Christopher Vaughn To Get Visit From Lawyer

Christopher Vaughn's new attorney was cleared to have a face-to-face meeting with the Oswego man charged with gunning down his entire family in cold blood.

George Lenard, a Joliet attorney with a private practice who also works part-time as a public defender, made the request for the contact visit during a brief court appearance Tuesday morning.

Judge Daniel Rozak approved the contact visit. Vaughn, 36, was not present in court.

Lenard wound up with the Vaughn case after two other attorneys, John Rogers of St. Louis and Gerald Kielian of Joliet, jumped ship on him in May.

The two lawyers bailed on the case after Gov. Pat Quinn did away with the death penalty, effectively cutting them off from a pipeline of state money made available through the capital litigation fund.

Vaughn has been locked up in the county jail for more than four years as he waits to be tried on charges he murdered his wife, Kimberly, 34, and three children — Blake, 8, Cassandra, 11, and Abigayle, 12 — in June 2007.

The family was heading from their home in Oswego to a Springfield water park when Vaughn killed them all as they sat in a parked sport utility vehicle on the Interstate 55 Frontage Road in Channahon Township, near Shorewood, police and prosecutors have said.

Vaughn claimed that it was his wife that killed the children — and tried to get him as well — before turning the gun on herself and committing suicide.

Vaughn was found the morning of the killings with a bullet wound to his leg. The authorities believe he shot himself as part of his cover story.