August 15, 2024 • 38 mins
On June 14, 2007, 32-year-old Chris Vaughn was found limping on the side of the road near Joliet, IL, bleeding from two gunshot wounds. When police arrived on scene, they found the bodies of his wife and three children shot in the car. Chris is unable to recount the events of that early morning, and there are no other witnesses to the crime. Chris was subsequently convicted of 4 counts of first-degree murder. Although the state intended on imposing the death penalty, it was abolished four years after Chris’s arrest. His trial hadn’t begun, altering the state’s course of action. He is currently incarcerated and serving 4 consecutive life sentences for the killings.
Chris Vaughn’s case was covered in the hit 2021 podcast series Murder in Illinois. While Chris was interviewed extensively for that podcast, this is the first time we hear Chris Vaughn’s voice as he shares his tragic story with Jason Flom.
Featuring:
Chris Vaughn
Keith Altman (Attorney)
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Jason Flom
Click here to listen to Murder in Illinois:
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-murder-in-illinois-84071522/
Please tell Governor Pritzker about your support for Christopher Vaughn:
https://gov.illinois.gov/contact-us/voice-an-opinion.html
https://www.instagram.com/govpritzker/?hl=en
To write to Christopher, send letters to:
Christopher Vaughn IDOC#MM33173
5835 State Route 154
Pinckneyville, IL 62274
To learn more, visit:
https://lavaforgood.com/podcast/250-jason-flom-with-rodney-lincoln/
Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Just before sunrise on June fourteenth, two thousand and seven,
Kimberly and Christopher Vaughan packed their three kids into the
car and headed to a water park in Springfield, Illinois,
but the road trips soon turned deadly. Kimberly Vaughan was
fatally shot under the chin in the front passenger seat,
and gunfire from that direction also killed their three children.
(00:26):
Christopher Vaughan was discovered limping alongside the road, suffering from
two gunshot wounds. His first words were, I think my
wife shot me. Could a mother possibly have done this
to her own family? Police theorized that Christopher Vaughan must
have staged the scene to appear like a murder suicide,
sending him away for the rest of his natural life.
(00:49):
But this is wrongful conviction. Wrongful conviction has always given
voice to him missing people in prison, and now we're
expanding that voice to you. Call us at eight three
three two O seven four six sixty six and tell
us how these stories make you feel and what you've
(01:11):
done to help the cause, even if it's something as
simple as telling a friend or sharing on social media,
and you might just hear yourself in a future episode.
Call us eight three, three, two oh seven, four six
sixty six. Welcome back to Ronful Conviction and joining us
(01:36):
from a correctional facility in Illinois. We have a man
that should have but never was able to grieve the
loss of his wife, Kimberly and their three beloved children,
but instead was snatched away from their funeral and blamed
for their deaths. Christopher Vaughan. I can't none of us
can begin to understand your pain or your resilience, but
(01:58):
we're very honored to have you here with us today.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Well, I appreciate you guys taking the time and interest,
I really do.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
You're very welcome and joining us today, as well as
Chris's attorney, Keith Altman, who's expertise in pharmaceutical side effects
will help shed light on this unspeakable tragedy. And Keith,
thanks so much for being here.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
You're welcome. You're welcome.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Later on, we're going to speak with one of our
Wrongful Conviction hosts, Lauren Bright Pacheco, whose podcast Murder in
Illinois was the first time that almost anyone heard Chris's
side of the story. But before he ever needed, or
ever thought he would need, any sort of advocacy, he
grew up pretty much like anybody else.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I was born in Indiana, we moved to Missouri. I've
got two younger brothers. We spent a lot of time
on sports, cub scouts. I did reasonably well in high school,
graduated in ninety three. Went to the University of Missouri Raala,
focused on an electrical engineering degree, and I had met
Kimberly the summer before college. To be frank, I mean,
(03:04):
dating was one thing, but we didn't have consistent pictures
of what the future looked like. At the end of
that first year of college, we found out she was pregnant,
and when I had got married, Abby was born in December.
Providing for Kimberly and the baby was my number one focus,
so I went ahead and dropped out of college and
(03:25):
was focusing on getting a local job. I had started
down a technology career path as the Internet was really
growing in the mid to late nineties. Information risk management
that's where my focus was, so I worked for a
variety of different consulting companies. There was significantly more work
out there for consultants in my niche market, so I
(03:48):
started my own consulting company.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Chris's successful private cybersecurity firm eventually got him hired by
a large international firm out of Chicago, and this success
allowed the family to grow from Abbey to Cassandra just
a year later, and then Blake three years later. On. Meanwhile,
the stress of parenthood on this young couple, who were
(04:11):
seemingly more chosen by fate than by each other, well,
that stress began to take a toll.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Living together was rocky. Were both early on, We're really
trying to make it work, and we had pretty much
come into the understanding that we were both happy being
part of the family and for the kids, we'd stay
together and we provide the happiest and most nurturing home
(04:38):
possible for them, but as soon as they were out
of the house, we would find our own past. And
it was fully my intention to continue to help her
out in any way form or fashion I could. I
sent her to school and tried to incorporate her into
the work I was doing, but it was still fully
my intention to pursue other avenues personally, and I believe
(05:00):
wasn't something that she was looking forward to.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
So Kim is very unhappy and having mental health details
and she's being treated and one of the medications that
she's been given as a drug called topiramate. The trade
name is topomax, which is really an anti convulsant. It's
normally given to people with epilepsy, but people had been
using it for mental health treatment as well. But what
neither she nor her doctor knew at the time is
(05:26):
that topomax had an increased risk of suicidal and self
injurious behavior. Now Johnson and Johnson knew this, and they
didn't tell the FDA, but nevertheless, shortly before the incident,
her dosage was changed of this drug. And one of
the things that these drugs are notorious for is that
when you change the dosage, that can lead to increased
(05:49):
negative mood and behavioral disturbances, the kind of things that
could cause you to take actions that you might not
have normally taken.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Which brings us up to June fourteenth, two thousand and seven,
when the couple woke up before sunrise and packed the kids,
half asleep into the car for the about three hour
drive to a water park in Springfield, Illinois.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
The night before was one of Kimberla and I's many
disagreements and turned more into a spiteful argument of well
I don't spend enough time at home with the kids,
she doesn't spend enough time helping out and partici dating
with the family, and then back and forth, and eventually
led to well, let's just do something together as a
(06:33):
family tomorrow. And in the morning got the kids up
and out to the truck, and we sat in the
truck and waited for her to come out. I remember,
particularly that morning, I had to go back up to
the front door and holler up the stairs. Eventually she
did come down through her stuff in the truck. We
left the house. It was after the point we got
on the highway. She said she wasn't feeling well, so
(06:55):
I found a place off the side of the road.
After I parked the truck, I asked her, you know,
is still feeling bad? She needed a few minutes, and
she really just didn't say much of anything, so I
opted to give her a few minutes. When ahead and
jumped out. Kids were asleep in the back, and I
went around and just did miscellaneous things, checked the luggage rack,
(07:16):
looked at the tires, and that's when I'd heard just
a horrendous racket, and I was heading for my door
to get in and find out what was going on.
I pulled the door open, and I was looking at
Kim holding the gun. She looked at me and she said,
you won't take my kids away from me. She says,
you killed them, and then she starts firing a gun
(07:38):
at me. And I was tumbling backward and trying to
come forward and not making much progress doing anything, And
that's when she turned the gun on herself.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
In the backseat of the vehicle. The three children were
all shot twice. The ballistics show that all six shots
of the children converge over the passenger seats left shoulder,
as if somebody had turned around from the passenger seat
and fired the gun and the passenger seat of the vehicle.
(08:11):
Kim was shot under the chin straight up. The driver
of the vehicle, Chris, was shot in the hand and
through the leg. The shots are not fatal, but he
is seriously injured.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
So there you are on the side of the road.
Had you actually looked in the car and seen what
she had done.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
No more than a quick glance, probably I was just
too horrified to do anything. The vehicle had an eerie
stillness to it, the stillness when you're in a place
by yourself and the only thing I could think jop
was that I need to get help. Knowing that I
wasn't walking distance from anywhere closed, I thought, well, I'll
(08:54):
just drive the vehicle. And the way she was slumped,
I needed to not unbuckle her, but to buckle her.
But I was just shaking so uncontrollably trying to buckle
her and failing on the seatbelt.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Blood was found. Now one would think that if she
had been shot by Chris, as what was alleged, that
her blood would have been on the seatbelt, But it
turns out that it is not her blood that's on
the seatbelt. It's Chris's blood.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
However, before the blood test, police theorized that Chris, who
had run a private security firm, never mind that it
was cybersecurity, but ignoring that, they came up with this
theory that he must have somehow been an expert in
staging crime scenes.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
According to prosecutor, Chris is such a criminal mastermind that
he was able to make the scene look like she
had committed the crime he did. That, down to blood
spatter and all of these things. It is just simply prepossible.
But what it is is an admission from the prosecution
that the physical evidence does not support that Chris committed
(10:07):
the crime. It supports that she committed the crime.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Nevertheless, they alleged that Chris, who's by the way, just
under five foot nine, somehow reached into the passenger side
of a large SUV, shot Kim from under her chin,
then reached over her left shoulder, shooting each child twice,
then proceeded to unbuckle the seat belt stained with what
they believe was Kim's blood, to make it appear that
(10:35):
Kim had been free to make the shots. The theory
continued that Chris somehow inflicted two survivable gunshot wounds, one
to his left hand and one to his thigh. But
since the blood on the seat belt actually belonged to Chris,
it meant two things. One, the belt was not buckled
(10:56):
when Kim was shot, and the belt was stained after
Chris had been shot. Like he said, when he reached
across her, his left hand bloody pulled the belt, leaving
a stain, and then it retracted when he was unable
to buckle it.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
And then I focused on the driving, but I was
just shaking so uncontrollably and just not thinking clearly enough
that driving wasn't going to be an option either, So
at that point I decided, okay, I just need to
find somebody that can make a phone call for me.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Chris then stumbled down the side of the highway, obviously
the state of shock with the two gunshot wounds, both
by the way without stippling a burn injury associated with
close range gunshots, so the shots had to have been
fired from at least eighteen inches away, if not thirty,
and the one in his thigh almost castrated him, so
(11:52):
we'd have to believe that he risked taking a distant
shot to stage a near miss with his testicles. Luckily
someone stopped to help him.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
There was a man in a pickup truck and he
pulled up aside and asked something to the effect of
have you been in an accident? And, without thinking, the
first thing that came out of my mouth was I
think my wife shot me. It wasn't that much longer
that ambulances and police cars showed up, took me to
the hospital, released me back to the police station, and
(12:23):
that was the multi day interrogation. The stress of the
situation kept me in an imploded state, unable to think
and still horrified, confused because I don't think anyone in
their right mind could do anything like that. If I
had suspected that she was violent at all, I would
have taken steps years before that. But that was not
(12:47):
the Kim that I knew. And I remember saying that
in the interrogation, Kim could not have done this. That
doesn't make any sense. And the missing piece that I
didn't have at that point right after the tragedy was
the medication.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Well, it wasn't obvious to him, aha, It must have
been the topomax. He just knew he had a wife
who was in pain, she was still the mother of
his three children, who had done these terrible things. And
I think when you combined all of that together, he
just decided to say nothing.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Which is his right. But as we so often see
in cases like these, there are judgments about what is
the right way to react. Here, they already suspected Chris,
and when he was only expressing his bewilderment over what
Kim had done. The next question is then who did it,
at which point one might expect that he'd vehemently defend himself.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
I can only sum it up in the word implosure.
Quite frankly, I was a shame that I had failed
my children and not seeing things ahead of time, been
better prepared or reacted in a better fashion. The physical
and the emotional pain was overwhelming, to the point where
I just couldn't string words together to make a sense,
(14:00):
let alone draw conclusions or be of any type of
productive help to my own defense.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
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Speaker 2 (14:34):
After I lost my kids, I lost my identity. I
saw myself as a dad, working and paying for a
house and taking care of the kids. At that point,
I lost meaning and purpose. The part that hurt even
more was that I was still here. I thought that
(14:57):
there had to have been a reason for that, because
I shouldn't be Had she completed what she had started,
I wouldn't have left that truck either. But the fact
that I did must mean that there's more meaning that
I'm supposed to be here. I've got a purpose. I
think that's what provided me with that little bit of
strength I needed to kind of start picking myself back up.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
So with no confession, and the crime scene indicating Kim's guilt.
Chris was released into a cab wearing nothing but a
hospital gown. Meanwhile, there was even more at the scene
that supported Chris's innocence. For instance, d Vaughan's usually stored
their gun, a Taurus nine milimeter, in a closet in
a terrycloth towel.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
There were crime scene pictures that showed a small white
towel covered in blood on Kim's leg, and when the
crime scene was processed, it was taken and washed and
sanitized and essentially destroyed as evidence.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Also, Kim's hands tested positive for gunshot residue, and while
a positive gunshot residence test has limited value, a negative
test can be used to exclude a suspect, but Chris's
hands were never tested. At least the crime seat investigator
Bob Deal was actively challenging the state's theory, citing the
bullet trajectory, the issue of Chris's smaller stature, the fact
(16:23):
that there were no signs of a struggle with Kim,
as well as the way the blood had hit her hand,
all of it serving as clear indications that she and
she alone had shot that gun. But Bob Deal the
investigator was ignored, and they continued to seek death penalty
even after the DNA testing revealed that the blood on
(16:44):
the seat belt indeed belonged to Chris.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Before the grand jury wasnt panel, they knew the blood
on the seat belt was Chris's. We know this because
there's a phone lock where the forensic examiner detailed that
she told the state's attorney that the blood was not Kims.
When the grand jury was to decide whether Chris would
be indicted or not, the question over the blood was
(17:11):
presented very craftily. The officer is never asked whose blood
was on the seat belt, But when you look at
the transcript, it is clear that the way the questions
were asked it was meant so that the jury would
infer reasonably infer that the blood on the seat belt
(17:32):
was Kim's and not Chris's.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
The following is a quote from the exchange between state's
attorney Leah Norbit and the lead investigator, Sergeant Gary Lawson. Quote.
They looked at the seat belt, right, Yes, as if
the seat belt were pulled to be seat belting. Someone
in correct, and there was blood on that seat belt?
Was there not?
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (17:53):
And when Kimberly Vaughan was found by the paramedics and
by the police. She was not wearing a seat belt. Correct.
Is significant because she was wearing that seat belt when
she was shot. That's correct end quote. If she had
been wearing the seat belt when she was shot, it
would have had to have been her blood, but it
wasn't Kim's blood.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
It completely refutes the prosecution's allegations as to what happened
in this case. It's all documented. The other thing that
was interesting is that before the grand jury, the forensic
report was mark draft, and then the day after the
grand jury comes out with its finding, the forensic report
(18:36):
it's changed from draft to final, and that examiner was
asked why did she do that? And her response was
I was told to do it, and she wouldn't answer
any further.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
It appears that marking the report final the day after
the grand jury indictment offered an appearance of plausible deniability
to the assistant state's attorney and Sergeant Gary Lawson. But
now they had their indictment and they had chosen to
arrest Chris while he was at the funeral of his
wife and children. The cruelty of the whole thing be
(19:09):
damned and effectively preparing for a capital trial, well, we
know that can take quite some time.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
I didn't go to trial until twenty twelve, so I
was in the will County jail from two thousand and
seven to twenty twelve.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
He was treated very poorly because of what it was
alleged that he had done, but he was under the
death penalty at the time, and there were funds provided
by the state to get the best attorneys, get the
best experts. And when I first became exposed to the case,
which is actually I had just been sworn in as
(19:45):
an attorney, but I had been doing the farmer covigilance
safety surveillance of drugs. That's how I got involved in
the case in the first place. And I remember sitting
in a room in Clayton, near Saint Louis with what
I considered to be the dream team of criminal defense lawyers,
and the ballistics expert had shown how it just was
(20:05):
totally inconsistent with Chris having shot the gun. And then
when you combine that with the topamax and at the
time I had seen a document from Johnson and Johnson
where they had concluded that Topermax increased the risk of
suicidal itself in Juri's behavior, but they never told the FDA.
(20:26):
So it was only after I petitioned the FDA for
action that things started to happen. And I remember sitting
there and saying, there's just no way this happening.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Chris's dream team continued to develop their defense, even deposing
the crime scene investigator Robert Dial in January twenty eleven
about the investigation, and deal said, quote, every time that
I offered up something that was contrary to what they said,
they had some reason why I didn't know what I
was talking about, or they would change their theory of
what happened to try to match the evidence, rather than
(20:55):
letting the evidence dictate the events that occurred.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Quote, I know he was taken off the case. And
you know, once again, the confirmation bias get rid of
anybody that may have an alternate explanation as to what happened.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
It's this horribly flawed human element that makes abolishing the
death penalty and absolute moral imperative. And then that's exactly
what happened. Illinois abolished the death penalty in March twenty eleven,
but this had paradoxically an unintended and ultimately tragic consequence
for Chris.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
When the death penalty got taken off the table, the
funds for his defense also evaporated.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
It was going to continue to be so expensive to
finish out what needed to be done. In my attorney
there in Illinois, he showed up and he just apologized.
It just wasn't possible.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
And the case was assigned to a public defender, and
they're overloaded, overworked, they don't have the resources. I remember
the public defender spending about five minutes with me on
the phone, and that was the last time I ever
heard from the public defender. I think he did ask
me if I would appear pro bono that there were
no funds, and I wasn't on my own, I was
(22:06):
working for somebody and I had just been told to
stop what I was doing. We hadn't done a report yet,
and so it is clear that the substantial evidence that
was being developed of Chris's innocence was not going to
be available to him.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
The Public Defender team had to become fully steeped in
everything that had been developed over five years to combat
the States team, which had been working together for just
as long.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
It's like going to the World Series and removing one
of the teams, getting them from a little league park
and throwing them in and say, oh, go ahead and
do your best.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
You were also facing a situation where I have to
believe you were one of the most hated people in
the state of Illinois.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
I know. The state's attorney was very vocal, and they
used the media to the nth degree to make sure
that the stage was set for their advantage.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
So the scales of justice were certainly tipped all the
way to one side as the trial was set to
begin in August of twenty twelve. But as we so
often see, when the physical evidence is weak, the state
focus is on circumstantial evidence. So they dug into the
Vaughn's marriage and the arrangement that they had, presenting bombshells
like Chris had gone to strip clubs.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
A lot of men go to strip clubs, a lot
of women go to strip clubs. A lot of men
who are happily married go to strip clubs. The fact
that somebody goes to a strip club doesn't speak anything
as to the state of their marital relationship or lack thereof.
It means absolutely nothing the other situation, Chris was into
survival type things, hunting, being out in the woods, stuff
(23:39):
he had grown up with his whole life. They took
the fact that he had a friend who talked about
these things going to go off grid meant that he
was planning to do this crime, go off grid and
live his days out.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
It's hard to believe that he'd choose to begin that
life with two debilitating gunshot wounds, but okay, it's just posterous.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
During the trial, I think the prosecution present at seven
hundred exhibits, They had about fifty witnesses. The public defender,
put on a limited defense here, did not have the
tools to properly defend Chris. First of the prosecution, who
had effectively unlimited resources, he had not really presented the
drug issue. I know it was mentioned lightly during the trial,
(24:22):
but the experts that had been retained were not consulted,
and the jury found him guilty in what an hour
or so with all of that information, How could they
possibly have reviewed that information?
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Jury foreman Dan Leche expressed that there was no doubt
in the juror's minds of Vaughan's guilt and that they
never even considered the defense's argument that Kimberly Vaughn had
actually committed the murders. The drug issue was not effectively raised,
a forensic expert did not effectively expose the state's nonsensical theory,
(24:57):
and the jury bought what they'd already heard in an media,
and Chris was found guilty on four accounts of first
degree murder, for which he received four consecutive life sentences.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
To have been convicted of this was beyond my comprehension.
I've been raised to believe in the courtroom and the
judge and the jury, and they're going to find justice.
These are open minded people that are there to look
at the facts. And it wasn't until that very end
that I realized that everything that I had believed in
and that trust that I had placed in that system
(25:31):
was all or not. It's nothing like you see on TV.
It's not like you see in the movies. There's parts
(25:52):
of it that are more grotesque and more violent than
they're probably allowed to show on TV. But there's a
lot of good people in here. There's a lot of
people that have definitely committed crimes, but there's a lot
of people that have learned their lessons when I got
to prison, I really didn't know what to expect, and
I was frankly scared out of my mind. But early
(26:15):
on some of the older guys with life sentences pulled
me aside, and the advice that they gave me was
that the quicker that I can accept my sentence and
the quicker that I can get adjusted to this being
home for the rest of my life. They said, it's
just going to be that much easier on you. They said,
don't trust and hope. All that's going to do is
(26:35):
wear you down, make you sick, and eat you up.
They said, make the best of each day and find
things that you can do to stay productive, find things
you can find meaning in. And for the first four
or five years that's what I really did. I was
still in contact with my parents and they still come
up once a month no matter where I am, no
(26:56):
matter where they are, they still come and visit me
in person, and I talked to them on home. But
essentially I made prison life first four or five years,
assuming that's where I was going to be. It was
quite some years before a very open minded person came
and decided to do a podcast on.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Me, and that podcast was called murder in Illinois, hosted
by our very own Lauren bred Pacheco.
Speaker 4 (27:22):
I had been covering crime in New York for a
national show for a decade, and I had never heard
of this case until the ten year anniversary came up,
and so I started digging a little bit deeper, and
it became very obvious that it's because this case unfolded
(27:42):
under the same state's attorney in the same courtroom across
the hallway as another very infamous case, which was the
police sergeant Drew Peterson who had more than one wife
go missing under dubious circumstances. And that just sucked all
the national bandwidth. And that's too bad, because more people
(28:06):
would have seen what I saw. There was tremendous reaction
to the podcast, both positive and negative. People wish death
on my children, that they hoped that I would experience
the loss that Kim had experienced. Again, I wasn't anticipating
that revisiting this case to see if justice was served
(28:31):
would just produce such incredible personal blowback. But there is
a very real pivot that happens when you know that
someone is innocent, where you no longer care that you
are criticized for being their champion. And that's the way
(28:52):
I feel for Chris. I have tremendous sympathy for Kim
for her family, But keep an insiscent man in prison
is not going to bring the kids back, and it's
not going to bring Kem back. And so the only
semblance of justice left in this case is correcting this
(29:13):
agree us wrong.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
She told us about the reinvestigation, which started with somebody
who our listeners might remember, Bill Clutter from the Rodney
Lincoln story, which will be linked in the episode description.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Now.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Bill's work as a private investigator led him to found
an organization called Investigating Innocence and also the Illinois Innocence Project,
and he had been hired as part of Chris's original
dream team.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
Bill Clutter had already done a lot of work in
terms of forensics and the medication she was on and
so when we joined forces and set out to make
Murder in Illinois, one of the things that we were
working towards was a crime scene reconstruction, which unfortunately is
(29:59):
an arduous, expensive undertaking. And so Jason, I reached out
to you. Sure enough, you saw what I saw. You
so graciously stepped forward and made the crime scene reconstruction
take place. Bill Clutter enlisted a former CSI named Katie Hartman,
who was meticulous in her approach, and she went through
(30:22):
Bob Diale's initial report with a fine tooth calmb and
was so impressed with the work that he had done.
She said she could see exactly everything within that suv.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
And let's not forget how deeply Bob Deal disagreed with
the lead investigator and prosecutors on this case.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
Bob Deal claims that within an hour that Detective Gary
Lawson had come up with this, in my opinion, asenine theory,
that Vaughn shot his wife through the passenger Explain then,
how there is no blood on the exterior of the car,
(31:07):
in the front or the back if he leaned through
this window of this gigantic suv. And Vaughn, keep in mind,
is five foot nine, maybe in dress heels. You know,
he is not a large, imposing man, and for him
to have gotten the trajectory didn't work, and Deal himself said, basically,
(31:27):
that's jack assery. Show me how he did it, and
Lawson couldn't because it was physically impossible, which is what
we then proved when we did the crime scene reconstruction.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
But before the reconstruction, Lauren won Chris's trust. He wrote
a letter to his parents, finally explaining what had happened
that day, which he in turn shared with Lauren, and
it all matched up with what we were to discover
through the crime scene reconstruction.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
We enlisted actors who were roughly the same size as
Kim and Chris and put it in an identical vehicle
and played out the States theory and played out Chris's
theory again and again, and only one of them worked.
Only one of them was backed by the forensics, by
(32:16):
the blood in the car, and that was Christopher Vaughns.
And the moment when the actor recreating Chris's movements reached
forward and pulled that belt to try to get it
over the actress who was playing Kimberly's body, you see
exactly where his blood ended up by her foot, where
(32:38):
the blood smeared across the center console, all of it,
and it was such an eye opening, astounding moment of
undeniable proof. And with all of that, you still have
an innocent man who's lost everything, rotting in prison in Illinois.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Lauren also interviewed Keith for the podcast, which brought him
back onto Chris's team.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
It had been haunting me about how he had been convicted,
and when she called me in and we talked about it,
when she told me about the letter and about him
talking about what had happened, and there was an opportunity
for me to get involved, I jumped on it. You know,
there are things afoot internally that we are not ready
to release yet, but I can tell you we're blaming
(33:29):
the third person in the car. There was Chris, it
was Kim, and there was Topomax. That is what it's
all about, because it does provide an explanation as to
what happened here. We intend to talk about the misconduct
by the prosecution during the grand jury, combined with the
psychological impact of what took place preventing him from really
assisting in his defense. And the goal is to get
(33:52):
him a new trial. We believe very strongly that's going
to lead to a different result.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Well, we certainly hope so. And if anyone in our
audience is moved to act, what can we ask them
to do?
Speaker 4 (34:03):
I would say to go to Keith Altman's website because
he has links on there. You know, I think we're
going to start another outreach of writing Governor Pritzker. Governor
Pritzker is a fair, just man. I send him stuff
on Instagram constantly, just messages imploring him to take another
look at this case.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
And we're going to leave ways to reach both Governor
Pritzker and Chris with messages of encouragement in the episode
description and with that we're going to go to closing arguments.
It's where I thank you again Keith, Lauren, and Chris
for being here and sharing this unreal story. But it's
all too real. So I'm going to now turn my
microphone off and just listen to anything else you want
(34:46):
to share. Keith, why don't you kick it off? Then Lauren,
and then Chris, if you would please take us off
into the sunset.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
This is a tough case. Three kids killed, mother shot
is one that doesn't sit well with anybody. Chris is
as much a victim here and prosecutors number one, they
need to have an open mind. They need to find
out what might have happened, instead of deciding what happened
(35:15):
and then altering the investigation to fit that. It's important
that people have open minds, that they wait for the
evidence to come through because sometimes things are just not
quite as they seem, and upcoms Raiser really does play
a role here. The simplest explanation tends to be the
right one, and so we are very hopeful that we
(35:38):
will be able to get Chris a new trial, and
we're highly confident that we will be able to present
a very different picture as to what had happened.
Speaker 4 (35:48):
I would just say, please, do not take my word
for it, don't take Jason's word for it, don't take
Keith Altman's word for it. Just look into it. I
guarantee you you will very quickly see the patterns that
we all know to be true. It's a heartbreaking misery onion,
(36:11):
and the layers just keep building with every single day, week,
and year that Christopher Vaughn is incarcerated. He needs to
be released and again the process of healing.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
This is not just about me. This is about a
lot of people and about a system that's not working
like it should be. While I've been in here, I've
met a lot of people that have claimed innocence. When
I was in the outside world, I assume that anybody
locked up it was guilty of the crime. I believe
what was in the media. If they got locked up,
(36:47):
you know, good riddens. You know they were out of
sight and out of mind. That's just not the case.
There's good people in here that deserve second chance. There's
good people in here that are innocent of the crimes
that they've been accused convicted of, and overall, out night,
out of mind doesn't work because there's still human beings
in here, and I hope it's nothing else that this
(37:10):
starts building awareness for what's going on in these prison systems.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
week early by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on
Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team, Connor
Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive
producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Clibern. The music
in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated
(37:43):
composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all
social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction.
You can also follow me on Instagram at It's Jason
Flamm Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good
podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one.
Speaker 4 (38:00):
The land that were
Just before sunrise on June fourteenth, two thousand and seven,
Kimberly and Christopher Vaughan packed their three kids into the
car and headed to a water park in Springfield, Illinois,
but the road trips soon turned deadly. Kimberly Vaughan was
fatally shot under the chin in the front passenger seat,
and gunfire from that direction also killed their three children.
(00:26):
Christopher Vaughan was discovered limping alongside the road, suffering from
two gunshot wounds. His first words were, I think my
wife shot me. Could a mother possibly have done this
to her own family? Police theorized that Christopher Vaughan must
have staged the scene to appear like a murder suicide,
sending him away for the rest of his natural life.
(00:49):
But this is wrongful conviction. Wrongful conviction has always given
voice to him missing people in prison, and now we're
expanding that voice to you. Call us at eight three
three two O seven four six sixty six and tell
us how these stories make you feel and what you've
(01:11):
done to help the cause, even if it's something as
simple as telling a friend or sharing on social media,
and you might just hear yourself in a future episode.
Call us eight three, three, two oh seven, four six
sixty six. Welcome back to Ronful Conviction and joining us
(01:36):
from a correctional facility in Illinois. We have a man
that should have but never was able to grieve the
loss of his wife, Kimberly and their three beloved children,
but instead was snatched away from their funeral and blamed
for their deaths. Christopher Vaughan. I can't none of us
can begin to understand your pain or your resilience, but
(01:58):
we're very honored to have you here with us today.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Well, I appreciate you guys taking the time and interest,
I really do.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
You're very welcome and joining us today, as well as
Chris's attorney, Keith Altman, who's expertise in pharmaceutical side effects
will help shed light on this unspeakable tragedy. And Keith,
thanks so much for being here.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
You're welcome. You're welcome.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Later on, we're going to speak with one of our
Wrongful Conviction hosts, Lauren Bright Pacheco, whose podcast Murder in
Illinois was the first time that almost anyone heard Chris's
side of the story. But before he ever needed, or
ever thought he would need, any sort of advocacy, he
grew up pretty much like anybody else.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I was born in Indiana, we moved to Missouri. I've
got two younger brothers. We spent a lot of time
on sports, cub scouts. I did reasonably well in high school,
graduated in ninety three. Went to the University of Missouri Raala,
focused on an electrical engineering degree, and I had met
Kimberly the summer before college. To be frank, I mean,
(03:04):
dating was one thing, but we didn't have consistent pictures
of what the future looked like. At the end of
that first year of college, we found out she was pregnant,
and when I had got married, Abby was born in December.
Providing for Kimberly and the baby was my number one focus,
so I went ahead and dropped out of college and
(03:25):
was focusing on getting a local job. I had started
down a technology career path as the Internet was really
growing in the mid to late nineties. Information risk management
that's where my focus was, so I worked for a
variety of different consulting companies. There was significantly more work
out there for consultants in my niche market, so I
(03:48):
started my own consulting company.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Chris's successful private cybersecurity firm eventually got him hired by
a large international firm out of Chicago, and this success
allowed the family to grow from Abbey to Cassandra just
a year later, and then Blake three years later. On. Meanwhile,
the stress of parenthood on this young couple, who were
(04:11):
seemingly more chosen by fate than by each other, well,
that stress began to take a toll.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Living together was rocky. Were both early on, We're really
trying to make it work, and we had pretty much
come into the understanding that we were both happy being
part of the family and for the kids, we'd stay
together and we provide the happiest and most nurturing home
(04:38):
possible for them, but as soon as they were out
of the house, we would find our own past. And
it was fully my intention to continue to help her
out in any way form or fashion I could. I
sent her to school and tried to incorporate her into
the work I was doing, but it was still fully
my intention to pursue other avenues personally, and I believe
(05:00):
wasn't something that she was looking forward to.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
So Kim is very unhappy and having mental health details
and she's being treated and one of the medications that
she's been given as a drug called topiramate. The trade
name is topomax, which is really an anti convulsant. It's
normally given to people with epilepsy, but people had been
using it for mental health treatment as well. But what
neither she nor her doctor knew at the time is
(05:26):
that topomax had an increased risk of suicidal and self
injurious behavior. Now Johnson and Johnson knew this, and they
didn't tell the FDA, but nevertheless, shortly before the incident,
her dosage was changed of this drug. And one of
the things that these drugs are notorious for is that
when you change the dosage, that can lead to increased
(05:49):
negative mood and behavioral disturbances, the kind of things that
could cause you to take actions that you might not
have normally taken.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Which brings us up to June fourteenth, two thousand and seven,
when the couple woke up before sunrise and packed the kids,
half asleep into the car for the about three hour
drive to a water park in Springfield, Illinois.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
The night before was one of Kimberla and I's many
disagreements and turned more into a spiteful argument of well
I don't spend enough time at home with the kids,
she doesn't spend enough time helping out and partici dating
with the family, and then back and forth, and eventually
led to well, let's just do something together as a
(06:33):
family tomorrow. And in the morning got the kids up
and out to the truck, and we sat in the
truck and waited for her to come out. I remember,
particularly that morning, I had to go back up to
the front door and holler up the stairs. Eventually she
did come down through her stuff in the truck. We
left the house. It was after the point we got
on the highway. She said she wasn't feeling well, so
(06:55):
I found a place off the side of the road.
After I parked the truck, I asked her, you know,
is still feeling bad? She needed a few minutes, and
she really just didn't say much of anything, so I
opted to give her a few minutes. When ahead and
jumped out. Kids were asleep in the back, and I
went around and just did miscellaneous things, checked the luggage rack,
(07:16):
looked at the tires, and that's when I'd heard just
a horrendous racket, and I was heading for my door
to get in and find out what was going on.
I pulled the door open, and I was looking at
Kim holding the gun. She looked at me and she said,
you won't take my kids away from me. She says,
you killed them, and then she starts firing a gun
(07:38):
at me. And I was tumbling backward and trying to
come forward and not making much progress doing anything, And
that's when she turned the gun on herself.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
In the backseat of the vehicle. The three children were
all shot twice. The ballistics show that all six shots
of the children converge over the passenger seats left shoulder,
as if somebody had turned around from the passenger seat
and fired the gun and the passenger seat of the vehicle.
(08:11):
Kim was shot under the chin straight up. The driver
of the vehicle, Chris, was shot in the hand and
through the leg. The shots are not fatal, but he
is seriously injured.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
So there you are on the side of the road.
Had you actually looked in the car and seen what
she had done.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
No more than a quick glance, probably I was just
too horrified to do anything. The vehicle had an eerie
stillness to it, the stillness when you're in a place
by yourself and the only thing I could think jop
was that I need to get help. Knowing that I
wasn't walking distance from anywhere closed, I thought, well, I'll
(08:54):
just drive the vehicle. And the way she was slumped,
I needed to not unbuckle her, but to buckle her.
But I was just shaking so uncontrollably trying to buckle
her and failing on the seatbelt.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Blood was found. Now one would think that if she
had been shot by Chris, as what was alleged, that
her blood would have been on the seatbelt, But it
turns out that it is not her blood that's on
the seatbelt. It's Chris's blood.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
However, before the blood test, police theorized that Chris, who
had run a private security firm, never mind that it
was cybersecurity, but ignoring that, they came up with this
theory that he must have somehow been an expert in
staging crime scenes.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
According to prosecutor, Chris is such a criminal mastermind that
he was able to make the scene look like she
had committed the crime he did. That, down to blood
spatter and all of these things. It is just simply prepossible.
But what it is is an admission from the prosecution
that the physical evidence does not support that Chris committed
(10:07):
the crime. It supports that she committed the crime.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Nevertheless, they alleged that Chris, who's by the way, just
under five foot nine, somehow reached into the passenger side
of a large SUV, shot Kim from under her chin,
then reached over her left shoulder, shooting each child twice,
then proceeded to unbuckle the seat belt stained with what
they believe was Kim's blood, to make it appear that
(10:35):
Kim had been free to make the shots. The theory
continued that Chris somehow inflicted two survivable gunshot wounds, one
to his left hand and one to his thigh. But
since the blood on the seat belt actually belonged to Chris,
it meant two things. One, the belt was not buckled
(10:56):
when Kim was shot, and the belt was stained after
Chris had been shot. Like he said, when he reached
across her, his left hand bloody pulled the belt, leaving
a stain, and then it retracted when he was unable
to buckle it.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
And then I focused on the driving, but I was
just shaking so uncontrollably and just not thinking clearly enough
that driving wasn't going to be an option either, So
at that point I decided, okay, I just need to
find somebody that can make a phone call for me.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Chris then stumbled down the side of the highway, obviously
the state of shock with the two gunshot wounds, both
by the way without stippling a burn injury associated with
close range gunshots, so the shots had to have been
fired from at least eighteen inches away, if not thirty,
and the one in his thigh almost castrated him, so
(11:52):
we'd have to believe that he risked taking a distant
shot to stage a near miss with his testicles. Luckily
someone stopped to help him.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
There was a man in a pickup truck and he
pulled up aside and asked something to the effect of
have you been in an accident? And, without thinking, the
first thing that came out of my mouth was I
think my wife shot me. It wasn't that much longer
that ambulances and police cars showed up, took me to
the hospital, released me back to the police station, and
(12:23):
that was the multi day interrogation. The stress of the
situation kept me in an imploded state, unable to think
and still horrified, confused because I don't think anyone in
their right mind could do anything like that. If I
had suspected that she was violent at all, I would
have taken steps years before that. But that was not
(12:47):
the Kim that I knew. And I remember saying that
in the interrogation, Kim could not have done this. That
doesn't make any sense. And the missing piece that I
didn't have at that point right after the tragedy was
the medication.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Well, it wasn't obvious to him, aha, It must have
been the topomax. He just knew he had a wife
who was in pain, she was still the mother of
his three children, who had done these terrible things. And
I think when you combined all of that together, he
just decided to say nothing.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Which is his right. But as we so often see
in cases like these, there are judgments about what is
the right way to react. Here, they already suspected Chris,
and when he was only expressing his bewilderment over what
Kim had done. The next question is then who did it,
at which point one might expect that he'd vehemently defend himself.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
I can only sum it up in the word implosure.
Quite frankly, I was a shame that I had failed
my children and not seeing things ahead of time, been
better prepared or reacted in a better fashion. The physical
and the emotional pain was overwhelming, to the point where
I just couldn't string words together to make a sense,
(14:00):
let alone draw conclusions or be of any type of
productive help to my own defense.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
You're listening to wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this
and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early
and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus
on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
After I lost my kids, I lost my identity. I
saw myself as a dad, working and paying for a
house and taking care of the kids. At that point,
I lost meaning and purpose. The part that hurt even
more was that I was still here. I thought that
(14:57):
there had to have been a reason for that, because
I shouldn't be Had she completed what she had started,
I wouldn't have left that truck either. But the fact
that I did must mean that there's more meaning that
I'm supposed to be here. I've got a purpose. I
think that's what provided me with that little bit of
strength I needed to kind of start picking myself back up.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
So with no confession, and the crime scene indicating Kim's guilt.
Chris was released into a cab wearing nothing but a
hospital gown. Meanwhile, there was even more at the scene
that supported Chris's innocence. For instance, d Vaughan's usually stored
their gun, a Taurus nine milimeter, in a closet in
a terrycloth towel.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
There were crime scene pictures that showed a small white
towel covered in blood on Kim's leg, and when the
crime scene was processed, it was taken and washed and
sanitized and essentially destroyed as evidence.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Also, Kim's hands tested positive for gunshot residue, and while
a positive gunshot residence test has limited value, a negative
test can be used to exclude a suspect, but Chris's
hands were never tested. At least the crime seat investigator
Bob Deal was actively challenging the state's theory, citing the
bullet trajectory, the issue of Chris's smaller stature, the fact
(16:23):
that there were no signs of a struggle with Kim,
as well as the way the blood had hit her hand,
all of it serving as clear indications that she and
she alone had shot that gun. But Bob Deal the
investigator was ignored, and they continued to seek death penalty
even after the DNA testing revealed that the blood on
(16:44):
the seat belt indeed belonged to Chris.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Before the grand jury wasnt panel, they knew the blood
on the seat belt was Chris's. We know this because
there's a phone lock where the forensic examiner detailed that
she told the state's attorney that the blood was not Kims.
When the grand jury was to decide whether Chris would
be indicted or not, the question over the blood was
(17:11):
presented very craftily. The officer is never asked whose blood
was on the seat belt, But when you look at
the transcript, it is clear that the way the questions
were asked it was meant so that the jury would
infer reasonably infer that the blood on the seat belt
(17:32):
was Kim's and not Chris's.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
The following is a quote from the exchange between state's
attorney Leah Norbit and the lead investigator, Sergeant Gary Lawson. Quote.
They looked at the seat belt, right, Yes, as if
the seat belt were pulled to be seat belting. Someone
in correct, and there was blood on that seat belt?
Was there not?
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (17:53):
And when Kimberly Vaughan was found by the paramedics and
by the police. She was not wearing a seat belt. Correct.
Is significant because she was wearing that seat belt when
she was shot. That's correct end quote. If she had
been wearing the seat belt when she was shot, it
would have had to have been her blood, but it
wasn't Kim's blood.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
It completely refutes the prosecution's allegations as to what happened
in this case. It's all documented. The other thing that
was interesting is that before the grand jury, the forensic
report was mark draft, and then the day after the
grand jury comes out with its finding, the forensic report
(18:36):
it's changed from draft to final, and that examiner was
asked why did she do that? And her response was
I was told to do it, and she wouldn't answer
any further.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
It appears that marking the report final the day after
the grand jury indictment offered an appearance of plausible deniability
to the assistant state's attorney and Sergeant Gary Lawson. But
now they had their indictment and they had chosen to
arrest Chris while he was at the funeral of his
wife and children. The cruelty of the whole thing be
(19:09):
damned and effectively preparing for a capital trial, well, we
know that can take quite some time.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
I didn't go to trial until twenty twelve, so I
was in the will County jail from two thousand and
seven to twenty twelve.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
He was treated very poorly because of what it was
alleged that he had done, but he was under the
death penalty at the time, and there were funds provided
by the state to get the best attorneys, get the
best experts. And when I first became exposed to the case,
which is actually I had just been sworn in as
(19:45):
an attorney, but I had been doing the farmer covigilance
safety surveillance of drugs. That's how I got involved in
the case in the first place. And I remember sitting
in a room in Clayton, near Saint Louis with what
I considered to be the dream team of criminal defense lawyers,
and the ballistics expert had shown how it just was
(20:05):
totally inconsistent with Chris having shot the gun. And then
when you combine that with the topamax and at the
time I had seen a document from Johnson and Johnson
where they had concluded that Topermax increased the risk of
suicidal itself in Juri's behavior, but they never told the FDA.
(20:26):
So it was only after I petitioned the FDA for
action that things started to happen. And I remember sitting
there and saying, there's just no way this happening.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Chris's dream team continued to develop their defense, even deposing
the crime scene investigator Robert Dial in January twenty eleven
about the investigation, and deal said, quote, every time that
I offered up something that was contrary to what they said,
they had some reason why I didn't know what I
was talking about, or they would change their theory of
what happened to try to match the evidence, rather than
(20:55):
letting the evidence dictate the events that occurred.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Quote, I know he was taken off the case. And
you know, once again, the confirmation bias get rid of
anybody that may have an alternate explanation as to what happened.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
It's this horribly flawed human element that makes abolishing the
death penalty and absolute moral imperative. And then that's exactly
what happened. Illinois abolished the death penalty in March twenty eleven,
but this had paradoxically an unintended and ultimately tragic consequence
for Chris.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
When the death penalty got taken off the table, the
funds for his defense also evaporated.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
It was going to continue to be so expensive to
finish out what needed to be done. In my attorney
there in Illinois, he showed up and he just apologized.
It just wasn't possible.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
And the case was assigned to a public defender, and
they're overloaded, overworked, they don't have the resources. I remember
the public defender spending about five minutes with me on
the phone, and that was the last time I ever
heard from the public defender. I think he did ask
me if I would appear pro bono that there were
no funds, and I wasn't on my own, I was
(22:06):
working for somebody and I had just been told to
stop what I was doing. We hadn't done a report yet,
and so it is clear that the substantial evidence that
was being developed of Chris's innocence was not going to
be available to him.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
The Public Defender team had to become fully steeped in
everything that had been developed over five years to combat
the States team, which had been working together for just
as long.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
It's like going to the World Series and removing one
of the teams, getting them from a little league park
and throwing them in and say, oh, go ahead and
do your best.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
You were also facing a situation where I have to
believe you were one of the most hated people in
the state of Illinois.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
I know. The state's attorney was very vocal, and they
used the media to the nth degree to make sure
that the stage was set for their advantage.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
So the scales of justice were certainly tipped all the
way to one side as the trial was set to
begin in August of twenty twelve. But as we so
often see, when the physical evidence is weak, the state
focus is on circumstantial evidence. So they dug into the
Vaughn's marriage and the arrangement that they had, presenting bombshells
like Chris had gone to strip clubs.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
A lot of men go to strip clubs, a lot
of women go to strip clubs. A lot of men
who are happily married go to strip clubs. The fact
that somebody goes to a strip club doesn't speak anything
as to the state of their marital relationship or lack thereof.
It means absolutely nothing the other situation, Chris was into
survival type things, hunting, being out in the woods, stuff
(23:39):
he had grown up with his whole life. They took
the fact that he had a friend who talked about
these things going to go off grid meant that he
was planning to do this crime, go off grid and
live his days out.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
It's hard to believe that he'd choose to begin that
life with two debilitating gunshot wounds, but okay, it's just posterous.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
During the trial, I think the prosecution present at seven
hundred exhibits, They had about fifty witnesses. The public defender,
put on a limited defense here, did not have the
tools to properly defend Chris. First of the prosecution, who
had effectively unlimited resources, he had not really presented the
drug issue. I know it was mentioned lightly during the trial,
(24:22):
but the experts that had been retained were not consulted,
and the jury found him guilty in what an hour
or so with all of that information, How could they
possibly have reviewed that information?
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Jury foreman Dan Leche expressed that there was no doubt
in the juror's minds of Vaughan's guilt and that they
never even considered the defense's argument that Kimberly Vaughn had
actually committed the murders. The drug issue was not effectively raised,
a forensic expert did not effectively expose the state's nonsensical theory,
(24:57):
and the jury bought what they'd already heard in an media,
and Chris was found guilty on four accounts of first
degree murder, for which he received four consecutive life sentences.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
To have been convicted of this was beyond my comprehension.
I've been raised to believe in the courtroom and the
judge and the jury, and they're going to find justice.
These are open minded people that are there to look
at the facts. And it wasn't until that very end
that I realized that everything that I had believed in
and that trust that I had placed in that system
(25:31):
was all or not. It's nothing like you see on TV.
It's not like you see in the movies. There's parts
(25:52):
of it that are more grotesque and more violent than
they're probably allowed to show on TV. But there's a
lot of good people in here. There's a lot of
people that have definitely committed crimes, but there's a lot
of people that have learned their lessons when I got
to prison, I really didn't know what to expect, and
I was frankly scared out of my mind. But early
(26:15):
on some of the older guys with life sentences pulled
me aside, and the advice that they gave me was
that the quicker that I can accept my sentence and
the quicker that I can get adjusted to this being
home for the rest of my life. They said, it's
just going to be that much easier on you. They said,
don't trust and hope. All that's going to do is
(26:35):
wear you down, make you sick, and eat you up.
They said, make the best of each day and find
things that you can do to stay productive, find things
you can find meaning in. And for the first four
or five years that's what I really did. I was
still in contact with my parents and they still come
up once a month no matter where I am, no
(26:56):
matter where they are, they still come and visit me
in person, and I talked to them on home. But
essentially I made prison life first four or five years,
assuming that's where I was going to be. It was
quite some years before a very open minded person came
and decided to do a podcast on.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Me, and that podcast was called murder in Illinois, hosted
by our very own Lauren bred Pacheco.
Speaker 4 (27:22):
I had been covering crime in New York for a
national show for a decade, and I had never heard
of this case until the ten year anniversary came up,
and so I started digging a little bit deeper, and
it became very obvious that it's because this case unfolded
(27:42):
under the same state's attorney in the same courtroom across
the hallway as another very infamous case, which was the
police sergeant Drew Peterson who had more than one wife
go missing under dubious circumstances. And that just sucked all
the national bandwidth. And that's too bad, because more people
(28:06):
would have seen what I saw. There was tremendous reaction
to the podcast, both positive and negative. People wish death
on my children, that they hoped that I would experience
the loss that Kim had experienced. Again, I wasn't anticipating
that revisiting this case to see if justice was served
(28:31):
would just produce such incredible personal blowback. But there is
a very real pivot that happens when you know that
someone is innocent, where you no longer care that you
are criticized for being their champion. And that's the way
(28:52):
I feel for Chris. I have tremendous sympathy for Kim
for her family, But keep an insiscent man in prison
is not going to bring the kids back, and it's
not going to bring Kem back. And so the only
semblance of justice left in this case is correcting this
(29:13):
agree us wrong.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
She told us about the reinvestigation, which started with somebody
who our listeners might remember, Bill Clutter from the Rodney
Lincoln story, which will be linked in the episode description.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Now.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Bill's work as a private investigator led him to found
an organization called Investigating Innocence and also the Illinois Innocence Project,
and he had been hired as part of Chris's original
dream team.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
Bill Clutter had already done a lot of work in
terms of forensics and the medication she was on and
so when we joined forces and set out to make
Murder in Illinois, one of the things that we were
working towards was a crime scene reconstruction, which unfortunately is
(29:59):
an arduous, expensive undertaking. And so Jason, I reached out
to you. Sure enough, you saw what I saw. You
so graciously stepped forward and made the crime scene reconstruction
take place. Bill Clutter enlisted a former CSI named Katie Hartman,
who was meticulous in her approach, and she went through
(30:22):
Bob Diale's initial report with a fine tooth calmb and
was so impressed with the work that he had done.
She said she could see exactly everything within that suv.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
And let's not forget how deeply Bob Deal disagreed with
the lead investigator and prosecutors on this case.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
Bob Deal claims that within an hour that Detective Gary
Lawson had come up with this, in my opinion, asenine theory,
that Vaughn shot his wife through the passenger Explain then,
how there is no blood on the exterior of the car,
(31:07):
in the front or the back if he leaned through
this window of this gigantic suv. And Vaughn, keep in mind,
is five foot nine, maybe in dress heels. You know,
he is not a large, imposing man, and for him
to have gotten the trajectory didn't work, and Deal himself said, basically,
(31:27):
that's jack assery. Show me how he did it, and
Lawson couldn't because it was physically impossible, which is what
we then proved when we did the crime scene reconstruction.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
But before the reconstruction, Lauren won Chris's trust. He wrote
a letter to his parents, finally explaining what had happened
that day, which he in turn shared with Lauren, and
it all matched up with what we were to discover
through the crime scene reconstruction.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
We enlisted actors who were roughly the same size as
Kim and Chris and put it in an identical vehicle
and played out the States theory and played out Chris's
theory again and again, and only one of them worked.
Only one of them was backed by the forensics, by
(32:16):
the blood in the car, and that was Christopher Vaughns.
And the moment when the actor recreating Chris's movements reached
forward and pulled that belt to try to get it
over the actress who was playing Kimberly's body, you see
exactly where his blood ended up by her foot, where
(32:38):
the blood smeared across the center console, all of it,
and it was such an eye opening, astounding moment of
undeniable proof. And with all of that, you still have
an innocent man who's lost everything, rotting in prison in Illinois.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Lauren also interviewed Keith for the podcast, which brought him
back onto Chris's team.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
It had been haunting me about how he had been convicted,
and when she called me in and we talked about it,
when she told me about the letter and about him
talking about what had happened, and there was an opportunity
for me to get involved, I jumped on it. You know,
there are things afoot internally that we are not ready
to release yet, but I can tell you we're blaming
(33:29):
the third person in the car. There was Chris, it
was Kim, and there was Topomax. That is what it's
all about, because it does provide an explanation as to
what happened here. We intend to talk about the misconduct
by the prosecution during the grand jury, combined with the
psychological impact of what took place preventing him from really
assisting in his defense. And the goal is to get
(33:52):
him a new trial. We believe very strongly that's going
to lead to a different result.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Well, we certainly hope so. And if anyone in our
audience is moved to act, what can we ask them
to do?
Speaker 4 (34:03):
I would say to go to Keith Altman's website because
he has links on there. You know, I think we're
going to start another outreach of writing Governor Pritzker. Governor
Pritzker is a fair, just man. I send him stuff
on Instagram constantly, just messages imploring him to take another
look at this case.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
And we're going to leave ways to reach both Governor
Pritzker and Chris with messages of encouragement in the episode
description and with that we're going to go to closing arguments.
It's where I thank you again Keith, Lauren, and Chris
for being here and sharing this unreal story. But it's
all too real. So I'm going to now turn my
microphone off and just listen to anything else you want
(34:46):
to share. Keith, why don't you kick it off? Then Lauren,
and then Chris, if you would please take us off
into the sunset.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
This is a tough case. Three kids killed, mother shot
is one that doesn't sit well with anybody. Chris is
as much a victim here and prosecutors number one, they
need to have an open mind. They need to find
out what might have happened, instead of deciding what happened
(35:15):
and then altering the investigation to fit that. It's important
that people have open minds, that they wait for the
evidence to come through because sometimes things are just not
quite as they seem, and upcoms Raiser really does play
a role here. The simplest explanation tends to be the
right one, and so we are very hopeful that we
(35:38):
will be able to get Chris a new trial, and
we're highly confident that we will be able to present
a very different picture as to what had happened.
Speaker 4 (35:48):
I would just say, please, do not take my word
for it, don't take Jason's word for it, don't take
Keith Altman's word for it. Just look into it. I
guarantee you you will very quickly see the patterns that
we all know to be true. It's a heartbreaking misery onion,
(36:11):
and the layers just keep building with every single day, week,
and year that Christopher Vaughn is incarcerated. He needs to
be released and again the process of healing.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
This is not just about me. This is about a
lot of people and about a system that's not working
like it should be. While I've been in here, I've
met a lot of people that have claimed innocence. When
I was in the outside world, I assume that anybody
locked up it was guilty of the crime. I believe
what was in the media. If they got locked up,
(36:47):
you know, good riddens. You know they were out of
sight and out of mind. That's just not the case.
There's good people in here that deserve second chance. There's
good people in here that are innocent of the crimes
that they've been accused convicted of, and overall, out night,
out of mind doesn't work because there's still human beings
in here, and I hope it's nothing else that this
(37:10):
starts building awareness for what's going on in these prison systems.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
week early by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on
Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team, Connor
Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive
producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Clibern. The music
in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated
(37:43):
composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all
social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction.
You can also follow me on Instagram at It's Jason
Flamm Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good
podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one.
Speaker 4 (38:00):
The land that were
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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