[Music] hi everyone my name is Jack and today we're going to take a look at another horrible case with you the vaugh family case what happened on a deserted Road on June 14th 2007 on a highway near Bluff Road police found a car parked on the side of the road with the breathless bodies of a 34-year-old woman named Kimberly vaugh and her three children 12-year-old Abigail 11-year-old Cassandra and 8-year-old Blake all of them died from gunshot wounds fired at almost Point Blank Range the only Survivor the head of the family named Christopher vaugh was only
lightly wounded he claimed that he was shot by his wife who in his opinion took the lives of their children and settled the score however Christopher could not say anything concrete because he allegedly had a sudden memory lapse the case was investigated for 5 years before the final verdict was handed down but some people to this day doubt the Justice of the verdict the story is still a Hot Topic on popular television talk shows raising a lot of questions and we'll try to get to the bottom of it all from the beginning Kimberly Phillips and
Christopher Vaughn the couple lived together for more than a decade raised three children and their family seemed happy and friendly from the outside Kimberly vaugh Maiden named Phillips was born in a small town of St Charles Missouri in December 1972 she grew up in a fairly well-to-do family where in addition to her were two daughters Jennifer and Elizabeth by the way Jennifer was the twin sister of our heroine the phillipses did not save on education and all round development of their daughters Kimberly along with her sisters attended a prestigious school and actively engaged in sports
she had many friends who spoke about the girl as an open responsive and very sociable person Christopher vaugh was born in the same state of Missouri but in the neighboring city of St Louis in September 1974 he was one of three sons in a rather modest but very friendly family in his school years the young man was seriously engaged in soccer loved hiking camping and family trips out of town the couple met in the early 90s and almost immediately a romantic relationship began between them Kimberly's parents from the very beginning opposed this Union because the
chosen one of their daughter was a few years younger than her did not yet have a stable job in addition as already mentioned grew up in a modest if not to say poor family but the young people were so in love with each other that they did not want to listen to anyone soon Kimberly became pregnant and in the summer of 1994 the couple married at the time of the wedding the groom was not yet 20 years old and the bride was only a couple of years older than him however they both seemed quite ready
for family life their daughter Abigail was born 4 months after the wedding in October of the same year just a year later the couple had a second daughter whom they named Cassandra and another 3 years later their youngest son Blake was born the first years of family life of the spouses were harmonious and happy young people were in love made great plans for the future raised their children and arranged their household all their children were talented Drew well actively engaged in various Sports were fond of music and played in the School drama theater Kimberly was
a homemaker and was busy raising her heirs she was the head of the PTA in her school class and the young woman was also the leader of the Scout Troop which included all of her children the head of the family meanwhile founded and grew his own small cyber security company a few years after the wedding the family moved to Washington State and in early 2000 they settled in a small town in Illinois where they could afford to buy their own spacious house then Kimberly decided to get a law degree and enrolled in one of the
local universities she received her diploma just a month before the tragedy at first glance this family seemed happy and strong but few people knew that soon after the move the relationship of the spouses became strained Christopher often traveled to another state for work where he began an affair with a woman named Jill this relationship lasted for about 1 year and one day Kimberly became aware of it a serious Scandal broke out in the family the husband and wife distanced themselves from each other and it was going to divorce but having weighed all the pros and
cons the couple decided to keep the marriage for the sake of their children husband and wife tried their best to pretend that everything was fine but the tension between them gradually increased Kim no longer trusted her Chosen One jealous of him and constantly suspected of cheating as it would later turn out not unreasonably on the nervous ground the young woman began to have health problems she suffered from anxiety migraines insomnia and problems with blood pressure Kimberly was forced to seek medical attention and was prescribed several types of medications to alleviate her condition she took them
continuously for about a year and also went to sessions with a psychologist to whom she told about the problems in her family but despite this Kimberly remained sociable friendly and active her husband however was described by others as a withdrawn introvert who never expressed much emotion a fateful trip in June 2007 on the eve of their 13th wedding anniversary the couple decided to organize a family trip to an amusement park in Springfield Illinois Christopher chose the place and the rest of the family members supported his idea so in the early morning hours of June 14th
the whole family after settling into their SUV hit the road a few hours later the bloodied head of the vaugh family was picked up by a passing car while wandering along the highway Christopher was wounded in the leg he calmly reported that he was shot by his wife but could not add anything else because he allegedly had a sudden lapse in memory according to the victim he and his family were driving to an amusement park but his wife got car sick in the car and asked him to stop he pulled over to the side of
the road and got out of the passenger compartment to check the roof rack then he heard a gunshot and after that everything happened like a horror movie Christopher realized that his wife had fired saw blood running down his leg and ran away comes and oblivious to the children in the cabin until he was picked up by a random car Christopher was unable to pinpoint where his SUV had been left but police tracked it down almost immediately they found four bodies in the car with gunshot wounds each had been shot twice except Kimberly who had been
killed with a single shot to the Head Christopher admitted that he had a gun at home which had probably been loaded and carried by his wife in Christopher's opinion she was the one who took the lives of their children shot him and afterward settled the score with her life while telling this he did not show much emotion and even when the police showed him the pictures of the bodies of the Dead family members during the interrogation at the station vau behaved surprisingly calm which could not but arouse suspicion Kimberly's parents learned of their daughter and
grandchildren's tragedy from a tactless reporter who called them at home and began asking about their son-in-law and whether he might have harmed their loved ones in the initial interrogations everyone claimed that Christopher could not have massacred his own family and there was probably someone else on the road who committed the crime however the police officers who saw the crime scene had a different opinion on the matter from the beginning they stated that the crime was purely domestic in nature so no one other than family members were suspected of being involved in the case at the
same time no specific names of suspects were initially given either during subsequent interrogations the surviving head of the family did not recall any new details but already confidently stated that his wife could have done it all killed the children wounded him and then shot herself Christopher believed that the pills she had been taking for the past year were to blame as well as the crisis in the relationship because of his infidelity which they could not overcome vaugh wrote off the loss of memory as shock and for the same reason he did not immediately call the
police or the emergency services but just rushed away not noticing the pain in his wounded leg his words sounded unconvincing but that wasn't enough to take Christopher into custody the family's home was searched and the couple's laptops were seized for inspection while the preliminary investigation was underway Christopher remained at large and was busy organizing the funeral of his wife and children the funeral ceremony was scheduled for June 23rd and was held in one of the city's funeral homes a large number of people came to pay their last respects and almost all of them noticed the
tension between the vaugh and Philip's families soon a police car pulled up to the building and just before the funeral service began Christopher was arrested on charges of murdering his family he himself behaved calmly and went silently with the police but his parents were quite outraged at what was happening they lamented the fact that their son was not even allowed to say goodbye to to his wife and children while his guilt had not yet been proven as this difficult case had already received a lot of press coverage members of the vaugh family suggested that Christopher's
arrest at the funeral was done in order to attract even more public attention at the same time the Phillips family was quite happy about this turn of events Kimberly's mother said in an interview that she was glad that her daughter was cleared of Suspicion of a crime against her own children from the the very beginning the investigation doubted the veracity of Christopher's words but he stubbornly wrote off everything on a sudden lapse in memory and claimed that he could not reconstruct the chronology of events but he was sure that it was his wife who committed
this terrible crime he was just lucky because the bullet hit only the soft tissues of the thigh without hitting the large vessels during the investigation it was found that Christopher had an insurance policy of his wife under which he in the event of her death could receive receive a payment of $1 million and the more the police deepened in this case the more convinced that it is the husband is the main culprit in this terrible tragedy the investigation itself lasted more than 5 years and all this time Christopher remained in custody despite his constant attempts
to prove his innocence a number of serious charges were brought against him and in case they were proved vaugh faced the death penalty therefore under state law he was provided with attorneys who were paid from a special fund that provided protection for people facing capital punishment Christopher's defense attorneys were thorough and tried to shift the blame for what happened to his late wife they gathered evidence that Kimberly suffered from a number of mental disorders which she developed against the background of the crisis in the marriage associated with the infidelity of her husband and the resulting
health problems and the drugs she was taking allegedly made her condition worse rather than better lawyers almost succeeded in proving that it was the wife who took a loaded gun from home on a family trip massacred the children wounded her husband and then shot herself in the head the evidence and materials provided seemed to support this version the case was left to be solved but at this time the state passed reforms that abolished the death penalty and therefore Chris lost his lawyers whose work was paid for by the foundation they asked for a quarter of
a million dollars to complete the case but vau did not have that kind of money Christopher was appointed a public defender who had to deal with the case from the beginning and to build a new line of defense this time attempts to exonerate the defendant looked far less credible the defendant's personal laptop which was seized during a search of his home revealed a rather curious and lengthy correspondence with a Canadian resident named Steve wet the two had met on a social networking site about 10 months before the tragedy and began corresponding almost daily Christopher complained
to his new friend that he was deeply unhappy in his marriage and family life had long bored him the men discussed the charms of life in the wilderness away from civilization talking about hiking in the wilderness camping and survival skills in the forests deserts and mountains at one point vaugh began to persuade his new acquaintance to help him fake his own death so that he could escape from his family however Steve did not like this idea and he refused to participate in it then Chris said that he would still leave his family work City Life
and run away to the Canadian province where no one can find him about a month before the tragedy the accused began to write about a certain Maya a girl whom he planned to take with him and with whom he was allegedly in love the police easily managed to find and bring Maya as a witness she turned out to be a dancer at a local strip club which Christopher regularly visited they dated for several months and all this time Christopher complained about his unhappy Family Life at one point he offered her to run away together but
Maya this plan seemed to Maya a foolish Venture and she refused it also turned out that vau had an affair with another young dancer to whom he lied that he was single and had no children wanting to impress the girl he spent a large sum of money on her in a short period of time and also offered to go to another country with him the two girls and the pen were called as Witnesses at the trial their testimony showed that the defendant did not seek to save his marriage at all but was going to run
away taking one of his Mistresses with him the trial of Christopher vaugh began in the fall of 2012 and was widely covered by the media evidence was presented that he had purchased a gun shortly before the tragedy and had visited shooting ranges several times where he practiced using the weapon notably the last time he shot at Targets was the evening before that very family trip experts also found that the shot in Christopher's thigh was made almost at Point Blank Range while he himself claimed that his wife shot him when he got out of the car
while Kimberly remained inside the car in addition the bullet holes on Christopher's jacket raised many questions according to the prosecutors such a trace could have been left by a single bullet if the gun was fired while wrapped in his jacket but this assumption could not be proven but one of the most important pieces of evidence was Kimberly's blood stains on her husband's clothes if Christopher as he claimed left the car while his family was still alive how did the blood of his wife who he said had shot herself already after he ran for help get
on his clothes and shoes in addition Kimberly's own blood was not on the murder weapon or on her hands which would be impossible if she had actually shot herself in the head with the gun to her chin but there was a drop of her husband's Blood on the thumb of her hand on top of that there were several searches on Christopher's work computer for detailed staging of the crime scene Kimberly's physician also testified at the trial stating that the young woman suffered from insomnia headaches and high blood pressure for which she was prescribed a number
of medications but that she had no bad thoughts or desire to harm herself or others the defendant was found guilty on each of the counts charged for such a horrific crime Christopher was sentenced to four life sentences one for each family member with no possibility of ever being released shortly after such a harsh sentence was handed down vau unexpectedly stated that he remembered in great detail the events of that day and had not lost his memory at all according to him shots rang out after he left the car but he did not immediately realize what
was happening then he saw the bodies of the children and at that moment his wife sh shot him in the leg she shouted that it was all his fault and then put a bullet in his head the new testimony of the convict had no effect on the verdict because it sounded more than ridiculous however Christopher's parents have been actively trying to justify their son in the eyes of the public for several years they regularly take part in all sorts of talk shows give interviews and blogs and social networks where they talk about how unhappy in
marriage was their Heir they also systemat Al blame All the Troubles on the Philip's family whose members according to them from the very beginning did not accept their son-in-law and did everything to turn his life into a nightmare several petitions for clemency have been filed by the vaugh family to have Chris acquitted or at least have his sentence commuted several such petitions were addressed to the governor of the state but he having familiarized himself with the case File stated that he had no reason to doubt the fairness of the Court's verdict he called the murder
of an entire family moreover his own the most horrible crime a person can commit and no leniency or justification in this case is out of the question thanks for watching guys jack was with you subscribe to the channel there are a lot of shocking stories ahead