The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the authors and participants and do not necessarily represent those of iHeart Media, Tenderfoot TV, or their employees. This series contains discussions of violence and sexual violence. Listener discretion is advised. Hey, it's been here. Today's a bonus episode before we return to the regular series. So we've been getting some interesting voicemails and questions and there's some stuff we want to investigate and follow up on, and doing this episode gives us a little more time to do that. So anyway, let's get to it. Hey, then, my name is Clarissa. I have been listening to your podcast for the last few days, and it's kind of crazy to me because I listened to a lot of true crime podcasts and this one especially hit home because it's where I live. Um. I live in Burnham, Illinois, which is right between Chicago and Northwest Indiana. I'm right between Hammond and Chicago technically, um and randomly, I also lived in Texas Houston, So I feel super related to this story and I just wanted to know what information you're looking for. So if you have any uh, leaves or anything that I could possibly help look into. Since I live in the area, I would love to be able to help get any information that I can. Hey, Clarissa, thanks for the offer, and we'll definitely keep that in mind. But probably the thing that would help the most of this point is just spreading word about the podcast and just kind of awareness about how you know, Darren Vaughan might be linked to these other cold cases. I'm still very interested in talking to people who knew on at various stages of his life to try to verify some of his stories. And I'm also interested in talking to China or people that knew her um about how it was that she knew that Tira Beatty was dead in an abandoned building, what was going on there? And Clarissa also stay tuned because in an upcoming episode, we are going to discuss a cluster of murders in Chicago and explore whether or not Von might have been connected to it. Uh. Speaking of Chicago, here's another voicemail. This is Pam Zeckman, former CBS reporter who did the story with Tom Hargrove on the possible serial killer in the Chicago area. I just wanted to tell you that I listened to your podcasts and you did a terrific job with it, and I know you have a lot more coming out, and I wanted to just tell you that I thought I was very impressed. Thanks bye. I was really excited to get that voicemail. I wonder if if Hargrove shared the podcast with her for context she was actually involved opped in them rage Tavern staying that I mentioned in episode one where the journalists made the fake bar to expose city corruption. Um and Harger have actually mentioned her to me. Um in one of his interviews that he was thrilled to work with her about that cluster of serial murders in Chicago. So the next message comes from Twitter, so we'll have a text to speech algorithm read that one. What's up, man, love listening to your pods. I'm from Northwest Indiana. Back in the summer oft I met my uncle at eighteen Street Brewery in Gary. My uncle works in downtown Chicago and rides the train to work, and there is a train stopped right by the brewery in Gary. So it had to be around five o'clock or so. There were probably ten to twenty people total at the brewery. It was a Friday night, normally a pretty mixed race crowd. This guy is sitting at the bar stuck out though. A couple of months pass and van S mugshot pops up on the low cool news. Uncle and I immediately text each other and say, wasn't that the guy we've seen at the brewery? He had one to two beers while we were there. He was chatting with the bartender and people at the bar. He left before us. Not a groundbreaking story for you, but maybe you can reach out to the brewery and see if he was a regular or something. Good luck and keep crushing it. So I contacted that brewery. They were saying it was a small operation back in so probably the owner is the one to speak to you. So I've tried to get in contact with him and I'll let you guys know if anything comes from it. Also, a computer pronouncing Vaughan's last name is Van reminded me that that's a question I've gotten a couple of times now. So his name is Darren Vaughan, but a lot of the early news reports pronounced it as Van, so I thought that was his name until months into the project, and a lot of people I interviewed. Also, I thought his name was pronounced van and, but from the interrogation tapes, you know it's clearly Vaughan and and a lot of people close to the case, um, you know know that it's Vaughn. But but even then, sometimes if I was interviewing them early on, I might have said Van and they started saying Van Hi. Then this is how they tuned him from Birmingham, Alabama. I've been listening to Algorithm every week on my directory work, So thanks for the great interial question for you for the upcoming human A. Are you finding it challenging to navigate the language around sex works for the series, especially since Vawn himself uses such dehumanizing language when it comes from the victims. Thanks in advance for answering my question. I've gotten comments from a couple of listeners about my use of the word prostitute on the podcast, basically telling me that there's a lot of stigma associated with that word, um, and that many prostitutes prefer to be called sex workers. I'm going to try to be better about using the term sex worker verse as prostitute, but there are some places where I think is still appropriate to use the term you know, for example, if we're talking about statistics, like you know, what's the percentage of the victims of serial killers who are prostitutes, and you know what's the percentage of victims who are sex workers? Those numbers will be different, and I think we need to be you know, very specific sometimes, right, because sex workers is this bigger, more all encompassing term that includes people like strippers or people involved in pornography, and you know, those people's risks, for example, being victimized in crime, are going to be different than people who are engaging in prostitution. And in fact, you know, even within prostitution there's different levels. Street prostitution is a lot higher risk than being in your own room the way Africa was is actually one of the least risky ways of doing prostitution. But you know, nothing is ever completely risk free. There are also sex workers who do self identify as prostitutes. For example, here's a voicemail from Maxine Dugan. Hey, Hi, it's Maxcine Dugan UM callings from San Francisco, California. I'm with the Erotic Service Providers Union UM. The Erotic Service Providers Union is by and for those who labor erotically to gain you know, their agency through solidarity organizing for occupational, social and economic rights UM and I myself work as a prostitute of thirty plus years, so I find that your show is phenomenal in that the woman who was looking for Africa, her friend is able to tell the police that she knows the phone number of the guys who saw Africa laugh, and she gives it to the police and they're able to get him into custody. That woman's faced inn array of felony charges for facilitating prostitution, you know, which has been recriminalized in recent years as sex trafficking, when really she's just a part of Africa's you know security. You know. I'm glad she was able to do the right thing and tell the police the crucial information to end this particular serial killer's reign of terror. She deserves a metal. Marvin and Tara's story reminds me of Sarah Derrid's story, who goes missing in the Lower East Side of Vancouver, BC in the late ninete Sarah's customer tries to report her missing to the police, but the police had some arbitrary rule that had to be a relative to report the missing person, so the customer context Sarah's sister, Maggie, and Maggie was able to report um, but given Sarah's status as a street based drug using prostitute you know, which are all criminalized activities, the police don't find her until they find her DNA on the property of a now convicted serial killer, Robert Pickton. The podcast also reminds me of the Green River Killer victims, whose boyfriends were often labeled as TIMPs when they tried to report the missing to the police, so the Seattle Police Department dismissed them because the missing people's status as street based prostitutes, and the police also responded with conducting stam operations for certain known prostitution areas you know, which only had the effect of forcing those workers until less populated and not will at areas where they became easier targets for the Green River Killer. I really appreciate that that feedback, Maccine, and thanks for listening. I hope that regardless of how anyone feels about sex work and it's legality, I hope that we can at least all agree that, you know, we need to find some ways to make it as safe as possible. Sex workers need to be able to go to police to report crimes, and when they do report crimes, they need to be taken seriously. Similarly, when a sex worker disappears, police need to to take that seriously as well, and and treat it the way they would treat any other missing person case. We need to demand that from the police, and we need to hold the police accountable. So our next voicemail comes from Lima, Ohio, which is the city in western Ohio where vond moved as a teenager and went to high school. I'm currently listening to your episode where mentioned bomb was dan Lima and graduated in nine. I live outside of Lima. Lima is a really freaking rous town. Um, I don't go to Lima for anything. I know he would have been a juvenile, but I just wondered if he checked any and soul murders at that time that might have fit m oh. I also wondered, um, did he ever come back to Lina to visit his mother. It's a great podcast, thank you. So in the interrogations, Vaughan didn't confess to any murders in Lima. He does mention that during that time he was arrested um. He says he was arrested as a juvenile on a cun running charge. I was going on probation in line as a juven I remember, I all were you there because there was shiploaded guns. I think we was we're shiving like two or three hundred guns of money. I don't know what they gave, but I know they dropped the gun charge because I was the kids. Because they wanted to adults. I think you a tl but he wanted to a dealt so you think you dealt with a t F. I didn't deal with him. I think they deal with other part of the case. They just want to get the kids out of the way. I got you because they wanted the help. They wanted the people that was actually moving in crazy and achievement. Right. What was the name of the game that was doing old game? They hacked They didn't have games. Then. We just had a bunch of trades in his white boys. When I hooked up with they wanted on some of my classmates, bigger brothers and uncles and stuff like that, right, because they've been eyeballing them for a while. I don't know if ant F gun was they one of them, but I know it was a whole, big old mess a valley. Was it in the favorite No, they kept pretty quiet. They rated on two or three houses. We had guns all over the place. I remember that, and I was like, Hey, told him mom, he's a kid. We don't even want him. We got the delts. I know they wanted our guy because our guy had the nations to other guy. You know what I'm saying. Yeah, they're trying to move up because I'm one of my best friends. I never speak to you again, said you brought that trader to us. Really, dude, that broke into it, Like I told you, droking to his stepfather. I've had all the guns, um, he told He told him everybody. Essentially, there's a kid he was friends with. His dad owned a ton of guns, and they stole those guns and sold them, and then the kid's mom found out, and you know, the the kid ended up getting them all in trouble. That's the only crime he mentions from that time period. But at the same time, just because he didn't confess any murders doesn't mean they didn't happen, especially because he wanted the death penalty. Um. And he said he didn't want to involve other jurisdictions, so he was only going to confess to murders in Indiana. So Von would have been in Lima from around seven to and according to Hargrove's data set, there is one unsolved strangulation from this time period. It's a thirty five year old black woman who was strangled in it's anonymized data, so you don't have a name, you don't have a month. That makes it hard to find articles about it. But I did find the Ohio Attorney General's office lists of unsolved homicides, and I tried to look it up on there and it didn't show up, you know, So I'm not exactly sure what that means. It might mean it was originally entered into the database is unsolved, but it's been solved um sometime later, and that's why it's not on this cold case database that the higher Attorney General keeps. Or it might be that that jurisdiction which isn't actually Lima, but it is Fort Shawnee, um, you know. So it could be something where the Trinee General asked Evere to submit their cold cases. They didn't submit it. Um. So if anyone knows anything about the strangulation of a woman in Fort Shawnee. Um. In, if someone else wants to take up this lou thing and tell me what they find, I'd really appreciate that, alright. So the next message comes from Facebook. It's a message from someone who came across the podcast. They're talking about Vaughan and they say he was a door fiend who used to hang out. I don't know what that means. Door fiend, drug fiend. Um. He was a door fiend who used to hang out in a crack house off Broadway and forty three. Whenever he got high, he tapped into satan. He had a routine. He appeared disoriented so that a crack would leave with him. After he flashed some money and hit the dope, they leave. They were never missed. I told Gary at a recorded council meeting about sanitation that they had a serial killer. He lived off a fifty second. He had been killing women. His partner is a serial killer too. UM. So this person wanted to remain anonymous. I've actually gotten back in touch with her. UM heard her story. It is pretty wild, so look forward to that in one of these upcoming episodes. She encountered Vaughan during this period when he was committing a bunch of these crimes. And some of it seems to also verify UM information I've gotten from other sources. So yeah, alright, here's here's when I've gotten a couple of times I've gotten a couple of people will ask about my accent. I also know the way I talk can sound different when I'm in the interviews versus when I'm narrating. It is harder than you might think to sound natural and keep your voice consistent across the thirty minute episode. And as for the accent, I grew up outside DC in northern Virginia. I did live for a couple of years in Mexico when I was a kid, you know, around the time I was first learning how to speak, So some of my speech patterned might come from that experience as well. Some people have been asking for more nuts and bolts information about the algorithm and how it works. Uh, if you go back to episode two, I think you can get a fuller explanation there. But I think it's maybe just people thinking that the algorithm is more complicated than it is. Um. The first thing it does is it groups together murders based on geography, the victim's gender, and the method of killing. There're been a couple of different versions of the algorithm. I think the original one also factored in the victim's age. UM. Now it's simpler and it just focuses on geography, gender, method of killing. You know, they they've compiled over seven hundred thousand homicides mainly from FBI data UM and you can then kind of divide those up into a hundred thousand different groups, right, and so in each one of these groups, it will be the same place, all the victims will be the same gender, killed in the same way. Now you have these a hundred thousand different groups, and you can rank those by the percentage of murders that were solved, and you can see which clusters have extremely low solution rates, right, so where they haven't made an arrest or or they at least didn't make an arrest at the time that they had entered it into the FBI's Supplemental homicide reports UM, and you can look for clusters that have extremely low solution rates, and you can look at that kind of across the entire time period that they have data for, or you can do this lighting window analysis where you look for a specific time period where that area had, you know, an extremely low solution rate for that particular type of murder. Right. And one of the explanations for why they might have that low solution rate is because there's a serial killer who is active, who is getting away with multiple crimes and making that type of crime harder to solve. So Hargrove believes that these clusters that have very low solution rates, those are more likely to contain victims of serial killers. And that's in part because that's what you see with the Green River killer, and a lot of the other clusters that he looked at early on um seemed to also match that pattern. Um. But this stuff isn't an exact science, right, So just because one of these clusters has a low solution rate doesn't mean that that area necessarily had a serial killer, or that even if they did have a serial killer active in that area during that time period, it doesn't mean that the killer was responsible for all of the murders in that cluster. Right. So, UM, imagine, you know, Vaughan is killing all these people, right, but it's still very possible that someone else could strangle someone. UM in Lake County during that same time period, right, and that murder also doesn't get solved, and the algorithm has no way of separating them, right. So it's not this magic bullet that only identifies murders by serial killers, but but it can kind of flag that they're an unusual number of you know, this certain kind of murder that haven't been solved, and you know, I think it's it's at least telling you that something is going on there. Right, So, even if it's not a serial killer, why aren't these murders being solved? And maybe someone should look into them? And we're doing a deep dive right now into this cluster and Gary, but I imagine that you would find, you know, incredibly interesting stories, which I for one of these clusters you looked into. I've also had some listeners who are hoping that this would be less of a deep dive into Vaughan and you know, this one specific case and more more of a deep dive into the algorithm and how it and other technology could be used to find serial killers in different cities across the country. So I picked this case in particular because I think it's very illustrative of the algorithm's potential. But I am very interested in exploring clusters and other cities, um, you know, especially kind of ongoing clusters where you know there might be someone out there and an active right now, because you know that's that's a place that we could really potentially do some good. And I hope on future seasons of the show we can do just that. You know. An if you're enjoying the show and you're interested in there being more seasons of Algorithm that explore other cities, you know, please tell a friend about the show and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. I know I'm always asking you guys to do that stuff, and you know it can feel like a drop in the bucket, but when it comes to these companies making a decision about whether or not to make another season of the show, h that kind of stuff is really important. Um. And also I'm looking for suggestions of cities that you think should be investigated. So if you have any ideas, you know, if you think there's something weird going on where you live, or you've heard crazy stories about cities that might have active serial killers right now, please let me know and we can see what the algorithm says and look into it. I really do appreciate all of you who listened and left voicemails or reached out on Twitter. UM, if you haven't yet, please do. I'm sure we'll have another episode like this soon. So you can leave a voicemail at eight five zero one zo nine. That's five zero one nine. UM. You can message me on Twitter at b N underscore KU E B R I c H. That's been underscore Keybrick. So we'll be back very soon with some episodes that are looking into some of the cold cases that the Algorithm identified and looking into Vaughan's possible connection to those murders. This episode was written and produced by me ben Key Brick. Algorithm is executive produced by Alex Williams, Donald Albright, and Matt Frederick. Production assistance in mixing by Eric Quintana. The music is by Makeup and Vanity Set in Blue Dot Sessions. Thanks to Christina Dana, Miranda Hawkins, Jamie Albright, Rema l k Ali, Trevor Young, and Josh Thane for their help and notes.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the authors and participants and do not necessarily represent those of iHeart Media, Tenderfoot TV, or their employees. This series contains discussions of violence and sexual violence. Listener discretion is advised. Hey, it's been here. Today's a bonus episode before we return to the regular series. So we've been getting some interesting voicemails and questions and there's some stuff we want to investigate and follow up on, and doing this episode gives us a little more time to do that. So anyway, let's get to it. Hey, then, my name is Clarissa. I have been listening to your podcast for the last few days, and it's kind of crazy to me because I listened to a lot of true crime podcasts and this one especially hit home because it's where I live. Um. I live in Burnham, Illinois, which is right between Chicago and Northwest Indiana. I'm right between Hammond and Chicago technically, um and randomly, I also lived in Texas Houston, So I feel super related to this story and I just wanted to know what information you're looking for. So if you have any uh, leaves or anything that I could possibly help look into. Since I live in the area, I would love to be able to help get any information that I can. Hey, Clarissa, thanks for the offer, and we'll definitely keep that in mind. But probably the thing that would help the most of this point is just spreading word about the podcast and just kind of awareness about how you know, Darren Vaughan might be linked to these other cold cases. I'm still very interested in talking to people who knew on at various stages of his life to try to verify some of his stories. And I'm also interested in talking to China or people that knew her um about how it was that she knew that Tira Beatty was dead in an abandoned building, what was going on there? And Clarissa also stay tuned because in an upcoming episode, we are going to discuss a cluster of murders in Chicago and explore whether or not Von might have been connected to it. Uh. Speaking of Chicago, here's another voicemail. This is Pam Zeckman, former CBS reporter who did the story with Tom Hargrove on the possible serial killer in the Chicago area. I just wanted to tell you that I listened to your podcasts and you did a terrific job with it, and I know you have a lot more coming out, and I wanted to just tell you that I thought I was very impressed. Thanks bye. I was really excited to get that voicemail. I wonder if if Hargrove shared the podcast with her for context she was actually involved opped in them rage Tavern staying that I mentioned in episode one where the journalists made the fake bar to expose city corruption. Um and Harger have actually mentioned her to me. Um in one of his interviews that he was thrilled to work with her about that cluster of serial murders in Chicago. So the next message comes from Twitter, so we'll have a text to speech algorithm read that one. What's up, man, love listening to your pods. I'm from Northwest Indiana. Back in the summer oft I met my uncle at eighteen Street Brewery in Gary. My uncle works in downtown Chicago and rides the train to work, and there is a train stopped right by the brewery in Gary. So it had to be around five o'clock or so. There were probably ten to twenty people total at the brewery. It was a Friday night, normally a pretty mixed race crowd. This guy is sitting at the bar stuck out though. A couple of months pass and van S mugshot pops up on the low cool news. Uncle and I immediately text each other and say, wasn't that the guy we've seen at the brewery? He had one to two beers while we were there. He was chatting with the bartender and people at the bar. He left before us. Not a groundbreaking story for you, but maybe you can reach out to the brewery and see if he was a regular or something. Good luck and keep crushing it. So I contacted that brewery. They were saying it was a small operation back in so probably the owner is the one to speak to you. So I've tried to get in contact with him and I'll let you guys know if anything comes from it. Also, a computer pronouncing Vaughan's last name is Van reminded me that that's a question I've gotten a couple of times now. So his name is Darren Vaughan, but a lot of the early news reports pronounced it as Van, so I thought that was his name until months into the project, and a lot of people I interviewed. Also, I thought his name was pronounced van and, but from the interrogation tapes, you know it's clearly Vaughan and and a lot of people close to the case, um, you know know that it's Vaughn. But but even then, sometimes if I was interviewing them early on, I might have said Van and they started saying Van Hi. Then this is how they tuned him from Birmingham, Alabama. I've been listening to Algorithm every week on my directory work, So thanks for the great interial question for you for the upcoming human A. Are you finding it challenging to navigate the language around sex works for the series, especially since Vawn himself uses such dehumanizing language when it comes from the victims. Thanks in advance for answering my question. I've gotten comments from a couple of listeners about my use of the word prostitute on the podcast, basically telling me that there's a lot of stigma associated with that word, um, and that many prostitutes prefer to be called sex workers. I'm going to try to be better about using the term sex worker verse as prostitute, but there are some places where I think is still appropriate to use the term you know, for example, if we're talking about statistics, like you know, what's the percentage of the victims of serial killers who are prostitutes, and you know what's the percentage of victims who are sex workers? Those numbers will be different, and I think we need to be you know, very specific sometimes, right, because sex workers is this bigger, more all encompassing term that includes people like strippers or people involved in pornography, and you know, those people's risks, for example, being victimized in crime, are going to be different than people who are engaging in prostitution. And in fact, you know, even within prostitution there's different levels. Street prostitution is a lot higher risk than being in your own room the way Africa was is actually one of the least risky ways of doing prostitution. But you know, nothing is ever completely risk free. There are also sex workers who do self identify as prostitutes. For example, here's a voicemail from Maxine Dugan. Hey, Hi, it's Maxcine Dugan UM callings from San Francisco, California. I'm with the Erotic Service Providers Union UM. The Erotic Service Providers Union is by and for those who labor erotically to gain you know, their agency through solidarity organizing for occupational, social and economic rights UM and I myself work as a prostitute of thirty plus years, so I find that your show is phenomenal in that the woman who was looking for Africa, her friend is able to tell the police that she knows the phone number of the guys who saw Africa laugh, and she gives it to the police and they're able to get him into custody. That woman's faced inn array of felony charges for facilitating prostitution, you know, which has been recriminalized in recent years as sex trafficking, when really she's just a part of Africa's you know security. You know. I'm glad she was able to do the right thing and tell the police the crucial information to end this particular serial killer's reign of terror. She deserves a metal. Marvin and Tara's story reminds me of Sarah Derrid's story, who goes missing in the Lower East Side of Vancouver, BC in the late ninete Sarah's customer tries to report her missing to the police, but the police had some arbitrary rule that had to be a relative to report the missing person, so the customer context Sarah's sister, Maggie, and Maggie was able to report um, but given Sarah's status as a street based drug using prostitute you know, which are all criminalized activities, the police don't find her until they find her DNA on the property of a now convicted serial killer, Robert Pickton. The podcast also reminds me of the Green River Killer victims, whose boyfriends were often labeled as TIMPs when they tried to report the missing to the police, so the Seattle Police Department dismissed them because the missing people's status as street based prostitutes, and the police also responded with conducting stam operations for certain known prostitution areas you know, which only had the effect of forcing those workers until less populated and not will at areas where they became easier targets for the Green River Killer. I really appreciate that that feedback, Maccine, and thanks for listening. I hope that regardless of how anyone feels about sex work and it's legality, I hope that we can at least all agree that, you know, we need to find some ways to make it as safe as possible. Sex workers need to be able to go to police to report crimes, and when they do report crimes, they need to be taken seriously. Similarly, when a sex worker disappears, police need to to take that seriously as well, and and treat it the way they would treat any other missing person case. We need to demand that from the police, and we need to hold the police accountable. So our next voicemail comes from Lima, Ohio, which is the city in western Ohio where vond moved as a teenager and went to high school. I'm currently listening to your episode where mentioned bomb was dan Lima and graduated in nine. I live outside of Lima. Lima is a really freaking rous town. Um, I don't go to Lima for anything. I know he would have been a juvenile, but I just wondered if he checked any and soul murders at that time that might have fit m oh. I also wondered, um, did he ever come back to Lina to visit his mother. It's a great podcast, thank you. So in the interrogations, Vaughan didn't confess to any murders in Lima. He does mention that during that time he was arrested um. He says he was arrested as a juvenile on a cun running charge. I was going on probation in line as a juven I remember, I all were you there because there was shiploaded guns. I think we was we're shiving like two or three hundred guns of money. I don't know what they gave, but I know they dropped the gun charge because I was the kids. Because they wanted to adults. I think you a tl but he wanted to a dealt so you think you dealt with a t F. I didn't deal with him. I think they deal with other part of the case. They just want to get the kids out of the way. I got you because they wanted the help. They wanted the people that was actually moving in crazy and achievement. Right. What was the name of the game that was doing old game? They hacked They didn't have games. Then. We just had a bunch of trades in his white boys. When I hooked up with they wanted on some of my classmates, bigger brothers and uncles and stuff like that, right, because they've been eyeballing them for a while. I don't know if ant F gun was they one of them, but I know it was a whole, big old mess a valley. Was it in the favorite No, they kept pretty quiet. They rated on two or three houses. We had guns all over the place. I remember that, and I was like, Hey, told him mom, he's a kid. We don't even want him. We got the delts. I know they wanted our guy because our guy had the nations to other guy. You know what I'm saying. Yeah, they're trying to move up because I'm one of my best friends. I never speak to you again, said you brought that trader to us. Really, dude, that broke into it, Like I told you, droking to his stepfather. I've had all the guns, um, he told He told him everybody. Essentially, there's a kid he was friends with. His dad owned a ton of guns, and they stole those guns and sold them, and then the kid's mom found out, and you know, the the kid ended up getting them all in trouble. That's the only crime he mentions from that time period. But at the same time, just because he didn't confess any murders doesn't mean they didn't happen, especially because he wanted the death penalty. Um. And he said he didn't want to involve other jurisdictions, so he was only going to confess to murders in Indiana. So Von would have been in Lima from around seven to and according to Hargrove's data set, there is one unsolved strangulation from this time period. It's a thirty five year old black woman who was strangled in it's anonymized data, so you don't have a name, you don't have a month. That makes it hard to find articles about it. But I did find the Ohio Attorney General's office lists of unsolved homicides, and I tried to look it up on there and it didn't show up, you know, So I'm not exactly sure what that means. It might mean it was originally entered into the database is unsolved, but it's been solved um sometime later, and that's why it's not on this cold case database that the higher Attorney General keeps. Or it might be that that jurisdiction which isn't actually Lima, but it is Fort Shawnee, um, you know. So it could be something where the Trinee General asked Evere to submit their cold cases. They didn't submit it. Um. So if anyone knows anything about the strangulation of a woman in Fort Shawnee. Um. In, if someone else wants to take up this lou thing and tell me what they find, I'd really appreciate that, alright. So the next message comes from Facebook. It's a message from someone who came across the podcast. They're talking about Vaughan and they say he was a door fiend who used to hang out. I don't know what that means. Door fiend, drug fiend. Um. He was a door fiend who used to hang out in a crack house off Broadway and forty three. Whenever he got high, he tapped into satan. He had a routine. He appeared disoriented so that a crack would leave with him. After he flashed some money and hit the dope, they leave. They were never missed. I told Gary at a recorded council meeting about sanitation that they had a serial killer. He lived off a fifty second. He had been killing women. His partner is a serial killer too. UM. So this person wanted to remain anonymous. I've actually gotten back in touch with her. UM heard her story. It is pretty wild, so look forward to that in one of these upcoming episodes. She encountered Vaughan during this period when he was committing a bunch of these crimes. And some of it seems to also verify UM information I've gotten from other sources. So yeah, alright, here's here's when I've gotten a couple of times I've gotten a couple of people will ask about my accent. I also know the way I talk can sound different when I'm in the interviews versus when I'm narrating. It is harder than you might think to sound natural and keep your voice consistent across the thirty minute episode. And as for the accent, I grew up outside DC in northern Virginia. I did live for a couple of years in Mexico when I was a kid, you know, around the time I was first learning how to speak, So some of my speech patterned might come from that experience as well. Some people have been asking for more nuts and bolts information about the algorithm and how it works. Uh, if you go back to episode two, I think you can get a fuller explanation there. But I think it's maybe just people thinking that the algorithm is more complicated than it is. Um. The first thing it does is it groups together murders based on geography, the victim's gender, and the method of killing. There're been a couple of different versions of the algorithm. I think the original one also factored in the victim's age. UM. Now it's simpler and it just focuses on geography, gender, method of killing. You know, they they've compiled over seven hundred thousand homicides mainly from FBI data UM and you can then kind of divide those up into a hundred thousand different groups, right, and so in each one of these groups, it will be the same place, all the victims will be the same gender, killed in the same way. Now you have these a hundred thousand different groups, and you can rank those by the percentage of murders that were solved, and you can see which clusters have extremely low solution rates, right, so where they haven't made an arrest or or they at least didn't make an arrest at the time that they had entered it into the FBI's Supplemental homicide reports UM, and you can look for clusters that have extremely low solution rates, and you can look at that kind of across the entire time period that they have data for, or you can do this lighting window analysis where you look for a specific time period where that area had, you know, an extremely low solution rate for that particular type of murder. Right. And one of the explanations for why they might have that low solution rate is because there's a serial killer who is active, who is getting away with multiple crimes and making that type of crime harder to solve. So Hargrove believes that these clusters that have very low solution rates, those are more likely to contain victims of serial killers. And that's in part because that's what you see with the Green River killer, and a lot of the other clusters that he looked at early on um seemed to also match that pattern. Um. But this stuff isn't an exact science, right, So just because one of these clusters has a low solution rate doesn't mean that that area necessarily had a serial killer, or that even if they did have a serial killer active in that area during that time period, it doesn't mean that the killer was responsible for all of the murders in that cluster. Right. So, UM, imagine, you know, Vaughan is killing all these people, right, but it's still very possible that someone else could strangle someone. UM in Lake County during that same time period, right, and that murder also doesn't get solved, and the algorithm has no way of separating them, right. So it's not this magic bullet that only identifies murders by serial killers, but but it can kind of flag that they're an unusual number of you know, this certain kind of murder that haven't been solved, and you know, I think it's it's at least telling you that something is going on there. Right, So, even if it's not a serial killer, why aren't these murders being solved? And maybe someone should look into them? And we're doing a deep dive right now into this cluster and Gary, but I imagine that you would find, you know, incredibly interesting stories, which I for one of these clusters you looked into. I've also had some listeners who are hoping that this would be less of a deep dive into Vaughan and you know, this one specific case and more more of a deep dive into the algorithm and how it and other technology could be used to find serial killers in different cities across the country. So I picked this case in particular because I think it's very illustrative of the algorithm's potential. But I am very interested in exploring clusters and other cities, um, you know, especially kind of ongoing clusters where you know there might be someone out there and an active right now, because you know that's that's a place that we could really potentially do some good. And I hope on future seasons of the show we can do just that. You know. An if you're enjoying the show and you're interested in there being more seasons of Algorithm that explore other cities, you know, please tell a friend about the show and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. I know I'm always asking you guys to do that stuff, and you know it can feel like a drop in the bucket, but when it comes to these companies making a decision about whether or not to make another season of the show, h that kind of stuff is really important. Um. And also I'm looking for suggestions of cities that you think should be investigated. So if you have any ideas, you know, if you think there's something weird going on where you live, or you've heard crazy stories about cities that might have active serial killers right now, please let me know and we can see what the algorithm says and look into it. I really do appreciate all of you who listened and left voicemails or reached out on Twitter. UM, if you haven't yet, please do. I'm sure we'll have another episode like this soon. So you can leave a voicemail at eight five zero one zo nine. That's five zero one nine. UM. You can message me on Twitter at b N underscore KU E B R I c H. That's been underscore Keybrick. So we'll be back very soon with some episodes that are looking into some of the cold cases that the Algorithm identified and looking into Vaughan's possible connection to those murders. This episode was written and produced by me ben Key Brick. Algorithm is executive produced by Alex Williams, Donald Albright, and Matt Frederick. Production assistance in mixing by Eric Quintana. The music is by Makeup and Vanity Set in Blue Dot Sessions. Thanks to Christina Dana, Miranda Hawkins, Jamie Albright, Rema l k Ali, Trevor Young, and Josh Thane for their help and notes.