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The Night Kaylin Gillis Never Came Home · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

• 0:40
  Speaker 1: You just don't get it. It's obvious to me that
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: you feel justified. You don't take any responsibility for the
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: outcome of your actions. I think you really could possibly
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: do the same thing again. Those were the words of
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: a Washington County judge spoken to the defendant in a
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: courtroom earlier this year. This was the last thing the
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: defendant heard before finding out their sentence, and it was
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: a sentence that they would receive for tearing apart a
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: dozen young lives and leaving one person dead. Caylen Gillis
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: was born on February twenty third, two thousand and three,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: and grew up in Schulerville, New York. She had just
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: graduated from high school, where she'd been a flyer on
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: the high school cheerleading team, and was on her way
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: to college. She was just about to head out on
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: the trip from New York to Florida to study to
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: become a marine biologist when she was invited out to
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: one last party. Caylen agreed to go, and she and
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: a group of friends piled into their cars and took
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: off towards the small town of Hebron, New York. One
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: friend was on their motorbike, leaving the rest to split
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: up between the two remaining cars. Caylen was in the
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: passenger seat of her boyfriend's SUV, and she was one
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: of the people trying to figure out if they were
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: actually heading in the right direction. As it turns out,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: cell phone coverage and street signs are in short supply
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: in Hebron, and those vehicles full of young people about
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: to head off to college slowly drove down the dark
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: and rural roads. They made a wrong turn. This was
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: the fateful turn that would forever change their lives, and
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: it was a turn that none of them would be
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: able to fully come back from. On the other side
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: of things, Kevin Monaghan was sixty five years old and
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: sleeping in his bed with his wife when he claimed
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: to hear someone coming down his driveway. When he looked
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: out the window, he saw multiple cars and a motorbike
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: slowly making their way towards his house, and he thought
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: that he was under attack. He told his wife to
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: hide in the closet and snatched up his shotgun. Once
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: out on the front porch, he fired once into the
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: air to warn his would be assailants away. When they
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: heard the shot, all of the vehicles stopped in their
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: tracks and began racing back out of the driveway. That
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: was when the second shot rang out back in the cars.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: The group of twenty year olds frantically tried to get
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: out of Kevin's driveway as fast as they could, and
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: then they made the terrifying discovery that one of them
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: had actually been hit. In the passenger seat of the
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: last car left in the driveway, Caylean clung to life.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: The second shot had struck the car and caught Kaylan
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: in the neck. Her friends did what they could to
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: keep her stable as her boyfriend, Blake Walsh, took off
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: speeding down the road. They had no cell reception and
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: the group couldn't call for help until they reached the
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: neighboring town of Salem. When the first responders arrived at
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: the scene, Caylen was unfortunately already gone and there was
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: nothing they could do for her. She was only twenty
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: years old at the time of her death, and her
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: only mistake had been accidentally going down the wrong driveway.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: The police were quick to act and went straight to
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Kevin's house to arrest him. Kevin was uncooperative with the authorities,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: and that came as no surprise to anyone who actually
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: knew him. Neighbors claimed that Kevin was a mean and
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: hostile man who would sometimes be physically aggressive. He'd actually
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: already been arrested for aggravated assaults with a weapon back
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and one, but the charge had been
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: dismissed before he could be taken to court. According to neighbors,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: because of the lack of signage and cell phone coverage,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: it was a common thing that people would mistake Kevin's
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: driveway for a road and accidentally go down it instead
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: of understanding the situation. Kevin became more and more annoyed
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: and irritated by this, and that all accumulated that evening
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three, when Calin lost her life back
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: at the scene, Kevin held the police up for over
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: an hour. He first tried to call the police off
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: by talking to the police dispatcher and then his attorney
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: over the phone, and then he tried to weasel his
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: way out of the situation altogether. Recorded on the eight
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: body cameras worn by the responding officers that night, Kevin
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: can be heard saying that he'd been in bed since
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: half past eight and had no idea what had happened.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: He claimed that he had never even left his bed,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: let alone fired his weapon, and that hunters must have
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: been the ones to shoot at the cars. And then,
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: perhaps unsurprisingly, within a few minutes, he changed his story.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Kevin confessed and said that he had in fact fired
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: a warning shot that night, but he'd fired it up
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: into the air. Everything after that, he claimed, had simply
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: been an accident. I didn't mean to shoot the second shot,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: he told the police and later the courts. According to
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: his own accounts, after firing the warning shot, Kevin had
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: tripped on some nails on the porch and dropped his gun.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: The gun had then hit the floor and misfired, accidentally
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: hitting the car and Kaylan. That was it, one accident
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: that had led to another and left one young woman
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: with her whole life ahead of her dead. The prosecution, however,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: disagreed with Kevin's versions of events. In courts, they showed
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: him video footage of the porch and asked him to
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: point to the nails that he had tripped on that night.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Kevin couldn't. They then made the argument that Kevin had
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: acted that night as he usually did with anger quote
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: he grabbed a shotgun and intended to make them leave
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: as fast as possible. He didn't care if they were
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: hurt or killed. Kevin disagreed, and he told the courts
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: that he'd been afraid for his and his wife's lives
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: and that he'd only tried to protect his home and family.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: But Kevin also made it incredibly difficult to believe his
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: version of events. Local police and responding officers testified that
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Kevin had shown no remorse for killing Kaylen, and Kevin
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: himself practically confirmed that the moment he sat down on
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: the witness stand. Judge Adam Mcalaney later addressed Kevin and
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: his behavior. Quote, the first thing you do on the
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: witness stand when you come up here and testify, he
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: told Kevin, is you made a joke to the jury
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: about them finally being able to see your face. You
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: senselessly took the life of Calen Gillis, and you have
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: the gall to sit here and talk about how you
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: plan to finish up the work on your house and
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: race motocross in the future. You don't deserve that. What
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: would make you think you deserved those things? I think
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: that you really could possibly do the same thing again.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: It's obvious to me that you feel justified. You don't
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: take any responsibility for the outcome of your actions. You
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: just don't get it. The jury agreed. Kevin was found
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: guilty of second degree murder on January twenty third, two
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: thousand twenty four. He was sentenced to twenty five years
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: to life in prison, plus a consecutive sentence of up
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: to four years. Calen's boyfriend, Blake Walsh, who was only
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: nineteen years old on the night that Caelen was killed,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: later described the shooting to the press. I tried to
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: step on the gas as fast as I could, he said,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: and that's when the fatal shot came through. My world
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: was taken from me. Blake and Calen had already been
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: together four years at that point, and the two of
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: them had been talking about getting married. She was just
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: beginning to find her way in the world with kindness, humor,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: and love. Caylen's family released in their public statement the
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: shooting came at a startling time in American history. Within
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: one week of Kaylen Gillis, a teenager who'd mistaken an
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: address to pick up his younger brothers, and two cheerleaders
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: entering the wrong vehicle were all shot. All of the
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: shootings revolved around mistake and addresses or simple mistakes, but
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Kaylen Gillis was the only one to lose her life
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: because of it. That is ten Minute Murder for today,
• 8:40
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• 8:43
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• 8:46
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• 8:58
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• 9:02
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• 9:25
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• 9:28
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