Forensic Files - Season 12, Episode 18 - Shattered Innocence - Full Episode | Forensic Files

there was a break-in and the murder what do you mean what happened in the room it looked like an execution my first
thought was this was a hit until a closer look at the forensic evidence revealed the truth that was
definitely a stage scene [Music] [Music] one of the best defense lawyers in san antonio texas was leslie vaughan
leslie was a workaholic if you know anything about guys who tried to to reach that uh status of perfectionism uh
leslie was a was a perfectionist he really was not surprisingly as a defense attorney
vaughn's practice also included problem clients he did have clients involved in the drug
trade he did have clients that were identified themselves with different like organized crime groups
on the night of november 10 1998 leslie's wife was working the night shift as a nurse at the local hospital
leslie and his two sons were home that night around 1 30 a.m 16 year old brian said he heard a loud
bang coming from his father's bedroom when he tried to get in he discovered the door was locked
he hears some more alarming noises in the nature of gurgling or breathing he can't get into his dad's room
and that concerns him in a panic brian called 911 [Music] after the call brian took his 11 year
old brother to his neighbor's house he indicated there might have been maybe somebody in the house and that's
that's why he was getting his brother out to make sure that his brother didn't get hurt
when paramedics arrived they broke down the bedroom door and found leslie vaughan dead
there was a single gunshot wound to his head there was a large limestone rock on the
bedroom floor and a broken window the killer's apparent point of entry the french doors opened to a balcony and
one of the doors had a very large gaping hole in it someone had thrown a rock through the doors
and the size of the breakout in the glass could accommodate a grown person walking in and out to that opening
so right off the bat i was i was pretty sure that we were dealing with the murder scene
there was a spent shell casing on the floor and the spent bullet was found in the
pillow under vaughan's head the bullet had six grooves with a right twist which would commonly indicate a
smith and wesson's semi-automatic nine-millimeter handgun but the motive for the murder
was unclear the television was on there was a remote control still intact there was
no indications of drawers open where somebody ransacked was searching for something uh whether it be jewelry money
so there was no indications at all of a burglary leslie vaughn was just 44 years old
my first thought was this was a hit just a day earlier a federal prosecutor overheard vaughn say he feared he would
be targeted for violence that's sometimes the risk you take when you lose a case for a client who happens
to be a drug dealer what went through my mind is is that rumors were that maybe it was a client a
disgruntled client somebody who's mad at him homicide detective alfred damiani broke
the news to leslie's wife madeline i've made lots of those notifications and after the initial gasp in shock
then it's how how did it happen and she never asked she never ever asked that and they found another surprise on the
911 [Music] at leslie vaughan's funeral prosecutors and law enforcement came together with drug dealers and felons to
mourn his death you had these grown men that by society status they are thugs but they were actually reduced to tears
because leslie vaughn was in that box about to be put in the ground in a search for the killer the vaughn
family told police they were getting harassing telephone calls in the weeks leading up to the murder
the family had been receiving calls that you'd pick the phone up nobody would say
anything they were basically just just dead air unfortunately phone records couldn't
determine the origin of the calls for investigators their first task was to eliminate the
victim's wife madeleine as a possible suspect hospital records confirmed she was
working on the night of the murder and had never left the premises madeleine was she was grieving she was
stunned she was in shock she was all the things that you would expect her to be and remember i showed you the pictures
of leslie and marlon and they look real happy did that look like a picture of somebody knocking each other out i mean
that's what i saw on the night of the murder as a matter of routine police swabbed brian vaughn's
hands for gunshot residue since he was in the house when the crime occurred these are the small microscopic
particles that are left behind when a gun is fired if a person fired a weapon within a 24-hour period it is very
likely that i will be able to find gunshot residue but under the scanning electron
microscope magnified up to 10 000 times the tests on brian's hands were negative
[Music] investigators suspected the killer somehow climbed up to a second floor balcony
broke through the french doors and then shot vaughn in the head with a nine millimeter gun
the balcony was about 15 feet from the ground this is a balcony without access to the
ground level there's no there's no stairway there's no other way to access this balcony except through those doors
i think someone could have scaled that balcony i would say that someone who did that
would have to be pretty fit in pretty good shape i don't think it would have been an easy thing to do necessarily but
it could be done but when investigators looked at the dirt below the balcony they couldn't find any evidence of a
ladder or even any foot impressions despite three days of constant rain how did this person get up here how did
this person climb up here and get up to the second floor of this wooden deck and gain enter to this residence if the
ground had been disturbed by a heavy footprints or a ladder or some sort of equipment it should have shown
up in the soil and investigators felt it would have been impossible to throw the rock from
the yard it weighed close to 10 pounds that person had to be very strong to be able to throw that rock from the bottom
floor and to make it go right through that glass we found no evidence that there was any activity anybody walking
around back there absolutely no evidence of it and investigators found another inconsistency
there was broken glass all over the bedroom floor and all over leslie vaughan's body as
well the rock that was thrown through that window didn't even phase him and didn't even
wake him up the obvious conclusion that you have to draw from that is is that the guy was
probably dead already toxicology tests found no drugs or alcohol in leslie vaughan's system so
there was no evidence he was unconscious before he was killed next investigators sent the rock
to the forensic lab for testing i talked to a scientist and asked him if there was a process which he planned to
use to to attempt to to raise these latent prints the process is called super glue fuming
heated super glue produces fumes that adhere to a fingerprint and the adhesion is greater than fingerprint powder
you want to preserve anything that is on that rock as far as laden prints or fingerprints you want to make sure that
there's no way by using a brush that it's going to come off unfortunately the surface of the rock
was too jagged the test was unsuccessful then investigators found an inconsistency
in brian vaughn's story brian called 9-1-1 to report the shooting at 1 46 a.m what's your last name
is anybody out there but brian took his brother to his neighbor's house 20 minutes earlier at 1
24. brian told the floyds that he had already placed a 9-1-1 call and that he was going back to the house to wait for
the police when i asked both mr and mrs floyd what time it was they both told me
it was exactly uh 1 24 a.m according to uh this this clock that they had in the bedroom
brian arrived at the floyd's house at 1 24 a.m did not call until 1 46. what was brian doing for these 20
minutes there were only three people in the house on the night of leslie vaughn's
murder the victim and his two sons a background check revealed sixteen-year-old brian had a previous
arrest he got into an argument with one of the security guards there at the bowling
alley who actually was an off-duty bear county sheriff's deputy and in that altercation he ended up striking
this deputy and in fact fleeing like evading from the scene and those were pending
charges at the time that leslie was murdered investigators also learned that brian's
car caught on fire three months before his father's murder the origin was suspicious
there was an emergency call the vehicle was totaled and had to be put out there's some question as to whether or
not brian was responsible for starting that fire or being there when the fire started
whether leslie vaughan suspected this or not is unclear but he offered to buy brian a used car
to replace the one ruined in the fire apparently brian wanted a new one a car salesman told police he witnessed
a heated argument between the two on the afternoon of the murder his academic grades were poor which is
the reason why his father wouldn't buy him the car in the first place according to brian's younger brother
chris the argument continued when they got home up until the early evening hours of the night of the murder
according to chris brian retaliated by threatening to quit his high school basketball team relinquishing any chance
of a college scholarship in chris's statement he said that it was heated exchange
between him and his father in brian vaughn's bedroom and that this thing occurred about 11 30 at night
investigators dusted the entire bedroom for fingerprints and found no foreign prince only those
of family members but on the french door with the broken window investigators found only one set
of prints bryan's to have your own prince in your own house is not that significant but given the fact that we
have this story about what happens and the door is really clean otherwise it's just one more piece to the puzzle
investigators found shards of glass in the hallway outside the bedroom leading towards the bathroom
it was easy to see it was from the killer there's some trace evidence some transfer blood and
tissue to a wall right next to the door that exits the bedroom and that's significant
we followed the glass yards to the bathroom and then inside of the bathroom we found an additional glass yard
and then we found two black hairs in the sink area all of the hairs from that bathroom were
sent to the forensic lab for analysis these hairs had a very clumped a very dense pigmentation pattern they were
short they were semi-circular they contained overall characteristics that followed and fell into the
footsteps of what one would conclude as being a negroid hair finally investigators listened to the
entire conversation between brian and the 9-1-1 operator on the night of the murder
brian said his father's bedroom door was locked but he told the operator one small
detail that only the killer would know i think my dad's been shot i'm calling him
he's all bleeding [Music] did you go inside the bedroom i can't the door's locked okay so how do you
know he's bleeding from the mouth area let's start running out in the room okay good timing you can't get into the
bedroom right i cannot get in the bedroom there is no way that brian vaughn would have known
that his dad had been shot if the door was locked and he could not gain entry the biggest evidence against brian
vaughn was brian vaughn okay he was his worst evidence investigators suspected that brian used
a nine-millimeter gun from his father's own collection we believe from talking to his friends
and his office manager that he would have had a gun in his night side table and on the night of the murder no gun
was found there we understood that he has had nine millimeter guns in the past as well and
leslie was killed with a nine millimeter the gun was in this case though never found was never found
finally investigators interviewed the only other person inside the house at the time of
the murder brian's younger brother chris we asked chris would brian kill your dad
and chris answered i don't know we asked him would brian could brian kill your dad
i don't know he's very athletic but i don't know if he could would he kill your dad
i don't know which is an unusual response as opposed to no he wouldn't do it no he couldn't do it no he would
never do it brian vaughn was arrested and charged with his father's murder but would the jury convict on so little
evidence three months before leslie vaughn's murder prosecutors believe that his son brian
may have set fire to his car as a ploy to get a new one but his father refused offering to buy
him a used car instead apparently they thought about this and other issues like his grades in school
and how he was jeopardizing his chances for an athletic scholarship to college according to chris vaughn the two argued
until close to 11 30 on the night of the murder prosecutors believe brian waited until his father went to
sleep then woke his little brother and took him to the neighbor's house he told his neighbors that he heard a
noise from his father's bedroom and that it might have been a gunshot he said he
already called 911 but that was a lie prosecutors believe he used the time to return home
and shoot his father in the head [Music] to create the illusion this was committed by an intruder brian went out
on the balcony and threw the rock through the window the glass landed on top of his father's
body proof that this happened after he was dead the evidence suggests brian locked the
bedroom door and tracked shards of glass through the hallway on his way to the bathroom
to clean up where he disposed of the murder weapon and his bloody clothing is unknown
22 minutes after taking his brother to the neighbors brian finally called 911. the call was full of inconsistencies
[Music] in january of 2000 brian vaughn went on trial for the murder of his father
and he was tried as an adult i don't think that you can be in your right mind to pull off something as
horrendous as that was if you're in your right mind that's all i'm going say and that's what i feel you cannot tell
me that he was in his right mind if he pulled that trigger the defense said an intruder committed
the murder but the lack of mud on the balcony outside the bedroom made it clear that the shooter came from inside the
house and brian's fingerprints were the only ones on the broken french door [Music]
brian also lied about the 9-1-1 call and clearly knew information only the killer would know
the jury found brian vaughn guilty will the jury assess the punishment of the defendant brian bond
at confinement for 33 years he'll be eligible for parole in 2017. if leslie von was here he would ask the
prosecutors to go leaning on his son i believe that our fathers would we could not fathom our children doing
something as horrendous as that to us period he got a gun he snuck up on his dad
while his dad was sleeping he put it to his dad's back of his dad's head and he blew his brains out basically yeah i
think he belongs in the penitentiary she was really a star athlete and this this is a kid that
probably would have figured out a way to uh you know do well enough in school to
to graduate from high school and probably would have had a college career plan playing basketball and probably
would have the time of his life and instead he's spending his life in jail few people can imagine a child killing a
parent but the evidence at the scene and evidence missing from the scene clearly
showed what happened this is such an unusual case in that you know forensics played a big role in this uh but but not
in not not not in the normal sense uh the lack of it uh in in in some ways uh was was kind of compelling
it is something that he probably just thought of either days before or that night just
planned it and but he slipped and he wasn't able to cover his tracks he provided all the necessary pieces to
convict him and in fact he provided evidence that was so strong you could not find him not guilty
it takes days and weeks of investigation okay it takes lives that you destroy and
you don't realize that when you're pulling the trigger because once you pull that trigger you can't take that
bullet back

The killer probably hoped to cover his tracks by staging the crime scene. But investigators saw through the attempt almost immediately, and turned to forensic science to learn what really happened that night.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

Leslie Vaughan was murdered; evidence implicated his son Brian in the crime.

Key points

The Murder of Leslie Vaughan. Leslie Vaughan was found dead in his home, leading to a complex investigation.
Brian's Inconsistent 911 Call. Brian called 911 after taking his brother to a neighbor's house, raising suspicions.
Trial and Conviction. Brian Vaughn was tried as an adult for his father's murder and found guilty.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

What do you mean what happened?

0:11WatchJan 28, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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