Brutal Crime Of Passion At Momence Illinois Hospital

Dateline: Momence Illinois hospital, June 14, 2007. At about 5:30 a.m. police were called when a passing motorist found Christopher Vaughn wandering on Interstate 55. The 32 year old private investigator had a gunshot wound in his thigh. His Ford Expedition was parked on a nearby driveway. Police found the brutally slain bodies of Vaughn's wife Kimberly, 34; and their children Abigayle, 12, Cassandra, 11, and Blake, 8 inside his SUV. The next day Vaughn left the District Five police station after interrogation, and a police spokesman said Vaughn was not a suspect. Vaughn stated that the family was on its way to a water park in Springfield when he had to check the luggage rack on the SUV, so he pulled off the interstate. When he was outside of the car his wife took the gun and wounded him before shooting their children and turning the weapon on herself.

Further investigation by state police at the family's residence turned up computer evidence such as modems and cable boxes with incriminating photographs, and a video entitled "Law & Order - Special Victims Unit". This video is about the murder of a family of mother and children in which the husband was merely wounded. In the beginning the authorities blamed the mother but in the end the husband was charged.


Nine days after the murders Vaughn was arrested by Illinois state police before the funeral began. It was noted that Vaughn was the beneficiary of his wife's million-dollar life insurance policy, which was taken out over 3 years before the murders (an Illinois law known as "the slayer statute" prevented Vaugn from receiving the money.) State prosecutors filed a list of witnesses who could testify at Vaughn's trial. Included in the dozens of names were the usual doctors, police officers, and Chicagoland healthcare paramedics. There was also a twenty-five page state police report with an interview of Christal L. Miller, a resident of Lombard. But there were also quite a few unusual witnesses, like employees from Scores (an upscale Chicago strip club located near O'Hare airport). And another police report cited Vaughn's connection to Druidism, a religious and philosophical system of the Druids - an ancient Celtic religious order of soothsayers, priests, poets and judges and in Ireland, Britain, and northern France.

Christopher Vaughn was the operator of Stonebridge Investigations. He specialized in risk assessments, employee background checks, corporate counter espionage, missing persons investigations, employee surveillance, cybercrime prevention and computer forensics. His wife Kimberly Vaughn was a recent graduate of the online University of Phoenix. For his defense Vaughn hired flamboyant St. Louis attorney Scott Rosenblum. But on July 26, 2007 Will County Judge Dan Rozak found Christopher Vaughn guilty on four counts of murder in the first degree.

It will be remembered that Momence hospital has been the scene of previous tragic events. On May 31, 2002, a young man from Momence named Brian Nelson went to a Custer Park farmhouse where he killed his girlfriend, her father, her brother, and a family friend; but he spared the life of his young daughter. In that case Nelson was found guilty and given the death penalty.

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