Speaker 1: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
Speaker 1: those of the authors and participants and do not necessarily
Speaker 1: represent those of iHeart Media, Tenderfoot TV, or their employees.
Speaker 1: This series contains discussions of violence and sexual violence. Listener
Speaker 1: discretion is advised. Previously an Algorithm journalist Thomas Hargrove warned
Speaker 1: police in northwest Indiana that they might have a serial
Speaker 1: killer and the loose. Starting in the nineteen nineties, we've
Speaker 1: seen several women who were found strangled in or near
Speaker 1: abandoned buildings, and four years later, after the murder of
Speaker 1: Africa Hardy, police arrested Darren Vaughan and Detective Shaan Ford
Speaker 1: began interrogating him. In your own words, what would you say?
Speaker 1: Has brought you here today? Why do you think you
Speaker 1: were arrested? Will say a hard Vaughn confessed to strangling
Speaker 1: Africa Hardy, and he told Ford and Captain Hinojosa that
Speaker 1: he had killed many more. How many people are you
Speaker 1: responsible for killing? His lifetime or couldn't even two? Vaughan
Speaker 1: took police to the body of one of his victims
Speaker 1: to provide evidence for his murders, but he wanted to
Speaker 1: make a deal. What are you trying to get out
Speaker 1: of this? Before? On a birthday? From iHeart Radio and
Speaker 1: Tenderfoot TV. This is algorithm. I'm ben Kee Brick. At
Speaker 1: one am on Sunday, October, Vaughan had just led investigators
Speaker 1: to the body of Anneth Jones, and just as Vaughan
Speaker 1: had described, they'd found her buried under a pile of
Speaker 1: stuft animals in the basement of an abandoned building. It
Speaker 1: appeared that Vaughan was a serial killer and his m
Speaker 1: O was the same one that Hargrove's algorithm had identified
Speaker 1: a hiller strangling women in Gary. But how many murders
Speaker 1: was her responsible for and were any of them on
Speaker 1: Hargrove's list. After police found anne jones body, they knew
Speaker 1: the investigation was going to get big and they wanted
Speaker 1: to keep Vaughan cooperating as long as they could. Detective
Speaker 1: Seawan Ford and Kelly Mickey convinced Vaughan to take them
Speaker 1: to another body, and Vaughan guided them ten minutes north
Speaker 1: to afforded up building on nineteen Avenue. Eerily, it was
Speaker 1: next door to a house that had a banner advertising
Speaker 1: Miss Deed's Hugs and Kisses Daycare. Here, Vaughan told detectives
Speaker 1: they'd find another body lying in the garage covered in plywood.
Speaker 1: He warned them to announce their presence before entering the
Speaker 1: building in case someone was quote using the house, and
Speaker 1: once again, detective found the body just where Von said
Speaker 1: it would be, in the building's garage, under a pile
Speaker 1: of plywood boards. This victim, later identified as Tiara Baby,
Speaker 1: appeared to have been dead for months. She was wearing
Speaker 1: a sweatshirt and jeans, and her body looked sunken in
Speaker 1: because her flesh had putrified inside her clothes. Detective Mickey
Speaker 1: tried to keep Von talking while she recorded on her
Speaker 1: cell phone. The audio quality is rough, but you can
Speaker 1: hear Detective Forward returning to the car and asking Van
Speaker 1: to take them to one more body complete jagg Off.
Speaker 1: I have a partner I worked with on regular basis
Speaker 1: and he dreams of stuff like this. He asked Vaughan
Speaker 1: to do it as a favor for his coworker. He
Speaker 1: just got into path. Do you have another one? I
Speaker 1: know it's dumb to ask, that's ins ridiculous. You're going
Speaker 1: to take the stone? I one th right. I won't
Speaker 1: point on all somebody. I hope you're prosecuted. Well, let
Speaker 1: me tell you this. You do, you do one more
Speaker 1: and you're definitely I'm a prosecutor's attention to why you
Speaker 1: can't be we're supposed to. Vaughn said he'd been back
Speaker 1: to the site where he left this body, and that
Speaker 1: he thought a worker that was demolishing abandoned buildings in
Speaker 1: the area might have come across this victim. So Ford
Speaker 1: called the Gary Police Department to ask them if they
Speaker 1: had found any bodies and the area of van was describing.
Speaker 1: This is a girl. It's a girl. They're all girls.
Speaker 1: They're all the guys. I can't give you all the
Speaker 1: guys are jobs. I can't. You'll probably figure out you
Speaker 1: guys who hired you know what. At this point, I
Speaker 1: don't think anybody's interested in the hiring. Well, I know
Speaker 1: one of them pass FBI ramifications. Believe the things will
Speaker 1: be very interesting. They want to know how we got
Speaker 1: to one of the federal faras. I don't know if
Speaker 1: he's a federal Winds or fay it my dear cop.
Speaker 1: I think he was an undercover cop. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: he's on the cover cop. You killed him? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: then it's more than one person of all, so I
Speaker 1: can't give you that boblem So how many women do
Speaker 1: you thinkers throughout the area? Here? Me or that I
Speaker 1: know personally either or okay, and that I know personally,
Speaker 1: maybe thirties me, maybe Quail, thirteen or year and none
Speaker 1: of them, no, mine don't get found. So I don't know.
Speaker 1: Some of these bodies should have been found. In fact,
Speaker 1: I know Gary found three, but since no DNA, no sex,
Speaker 1: none of head, they'll never know who killed him. Person
Speaker 1: to recap, Vaughn was now claiming he was responsible for
Speaker 1: killing thirty teen women and Gary in just the last year.
Speaker 1: Ford returns to the car and says Gary hadn't found
Speaker 1: anybodies recently in the area of Vaughan had mentioned, Did
Speaker 1: they say found me he hadn't heard of. Well, at
Speaker 1: least we're not far from all right. That's now you're
Speaker 1: going a brawl away. As they drive to the next
Speaker 1: crime scene. It's hard to tell Ford is trying to
Speaker 1: apply Vaughan for information, where if he's just making small talk.
Speaker 1: Do you got any good drug robbery guys in the
Speaker 1: streets that you must specialty? They don't have that specialty,
Speaker 1: written no more, no best I know they don't report it.
Speaker 1: Of course they don't. That's why it's the best crime.
Speaker 1: Maybe he is just making conversation figuring it will pay
Speaker 1: dividends later in the investigation. Now, I don't want to
Speaker 1: be putting all this in your head. But I've already done.
Speaker 1: I know. I've been all of Florida and sex since
Speaker 1: that's Florida. That's where it really and it jumped off
Speaker 1: big down there California. All I say, only stuff Indiana
Speaker 1: or we'll be tied up for a long time. You
Speaker 1: can take me on vacation, man, no on, stop my
Speaker 1: wrist me and you will be my ties. So what
Speaker 1: is the worst part about Like when you kill somebody,
Speaker 1: like you're like part no. But I mean, like like
Speaker 1: you said, you're moving that one girl down in the
Speaker 1: basement and like she started leaking. What is it that
Speaker 1: you're like, dad? But bless it she leaking? We take
Speaker 1: them away from the murder site. I really don't care
Speaker 1: if they leak, because you're not gonna find no evidence
Speaker 1: on the murder site. It's all I'm saying. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I hear you. On So is that why you move him? Right?
Speaker 1: And how long did it take you before you started
Speaker 1: moving them? I'll always move him tough to move right?
Speaker 1: And at what age did somebody start teaching me the
Speaker 1: first person should? Oh, you didn't do that alone. No,
Speaker 1: somebody had to teach me. You know you don't. But
Speaker 1: I didn't know if it was like, you know, something happened,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, just happened. They arrived at
Speaker 1: a third abandoned house. This one was a two story building.
Speaker 1: At the top of the stairs, in a closet, police
Speaker 1: found another body, and this time the body was skeletal
Speaker 1: as it be for bo. Yeah, her bones are showing,
Speaker 1: her skull is showing, saying, son of the other ones.
Speaker 1: I couldn't bring you too, because y'all wouldn't be at
Speaker 1: the tail. How what kills and does invation? You really
Speaker 1: be for cold? Yeah, but at least the families could
Speaker 1: have some peace, right. I gotta take you too once.
Speaker 1: I know, like I'd like to say, mama's stays, I'm
Speaker 1: taking all the MoMA's, These all mama's stakes, and these
Speaker 1: keeping one's supposed to be killed. Okay, get other people
Speaker 1: that are causing it? Said, they were pretty don exist
Speaker 1: in the wrongs. Fie Long time. How many just between
Speaker 1: me and you know? How many people you think keeps killing? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Do you keep track? No? I know, I know. I
Speaker 1: was upset when I found out there was a guy
Speaker 1: who mixed I killed over five hundred. That upset because
Speaker 1: you haven't because I hadn't. Oh so you wanted to
Speaker 1: kill five time? I want to kill five hundred. I
Speaker 1: was just used to being in Geary. I was known
Speaker 1: at one time the best it was a year. And
Speaker 1: then when he was looking at history and started reading
Speaker 1: that hundred for my reason murder stuff, that people a
Speaker 1: whole lot of more murders, so how many things? Told him, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm under the hundred. I know that under a hundreds.
Speaker 1: Since you were nine, I'm right over a hundred. I've
Speaker 1: had to be years. What thirteen this year? I have
Speaker 1: way more than thirteen this year month. Wow. At first,
Speaker 1: when I heard Vaughn's claim of three murders a month,
Speaker 1: I thought Vaughan was again contradicting himself, because earlier he
Speaker 1: said he'd only killed thirteen women in Gary that year.
Speaker 1: But then I remembered he also said he'd killed men
Speaker 1: as well, and people out of state, so he's not
Speaker 1: necessarily being inconsistent here. Still, there's something about his tone
Speaker 1: that makes me think he's embellishing his story. The investigation
Speaker 1: was just beginning, though. The next day, officers continued their interrogation,
Speaker 1: and the next night Vaughn led them to even more victims.
Speaker 1: On October twenty, two, days after Vaughan's arrest and the
Speaker 1: discovery of bodies and abandoned home, two press conferences were held.
Speaker 1: My name is Karen Freeman Wilson. I'm Mayor of the
Speaker 1: City of Gary, Indiana. We are here to discuss the
Speaker 1: apprehension of a suspect who was in the custom of
Speaker 1: the Hammond Police Department. This initially started with a murder
Speaker 1: in the city of Hammond at Motel six. The Hammond
Speaker 1: Police Department began an investigation which led them to a suspect.
Speaker 1: They began questioning him and learned that there were additional victims,
Speaker 1: and he led them to the bodies of those victims.
Speaker 1: Has there been any indication on how many victims may
Speaker 1: be out there at this point, we are unsure of
Speaker 1: the number. As of last night, he was continuing to
Speaker 1: lead police to the bodies of victims as he made
Speaker 1: any statements that they're all here. In GARYA I mean,
Speaker 1: I know the one. We believe there may be people
Speaker 1: in other parts of Northwest Indian to be a little
Speaker 1: bit lord. The second press conference was held by the
Speaker 1: Hammond Police Chief good afternoon. As a result of our investigation,
Speaker 1: it is believed that the suspect is a registered sex
Speaker 1: offender in the state of Texas, a forty three year
Speaker 1: old resident of Gary by the name of Darren Van.
Speaker 1: The investigations of at least six are ongoing. It is
Speaker 1: possible that investigation will lead to more victims, so we
Speaker 1: have to be careful about what we say at this point.
Speaker 1: So I'll take at least a couple of time. We're
Speaker 1: dealing with police. It could go back as far as
Speaker 1: twenty years based on some statements we have and that's
Speaker 1: yet to be coaberative. Ham And Police had found exactly
Speaker 1: what Hardgrive described in this letter as serial killer, strangling
Speaker 1: women and Gary crimes going back to the nineties and
Speaker 1: women's bodies left in abandoned billldings. A television production company
Speaker 1: called me and they said, had you heard about Gary?
Speaker 1: And I said what? And they told me all about
Speaker 1: the arrest of Mr Van. He said he had been
Speaker 1: active going back to the nineties and took them to
Speaker 1: the scenes of abandoned buildings in Gary, Indiana, where they
Speaker 1: recovered six previously unknown murder victims. So something I think
Speaker 1: about sometimes is was there something I could have done better?
Speaker 1: Because they weren't even looking and seven women died after
Speaker 1: two thousand ten, I at least knew that there was
Speaker 1: a serial killer active in Gary. Eventually, Vaughan was charged
Speaker 1: with murdering seven women and Jones, Christine Williams, Suna Billingsley,
Speaker 1: Tanya Gatwin, Tracy Martin, Tiera Beatty, and Africa Hardy. But
Speaker 1: none of these seven victims were in hargross list. Hard
Speaker 1: group had generated his list back in and the seven
Speaker 1: murders that von had confess us too weren't cold cases.
Speaker 1: They were all recent murders committed in the last year.
Speaker 1: Some of the victims hadn't even been reported missing. This
Speaker 1: was one of the aspects of the case that confused
Speaker 1: me when I first learned about it. Vaughan had only
Speaker 1: been charged for these recent murders, but according to the
Speaker 1: press conference held shortly after Vaughan's arrest, Vaughan had alluded
Speaker 1: to crimes going back twenty years and also In a
Speaker 1: since deleted Facebook post, Hammond's mayor wrote that Vaughan had
Speaker 1: admitted to quote a couple of homicides in Hammond back
Speaker 1: in ninety four, and based on those statements, Hargrove became
Speaker 1: convinced that Vaughan is responsible for at least some of
Speaker 1: the murders his algorithm identified. How convinced are you that
Speaker 1: this is the work of Van or another serial killer?
Speaker 1: And kind of what what makes you think that? Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, that's what he told Hammond police, that
Speaker 1: he had been active going back to the mid nineties,
Speaker 1: and I would take him out his word that he
Speaker 1: was responsible for some of these women who were found
Speaker 1: in abandoned buildings. I think that's his them all, but
Speaker 1: I don't have proof. When I started researching the case
Speaker 1: and speaking to Hargrove, only a tiny trickle of information
Speaker 1: had leaked out about Von's crimes. To try to avoid
Speaker 1: biasing a jury, the judge put a gag order on
Speaker 1: the case, preventing the lawyers involved, law enforcement or politicians
Speaker 1: from discussing it publicly, and the trial faced delay after delay.
Speaker 1: So for years, no one in the public, not even Hargrove,
Speaker 1: knew the extent of Vaughan's crimes, or even what exactly
Speaker 1: Vaughan had confessed to. Vaughan pled guilty to the seven murders,
Speaker 1: but in a highly unusual move, the judge kept the
Speaker 1: gag order in place after the trial ended, even though
Speaker 1: Vaughan didn't seem interested in appealing the case. I'd never
Speaker 1: heard of this happening before, and I began to wonder
Speaker 1: if there was more to the story, something Lake County
Speaker 1: was trying to cover up, but I also didn't want
Speaker 1: to jump to conclusions. Yeah, it's interesting, So, yeah, there
Speaker 1: there's a couple of statements in this press conference with
Speaker 1: the police chief where it alludes to crimes that could
Speaker 1: go back as far as twenty years. Then they kind
Speaker 1: of put a gang order during the trial that then
Speaker 1: justified not releasing information about his confession, even though the
Speaker 1: case is now closed. So I'm still kind of in
Speaker 1: the in the process of trying to get some of
Speaker 1: that information. But you know, it almost feels like maybe
Speaker 1: they did find some stuff and want to just sweep
Speaker 1: it under the rug. I think that they were very
Speaker 1: paranoid about making a reversible error. I couldn't tell you
Speaker 1: more than that, I really don't know. What does that mean,
Speaker 1: fear of reversible error, that maybe something about the way
Speaker 1: les confession was obtained would be improper, yeah, or um
Speaker 1: speculation that he's responsible for other murders beyond the step
Speaker 1: for which he was convicted. I don't know. I don't understand.
Speaker 1: Why do you have any theories as to why no
Speaker 1: attempt has been made to link than to any of
Speaker 1: these other murders, at least not to my knowledge. My
Speaker 1: working theory is because you warned them about it, and
Speaker 1: if it came out that indeed he was responsible for them,
Speaker 1: that that could politically embarrassing that. I mean, that's that's
Speaker 1: kind of just what in my head. But I have
Speaker 1: no idea how people actually make these kinds of decisions. No,
Speaker 1: that was the conversation I had with hard Grow before
Speaker 1: I got my hands on Vond's confessions. So after him
Speaker 1: and sent me the interrogations and police reports, I started
Speaker 1: combing through the hours of audio and hundreds of pages
Speaker 1: of documents. I was looking for any evidence that Vaughan
Speaker 1: might be responsible for the crimes on Hargrow's list, But
Speaker 1: also as I read and listened, I was trying to
Speaker 1: figure out whether Von's confessions were even credible. The Hammond
Speaker 1: Police Department had sent me twelve hours if Darren Vaughn's
Speaker 1: recorded confessions, as well as dozens of interviews with Vaughn's
Speaker 1: relatives and the friends and family of Vaughn's victims. As
Speaker 1: I listened through them, I was especially curious to find
Speaker 1: out what the Hammond Mayor had been referring to when
Speaker 1: he said Vaughn had confessed to quote a couple of
Speaker 1: homicides and Hammond in But I also wanted to know
Speaker 1: how much I should trust Vaughan in the first place.
Speaker 1: And as I kept listening through his interrogation, some of
Speaker 1: his claims just sounded bizarre or grandiose. To try to
Speaker 1: put vaughn story into context, I went back and re
Speaker 1: listened to an interview I've done a couple of months earlier.
Speaker 1: We created Darren. Darren at age six, was taken from
Speaker 1: his mother put in even a worse situation. This is
Speaker 1: Goeko Cossage, one of the public defenders who was assigned
Speaker 1: to Vaughan's case. And then my name is pronounced Goeko Cossage.
Speaker 1: It's like crotch itch, but it's costage um. When I
Speaker 1: got your email. You know, you told me that the
Speaker 1: gag order was still in place. So I'm curious kind
Speaker 1: of like, what can you talk about? What can't you
Speaker 1: talk about? Well, I think specifically I can certainly talk
Speaker 1: about anything from the public record, and I can also
Speaker 1: probably just kind of generically tell you a little bit
Speaker 1: about Darren's background without getting into too many specifics. To
Speaker 1: say the least Costage doesn't mince words. You have to
Speaker 1: understand Darren Van was the product of his fourteen year
Speaker 1: old mother being raped by the landlord. Cost It said
Speaker 1: that when Von's mother gave birth to him in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one, she was just fourteen years old. She had
Speaker 1: three more daughters after that in very short order. So
Speaker 1: this woman who was completely unequipped to probably have a pet,
Speaker 1: had four children. When Vaughan was six, the Department of
Speaker 1: Family and Children put him into foster care. For good
Speaker 1: five six years. He was passed around through foster homes.
Speaker 1: Almost in every foster home he was mistreated, and then
Speaker 1: an eight two, he got placed at Thelma Marshall. The
Speaker 1: Thelma Marshall Children's Home was a residential institution for foster kids.
Speaker 1: They had I think it was sixteen boys, sixteen girls.
Speaker 1: Eight of the boys were small and the girls were small.
Speaker 1: Eight to the boys were teenagers, eight of the girls
Speaker 1: were teenagers. They would go to neighborhood schools. They would
Speaker 1: just stay at the home. The basketball court there, and
Speaker 1: he had stuff down in the basement as far as
Speaker 1: a ping pong table or in a pool table. In
Speaker 1: the bedrooms were upstairs, in the kitchen was upstairs. According
Speaker 1: to Vaughan, things might have looked fine if you visited
Speaker 1: during the day, but after dark it turned into a nightmare.
Speaker 1: The adults would leave at five o'clock and at night
Speaker 1: they would be left with the counselors who were and
Speaker 1: they would go down in his hellhole of the basement
Speaker 1: and they would have gladiator games where they would have
Speaker 1: the kids square off and have to fight each other.
Speaker 1: Darren told us when he was being disciplined, they would
Speaker 1: put him in a completely dark room with the dog
Speaker 1: that he would have to climb on the pool table
Speaker 1: and be up on the pool table pretty much all
Speaker 1: night long, with his dog running around the outside of
Speaker 1: the pool table barking at him to get at him.
Speaker 1: When Von described his childhood to Detective Ford, he didn't
Speaker 1: mention the years he'd spent living with the foster families
Speaker 1: at all, but Vaughan said his time at the Thelma
Speaker 1: marshal Um was formative. Where did you live as a
Speaker 1: kid that you remember besides the boy's homes? That's all
Speaker 1: that you know? That's all I remember that somebody had
Speaker 1: to tell me family history when I came home because
Speaker 1: I didn't like nobody to okay. I was hitting people
Speaker 1: with objects, so they had to come over with some
Speaker 1: reason for Okay, So you were, you were violent even
Speaker 1: as a young young kid. What you're saying put to
Speaker 1: be an environment where I had to be valid. So okay,
Speaker 1: So due to this is that way you were originally taken? No,
Speaker 1: I was. I was a kid. I had a violent
Speaker 1: streeting me as a young young kid. But when you
Speaker 1: go to the homes you deal with people. Is in
Speaker 1: there for a criminal activity? What year do you think
Speaker 1: you've got? How old do you think you are when
Speaker 1: you went to the homes? I can tell you that's
Speaker 1: the only place I remember is being home. Like when
Speaker 1: I get depressed, I go there. I sit outside of
Speaker 1: it really still today because my home it's not only
Speaker 1: home I've ever known. That's insane. Well, what did you
Speaker 1: go when? I understand what you're saying, but like it's
Speaker 1: where I was made. Vaughn said that shortly after coming
Speaker 1: to film and Marshall, one of the teenagers at the
Speaker 1: home started targeting him. What did he do to mess
Speaker 1: with you? You know, I'm trying to turn him into
Speaker 1: a girl. Okay, So he was actually a predator. He's
Speaker 1: trying to break and we don't really call them predators.
Speaker 1: Y'all call them predators. We don't call them predators. What
Speaker 1: would you call him? He's just what he is. That's
Speaker 1: why terror. Everybody is what they is. Everybody has some
Speaker 1: kind of busing thing. But Vaughan says, one of the
Speaker 1: other kids, an eighteen year old, he went by big Ee,
Speaker 1: found out about the team that was messing with. Vaughn
Speaker 1: wanted to older kids older than you go to Obhi
Speaker 1: and being his homeies. Gentleman, I remember it's Timo missing.
Speaker 1: So the nailed him in home? Yeah? Are we always
Speaker 1: asked jumping going on? There's always something going on in
Speaker 1: the home. And then he came up missing later right,
Speaker 1: it was ever found? When you say he's missing, when
Speaker 1: I mean was he killed? Ya? Oh? Yeah? He was killed.
Speaker 1: It was coming, It was coming. Fawn says that Big
Speaker 1: E was a gangster disciple at g D, a member
Speaker 1: of the nationwide gang that had its nerve center in
Speaker 1: nearby Chicago, and after saving Vaughan, BIGI recruited him to
Speaker 1: join the gang. Remember Drew Elementary School. Biggie's hit Massy.
Speaker 1: It's like, make sure you looked after because you're always
Speaker 1: gonna be going somewhere doing something for somebody. You might
Speaker 1: be the best guy right now, really best guy. How
Speaker 1: come he had one of the best codes of honor.
Speaker 1: I've never seeing him break a g D rule. He's
Speaker 1: a really good guy. As long as you do funk
Speaker 1: around where he believed in, he was perfectly safe. I
Speaker 1: remember he was a star on the Roosevelt basketball squad.
Speaker 1: But you quit, guess some kind of trouble, okay. Joining
Speaker 1: the Gangster Disciples was a multi step process. The first step,
Speaker 1: getting jumped in meant getting beat up by the other
Speaker 1: members of the gang. And I got jumped and for
Speaker 1: real elementary schools, do you remember you're jumping for reading?
Speaker 1: Really busted arm messed up? Remember all that. Yeah. Vaughn
Speaker 1: says that before long he was spending more time with
Speaker 1: the gang than he did in school, and his new
Speaker 1: recruits got further initiated into the gang. They would be
Speaker 1: asked to commit crimes, crimes that grew more and more violent. Now,
Speaker 1: you said when you first became a g D that stuff.
Speaker 1: You had an incident where you killed the first person
Speaker 1: that you ever killed, right, and what made you kill him?
Speaker 1: That's part of all being blessed in Chicago? What does
Speaker 1: it mean to be blessed? You put on the books,
Speaker 1: you can always call for get support if you need it.
Speaker 1: You kind of like an official or member your official. Remember,
Speaker 1: if you're not the own book, you're not really a member.
Speaker 1: You're just sing you agg did you kill somebody specific
Speaker 1: to get blessed in? I mean, I hear who they
Speaker 1: told me to kill, and I really don't know who.
Speaker 1: World didn't care, so they just gave me an assignment. Right,
Speaker 1: But it wasn't enough for a recruit just to kill someone.
Speaker 1: It was also how they acted after they'd done the deed.
Speaker 1: Van brought this up with Officer Mickey the night he
Speaker 1: was arrested. Now that the kids ever not want to
Speaker 1: do it, you who have a choice, So like when
Speaker 1: the kids do it for the first time, do they
Speaker 1: flip out, like do you come from them? Or you
Speaker 1: break down too much? If you're getting rid of black kills,
Speaker 1: that's always been a gang thing. They can't take no chance.
Speaker 1: And some of you spell in the bank, bill in
Speaker 1: the vein for some keys y'all think are like random ers.
Speaker 1: They're not random ers. Ideas something they can live with.
Speaker 1: It started talking and start had to be get rid
Speaker 1: of the gang that Von has been talking about. The
Speaker 1: Gangster Disciples or g DS, was formed in Chicago in
Speaker 1: nineteen four. The Gangster Disciples were founded by Larry Hoover.
Speaker 1: At the time, he was serving a life sentence in
Speaker 1: an Illinois prison for murder, but using coded messages, he
Speaker 1: ran the gang's drug dealing and prostitution rackets from behind
Speaker 1: bars for decades. Hoover created what he called the sixteen
Speaker 1: Rules of proper behavior for the Disciples. These rules included
Speaker 1: silence about gang business. They'd say, nothing will hurt the
Speaker 1: duck but its own bill. Other rules prohibited homosexual rape,
Speaker 1: using addictive drugs, and stealing from other gangster disciples. These
Speaker 1: sixteen rules were to be followed strictly. If rules were
Speaker 1: by related gang leaders would order punishments to be dealt
Speaker 1: out by gang enforcers. The punishments could range from beatings
Speaker 1: to death. Vaughn says he was taught how to kill
Speaker 1: by the gang and became one of the gangs enforcers.
Speaker 1: Von's lawyer, Cossage, says that as a public defender in
Speaker 1: Lake County, Indiana, he's had many clients and gangs. You
Speaker 1: can't even imagine, imagine what they went through in their lives.
Speaker 1: You know, you can go ahead and talk about all
Speaker 1: these gang manners and all these shootings and until you
Speaker 1: you really break it down. You know, these kids are
Speaker 1: eight nine years old and they live in these neighborhoods
Speaker 1: where they're getting harassed and either they're gonna keep getting
Speaker 1: picked on and keep getting beat up, or they're gonna
Speaker 1: join a game, and they grow into these gangs, and
Speaker 1: these gangs become their only family, and they do what
Speaker 1: they're told. What never sees us to amaze me. You know,
Speaker 1: they give you the Latin King Manifesto or the Gangster
Speaker 1: Disciple Rules, whatever the hell they have, and like the
Speaker 1: first page, first page says, I will never cooperate with
Speaker 1: the police. I will never give evidence to the police,
Speaker 1: or stay us to the police, that may implicate a brother.
Speaker 1: But the sons of bitches on the very top, when
Speaker 1: they get busted within forty eight hours, they are singing
Speaker 1: like the loudest damn canaries you've ever heard, to save
Speaker 1: their asses. They're telling them about murders they ordered, who
Speaker 1: did them, to save their asses. And the guys on
Speaker 1: the bottom never figure that out, never figure out, but
Speaker 1: they're gonna get sold out by the guys on the top.
Speaker 1: Fons lawyers wanted more information about fons early life and
Speaker 1: gang involvement, so they tried to find out more information
Speaker 1: about Big E. He was challenging though, because Von didn't
Speaker 1: know Big EA's real name. We really really wanted to
Speaker 1: track him down. We thought at one time it was
Speaker 1: someone who played basketball and one of the local high
Speaker 1: schools there, and he was on on the bench on
Speaker 1: one of the state champ bionship teams, but that ended
Speaker 1: up falling by the wayside. It wasn't him. We never
Speaker 1: couldn't find him. The police were also interested in finding
Speaker 1: Big E to verify Von's story and to investigate the
Speaker 1: early murders Vaughan had mentioned. They asked Von's half brother
Speaker 1: Reginald about it. Reginald new big e by a slightly
Speaker 1: different name. Okay, his friend Big talk about him, a
Speaker 1: big white girl in the homes gather him big whit
Speaker 1: him big white being bad. But nobody in my family
Speaker 1: knows being white. Nobody's ever seen big white. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Come on, then it's not plausible? And
Speaker 1: what is a fictional character? Because I dug further into
Speaker 1: Vaughan's confessions, it was not at all this story I
Speaker 1: was expecting. But I did discover or what I suspect
Speaker 1: is the reason why authorities wanted to keep this case
Speaker 1: quiet for so long. Next time on algorithm, be it
Speaker 1: from the organic injury or something he had convinced himself.
Speaker 1: There were episodes in Darren's life that he remembered completely
Speaker 1: different than what we had incredible evidence for. All went
Speaker 1: back out of control again. I never made it back
Speaker 1: un Once you I don't know how to play with y'all,
Speaker 1: y'all don't have the same or once you start killing again.
Speaker 1: Now when you say abuse of like verbally, abuse of physically,
Speaker 1: I don't recall all the different actually with all her
Speaker 1: y'all probably caught me years ago this episode was written
Speaker 1: and produced by me ben Kiebrick Algorithm is executive produced
Speaker 1: by Alex Williams, Donald Albright, and Matt Frederick. Production assistance
Speaker 1: in mixing by Eric Quintana. The music is by Makeup
Speaker 1: and Vanity Set and Blue Dot Sessions. Thanks to Christina Dana,
Speaker 1: Miranda Hawkins, Jamie Albright, Rima l. K Ali, Trevor Young,
Speaker 1: and Josh Thane for their help and notes, and thanks
Speaker 1: for listening. The story is only going to keep getting
Speaker 1: crazier and soon I'm going to need you all to
Speaker 1: help me solve some of the mysteries regarding this case.
Speaker 1: Please help spread the word about this podcast, especially if
Speaker 1: you have any friends in Indiana, Illinois, or Texas. I
Speaker 1: hope that through this podcast we can shed some light
Speaker 1: on some really important issues and maybe even bring justice
Speaker 1: and closure to additional victims. If you do have any
Speaker 1: information about Big E, Daryn Vaughan, where crimes that you
Speaker 1: think might be related, or if you just have questions
Speaker 1: you want addressed on the podcast, please call and leave
Speaker 1: me a voicemail with your contact information at eight eight
Speaker 1: five zero one three three zero nine. That's eight eight
Speaker 1: five year one three three zero nine, or you can
Speaker 1: also reach out to me on Twitter. I'm at ben
Speaker 1: Underscore Keybrick. That's b E N Underscore k U E
Speaker 1: b R I c H. Thanks