July 20, 2021 • 28 mins
After the death of Vann's child, Vann snaps. He's arrested twice for horrific crimes, once in Gary and then in Austin.
Find out more about the case on twitter, instagram, or facebook. Follow host Ben Kuebrich on twitter @Ben_kuebrich. And reach out with any tips on Darren Vann, Big E, or crimes that might be related on social media or by leaving a voicemail at 888-501-3309.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
The views and opinions expressing this podcast are solely those
of the authors and participants and do not necessarily represent
those of iHeart Media, Tenderfoot TV, or their employees. This
series contains discussions of violence and sexual violence. Listener discretion
is advised previously an algorithm. After graduating high school in
(00:25):
in Lima, Ohio, Vaughan returned to Indiana, where he says
he committed three murders in Hammond, killing a couple as
part of a robbery and shooting a man after getting
into a fight. You said that you shot him near
the telephone call that was directly across right from there.
How many times you think you shot at? By? After
a stint in the Marines, some head trauma and a
(00:48):
less than honorable discharge, Vaughn began dating a woman twenty
nine years older than him. They moved to Texas and
got married, but life kept drawing vond back to Gary
and they moved back. Around the year two thousand, Von
grew apart from his wife. He made a new girlfriend, Sharifa,
(01:10):
but it was an abusive relationship. In two thousand four,
he and Sharitha had a child together, but shortly after
their child's birth. The child died. That n a dead
moment for we allowed the child. We're going through the
morning period. She was out, took the money to the nopeman.
I was like, that's just too got me. What do
(01:32):
you want to fuck up? Like if we're just gonna
beat this ship over from my Heart radio and Tenderfoot TV,
this is algorithm, I'm ben key break. After Von and
Shretha's child died, Sharia escaped Vaughn and went into hiding.
Von suspected Sharitha was staying with a friend of hers,
a man named David Abraham, who Vaughan said was a
(01:55):
drug dealer and a member of a rival gang, the
Vice Lords. Dude, we woke through somebody. I'm too, According
to a police report, near the beginning of April two
thousand four, Vaughan showed up at Abram's house and asked
if Shritha was there. Abram told him she wasn't, but
Vaughan got angry. I know she's in there, he said,
(02:19):
and kept demanding to see her, but eventually Von gave
up and left. The Next day, Vaughan returned, this time
with police officers. Vaughn told them that Abram had shot
at his cousin Darryl. Abram talked to the police and
explained the situation. When the police were satisfied with Abram's story,
(02:40):
they left and Vaughan left as well. But Abram started
hearing through the grape vine that Vaughn was hatching a
plan to get back at him. Vaughn was telling people
he had dynamite and he was going to blow up
Abram's house. A few days later, Abram was driving through
his neighborhood when he saw Van storming towards his house
(03:01):
with a red can of gasoline. Abram called the police
and pulled over beside Vaughan. Vaughan yelled at him that
he'd blew up Abraham's home if he didn't get Sharita back,
and said that Shreta owed him seven thousand dollars. Abraham
tried to reason with Vaughan. He remembered saying, you're going
to burn down my family, innocent people, over a woman.
(03:24):
Vaughan responded, give me seven thousand dollars and you can
have her. When the police showed up, they saw Vaughan
was standing by Abram's car, yelling wildly and waving around
a red gas canister. Police say that they tried to
get Von to calm down, but things escalated. Instead, Vaughn
poured gasoline on himself and got out of lighter, yelling
(03:47):
to officers that he had dynamite and would blow himself up.
The officers advised Abraham to get away from Vaughan, so
Abraham drove back towards his home, but he could see
Vaughan following in his rear view mirror. Abraham says he
saw Sharita sitting on a porch a couple of doors
down from his home, and he threw her a set
of his keys and told her to lock herself inside.
(04:10):
But before Sharitha had a chance to react, Vaughan was
already approaching. He yelled, bitch, are you crazy, and then
started running towards her. She sprinted to the back door
of Abram's house. Von pursued her, gaining on her, but
she managed to get inside and locked the door behind her.
Vaughan began kicking at the door. Terrified, Shartha tried to
(04:35):
find a place to hide and ended up crawling under
a bed. She could hear the door bust open and
then heard Von stepping inside Vaughan yelled that if she
didn't come out of hiding, he'd burned the whole place down.
He began pouring gasoline onto the floor. Sharitha was terrified
and didn't know what to do, but as Vaughan kept
(04:57):
pouring gas, fumes began filling apartment and soon became overpowering. Finally,
Sharifa crawled out from under the bed. Immediately, Von put
her in a headlock, and then he poured gasolene on
top of her until the can was almost empty. The
final bit of gasoline he poured onto his own head
(05:18):
gabs just running off. Yeah, but the gas pipe and
had the whole bud to feel with games. Police had
now arrived at Abram's home, but Von told them to
stay back. We'd light the building on fire. Police tried
to talk him down and to clear others out of
the area. Vaughn says he started clicking the lighter the
(05:40):
girl fire, beat on fire and go to building up,
always saying it's part but it didn't light. You said
you got lucky fume with one hard. Officer Carrie Rice
was working that day. He remembers it a bit differently.
If he had tried to strike that cigarette line and
it didn't strike the person, he wouldn't have got a
(06:01):
second chance to try to strike it. He had a
deadly weapon, a gas on the cigarette for the deadly weapons,
deadly for it was authorized. You shouldn't and you don't
want to, but sometimes you scenario had it went different
in two thousand four, and maybe some people would still
be alive today. I don't know, but it's just eerie
sometimes because I don't think we still know I'm in
(06:22):
the women he's actually killed. Rice says that he was
nearby when Abram called. We don't have too many days
where we have stuff like this. In fact, it probably
my first time ever going to a hospital situation like
this one was. It was a strange scene with Sharifa
in a headlock. Vaughan had marched her out of Abram's
(06:43):
apartment and was starting back towards his own place. He
had a left hand around her neck, the gas can
in his left hand and cigarette lighter in his right hand.
The girl was, of course scared. She was screaming, please
help me a lot. The officers tried to calm Vonda down.
You trying to tell him you haven't heard anybody it's
(07:03):
gonna be okay. You know, let's go ahead end this
now and nobody hurts. You know, it's not that serious.
But he really didn't want to be, for some reason
separated from that female, and he wouldn't let any of
us get too close to him. But like if you
guys started getting close, he threatened to light him on fire.
Or yes, he kept telling us to stay away every
time you get the step twelve and be thrown the
(07:25):
light both of him up. And how would you describe
his general state of mind? Um, he was calm, but
but he was yellout. I guess he was yellous so
we could hear him. I really did believe that he
was going to set both of them on fired, you know,
just from this demeanor what he was saying. Sure, you
(07:46):
kind of like running through in your head. What can
you do if he does do that? The only thing
we can do at that point is trying to at
least grab the female fell up to the ground and
try to put the fire up. As Vaughan March Wreatha
back to his apartment, a growing procession of police, firefighters,
and now a SWAT team followed. They crossed us twenty
(08:08):
a three way highway that runs through Gary, and they
went down an alleyway until they arrived at the back
door of Vaughn's apartment because back was up against the
door in the back of the apartment building. At that point,
we had two or three of our swat team guys
go through the front door apartment buildings. But after he
backed up to the door and opened it, two of
(08:30):
us watch teams actually grabbed him. He ran up, also
grabbed the can. One of us grabbed the girl as
snatched her out, and that's not we were able to
prod him away from her. Vaughn was charged with felony
breaking and entering and felony intimidation. He took a plea
deal that knocked off the intimidation charge, and the judge
(08:53):
used her discretion to bump the breaking and entry charge
down to a misdemeanor. Vaughn was sentenced to a year
in praison in in a year of probation. Obviously, Von
was a deeply troubled person before this all happened. But
in Von's own mind, or at least the story that
he's told the police, this two thousand four incident, losing
(09:13):
his child and his relationship with Sharifa and then going
to prison. This was the incident that vond saw as
the beginning of his downward spiral. And then it seemed
like I never made it back from there. I was
doing good thing, a quick crime like quick back. What
are you now? Working at a house doing good? Just
(09:35):
couldn't make it back. We're at least if it wasn't
the beginning of his downward spiral, it may have been
when he returned to killing, it all went back out
of control again. I never made him back. Un Once
you I don't know how to flame. If y'all y'all
don't have the same or just once you start killing again,
it becomes it's like any other day. It's like if
(09:58):
I was I'm not an out the hallway, right, But
if I were and I started to drink, you're off
to the races, right. That's because you have the urge
to hunt. In this part of the interview, Vaughan clearly
implies they struggled with murder rages sometime before his arrest
in two thousand four, and then he struggled with them
again after his release in two thousand five. In two
(10:22):
thousand and six, after Vaughan finished serving a year in
jail and a year of probation. He borrowed some money
from his stepsister, Regina, and moved back down to Texas.
Vaughan got an apartment in the Rundberg area of North Austin,
an area known for drugs and prostitution. That's that same
area where Maria's son said that Vaughan would go for
(10:44):
long walks at night. In Austin, Vaughn kept a low
profile for about a year before he committed his next crime.
(11:17):
In two thousand and six, after Vaughan had finished a
year of prison and a year of probation for breaking
and entering and threatening to kill Sharita, Vaughan moved back
to Austin, and in December two thousand seven, he committed
his next documented crime. This next section is going to
get graphic. I'm not including it to be lurid, but
(11:38):
because this is what von did, and maybe more importantly,
this is what the justice system knew Vaughan was capable of.
The following comes from police documents. On December two thousand seven,
Vaughan booked a prostitute to come to his apartment. She
says they met in the parking lot inside his building,
(12:01):
and then went back to his place. It was dark,
and she asked Vaughan if they could turn on a light.
He did, and then asked her if she was a
police officer. She told him she wasn't, and then he
attacked her. He tripped her and knocked her down to
the ground, gone on top of her, and began choking her.
(12:24):
As she lost blood flow to her brain, she felt
her body go limp and she urinated. She felt completely
and utterly helpless. Vaughan yelled at her that he could
kill her if he wanted. She thought that she was
going to die. Vaughan then forced her to undress and
to perform sex acts, beating her if she didn't comply. Eventually,
(12:50):
he ejaculated inside her in a short while later, he
allowed her to leave. The Next day, the woman went
to the Austin Police to report the attack. A sexual
assault nurse observed that she had broken blood vessels in
her left eye and pinpoint bruises behind her ears. These
(13:11):
are injuries that can occur if someone has been strangled,
so they supported her story of a violent attack. The
nurse performed a rape kit and collected DNA evidence. The
woman told police what had happened and where Von lived.
Police determined that Darren Vaughan was leasing the apartment at
(13:31):
the address she had given them, but he wasn't at
the apartment when they showed up. Eventually, they did locate him,
and Vaughan told them that he was innocent. He claimed
to have never met the victim and said that he
had moved out of the apartment a month prior to
the incident. Police asked him if he'd consent to a
DNA test, and he agreed. Almost half a year passed
(13:56):
before police received the DNA analysis His uncle year exactly
what caused this delay. Like many places across the country,
there was a rape kit backlog in Texas. It's worth noting, too, though,
that there's currently a class action lawsuit against the Austin
Police Department for allegedly mishandling thousands of sexual assault cases
(14:17):
going back to the same time period. Whatever the reason, though,
almost half a year passed between when the DNA was
collected and when police received the analysis. The analysis showed
a sample from the victims jacket matched Vaughn's DNA, but
it still took another two months before police found and
arrested Vaughan. Vaughn was charged with two counts of aggravated
(14:41):
sexual assault, a first degree felony that can lead to
a sentence of up to years in prison, but the
Travis County District Attorney's office labeled Vaughan a low risk
offender and gave him a plea deal where if he
played guilty to a second degree sexual assault charge, he'd
only see a five year sentence. Years later, a spokesperson
(15:05):
for the District Attorney's office told the local paper that
they were completely unaware of Vaughan's violent incident with Sharifa
because Vaughan had only been convicted of a misdemeanor breaking
and entering charge. It wasn't even on their radar when
I learned about the crimes Vaughan had been convicted of
ving Gary and Austin for incidents where he had almost
(15:26):
killed two women. I was shocked by the short sentences
he'd received, but I also just didn't have a good
sense for what's normal. How do we and how should
we make decisions about how we sentence someone for a crime.
To try to find out how big of a threat
someone like Vaughan poses, I contacted professor Carl Hansen. If
(15:48):
you look at the police stories, the police stories are
almost always told from the perspective of catching the wrong door.
My story starts, Okay, you caught him, Now what you know,
what's the rest of the story. Hanson is a clinical
psychologist who spent most of his career working for the
Canadian government trying to figure out how their justice system
(16:08):
should deal with sex offenders. He's now a professor at
Carlton University in Ottawa. Most of my research has focused
on sexual recidivism. So these are people with a history
of sexual crime, and the question is, given that somebody
has a history of sexual crime, what is the likelihood
(16:28):
that they're going to do it again? And how can
we tell individuals are higher or lower risk? Hansen says
there's a number of factors that predict whether an offender
is high risk or low risk, like young age, past crimes,
negative attitudes towards authority, substance use, and a general preoccupation
(16:48):
with sex. All of these risk factors can then be
tallied up and put into an algorithm that then predicts
a sex offender's risk of committing future offenses. Studies know
that these algorithms do a better job at predicting recidivism
than pearl boards, who are decisions made by professionals based
on their intuition. The data is getting better. We can
(17:10):
stort people into higher and lower risks. The lowest risk
people have expected rates of sexual recidivism that are quite low.
It's like less than two percent after five years. The
highest risk groups have rates um, you know, thirty two
after five years, which I think most people would consider
(17:33):
objectively high. Now that being said, people are not fully predictable.
We're not billiard balls. Even somebody in the highest risk group.
There's no group that will say this person is guaranteed
to reoffend. It's a question of how much risk we're
willing to tolerate. I wondered whether Texas had all the
information it needed when it deemed von low risk. Should
(17:57):
the gasoline incident with Sharifa have been factor it in?
This guy at one point had kidnapped in an ex girlfriend,
So after she left the relationship, he showed up and
was threatening her with a can of gasoline, and you know,
police showed up, and it was this whole thing. But
I'm curious how you know, like the history of a
(18:19):
crime like that might influence how you think of someone's risk.
A history of of violence is a well established rispector
for sexual crime. If you knew this guy had a
history of threatening his ex girlfriends, um, it's not good. Yeah,
And and it's kind of like domestic violence or violence
(18:40):
against women. Is that particularly important or so? One of
the well established predictors of sexual violence against women is
his negative attitude towards women. You're putting women in a
class who they're not trusted. You know, think about in
cells individuals who think that women are or you out
(19:00):
to get them. They're tricky. You can't be trusted if
you have that belief. And if you also have problems
with what you know they college would call attachment, so
that you get particularly upset or irrational around the breakup
of relationships. Those are established risk factors for sexual violence.
When Hansen mentioned attachment problems, I thought of Vaughan's relationship
(19:25):
with his mother, how he'd been put into foster care
at age six and felt that his mother had abandoned him.
You know, there probably are factors from someone's childhood or
early experiences, are really things that they have little control over.
Is it fair to use those factors to make these decisions, um,
(19:48):
when in some ways they could help public safety, but
in other ways almost feel discriminatory against a person. Yeah,
it coming back to the moral question about you know,
how blame worthy people are. We're all a product of something, right,
you know, there's we all have causes and conditions that
made us who we are. And if we're you know,
(20:12):
committing serious sexual violence, I can bet that the conditions
weren't very good, right, So what do we do about that? UM?
I think that we have to make some determination to
blame worthin us. But I think we also have to
have a wide view about how we can make the
(20:32):
world a better place, and some of it has to
do with, um, making people's upbringings better. One of the
researchers who I really like, Richard Tromblay, He was very
interested in, you know, going back in the prevention, and
so he started with you know, severe forensic hospitals, and
he got a bit younger, and got two teens, and
(20:53):
he got two young children. And last time I talked
to him, or so him speak, UM, he was looking
at pregnant women and he was able to identify prior
to birth children who were going to be involved in
the criminals as the system and had to do with
the parents, um lifestyle, their substance abuse. There, you know,
(21:17):
values and behavior. We're all products of something. I'm not
(21:42):
sure what to do with all this information about the
factors that might make someone high or blue risk of reoffending.
Before I ended my conversation with Hansen, he wanted to
make it very clear that Vaughan isn't a typical offender.
He's an exception to the rule. Sounds the fellow that
you're focusing on a specificate and serious problems in multiple areas,
(22:05):
but that's not typical when you're talking about sex crime
and sex crimes against women. We tend to make policy
based on the worst cases. If you have a wider
range of what these cases actually look like, I think
we'll motivate towards better public policy overall. And I want
to be clear, I don't think any advant's risk factors
(22:27):
excuse his behavior in any way. But I do think
as a society we should work to reduce risk factors
like neglect and abuse that can make someone more likely
to commit these sorts of violent crimes. And I think
we need to do a better job at making sure
courts and parole boards have the information they need to
(22:47):
make informed, evidence based decisions about someone's risk of re offense.
But Vaughan didn't feel like he'd gotten off easy. As
he told Detective Forward in and from that offense where
you choked the girl there and wound up with all
this happening, you were never given probation or parole conditions
(23:10):
or anything like that. Is you came to Indiana, you
were completely released. So the only thing you had to
do was signed up on the offender RESHI, according to
Von's twisted logic, because the woman was a prostitute, it
wasn't ranged locked up. Yeah, I'll beat her. I rape you, well,
(23:31):
I rape got standard. Y'all call it rape, but we
don't call it rape. And streets like you pay her.
So what is she p plaining about? After Vaughn was
released from prison in Austin, he needed somewhere to stay Texas, right,
offer me housing. I don't want your money. I don't
need you to give me anything. I could go get
(23:54):
what I wanted. It might not be the way y'all
want me to go get anything, but I could go
get it. I think it's the way most people in
society wasn't right. But that's why we got what a
trillion dollars and did because everybody, like guys that lived
in projects that we know your publics. This we call
him bitches. You get no respect, We'll slap you, knock
you out because you're mate. We'd rather you rob like
(24:18):
because kids need more health than a delt. Once you've
been going with a dolt, you shouldn't need any dolt.
Vun ended up going straight back to Gary and moving
in with his stepbrother, Reginald Beard. Here's Reginald talking to
the police shortly after Bond's arrest. You know he was
gonna do when he got out and mucket, I'm sensitive,
(24:38):
you know what I'm saying that it's my brother. No,
I said, brother, you know you need space, crash man,
you can come here, okay. And he when he got home,
he explads to me like the details of when he
went to jail for down there in Texas. Uh, he
had to register at my house. I get him light up.
You know, okay, what do you do when you first
(25:00):
came most here doing? When he first name well, he
really didn't go him right on that mostly watching a
lot of TV, eating a lot of food. Yeah, how
does behavior mens? Just's been out of jail. I mean,
what do you I was having when you first came
from Do you have me? He started getting pressed, He
(25:23):
flip flops. Man. Uh. Some days he had come in
the house and he had spent on couch. On a
day he watched cartoonls, like fucking cartoonls out back day,
Schoopy said, and then true green one more for a while.
See you you know what I'm saying. And I'm alte
him for a couple of fucking days, sure, he said,
(25:44):
two three morning open, go for a walk? Yeah? Is
that all the time? He walks a lot. He had
disappeared for a couple of days. But it's not always
at the exact time. I really can't keep tabs something
like that. But before olish, you know, his walks out
and you just take a walk. Okay, working house now
(26:07):
and now as alltist and like, well you've walked up.
Help not I'm talking about the city to like see
you know what I'm saying. It's unclear exactly when Bond
started killing after he returned to Indiana, but Bonds confirmed
murders the ones where he took police to the bodies.
(26:28):
News appeared to have started in January with the disappearance
of Tierra Beatty. Contact police base, but they will say
enough that she probably wanted to be bombed with nobody,
but we knew that wasn't the case. But you knew
the look out with it. So I said, well, let
me start in death. Gave myself next time on algorithm.
(26:54):
I'm not normally a drug dealer because I'm not kind
of got you go hold ten dollars to you know
what I'm saying, I want my ten dollars. Presiban talking
like keeping people that were like, I don't you got
the twinings, but I've seen you had to sing her
the other day, dn't pretty much one dollars. It was
one girl. She was one of the very very first
(27:16):
person that I ever ran into him, but she happened
to get away from him. She talked to the detective
because of her line of work, they didn't have time
for her to me, it's more because this is him.
You know what I'm saying, This is he's told me
the person I've always tooke. China was going around telling
(27:37):
people that she's in a band of building on the
west side of town. It was like a singing from
a horror movie. This episode was written and produced by
me then Keith. Break Algorithm is executive produced by Alex
(27:59):
will Umes, Donald Albright and Matt Frederick. Production assistance and
mixing by Eric Quintana. The music is by Makeup and
Vanity Set and Blue Dot Sessions. Thanks to Christina Dana,
Miranda Hawkins, Jamie Albright, Rema l Kali, Trevor Young, and
Josh Thane for their help and notes. And if you're
(28:22):
looking for another true crime show to listen to, you
can now binge camp Hell. It's a podcast investigating the
rise of this weird wilderness therapy school based out of Georgia,
which operated for over thirty years and ended in this
huge scandal. Is a really good show and all twelve
episodes are out now, so you can binge them. Search
for Camp Hell on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(28:45):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
The views and opinions expressing this podcast are solely those
of the authors and participants and do not necessarily represent
those of iHeart Media, Tenderfoot TV, or their employees. This
series contains discussions of violence and sexual violence. Listener discretion
is advised previously an algorithm. After graduating high school in
(00:25):
in Lima, Ohio, Vaughan returned to Indiana, where he says
he committed three murders in Hammond, killing a couple as
part of a robbery and shooting a man after getting
into a fight. You said that you shot him near
the telephone call that was directly across right from there.
How many times you think you shot at? By? After
a stint in the Marines, some head trauma and a
(00:48):
less than honorable discharge, Vaughn began dating a woman twenty
nine years older than him. They moved to Texas and
got married, but life kept drawing vond back to Gary
and they moved back. Around the year two thousand, Von
grew apart from his wife. He made a new girlfriend, Sharifa,
(01:10):
but it was an abusive relationship. In two thousand four,
he and Sharitha had a child together, but shortly after
their child's birth. The child died. That n a dead
moment for we allowed the child. We're going through the
morning period. She was out, took the money to the nopeman.
I was like, that's just too got me. What do
(01:32):
you want to fuck up? Like if we're just gonna
beat this ship over from my Heart radio and Tenderfoot TV,
this is algorithm, I'm ben key break. After Von and
Shretha's child died, Sharia escaped Vaughn and went into hiding.
Von suspected Sharitha was staying with a friend of hers,
a man named David Abraham, who Vaughan said was a
(01:55):
drug dealer and a member of a rival gang, the
Vice Lords. Dude, we woke through somebody. I'm too, According
to a police report, near the beginning of April two
thousand four, Vaughan showed up at Abram's house and asked
if Shritha was there. Abram told him she wasn't, but
Vaughan got angry. I know she's in there, he said,
(02:19):
and kept demanding to see her, but eventually Von gave
up and left. The Next day, Vaughan returned, this time
with police officers. Vaughn told them that Abram had shot
at his cousin Darryl. Abram talked to the police and
explained the situation. When the police were satisfied with Abram's story,
(02:40):
they left and Vaughan left as well. But Abram started
hearing through the grape vine that Vaughn was hatching a
plan to get back at him. Vaughn was telling people
he had dynamite and he was going to blow up
Abram's house. A few days later, Abram was driving through
his neighborhood when he saw Van storming towards his house
(03:01):
with a red can of gasoline. Abram called the police
and pulled over beside Vaughan. Vaughan yelled at him that
he'd blew up Abraham's home if he didn't get Sharita back,
and said that Shreta owed him seven thousand dollars. Abraham
tried to reason with Vaughan. He remembered saying, you're going
to burn down my family, innocent people, over a woman.
(03:24):
Vaughan responded, give me seven thousand dollars and you can
have her. When the police showed up, they saw Vaughan
was standing by Abram's car, yelling wildly and waving around
a red gas canister. Police say that they tried to
get Von to calm down, but things escalated. Instead, Vaughn
poured gasoline on himself and got out of lighter, yelling
(03:47):
to officers that he had dynamite and would blow himself up.
The officers advised Abraham to get away from Vaughan, so
Abraham drove back towards his home, but he could see
Vaughan following in his rear view mirror. Abraham says he
saw Sharita sitting on a porch a couple of doors
down from his home, and he threw her a set
of his keys and told her to lock herself inside.
(04:10):
But before Sharitha had a chance to react, Vaughan was
already approaching. He yelled, bitch, are you crazy, and then
started running towards her. She sprinted to the back door
of Abram's house. Von pursued her, gaining on her, but
she managed to get inside and locked the door behind her.
Vaughan began kicking at the door. Terrified, Shartha tried to
(04:35):
find a place to hide and ended up crawling under
a bed. She could hear the door bust open and
then heard Von stepping inside Vaughan yelled that if she
didn't come out of hiding, he'd burned the whole place down.
He began pouring gasoline onto the floor. Sharitha was terrified
and didn't know what to do, but as Vaughan kept
(04:57):
pouring gas, fumes began filling apartment and soon became overpowering. Finally,
Sharifa crawled out from under the bed. Immediately, Von put
her in a headlock, and then he poured gasolene on
top of her until the can was almost empty. The
final bit of gasoline he poured onto his own head
(05:18):
gabs just running off. Yeah, but the gas pipe and
had the whole bud to feel with games. Police had
now arrived at Abram's home, but Von told them to
stay back. We'd light the building on fire. Police tried
to talk him down and to clear others out of
the area. Vaughn says he started clicking the lighter the
(05:40):
girl fire, beat on fire and go to building up,
always saying it's part but it didn't light. You said
you got lucky fume with one hard. Officer Carrie Rice
was working that day. He remembers it a bit differently.
If he had tried to strike that cigarette line and
it didn't strike the person, he wouldn't have got a
(06:01):
second chance to try to strike it. He had a
deadly weapon, a gas on the cigarette for the deadly weapons,
deadly for it was authorized. You shouldn't and you don't
want to, but sometimes you scenario had it went different
in two thousand four, and maybe some people would still
be alive today. I don't know, but it's just eerie
sometimes because I don't think we still know I'm in
(06:22):
the women he's actually killed. Rice says that he was
nearby when Abram called. We don't have too many days
where we have stuff like this. In fact, it probably
my first time ever going to a hospital situation like
this one was. It was a strange scene with Sharifa
in a headlock. Vaughan had marched her out of Abram's
(06:43):
apartment and was starting back towards his own place. He
had a left hand around her neck, the gas can
in his left hand and cigarette lighter in his right hand.
The girl was, of course scared. She was screaming, please
help me a lot. The officers tried to calm Vonda down.
You trying to tell him you haven't heard anybody it's
(07:03):
gonna be okay. You know, let's go ahead end this
now and nobody hurts. You know, it's not that serious.
But he really didn't want to be, for some reason
separated from that female, and he wouldn't let any of
us get too close to him. But like if you
guys started getting close, he threatened to light him on fire.
Or yes, he kept telling us to stay away every
time you get the step twelve and be thrown the
(07:25):
light both of him up. And how would you describe
his general state of mind? Um, he was calm, but
but he was yellout. I guess he was yellous so
we could hear him. I really did believe that he
was going to set both of them on fired, you know,
just from this demeanor what he was saying. Sure, you
(07:46):
kind of like running through in your head. What can
you do if he does do that? The only thing
we can do at that point is trying to at
least grab the female fell up to the ground and
try to put the fire up. As Vaughan March Wreatha
back to his apartment, a growing procession of police, firefighters,
and now a SWAT team followed. They crossed us twenty
(08:08):
a three way highway that runs through Gary, and they
went down an alleyway until they arrived at the back
door of Vaughn's apartment because back was up against the
door in the back of the apartment building. At that point,
we had two or three of our swat team guys
go through the front door apartment buildings. But after he
backed up to the door and opened it, two of
(08:30):
us watch teams actually grabbed him. He ran up, also
grabbed the can. One of us grabbed the girl as
snatched her out, and that's not we were able to
prod him away from her. Vaughn was charged with felony
breaking and entering and felony intimidation. He took a plea
deal that knocked off the intimidation charge, and the judge
(08:53):
used her discretion to bump the breaking and entry charge
down to a misdemeanor. Vaughn was sentenced to a year
in praison in in a year of probation. Obviously, Von
was a deeply troubled person before this all happened. But
in Von's own mind, or at least the story that
he's told the police, this two thousand four incident, losing
(09:13):
his child and his relationship with Sharifa and then going
to prison. This was the incident that vond saw as
the beginning of his downward spiral. And then it seemed
like I never made it back from there. I was
doing good thing, a quick crime like quick back. What
are you now? Working at a house doing good? Just
(09:35):
couldn't make it back. We're at least if it wasn't
the beginning of his downward spiral, it may have been
when he returned to killing, it all went back out
of control again. I never made him back. Un Once
you I don't know how to flame. If y'all y'all
don't have the same or just once you start killing again,
it becomes it's like any other day. It's like if
(09:58):
I was I'm not an out the hallway, right, But
if I were and I started to drink, you're off
to the races, right. That's because you have the urge
to hunt. In this part of the interview, Vaughan clearly
implies they struggled with murder rages sometime before his arrest
in two thousand four, and then he struggled with them
again after his release in two thousand five. In two
(10:22):
thousand and six, after Vaughan finished serving a year in
jail and a year of probation. He borrowed some money
from his stepsister, Regina, and moved back down to Texas.
Vaughan got an apartment in the Rundberg area of North Austin,
an area known for drugs and prostitution. That's that same
area where Maria's son said that Vaughan would go for
(10:44):
long walks at night. In Austin, Vaughn kept a low
profile for about a year before he committed his next crime.
(11:17):
In two thousand and six, after Vaughan had finished a
year of prison and a year of probation for breaking
and entering and threatening to kill Sharita, Vaughan moved back
to Austin, and in December two thousand seven, he committed
his next documented crime. This next section is going to
get graphic. I'm not including it to be lurid, but
(11:38):
because this is what von did, and maybe more importantly,
this is what the justice system knew Vaughan was capable of.
The following comes from police documents. On December two thousand seven,
Vaughan booked a prostitute to come to his apartment. She
says they met in the parking lot inside his building,
(12:01):
and then went back to his place. It was dark,
and she asked Vaughan if they could turn on a light.
He did, and then asked her if she was a
police officer. She told him she wasn't, and then he
attacked her. He tripped her and knocked her down to
the ground, gone on top of her, and began choking her.
(12:24):
As she lost blood flow to her brain, she felt
her body go limp and she urinated. She felt completely
and utterly helpless. Vaughan yelled at her that he could
kill her if he wanted. She thought that she was
going to die. Vaughan then forced her to undress and
to perform sex acts, beating her if she didn't comply. Eventually,
(12:50):
he ejaculated inside her in a short while later, he
allowed her to leave. The Next day, the woman went
to the Austin Police to report the attack. A sexual
assault nurse observed that she had broken blood vessels in
her left eye and pinpoint bruises behind her ears. These
(13:11):
are injuries that can occur if someone has been strangled,
so they supported her story of a violent attack. The
nurse performed a rape kit and collected DNA evidence. The
woman told police what had happened and where Von lived.
Police determined that Darren Vaughan was leasing the apartment at
(13:31):
the address she had given them, but he wasn't at
the apartment when they showed up. Eventually, they did locate him,
and Vaughan told them that he was innocent. He claimed
to have never met the victim and said that he
had moved out of the apartment a month prior to
the incident. Police asked him if he'd consent to a
DNA test, and he agreed. Almost half a year passed
(13:56):
before police received the DNA analysis His uncle year exactly
what caused this delay. Like many places across the country,
there was a rape kit backlog in Texas. It's worth noting, too, though,
that there's currently a class action lawsuit against the Austin
Police Department for allegedly mishandling thousands of sexual assault cases
(14:17):
going back to the same time period. Whatever the reason, though,
almost half a year passed between when the DNA was
collected and when police received the analysis. The analysis showed
a sample from the victims jacket matched Vaughn's DNA, but
it still took another two months before police found and
arrested Vaughan. Vaughn was charged with two counts of aggravated
(14:41):
sexual assault, a first degree felony that can lead to
a sentence of up to years in prison, but the
Travis County District Attorney's office labeled Vaughan a low risk
offender and gave him a plea deal where if he
played guilty to a second degree sexual assault charge, he'd
only see a five year sentence. Years later, a spokesperson
(15:05):
for the District Attorney's office told the local paper that
they were completely unaware of Vaughan's violent incident with Sharifa
because Vaughan had only been convicted of a misdemeanor breaking
and entering charge. It wasn't even on their radar when
I learned about the crimes Vaughan had been convicted of
ving Gary and Austin for incidents where he had almost
(15:26):
killed two women. I was shocked by the short sentences
he'd received, but I also just didn't have a good
sense for what's normal. How do we and how should
we make decisions about how we sentence someone for a crime.
To try to find out how big of a threat
someone like Vaughan poses, I contacted professor Carl Hansen. If
(15:48):
you look at the police stories, the police stories are
almost always told from the perspective of catching the wrong door.
My story starts, Okay, you caught him, Now what you know,
what's the rest of the story. Hanson is a clinical
psychologist who spent most of his career working for the
Canadian government trying to figure out how their justice system
(16:08):
should deal with sex offenders. He's now a professor at
Carlton University in Ottawa. Most of my research has focused
on sexual recidivism. So these are people with a history
of sexual crime, and the question is, given that somebody
has a history of sexual crime, what is the likelihood
(16:28):
that they're going to do it again? And how can
we tell individuals are higher or lower risk? Hansen says
there's a number of factors that predict whether an offender
is high risk or low risk, like young age, past crimes,
negative attitudes towards authority, substance use, and a general preoccupation
(16:48):
with sex. All of these risk factors can then be
tallied up and put into an algorithm that then predicts
a sex offender's risk of committing future offenses. Studies know
that these algorithms do a better job at predicting recidivism
than pearl boards, who are decisions made by professionals based
on their intuition. The data is getting better. We can
(17:10):
stort people into higher and lower risks. The lowest risk
people have expected rates of sexual recidivism that are quite low.
It's like less than two percent after five years. The
highest risk groups have rates um, you know, thirty two
after five years, which I think most people would consider
(17:33):
objectively high. Now that being said, people are not fully predictable.
We're not billiard balls. Even somebody in the highest risk group.
There's no group that will say this person is guaranteed
to reoffend. It's a question of how much risk we're
willing to tolerate. I wondered whether Texas had all the
information it needed when it deemed von low risk. Should
(17:57):
the gasoline incident with Sharifa have been factor it in?
This guy at one point had kidnapped in an ex girlfriend,
So after she left the relationship, he showed up and
was threatening her with a can of gasoline, and you know,
police showed up, and it was this whole thing. But
I'm curious how you know, like the history of a
(18:19):
crime like that might influence how you think of someone's risk.
A history of of violence is a well established rispector
for sexual crime. If you knew this guy had a
history of threatening his ex girlfriends, um, it's not good. Yeah,
And and it's kind of like domestic violence or violence
(18:40):
against women. Is that particularly important or so? One of
the well established predictors of sexual violence against women is
his negative attitude towards women. You're putting women in a
class who they're not trusted. You know, think about in
cells individuals who think that women are or you out
(19:00):
to get them. They're tricky. You can't be trusted if
you have that belief. And if you also have problems
with what you know they college would call attachment, so
that you get particularly upset or irrational around the breakup
of relationships. Those are established risk factors for sexual violence.
When Hansen mentioned attachment problems, I thought of Vaughan's relationship
(19:25):
with his mother, how he'd been put into foster care
at age six and felt that his mother had abandoned him.
You know, there probably are factors from someone's childhood or
early experiences, are really things that they have little control over.
Is it fair to use those factors to make these decisions, um,
(19:48):
when in some ways they could help public safety, but
in other ways almost feel discriminatory against a person. Yeah,
it coming back to the moral question about you know,
how blame worthy people are. We're all a product of something, right,
you know, there's we all have causes and conditions that
made us who we are. And if we're you know,
(20:12):
committing serious sexual violence, I can bet that the conditions
weren't very good, right, So what do we do about that? UM?
I think that we have to make some determination to
blame worthin us. But I think we also have to
have a wide view about how we can make the
(20:32):
world a better place, and some of it has to
do with, um, making people's upbringings better. One of the
researchers who I really like, Richard Tromblay, He was very
interested in, you know, going back in the prevention, and
so he started with you know, severe forensic hospitals, and
he got a bit younger, and got two teens, and
(20:53):
he got two young children. And last time I talked
to him, or so him speak, UM, he was looking
at pregnant women and he was able to identify prior
to birth children who were going to be involved in
the criminals as the system and had to do with
the parents, um lifestyle, their substance abuse. There, you know,
(21:17):
values and behavior. We're all products of something. I'm not
(21:42):
sure what to do with all this information about the
factors that might make someone high or blue risk of reoffending.
Before I ended my conversation with Hansen, he wanted to
make it very clear that Vaughan isn't a typical offender.
He's an exception to the rule. Sounds the fellow that
you're focusing on a specificate and serious problems in multiple areas,
(22:05):
but that's not typical when you're talking about sex crime
and sex crimes against women. We tend to make policy
based on the worst cases. If you have a wider
range of what these cases actually look like, I think
we'll motivate towards better public policy overall. And I want
to be clear, I don't think any advant's risk factors
(22:27):
excuse his behavior in any way. But I do think
as a society we should work to reduce risk factors
like neglect and abuse that can make someone more likely
to commit these sorts of violent crimes. And I think
we need to do a better job at making sure
courts and parole boards have the information they need to
(22:47):
make informed, evidence based decisions about someone's risk of re offense.
But Vaughan didn't feel like he'd gotten off easy. As
he told Detective Forward in and from that offense where
you choked the girl there and wound up with all
this happening, you were never given probation or parole conditions
(23:10):
or anything like that. Is you came to Indiana, you
were completely released. So the only thing you had to
do was signed up on the offender RESHI, according to
Von's twisted logic, because the woman was a prostitute, it
wasn't ranged locked up. Yeah, I'll beat her. I rape you, well,
(23:31):
I rape got standard. Y'all call it rape, but we
don't call it rape. And streets like you pay her.
So what is she p plaining about? After Vaughn was
released from prison in Austin, he needed somewhere to stay Texas, right,
offer me housing. I don't want your money. I don't
need you to give me anything. I could go get
(23:54):
what I wanted. It might not be the way y'all
want me to go get anything, but I could go
get it. I think it's the way most people in
society wasn't right. But that's why we got what a
trillion dollars and did because everybody, like guys that lived
in projects that we know your publics. This we call
him bitches. You get no respect, We'll slap you, knock
you out because you're mate. We'd rather you rob like
(24:18):
because kids need more health than a delt. Once you've
been going with a dolt, you shouldn't need any dolt.
Vun ended up going straight back to Gary and moving
in with his stepbrother, Reginald Beard. Here's Reginald talking to
the police shortly after Bond's arrest. You know he was
gonna do when he got out and mucket, I'm sensitive,
(24:38):
you know what I'm saying that it's my brother. No,
I said, brother, you know you need space, crash man,
you can come here, okay. And he when he got home,
he explads to me like the details of when he
went to jail for down there in Texas. Uh, he
had to register at my house. I get him light up.
You know, okay, what do you do when you first
(25:00):
came most here doing? When he first name well, he
really didn't go him right on that mostly watching a
lot of TV, eating a lot of food. Yeah, how
does behavior mens? Just's been out of jail. I mean,
what do you I was having when you first came
from Do you have me? He started getting pressed, He
(25:23):
flip flops. Man. Uh. Some days he had come in
the house and he had spent on couch. On a
day he watched cartoonls, like fucking cartoonls out back day,
Schoopy said, and then true green one more for a while.
See you you know what I'm saying. And I'm alte
him for a couple of fucking days, sure, he said,
(25:44):
two three morning open, go for a walk? Yeah? Is
that all the time? He walks a lot. He had
disappeared for a couple of days. But it's not always
at the exact time. I really can't keep tabs something
like that. But before olish, you know, his walks out
and you just take a walk. Okay, working house now
(26:07):
and now as alltist and like, well you've walked up.
Help not I'm talking about the city to like see
you know what I'm saying. It's unclear exactly when Bond
started killing after he returned to Indiana, but Bonds confirmed
murders the ones where he took police to the bodies.
(26:28):
News appeared to have started in January with the disappearance
of Tierra Beatty. Contact police base, but they will say
enough that she probably wanted to be bombed with nobody,
but we knew that wasn't the case. But you knew
the look out with it. So I said, well, let
me start in death. Gave myself next time on algorithm.
(26:54):
I'm not normally a drug dealer because I'm not kind
of got you go hold ten dollars to you know
what I'm saying, I want my ten dollars. Presiban talking
like keeping people that were like, I don't you got
the twinings, but I've seen you had to sing her
the other day, dn't pretty much one dollars. It was
one girl. She was one of the very very first
(27:16):
person that I ever ran into him, but she happened
to get away from him. She talked to the detective
because of her line of work, they didn't have time
for her to me, it's more because this is him.
You know what I'm saying, This is he's told me
the person I've always tooke. China was going around telling
(27:37):
people that she's in a band of building on the
west side of town. It was like a singing from
a horror movie. This episode was written and produced by
me then Keith. Break Algorithm is executive produced by Alex
(27:59):
will Umes, Donald Albright and Matt Frederick. Production assistance and
mixing by Eric Quintana. The music is by Makeup and
Vanity Set and Blue Dot Sessions. Thanks to Christina Dana,
Miranda Hawkins, Jamie Albright, Rema l Kali, Trevor Young, and
Josh Thane for their help and notes. And if you're
(28:22):
looking for another true crime show to listen to, you
can now binge camp Hell. It's a podcast investigating the
rise of this weird wilderness therapy school based out of Georgia,
which operated for over thirty years and ended in this
huge scandal. Is a really good show and all twelve
episodes are out now, so you can binge them. Search
for Camp Hell on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(28:45):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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