Speaker 1: Murder in Illinois is a production of iHeartRadio. At this point,
Speaker 1: it was April of twenty twenty one, and the last
Speaker 1: email I'd received from Christopher Vaughan began with Lauren, I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry to have wasted your time. I am done
Speaker 1: with the podcast. That email ended with I thank you
Speaker 1: for your compassion and your willingness to help. I wish
Speaker 1: you all the best, Chris. This was an unexpected and
Speaker 1: unfortunate turn, especially in light of the potential insight. Chris's
Speaker 1: five page letter provided something I conveyed to his parents
Speaker 1: on April first. It's so strange that he sent that
Speaker 1: to me, because today I got my first shot of
Speaker 1: the vaccine, so I'm that much closer to being able
Speaker 1: to visit with him. And I think you were right.
Speaker 1: You both said that he knows what to expect from life.
Speaker 2: Right now, well digitally.
Speaker 3: That's why he hasn't called us this week, because he's been.
Speaker 2: Overthinking going through it. Going through a new trial is
Speaker 2: like pulling chief with him. He doesn't want to go
Speaker 2: back to Joli yet. He doesn't want to bring up
Speaker 2: the loss of his children again. He doesn't want to
Speaker 2: point a finger at Kim and then he gets scared.
Speaker 2: He doesn't want to put hope out there. He thought
Speaker 2: that he was not good enough to take care and
Speaker 2: watch over and save his children, and he doesn't want
Speaker 2: it out there again that he was unable to do that.
Speaker 2: For him, time has stood still.
Speaker 4: That might be.
Speaker 2: Fourteen years later, but for him, I think he's just
Speaker 2: rerunning it all the time.
Speaker 4: Well, like Gale said, he has nothing to do twenty
Speaker 4: four to seven but think about this, and he's got
Speaker 4: anxiety about going through this all again.
Speaker 1: Well, there are other avenues for post conviction relief other
Speaker 1: than a trial.
Speaker 3: Okay, that would help, because right now Chris only sees
Speaker 3: a retrial. I know that if we could actually get
Speaker 3: to talk to him, visit him, and it would help
Speaker 3: things a lot.
Speaker 1: I was becoming increasingly convinced that Bond's version, as laid
Speaker 1: out in the letter, provided answers to issues I'd personally
Speaker 1: had with both the prosecution and the defensive scenarios of
Speaker 1: the events. I have been through everything with a fine toothcomb.
Speaker 1: They theorize how he did it, but they can't explain
Speaker 1: why there is no blood trail from the passenger side
Speaker 1: if he was shot on one side and he was standing.
Speaker 1: On the other he would have had to have walked
Speaker 1: around the car. Are either the front or the back?
Speaker 1: None of it makes sense. They proved motive, but they
Speaker 1: never proved that he did it. Forensics are explained by
Speaker 1: his version of what happened that day. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco,
Speaker 1: and this is murder in Illinois.
Speaker 4: Gange Dilloy.
Speaker 5: Cry Gange feel ground.
Speaker 1: Well, that's disappointing, yes, but understandable. I reached out to
Speaker 1: Bill to discuss Chris's email about no longer moving forward.
Speaker 1: There have been parts of his memories that he's kept
Speaker 1: really hidden from himself and locked away for a long time,
Speaker 1: and now they're all out there. He had to put
Speaker 1: them on the page, and now he's living with them
Speaker 1: on a daily basis. I told his parents that I
Speaker 1: was going to keep corresponding with him and just ask
Speaker 1: that he meet with me. At least his version of
Speaker 1: the events really seems to explain the forensics of the car.
Speaker 1: If his letter ends up being backed up by your
Speaker 1: crime scene reconstruction, is there another option other than going
Speaker 1: through another trial, perhaps going to the ag or to
Speaker 1: the governor.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, it's a lot on all of these
Speaker 6: avenues are just extremely difficult, but executive clemency it stands
Speaker 6: a better chance than going back.
Speaker 7: To wil County.
Speaker 1: Executive clemency would be a possible way of avoiding another trial.
Speaker 1: It referred to the general powers of the President and
Speaker 1: of governors to pardon, grant, amnesty, communion, or reprieve to
Speaker 1: individuals who've been convicted. Two days after that discussion, Gale
Speaker 1: and Pierre called with news they'd finally heard from Chris.
Speaker 1: I immediately reached back out to Bill. They spoke to Chris.
Speaker 1: They said, he cannot give up on himself, and he
Speaker 1: cannot quit until he has sat with us in person
Speaker 1: and we've talked to him about his other options and
Speaker 1: he's back on board.
Speaker 7: That's great, That is a positive development.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's stirred up all these feelings and emotions and memories,
Speaker 1: and on many levels, I think he's come to the
Speaker 1: conclusion that it would be easier to just stay where
Speaker 1: he is and live what he knows.
Speaker 7: He just has resigned himself to just isolating, and it's
Speaker 7: good that his parents were able to get through to it.
Speaker 1: Another obstacle would be getting Chris to agree to share
Speaker 1: the information in that deeply personal letter he'd sent his parents.
Speaker 1: It is also the only eyewitness account of the events
Speaker 1: that day, and if it does end up overlapping seamlessly
Speaker 1: with the forensics in terms of recreating the crime scene,
Speaker 1: it's ultimately the key to getting him out, and so
Speaker 1: we need to address it.
Speaker 7: It's an incredibly difficult cases, it is, but having his
Speaker 7: cooperation is essential.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. It becomes very clear that he was incapable or
Speaker 1: unwilling to defend himself until this point. So it is
Speaker 1: a breakthrough, you know, it's as if he was challenging
Speaker 1: people to figure it out without his help.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: My next step was to reach out for advice to
Speaker 1: a prominent force in the innocence community, Jason Flam, the
Speaker 1: host of the Wrongful Conviction podcast that bears his name.
Speaker 1: Our pads actually crossed a few years back when I
Speaker 1: picked up a freelance producing job for the Doctor Phil
Speaker 1: Show solely for the chance to meet Flom in person.
Speaker 1: As it turned out, he was listening to Murder in Oregon,
Speaker 1: one of my previous podcasts at the time, and we've
Speaker 1: stayed in touch since. As an aside, Jason's three decades
Speaker 1: of work in the field of justice, reform is as
Speaker 1: impressive as his day job as a record label executive.
Speaker 1: He's launched the careers of acts like Matchbox twenty, Katy Perry,
Speaker 1: and Lord. He's a truly impressive, inspiring guy.
Speaker 8: I am the founding board member of the Innocence Project
Speaker 8: in New York, not the founder by any means, but
Speaker 8: the founding board member of Big Difference. The founders, of course,
Speaker 8: are Parry Schech and Peter Neufeld. I don't remember the
Speaker 8: exact case, but I turned on the TV and there
Speaker 8: was the story that the Innocence Project, which was a
Speaker 8: brand new organization back then, had found the DNA in
Speaker 8: a case of a guy who was about to be executed,
Speaker 8: and at sort of the last hour, had ridden in
Speaker 8: like the Avengers and proven that this man was innocent.
Speaker 8: Not only did he not get execute it, but he
Speaker 8: was freed. And I thought, that's the most amazing, craziest
Speaker 8: shit I've ever heard. It never occurred to me back
Speaker 8: then that innocent people went to prison.
Speaker 1: That was thirty years ago, and ever since, Flohm has
Speaker 1: become a power full voice for the powerless and voiceless,
Speaker 1: and well versed in the misconception surrounding wrongful convictions.
Speaker 8: There's growing awareness, for sure about the scourge of wrongful convictions,
Speaker 8: but I think it's probably hard for the human mind,
Speaker 8: or the American mind, to process the idea that it's
Speaker 8: as common as it is, because if you accept that,
Speaker 8: then you have to also understand that it could happen
Speaker 8: to you. The fact is, it happens all the damn time,
Speaker 8: and social scientists different studies have estimated between four and
Speaker 8: seven percent of people in prison are innocent in America,
Speaker 8: some say as high as ten percent. I personally think
Speaker 8: it may be higher because it's the guilty plea problem,
Speaker 8: and that doesn't even take into account the huge number
Speaker 8: of people that are in jail who haven't been convicted
Speaker 8: of anything.
Speaker 1: Flom is all too familiar with the most sobering statistics
Speaker 1: about our legal system, in particular pre conviction incarceration.
Speaker 8: Almost five hundred thousand people in jail right now as
Speaker 8: we're talking who haven't been convicted of anything, and the
Speaker 8: majority of those people are actually innocent. So when you
Speaker 8: add all those numbers together, you get to a really
Speaker 8: high number of people that are actually innocent. I mean,
Speaker 8: over two hundred thousand seems to be very likely two
Speaker 8: hundred thousand people innocent of the crimes for which they're
Speaker 8: serving time or awaiting trial is nuts. And every one
Speaker 8: of them has a story and had dreams and hopes
Speaker 8: and aspirations as a family of some sort. It's a massive,
Speaker 8: massive problem. But I'm super humbled and grateful that people
Speaker 8: listen to my podcast and are learning and getting involved,
Speaker 8: and change is coming. It's happening right now.
Speaker 1: Change and reform he's dedicated to making sure also addresses
Speaker 1: the treatment of people after they've served their sentences.
Speaker 8: Yeah, there's almost an analogy I would draw where you've
Speaker 8: probably seen these cities and counties where they take the
Speaker 8: spots where homeless people sleep at night, and they put
Speaker 8: spikes on the benches and things. I mean, isn't it
Speaker 8: bad enough that these people are without a place to live,
Speaker 8: and now we're going to take away what little comfort
Speaker 8: they may have been able to find under a bridge
Speaker 8: or god knows where. And it's sort of like the
Speaker 8: same thing we do with people coming out of prison,
Speaker 8: innocent or guilty, right where we should be providing them
Speaker 8: with the tools that they need to re enter society,
Speaker 8: to be able to go back to their community, to
Speaker 8: their family, to their school and have a chance, a
Speaker 8: real chance at rebuilding their life. Instead, we put up
Speaker 8: roadblocks at every turn. Basically, they have to live a
Speaker 8: life of purity and sanctity and perfection and promptness, and
Speaker 8: they have to be on time for their parole officer
Speaker 8: and whatever. They can't you need a poppy seat bagel
Speaker 8: because they'll fail a drug test and otherwise they're going
Speaker 8: back to jail. And of course there's all the other
Speaker 8: barriers right into employment and housing.
Speaker 1: That's the other thing. I think that there is this naivete,
Speaker 1: this misconception that if someone is innocent and you can
Speaker 1: prove it, that they're automatically welcomed back into society led
Speaker 1: out of prison. And it's a huge hurdle. And that's
Speaker 1: why I'm reaching out to you, because in the case
Speaker 1: with Chris Vaughan, I didn't want to reach out to
Speaker 1: you actually until I felt that I could very clearly
Speaker 1: articulate why I needed your advice and why I needed
Speaker 1: your guidance and your help in this. With Chris's knowledge
Speaker 1: and his parent support, I'd sent Jason Bond's five page letter.
Speaker 1: In addition to extensive background information, crime scene reports, depositions,
Speaker 1: and build Clutter's twenty ten detailed summary, which made the
Speaker 1: case for murder suicide based on forensic evidence.
Speaker 8: I often think that the only thing worse than being
Speaker 8: wrongfully convicted and sent to prison for the rest of
Speaker 8: your life or death row, or any any variation of that,
Speaker 8: is being wrongfully convicted of murdering a relative, particularly a child,
Speaker 8: your own child, or a parent or sibling. I guess,
Speaker 8: but something about the child or the parent is particularly
Speaker 8: difficult for me to process. Arresting him at the funeral
Speaker 8: is just particularly six scenario. And you know, but it
Speaker 8: goes on all the time, right, It's like, what are
Speaker 8: the authorities kicking people's doors allegedly looking for drugs? If
Speaker 8: you're looking for drugs, why not wait till somebody emerges
Speaker 8: from the house in the morning and arrest them. Then
Speaker 8: you know. But it's all it's all just backwards, and
Speaker 8: it's all designed for maximum cruelty and abuse. That's the
Speaker 8: system that we're in, and he unfortunately caught the very
Speaker 8: worst of all of it.
Speaker 1: I wanted Flohm's seasoned opinion to weigh in on the
Speaker 1: one I was finally ready to voice.
Speaker 8: The letter.
Speaker 1: Honestly, it's like you take an overlay, and all the
Speaker 1: missing puzzle pieces just materialized and you could see for
Speaker 1: the first time the clear picture, and it just makes
Speaker 1: the whole thing that much more tragic. Actually, on so
Speaker 1: many levels.
Speaker 8: Jason.
Speaker 1: You have the defense theory, which didn't make sense because
Speaker 1: they wanted to believe the reason why he couldn't remember
Speaker 1: anything was dissociative amnesia, and that he was in the
Speaker 1: car when the kids were shot, and that he rolled
Speaker 1: forward in kind of a frozen state, and that he
Speaker 1: sat back into her blood. None of that made sense.
Speaker 1: But the prosecution's theory made no more sense, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't until you get his letter and you realize that
Speaker 1: he was behind the car, heard this explosion inside the car,
Speaker 1: that as he was opening the driver's side she shot
Speaker 1: him once, tried to get back in, she shot again,
Speaker 1: and then shot herself. So when he sat back down
Speaker 1: into the driver's seat and turned around to check on
Speaker 1: the kids, her blood was all over his back, but
Speaker 1: her body was also slumped, and in his panic, he thought,
Speaker 1: I'll drive to go get help, and in doing so,
Speaker 1: he tried to pull her belt which she had taken off,
Speaker 1: and his blood from his wounded left wrist was all
Speaker 1: over the belt, and his hands were shaking so much
Speaker 1: while he was trying to buckle her in because she
Speaker 1: was also blocking that buckle, that the blood pooled on
Speaker 1: the council and then he gave up because he was shaking,
Speaker 1: and it retracted and went back and he got out
Speaker 1: of the car. But that's why none of his blood
Speaker 1: is on the exterior perimeter back or front of the car.
Speaker 1: If he had shot her, there would have been blood
Speaker 1: all over him and he would have had to have
Speaker 1: walked around. And it wasn't until Chris wrote the letter
Speaker 1: which I had shared with you, that I started this
Speaker 1: thinking what if he were innocent? And now I sincerely
Speaker 1: feel he is. Chris Vaughn allowed himself to be convicted.
Speaker 1: He was incapable or unwilling for fourteen years to adequately
Speaker 1: defend himself. In many levels, it's just this perfect storm
Speaker 1: of tunnel vision, confirmation, bias, character assassination, and then blood
Speaker 1: splatter evidence, which it's this interpretive science, which is like
Speaker 1: reading an ink block. Blood spatter expert Paul Kish was
Speaker 1: utilized by the prosecution to contend that the blood spatter
Speaker 1: evidence did not conform with Vaughn having left the vehicle
Speaker 1: before his wife was shot, due to the presence of
Speaker 1: his blood on the seat belt console and droplets on
Speaker 1: the passenger side. Obviously, Kish wasn't privy to Bond's latest revelations,
Speaker 1: but even at the time of the trial, Kish conceded
Speaker 1: that he couldn't rule out murder suicide based on the
Speaker 1: blood evidence either. Here again is Jason Flamm.
Speaker 8: Let's talk about blood spatter because I think people watch Dexter,
Speaker 8: they watch CSI or whatever they watch, and they have
Speaker 8: this totally unrealistic view. Because the National Academy of Sciences, right,
Speaker 8: the real thing, right, the people who we should hold
Speaker 8: in the highest regard, in two thousand and nine did
Speaker 8: a very intensive study real scientific integrity, and they were
Speaker 8: extremely critical of a number of the junk sciences. But
Speaker 8: I think they saved some of their strongest words for
Speaker 8: blood spatter, and among other things, that this blood spatter
Speaker 8: analysis is more subjective than substantive.
Speaker 1: It's whatever you want to say, and it can be
Speaker 1: used to prove whatever you want to prove given most scenarios.
Speaker 8: No, you're absolutely right. It is the probably the worst
Speaker 8: of all the junk sciences, and to call it a
Speaker 8: science is ridiculous. Right, you can take a forty hour
Speaker 8: course to become a bloodstained pattern analyst and then you
Speaker 8: can actually go and testify in court. It's ridiculous. It's
Speaker 8: absurd because the people are getting up and testifying as
Speaker 8: experts forty hours. What can you learn in forty hours.
Speaker 8: Almost nothing. There's nothing scientific about it. It's foolishness, that's
Speaker 8: what it is, except for the fact that the consequences
Speaker 8: are so extremely serious and real. So that should have
Speaker 8: been the end of it. It should never have been
Speaker 8: used again after that was made clear. But again the
Speaker 8: courts fall back on themselves and the system protects itself.
Speaker 8: It doesn't protect the people. It doesn't work for the
Speaker 8: Chris Bonds, it doesn't work for any of the people
Speaker 8: it's supposed to work for, which are the people whose
Speaker 8: lives are in the hands of the system that is
Speaker 8: supposed to protect their rights and all of our rights.
Speaker 8: And once once it starts down a road and that
Speaker 8: television sets in, as you said, Lauren, they will find
Speaker 8: ways to railroad you and they just put these blinders
Speaker 8: on and it doesn't matter. And as I was listening
Speaker 8: to you talk, it occurred to me that Chris is
Speaker 8: exactly the person that we were referencing a few minutes ago, right,
Speaker 8: because he didn't believe that he could be wrongfully convicted,
Speaker 8: which is why he didn't really mount the defense. First
Speaker 8: of all, this poor guy's just lost his entire family.
Speaker 8: He's just seen his entire family dead in front of
Speaker 8: his eyes. Right, he saw his kids murdered like seconds earlier,
Speaker 8: bleeding to death whatever the backseat of his car, and
Speaker 8: then his wife. Now grant that he wasn't badly hurt,
Speaker 8: but I've never been shot. I'm sure it's kind of traumatic.
Speaker 8: To be shot twice and then find your family dead
Speaker 8: is something nobody should ever have to go through. And
Speaker 8: it's unbelievable to even imagine what the hell. And it's
Speaker 8: also disgusting for us to think that we know how
Speaker 8: someone should or should not act that has been through that.
Speaker 1: And yeah, you're right, he was on his demeanor. He
Speaker 1: didn't act the way he should. I think that he
Speaker 1: didn't want to implicate his wife because he felt guilt
Speaker 1: that he thought that his actions drove her to do
Speaker 1: something so horrific and out of character.
Speaker 8: And you know, in my view, he's guilty of being
Speaker 8: maybe not the best husband. But I'm not going to
Speaker 8: sit there and judge him, and I would say that
Speaker 8: no one else really should either. We don't know what
Speaker 8: was going on in their relationship or in their home,
Speaker 8: and that is also not a crime. It might be
Speaker 8: a moral failing, but it's not a crime. And also
Speaker 8: that I think he was in a certain way protecting
Speaker 8: the reputation of the woman that he had been married to.
Speaker 8: But this also reminds me, Lauren of, in a certain way,
Speaker 8: the case that we covered on wrongful Conviction, the Larry
Speaker 8: Delile case, right where Larry was in his car with
Speaker 8: his four kids and his wife, gas pedal jammed and
Speaker 8: the car went screaming into the river off a dock,
Speaker 8: and he and his wife I don't think they could swim,
Speaker 8: but they managed to get out, and the kids were
Speaker 8: tragically drowned. And then started this narrative where he's not
Speaker 8: emotional enough, the press is stalking him at his house.
Speaker 8: He's they were sitting outside, he and his wife having
Speaker 8: an iced t or a beer or something. Now, he
Speaker 8: was on a lot of medications after this. He was
Speaker 8: taking so many pills to try to deal with this
Speaker 8: unimaginable trauma. But they wanted to believe what they wanted
Speaker 8: to believe, and I think in that case, people couldn't
Speaker 8: process the idea that this car could have malfunctioned in
Speaker 8: such a way with such awful consequences. So even when
Speaker 8: the evidence emerged that is in fact exactly what happened,
Speaker 8: and even when it became clear that one hundred and
Speaker 8: seventeen I think other cars of this exact same make
Speaker 8: and model had been recalled because the accelerator jammed. And
Speaker 8: even though his wife said the accelerator jammed, the story
Speaker 8: got out there in the media that he had confessed.
Speaker 8: That's debatable, but Larry is still in prison now thirty
Speaker 8: I think it was nineteen eighty nine. So yeah, this
Speaker 8: unfortunately is going back to what your question from earlier.
Speaker 8: This is terribly, terribly common, and we need to overhaul
Speaker 8: the system. And you know, Lady Justice, with the scales,
Speaker 8: it's not a realistic depiction at all of our system. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I know, this concept that justice is blind.
Speaker 8: I think it's deaf, and it's interesting as it relates
Speaker 8: to this case, right to the advant case, because you know,
Speaker 8: another thing that I think is really not in the
Speaker 8: public consciousness is that science and justice are practically opposite.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 8: Science is based on the analysis of data and information
Speaker 8: that is processed in a way that is scientific, and
Speaker 8: justice is based on precedent. Right. So while science moves forward,
Speaker 8: justice looks backward. And some of these junk sciences are
Speaker 8: similar in certain ways, right, just as with bitemark evidence.
Speaker 8: And so what I mean by that is a judge
Speaker 8: will look at a case and say, well, there's another
Speaker 8: court that ruled that bite marks are okay. Even though
Speaker 8: you have a huge body of evidence that you've just
Speaker 8: presented that shows that bite marks are as unscientific as
Speaker 8: could be, I'm going to allow it because another court
Speaker 8: allowed it. Justice should be about making sure that, whilst
Speaker 8: mistakes will always be made, that we minimize those mistakes,
Speaker 8: and that people who don't do their jobs. And that
Speaker 8: extends to the defense bar as well. If you have
Speaker 8: a defender public or private who shows up drunk or
Speaker 8: doesn't mount any defense re client, or is corrupt in
Speaker 8: any way, they should be disbarred, just like an other
Speaker 8: profession's and it almost never happens on the other side.
Speaker 8: On the prosecution side, we know that police and prosecutors
Speaker 8: lie with impunity, as do Unfortunately many forensic examiners. They
Speaker 8: either lie or they just don't know what they're talking about.
Speaker 1: And while there are many cases worthy of Jason's help,
Speaker 1: he agreed to explore whether Vaughn's was worthy of re examination.
Speaker 8: That's unbelievable. Yeah, Kafka meets Victor Hugo in the worst
Speaker 8: possible ways, and I feel, as you do, compelled to
Speaker 8: want to help him.
Speaker 1: Next, I LinkedIn with Bill Clutter to discuss more details
Speaker 1: about the case.
Speaker 7: Sergeant Gary Lawson had already formed an opinion from day
Speaker 7: one that Chris Vaughn committed the murder of his wife
Speaker 7: and three kids. Sergeant Lawson's theory just conflicted with the
Speaker 7: ballistic evidence. We conducted our own examination of the Ford expedition,
Speaker 7: and Tom Bevell, our bloodstained expert, notices that in the
Speaker 7: back of the Ford Expedition, behind where the children were seated,
Speaker 7: there's a third seat and there was a bullet lodged,
Speaker 7: and so he asked to get a doll rod. He
Speaker 7: put it through the back of the seat where Cassandra
Speaker 7: was seated in the middle of the two other children,
Speaker 7: and pushed it through the third seat where the bullet
Speaker 7: was lodged. It showed that the shot that killed Cassandra
Speaker 7: was fired from the passengers seat, and then Luke Caid,
Speaker 7: who was a ballistic expert, inspected the vehicle again with
Speaker 7: laser and so clearly that shot came from where Kim
Speaker 7: was seated. And the irony about this whole case the
Speaker 7: state doesn't they acknowledge that the crime scene evidence suggests
Speaker 7: a murder suicide, but that Chris Vaughn was this mastermind,
Speaker 7: that he was so smart that he read this article
Speaker 7: in PI magazine, which you know they fingerprinted. His fingerprints
Speaker 7: weren't on it, and the article was the cover story
Speaker 7: about it was a detective from New York City. It
Speaker 7: dealt with staging a murder to look like a suicide. Well,
Speaker 7: the example that he was writing about was some case
Speaker 7: where a woman had been strangled to death by the
Speaker 7: killer and then the killer stages it to look like
Speaker 7: she had hung herself and committed suicide, totally separate, and
Speaker 7: so they tried to infer and to argue with the
Speaker 7: jury that somehow, but it's all confirmatory biased. The police
Speaker 7: see that article, they say, ah, he must have staged
Speaker 7: it to look like a suicide. But that was their case.
Speaker 8: Yeah, bail and I want to say that this is sadly,
Speaker 8: tragically not an uncommon narrative right where law enforcement decides
Speaker 8: that the person who they claim to be the perpetrator
Speaker 8: is both a deranged psychopath and a criminal mastermind.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 8: I believe when it's caught up along with the media
Speaker 8: shit storm and the heightened emotions around a case like this,
Speaker 8: it's like the thing just grows and everyone is able
Speaker 8: to put on the same set of blinders and go, yep,
Speaker 8: that must be what happened. To any trainee investigator or
Speaker 8: first year law student, or someone who even watches TV
Speaker 8: crime shows. You could look at us and go, no,
Speaker 8: just no, that's not how this could have happened. The prosecutor,
Speaker 8: I'm sure, would have had the jurors in the palm
Speaker 8: of his hand as he or she presented this narrative
Speaker 8: because they don't want to believe that mom killed the
Speaker 8: kids and there's nobody alive to blame.
Speaker 1: But to challenge Bond's conviction, both the state scenario and
Speaker 1: the one recently conveyed in Chris's letter would need to
Speaker 1: be scientifically tested to know which one aligned with ballistic
Speaker 1: and blood evidence. In regards to the crime scene.
Speaker 7: The state's theory that Paul Kish testified to that Kim
Speaker 7: was her seat belt was buckled when she was shot
Speaker 7: and killed, but that Chris unbuckled it to somehow stage
Speaker 7: the crime scene. I always felt all along that would
Speaker 7: have been virtually impossible. The way her body was positioned.
Speaker 7: He would actually have to move her body to try
Speaker 7: to unbuckle her seat belt it was buckled. And then
Speaker 7: the second thing is her blood would be somewhere on
Speaker 7: that seat belt as that seat belt's retracting. So that's
Speaker 7: one scenario that we'll test. But the other one is
Speaker 7: whether Chris the act of trying to buckle her in
Speaker 7: which he describes in his statement.
Speaker 1: Bill Clutter believes by demonstrating how each scene unfolded and
Speaker 1: by testing which scenario is supported by the actual crime
Speaker 1: scene evidence, he can call Vaughn's guilt into question. Jason
Speaker 1: Plomm agreed that there was enough reasonable doubt to question
Speaker 1: Vaughan's conviction and to warrant mounting a crime scene reconstruction.
Speaker 8: Because there's this freaking thing in the Constitution where it
Speaker 8: says innocent until proven guilty, and there's that other thing
Speaker 8: about reasonable doubt. I don't know how and when that
Speaker 8: went out the window. But we need to restore those principles.
Speaker 1: But crime scene reconstructions cost money. Bill Clutter had applied
Speaker 1: for a fund that could potentially cover the costs of
Speaker 1: one for Vaughn and was waiting for news on that grunt.
Speaker 8: If there's anything that I can do, if there's a
Speaker 8: financial support, if there's a need for a task that
Speaker 8: you can't get the money for it, I mean, I
Speaker 8: will just call it.
Speaker 7: Here's what I want to do, and I'll send you
Speaker 7: the grant. But we're going for the grant too, fun
Speaker 7: the crime scene reconstruction. I'd like to get this crime
Speaker 7: scene reconstruction done by August.
Speaker 8: Well, you know, let me know. I'm I'm happy to
Speaker 8: write a check if that's what's needed. You know, I've
Speaker 8: been lucky enough to make some money and this is
Speaker 8: what I decided choose to spend it.
Speaker 1: And suddenly, with that act of unexpected generosity, Christopher Vaughan's
Speaker 1: conviction was that much closer to getting a very real
Speaker 1: and very significant chance for reevaluation. It was about this
Speaker 1: time that we uncovered a potentially troubling timeline concerning Christopher
Speaker 1: Vaughn's indictment in July of two thousand and seven, Bill
Speaker 1: was going back through the discovery from the Vaughnd case
Speaker 1: and happened upon a phone record memo regarding a conversation
Speaker 1: between the state and its DNA testing lab.
Speaker 7: The decision to arrest Christopher Vaughan was made on Friday,
Speaker 7: June twenty second. He was arrested the next day, right
Speaker 7: before the funerals for his family were to begin, and
Speaker 7: that decision really focused on two issues. One was Chris's
Speaker 7: inability to remember how his wife's blood was transferred to
Speaker 7: the back right side of his jacket and the belief
Speaker 7: that he had staged the crime scene by unbuckling his
Speaker 7: wife's seat belt, and that was based on Bob Deal's
Speaker 7: observations that there was a large saturation stain on his
Speaker 7: wife's passenger seat belt that appeared consistent with her bleeding
Speaker 7: onto the seat belt. That assumption turned out to be
Speaker 7: wrong and it was disproved by DNA testing. All of
Speaker 7: the blood turned out to be Chris's blood, and that
Speaker 7: wasn't discovered until about a week after they arrested Chris
Speaker 7: when the DNA results came back.
Speaker 1: So what day did the DNA results come back and
Speaker 1: what did they show and who was aware? Pay close
Speaker 1: attention to the timeline and details you're about to hear.
Speaker 7: We obtain a phone conversation log that was kept by
Speaker 7: the crime lab. The general practice of the forensic scientists
Speaker 7: or to keep telephone logs of contacts with investigators and
Speaker 7: even private investigators like myself. On June twenty seventh of
Speaker 7: two thousand and seven, at around ten am, Kelly Crachnach
Speaker 7: from the Joliette Crime Lab contacted Sergeant Gary Lawson and
Speaker 7: she gave him a verbal report of the DNA results,
Speaker 7: which included one of the stains on the passenger seat belt,
Speaker 7: and that stain turned out to be Chris's blood, not
Speaker 7: Kimberly's blood as they first believed.
Speaker 1: So I'm reading it now and it says reason for call.
Speaker 1: Ten am, June twenty seventh, two thousand and seven, I
Speaker 1: called to speak to Gary Lawson. I gave him verbal
Speaker 1: DNA results on the latest batch of exhibits. He asked
Speaker 1: me to inform the State's Attorney's office. I'll give them
Speaker 1: a call period and then what happens. She had left
Speaker 1: a message and that would have been according to the memo.
Speaker 1: At ten thirty five am, and then what happened.
Speaker 7: And then she got a call back by both Jim Glascal,
Speaker 7: the state's attorney, and his assistant, John Connor, And that
Speaker 7: was at two o'clock. And there was a later call
Speaker 7: at four just to confirm whether they wanted the statistical
Speaker 7: analysis of the DNA and this is the probability of
Speaker 7: the DNA, and that occurred around four pm.
Speaker 1: So it is your understanding that they should have known
Speaker 1: whose blood was on the retracted belt at that point.
Speaker 7: At that point, yes, based on the DNA results that
Speaker 7: were given to them.
Speaker 1: Christopher Vaughan was indicted the following month. An indictment requires
Speaker 1: the state prosecutor to go in front of a grand
Speaker 1: jury and present evidence of the alleged crime and ask
Speaker 1: the grand jury to bring charges against the defendant. All
Speaker 1: capital crimes and those for which the death penalty as
Speaker 1: a punishment must be presented by indictment. You're about to
Speaker 1: hear the exact transcript from the closed grand jury testimony
Speaker 1: that was presented on July twenty fifth, two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: nearly a month after it was known that the DNA
Speaker 1: results on the retracted belt belonged to Christopher, not Kimberly Vaughan.
Speaker 7: This is where Sergeant Lawson testified before the grand jury
Speaker 7: which ultimately indicted Chris and there was a series of questions.
Speaker 7: He was asked about the seat belt.
Speaker 1: I will read the part of the female prosecutor and.
Speaker 7: This is one of the other prosecutors, Leah Norbitt, and
Speaker 7: she's talking about the crime scene investors.
Speaker 1: They looked at the seat belt right, yes, and on
Speaker 1: that seat belt as if the seat belt were pulled
Speaker 1: to be seat belted. Someone in correct, there was blood
Speaker 1: on that seat belt, was there not?
Speaker 7: Yes, it was.
Speaker 1: And when Kimberly Vaughan was found by the paramedics and
Speaker 1: by the police, she was not wearing a seat belt.
Speaker 1: That's correct, and that is significant because she was wearing
Speaker 1: that seat belt when she was shot.
Speaker 7: That's correct.
Speaker 1: What's problematic from your viewpoint about that testimony in front
Speaker 1: of a grand jury, which means, if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: that he could not have been cross examined. It was closed, right.
Speaker 7: The problem is is that they've got DNA testing that
Speaker 7: contradicts their initial assumption that this was Kim's blood, and
Speaker 7: the DNA testing contradicts that initial assumption. So you can't say,
Speaker 7: based on the DNA testing that she was seatbelted when
Speaker 7: she was shot, because her blood wasn't on the seat belt.
Speaker 7: That's the problem with that testimony.
Speaker 1: Well, they would have had verbal confirmation of the DNA
Speaker 1: results a month earlier, on the twenty seventh of June,
Speaker 1: but when would they have had written confirmation?
Speaker 7: And this is where it becomes problematic because after Sergeant
Speaker 7: Lawson gives that testimony, there's a DNA report that stated
Speaker 7: the day after, which is July twenty six, two thousand
Speaker 7: and seven. But the problem is we found in discovery
Speaker 7: that same report had been actually dated July third, two
Speaker 7: thousand and seven, three weeks before he gave that testimony.
Speaker 7: And on that report there was dated July third, There
Speaker 7: was in handwritten notes draft at the top and on
Speaker 7: each page. So it appears that it gives sergeant loss
Speaker 7: and plausible deniability about the results of the DNA having
Speaker 7: it dated the day after he testified at the grand jury,
Speaker 7: and the report was actually dated July third, about three
Speaker 7: weeks before he testified, and so it really raises all
Speaker 7: kinds of questions as to who directed the DNA analyst
Speaker 7: Kelly Craajenek to mark draft. If that's her handwriting, what
Speaker 7: was the purpose of marking a draft.
Speaker 1: Was there any difference between the version that's marked draft
Speaker 1: on the third of July and the final version, which
Speaker 1: is dated the day after the closed grand jury testimony.
Speaker 7: The only difference is the day. The reports are identical.
Speaker 7: The conclusions of the DNA results are identical. The only
Speaker 7: thing that's different is that changing of the date on
Speaker 7: the report.
Speaker 1: How do you characterize that.
Speaker 7: It smells of fraud. That's what it smells to me.
Speaker 7: It really deserves further investigation and to get to the
Speaker 7: bottom of why that report was manipulated. I've never seen
Speaker 7: it in my thirty five years of investigating for police
Speaker 7: reports and forensic labs. I've never seen this ever in
Speaker 7: my career, and so it really begs the question why
Speaker 7: was it done and who directed.
Speaker 8: It to be done.
Speaker 1: Why would the date have been changed to the day
Speaker 1: after loss and testified when it was known that he
Speaker 1: had this information a month before that time. If this
Speaker 1: was done intentionally, it does give the appearance that, in
Speaker 1: order to secure Christopher Vaughn's indictment, the prosecution was trying
Speaker 1: to hide the fact that this information was known at
Speaker 1: the time of loss and testimony. I reached out to
Speaker 1: the office of the Will County States Attorney to request
Speaker 1: four clarification. After sending two emails, I followed up by
Speaker 1: phone and was informed by James Glasgow's director of public
Speaker 1: Affairs that mister Glasgow was not interested in providing a
Speaker 1: statement or response. With that in mind, I wanted to
Speaker 1: speak to a legal expert and get their thoughts. Richard
Speaker 1: Kling is a clinical professor of law in Chicago at
Speaker 1: the Kent College of Law and a practicing defense lawyer.
Speaker 1: What are your thoughts just on the fact of Will
Speaker 1: County State's attorney seeking a grand jury indictment as opposed
Speaker 1: to a preliminary hearing.
Speaker 9: In most of the murder cases, the state's attorney generally
Speaker 9: takes it to the grand jury. It's not unusual in
Speaker 9: my experience. The vast majority of murder cases and sex
Speaker 9: cases are taken directly to the grand jury.
Speaker 1: Although the DNA testing had disproven the initial theory that
Speaker 1: Kimberly Vaughn was wearing her safety belt when she was
Speaker 1: shot allegedly, Sergeant Gary Lawson appeared before the grand jury
Speaker 1: and testimony was elicited that suggested that Kimberly Vaughn was
Speaker 1: wearing the seat belt at the time of her death.
Speaker 1: Having read over that transcript, how would you characterize that
Speaker 1: testimony in light of the fact that he knew the
Speaker 1: results a month before.
Speaker 9: It certainly erroneous, Whether it was mistakenly erroneous or intentionally erroneus.
Speaker 9: Obviously I can't get into somebody else's mind, but it
Speaker 9: was certainly a mistake to bring that in front of
Speaker 9: the grand jury the way it was.
Speaker 1: Would you categorize it as misleading?
Speaker 9: Well, it is misleading to the grand jury. Realistically, they
Speaker 9: didn't have the full story.
Speaker 1: And I know that in Illinois police are were and
Speaker 1: are allowed to lie to a suspect during interrogations to
Speaker 1: coerce our confession or secure a confession. I should say,
Speaker 1: is there any scenario in which an officer of the
Speaker 1: law would be allowed to lie on the witness stand?
Speaker 9: Absolutely? Not that the law is abundant. Police officers are not
Speaker 9: allowed to lie to grand juris.
Speaker 1: Kling was already very familiar with the Christopher Vaughn case
Speaker 1: and investigating Innocent's efforts on his behalf. For him, it
Speaker 1: called to mind another famous Illinois case which we referenced
Speaker 1: in a previous episode that led to the abolishment of
Speaker 1: the death penalty in Illinois and involved the vilification of
Speaker 1: another investigator, much along the lines of Bob Dial's experience.
Speaker 9: The parallels are spookily similar to the extent that Mike Callahan,
Speaker 9: who was the state police officer when forty eight Hours,
Speaker 9: was going to do a piece about Randy's tidel he
Speaker 9: was asked by the state Police to investigate, essentially to
Speaker 9: make sure that they were covered. And what happened with
Speaker 9: Callahan is that he ended up finding out that the
Speaker 9: state police had screwed around with a lot of stuff,
Speaker 9: as well as the local police, and he eventually went
Speaker 9: from being a decorated lieutenant in charge of the whole
Speaker 9: district to writing traffic tickets. In I fifty five, the
Speaker 9: parallels are very similar to the extent of the state
Speaker 9: police was asked to do an investigation to make sure
Speaker 9: that the Witleck title came went well, and when Palahan
Speaker 9: came to the conclusion it didn't go well, he ended
Speaker 9: up getting xed. And it's similar here.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, former Illinois State Police investigator Michael Callahan would vile
Speaker 1: a civil lawsuit which determined his constitutional rights had been
Speaker 1: violated by his superiors. He wrote a book detailing his
Speaker 1: experience called Too Politically Sensitive. As mentioned previously, the two
Speaker 1: men convicted for murders they did not commit, HERB Whitlock
Speaker 1: and Randy Stidle, were ultimately released as a result of
Speaker 1: the corruption a misconduct Callahan uncovered. Stitle had been imprisoned
Speaker 1: for seventeen years, Whitlock for twenty one. Back to Richard Klang.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I think the bottom line is, I would hope
Speaker 9: is that the state police, as well as the rest
Speaker 9: of the world, is not interested in having somebody who
Speaker 9: was innocent convicted, and hopefully they would want to reopen
Speaker 9: it and hopefully the result for mister Vaughan will be
Speaker 9: the same that it was for Whitlock.
Speaker 1: Ands title, Richard Kling is very clear on where he
Speaker 1: stands in regards to Christopher.
Speaker 9: I was a public defender in Cook County for ten years.
Speaker 9: In November, I will have been practicing fifty years. I've
Speaker 9: tried over five hundred murder jury cases, including DNA, so
Speaker 9: I'm not just speaking from the standpoint of academia. I'm
Speaker 9: speaking from the standpoint of being in the trenches, and
Speaker 9: I think it's a case that needs to be reevaluated.
Speaker 4: Cay you he the.
Speaker 5: Gry out O feel the ground holding load?
Speaker 4: Are you.
Speaker 1: On the next Murder in Illinois? I finally meet Christopher
Speaker 1: Vaughn in person. Right as we get closer to the
Speaker 1: prison is absolutely pouring quorks of lightning before Bill Clutter
Speaker 1: takes on meticulously mounting an ambitious crime scene reconstruction. We're
Speaker 1: all going to get the visual of every scenario, and
Speaker 1: that's important that we'll put Bond's version of events to
Speaker 1: the test.
Speaker 8: As you pull back these layers, it becomes so painfully obvious.
Speaker 1: Murder in Illinois is a production of iHeartRadio. Executive producers
Speaker 1: are Lauren Bright Pacheco and Taylor Chackoine. Written by Lauren
Speaker 1: Brett Pacheco and Matthew Riddle, Story editing by Matthew Riddle,
Speaker 1: editing and sound design by Van Tyre and Taylor Chaqoine.
Speaker 1: Featuring music by Cicada Rhythm with new compositions engineered and
Speaker 1: mixed by Van Tyre and Taylor Chackoine.
Speaker 6: You see the Ground.
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