Chris Vaughn Murder Case about to Go to Jury

Close to a month of testimony wrapped up Tuesday afternoon and closing arguments in the Christopher Vaughn murder trial are set for Thursday.

The Oswego man charged with executing his wife and young children as they sat defenseless in the family's Ford Expedition more than five years ago declined to take the witness stand in his own defense.

The final day of testimony did feature a blood-spatter expert, an investigator from the Will County Public Defender's Office, and a neuropsychiatrist

The blood-spatter expert, Tom Bevel, said it was "possible" for Vaughn's wife, Kimberly Vaughn, 34, to have shot her husband in the wrist and thigh, and to have put two bullets apiece in their three children—Blake, 8, Cassandra, 11, and Abigayle, 12—before sticking the pistol under her own chin and pulling the trigger a final time.

Prosecutors maintain that it was actually Christopher Vaughn, 37, who did all the shooting. He wounded himself in the wrist and thigh to bolster his cover story, according to the prosecution's theory.

After Bevel, Michelle Palaro, an investigator with the public defender's office, read an email message sent from Kimberly Vaughn to one of her classmates at the University of Phoenix, an online college.

The classmate apparently suffered from multiple sclerosis, and Kimberly Vaughn told him of her sister's struggles with symptoms of the disease. Kimberly Vaughn also wrote about her sister suffering from bipolar disorder.

Last to the stand was neuropsychiatrist Michael Schrift, who was called by prosecutors as a rebuttal witness.

Schrift testified that neither the antidepressant nortriptyline nor the epilepsy medication Topamax should not have caused suicidal or homicidal feelings in Kimberly Vaughn. She was taking the two drugs to alleviate her migraine headaches.

During the trial, Christopher Vaughn's attorneys attempted to convince the jury that the combination of nortriptyline and Topamax may have altered Kimberly Vaughn's personality to the point that the loving wife and mother was driven to kill her husband, her children and herself.

Schrift said this was even less likely to occur as a result of taking both drugs than of taking just one of them.