Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #470 Jason Flom with Chris Vaughn

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#470 Jason Flom with Chris Vaughn · Wrongful Conviction

0:03
Speaker 1: Just before sunrise on June fourteenth, two thousand and seven,
0:06
Speaker 1: Kimberly and Christopher Vaughan packed their three kids into the
0:10
Speaker 1: car and headed to a water park in Springfield, Illinois,
0:14
Speaker 1: but the road trips soon turned deadly. Kimberly Vaughan was
0:18
Speaker 1: fatally shot under the chin in the front passenger seat,
0:22
Speaker 1: and gunfire from that direction also killed their three children.
0:26
Speaker 1: Christopher Vaughan was discovered limping alongside the road, suffering.
0:29
Speaker 2: From two gunshot wounds.
0:31
Speaker 1: His first words were, I think my wife shot me.
0:35
Speaker 1: Could a mother possibly have done this to her own family?
0:39
Speaker 1: Police theorized that Christopher Vaughan must have staged the scene
0:43
Speaker 1: to appear like a murder suicide, sending him away for the.
0:47
Speaker 2: Rest of his natural life.
0:49
Speaker 1: But this is wrongful conviction. Wrongful conviction has always given
0:59
Speaker 1: voice to him and people in prison, and now we're
1:01
Speaker 1: expanding that voice to you. Call us at eight three
1:05
Speaker 1: three two O seven four six sixty six and tell
1:08
Speaker 1: us how these stories make you feel and what you've
1:11
Speaker 1: done to help the cause, even if it's something as
1:13
Speaker 1: simple as telling a friend or sharing on social media,
1:17
Speaker 1: and you might just hear yourself in a future episode.
1:20
Speaker 1: Call us eight three, three, two oh seven, four six
1:23
Speaker 1: sixty six. Welcome back to Ronful Conviction and joining us
1:36
Speaker 1: from a correctional facility in Illinois. We have a man
1:39
Speaker 1: that should have but never was able to grieve the
1:42
Speaker 1: loss of his wife, Kimberly and their three beloved children,
1:46
Speaker 1: but instead was snatched away from their funeral and blamed
1:50
Speaker 1: for their deaths. Christopher Vaughan. I can't none of us
1:53
Speaker 1: can begin to understand your pain or your resilience, but
1:58
Speaker 1: we're very honored to have you here with us today.
2:01
Speaker 3: Well, I appreciate you guys taking the time and interest,
2:04
Speaker 3: I really do.
2:05
Speaker 1: You're very welcome and joining us today, as well as
2:08
Speaker 1: Chris's attorney, Keith Altman, who's expertise in pharmaceutical side effects
2:13
Speaker 1: will help shed light on this unspeakable tragedy. And Keith,
2:18
Speaker 1: thanks so much.
2:19
Speaker 2: For being here.
2:19
Speaker 4: You're welcome.
2:20
Speaker 2: You're welcome.
2:21
Speaker 1: Later on, we're going to speak with one of our
2:22
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction hosts, Lauren Bright Pacheco, whose podcast Murder in
2:26
Speaker 1: Illinois was the first time that almost anyone heard Chris's
2:31
Speaker 1: side of the story. But before he ever needed, or
2:34
Speaker 1: ever thought he would need, any sort of advocacy, he
2:36
Speaker 1: grew up pretty much like anybody else.
2:39
Speaker 3: I was born in Indiana, we moved to Missouri. I've
2:43
Speaker 3: got two younger brothers. We spent a lot of time
2:46
Speaker 3: on sports, cub scouts. I did reasonably well in high school,
2:50
Speaker 3: graduated in ninety three. Went to the University of Missouri Raala,
2:54
Speaker 3: focused on an electrical engineering degree, and I had met
2:59
Speaker 3: Kimberly the summer before college. To be frank, I mean,
3:04
Speaker 3: dating was one thing, but we didn't have consistent pictures
3:07
Speaker 3: of what the future looked like. At the end of
3:09
Speaker 3: that first year of college, we found out she was pregnant,
3:14
Speaker 3: and when I had got married, Abby was born in December.
3:17
Speaker 3: Providing for Kimberly and the baby was my number one focus,
3:21
Speaker 3: so I went ahead and dropped out of college and
3:25
Speaker 3: was focusing on getting a local job. I had started
3:28
Speaker 3: down a technology career path as the Internet was really
3:31
Speaker 3: growing in the mid to late nineties. Information risk management
3:36
Speaker 3: that's where my focus was, so I worked for a
3:39
Speaker 3: variety of different consulting companies. There was significantly more work
3:44
Speaker 3: out there for consultants in my niche market, so I
3:48
Speaker 3: started my own consulting company.
3:51
Speaker 1: Chris's successful private cybersecurity firm eventually got him hired by
3:55
Speaker 1: a large international firm out of Chicago, and this success
3:58
Speaker 1: allowed the family to grow from Abbey to Cassandra just
4:02
Speaker 1: a year later, and then Blake three years later.
4:05
Speaker 2: On.
4:06
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, the stress of parenthood on this young couple, who
4:09
Speaker 1: were seemingly more chosen by fate than by each other, well,
4:14
Speaker 1: that stress began to take a toll.
4:16
Speaker 3: Living together was rocky. We both early on we're really
4:21
Speaker 3: trying to make it work, and we had pretty much
4:24
Speaker 3: come into the understanding that we were both happy being
4:29
Speaker 3: part of the family and for the kids, we'd stay
4:32
Speaker 3: together and we provide the happiest and most nurturing home
4:38
Speaker 3: possible for them, but as soon as they were out
4:40
Speaker 3: of the house, we would find our own past. And
4:43
Speaker 3: it was fully my intention to continue to help her
4:46
Speaker 3: out in any way form or fashion I could. I
4:49
Speaker 3: sent her to school and tried to incorporate her into
4:51
Speaker 3: the work I was doing, but it was still fully
4:54
Speaker 3: my intention to pursue other avenues personally, and I believe
5:00
Speaker 3: wasn't something that she was looking forward to.
5:03
Speaker 4: So Kim is very unhappy and having mental health details
5:08
Speaker 4: and she's being treated and one of the medications that
5:11
Speaker 4: she's been given as a drug called topiramate. The trade
5:14
Speaker 4: name is topomax, which is really an anti convulsant. It's
5:17
Speaker 4: normally given to people with epilepsy, but people have been
5:21
Speaker 4: using it for mental health treatment as well. But what
5:23
Speaker 4: neither she nor her doctor knew at the time is
5:26
Speaker 4: that topomax had an increased risk of suicidal and self
5:31
Speaker 4: injurious behavior. Now Johnson and Johnson knew this, and they
5:35
Speaker 4: didn't tell the FDA, but nevertheless, shortly before the incident,
5:41
Speaker 4: her dosage was changed of this drug. And one of
5:43
Speaker 4: the things that these drugs are notorious for is that
5:46
Speaker 4: when you change the dosage, that can lead to increased
5:49
Speaker 4: negative mood and behavioral disturbances, the kind of things that
5:53
Speaker 4: could cause you to take actions that you might not
5:56
Speaker 4: have normally taken.
5:58
Speaker 1: Which brings us up to June fourteenth, two thousand and seven,
6:02
Speaker 1: when the couple woke up before sunrise and packed the kids,
6:05
Speaker 1: half asleep into the car for the about three hour
6:08
Speaker 1: drive to a water park in Springfield, Illinois.
6:11
Speaker 3: The night before was one of Kimberla and I's many
6:15
Speaker 3: disagreements and turned more into a spiteful argument of well
6:20
Speaker 3: I don't spend enough time at home with the kids,
6:23
Speaker 3: she doesn't spend enough time helping out and partic dating
6:27
Speaker 3: with the family, And then back and forth and eventually
6:30
Speaker 3: led to well, let's just do something together as a
6:33
Speaker 3: family tomorrow. And in the morning got the kids up
6:36
Speaker 3: and out to the truck, and we sat in the
6:39
Speaker 3: truck and waited for her to come out. I remember,
6:41
Speaker 3: particularly that morning, I had to go back up to
6:43
Speaker 3: the front door and holler up the stairs. Eventually she
6:46
Speaker 3: did come down through her stuff in the truck. We
6:49
Speaker 3: left the house. It was after the point we got
6:52
Speaker 3: on the highway. She said she wasn't feeling well, so
6:55
Speaker 3: I found a place off the side of the road.
6:57
Speaker 3: After I parked the truck, I asked her, you know,
7:00
Speaker 3: is still feeling bad? She needed a few minutes, And
7:03
Speaker 3: she really just didn't say much of anything, So I
7:07
Speaker 3: opted to give her a few minutes. When ahead and
7:09
Speaker 3: jumped out. Kids were asleep in the back, and I
7:13
Speaker 3: went around and just did miscellaneous things, checked the luggage rack,
7:16
Speaker 3: looked at the tires, and that's when I'd heard just
7:20
Speaker 3: a horrendous racket, and I was heading for my door
7:23
Speaker 3: to get in and find out what was going on.
7:26
Speaker 3: I pulled the door open, and I was looking at
7:30
Speaker 3: Kim holding the gun. She looked at me and she said,
7:33
Speaker 3: you won't take my kids away from me. She says,
7:35
Speaker 3: you killed them, and then she starts firing a gun
7:38
Speaker 3: at me. And I was tumbling backward and trying to
7:43
Speaker 3: come forward and not making much progress doing anything, And
7:47
Speaker 3: that's when she turned the gun on herself.
7:50
Speaker 4: In the backseat of the vehicle. The three children were
7:53
Speaker 4: all shot twice. The ballistics show that all six shots
7:58
Speaker 4: of the children converge over the passenger seats left shoulder,
8:03
Speaker 4: as if somebody had turned around from the passenger seat
8:06
Speaker 4: and fired the gun and the passenger seat of the vehicle.
8:11
Speaker 4: Kim was shot under the chin straight up. The driver
8:15
Speaker 4: of the vehicle, Chris, was shot in the hand and
8:18
Speaker 4: through the leg. The shots are not fatal, but he
8:21
Speaker 4: is seriously injured.
8:23
Speaker 1: So there you are on the side of the road.
8:26
Speaker 1: Had you actually looked in the car and seen what
8:30
Speaker 1: she had done.
8:31
Speaker 3: No more than a quick glance, probably I was just
8:34
Speaker 3: too horrified to do anything. The vehicle had an eerie
8:39
Speaker 3: stillness to it, the stillness when you're in a place
8:44
Speaker 3: by yourself and the only thing I could think jop
8:47
Speaker 3: was that I need to get help. Knowing that I
8:51
Speaker 3: wasn't walking distance from anywhere closed, I thought, well, I'll
8:54
Speaker 3: just drive the vehicle. And the way she was slumped,
8:58
Speaker 3: I needed to not unbuckle her, but to buckle her.
9:02
Speaker 3: But I was just shaking so uncontrollably trying to buckle
9:06
Speaker 3: her and failing on the seatbelt.
9:09
Speaker 4: Blood was found. Now one would think that if she
9:14
Speaker 4: had been shot by Chris, as what was alleged, that
9:18
Speaker 4: her blood would have been on the seatbelt, But it
9:21
Speaker 4: turns out that it is not her blood that's on
9:24
Speaker 4: the seatbelt. It's Chris's blood.
9:26
Speaker 1: However, before the blood test, police theorized that Chris, who
9:29
Speaker 1: had run a private security firm, never mind that it
9:33
Speaker 1: was cybersecurity, but ignoring that, they came up with this
9:38
Speaker 1: theory that he must have somehow been an expert in
9:42
Speaker 1: staging crime scenes.
9:44
Speaker 4: According to prosecutor, Chris is such a criminal mastermind that
9:48
Speaker 4: he was able to make the scene look like she
9:53
Speaker 4: had committed the crime he did. That, down to blood
9:56
Speaker 4: spatter and all of these things. It is just simply prepossible.
10:00
Speaker 4: But what it is is an admission from the prosecution
10:03
Speaker 4: that the physical evidence does not support that Chris committed
10:07
Speaker 4: the crime. It supports that she committed the crime.
10:11
Speaker 1: Nevertheless, they alleged that Chris, who's by the way, just
10:14
Speaker 1: under five foot nine, somehow reached into the passenger side
10:18
Speaker 1: of a large SUV, shot Kim from under her chin,
10:23
Speaker 1: then reached over her left shoulder, shooting each child twice,
10:28
Speaker 1: then proceeded to unbuckle the seat belt stained with what
10:30
Speaker 1: they believe was Kim's blood, to make it appear that
10:35
Speaker 1: Kim had been free to make the shots. The theory
10:39
Speaker 1: continued that Chris somehow inflicted two survivable gunshot wounds, one
10:46
Speaker 1: to his left hand and one to his thigh. But
10:48
Speaker 1: since the blood on the seat belt actually belonged to Chris,
10:52
Speaker 1: it meant two things. One, the belt was not buckled
10:56
Speaker 1: when Kim was shot, and the belt was stained after
11:00
Speaker 1: Chris had been shot. Like he said, when he reached
11:03
Speaker 1: across her, his left hand bloody pulled the belt, leaving
11:08
Speaker 1: a stain, and then it retracted when he was unable
11:11
Speaker 1: to buckle it.
11:12
Speaker 3: And then I focused on the driving, but I was
11:16
Speaker 3: just shaking so uncontrollably and just not thinking clearly enough
11:22
Speaker 3: that driving wasn't going to be an option either, So
11:24
Speaker 3: at that point I decided, okay, I just need to
11:27
Speaker 3: find somebody that can make a phone call for me.
11:30
Speaker 1: Chris then stumbled down the side of the highway, obviously
11:33
Speaker 1: the state of shock with the two gunshot wounds, both
11:37
Speaker 1: by the way without stippling a burn injury associated with
11:40
Speaker 1: close range gunshots, so the shots had to have been
11:44
Speaker 1: fired from at least eighteen inches away, if not thirty,
11:48
Speaker 1: and the one in his thigh almost castrated him, so
11:52
Speaker 1: we'd have to believe that he risked taking a distant
11:54
Speaker 1: shot to stage a near miss with his testicles. Luckily
12:01
Speaker 1: someone stopped to help him.
12:03
Speaker 3: There was a man in a pickup truck and he
12:05
Speaker 3: pulled up aside and asked something to the effect of
12:08
Speaker 3: have you been in an accident? And, without thinking, the
12:11
Speaker 3: first thing that came out of my mouth was I
12:13
Speaker 3: think my wife shot me. It wasn't that much longer
12:16
Speaker 3: that ambulances and police cars showed up, took me to
12:19
Speaker 3: the hospital, released me back to the police station, and
12:23
Speaker 3: that was the multi day interrogation. The stress of the
12:26
Speaker 3: situation kept me in an imploded state, unable to think
12:30
Speaker 3: and still horrified, confused because I don't think anyone in
12:34
Speaker 3: their right mind could do anything like that. If I
12:38
Speaker 3: had suspected that she was violent at all, I would
12:42
Speaker 3: have taken steps years before that. But that was not
12:47
Speaker 3: the Kim that I knew. And I remember saying that
12:49
Speaker 3: in the interrogation, Kim could not have done this. That
12:53
Speaker 3: doesn't make any sense. And the missing piece that I
12:56
Speaker 3: didn't have at that point right after the tragedy was
13:00
Speaker 3: the medication.
13:01
Speaker 4: Well, it wasn't obvious to him, aha, It must have
13:03
Speaker 4: been the topomax. He just knew he had a wife
13:06
Speaker 4: who was in pain, she was still the mother of
13:08
Speaker 4: his three children, who had done these terrible things. And
13:10
Speaker 4: I think when you combined all of that together, he
13:12
Speaker 4: just decided to say nothing.
13:15
Speaker 1: Which is his right. But as we so often see
13:18
Speaker 1: in cases like these, there are judgments about what is
13:20
Speaker 1: the right way to react. Here, they already suspected Chris,
13:24
Speaker 1: and when he was only expressing his bewilderment over what
13:28
Speaker 1: Kim had done. The next question is then who did it,
13:33
Speaker 1: at which point one might expect that he'd vehemently defend himself.
13:38
Speaker 3: I can only sum it up in the word implosure.
13:41
Speaker 3: Quite frankly, I was a shame that I had failed
13:43
Speaker 3: my children and not seeing things ahead of time, been
13:47
Speaker 3: better prepared or reacted in a better fashion. The physical
13:53
Speaker 3: and the emotional pain was overwhelming, to the point where
13:57
Speaker 3: I just couldn't string words together to make a sense,
14:00
Speaker 3: let alone draw conclusions or be of any type of
14:03
Speaker 3: productive help to my own defense.
14:17
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Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts.
14:34
Speaker 3: After I lost my kids, I lost my identity. I
14:40
Speaker 3: saw myself as a dad, working and paying for a
14:44
Speaker 3: house and taking care of the kids. At that point,
14:48
Speaker 3: I lost meaning and purpose. The part that hurt even
14:52
Speaker 3: more was that I was still here. I thought that
14:57
Speaker 3: there had to have been a reason for that, because
15:01
Speaker 3: I shouldn't be Had she completed what she had started,
15:05
Speaker 3: I wouldn't have left that truck either. But the fact
15:08
Speaker 3: that I did must mean that there's more meaning that
15:11
Speaker 3: I'm supposed to be here. I've got a purpose. I
15:14
Speaker 3: think that's what provided me with that little bit of
15:17
Speaker 3: strength I needed to kind of start picking myself back up.
15:22
Speaker 1: So with no confession, and the crime scene indicating Kim's guilt.
15:27
Speaker 1: Chris was released into a cab wearing nothing but a
15:30
Speaker 1: hospital gown. Meanwhile, there was even more at the scene
15:34
Speaker 1: that supported Chris's innocence. For instance, d Vaughan's usually stored
15:39
Speaker 1: their gun, a Taurus nine milimeter, in a closet in
15:41
Speaker 1: a terrycloth towel.
15:43
Speaker 3: There were crime scene pictures that showed a small white
15:49
Speaker 3: towel covered in blood on Kim's leg, and when the
15:54
Speaker 3: crime scene was processed, it was taken and washed and
15:58
Speaker 3: sanitized and essentially destroyed as evidence.
16:02
Speaker 1: Also, Kim's hands tested positive for gunshot residue, and while
16:06
Speaker 1: a positive gunshot residence test has limited value, a negative
16:10
Speaker 1: test can be used to exclude a suspect, but Chris's
16:13
Speaker 1: hands were never tested. At least the crime seat investigator
16:16
Speaker 1: Bob Deal was actively challenging the state's theory, citing the
16:19
Speaker 1: bullet trajectory, the issue of Chris's smaller stature, the fact
16:23
Speaker 1: that there were no signs of a struggle with Kim,
16:25
Speaker 1: as well as the way the blood had hit her hand,
16:29
Speaker 1: all of it serving as clear indications that she and
16:32
Speaker 1: she alone had shot that gun. But Bob Deal the
16:36
Speaker 1: investigator was ignored, and they continued to seek death penalty
16:40
Speaker 1: even after the DNA testing revealed that the blood on
16:44
Speaker 1: the seat belt indeed belonged to Chris.
16:47
Speaker 4: Before the grand jury wasnt panel, they knew the blood
16:51
Speaker 4: on the seat belt was Chris's. We know this because
16:54
Speaker 4: there's a phone lock where the forensic examiner detailed that
16:58
Speaker 4: she told the state's attorney that the blood was not Kims.
17:04
Speaker 4: When the grand jury was to decide whether Chris would
17:07
Speaker 4: be indicted or not, the question over the blood was
17:11
Speaker 4: presented very craftily. The officer is never asked whose blood
17:16
Speaker 4: was on the seat belt, But when you look at
17:19
Speaker 4: the transcript, it is clear that the way the questions
17:23
Speaker 4: were asked it was meant so that the jury would
17:28
Speaker 4: infer reasonably infer that the blood on the seat belt
17:32
Speaker 4: was Kim's and not Chris's.
17:34
Speaker 1: The following is a quote from the exchange between state's
17:38
Speaker 1: attorney Leah Norbit and the lead investigator, Sergeant Gary Lawson.
17:42
Speaker 2: Quote.
17:43
Speaker 1: They looked at the seat belt, right, Yes, as if
17:46
Speaker 1: the seat belt were pulled to be seat belting. Someone
17:49
Speaker 1: in correct, and there was blood on that seat belt?
17:52
Speaker 2: Was there not? Yes?
17:53
Speaker 1: And when Kimberly Vaughan was found by the paramedics and
17:56
Speaker 1: by the police. She was not wearing a seat belt.
17:58
Speaker 2: Correct.
18:00
Speaker 1: Is significant because she was wearing that seat belt when
18:02
Speaker 1: she was shot. That's correct end quote. If she had
18:07
Speaker 1: been wearing the seat belt when she was shot, it
18:09
Speaker 1: would have had to have been her blood, but it
18:12
Speaker 1: wasn't Kim's blood.
18:14
Speaker 4: It completely refutes the prosecution's allegations as to what happened
18:20
Speaker 4: in this case. It's all documented. The other thing that
18:23
Speaker 4: was interesting is that before the grand jury, the forensic
18:27
Speaker 4: report was mark draft, and then the day after the
18:32
Speaker 4: grand jury comes out with its finding, the forensic report
18:36
Speaker 4: it's changed from draft to final, and that examiner was
18:41
Speaker 4: asked why did she do that? And her response was
18:44
Speaker 4: I was told to do it, and she wouldn't answer
18:46
Speaker 4: any further.
18:48
Speaker 1: It appears that marking the report final the day after
18:51
Speaker 1: the grand jury indictment offered an appearance of plausible deniability
18:55
Speaker 1: to the assistant state's attorney and Sergeant Gary Lawson. But
18:59
Speaker 1: now they had their indictment and they had chosen to
19:02
Speaker 1: arrest Chris while he was at the funeral of his
19:06
Speaker 1: wife and children. The cruelty of the whole thing be
19:09
Speaker 1: damned and effectively preparing for a capital trial, well, we
19:13
Speaker 1: know that can take quite some time.
19:16
Speaker 3: I didn't go to trial until twenty twelve, so I
19:19
Speaker 3: was in the will County jail from two thousand and
19:22
Speaker 3: seven to twenty twelve.
19:25
Speaker 4: He was treated very poorly because of what it was
19:28
Speaker 4: alleged that he had done, but he was under the
19:31
Speaker 4: death penalty at the time, and there were funds provided
19:35
Speaker 4: by the state to get the best attorneys, get the
19:37
Speaker 4: best experts. And when I first became exposed to the case,
19:41
Speaker 4: which is actually I had just been sworn in as
19:45
Speaker 4: an attorney, but I had been doing the farmer covigilance
19:48
Speaker 4: safety surveillance of drugs. That's how I got involved in
19:50
Speaker 4: the case in the first place. And I remember sitting
19:53
Speaker 4: in a room in Clayton, near Saint Louis with what
19:56
Speaker 4: I considered to be the dream team of criminal defense lawyers,
20:00
Speaker 4: and the ballistics expert had shown how it just was
20:05
Speaker 4: totally inconsistent with Chris having shot the gun. And then
20:09
Speaker 4: when you combine that with the topamax and at the
20:12
Speaker 4: time I had seen a document from Johnson and Johnson
20:17
Speaker 4: where they had concluded that Topermax increased the risk of
20:22
Speaker 4: suicidal itself and Juri's behavior, but they never told the FDA.
20:26
Speaker 4: So it was only after I petitioned the FDA for
20:29
Speaker 4: action that things started to happen. And I remember sitting
20:32
Speaker 4: there and saying, there's just no way this happening.
20:34
Speaker 1: Chris's dream team continued to develop their defense, even deposing
20:38
Speaker 1: the crime scene investigator Robert Dial in January twenty eleven
20:42
Speaker 1: about the investigation, and deal said, quote, every time that
20:45
Speaker 1: I offered up something that was contrary to what they said,
20:48
Speaker 1: they had some reason why I didn't know what I
20:50
Speaker 1: was talking about, or they would change their theory of
20:53
Speaker 1: what happened to try to match the evidence, rather than
20:55
Speaker 1: letting the evidence dictate the events that occurred.
21:00
Speaker 2: Quote, I know he.
21:01
Speaker 4: Was taken off the case. And you know, once again,
21:04
Speaker 4: the confirmation bias get rid of anybody that may have
21:07
Speaker 4: an alternate explanation as to what happened.
21:10
Speaker 1: It's this horribly flawed human element that makes abolishing the
21:12
Speaker 1: death penalty and absolute moral imperative. And then that's exactly
21:17
Speaker 1: what happened. Illinois abolished the death penalty in March twenty eleven,
21:20
Speaker 1: but this had paradoxically an unintended and ultimately tragic consequence
21:26
Speaker 1: for Chris.
21:27
Speaker 4: When the death penalty got taken off the table, the
21:30
Speaker 4: funds for his defense also evaporated.
21:34
Speaker 3: It was going to continue to be so expensive to
21:37
Speaker 3: finish out what needed to be done. In my attorney
21:40
Speaker 3: there in Illinois, he showed up and he just apologized.
21:44
Speaker 3: It just wasn't possible.
21:45
Speaker 4: And the case was assigned to a public defender, and
21:49
Speaker 4: they're overloaded, overworked, they don't have the resources. I remember
21:54
Speaker 4: the public defender spending about five minutes with me on
21:57
Speaker 4: the phone, and that was the last time I ever
21:58
Speaker 4: heard from the public defender. I think he did ask
22:01
Speaker 4: me if I would appear pro bono that there were
22:04
Speaker 4: no funds, and I wasn't on my own, I was
22:06
Speaker 4: working for somebody and I had just been told to
22:09
Speaker 4: stop what I was doing. We hadn't done a report yet,
22:12
Speaker 4: and so it is clear that the substantial evidence that
22:16
Speaker 4: was being developed of Chris's innocence was not going to
22:20
Speaker 4: be available to him.
22:21
Speaker 1: The Public Defender team had to become fully steeped in
22:25
Speaker 1: everything that had been developed over five years to combat
22:28
Speaker 1: the States team, which had been working together for just
22:30
Speaker 1: as long.
22:31
Speaker 3: It's like going to the World Series and removing one
22:34
Speaker 3: of the teams, getting them from a little league park
22:37
Speaker 3: and throwing them in and say, oh, go ahead and
22:38
Speaker 3: do your best.
22:40
Speaker 1: You were also facing a situation where I have to
22:42
Speaker 1: believe you were one of the most hated people in
22:44
Speaker 1: the state of Illinois.
22:45
Speaker 3: I know. The state's attorney was very vocal, and they
22:49
Speaker 3: used the media to the nth degree to make sure
22:52
Speaker 3: that the stage was set for their advantage.
22:56
Speaker 1: So the scales of justice were certainly tipped all the
22:59
Speaker 1: way to one side as the trial was set to
23:01
Speaker 1: begin in August of twenty twelve. But as we so
23:04
Speaker 1: often see, when the physical evidence is weak, the state
23:07
Speaker 1: focus is on circumstantial evidence. So they dug into the
23:10
Speaker 1: Vaughn's marriage and the arrangement that they had, presenting bombshells
23:14
Speaker 1: like Chris had gone to strip clubs.
23:17
Speaker 4: A lot of men go to strip clubs, a lot
23:18
Speaker 4: of women go to strip clubs. A lot of men
23:20
Speaker 4: who are happily married go to strip clubs. The fact
23:23
Speaker 4: that somebody goes to a strip club doesn't speak anything
23:26
Speaker 4: as to the state of their marital relationship or lack thereof.
23:30
Speaker 4: It means absolutely nothing the other situation, Chris was into
23:35
Speaker 4: survival type things, hunting, being out in the woods, stuff
23:39
Speaker 4: he had grown up with his whole life. They took
23:41
Speaker 4: the fact that he had a friend who talked about
23:45
Speaker 4: these things going to go off grid meant that he
23:47
Speaker 4: was planning to do this crime, go off grid and
23:50
Speaker 4: live his days out.
23:52
Speaker 1: It's hard to believe that he'd choose to begin that
23:54
Speaker 1: life with two debilitating gunshot wounds, but okay, it's just posterous.
24:00
Speaker 4: During the trial, I think the prosecution present at seven
24:04
Speaker 4: hundred exhibits, They had about fifty witnesses. The public defender,
24:08
Speaker 4: put on a limited defense here, did not have the
24:11
Speaker 4: tools to properly defend Chris. First of the prosecution, who
24:15
Speaker 4: had effectively unlimited resources, he had not really presented the
24:19
Speaker 4: drug issue. I know it was mentioned lightly during the trial,
24:22
Speaker 4: but the experts that had been retained were not consulted,
24:28
Speaker 4: and the jury found him guilty in what an hour
24:32
Speaker 4: or so with all of that information, How could they
24:34
Speaker 4: possibly have reviewed that information?
24:37
Speaker 1: Jury foreman Dan Leche expressed that there was no doubt
24:40
Speaker 1: in the juror's minds of Vaughan's guilt and that they
24:43
Speaker 1: never even considered the defense's argument that Kimberly Vaughn had
24:48
Speaker 1: actually committed the murders. The drug issue was not effectively raised,
24:52
Speaker 1: a forensic expert did not effectively expose the state's nonsensical theory,
24:57
Speaker 1: and the jury bought what they'd already heard in an media,
25:01
Speaker 1: and Chris was found guilty on four accounts of first
25:05
Speaker 1: degree murder, for which he received four consecutive life sentences.
25:10
Speaker 3: To have been convicted of this was beyond my comprehension.
25:15
Speaker 3: I've been raised to believe in the courtroom and the
25:17
Speaker 3: judge and the jury, and they're going to find justice.
25:20
Speaker 3: These are open minded people that are there to look
25:22
Speaker 3: at the facts. And it wasn't until that very end
25:26
Speaker 3: that I realized that everything that I had believed in
25:29
Speaker 3: and that trust that I had placed in that system
25:31
Speaker 3: was all or not. It's nothing like you see on TV.
25:49
Speaker 3: It's not like you see in the movies. There's parts
25:52
Speaker 3: of it that are more grotesque and more violent than
25:57
Speaker 3: they're probably allowed to show on TV. But there's a
25:59
Speaker 3: lot of good people in here. There's a lot of
26:01
Speaker 3: people that have definitely committed crimes, but there's a lot
26:05
Speaker 3: of people that have learned their lessons when I got
26:08
Speaker 3: to prison, I really didn't know what to expect, and
26:11
Speaker 3: I was frankly scared out of my mind. But early
26:15
Speaker 3: on some of the older guys with life sentences pulled
26:19
Speaker 3: me aside, and the advice that they gave me was
26:21
Speaker 3: that the quicker that I can accept my sentence and
26:25
Speaker 3: the quicker that I can get adjusted to this being
26:28
Speaker 3: home for the rest of my life. They said, it's
26:31
Speaker 3: just going to be that much easier on you. They said,
26:33
Speaker 3: don't trust and hope. All that's going to do is
26:35
Speaker 3: wear you down, make you sick, and eat you up.
26:38
Speaker 3: They said, make the best of each day and find
26:41
Speaker 3: things that you can do to stay productive, find things
26:44
Speaker 3: you can find meaning in. And for the first four
26:48
Speaker 3: or five years that's what I really did. I was
26:51
Speaker 3: still in contact with my parents and they still come
26:54
Speaker 3: up once a month no matter where I am, no
26:56
Speaker 3: matter where they are, they still come and visit me
26:58
Speaker 3: in person, and I talked to them on home. But
27:01
Speaker 3: essentially I made prison life first four or five years,
27:06
Speaker 3: assuming that's where I was going to be. It was
27:08
Speaker 3: quite some years before a very open minded person came
27:12
Speaker 3: and decided to do a podcast on.
27:14
Speaker 1: Me, and that podcast was called murder in Illinois, hosted
27:19
Speaker 1: by our very own Lauren bred Pacheco.
27:22
Speaker 5: I had been covering crime in New York for a
27:26
Speaker 5: national show for a decade, and I had never heard
27:30
Speaker 5: of this case until the ten year anniversary came up,
27:34
Speaker 5: and so I started digging a little bit deeper, and
27:38
Speaker 5: it became very obvious that it's because this case unfolded
27:42
Speaker 5: under the same state's attorney in the same courtroom across
27:47
Speaker 5: the hallway as another very infamous case, which was the
27:52
Speaker 5: police sergeant Drew Peterson who had more than one wife
27:56
Speaker 5: go missing under dubious circumstances. And that just sucked all
28:02
Speaker 5: the national bandwidth. And that's too bad, because more people
28:06
Speaker 5: would have seen what I saw. There was tremendous reaction
28:11
Speaker 5: to the podcast, both positive and negative. People wish death
28:15
Speaker 5: on my children, that they hoped that I would experience
28:19
Speaker 5: the loss that Kim had experienced. Again, I wasn't anticipating
28:26
Speaker 5: that revisiting this case to see if justice was served
28:31
Speaker 5: would just produce such incredible personal blowback. But there is
28:39
Speaker 5: a very real pivot that happens when you know that
28:44
Speaker 5: someone is innocent, where you no longer care that you
28:48
Speaker 5: are criticized for being their champion. And that's the way
28:52
Speaker 5: I feel for Chris. I have tremendous sympathy for Kim
28:57
Speaker 5: for her family, But keep an ascent man in prison
29:01
Speaker 5: is not going to bring the kids back, and it's
29:04
Speaker 5: not going to bring Kem back. And so the only
29:08
Speaker 5: semblance of justice left in this case is correcting this
29:13
Speaker 5: agree us wrong.
29:15
Speaker 1: She told us about the reinvestigation, which started with somebody
29:18
Speaker 1: who our listeners might remember, Bill Clutter from the Rodney
29:22
Speaker 1: Lincoln story, which will be linked in the episode description.
29:25
Speaker 2: Now.
29:25
Speaker 1: Bill's work as a private investigator led him to found
29:28
Speaker 1: an organization called Investigating Innocence and also the Illinois Innocence Project,
29:34
Speaker 1: and he had been hired as part of Chris's original
29:37
Speaker 1: dream team.
29:38
Speaker 5: Bill Clutter had already done a lot of work in
29:42
Speaker 5: terms of forensics and the medication she was on and
29:46
Speaker 5: so when we joined forces and set out to make
29:50
Speaker 5: Murder in Illinois, one of the things that we were
29:53
Speaker 5: working towards was a crime scene reconstruction, which unfortunately is
29:59
Speaker 5: an arduous, expensive undertaking. And so Jason, I reached out
30:04
Speaker 5: to you. Sure enough, you saw what I saw. You
30:08
Speaker 5: so graciously stepped forward and made the crime scene reconstruction
30:12
Speaker 5: take place. Bill Clutter enlisted a former CSI named Katie Hartman,
30:18
Speaker 5: who was meticulous in her approach, and she went through
30:22
Speaker 5: Bob Diale's initial report with a fine tooth calmb and
30:26
Speaker 5: was so impressed with the work that he had done.
30:30
Speaker 5: She said she could see exactly everything within that suv.
30:37
Speaker 1: And let's not forget how deeply Bob Deal disagreed with
30:43
Speaker 1: the lead investigator and prosecutors on this case.
30:46
Speaker 5: Bob Deal claims that within an hour that Detective Gary
30:51
Speaker 5: Lawson had come up with this, in my opinion, asenine theory,
30:57
Speaker 5: that Vaughn shot his wife through the passenger Explain then,
31:02
Speaker 5: how there is no blood on the exterior of the car,
31:07
Speaker 5: in the front or the back if he leaned through
31:09
Speaker 5: this window of this gigantic suv. And Vaughan, keep in mind,
31:15
Speaker 5: is five foot nine, maybe in dress heels. You know,
31:18
Speaker 5: he is not a large, imposing man, and for him
31:22
Speaker 5: to have gotten the trajectory didn't work, and Deal himself said, basically,
31:27
Speaker 5: that's jack assery. Show me how he did it, and
31:30
Speaker 5: Lawson couldn't because it was physically impossible, which is what
31:34
Speaker 5: we then proved when we did the crime scene reconstruction.
31:38
Speaker 1: But before the reconstruction, Lauren won Chris's trust. He wrote
31:41
Speaker 1: a letter to his parents, finally explaining what had happened
31:45
Speaker 1: that day, which he in turn shared with Lauren, and
31:48
Speaker 1: it all matched up with what we were to discover
31:51
Speaker 1: through the crime scene reconstruction.
31:53
Speaker 5: We enlisted actors who were roughly the same size as
31:58
Speaker 5: Kim and Chris and put it in an identical vehicle
32:02
Speaker 5: and played out the States theory and played out Chris's
32:07
Speaker 5: theory again and again, and only one of them worked.
32:12
Speaker 5: Only one of them was backed by the forensics, by
32:16
Speaker 5: the blood in the car, and that was Christopher Vaughns.
32:19
Speaker 5: And the moment when the actor recreating Chris's movements reached
32:24
Speaker 5: forward and pulled that belt to try to get it
32:28
Speaker 5: over the actress who was playing Kimberly's body, you see
32:33
Speaker 5: exactly where his blood ended up by her foot, where
32:38
Speaker 5: the blood smeared across the center console, all of it,
32:43
Speaker 5: and it was such an eye opening, astounding moment of
32:49
Speaker 5: undeniable proof. And with all of that, you still have
32:55
Speaker 5: an innocent man who's lost everything, rotting in prison in Illinois.
33:01
Speaker 1: Lauren also interviewed Keith for the podcast, which brought him
33:04
Speaker 1: back onto Chris's team.
33:06
Speaker 4: It had been haunting me about how he had been convicted,
33:10
Speaker 4: and when she called me in and we talked about it,
33:13
Speaker 4: when she told me about the letter and about him
33:16
Speaker 4: talking about what had happened, and there was an opportunity
33:19
Speaker 4: for me to get involved, I jumped on it. You know,
33:22
Speaker 4: there are things afoot internally that we are not ready
33:25
Speaker 4: to release yet, but I can tell you we're blaming
33:29
Speaker 4: the third person in the car. There was Chris, it
33:32
Speaker 4: was Kim, and there was Topomax. That is what it's
33:35
Speaker 4: all about, because it does provide an explanation as to
33:38
Speaker 4: what happened here. We intend to talk about the misconduct
33:41
Speaker 4: by the prosecution during the grand jury, combined with the
33:45
Speaker 4: psychological impact of what took place preventing him from really
33:49
Speaker 4: assisting in his defense. And the goal is to get
33:52
Speaker 4: him a new trial. We believe very strongly that's going
33:55
Speaker 4: to lead to a different result.
33:57
Speaker 1: Well, we certainly hope so. And if anyone in our
33:59
Speaker 1: audience is move to act, what can we ask them
34:02
Speaker 1: to do?
34:03
Speaker 5: I would say to go to Keith Altman's website because
34:06
Speaker 5: he has links on there. You know, I think we're
34:09
Speaker 5: going to start another outreach of writing Governor Pritzker. Governor
34:14
Speaker 5: Pritzker is a fair, just man. I send him stuff
34:18
Speaker 5: on Instagram constantly, just messages imploring him to take another
34:22
Speaker 5: look at this case.
34:23
Speaker 1: And we're going to leave ways to reach both Governor
34:26
Speaker 1: Pritzker and Chris with messages of encouragement in the episode
34:29
Speaker 1: description and with that we're going to go to closing arguments.
34:32
Speaker 1: It's where I thank you again Keith, Lauren, and Chris
34:36
Speaker 1: for being here and sharing this unreal story. But it's
34:40
Speaker 1: all too real. So I'm going to now turn my
34:43
Speaker 1: microphone off and just listen to anything else you want
34:46
Speaker 1: to share. Keith, why don't you kick it off? Then Lauren,
34:50
Speaker 1: and then Chris, if you would please take us off
34:53
Speaker 1: into the sunset.
34:54
Speaker 4: This is a tough case. Three kids killed, mother shot
34:59
Speaker 4: is one that doesn't sit well with anybody. Chris is
35:03
Speaker 4: as much a victim here and prosecutors number one, they
35:07
Speaker 4: need to have an open mind. They need to find
35:10
Speaker 4: out what might have happened, instead of deciding what happened
35:15
Speaker 4: and then altering the investigation to fit that. It's important
35:18
Speaker 4: that people have open minds, that they wait for the
35:22
Speaker 4: evidence to come through because sometimes things are just not
35:26
Speaker 4: quite as they seem, and upcoms Raiser really does play
35:31
Speaker 4: a role here. The simplest explanation tends to be the
35:34
Speaker 4: right one, and so we are very hopeful that we
35:38
Speaker 4: will be able to get Chris a new trial, and
35:41
Speaker 4: we're highly confident that we will be able to present
35:44
Speaker 4: a very different picture as to what had happened.
35:48
Speaker 5: I would just say, please, do not take my word
35:52
Speaker 5: for it, don't take Jason's word for it, don't take
35:55
Speaker 5: Keith Altman's word for it. Just look into it. I
36:00
Speaker 5: guarantee you you will very quickly see the patterns that
36:05
Speaker 5: we all know to be true. It's a heartbreaking misery onion,
36:11
Speaker 5: and the layers just keep building with every single day, week,
36:15
Speaker 5: and year that Christopher Vaughn is incarcerated. He needs to
36:19
Speaker 5: be released and again the process of healing.
36:25
Speaker 3: This is not just about me. This is about a
36:29
Speaker 3: lot of people and about a system that's not working
36:32
Speaker 3: like it should be. While I've been in here, I've
36:35
Speaker 3: met a lot of people that have claimed innocence. When
36:38
Speaker 3: I was in the outside world, I assume that anybody
36:41
Speaker 3: locked up it was guilty of the crime. I believe
36:43
Speaker 3: what was in the media. If they got locked up,
36:47
Speaker 3: you know, good riddens. You know they were out of
36:49
Speaker 3: sight and out of mind. That's just not the case.
36:51
Speaker 3: There's good people in here that deserve second chance. There's
36:55
Speaker 3: good people in here that are innocent of the crimes
36:58
Speaker 3: that they've been accused convicted of, and overall, out of night,
37:03
Speaker 3: out of mind doesn't work because there's still human beings
37:06
Speaker 3: in here, and I hope it's nothing else that this
37:10
Speaker 3: starts building awareness for what's going on in these prison systems.
37:22
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
37:25
Speaker 1: to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
37:27
Speaker 1: week early by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus.
37:30
Speaker 2: On Apple Podcasts.
37:31
Speaker 1: I want to thank our production team, Connor Hall and
37:34
Speaker 1: Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler,
37:38
Speaker 1: Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Cleibern. The music in this production
37:41
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
37:44
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms
37:47
Speaker 1: at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can
37:50
Speaker 1: also follow me on Instagram at It's Jason Flamm Wrongful
37:53
Speaker 1: Conviction is a production of Lava for Good podcasts and
37:56
Speaker 1: association with signal company Number one.
38:00
Speaker 3: The w