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

Summary

In "Shattered Innocence," a gripping episode of Forensic Files, the tragic story of attorney Leslie Vaughan's murder unfolds, hacking the puzzle of a seemingly perfect crime. Leslie was found dead with a gunshot wound, and the crime scene hinted at a possible hit due to his connections with organized crime as a defense lawyer. However, the investigation gradually unearthed a shocking and unsettling truth. Through a profound analysis of forensic evidence, investigators concluded the scene was staged. The narrative takes a dark twist, revealing family turmoil, leading to a chilling revelation about an unlikely suspect: Leslie's own son, Brian Vaughan. Through meticulous forensics, highlighting the absence of intruder traces, and examining Brian's contradictory behavior, the investigation pieced together a narrative of a son’s deadly rebellion, climaxing in a courtroom verdict that sentenced Brian for the crime.

Highlights

• The episode reveals a shocking family crime hidden behind an assumed break-in. 🚔
• Leslie Vaughan's murder investigation initially suggests a mob-related hit. 📉
• A surprising turn finds Leslie's own son, Brian, as the primary suspect. 🕵️‍♂️
• Forensic evidence plays a crucial role in uncovering the hidden truths. 🔬
• The investigation debunks the staged crime scene meticulously crafted by the killer. 🕵️‍♀️

Key Takeaways

• Family Ties Torn Apart: What appears as a mob hit turns out to be a family betrayal. 😱
• Forensic Precision: The forensics team uncovers the truth hiding in plain sight. 🔍
• Love and Law: The intertwining complexities of relationships and justice explored. ⚖️
• A Single Call: How inconsistencies in a 911 call unveiled a shocking truth. 📞
• Staged Scene: Detectives unmask the reality behind a perfectly staged crime scene. 🎭

Overview

In the dramatic episode titled 'Shattered Innocence,' Forensic Files delves into the tragic and unsettling murder of Leslie Vaughan, a prominent defense attorney. The story pivots around a supposed hit job that turns out to be a meticulously staged crime scene. The investigation leads us through a labyrinth of forensic analysis, where detectives are faced with a shocking truth: the killer was none other than Vaughan's teenage son, Brian. It's a gripping case showing how even the closest family ties can unravel into deadly consequences.

With his connections to organized crime circles and dangerous clients, Leslie Vaughan's murder first appeared as a mob hit. Investigators are tasked with unraveling a heavily staged crime scene, where initial impressions and evidence seemed to point toward professional execution. However, contradictions and missing elements slowly emerge. A skilled forensics team uncovers inconsistencies, piecing together shattered glass, missing footprints, and timeline discrepancies, proving the crime was no professional job, but an internal family conflict with devastating results.

The episode concludes with Brian Vaughan's trial, where forensic evidence, including his inconsistent statements and the shocking details from the crime scene, led to his conviction. This case serves as a sinister reminder of the unthinkable actions motivated by family strife and the thoroughness of forensic investigative work. The narrative of 'Shattered Innocence' is a thrilling testament to the power of forensic science in unveiling hidden truths and delivering justice.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to the Crime Scene The chapter titled 'Introduction to the Crime Scene' describes a break-in and a murder that initially appeared like a targeted execution or hit. However, upon closer examination of the forensic evidence, it was revealed that the scene was staged, altering the initial assumptions about the crime.
• 00:30 - 02:30: Background on Leslie Vaughan The chapter titled 'Background on Leslie Vaughan' highlights Leslie Vaughan as one of the top defense lawyers in San Antonio, Texas.
• 02:30 - 08:00: The Night of the Murder The chapter titled 'The Night of the Murder' delves into the life of Leslie, who is portrayed as a workaholic and perfectionist. Leslie's dedication to his career is evident as he strives for perfection, a typical trait of someone aiming for high standards. Vaughn, a defense attorney, is another key figure in this chapter, known for representing challenging clients, including those involved in the drug trade and organized crime. These elements hint at the complex environment in which the characters operate, setting the stage for the narrative that unfolds.
• 08:00 - 18:00: Suspicion on Brian Vaughan The chapter titled 'Suspicion on Brian Vaughan' revolves around the events of November 10, 1998, when Leslie's wife was working a night shift at the hospital, leaving Leslie and his two sons at home. At around 1:30 a.m., 16-year-old Brian claimed to have heard a loud bang from Leslie’s bedroom. When Brian tried to enter the room, he found the door locked, leading to suspicion and concern.
• 18:00 - 23:00: Inconsistencies and Evidence Against Brian Brian hears alarming noises that sound like gurgling or breathing.
• 23:00 - 29:00: The Trial and Verdict After a distress call, Brian takes his 11-year-old brother to their neighbor's house, fearing someone might be in their home. To ensure his brother's safety, he leaves him there. When the paramedics arrive, they break open the bedroom door and discover Leslie Vaughan dead, with a single gunshot wound to the head and a large limestone rock nearby.
• 29:00 - 37:00: Conclusion and Reflection The chapter titled 'Conclusion and Reflection' describes the discovery of the murder crime scene. The scene is a bedroom with a broken window, which appears to be the killer's entry point. The French doors leading to a balcony are also damaged, with a large hole indicating forced entry, likely caused by a rock. The size of the hole suggests that a grown person could easily pass through. A spent shell casing found on the floor further confirms the location as the crime scene.

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

• 00:00 - 00:30 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
• 00:30 - 01:00 [Music] [Music] one of the best defense lawyers in san antonio texas was leslie vaughan
• 01:00 - 01:30 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
• 01:30 - 02:00 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
• 02:00 - 02:30 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]
• 02:30 - 03:00 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
• 03:00 - 03:30 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
• 03:30 - 04:00 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
• 04:00 - 04:30 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
• 04:30 - 05:00 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
• 05:00 - 05:30 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
• 05:30 - 06:00 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
• 06:00 - 06:30 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
• 06:30 - 07:00 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
• 07:00 - 07:30 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
• 07:30 - 08:00 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
• 08:00 - 08:30 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
• 08:30 - 09:00 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
• 09:00 - 09:30 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
• 09:30 - 10:00 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
• 10:00 - 10:30 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
• 10:30 - 11:00 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
• 11:00 - 11:30 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
• 11:30 - 12:00 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
• 12:00 - 12:30 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
• 12:30 - 13:00 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
• 13:00 - 13:30 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
• 13:30 - 14:00 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
• 14:00 - 14:30 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]
• 14:30 - 15:00 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
• 15:00 - 15:30 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
• 15:30 - 16:00 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
• 16:00 - 16:30 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
• 16:30 - 17:00 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
• 17:00 - 17:30 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
• 17:30 - 18:00 [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
• 18:00 - 18:30 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]
• 18:30 - 19:00 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
• 19:00 - 19:30 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
• 19:30 - 20:00 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
• 20:00 - 20:30 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
• 20:30 - 21:00 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
• 21:00 - 21:30 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
• 21:30 - 22:00 pulling the trigger because once you pull that trigger you can't take that bullet back