A jury convicted Christopher Vaughn, of Oswego, Ill., Thursday, Sept. 20, 2012, in Joliet, Ill., of murder in the fatal shooting his wife and three children in June 2007. Jurors took less than an hour to reach the verdict against Vaughn.JOLIET, Ill. – Jurors deliberating for less than an hour convicted a suburban Chicago computer specialist of murder Thursday in the deaths of his wife and three school-aged kids during what he told them was a road trip to a water park.
Christopher Vaughn, 37, showed no emotion as the verdict was read. Family members of the victims cried and hugged each other in a hallway outside the courtroom immediately afterward.
Vaughn killed his family because he saw them as inconvenient obstacles to his dream of a new life subsisting in the Canadian wilderness, prosecutors told jurors Thursday before they withdrew to deliberate. The prosecution argued he had compiled survival guides and posted wistful Internet messages about constructing a cabin and settling for good in the Yukon cut off from the world, state attorneys said.
“This case is not just a murder, it’s an atrocity,” said Will County States Attorney James Glasgow. “To annihilate your family, I can’t think of a more despicable crime.”
Vaughn was eligible for the death penalty when the case began, but Illinois has since abolished capital punishment. That means he faces a maximum life term when he is sentenced on Nov. 26.