Speaker 1: Murder in Illinois is a production of iHeartRadio. Fourteen years later,
Speaker 1: it's still difficult to imagine oneself on either side of
Speaker 1: this tragic coin. Whether you lost your loved ones to murder,
Speaker 1: or you also believed your loved one had been wrongfully
Speaker 1: convicted of those murders, there would be pain, anger, and bitterness.
Speaker 1: As reporter Erica Worst aptly put it, no.
Speaker 2: One's gonna get what they want, which is their loved
Speaker 2: one's beast.
Speaker 1: Here's Gale Vaughan.
Speaker 3: I got a phone call about noon, a personal phone
Speaker 3: call from a lady from the Sun Times, I believe,
Speaker 3: and she was interviewing me on how Kim intermingled with
Speaker 3: the family. And it was like, well, where did this
Speaker 3: call comes from? And she says, oh, didn't you hear
Speaker 3: they were killed? And it was like turned on the news,
Speaker 3: so yeah. I told her I couldn't talk any longer,
Speaker 3: and I went to the TV and I called my husband.
Speaker 3: I was just I was going to sixty directions, but
Speaker 3: I wasn't going anywhere. It was just I didn't know
Speaker 3: how to react. I just sat on the floor for
Speaker 3: a few minutes and just and so my sister came
Speaker 3: up from downstairs where she's been staying, and she says,
Speaker 3: what are you doing sting on the phone. I says,
Speaker 3: my fail has been killed.
Speaker 4: Jale called me after the reporter called her. She told
Speaker 4: me that there was one survivor.
Speaker 5: She didn't know who it was.
Speaker 4: So I tried calling Chris a couple times on his phone,
Speaker 4: tried calling Kim on her phone, leave once, and I
Speaker 4: tracked down his office number and talked to them. Finally
Speaker 4: I had somebody tell me, no, he did not.
Speaker 5: Show for work that day.
Speaker 4: As far as they know, he had took taken a
Speaker 4: vacation day.
Speaker 1: Pierre immediately began to feel a mixture of fear and panic.
Speaker 4: I thought somebody had to do this to them. I
Speaker 4: didn't believe it was within the family, and I was
Speaker 4: very angry, and my mind was racing about one hundred
Speaker 4: miles a minute because I was at work. I just
Speaker 4: kept calling back and forth, and I finally called gailback
Speaker 4: and said, I cannot get a hold of it. Well,
Speaker 4: she called me back not too long after that, and
Speaker 4: evidently missus Phillips had called her and asked her if
Speaker 4: she's seen the news, and missus Phillips told her that
Speaker 4: it was Chris and Kim's truck, and Kimberly was in
Speaker 4: the front seat and the children in the back, and
Speaker 4: they believed them all to be he dead.
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Brt Pacheco and this is murdering Allinois.
Speaker 6: Hey, no face food you baby faced the king? Bye
Speaker 6: all be f.
Speaker 7: You came to.
Speaker 6: Distrushed for had been she.
Speaker 8: A brock came.
Speaker 6: Bye? You did jack you.
Speaker 1: The Vaughn family had loaded into their suv and left
Speaker 1: their oswe Go home before four forty five am. At
Speaker 1: approximately five point fifteen am, a passing motorists would stop
Speaker 1: to render assistance to Christopher Vaughan, who was found limping
Speaker 1: along the frontage road of Interstate fifty five. He'd been
Speaker 1: shot twice. Ten minutes later, our first responders would find
Speaker 1: the rest of his family inside their suv. Like Vaughn,
Speaker 1: each of the three children had been shot twice. The
Speaker 1: body of their mother, Kimberly Vaughan, was slumped in the
Speaker 1: passenger seat, a single gunshot wound under her chin and
Speaker 1: a nine millimeter Torus handgun at her feet. Almost immediately,
Speaker 1: the scene of the murders would be broadcast as breaking
Speaker 1: and heartbreaking news. Gail's sister Rose vividly remembers that fateful morning.
Speaker 2: Yep, because we have a large property. I at the
Speaker 2: time had commercial greenhouses on her property. I was working
Speaker 2: outside and I just came out of the barn and
Speaker 2: my brother called me and told me. I came in
Speaker 2: the house, and of course.
Speaker 8: It was all over TV.
Speaker 9: Their bodies were found in the family vehicle parked near
Speaker 9: I fifty five, on a narrow path near a cell
Speaker 9: phone tower.
Speaker 10: His thirty four year old wife, Kimberley, along with their
Speaker 10: twelve year old daughter Abigail, eleven year old daughter Cassandra,
Speaker 10: and eight year old son Blake, were found dead in
Speaker 10: their suv that was parked on a frontage road just
Speaker 10: west of Interstate fifty five in Shanahan.
Speaker 1: Did you jump to any conclusions or did you assume
Speaker 1: that it must have been a robbery? What were your
Speaker 1: initial thoughts?
Speaker 9: Do you remember if I wouldn't have seen their car
Speaker 9: on TV, I wouldn't have expected it to be true.
Speaker 8: It was crazy. I had no idea. I literally had
Speaker 8: no idea, because of.
Speaker 9: Course with the TV, they don't tell you anything, and
Speaker 9: if they do, you can't always believe anything they say.
Speaker 8: So I was just waiting to.
Speaker 9: Talk to my sister again, which we kept in contact
Speaker 9: to see exactly what the next step was, what we
Speaker 9: need to to do.
Speaker 1: I spoke to both of Chris's brothers, and nearly fifteen
Speaker 1: years later, they both still remember the exact moment they
Speaker 1: heard the details of the news. Here's Adam Bond.
Speaker 11: At the time, I was based in Junction City, Kansas,
Speaker 11: working for a small biotech company. I got a call
Speaker 11: on my cell phone from my parents' number.
Speaker 5: They called in and let.
Speaker 11: Me know that there had been an accident and that
Speaker 11: they didn't have all the details yet.
Speaker 4: I I.
Speaker 11: Want to say that the initial story was that an
Speaker 11: unknown shooter had attacked them while they were pulled over
Speaker 11: on the side of the road or something, and it
Speaker 11: just all kind of spiraled from there, and I was
Speaker 11: able to quickly find some pictures online that were just disturbing.
Speaker 11: The one that most vividly burned its image into my
Speaker 11: memory was an aerial shot from I assume a helicopter
Speaker 11: that was actually from an angle such that you could
Speaker 11: see Kimberly's form lying over in.
Speaker 8: The front seat.
Speaker 1: Eric saw similar photos, and like his brother, Adam, was
Speaker 1: in utter disbelief over the images.
Speaker 12: My dad called and told me to turn on the news,
Speaker 12: so I pulled it up on my computer. It was
Speaker 12: aerial helicopter footage of a wooded area with Chris and
Speaker 12: Kim's maroon Ford expedition. Headlines were already flying at that
Speaker 12: point in time, when it had just happened hours prior
Speaker 12: to that. I was really confused. I really kind of
Speaker 12: disbelief that something like that what was happening, or it
Speaker 12: had happened. It definitely set me back on my rear.
Speaker 12: I sat there and watched the footage and tried getting
Speaker 12: a hold of my mom. Once the picture started popping
Speaker 12: up on the news and everything, and my parents were
Speaker 12: able to figure out where Chris was at, they got
Speaker 12: in the truck and got up there to take care
Speaker 12: of him.
Speaker 1: Pierre picks it up from here.
Speaker 4: We tried getting a hold of the state police and
Speaker 4: everything like that, which we're totally uncooperative. Finally, after after
Speaker 4: all afternoon to pacing back and forth, I decided let's go,
Speaker 4: we'll go physically finding. So we spent the next five
Speaker 4: and a half six hours driving up there and finally
Speaker 4: tracking down a little state police station there.
Speaker 8: Here's Gale's take after many calls to the police made
Speaker 8: by myself and my husband, we received no answers. Discontinued
Speaker 8: throughout the morning and afternoon. June fourteenth, thirty pm, my
Speaker 8: husband and I decided to go to the State Police
Speaker 8: District five headquarters in Joliet.
Speaker 1: Gaiale and Pierre made that long drive with only one
Speaker 1: goal in mind to find to their son. Other than
Speaker 1: the location of the police station where Chris was being questioned,
Speaker 1: they still had no real information.
Speaker 8: Ten thirty at night, we arrived at the State Police
Speaker 8: headquarters asking to see Chris.
Speaker 1: They had no idea to the extent to which he
Speaker 1: was hurt or what kind of state.
Speaker 11: He was in.
Speaker 3: And we went in and we told him the situation
Speaker 3: and they said, sure, have a seat, and we sat
Speaker 3: there for a couple of hours, and then we never
Speaker 3: put in a room and it was recorded, and they
Speaker 3: went through questions and everything, and each time, you know,
Speaker 3: we keep asking how is Chris, Where is Chris, And
Speaker 3: they said, well, he's here, but he's unavailable right now.
Speaker 3: That was our first indication.
Speaker 1: Gale and Pierre still hadn't spoken to their son or
Speaker 1: been given any official information about what had occurred. For
Speaker 1: Kimberly's family, things have been quite a bit different, and
Speaker 1: a lawyer, David Bush, was already speaking on behalf of
Speaker 1: the Phillips.
Speaker 3: I think he was just a family friend. I'm not
Speaker 3: sure how it came to be, but anyway, he seemed
Speaker 3: to handle all the interviews throughout and he spoke for
Speaker 3: the Phillips, and he is where I got the information
Speaker 3: that the police had got into the Phillips home within
Speaker 3: two hours of this incident, that eight o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 3: eight thirty, and that grief counselor was on site.
Speaker 1: To reiterate. The Phillips were informed within hours of the
Speaker 1: tragedy by officers with the grief counselor in tel The
Speaker 1: Vonds found out through the press. Looking back, this seems
Speaker 1: to set the tone for how the public and law
Speaker 1: enforcement would view the crime from the beginning, foreshadowing the
Speaker 1: way they would both deal with Christopher's versus Kimberly's family.
Speaker 8: We were told that Chris was not a suspect and
Speaker 8: was helping the police try to make sense of what happened.
Speaker 8: They did not want to disturb him at this time.
Speaker 1: We would have to wait, and so they waited at
Speaker 1: the station, hoping for any information they could get about
Speaker 1: their son. Finally, an officer was willing to speak to them.
Speaker 4: First of all, they didn't even want to let us in.
Speaker 4: Then when we told them who we were, then a
Speaker 4: couple police officers came out and talked to us a
Speaker 4: little bit and they said, well, you can't see right now,
Speaker 4: we're questioning him in this and the other thing. And
Speaker 4: we asked him if he's been hurt, and he says, yes,
Speaker 4: he was shot also, and he was staying a hospital
Speaker 4: and treated, but he didn't have life threatening wounds. They
Speaker 4: made us wait in the waiting room for a while,
Speaker 4: and then then they come back out and they said,
Speaker 4: can we talk to you, And they took us in
Speaker 4: a closed room and talked to us and started asking
Speaker 4: us all sorts of questions.
Speaker 5: And I said, is he'd be in charge? Is to
Speaker 5: be in charge?
Speaker 4: And they said no, we's not being charge. And I said, well,
Speaker 4: then we need to take him home. And then they said,
Speaker 4: well no, he waved his right to an attorney, so
Speaker 4: we got to finish question him. But at the time
Speaker 4: he waved his right to an attorney, they had told
Speaker 4: him the rest of his family it was dead.
Speaker 8: We were then greeted by some plain clothes officers and
Speaker 8: ushered into our room. Richard Mullen began asking us questions,
Speaker 8: not really answering any of our questions. The interview with
Speaker 8: us ended and our Chris was still not available. We
Speaker 8: were assured by Agent Mullen that Christopher knew we were
Speaker 8: there and our cell phone number would be given to him.
Speaker 8: Christopher would give us a call when he was finished
Speaker 8: answering questions because he would need a ride home. Again,
Speaker 8: we were told Chris was free to go at any time.
Speaker 4: He was not a suspect.
Speaker 1: So this is what Pierre and Gale were left with.
Speaker 1: They now knew Chris had gunshot wounds and that he'd
Speaker 1: waived his right to an attorney, and they believed, at
Speaker 1: least at the time, he'd seemingly not been made aware
Speaker 1: of the fate of his wife and children.
Speaker 4: All we were doing is pressing them to see and
Speaker 4: talk to Chris. And we said, okay, well we'll just
Speaker 4: sit in the waiting room. The name midnight or so.
Speaker 8: Then.
Speaker 12: Look, you can't sit here and wait, so we don't
Speaker 12: know how long it's going to be.
Speaker 8: We left the police station at one ten in the morning,
Speaker 8: so look for a hotel. After asking the police where
Speaker 8: a hotel could be found, because we weren't familiar with
Speaker 8: this area, no call came from Christopher.
Speaker 1: By the morning, they'd still not heard anything from Christopher
Speaker 1: or the police.
Speaker 8: Friday, June fifteenth, we checked out the hotel, We went
Speaker 8: through a fast food restaurant. We went back to the
Speaker 8: state police headquarters in Juliette. We were told Chris had
Speaker 8: asked to leave about two am. The police had called
Speaker 8: Chris a cab. The police said they had no idea
Speaker 8: where he had gone. We drove back to Chris and
Speaker 8: Kim's house in Oswego, Illinois.
Speaker 1: Gall and Pierre thought that Chris's first instinct might have
Speaker 1: been to try to return home, so that's where they headed.
Speaker 1: A media circus was already building.
Speaker 8: There were many many reporters and news trucks were in
Speaker 8: the cul de sac in front of Chris and Kim's house.
Speaker 8: We parked in a driveway to the right of Chris's house,
Speaker 8: pere ring the doorbell knock, peered inside. The house was dark.
Speaker 8: No one was home at Chris's.
Speaker 13: Where met by reporters there and you know, they, you know,
Speaker 13: wanted to know the reporters wanted to know.
Speaker 4: Right out the bat why.
Speaker 3: Chris killed his family.
Speaker 4: That was their first question, you know, and and where
Speaker 4: is he at? I don't know where he's at.
Speaker 8: Your reporters, do your.
Speaker 13: Job, find out where he's at, and maybe you can
Speaker 13: tell us.
Speaker 4: And I got in the car and left.
Speaker 1: At this point, Gallumpierre still had no word from Chris
Speaker 1: or the police. They desperately wanted to locate their son,
Speaker 1: and on top of it all, they were still processing
Speaker 1: the fact that their daughter in law and grandchildren were dead.
Speaker 1: There was grief and frustration and confusion all at once.
Speaker 8: It it was really surreal. I couldn't believe this had happened.
Speaker 8: I hadn't really talked to anybody to get the details
Speaker 8: on what had happened. How did this happen, Why did
Speaker 8: this happen? Who did this? I mean, these thoughts were
Speaker 8: going through our minds and we were trying to think
Speaker 8: of what happened. And it didn't really sink in that
Speaker 8: they were gone yet. But now we did talk to
Speaker 8: the police and they said, yes, we are interviewing Chris.
Speaker 8: So that answered the question of before we're dead and
Speaker 8: one was alive. So we wanted to be with Chris.
Speaker 8: We wanted to get to Chris as soon as we could,
Speaker 8: and for some reason, the police we're not helping.
Speaker 14: Us do this.
Speaker 1: That reason would soon become clear, but the Vaughans were
Speaker 1: simply left to search for their son.
Speaker 8: We didn't know what in the condition he was in.
Speaker 8: He did sustain two gun wounds, we didn't know where.
Speaker 8: We knew he wasn't dead, and he was walking around,
Speaker 8: so it couldn't have been life threatening. But the imagination
Speaker 8: is a terrible thing when you are near a traumatic incident.
Speaker 8: So Pierre and I drove away from the media circus
Speaker 8: from Chris's house and pulled into the clubhouse parking area
Speaker 8: in the front by the pool. We again called the
Speaker 8: state police to see if they could trace the cab
Speaker 8: that they had called for Chris, and to find out
Speaker 8: where they had dropped Chris at. The police called back
Speaker 8: Chris had been dropped up at the Fairfield Inn, just
Speaker 8: off Route thirty back in Joliet.
Speaker 11: We were now in.
Speaker 8: Northwego, so we drove to the Fairfield Inn and there
Speaker 8: was no Christopher.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I remember, he's in an open hospital gown
Speaker 4: with a pair of underwear on and hospital booties and
Speaker 4: he's you knows Riss's bandage, his legs bandaged, and you
Speaker 4: know they hadn't changed the bandage since the hospital treatedy
Speaker 4: and that nine.
Speaker 5: In the morning.
Speaker 1: They'd later find out that shortly after telling the bonds
Speaker 1: to leave, the police put Chris Vaughn in a cab
Speaker 1: alone without a phone, at one forty a m. He
Speaker 1: wasn't told his parents had actually been at the station,
Speaker 1: and they knew that you were in town. They knew
Speaker 1: that you had begged to see him. They you had
Speaker 1: given them your cell phone, and they just put him
Speaker 1: out on the street.
Speaker 5: They called him a cab and.
Speaker 4: I guess he had his wallet or a credit card
Speaker 4: with you or whatever, but yeah, they put they get
Speaker 4: he got a cab and they told the cab driver
Speaker 4: take him to a hotel, and he went through three
Speaker 4: or four hotels before you know, because he come walking
Speaker 4: in in the hospital gown and with the bloody leg
Speaker 4: and they're not going to exactly take you in.
Speaker 1: You'll recall that police claimed Chris was dropped at a
Speaker 1: Fairfield end, but Gail and Pierre found him at a
Speaker 1: motel eight.
Speaker 8: We asked Chris why he had been in the Motel eight.
Speaker 8: When the cab dropped him at the Fairfield. His reply
Speaker 8: was that Hotel eight was the only one out of
Speaker 8: three that would let him have a room, seeing the
Speaker 8: way he was dressed. So this meant that the tab
Speaker 8: dropped him off the Fairfield and he walked in and
Speaker 8: they turned him away. He walked into the next one
Speaker 8: they turned him away, and the Motel eight was the
Speaker 8: only one that allowed him to get a room.
Speaker 4: He told the guy he paid him double them to
Speaker 4: stay in the room, so he went in there and crash.
Speaker 1: Gall and Pierre were finally able to locate their son
Speaker 1: at the motel.
Speaker 8: We hugged him. He appeared to be in a state
Speaker 8: of shock. His skin was cold and clammy. There there
Speaker 8: was very little color in his face. His eyes were
Speaker 8: blazed and dark. It was like his pupils were dilated.
Speaker 8: They his eyes just weren't. I mean, he was wearing
Speaker 8: two hospital gowns, underwear, and hospital booties when we found him.
Speaker 8: The gauze from his leg wound was loose and bloody.
Speaker 8: We went back into the hotel room the Motel eight
Speaker 8: and I left Pierre with Christopher and I immediately went
Speaker 8: to the store to buy his clothes, shoes, and bandages.
Speaker 8: Pierre sat there. They sat in the dark. Chris said
Speaker 8: he didn't on any lights all. I mean, he just
Speaker 8: he was hiding. He didn't know what to do. His
Speaker 8: world had collapsed. So Pierre sat with Chris. He hugged Chris.
Speaker 8: They really did not speak at this point. Ollie did well.
Speaker 8: Pierre did was just shold him. Pierre did not push
Speaker 8: for answers at this time because Chris was in a daze,
Speaker 8: quite a bit.
Speaker 4: Of shock, you know, to see your your son living
Speaker 4: and bloody bandages and at the time he had long hair,
Speaker 4: and it was it was just fuddled. It was all
Speaker 4: over the place, and he was he was ghost white, pale,
Speaker 4: and dark circles around his eyes, and he just yeah,
Speaker 4: it was a bad scene.
Speaker 1: Pierre sat with his son, watching him try to process
Speaker 1: what had happened, while also dealing with his own emotions
Speaker 1: as a father and grandfather.
Speaker 5: And I stayed there and talked with him, and in
Speaker 5: he just one word answers.
Speaker 4: Then he finally he asked me. He says, he says,
Speaker 4: they told me my Kim and the kids are dead
Speaker 4: and they're gone. And I says yeah, And I says
Speaker 4: that's what they told us too. And he says, he all,
Speaker 4: it's a long time. He says, well, he says, everything's gone.
Speaker 4: Then he'sas, I have no reason to continue, no reason
Speaker 4: to have a house job.
Speaker 5: You know, my family's gone.
Speaker 4: I have nothing.
Speaker 5: So at that moment, he was, he was at rock bottom.
Speaker 1: As we've stated in previous episodes, Chris had a parent
Speaker 1: gaps in his memory in regard to the sequence of events,
Speaker 1: which fostered almost immediate suspicion among the investigators. His parents
Speaker 1: attributed his demeanor to the stress and shock of what
Speaker 1: he'd just experienced. Gail and Pierre shifted their focus to
Speaker 1: taking care of their son. As support of parents.
Speaker 8: Tierre talked to Chris about his physical wounds and just
Speaker 8: mostly sat in silence, just being there with him. I
Speaker 8: returned with clothes, flip flops, and moon clean cleaners and bandages,
Speaker 8: and we washed Chris up, helped him put on his clothes.
Speaker 8: We assisted him in changing his bandages on his left
Speaker 8: wrist and left thigh. We left Motel eight and went
Speaker 8: back to Target to fill up prescription for antibiotics. He
Speaker 8: had received a script from the emergency room. When the
Speaker 8: prescription was filled, we left. We found a restaurant starving
Speaker 8: breakfast as well as lunch. We ordered, but not much
Speaker 8: was he eaten. We checked into a Holiday Express Saturday
Speaker 8: and watched TV together, not really seeing what was on
Speaker 8: the screen.
Speaker 1: You will find multiple incidences of Chrispond's allegedly self inflicted
Speaker 1: bullet wounds to his left wrist and leg, described as
Speaker 1: superficial injuries. His parents disagree.
Speaker 13: His wrist was probably the least one because we thought
Speaker 13: possibly the bullet had ricocheted off of the bend of
Speaker 13: his watch that he had, so it just kind of
Speaker 13: skittered down his skin. Yeah, it didn't go through his wrist, No,
Speaker 13: it went perpendicular to his wrist and his bone stuff
Speaker 13: like that, and made a nice gash in there.
Speaker 4: Now, his wound to his leg.
Speaker 3: That was a different matter.
Speaker 12: That's different matter, because that was a true and true wound.
Speaker 13: Luckily it went on the outside of the bone instead
Speaker 13: of inside of the Who had gone on the inside
Speaker 13: of the bone, it would have.
Speaker 3: Hit the main artery and he wouldn't be here to day.
Speaker 13: But it went through and through on the left side,
Speaker 13: come out the backside of the sky. And sometime during
Speaker 13: the week between that and the funeral. I took him
Speaker 13: into a doctor and the doctor pulled thirty six inches
Speaker 13: of gauze out of the wound hole they had packed
Speaker 13: a pull of gauze.
Speaker 1: Christopher Vaughan was wounded, had lost his entire family, and
Speaker 1: according to the law, was supposed to have had the
Speaker 1: presumption of innocence.
Speaker 3: He just had a glassy stare and stared off in space,
Speaker 3: and but he was with us, so you know, as
Speaker 3: long as he was with us, that was okay. We
Speaker 3: went back to the hotel, he went in for another
Speaker 3: interrogation talk, and then the next day he went in again,
Speaker 3: and after that we headed back to Saint Louis, Missouri.
Speaker 13: Home.
Speaker 1: There are many key and controversial moments of the initial interrogations,
Speaker 1: but at the time Gale and Pierre had no idea
Speaker 1: to the extent of the questioning Chris had endured until
Speaker 1: later when they viewed the tapes, which they've shared with us.
Speaker 1: Pierre Vaughan believes the aggressiveness of the interrogation was meant
Speaker 1: to serve a very specific purpose.
Speaker 5: To break him down even further.
Speaker 4: It's kind of like boot camp in the military. They
Speaker 4: were you out so bad that you submit to their orders,
Speaker 4: and I think that's.
Speaker 6: What they did.
Speaker 4: I mean, when you questioned a guy from ten o'clock
Speaker 4: in the morning till two o'clock the next morning, eighteen
Speaker 4: hours or whatever it was, twenty hours of questioning, you
Speaker 4: know you're going to break down his resistance, and that's
Speaker 4: what they tried to do. But according to the transcripts
Speaker 4: of the police tapes, he never did. That was never
Speaker 4: presented at the trial.
Speaker 1: Here are some of the excerpts of the questioning of
Speaker 1: Vaughn after the shootings, while he was still clad in
Speaker 1: a hospital gown and bleeding.
Speaker 4: I don't remember. I got in, and I don't know.
Speaker 15: I don't even know if I was putting my seatbelt
Speaker 15: on or what. And then once I saw my leg,
Speaker 15: I don't know. I think I stopped thinking. Did you
Speaker 15: see a gun in your hand? I don't even remember
Speaker 15: seeing her.
Speaker 3: I just got in, and.
Speaker 15: I don't remember I remember even looking around, but that
Speaker 15: I just I.
Speaker 11: Just got out.
Speaker 16: Do you remember something else you told me that happened
Speaker 16: that you did or you said after you felt any
Speaker 16: the the the injury to your life.
Speaker 15: So that was where I go for help, Okay, do
Speaker 15: you remember you saying that? Not particularly but I remember,
Speaker 15: I don't. I don't know if I said it or
Speaker 15: if I meant to say it, but that was where
Speaker 15: I was headed.
Speaker 4: Mkay.
Speaker 16: But you said you said it to her, Okay, I
Speaker 16: I'm I'm only telling you. I'm repeating back to you what.
Speaker 13: You told me.
Speaker 4: Well, you guys asked exactly how. I don't remember if
Speaker 4: I said, CANIM long for help? I'm longing for help?
Speaker 4: I I don't remember other than I'm going for help.
Speaker 17: Did you say it the way you're talking now? Real solve?
Speaker 4: Like a little girl?
Speaker 1: Talk up here? Again? Is Pierre Vaughan, Well, you'd have to.
Speaker 4: Look at the beginning of the tape when he they
Speaker 4: first run Hi back from the hospital and they started
Speaker 4: talking to him and everything like that. They were asking
Speaker 4: him questions and he was kind of in shocked because
Speaker 4: he'd been shot. He kept asking, where's Kim, where's the kids?
Speaker 4: Where's Kim, where's the kids? And they wouldn't tell him.
Speaker 4: They wouldn't tell him, And that went on for quite
Speaker 4: a while. So finally they told him. You know, he
Speaker 4: told him, he said, well, unless you tell me where
Speaker 4: Kim the kids are, I'm not going to talk to
Speaker 4: you anymore. So that's when, you know, the nice policeman
Speaker 4: said you killed all your family. They're dead, And then
Speaker 4: they laid out the pictures and he said, no, that's
Speaker 4: that's not true. You know, he says they're not dead,
Speaker 4: and he as they are, and they kept pushing the
Speaker 4: picture back and in front of him and you know,
Speaker 4: accusing him of doing it.
Speaker 1: As a side note, during that interrogation, Chris could have
Speaker 1: blamed his wife, but he didn't, pulling and over and over.
Speaker 14: And over.
Speaker 13: All.
Speaker 15: The thing I can think of is it Kim somehow?
Speaker 15: Oh my god, And there's there's snowy around and.
Speaker 4: So, Okay, I don't.
Speaker 8: Know.
Speaker 17: I don't think she's killed all of that.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 1: Something private investigator Bill Clutter pointed out during one of
Speaker 1: our interviews.
Speaker 14: As I started going through the transcripts of those interviews,
Speaker 14: I was being able to see there were a number
Speaker 14: of times when the detectives would try to get Chris
Speaker 14: to point the finger it Kimberly for having done this,
Speaker 14: and he just was reluctant to go there. When he
Speaker 14: was given the opportunity to blame his wife, he defended
Speaker 14: her and just found it impossible to believe that she
Speaker 14: would kill her own children. So if this is a
Speaker 14: person that had staged all this with the intent of
Speaker 14: leading the police to believe that his wife had committed
Speaker 14: this as a murder suicide, I mean, detectives gave him
Speaker 14: every opportunity to bite on that, and he just never did.
Speaker 17: Why do you think she would shoe shoot?
Speaker 15: I can't imagine why she would do I can't imagine
Speaker 15: her doing that.
Speaker 4: I don't know, I.
Speaker 5: Mean knew he had her words the night.
Speaker 4: Before, and she still didn't know about the weekend.
Speaker 15: I had no idea, I mean name, we had, we had.
Speaker 1: Plans all summer, Bill had. Doctor Terry Killian, a forensic psychiatrist,
Speaker 1: examined the footage of the entire interrogation. His professional opinion
Speaker 1: was that Chris exhibited signs of dissociative amnesia, which would
Speaker 1: have been difficult to fake. Despite their attempts to break
Speaker 1: Chris down over the duration of the police interview, he
Speaker 1: stuck to the story that he could not remember, and
Speaker 1: the police stuck to their narrative.
Speaker 17: Tell me you're a lucky guy. Out of here, tell
Speaker 17: me you're a lucky guy. Say I'm a lucky guy
Speaker 17: because I didn't die today.
Speaker 4: I don't think that's true.
Speaker 17: You're a lucky guy, Chris. You didn't die today. Guess
Speaker 17: what you're gonna live? Things being here ain't here?
Speaker 9: No more?
Speaker 17: Gone, Dad, your kids? What's her name? This is Sandy?
Speaker 17: How would a say? Is this the way you remember
Speaker 17: Sandy looking this morning? Did she look just like this?
Speaker 17: What did she look like? Her hair was shorter? How
Speaker 17: else was it? What did she look like when she died?
Speaker 17: What do you think she looked like when she died?
Speaker 17: How about Abigail? What does she look like? Did she
Speaker 17: look like this? Did she look like this before she
Speaker 17: died today? Did she What do you think did she
Speaker 17: have that same look on her face when she died today?
Speaker 17: Is that the way she looked? You can't say? How
Speaker 17: about Blake.
Speaker 3: Looks just like you?
Speaker 7: Did he look like that today when you killed him?
Speaker 7: Did you kill him? Did you kill Blake? Did you
Speaker 7: kill your wife? Did you kill anybody? But they're all dead?
Speaker 13: Right?
Speaker 8: What you said?
Speaker 17: That's what I'm telling you happened. They're all dead. They're
Speaker 17: not here, but lucky Chris is still here. Not so lucky,
Speaker 17: not so lucky?
Speaker 6: Why not?
Speaker 17: Why aren't you so lucky? Everything that everything you live for?
Speaker 17: And it's gone. But guess what, you're still here. That's
Speaker 17: pretty lucky.
Speaker 1: Here again is Pierre.
Speaker 5: Finally he pushed the pictures away and he shut down.
Speaker 4: I mean, he he would just keep denying that he
Speaker 4: killed them, and that he'd answer the questions and tell
Speaker 4: them he told him, he says. You know, after we
Speaker 4: pulled off on the road, he says, I got out
Speaker 4: to check check the truck, and he says after that,
Speaker 4: he says, I do not remember anything. He says, the
Speaker 4: next thing I remember is that I'm walking along the
Speaker 4: road and the guy taps me on the shoulder. And
Speaker 4: please wouldn't accept that. They you know, well, how can
Speaker 4: you shoot your wife and kids and not remember that? Basically,
Speaker 4: he shut down.
Speaker 5: If you're not gonna believe me, I'm not going to
Speaker 5: talk to you type thing. And it gets that for me.
Speaker 5: I mean, if if I.
Speaker 4: Talk to people and they're not listening to me, I
Speaker 4: don't talk to him anymore.
Speaker 5: Wou'd you do it again?
Speaker 11: I didn't do it?
Speaker 4: But you do it again?
Speaker 13: I didn't do it.
Speaker 17: What did you do it again? You keep repeating, how
Speaker 17: did you do it? I didn't Did they see it?
Speaker 14: I didn't do anything?
Speaker 17: Did they see it when you did it?
Speaker 4: I'm done talking.
Speaker 17: Did you see it? Did you see it? Did you
Speaker 17: see their face? Did you see their faces when they
Speaker 17: did it?
Speaker 8: Huh?
Speaker 17: I'm never talking.
Speaker 11: Huh.
Speaker 17: Don't shut down on me. This is a new Cress.
Speaker 17: Remember I answered your question, Chris Man. This is a
Speaker 17: new Chris.
Speaker 16: I lost everything, but you'd have everything now. You may
Speaker 16: have lost things in the past, but what do you
Speaker 16: have now? But you get to start a new don't you.
Speaker 16: You're reborn again, the new Chris.
Speaker 17: Right else you do. But you know what, Chris, put
Speaker 17: your head down. Keep it down, because that's where it belongs.
Speaker 7: The shame, the shame of it all, Chris, I just
Speaker 7: don't want to hear what you have, the same of
Speaker 7: it all and over this, the shame of it all.
Speaker 17: Quite put your head back down. I'd be shame too.
Speaker 7: If I did what you did, I'd be shaved. I
Speaker 7: put my head down, just done. I would put my
Speaker 7: head downheah, put your head back down. Shameful, But that's
Speaker 7: old Chris.
Speaker 17: Would be a shameful. Do anything shameful.
Speaker 1: After everything, they let Chris go, but the police were
Speaker 1: far from being done with him. He was followed constantly
Speaker 1: They had a tail on.
Speaker 4: Him and us at all times. They had an unmarked car.
Speaker 4: They knew exactly where we were, they knew exactly what
Speaker 4: rooms where you're staying in and and everything. They tailed
Speaker 4: us all the way coming back to the Missouri shape line.
Speaker 1: And then the next day, when it seemed as if
Speaker 1: Chris had already hit rock bottom, things would continue to
Speaker 1: get worse.
Speaker 4: It wasn't until we got Chris back to our house.
Speaker 13: And then.
Speaker 4: While we were making the funeral arrangements stuff like that,
Speaker 4: the state police called us and they wanted to talk
Speaker 4: to Chris and I again. And I said, okay, we'll
Speaker 4: come over and talk to us. You know, this is
Speaker 4: our address, and he said, no, you got to go
Speaker 4: over there. Well, we had to go over across the
Speaker 4: state line in Illinois because they had no jurisdiction. And
Speaker 4: if you know, I didn't figure out this out till later,
Speaker 4: but if Chris had said something or admitted something, they
Speaker 4: could arrested him right there in Illinois because they had jurisdiction.
Speaker 4: If they came over to our side of the river,
Speaker 4: they had none.
Speaker 1: In spite of everything, the Vaughn still trusted the police
Speaker 1: at that point and in the presumption of innocence. They
Speaker 1: also felt they had nothing to hide, so.
Speaker 4: We went over there and talked to him again. On
Speaker 4: the way back, Chris more or less told me he's
Speaker 4: his dad. He says, I think they're going to try
Speaker 4: to do in this on me. And I said, well,
Speaker 4: you know, I says, you don't have any worry about
Speaker 4: he didn't do it, and he said, well, that's not
Speaker 4: what they think. And then that's about all I said
Speaker 4: about it, because he he was still much in a
Speaker 4: state of shock, trying to figure things out. Neither one
Speaker 4: of us knew what to.
Speaker 1: Do, and it turns out there was very little that
Speaker 1: could be done. It was at this point that Christopher
Speaker 1: Vaughan was no longer just a grieving father and spouse.
Speaker 1: He was the primary suspect, and the murders of his
Speaker 1: wife and children called.
Speaker 6: His feet to my nor my flight diuma.
Speaker 18: He swollen him up, changing mine. I'll hope he fusing.
Speaker 6: This in that.
Speaker 1: On the next murder in Illinois, as Crispawn prepares to
Speaker 1: place his wife and children in their graves.
Speaker 5: I absolutely saw him crying.
Speaker 11: I saw him trying to hold it together around people,
Speaker 11: but you could just see pain emanating from him.
Speaker 1: Handcuffs are placed on his wrists.
Speaker 4: There was fourteen different policemen standing there and they immediately
Speaker 4: handcuffed him and writing his rights and tell him his
Speaker 4: being arrested for the murder of his family.
Speaker 1: Murder in Illinois is a production of iHeartRadio. Executive producers
Speaker 1: are Lauren Bright Pacheco and Taylor Chaquoine. Written by Lauren
Speaker 1: Bright Pacheco and Matthew Riddle, Story editing by Matthew Riddle,
Speaker 1: editing and sound design by Evan Tyer and Taylor Chaquoine.
Speaker 1: Featuring music by Cicada Rhythm with new compositions engineered and
Speaker 1: mixed by Evan Tyer and Taylor Chaquoyne. Archived news reports
Speaker 1: provided by w G.
Speaker 19: Nyma Hey It's way, alma I am.
Speaker 6: Bra and waitlaar yes, wait helma ar Wait kay say.
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