ended up finding out she was in school online getting her criminal justice degree, and she had a lot, a lot of irons in the fire with her kids, which she always put her kids first everything. She would be in the classroom, going to drop them off, going to pick them up, just always there for them. Whatever activities they were involved in, she was there.
So she seemed like super mom.
Yes, I called her the mother of all mothers. And the reason why I called her that is because Kim never raised her voice. She was always so calm, and I started asking her questions like you don't ever get angry and raise your voice, because I've never seen a raise your voice at her kids. And it just shocked me because at some point some mom says, don't do that or what are you doing? But Kim was always just calm with her voice, and she always told her kids use your words all the time. I heard that
from her. Her husband was out of town a lot. I met him once, but I spent, you know, some time with Kim and the kids.
I know that you only met him once, But do you remember any impressions of Chris.
Yes, Chris was a really nice guy. He was very kind, But I don't know why the hairs on my neck stood up when I met him. I can't even explain it. I can't. He was a nice guy. He wasn't rude or mean or anything like that. But I don't know what I was sensing. And I just said hello and I left.
And this is how many people who knew Kim felt that Chris was quiet, sort of offbeat, and that Kim was just a vibrant, wonderful mother. All these years later, Barbara remains upset and confused as to what actually happened that day.
It was unbelievable. I cried so hard. I given one. I think about it now, it makes me sad. Oh, they were such good kids. Kim was such a good mother, you know, lady was the mother of all mothers. She was so good to her kids. What in the world happened? What happened? And I'm like, whatever they were saying on the news was not making sense. When the stories came out that Chris said that she shot the kids and then shot him, and I'm like, no, no, no, no, Kim,
the Kim I know would never do that. Kim, the Kim I know would have put her body on her kids and covered her kids up. So in my.
Mind, I thought he would have had to shoot her first, because she would have She would have protected her kids like she was a mama bear. She was the mother of all mothers. Kim would have laid her body over those kids, I'm telling you right now, Oh God, she would have covered them, canceled. She would have thought with all she had.
We'll revisit this later, But there was absolutely no sign of struggle. Kim did not have defensive wounds, bruises, pulled hair, nothing that suggests she was held in place while a shot was placed with precision, just slightly away from the soft area under her chin. And when her nails were scraped, they did not contain Christopher Vaughn's DNA. You mentioned that she had migraines. Can you just elaborate a little bit upon that. How did you know and how much did they impact her?
All I know is that she suffered from them quite a bit. She would have headaches, and she talked about him sometime. She was involved with so much. But I know that she had them, and that she still was in school when the kids were gone online. She still worked in their classroom quite a bit.
Did she ever talk to you about the medication she was taking for her migraines and her anxiety.
No, we never talked about that.
But Kim did discuss issues associated with those medications with others. Here's Bill Clutter in.
Her own words on May twenty fourth of two thousand and seven, and this is three weeks before this tragedy happened. There was an email she had written to Chris after she had visited an osteopath, and she reported to the osteopath that she was taking these migraine prescriptions and that
she was feeling anxiety. A high anxiety was the notation in the medical records, and in her own words she says, I told him that you had noticed and I had noticed a big personality change and an anxiety change, and
that I was feeling lethargic, tired all the time. And of course, when you look at the medication guide that came out a year later, when the FDA was wanting to place a black box warning on Topomax warning suicidal behavior and ideation anti epileptic drugs, including Topomax, increase the risk of suicidal thoughts or behavior and patients taking these
drugs for any indications. And it goes on to say, patients treated with anti epileptic drugs for any indication should be monitored for the emergence of worsening of depression, suicidal thoughts or behavior, and or any unusual changes in mood or behavior. It described feeling agitated or restless, panic attacks, trouble sleeping, new or worse, irritability, acting aggressive, being angry or violent, acting on dangerous impulses, an extreme increase in anxiety, and talking mania.
So her change in personality and her anxiety would have gone hand in hand with an adverse reaction.
That's right.
Two days after the tragedy, police spoke with a sixth grade locker buddy of Abigail Vaughan about an interaction he had with his visibly upset friend on June seventh, a week before the murders. His name is Jacob. He's now in his twenties. Tell me about the conversation you two had on the last day of school in two thousand and seven and why that stuck out to you.
It stuck out to me because she was really upset. She said that her mom was acting crazy, and that was basically the gist of that. It was one of the first things that popped up in my head when I first heard about the murders.
What he told police, according to their report two days after the tragedy, was that Abigail Vaughn said her mother was quote hearing thoughts in her head unquote end quote. Psycho Bill Clutter also spoke with him in two thousand and nine.
Well, I spoke to both of Jacob's parents before talking to him because he was a minor, and they explained that Jacob had related this to them, and they felt it was important for the state police to know this, and that resulted in Jacob's.
Interview because they believed that his story about the mother's mental state might bear significance on the murders. Right, according to your notes, what did Abby tell Jacob.
That her mother was hearing thoughts in her head. She would be talking to herself and nobody was there. And then she mentioned that her mother was sleep talking. And all of this paints a picture of some sort of mental instability that's happening with Kimberly Vaughn.
During the trial, forensic pathologist doctor Larry Bloom testified that at the time of her death, Kimberly Vaughn was taking two medications known to cause increased risk of suicidal thoughts
and side effects including confusion or agitation. If Kim was in fact struggling with difficulties with the medication she was taking, or exhibiting anomalies in her behavior behind the scenes that strained their relationship to some degree, Chris's behavior after the tragedy in many ways could have been seen as a normal response. According to neuroscientists and professor of human behavior doctor James Fallen Right.
It's like I was my fault because I didn't understand him enough or her enough, and so they'll start blaming themselves.
Let's also address Bond's personality. He came across to some acquaintances in the initial questioning the press and the courtroom as odd. He's unusually intelligent, as his former salary and profession would imply, but given his interest in druidism, writing poems in Celtic, and role playing on wilderness sites, he's also quirky. Did that add to his perception of guilt. Here's doctor Fallon's take.
This reminds me a bit of somebody who is an introvert and maybe not open. You know. It brings you back to Ta kill a Mockingbird with bou Radley, who was a little excent. I don't know if Christopher phones eccentric at all, but it's just been reading it. I said, here's an easy mark, introvert who just wants to go off the grid, like I think anybody would want to do it, considering everything, and they put in their things
about it. But when I went to a strip club and he had an affair, if this is the sort of evidence you need, I wonder how many das are going to pass that test, or sheriffs or anybody. And so it seemed completely made out of less than whole club.
When Vaughn was convicted, here's how the will County State's attorney, James Glasgow referred to him.
He's a heartless, soulless psychopath without any compassion, without any empathy for other human beings.
Doctor Fallon is an expert on these terms which require evaluation.
I didn't see any good psychiatric analyzes in these reports. How did he know this or how he because he doesn't seem like it right at all. For some reason, it was demonizing it. Were there people involved in the case for who were doing things for political reasons? I mean because it's when you read this whole thing says somebody's getting bamboozle.
Now, let's address emotional bias in keeping with such a brutal, unfathomable tragedy. And the crime scene photos shown as evidence during the trial. You've heard the impact they had on many, including Jojosey and Erica Wurst, reporters who covered the trial.
I don't think I saw the crime scene photos until the trial. They were heartbreaking. They were horrible. They were horrible.
You have little babies with bullet wounds that were zooming up on and seeing and Kim with her hand like flouched down by the center council kind of and she's got her wedding ring on. That's one that's like seared into my head just because it's so sad.
Bill Clutter points out something that may seem obvious but needs to be taken into account.
There are evidence in the sense that it describes the crime scene, but it's not evidence that resolves the issue of who did it. And unfortunately, in this case, the prosecution had a big screen to display the crime scene photos, and more than anything else, it was the emotional impact of those photos. I think that really swayed the jury.
Was Chris vond convicted on character assassination and circumstantial evidence. Let's take a step back from emotion, a step back from Chris or Kim, and let's look solely at evidence. The crime scene evidence remains problematic for both the prosecution and the defense because it doesn't align with either of their versions. Let's start with the blood evidence.
There's no physical evidence that supports the state's theory that Chris reached around his wife after shooting her to shoot the kids. There was no transfer of her blood on the front of his body. He would have had to lean over her body to make those shots. I mean, she's bleeding profusely and her blood is falling and it's pooling on the center council and then it's splashing up
onto the back of his driver's seat. Well, there's no evidence, you know, for him to have done with the state alleges, he would have had to have reached around her through that zone of blood spatter. But there was no blood of Kims that was on his right arm or right sleeve or left sleeve. And Vaughn was right handed and Vonn was right hand.
Okay, Now, is it important that According to Bob Deal, there was blood on Kimberly's arm that was never tested.
Well, it's important, particularly the blood on her left and right hands.
Clutter contends that if Kim held the gun under her chin and used her left thumb to pull the trigger her right hand to steady the weapon, that this pattern of blood could be consistent with suicide.
If she was holding the gun as soon as the bullet was fired, her blood would have been dripping down. There's patterns of passive drops of blood on her left hand, but that was never tested. But if that was her blood, that would be strong evidence that she held the gun and was bleeding onto the hands after the gun was fired.
We've already really addressed the terry cloth. What would that have possibly shown had that not been disposed.
Of passive bloods gains? If those had been Kim's blood, you know, that's again consistent with her having self inflicted and bleeding onto the terry cloth as she was slumping to the left. And so if we were able to identify that pattern of passive drops of blood were her blood, that would be very strong evidence that she self inflicted that wound. The wound under Kim's chin that's completely consistent with a self inflicted gunshot wound. The muzzle of the
gun wasn't firmly against the chin. It was raised up to the chin, and there was enough of a gap that allowed the gas that was ejected from the barrel of the gun to darken and blacken her chin. And that's completely contrary to the initial belief of the state's attorney that the gun had been jammed under her chin.
For Christopher Vaughan to have staged this to make it look like Kim self inflicted her own wound, he would have one had to have enlisted her cooperation to stand still while he placed the muzzle of the gun under her chin. There was no evidence that he had held her hair and she was trying to pull away. None of that type of evidence that would suggest that there was a violent, forceful struggle to put the barrel of the gun under her chin.
There's also physical size to take into account of both the bond and the large suv.
It was Sergeant Lawson's opinion that he had reached through the passenger window. He had to assumed that it was opened, because when they arrived at the scene it was rolled up, but Lawson's theory was that Chris had reached in through the window and killed Kim and killed the kids. Well, he would have to have awfully long arms to have reached all the way to the left side of the passenger seat to make those shots that killed the children.
And you know, he's only five to nine. He's just physically, as Bob Diale said it, that's an impossibility.
Well, Vaughn's blood was found on his wife's retractor belt and droplets by her feet. There is no evidence that shows Vaughn ever stood outside that passenger door or evidence he walked back around the vehicle to the driver side, where a bullet was lodged with his DNA.
The shot that penetrated his left leg. The barrel of the gun had been thrust into the jacket, and according to the ballistics, the shot was within less than six inches from the leg when it was fired, so the trajectory from the jacket pocket to the left leg would pass just millimeters above the growing area When it penetrated the top of the left leg right at the hip.
It just narrowly missed the femeral ar of the leg, which could have been potentially fatal had that bullet been lower and he had been shot in the growing, I don't think he would have been charged, yeah, or alive or alive.
Clutter remains bothered by the criminal mastermind charge.
Where's the evidence of that? We have to have evidence, you know, they have to have some evidence that he staged this crime scene, and there is not there just simply isn't. There's strong reasonable doubt that he did this. The forensic evidence suggests that this was a murder suicide. The state concedes it appears to be a murder suicide. But the caveat is they argue that he staged the crime scene to make it look like it was. You have to prove that. That's the concept of proof beyond
a reasonable doubt, and they didn't meet that test. Twelve jurors were influenced by the emotional appeal of the crime scene photos, the dead children, the strip clubs, the character assassination, and that's why he's in prison today.
But there are three major questions that have yet to be answered on the next murder in Illinois. How did Christopher Vaughan's blood get on the retracted safety belt, droplets of his blood on the passenger side, and Kim's blood on the back of his jacket.
It is a manager revelation.
Possible insight into these three unsolved mysteries in this case come from an unexpected source.
Oh my God.
Murder in Illinois is a production of iHeartRadio. Executive producers are Lauren bred Pacheco and Taylor Chicogyne. Written by Lauren Brd Pacheco and Matthew Riddle, story editing by Matthew Riddle, editing and sound designed by Evan Tire and Taylor Chaqoin. Featuring music by Cicada Rhythm with new compositions engineered and mixed by Evan Tyre and Taylor Chackoin.
No Wow, Babe, Ye.
Wall Wild.
They By.
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