Christopher Vaughn will be ringing in another New Year in the Will County jail as he waits for his murder case to crawl through the system.
Vaughn — charged with killing his wife and three young children in June 2007 — was scheduled to find out if emails penned by his slain wife could be used as evidence against him, but Judge Daniel Rozak had not finished reviewing the mountain of messages.
"I promising you, I'm working diligently on it," Rozak told defense attorney George Lenard and prosecutor Mike Fitzgerald during a brief Thursday morning hearing.
Rozak scheduled a Jan. 12 return date to hand down his decision on whether any of the dozens of emails prosecutors want to use can be seen by a jury.
The emails prove Vaughn's wife, Kimberly Vaughn, was in a healthy state of mind and not homicidal and suicidal as her husband told investigators after her death, Assistant State's Attorney John Connor explained at an earlier hearing.
Christopher Vaughn claimed his distraught wife opened fire on his children — Blake, 8, Cassandra, 11, and Abigayle, 12 — killing them all as they sat in the family's minivan.
Christopher Vaughn also told detectives that Kimberly Vaughn shot him in the leg before he fled the van. She then turned the gun on herself and committed suicide, according to Christopher Vaughn's story.
But prosecutors maintain Christopher Vaughn murdered his entire family and then shot himself in the leg to bolster the cover story that his wife did the killings.
The Vaughns were heading from their home in Oswego to a Springfield waterpark when Kimberly Vaughn and the children were killed. They were shot to death on the Interstate 55 frontage road outside Channahon and near Shorewood.
Christopher Vaughn could have faced the death penalty if convicted of the murders but slipped that possibility when Governor Quinn banned capital punishment in March.
Never saw any updates on first the dozens of cities and towns that joined the lawsuit, then the HUNDREDS of cities that have joined the lawsuit against Channahon. Never saw any updates on the stonewalling in the courts by Channahon to withhold documents from a FOIA request for that lawsuit. Never saw any updates on the bill introduced in the Illinois Senate that was created to prevent the tax evasion Channahon is involved in. Never saw any updates on the fact that Kankakee has begun to setup a fund with tens of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money set aside to pay for the legal fees of this same lawsuit, and that Channahon hasn't even begun to address the costs involved, much less set anything aside. For awhile, it could be dismissed as an easy omission. Now, however, it seems a deliberate attempt to keep the residents in the dark on what is happening to them.
This story is currently the headline story on the Channahon patch. Sadly, it is a story written for another patch, that was just thrown up over here as well. As Tim said, they seem to be ignoring the issues going on here, and instead posting stories about everywhere else. I would say it would be better for you to learn how patch operates before making such claims again.
Nothing was changing, and instead of wasting my time trying to change something out of my control, I focused on what was within my power to control, and moved out to a much better run and more informed population. I do still have friends there, so I am still interested in what happens. Unfortunately, some of them do not have the resources to leave like many others have, and I am concerned that they will be further dug into a situation they will be unable to leave, or change, before it is much to late. Some of them are on fixed income, and are unable to voice their opinion at the meetings. Many others have moved out as well, instead of trying to deal with a population that seems to think hiding its head in the sand will just make all these problems go away. Not a single thing has been addressed in the village meetings about this, and in the meantime the village attorneys are working behind the scenes to keep any information about this case from going public. If you are done focusing on my personal life now, would you care to address any of the things that were brought up? Do you think the residents of Channahon can handle a triple digit percent tax increase( over 100%) when they lose the case?
http://www.fox2now.com/news/ktvi-st-george-residents-vote-to-dissolve-town-20111109,0,5833912.story "dissolving the town is a far cheaper alternative for residents because the only way the city could afford to upgrade roads would be to raise municipal taxes, creating an additional tax liability of about $1,500 per homeowner." "St. George's police department also was the focus of scandals in recent years." sound familiar yet? Honestly, I think it is way past too late to stop the inevitable now. It does bother me to see what was once a nice place, turn into nothing more than a memory because of the criminal acts of the officials.