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. Previously on Algorithm, I looked at two cases from Hargar's list that, upon closer inspection, looked unlikely to be the work of Darren Vaughan. The next day is when his girlfriend was found in about it big, So, I don't think it has anything to do with in the serial killer was once in a lifetime thing. And I explored Darren Vaughan's confessions with regard to Chicago. Probably had a whole while they have they have way more. But Bond later contradicted himself and didn't give any specifics that could link him to the crimes Hargrove had identified, and the interrogation ended abruptly after Vaughan informed detectives that he'd spoken with a lawyer. You said you thought lawyer day James Giving Day, he gave me a lawyer. You're going have told us that in the beginning. I'm not I'm not worried of me because I might have to fire from my heart radio and Tenderfoot TV. This is algorithm. When Vaughn was arrested for the murder of Africa Hardy, he told police he didn't want to confess to murders that took place out of state because he didn't want to involve other jurisdictions. He wanted a speedy trial and a quick execution. But somewhere down the line he changed his mind about wanting to receive the death penalty. So I wondered what happened there and if he might now be open to talking about additional crimes. I asked Vaughn's lawyer, Guiko Kosach, to walk me through Von's trial and why Vaughan had changed his mind. At the very beginning, he just wanted to plead guilty before he even met his lawyer, and he wanted the death penalty, and of course they wouldn't allow that, so he was not very cooperative. The way we do things in Lake County is if you're ever appointed public defender to a human being, you are married to that human being for the rest of your natural lives. So Darren had had a previous felony early eighties, something like that. I can't remember the exact date. And uh he had been appointed to a certain public defender who he was very happy with because he got the case this Mr resolved quite favorably. So now when Darren comes back on this, they appoint the guy who replaced that public defender, Matt Fetch, to represent Darren. Now, in Indiana, we have a criminal rule especially deals with death penalties, and for you to be a first chair in a death penalty case, you have to have been involved in a previous death penalty case. So the powers that be decided to appoint a first chair, qualified death penalty lawyer, TERSA. Hollins Worth to start out. In his first appearance in court, Vaughn refused to answer questions and he was warned that he could be held in contempt of court. At his next hearing, he complied with the judge and a preliminary non guilty plea was entered on his behalf. But a month later, Von didn't want to come into court at all. They ended up stripping him down naked and putting him in a restraint chair and they put some kind of vest on him, wheeled him in the court and Teresa just went absolutely ape shit, and Judge Boswell agreed that you know, you're not going to have court with him naked with that restraint vest, so they ended up taking him back to the jail. After that incident, Vaughan ended up bonding with Teresa Hollandsworth, but he still wanted the death penalty and he still didn't want to participate in court. At the next hearing, Vaughn communicated through Teresa, whispering into her ear. She announced that Vaughn was waving his right to appear at all future court proceedings unless the court required him to appear. The prosecution worried that this could open them up to an appeal down the line, but the judge ruled that it was Vaughan's right to not appear in court. So things were kind of rolling along and they were doing their things for a good year or so, and Teresa got a job opportunity to work in the juvenile court for more money, so she took that position. Nobody can blame her, so at that time they had to replace Teresa. We don't have a lot of people anymore in the unequalified and death been with cases because they're just not filing them anymore. At used to file thirty fifty a year. Now if it's for they're lucky. So um, Teresa referred me and the powers that be agreed and I got involved in the case. And the proverbial should hit the fan right from the beginning, because Darren had established quite a close relationship with Teresa. Uh, let's just say she was his perfect type and he really liked her. Throughout his life, women have abandoned him his mother wife, and when she left, here's it another time, or a woman that he had some trust in he felt abandoned him. So I was locked out. He wouldn't even talk, and he wanted to go pro se, which means represent himself. So I kept banging my head against the door. I kept sending him letters. I kept going up to see him. He would refuse to see me, but I told him in my letters, I'm gonna come to see you every week. I'm proven to you that I'm in this for the long haul. And at some point he just indicated, well, I just need thirty more days to myself, and then he says, okay, come see me, and uh we kissed and made up, and uh, I think developed a pretty good relationship and I would have deep conversations with Darren. I would meet with Darren almost every week at least for a couple of hours because he needed the time with human beings. So newspapers, you know, would often go ahead and make fun of this being the Gyko costage for a one K plan, that I was just going over there needlessly to go ahead and pad my bill. But with death penalty cases, you you have to earn trust, and part of that is going over there. But you know, we would talk about things, and one of those things would be this plan of his. And uh, from the very beginning, Darren wanted the death penalty. He did not want to go back to prison. He had done prison time in Texas for a sexual assault case and he did not want to go back to prison. So he says, hey, if I give you six more bodies, can you promise me you're gonna kill me? And he says they said yeah. They say no, we were never promising that, you know, And at some point then Darren eventually decides he doesn't with the death penalty or what happened with that. There's not easy answer to your question, Ben, I mean, it's from the very beginnings, and one death and want death. I want death. And then all of a sudden, about three days four days before we cut the a, he changed his mind. There's probably several things that played a factor in it. Cossage says that he wanted Von to take a plea deal, and the first thing that really helped was getting Bond to see his stepsister Regina and half brother Reginald. And after that his attitude changed. Someone We kept telling Darren, Darren, you know, you go to trial, you got you get convicted. They might not whack you for eighteen years with LWOP life without parole, he would be in the general population with death penalty. He's in a cage twenty three hours of day. The key then after that was Keisha. We had a fabulous and she still works with those. Keisha Evans I grew up in the Etna section of Gary and that she lives there now, so that's kind of my et noboddy. But Keisha's black. She's like a sister to him, and they just hit it off. Cossage says that they're close to making a breakthrough it Von and getting him to consider a plea deal that would avoid the death penalty. When Keisha asked to speak to Van one on one. Keisha went in there. Actually we all went in there. Keisha threw us out. Keisha talk to him for about forty minutes. She came out crying. We went back in. He was crying, and at that point in time, he agreed to take the police to life without for all. You get to this point, and you've got to get it done in the the next couple of days because when they're starting to think about it, you've gotta keep hammering and keep hammering and keep hammering and get it done, because if you give them too much time to think about it, they'll change their minds. So again, this is an ongoing process that we're going on for years and years, and all of a sudden the last few days, boom, everything came together. On May fourth, almost four years after his arrest, Von pled guilty to seven murders, the murders of Africa Hardy and the six victims he led police to on the death March weeks later, Von was given seven life sentences, one for each victim. Marvin Clinton was the only person to make a victim impact statement. He read the names of the victims out loud. Africa Hardy, nineteen of Chicago, Anne Jones of Maryville, Tracy Martin forty one of Gary, Christine Williams thirty six of Gary, Sonia Billingsley fifty two of Gary, Tanya Gatlin of Highland, and Tierra Baty of Gary. Clinton said that Vaughan didn't have a heart or a soul, that he had anger for Vaughan, but that Tierra wouldn't want him to hold on to that anger. But Vaughan never heard what Clinton said because he'd opted not to show up to his own sentencing and the court allowed it. Clinton also said that while he knew the defense counsel had a job to do, he was frustrated with all of the time and money being spent assisting Vaughan. Cossage expressed him that they to all of the families in the courtroom and apologized. I was curious why Cossage in Lake County has spent so much time and effort to convince von that he didn't want the death penalty. Are you philosophically opposed to the death penalty or what motivates you to go to to all these lengths for your client? You know I waver back and forth. You know I was very much o death penalty before. Now I cannot say that I'm against the death penalty in every single case, but you know, dollars are dollars, and you do the calculation that it probably costs ten times more money to execute someone in the given life without parole. You know, the delay that was one of the selling points I think to Darren. Ultimately, is Darren, if they ordered the death penalty today, you're gonna be sixty two years old before you get executed. So you know, aren't you better off living eighteen years or whatever in g POP and die a natural death out of general population and sitting in a cage for eighteen years with a cat because I let him have cats on death row. It's one of the person death row. Um. We've been talking forever, and I probably would just keep talking forever. Um, I need to run to the bathroom really quick. If you don't mine, that's funny because I ran with my laptops. You did it while you were talking to me. No, you didn't have me on camera. Ultimately, I'm glad that Von decided to take the plea because I hope now that he's accepted his fate of life without parole I hope that there's a chance that he might confess to more murders. And after looking into the scarce information that there is out there about many of the murderers that her GROW's algorithm identified, I think it can feeshion from Vaughan might be one of the only ways that we can figure out some of these old cold cases. Do you have any advice to me. I don't know if the system in Indiana very well. If I wanted to reach out to Darren Vaughan and try to talk to him directly, Um, he's not gonna talk to you, okay. Um he has to put you on his list of people who correspond with He won't do that. A b uh. During the time that I represented him, he got many many letters from women, the gallows brides that are out there. He got letters from this husband and wife couple that claimed that they do interviews with serial killers and they wanted to talk to him. He had no real interest in being involved with any of that. He didn't want any more notorieting, and he already had and I don't think he's changed he will ever change in that regard. Do you know if he heard about the whole Hardgrove story. Yeah, I talked him about Yeah, he laughed. Are you able to talk to him? Are you able to reach out to him at this point? Or is he no? We stay we stay in touch. I mean, I guess if you would just mention that there's this guy out there doing this thing and um, you know, just that I'd love to talk to him. Despite costage his insistence that Vaughan wouldn't speak to me, I wrote him a letter anyways. I told him that I'd listened through his interrogations and read articles about him, but most of the articles hadn't mentioned his traumatic childhood or the abuse that he'd suffered at the film of Marshall Children's Home. I didn't ask him specifically about the cold cases or previous murders. I just wanted to get him on the phone and see what happened. And honestly, I almost forgot I sent it until a few months later. I went to my overflowing mailbox and I found an envelope from the Indiana Department of Corrections. Just checked my mail. I was looking for a wedding invitation and instead I found a piece of mail from Darren Vonn and uh, yeah, open this up. Never gotten a piece of mail from a serial killer before U It's handwritten well, so he says to ben Keybrick, Date time seven eighteen pm, I, Darren Devon would like to offer you a deal. You would have to contact my lawyer to work out an arrangement where he would have to agree beforehand. You would have to write a report of the corruption that's ongoing at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility, from guards beating on inmates of rassin bullysh it, from fed founds, from shower not having hot water, from playing with legal mail, from filing false report, from threatening inmates with physical violence, to reckless behavior that but inmate life danger or I also believe that they're a law against family and friend work at the same time, and you that to stop we're cover up for ceo s and counselor that are doing wrong. For appointment to be set up, must contact my lawyer, Goko Cassach at two one nine. All right, Well, I'm not sure what to make of a lot of that, but maybe we'll be talking to Darren Vaughan. I reached back out to Cossage to see about setting up the interview Cossage was less than enthusiastic about getting involved. He said he was busy working on a murder trial and said, quote, I'm really not excited about driving to his correctional facility to meet him. He told me to talk to the Department of Corrections and try to set it up with them, and I was less than enthusiastic about that, since Vaughn wanted to talk about allegations of corruption at the prison. But I emailed the chief communications officer at the Department of Corrections in Indiana. She told me, quote, in order to get the process started, I will need you to submit the topic of your story slash project and the list of questions you plan to ask the offender. I sent her a fairly generic list of biographical questions. I didn't feel comfortable putting anything on the list about the cold cases because I figured Cossage might object, and I was also afraid that if I put any questions about prison conditions in there, the Department of Corrections might shut down the interview. I tried to hedge things and leave open the possibility to ask other questions by writing underneath my list, do you need a list of all the questions I would ask or just a representative list of questions. The officer emailed back and told me my list should suffice. The very next day, she sent another short email. It read quote, facility staff checked with the offender, Darren Vaughan, and he declined to be interviewed. I were responded. I appreciate you checking with him. I wonder if there's some sort of miscommunication, because I already have a letter from him where he's agreed to be interviewed. I'm c seeing his lawyer, Guiko Cossage. Is there a way you could ask him again and say I was the journalist who sent him the letter? She wrote back. Since he has declined the interview, we will respect his decision and not ask him again. You're welcome to write him a letter where if you're on his contact list, use email or phone to further communicate with him. I was frustrated months had passed between when I had originally sent Vaughn the letter and when I had finally heard back from him, and especially since he had complained about corruption in the prison, I worried that the Department of Corrections might not handle my request properly. I wrote back to Darren Vaughan asking him to add me to his email and phone contact list, but I've yet to hear back. I'll definitely let you know if I do, but I'm unsure of how much we can trust fund anyway. Is we'd really need an airtight confession to take it seriously. We're some sort of other evidence to verify what he said, because he lied and changed his stories throughout the interrogation and towards the end, claimed that strangling women and leaving them in abandoned buildings was new for him. Disc is a new thing. It's some more my anger tour, like I gonna lock up for profits to drop. He claimed that these murders were due to his anger at getting locked up in Texas, but I think his pattern of behavior says otherwise, and I want to explore that a little bit. I don't think he was seeking revenge on the women of Gary because of the Texas sex worker who got him arrested. I think his murders were displaced aggression towards someone else. And I'm not the only one who thinks. So let me go ahead and consent to your record. But there's anything that I'm not comfortable but being recorded. The house, saying that it's off the record. A woman from Gary contacted me telling me she had met Von sometime in the middle of his killing spree, that he was a serial killer. A woman from Gary contacted me telling me she had met Vaughan sometime in the middle of his killing spree. She wanted to speak anonymously and asked me to disguise her voice. The color said she met Vaughan through her cousin who struggled with addiction. She was telling me about this guy because quite often I would have to be the one to rescue her from the drug house. So she used to tell me about the guys that's coming in or whatever. But on this particular to day, I was there able to transaction and the guy that she had been telling me a few stories about he came in, which happened to be Garon. She was telling me about his rules. So this is his rules. Once he got high, he would started taking out all his money, so all the girls that would be in the house would see his money. And you know, when they see the money, they're trying to leave with you, especially if they know you get high, they think you discombobulated. And he played real stupid, But she was telling me that one day she tried to get some money out of his pocket and he sobered up so quick. She knew he was playing the game right. So another girl left with him. This is what a long term. It was one girl that she hustled with, who would not have gone off without telling her she wasn't coming back or what happened. You know, there was good like that. The girl left with Darren did not come back. The color said that her cousin's friend was never seen again. They were a team. There was no way she's not coming back, and she knew that Darren had done something to turn her. Four months later, another girl left with him and she didn't come back either. That's when we knew that he was a serial killer. Do you remember what either of these girls names were or like what they went by? Uh? It was two of them that they found in the band and building close to the forty third property that was closest to forty third Avenue. Four of the victims were found on forty third Avenue. We're just off of forty three, and I knew from police interrogations that there was a drug house on forty three that some of the victims would frequent was the drug house? Was that like the corner of Massachusetts And yeah, yeah, yeah. There were a lot of parts of this story that were hard to verify, but this part seemed to check out. Now, this is why this man probably went back on to check it, or the lawn didn't go out on an average every day Monday through Friday. This is the normal dude. He's a peculiar dude, but he's a he's just a normal man in his own business kind of die when he get his paycheck. Is drugs are us? And then Nika taps in it with Satan at that point, what do you mean when you say that? Okay, this is what I mean. You know some people that do drugs, they turned into a whole another person as soon as those drugs hip like it's jackal and hide. You understand what I'm saying. And if you already had a proclivity towards the violent sex sado masochism, so he was already known for being procurliar. He likes to get high, beat and rape his girls, but he played the game so that they would think he wasn't alert. Did you see what I'm saying? I heard some people like they interviewed his son in law and that dude said he was really creepy. That you would see him kind of like talking to himself, or he would like look like he was deep in thought. Was that stuff that you ever saw around him? I wasn't close enough to observed him that way. He stayed two streets behind us. We would see him at the forty ninth gas station and he would say something like, what's up. You know what I'm saying. He'd get out the car just as cool as anybody else, what's up, what's up? His hands were clean, his clothes were clean, he smelled clean. But when he got on drugs, he tapped into satan. The day that he came over to the house, and she pointed out to me that this is the guy who she was talking about. My observation of him was watching what she told me he did. So that's what I paid attention to. I watched him get high, I watched him take out his money. I watched him try to play like he was out of his mind off the drugs and started inviting people to ride to the liquor store with him. Yeah, so that day that you were there, didn't even take him up on it. I didn't. I didn't stick around for you know how you look at somebody, you already know that it's something you guys discussed. It is going down, and y'all get a look. Yeah, you guys gave each other the look. And she's like, I was telling you right, right exactly. The color said that her and her cousin's suspicions about Darren were confirmed after a woman named Ebony left the Drughouse with Darren. It was a chick named Ebony, and she was mixed. She was mexicanan black. She was the hottest ticket. So Ebony see his bank roll one day and my cousin told, how don't go with him because such and such stuff up for him. And she didn't come back. So she tell her don't go, but she goes anyway. When they see Ebony is maybe a week or two later, she got cut, scratches everything, She showed all the bruises she had. Hey, yeah, he was a statistic, brutal motherfucker. Ebany, you let me explain something that she said. This is something that I do feel like you should know. She says that his strength was extraordinary. He handled hut with one hand, like he could like pick her up by the neck with one hand or something like that. Yes, he would shut her up in the window and have her watching out the window. He was telling her to look at all the people out there living Dade life. I bet that you wish that you was at home right now. You should have been at home with your children. His mom had to be a prostitute. I don't know anything about his mom because I don't know him like that, but his mom had to be everything about what he went out and killed. He had to have the spies time what a person on drugs will do as far as the property for their children, the situations, they'll leave them me in to go and get some drugs. You'll leave them with other drug addings. And if ain't nobody around but the key, what you think they're gonna do? And he killing these prostitutes because he knows the kid is going through the same thing he went through. Yeah, I don't know, No, that's what he He know the ancoul then he went through with his mom. He know that's what the kids is going through. So why is he not gonna kill you when you know what you're drawing to your children, you probably left him somebody to be out getting drugs or whatever. And I'm sure this is what he was saying to them before shade that you don't think that he had a conversation with them. To be very clear, the color is speculating here, but the colors intuition is correct about his mother. She was a drug addict and a sex worker herself, at least in her younger years. And it's also true that Van hated his mother. That was something that came up again and again and police documents, interrogations and interviews. His stepsister told police that if she were to have imagined him killing anyone, it would have been his mother. UNS Lawyer Cossa mentioned this as well, how sometimes defense lawyers used a client's mother to humanize them. One guy had nothing going for him, absolutely nothing, and he put his mom on the standard mitigation and she fainted and he jumped over the table and ran to her and hugged her and was crying, Mama, are you okay? Mama, are you okay? And the jury decided that was a redeeming factor, and based upon that, they spared his life. And we thought, gee, wouldn't it be great? And then we paused and said, well, if Darren's mom fainted during trial, Darren would probably jump over the table and try to help her pass on to the next world. So it's kind of a little running joke that we had that we couldn't even use. That he didn't like his mom, No, he did not. That goes all the way back to the abandonment of women in his life, which caused him to have such a difficult time with all of these women, except for his wife, who basically was his mother because she was that much older and she treated him kindly, so she was kind of like the mom he never had. Although Von made a little mention of his mother during the interrogation, it seemed important to him to repeatedly make the point that he only killed adults, never children, and he said that he regretted killing Africa because she was so young. She feel sorry for his however, really because he was an age friend about you that just too young to me, so to you her a kid almost here because he had a chance to be was said in any way, she had a chance to be unil the color story about Von targeting women who reminded him of his mother supported my own suspicions, And I want to be clear that I'm not trying to cast blame on Von's mother or imply that his crimes are somehow her fault. But I think Von's rage and hatred of women go back much further than his Austin arrest or even the incident with Sharifa, and I suspect his murders do as well. But I wanted to see if I could talk to Ebony or someone else to verify the story. What about Ebony? Do you know how to get in contact with her? No, this is years ago. She wouldn't have been in my running circle. No way. I just called her hanging out with my cousin and got the story from her. Yeah. See, I had custody of my cousin's son for his senior year so that he could complete school and everything. M So he used to walk home with a group of friends, and you know, would have to act like that wasn't his mother standing on the corner forty third and Broadway. M walk home with a group of friends and walk past his mother. Yeah yeah, and she has since been murdered in Indianapolish. Yeah right, you know, I mean, this ship gets real out here, you'd be doing drugs with them folks. They they get in your house and hit them drugs and realizes that they don't want to split no drugs with you. Shit, he's spokes to turn into the absolute ex They had spent around and they'd be spending green ship the next time you see him. See when the Avenue is telling this, like, did ever know that story? Like all the people hanging out in these places? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes see it got to a point where he couldn't get anybody from forty three anymore. This is why is that started calling on Craiglist mm hmmm, because the cat was out of the bag. I am curious. Did you ever go to the police or talk to someone like that about it? This is why I brought that up to you. They had a sanitation meeting at City Hall and I told them, you guys have a serial killer. Now this meeting is recorded. If I say all open TV something that obserd, don't you think the police should come to me? Like? Why did you say that? What would make you say that to the police? Never came to you? No, Never. Look at how many people are missing, look at how many victims there are before the serial killers are called, and look at how they get caught. They don't get caught by investigations. They get caught once they can't control themselves. He only got caught because he couldn't help himself. He publicly killed his first victim in a public hotel. That's the only reason why they called you. There's still some old women missing. They didn't tell you that though different. There's still some more women missing that they've never located him. They got a serial killer running around right now, they posted. Next week is the final episode in this season of Algorithm. We'll look into what I think is the most likely way we can connect Darren von to additional crimes, and we'll also talk about the future of the Algorithm and how algorithms might help catch serial killers across the country. If you haven't yet subscribed to the feed, you're not gonna want to miss this one. 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 and Blue Dot Sessions. Thanks to Christina Dana, Miranda Hawkins, Jamie Albright, Rima l Kali, Trevor Young, and Josh Thane for their help and notes. For more podcast from My Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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. Previously on Algorithm, I looked at two cases from Hargar's list that, upon closer inspection, looked unlikely to be the work of Darren Vaughan. The next day is when his girlfriend was found in about it big, So, I don't think it has anything to do with in the serial killer was once in a lifetime thing. And I explored Darren Vaughan's confessions with regard to Chicago. Probably had a whole while they have they have way more. But Bond later contradicted himself and didn't give any specifics that could link him to the crimes Hargrove had identified, and the interrogation ended abruptly after Vaughan informed detectives that he'd spoken with a lawyer. You said you thought lawyer day James Giving Day, he gave me a lawyer. You're going have told us that in the beginning. I'm not I'm not worried of me because I might have to fire from my heart radio and Tenderfoot TV. This is algorithm. When Vaughn was arrested for the murder of Africa Hardy, he told police he didn't want to confess to murders that took place out of state because he didn't want to involve other jurisdictions. He wanted a speedy trial and a quick execution. But somewhere down the line he changed his mind about wanting to receive the death penalty. So I wondered what happened there and if he might now be open to talking about additional crimes. I asked Vaughn's lawyer, Guiko Kosach, to walk me through Von's trial and why Vaughan had changed his mind. At the very beginning, he just wanted to plead guilty before he even met his lawyer, and he wanted the death penalty, and of course they wouldn't allow that, so he was not very cooperative. The way we do things in Lake County is if you're ever appointed public defender to a human being, you are married to that human being for the rest of your natural lives. So Darren had had a previous felony early eighties, something like that. I can't remember the exact date. And uh he had been appointed to a certain public defender who he was very happy with because he got the case this Mr resolved quite favorably. So now when Darren comes back on this, they appoint the guy who replaced that public defender, Matt Fetch, to represent Darren. Now, in Indiana, we have a criminal rule especially deals with death penalties, and for you to be a first chair in a death penalty case, you have to have been involved in a previous death penalty case. So the powers that be decided to appoint a first chair, qualified death penalty lawyer, TERSA. Hollins Worth to start out. In his first appearance in court, Vaughn refused to answer questions and he was warned that he could be held in contempt of court. At his next hearing, he complied with the judge and a preliminary non guilty plea was entered on his behalf. But a month later, Von didn't want to come into court at all. They ended up stripping him down naked and putting him in a restraint chair and they put some kind of vest on him, wheeled him in the court and Teresa just went absolutely ape shit, and Judge Boswell agreed that you know, you're not going to have court with him naked with that restraint vest, so they ended up taking him back to the jail. After that incident, Vaughan ended up bonding with Teresa Hollandsworth, but he still wanted the death penalty and he still didn't want to participate in court. At the next hearing, Vaughn communicated through Teresa, whispering into her ear. She announced that Vaughn was waving his right to appear at all future court proceedings unless the court required him to appear. The prosecution worried that this could open them up to an appeal down the line, but the judge ruled that it was Vaughan's right to not appear in court. So things were kind of rolling along and they were doing their things for a good year or so, and Teresa got a job opportunity to work in the juvenile court for more money, so she took that position. Nobody can blame her, so at that time they had to replace Teresa. We don't have a lot of people anymore in the unequalified and death been with cases because they're just not filing them anymore. At used to file thirty fifty a year. Now if it's for they're lucky. So um, Teresa referred me and the powers that be agreed and I got involved in the case. And the proverbial should hit the fan right from the beginning, because Darren had established quite a close relationship with Teresa. Uh, let's just say she was his perfect type and he really liked her. Throughout his life, women have abandoned him his mother wife, and when she left, here's it another time, or a woman that he had some trust in he felt abandoned him. So I was locked out. He wouldn't even talk, and he wanted to go pro se, which means represent himself. So I kept banging my head against the door. I kept sending him letters. I kept going up to see him. He would refuse to see me, but I told him in my letters, I'm gonna come to see you every week. I'm proven to you that I'm in this for the long haul. And at some point he just indicated, well, I just need thirty more days to myself, and then he says, okay, come see me, and uh we kissed and made up, and uh, I think developed a pretty good relationship and I would have deep conversations with Darren. I would meet with Darren almost every week at least for a couple of hours because he needed the time with human beings. So newspapers, you know, would often go ahead and make fun of this being the Gyko costage for a one K plan, that I was just going over there needlessly to go ahead and pad my bill. But with death penalty cases, you you have to earn trust, and part of that is going over there. But you know, we would talk about things, and one of those things would be this plan of his. And uh, from the very beginning, Darren wanted the death penalty. He did not want to go back to prison. He had done prison time in Texas for a sexual assault case and he did not want to go back to prison. So he says, hey, if I give you six more bodies, can you promise me you're gonna kill me? And he says they said yeah. They say no, we were never promising that, you know, And at some point then Darren eventually decides he doesn't with the death penalty or what happened with that. There's not easy answer to your question, Ben, I mean, it's from the very beginnings, and one death and want death. I want death. And then all of a sudden, about three days four days before we cut the a, he changed his mind. There's probably several things that played a factor in it. Cossage says that he wanted Von to take a plea deal, and the first thing that really helped was getting Bond to see his stepsister Regina and half brother Reginald. And after that his attitude changed. Someone We kept telling Darren, Darren, you know, you go to trial, you got you get convicted. They might not whack you for eighteen years with LWOP life without parole, he would be in the general population with death penalty. He's in a cage twenty three hours of day. The key then after that was Keisha. We had a fabulous and she still works with those. Keisha Evans I grew up in the Etna section of Gary and that she lives there now, so that's kind of my et noboddy. But Keisha's black. She's like a sister to him, and they just hit it off. Cossage says that they're close to making a breakthrough it Von and getting him to consider a plea deal that would avoid the death penalty. When Keisha asked to speak to Van one on one. Keisha went in there. Actually we all went in there. Keisha threw us out. Keisha talk to him for about forty minutes. She came out crying. We went back in. He was crying, and at that point in time, he agreed to take the police to life without for all. You get to this point, and you've got to get it done in the the next couple of days because when they're starting to think about it, you've gotta keep hammering and keep hammering and keep hammering and get it done, because if you give them too much time to think about it, they'll change their minds. So again, this is an ongoing process that we're going on for years and years, and all of a sudden the last few days, boom, everything came together. On May fourth, almost four years after his arrest, Von pled guilty to seven murders, the murders of Africa Hardy and the six victims he led police to on the death March weeks later, Von was given seven life sentences, one for each victim. Marvin Clinton was the only person to make a victim impact statement. He read the names of the victims out loud. Africa Hardy, nineteen of Chicago, Anne Jones of Maryville, Tracy Martin forty one of Gary, Christine Williams thirty six of Gary, Sonia Billingsley fifty two of Gary, Tanya Gatlin of Highland, and Tierra Baty of Gary. Clinton said that Vaughan didn't have a heart or a soul, that he had anger for Vaughan, but that Tierra wouldn't want him to hold on to that anger. But Vaughan never heard what Clinton said because he'd opted not to show up to his own sentencing and the court allowed it. Clinton also said that while he knew the defense counsel had a job to do, he was frustrated with all of the time and money being spent assisting Vaughan. Cossage expressed him that they to all of the families in the courtroom and apologized. I was curious why Cossage in Lake County has spent so much time and effort to convince von that he didn't want the death penalty. Are you philosophically opposed to the death penalty or what motivates you to go to to all these lengths for your client? You know I waver back and forth. You know I was very much o death penalty before. Now I cannot say that I'm against the death penalty in every single case, but you know, dollars are dollars, and you do the calculation that it probably costs ten times more money to execute someone in the given life without parole. You know, the delay that was one of the selling points I think to Darren. Ultimately, is Darren, if they ordered the death penalty today, you're gonna be sixty two years old before you get executed. So you know, aren't you better off living eighteen years or whatever in g POP and die a natural death out of general population and sitting in a cage for eighteen years with a cat because I let him have cats on death row. It's one of the person death row. Um. We've been talking forever, and I probably would just keep talking forever. Um, I need to run to the bathroom really quick. If you don't mine, that's funny because I ran with my laptops. You did it while you were talking to me. No, you didn't have me on camera. Ultimately, I'm glad that Von decided to take the plea because I hope now that he's accepted his fate of life without parole I hope that there's a chance that he might confess to more murders. And after looking into the scarce information that there is out there about many of the murderers that her GROW's algorithm identified, I think it can feeshion from Vaughan might be one of the only ways that we can figure out some of these old cold cases. Do you have any advice to me. I don't know if the system in Indiana very well. If I wanted to reach out to Darren Vaughan and try to talk to him directly, Um, he's not gonna talk to you, okay. Um he has to put you on his list of people who correspond with He won't do that. A b uh. During the time that I represented him, he got many many letters from women, the gallows brides that are out there. He got letters from this husband and wife couple that claimed that they do interviews with serial killers and they wanted to talk to him. He had no real interest in being involved with any of that. He didn't want any more notorieting, and he already had and I don't think he's changed he will ever change in that regard. Do you know if he heard about the whole Hardgrove story. Yeah, I talked him about Yeah, he laughed. Are you able to talk to him? Are you able to reach out to him at this point? Or is he no? We stay we stay in touch. I mean, I guess if you would just mention that there's this guy out there doing this thing and um, you know, just that I'd love to talk to him. Despite costage his insistence that Vaughan wouldn't speak to me, I wrote him a letter anyways. I told him that I'd listened through his interrogations and read articles about him, but most of the articles hadn't mentioned his traumatic childhood or the abuse that he'd suffered at the film of Marshall Children's Home. I didn't ask him specifically about the cold cases or previous murders. I just wanted to get him on the phone and see what happened. And honestly, I almost forgot I sent it until a few months later. I went to my overflowing mailbox and I found an envelope from the Indiana Department of Corrections. Just checked my mail. I was looking for a wedding invitation and instead I found a piece of mail from Darren Vonn and uh, yeah, open this up. Never gotten a piece of mail from a serial killer before U It's handwritten well, so he says to ben Keybrick, Date time seven eighteen pm, I, Darren Devon would like to offer you a deal. You would have to contact my lawyer to work out an arrangement where he would have to agree beforehand. You would have to write a report of the corruption that's ongoing at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility, from guards beating on inmates of rassin bullysh it, from fed founds, from shower not having hot water, from playing with legal mail, from filing false report, from threatening inmates with physical violence, to reckless behavior that but inmate life danger or I also believe that they're a law against family and friend work at the same time, and you that to stop we're cover up for ceo s and counselor that are doing wrong. For appointment to be set up, must contact my lawyer, Goko Cassach at two one nine. All right, Well, I'm not sure what to make of a lot of that, but maybe we'll be talking to Darren Vaughan. I reached back out to Cossage to see about setting up the interview Cossage was less than enthusiastic about getting involved. He said he was busy working on a murder trial and said, quote, I'm really not excited about driving to his correctional facility to meet him. He told me to talk to the Department of Corrections and try to set it up with them, and I was less than enthusiastic about that, since Vaughn wanted to talk about allegations of corruption at the prison. But I emailed the chief communications officer at the Department of Corrections in Indiana. She told me, quote, in order to get the process started, I will need you to submit the topic of your story slash project and the list of questions you plan to ask the offender. I sent her a fairly generic list of biographical questions. I didn't feel comfortable putting anything on the list about the cold cases because I figured Cossage might object, and I was also afraid that if I put any questions about prison conditions in there, the Department of Corrections might shut down the interview. I tried to hedge things and leave open the possibility to ask other questions by writing underneath my list, do you need a list of all the questions I would ask or just a representative list of questions. The officer emailed back and told me my list should suffice. The very next day, she sent another short email. It read quote, facility staff checked with the offender, Darren Vaughan, and he declined to be interviewed. I were responded. I appreciate you checking with him. I wonder if there's some sort of miscommunication, because I already have a letter from him where he's agreed to be interviewed. I'm c seeing his lawyer, Guiko Cossage. Is there a way you could ask him again and say I was the journalist who sent him the letter? She wrote back. Since he has declined the interview, we will respect his decision and not ask him again. You're welcome to write him a letter where if you're on his contact list, use email or phone to further communicate with him. I was frustrated months had passed between when I had originally sent Vaughn the letter and when I had finally heard back from him, and especially since he had complained about corruption in the prison, I worried that the Department of Corrections might not handle my request properly. I wrote back to Darren Vaughan asking him to add me to his email and phone contact list, but I've yet to hear back. I'll definitely let you know if I do, but I'm unsure of how much we can trust fund anyway. Is we'd really need an airtight confession to take it seriously. We're some sort of other evidence to verify what he said, because he lied and changed his stories throughout the interrogation and towards the end, claimed that strangling women and leaving them in abandoned buildings was new for him. Disc is a new thing. It's some more my anger tour, like I gonna lock up for profits to drop. He claimed that these murders were due to his anger at getting locked up in Texas, but I think his pattern of behavior says otherwise, and I want to explore that a little bit. I don't think he was seeking revenge on the women of Gary because of the Texas sex worker who got him arrested. I think his murders were displaced aggression towards someone else. And I'm not the only one who thinks. So let me go ahead and consent to your record. But there's anything that I'm not comfortable but being recorded. The house, saying that it's off the record. A woman from Gary contacted me telling me she had met Von sometime in the middle of his killing spree, that he was a serial killer. A woman from Gary contacted me telling me she had met Vaughan sometime in the middle of his killing spree. She wanted to speak anonymously and asked me to disguise her voice. The color said she met Vaughan through her cousin who struggled with addiction. She was telling me about this guy because quite often I would have to be the one to rescue her from the drug house. So she used to tell me about the guys that's coming in or whatever. But on this particular to day, I was there able to transaction and the guy that she had been telling me a few stories about he came in, which happened to be Garon. She was telling me about his rules. So this is his rules. Once he got high, he would started taking out all his money, so all the girls that would be in the house would see his money. And you know, when they see the money, they're trying to leave with you, especially if they know you get high, they think you discombobulated. And he played real stupid, But she was telling me that one day she tried to get some money out of his pocket and he sobered up so quick. She knew he was playing the game right. So another girl left with him. This is what a long term. It was one girl that she hustled with, who would not have gone off without telling her she wasn't coming back or what happened. You know, there was good like that. The girl left with Darren did not come back. The color said that her cousin's friend was never seen again. They were a team. There was no way she's not coming back, and she knew that Darren had done something to turn her. Four months later, another girl left with him and she didn't come back either. That's when we knew that he was a serial killer. Do you remember what either of these girls names were or like what they went by? Uh? It was two of them that they found in the band and building close to the forty third property that was closest to forty third Avenue. Four of the victims were found on forty third Avenue. We're just off of forty three, and I knew from police interrogations that there was a drug house on forty three that some of the victims would frequent was the drug house? Was that like the corner of Massachusetts And yeah, yeah, yeah. There were a lot of parts of this story that were hard to verify, but this part seemed to check out. Now, this is why this man probably went back on to check it, or the lawn didn't go out on an average every day Monday through Friday. This is the normal dude. He's a peculiar dude, but he's a he's just a normal man in his own business kind of die when he get his paycheck. Is drugs are us? And then Nika taps in it with Satan at that point, what do you mean when you say that? Okay, this is what I mean. You know some people that do drugs, they turned into a whole another person as soon as those drugs hip like it's jackal and hide. You understand what I'm saying. And if you already had a proclivity towards the violent sex sado masochism, so he was already known for being procurliar. He likes to get high, beat and rape his girls, but he played the game so that they would think he wasn't alert. Did you see what I'm saying? I heard some people like they interviewed his son in law and that dude said he was really creepy. That you would see him kind of like talking to himself, or he would like look like he was deep in thought. Was that stuff that you ever saw around him? I wasn't close enough to observed him that way. He stayed two streets behind us. We would see him at the forty ninth gas station and he would say something like, what's up. You know what I'm saying. He'd get out the car just as cool as anybody else, what's up, what's up? His hands were clean, his clothes were clean, he smelled clean. But when he got on drugs, he tapped into satan. The day that he came over to the house, and she pointed out to me that this is the guy who she was talking about. My observation of him was watching what she told me he did. So that's what I paid attention to. I watched him get high, I watched him take out his money. I watched him try to play like he was out of his mind off the drugs and started inviting people to ride to the liquor store with him. Yeah, so that day that you were there, didn't even take him up on it. I didn't. I didn't stick around for you know how you look at somebody, you already know that it's something you guys discussed. It is going down, and y'all get a look. Yeah, you guys gave each other the look. And she's like, I was telling you right, right exactly. The color said that her and her cousin's suspicions about Darren were confirmed after a woman named Ebony left the Drughouse with Darren. It was a chick named Ebony, and she was mixed. She was mexicanan black. She was the hottest ticket. So Ebony see his bank roll one day and my cousin told, how don't go with him because such and such stuff up for him. And she didn't come back. So she tell her don't go, but she goes anyway. When they see Ebony is maybe a week or two later, she got cut, scratches everything, She showed all the bruises she had. Hey, yeah, he was a statistic, brutal motherfucker. Ebany, you let me explain something that she said. This is something that I do feel like you should know. She says that his strength was extraordinary. He handled hut with one hand, like he could like pick her up by the neck with one hand or something like that. Yes, he would shut her up in the window and have her watching out the window. He was telling her to look at all the people out there living Dade life. I bet that you wish that you was at home right now. You should have been at home with your children. His mom had to be a prostitute. I don't know anything about his mom because I don't know him like that, but his mom had to be everything about what he went out and killed. He had to have the spies time what a person on drugs will do as far as the property for their children, the situations, they'll leave them me in to go and get some drugs. You'll leave them with other drug addings. And if ain't nobody around but the key, what you think they're gonna do? And he killing these prostitutes because he knows the kid is going through the same thing he went through. Yeah, I don't know, No, that's what he He know the ancoul then he went through with his mom. He know that's what the kids is going through. So why is he not gonna kill you when you know what you're drawing to your children, you probably left him somebody to be out getting drugs or whatever. And I'm sure this is what he was saying to them before shade that you don't think that he had a conversation with them. To be very clear, the color is speculating here, but the colors intuition is correct about his mother. She was a drug addict and a sex worker herself, at least in her younger years. And it's also true that Van hated his mother. That was something that came up again and again and police documents, interrogations and interviews. His stepsister told police that if she were to have imagined him killing anyone, it would have been his mother. UNS Lawyer Cossa mentioned this as well, how sometimes defense lawyers used a client's mother to humanize them. One guy had nothing going for him, absolutely nothing, and he put his mom on the standard mitigation and she fainted and he jumped over the table and ran to her and hugged her and was crying, Mama, are you okay? Mama, are you okay? And the jury decided that was a redeeming factor, and based upon that, they spared his life. And we thought, gee, wouldn't it be great? And then we paused and said, well, if Darren's mom fainted during trial, Darren would probably jump over the table and try to help her pass on to the next world. So it's kind of a little running joke that we had that we couldn't even use. That he didn't like his mom, No, he did not. That goes all the way back to the abandonment of women in his life, which caused him to have such a difficult time with all of these women, except for his wife, who basically was his mother because she was that much older and she treated him kindly, so she was kind of like the mom he never had. Although Von made a little mention of his mother during the interrogation, it seemed important to him to repeatedly make the point that he only killed adults, never children, and he said that he regretted killing Africa because she was so young. She feel sorry for his however, really because he was an age friend about you that just too young to me, so to you her a kid almost here because he had a chance to be was said in any way, she had a chance to be unil the color story about Von targeting women who reminded him of his mother supported my own suspicions, And I want to be clear that I'm not trying to cast blame on Von's mother or imply that his crimes are somehow her fault. But I think Von's rage and hatred of women go back much further than his Austin arrest or even the incident with Sharifa, and I suspect his murders do as well. But I wanted to see if I could talk to Ebony or someone else to verify the story. What about Ebony? Do you know how to get in contact with her? No, this is years ago. She wouldn't have been in my running circle. No way. I just called her hanging out with my cousin and got the story from her. Yeah. See, I had custody of my cousin's son for his senior year so that he could complete school and everything. M So he used to walk home with a group of friends, and you know, would have to act like that wasn't his mother standing on the corner forty third and Broadway. M walk home with a group of friends and walk past his mother. Yeah yeah, and she has since been murdered in Indianapolish. Yeah right, you know, I mean, this ship gets real out here, you'd be doing drugs with them folks. They they get in your house and hit them drugs and realizes that they don't want to split no drugs with you. Shit, he's spokes to turn into the absolute ex They had spent around and they'd be spending green ship the next time you see him. See when the Avenue is telling this, like, did ever know that story? Like all the people hanging out in these places? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes see it got to a point where he couldn't get anybody from forty three anymore. This is why is that started calling on Craiglist mm hmmm, because the cat was out of the bag. I am curious. Did you ever go to the police or talk to someone like that about it? This is why I brought that up to you. They had a sanitation meeting at City Hall and I told them, you guys have a serial killer. Now this meeting is recorded. If I say all open TV something that obserd, don't you think the police should come to me? Like? Why did you say that? What would make you say that to the police? Never came to you? No, Never. Look at how many people are missing, look at how many victims there are before the serial killers are called, and look at how they get caught. They don't get caught by investigations. They get caught once they can't control themselves. He only got caught because he couldn't help himself. He publicly killed his first victim in a public hotel. That's the only reason why they called you. There's still some old women missing. They didn't tell you that though different. There's still some more women missing that they've never located him. They got a serial killer running around right now, they posted. Next week is the final episode in this season of Algorithm. We'll look into what I think is the most likely way we can connect Darren von to additional crimes, and we'll also talk about the future of the Algorithm and how algorithms might help catch serial killers across the country. If you haven't yet subscribed to the feed, you're not gonna want to miss this one. 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 and Blue Dot Sessions. Thanks to Christina Dana, Miranda Hawkins, Jamie Albright, Rima l Kali, Trevor Young, and Josh Thane for their help and notes. For more podcast from My Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.