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 an algorithm. After Vaughan's release from prison in August, he returned to Gary and his confirmed murders appeared to begin early in fourteen with the disappearance of Tierra Baty as way nor call it never happened, and although her fiance, Marvin Clinton, uncovered that a man was using her cell phone and provided cell records to police, it appears police didn't investigate this lead. They looked at about they didn't have it, so we don't know what the other detective dea where did it? Blew it away? On what abblicate may be. And when Vaughan kidnapped and sexually assaulted a sex worker, her rape kit went untested and that left bond free to continue to kill. No sexual assaults in particular, the departments are under resource, they're not followed up on, and this is what happens when you don't follow up on them. Sexual offenders continue to offend, but could Vaughan have been stopped even earlier? The police had just heated hard Groups warnings from my Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV. This is Algorithm. I'm benk kee Brick. After I'd gone through Vond's interrogations, I reached back out to Hargrove. I'm not sure if he remembered who I was, so I'm sorry. I've forgotten which podcast is this. I tried not to take it personally. It had been almost a year since I first contacted him, and while I've been going back and listening to my interviews with him over and over as they worked on the early episodes. To him, I was just some random guy who reached out to him with the vague idea that I was going to make a pie cast. But when I let him know I'd managed to get my hands on Von's confessions, he lit up. You did. Yeah, that's one of the things that I was really excited about and wanted to share with you. You you're making news. Yeah, So it got a lot of audio. It's almost all of his confessions. I told hard Growth that had gone through Von's confessions looking for some sort of smoking gun that would clearly connect him to one of the crimes hard Grove had identified, but it was Hard bonded confession erically to committing many murders. How many people are you responsible for killing? Is a lifetime are couldn't need the two. But Von hadn't provided many details about these crimes, and when it came to cold cases in Indiana, he'd only provided specifics about two incidents, the two murders he said he was responsible for in Hammond when Detective Ford had pressed him. And these two crimes that Von described didn't match the ones from Hargrove's algorithm, but were cheatings and not strangulations. But I did now have a much better sense of Vaughan and his m O, so I decided to go back through the crimes hard Grove had identified and researched them to see if any stood out. I was looking for crimes from when Von was living in Gary, especially where the victim might have had a history of sex work or drug abuse, or crimes where it appeared the victim had been discovered in an abandoned building long after they've been killed. Hard Grove's algorithm had identified fifteen women who had been strangled between and two thousand seven, and he had identified what he saw as two rough patterns. In recent years, several women have been strangled in their homes. In at least two cases, of fire was set after the women were killed. Also, starting in the nineteen nineties, we've seen several women who were found strangled in or near abandoned buildings. I decided to start with one of the more recent cases on hard Groves list. Her Grove's letter stated that an unidentified female victim had been found in an abandoned garage on February two thousand seven, and her body had been set on fire. This would have been a couple of years after Vaughan's incident with Sharita and the gasoline, so I wondered if Vaughn might have a fixation with fire. Plus, he had mentioned in the interrogations that the incident with Sharita had made him go back out of control, it had awakened his murder rages, so I thought that might be an indication that he'd started killing soon after that. It turned out that there had been a breakthroughing the case after Hargrove had sent the letter to Gary police. She has been dead for seven years. Her name remains a mystery, but the Lake County, Indiana Corners Office it's hopeful that new forensic artwork will give a real name to Jane Gary Dough. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children put out a new facial reconstruction of the victim. They were hoping that a member of the public could identify her. The new picture was published in the local paper, which also mentioned that she was thought to be somewhere between sixteen and twenty, and that she had scars in various stages of healing on her face and torso. She was thought to have been killed about a day before the body was discovered. Over a year past with no leads until August, when a woman named Kira Hill recognized the girl in the sketch as her cousin and reported it to the Gary police. She said the girl was fifteen year old Erika Hill from Fitchburg, Wisconsin, and d n A confirmed Kars identification. That family member who identified Erica Hill had been holding onto a terrible secret, and it turned out Kira didn't just know the victim, she knew the murderer as well. Investigators say the relative, who does not face charges, had been fearful all of these years of retaliation if she told, but decided she wanted to end the pattern of abuse. Cira's mother, Taylor, adopt did Erica in two thousand one, after Erica's grandmother, who had been caring for Erica, passed away. Talan was a special education teacher who had three kids of her own. She had a good reputation in her neighborhood, but Kiara said that behind closed doors, Talan was cruel. Kira said her mother beat all of her children, but Erica was abused more than the rest, and as the abuse escalated, Talan withdrew her children from school, worried that teachers would notice the signs of abuse. One night in February two thousand seven, Tlan called kar at work and told her to come home because of a family emergency. When Kiara came home, her mother told her to go into the bathroom, but wouldn't tell her why. Kiarra saw Erica lying on the floor. Her skin looked gray. Talan had shoved a rag deep into Erica's mouth, and she'd ended up making Erica choked to death. According to Kiara, her mother told the kid to put Erica into a black garbage bag and take her to the garage. Kia said that she and the other siblings were terrified of their mother, so they complied out of fear. They left Erica's body in the garage until it started to smell A few days later. Then Taylan had her children load Erica's body into their van and they drove from Wisconsin down to Chicago. Taylan left Erica's body under a highway overpass. She set fire to the body and pulled out some of Erica's teeth to try to make the body harder to identify, and then the family returned to Wisconsin, but Taylan started having second thoughts. Allegedly, Taylan began worrying that an elderly person might stumble upon Erica's remains and have a heart attack, so they drove back to Chicago, picked up Erica's charred body, and took it to Gary, where they left the body inside an abandoned garage. Kara said that if any and asked about Erica, their mother would say Erica had moved to live with another family member in Illinois. She was never reported missing. The incident haunted Chiara, and years later, after she'd moved out of her abusive mother's house and begun going to therapy. She finally gained the courage to confront what had happened, and in she came across the newly commissioned facial reconstructions of Erica, and she reached out to the Gary police. The new details led investigators to charge Hill with multiple counts of abuse and first degree murder. The police were able to verify much of Kira's story, and Taylor ended up being convicted for the murder and sentenced to twenty years in prison. I told Hargrove about Erica and how she was killed. To me that that's an example of the challenge of this, right, some of the data is just going to be stuff like that that an algorithm can never make that connection. No algorithm is going to be perfect, and no computer is really going to do the work of of police. I mean, it's in the end, it's hard work to solve these Boy, this is a strange case. So in two thousand seven, Gary was famous enough that if you have to get rid of a body, you know to go there, even if you're two states away. That's crazy, Like they don't have enough trouble. But this is the place to drop your bodies. Erica clearly wasn't a victim of Darren Vaughan or another Gary serial killer, but her case shows how hard it can be to solve these cold cases. Even once a body is discovered, it can be almost impossible to know when and where a victim was killed. As I continue you going through Hargrove's list and reading old newspaper articles, it felt to me like the murders fell into two categories. There were murders where the information was extremely scarce, where he sometimes couldn't find a single article about the homicide. And then there were others with more details, details that have been published because police had eventually identified a suspect and information about the murderer had come out in court. For example, the very first murder on Hargrove's list, Suzanne Router, Hargrove's letter said that Suzanne Router was found on November. She was found stuffed into bags on a back porch and she'd been strangled. Darren Vaughan would have been about twenty years old when this took place, and this would have been before he joined the Marines and left the area. I found a newspaper article about Router's death. She was a secretary who disappeared just before Thanksgiving in She was later found dismember bird in a trash bag outside an apartment building. But from the article, it seemed like she wasn't found in Lake County, Indiana, but rather in Chicago, and that she lived in Chicago as well, And it looked like well the case had never been solved. Police had made an arrest and charged someone for the crime, a man named Anthony Pressley. Pressley lived in the apartment building where Suzanne was found, and it turned out that he knew her. According to some they were dating. Others said he was her drug dealer. Regardless, he became the prime suspect in the case, and he was eventually charged with the crime. But I was confused, why was this case on Hargrow's list in the first place if her body wasn't found in Lake County, Indiana. I reached out to Pressley's lawyer, Richard Kling, to see if the case was somehow connected to Lake County. When I emailed you, you know, I wasn't sure if you'd remember the case at all. It's almost thirty years old at this point, what what makes this case stand out to you? You know, I have tried over five cases. Um, there are some cases that stick in your mind, and this was a case that stuck in my mind because Number one, we had we had a good defense to the forensic evidence, if you can call it forensic evidence. And first of all, let me tell you that what we will talk about is not at all based on attorney client privileged issue. It's all based on my observations and what I know about the case from from the case, not from words of Mr Presley. I was appointed to represent him. He was charged with murder of his girlfriend who was found on the back porch and a body back, and his defense was that he had been dealing drugs and that he owed the person he was dealing with a lot of money. The person came and essentially told him, if you don't pay up, something's going to happen. And the next day is when his girlfriend was found in a body back. So I don't think it has anything to do with in the serial killer. It was once in a lifetime thing. The Chicago Police Department aim that they've done a hair analysis that linked Pressley to the murder. There was a hair which was found in the body bag, or a couple of hairs on the back of the body begs under the tape, and they were examined by the Chicago Police Department, and in the opinion of the Chicago Police Departments here analysis he came to the conclusion that the hair on the body bag was morphologically similar to the hair of the defendant. At the time, DNA didn't exist. The only benefit of the hair evidence was that under a microscope you can morphologically tell the difference between Caucasian had hair, Nigroid head hair, and mono head hair. They have different textures, different components inside, and you can definitely tell the difference. Today, the follicles from those hairs might be tested for DNA that could either conclusively link the hair suppressley or show that they belonged to someone else. But at the time the hairs were just examined under a microscope, and this hair analysis could only reliably determine the ray of the person the hairs had come from. My cross was very simple. My cross to the hair examiner was, when you say it's morphologically similar, that's because you know it came from an African American. Is that right? Yes? It is. In fact, the head hair is morphologically similar to the two front jurors, is it not, Yes, it is, And it was morphologically similar to the head hair of the judge, isn't it? Yes, it is, no further question, and that that was essentially the case that that blew apart their case. The only thing they had really was the head hair and the body on the back of his porch. It's not good to find your girlfriend's body on the back of your porch. But he had an explanation as to why she was there, and it was assigned by the person to go old money too that you don't pay up, this is what's going to happen. I think that was a good summary of the whole story. So I came across this case in you know, what I thought was a list of all crimes that had happened in Wake County, Indiana, and then this is actually like a case in Chicago. Do you know if any police from Wake County, Indiana or something like that would have been involved, or if there's some connection where it would have ended up in a database. No, they would not have, and to my knowledge they were not. To my knowledge, it was strictly a body phone on the back of a Portugal County They had the guy who they believed was responsible, and that was the end of the investigation. You know, whether it was tunnel vision. On the other hand, it's a it's a pretty clear tunnel when a dead body is fumed on your back porch and there's a relationship between the defendant and the Yeah, so I don't think Indiana was ever involved. I asked Hargrove if he knew how a Chicago case had ended up on the list. I started looking into Susanne Router. It looks like she was actually murdered in Chicago, Illinois. Yes, yes, just over the line. Okay, And so is that you know it was a case when you're looking at this Chicago metropolitan area, you identified that one and felt like it fit in with the other cluster. Oh. In fact, I think she was originally coded in Lake County and it was a mistake. Okay. Um, so no, I think it was a miscoding originally, although um, she does look like part of the pattern. I was surprised to hear Hargrove say that, because from what I've learned to me, it didn't seem like she was part of the pattern. Then that's one where when you look into it, her body was found in the trash can of this guy who was either her boyfriend or her drug dealer, or maybe both. I think the fact that Router's body had shown up in the trash can of one of her acquaintances, it was just too much of a coincidence for it to have been a random murder conducted by a serial killer. And as they looked into it more, I'm not sure about hargroves explanation for how she showed up on his list. I don't think an error was made in the coding of Router's death because there's another unsolved strangulation case and Gary for the same year, Santina Williams, a thirty one year old black woman who has found hung in the bathroom at Gary Street and Gary. I can see how police investigating Hargrove's list might have dismissed it when the very first murderer is actually in Chicago and police had identified a strong suspect in the case. But you have to remember Hargreave was working with anonymized data. He was trying to link cases from newspaper articles to the cases from the algorithm himself from halfway across the country because the police refused to talk to him. Also, Hargrove had never claimed that every murder identified with the algorithm was the work of a serial killer, just that he'd identified a type of murder where an unusual number of killings had gone unsolved, and that therefore these murders were more likely to have been done by a serial killer and should be given extra scrutiny. But while routers killing in Chicago was likely unconnected to Van, Interestingly, Chicago has his own cluster of strangulations that the algorithm identified, and in his interrogation, Von claimed Chicago was where he went to kill. Illinois probably had a whole lot of They had more in India. They have way more in India. The first time I spoke to Hargrove, I mentioned that police had monitored Von's cell phone shortly after he'd murdered Africa and they saw he traveled into South Chicago. Well, there are plenty of unsolved maybe he had something to do with some of those. Sources told the Chicago Sometimes that after murdering Africa, Von had spent more than twelve hours driving through the South suburbs of Chicago, and police in the neighborhoods of Harvey, Markham and Hazel Crest searched twenty six abandoned homes with a cadaver dog. Hargrove hadn't heard about Bond's connection to Chicago, but he said he was interested in a cluster of over fifty strangulations there. We are convinced that there's a there are active, more than one serial killers working the South and West sides of Chicago. They've all been strangled, almost always sexually disrobed in some way, and a great many of them put into trash cans. I don't think we're done knowing all of the people that Mr. Van killed. You're the first to tell me that he had been hanging around Chicago. Do you know what parts of Chicago? Because if you go to the map we've done of the Chicago murders, there's a very odd element. There is a linear pattern on many of the South Side murders which happens to exactly conform to the Chicago Transit green line. Um. We've told the Chicago police that We've told them we're sure it's not a coincidence, but we don't know what it means it could be that the killer is using mass transit. It could also mean that, um, it's a hooker walk under the elevated trains. That's that's possible too. So we don't know if it's an indicator of the m O of the killer or just where the targets are easily available. We don't know, but I'm pretty sure it ain't a coincidence. The linearity of the pattern is striking. When I talk to Hargrove again about Vond's confessions, I wanted to tell him specifically about what von had mentioned about murders in Illinois. I call it the states your rageous they are still don't go right. I'll look, we're out. Are you try to go to Illinoise where I have my guns? But if I don't have a way to get there or like right now and watching my soups the kids. So if I get upset, I can't just leave up on sketching. You know what I'm saying, and the schedule compressed, that's how to do that. What does that calls you go into a range flash year is brutly pan. I can't work. I'm going to get my idea. Wont to give my idea just so much. I'm just like I'm tired. Doesn't do anything for you. I want to say release is pressure, because really I just rather tell me how crazy got time all the times? Just want to walk and something to blow everything up. I guess what I'm asking, how do you connect the rage with these people that they're right? All? It does take your wrong person to say something or triggers something from my past. That's why I really can't give the Illinoise because Illinois probably has a whole lot of they have more in the Indian Let's say that they away more in India. Vaughn said that he killed more in Illinois than he had in Indiana. And remember what her Grove had said about the murderers along the train line. Here's what Von told detectives when they asked him where he'd stay in Chicago. What were you saying that over there? I don't have the stage where he was just I just I get on the train. But I was like, I know a move. I'm trying to get far away from my family, myself, myself living. Yes, he said there that when he felt himself slipping into a murder rage, he'd go to Chicago. Because he liked to keep his murders far away from his family. But a few days later, in another interrogation, Vaughn changed his story. He repeated that he killed many how many in Chicago? At how many do you recall in Chicago? I ain't know for a fact, at least killed maybe over a dozen, over a dozen of Chicago right. But this time he says that these Chicago killings weren't part of his murder rages. Instead, he says that all of the Chicago killings were gang related and that they've taken place in the nineties, in early two thousand's. Chicago has a lot because that's where of gangs. Vain Chica the first time we Chica about you know, lamon with the deed so obvious. In fact, I love my virginity in Chicago. So as a long time how many of Marko I'm kills more army rue children hart China City? One? How long ago? If it was more our early nineties? So I stayed too long? After I go now into the service, I'm sorry traveling okay? And these would be uh, males and females all e mails, all these are all males, all just all gang relates. They were all these demos between one years eighty nine two thousand, in or towards the end of the final interrogation Forda spawn if he'd ever confess to murders in other states? Did you think that will ever find any of the murders you did in other states? I doubt it. I know what I'm gonna say, y'all won't find and say y'all already found them. I know for a fact the one in California, one of ones California know y'all found. Why do you say that? Because it was everywhere if you need it was, there was everywhere for they know area. It was like they were having the field. They're like, we have murder over here. Know what I'm saying. But I won't worried about it was because all stuff of those trason I didn't go in the house. I didn't load the gun. I just checked to make sure we're fired. And if y'all find a person killed, it ain't gonna be my fingerprints on it. Then like the gun came back the Indiana good old U s steel meal stripped down, dropped in the furnace. I don't have to worry about you all but it's sold out to whoever you want take them. Y'all gonna have them. So y'all have found some of my merriers. I know this for a fact, having and found something. Basically, yeah, Texas and found something. What about girls? Yeah, you'll no found him? No women in Texas. No, I don't do That's what I'm saying. This is a new thing. This is more of my anger to it. Like I got locked up for a processitude I paid. I see in my mind, why was our called five years? I should have just killed her, that was my thing. I was upset. I should have just killed her because supposing the bodies are easy, We're in Texas. Y'all got an ocean. I know that sounds weird, but y'all have an ocean, and the ocean is probably the best. Like like Michigan Lake Michigan probably have so many bodies in it's not funny. They're they wash up every now and that, right, But by telling y'all get them, it's useless if I find a way, because I can be resourceful here and there, say we discover one that's out of state, I won't get you nothing. Now, we'll just foll on the and I can keep you in Indiana, even if it's written out, I can keep you in Indiana. I'm not going on how to say this. I'm not going to open any other jurdictions like I gave you one and Gary because I felt they needed to get and then pretty much you and Zego who all right, guys, Gary, Gary' is a sesspool. I have no respect for nothing in Gary. So if you was a fine thirteen of my murders, dig up with building, or they knock it down and building and find Gary can. I don't wanna be disful. They can kiss me with a sun don't shine. They'll just have unsolved on their books because they got a couple of one songs on the book that's probably mine. Bond said that in addition to the out of state murders he didn't want to confess to, he had also committed additional murders and Gary that he didn't want to confess to you because he hated Gary. But the interrogation ended rather abruptly after police learned that Bond had met with the lawyer. If we found something that that you had done, or I know you're not gonna talk against somebody else or I already know that. Would you ever let us know that we were on the right track anything with gang activity, y'all will never get an answer from me for him. Okay, if y'all actually coming and said we think you killed this person, we know you're probably killed them with somebody else, beaud you tell if you killed him and I know it was a person I killed, that maybe he didn't need to be killed. I don't know how to ask gonna work because I'm not even supposed to be. Not a lawyer came to me that he's a y'all're not supposed to be to him, not supposed to be to y'alla. You said you taught a lawyer name. Yeah, you can't see you that he gave me a lawyer because I don't go to court tomorrow. Who who did? Y'all can't be a lawyer? Math In Finch? You might if I that's right, because he told me I'll speak to y'all. I'm like whatever. Because he wants to do with the Mother's ship. I don't want it. You could have told us that en up beginning, But he's not important to me because I might have to fire because he doesn't agree with my apology. He doesn't believe the capital punish, which I don't understand how y'all gave me a lawyers can cap punish and not toldom lawyers and I don't have right. But I mean y'all spoke to him. They could have told him he I believe the capital punish, probably more than y'all believe in capital punished. I'm more a wild West person. We've got a problem with you. I rather just call y'all three guineas down because it's my way. We're still being overwet. I don't like you. That's going out of back. You know. At the time, Bund said he didn't want to confess to any murders out of state because he wanted to get the death penalty and he wanted to get executed as quickly as possible. But somewhere down the line he changed his mind. So what exactly happened there and might mean that Von would be open to confessing now next time on algorithm. There's not easy answer to your question, man, I mean, it's from the very beginning and want death. I want death. I want death, and all of a sudden, about three days, four days before we cut the play, he changed his mind. Were the second biggest county in the state. I mean, given the numbers that we have seen at our agency of reporting people, I cannot imagine what it would be like for a law enforcement officer with that many cases on their death. They ended up stripping him down naked and putting him in a restraint chair and they put some kind of vest on him. We all him into court and Teresa just went absolutely ship. Do you know if he heard about the whole Hardgrove story? It, Yeah, I talked to him about 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 and mixing by Eric Quintana. The music is by Makeup and Vanity Set and 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. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And Hey, guys, I just wanted to say I really enjoyed all the messages we got after the Q and a episode. There were a lot of great suggestions of cases to look into. I haven't gotten a chance to respond to all your messages yet, but I will. And thanks to everyone who left reviews on Apple Podcasts. I really appreciate that as well.

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 an algorithm. After Vaughan's release from prison in August, he returned to Gary and his confirmed murders appeared to begin early in fourteen with the disappearance of Tierra Baty as way nor call it never happened, and although her fiance, Marvin Clinton, uncovered that a man was using her cell phone and provided cell records to police, it appears police didn't investigate this lead. They looked at about they didn't have it, so we don't know what the other detective dea where did it? Blew it away? On what abblicate may be. And when Vaughan kidnapped and sexually assaulted a sex worker, her rape kit went untested and that left bond free to continue to kill. No sexual assaults in particular, the departments are under resource, they're not followed up on, and this is what happens when you don't follow up on them. Sexual offenders continue to offend, but could Vaughan have been stopped even earlier? The police had just heated hard Groups warnings from my Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV. This is Algorithm. I'm benk kee Brick. After I'd gone through Vond's interrogations, I reached back out to Hargrove. I'm not sure if he remembered who I was, so I'm sorry. I've forgotten which podcast is this. I tried not to take it personally. It had been almost a year since I first contacted him, and while I've been going back and listening to my interviews with him over and over as they worked on the early episodes. To him, I was just some random guy who reached out to him with the vague idea that I was going to make a pie cast. But when I let him know I'd managed to get my hands on Von's confessions, he lit up. You did. Yeah, that's one of the things that I was really excited about and wanted to share with you. You you're making news. Yeah, So it got a lot of audio. It's almost all of his confessions. I told hard Growth that had gone through Von's confessions looking for some sort of smoking gun that would clearly connect him to one of the crimes hard Grove had identified, but it was Hard bonded confession erically to committing many murders. How many people are you responsible for killing? Is a lifetime are couldn't need the two. But Von hadn't provided many details about these crimes, and when it came to cold cases in Indiana, he'd only provided specifics about two incidents, the two murders he said he was responsible for in Hammond when Detective Ford had pressed him. And these two crimes that Von described didn't match the ones from Hargrove's algorithm, but were cheatings and not strangulations. But I did now have a much better sense of Vaughan and his m O, so I decided to go back through the crimes hard Grove had identified and researched them to see if any stood out. I was looking for crimes from when Von was living in Gary, especially where the victim might have had a history of sex work or drug abuse, or crimes where it appeared the victim had been discovered in an abandoned building long after they've been killed. Hard Grove's algorithm had identified fifteen women who had been strangled between and two thousand seven, and he had identified what he saw as two rough patterns. In recent years, several women have been strangled in their homes. In at least two cases, of fire was set after the women were killed. Also, starting in the nineteen nineties, we've seen several women who were found strangled in or near abandoned buildings. I decided to start with one of the more recent cases on hard Groves list. Her Grove's letter stated that an unidentified female victim had been found in an abandoned garage on February two thousand seven, and her body had been set on fire. This would have been a couple of years after Vaughan's incident with Sharita and the gasoline, so I wondered if Vaughn might have a fixation with fire. Plus, he had mentioned in the interrogations that the incident with Sharita had made him go back out of control, it had awakened his murder rages, so I thought that might be an indication that he'd started killing soon after that. It turned out that there had been a breakthroughing the case after Hargrove had sent the letter to Gary police. She has been dead for seven years. Her name remains a mystery, but the Lake County, Indiana Corners Office it's hopeful that new forensic artwork will give a real name to Jane Gary Dough. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children put out a new facial reconstruction of the victim. They were hoping that a member of the public could identify her. The new picture was published in the local paper, which also mentioned that she was thought to be somewhere between sixteen and twenty, and that she had scars in various stages of healing on her face and torso. She was thought to have been killed about a day before the body was discovered. Over a year past with no leads until August, when a woman named Kira Hill recognized the girl in the sketch as her cousin and reported it to the Gary police. She said the girl was fifteen year old Erika Hill from Fitchburg, Wisconsin, and d n A confirmed Kars identification. That family member who identified Erica Hill had been holding onto a terrible secret, and it turned out Kira didn't just know the victim, she knew the murderer as well. Investigators say the relative, who does not face charges, had been fearful all of these years of retaliation if she told, but decided she wanted to end the pattern of abuse. Cira's mother, Taylor, adopt did Erica in two thousand one, after Erica's grandmother, who had been caring for Erica, passed away. Talan was a special education teacher who had three kids of her own. She had a good reputation in her neighborhood, but Kiara said that behind closed doors, Talan was cruel. Kira said her mother beat all of her children, but Erica was abused more than the rest, and as the abuse escalated, Talan withdrew her children from school, worried that teachers would notice the signs of abuse. One night in February two thousand seven, Tlan called kar at work and told her to come home because of a family emergency. When Kiara came home, her mother told her to go into the bathroom, but wouldn't tell her why. Kiarra saw Erica lying on the floor. Her skin looked gray. Talan had shoved a rag deep into Erica's mouth, and she'd ended up making Erica choked to death. According to Kiara, her mother told the kid to put Erica into a black garbage bag and take her to the garage. Kia said that she and the other siblings were terrified of their mother, so they complied out of fear. They left Erica's body in the garage until it started to smell A few days later. Then Taylan had her children load Erica's body into their van and they drove from Wisconsin down to Chicago. Taylan left Erica's body under a highway overpass. She set fire to the body and pulled out some of Erica's teeth to try to make the body harder to identify, and then the family returned to Wisconsin, but Taylan started having second thoughts. Allegedly, Taylan began worrying that an elderly person might stumble upon Erica's remains and have a heart attack, so they drove back to Chicago, picked up Erica's charred body, and took it to Gary, where they left the body inside an abandoned garage. Kara said that if any and asked about Erica, their mother would say Erica had moved to live with another family member in Illinois. She was never reported missing. The incident haunted Chiara, and years later, after she'd moved out of her abusive mother's house and begun going to therapy. She finally gained the courage to confront what had happened, and in she came across the newly commissioned facial reconstructions of Erica, and she reached out to the Gary police. The new details led investigators to charge Hill with multiple counts of abuse and first degree murder. The police were able to verify much of Kira's story, and Taylor ended up being convicted for the murder and sentenced to twenty years in prison. I told Hargrove about Erica and how she was killed. To me that that's an example of the challenge of this, right, some of the data is just going to be stuff like that that an algorithm can never make that connection. No algorithm is going to be perfect, and no computer is really going to do the work of of police. I mean, it's in the end, it's hard work to solve these Boy, this is a strange case. So in two thousand seven, Gary was famous enough that if you have to get rid of a body, you know to go there, even if you're two states away. That's crazy, Like they don't have enough trouble. But this is the place to drop your bodies. Erica clearly wasn't a victim of Darren Vaughan or another Gary serial killer, but her case shows how hard it can be to solve these cold cases. Even once a body is discovered, it can be almost impossible to know when and where a victim was killed. As I continue you going through Hargrove's list and reading old newspaper articles, it felt to me like the murders fell into two categories. There were murders where the information was extremely scarce, where he sometimes couldn't find a single article about the homicide. And then there were others with more details, details that have been published because police had eventually identified a suspect and information about the murderer had come out in court. For example, the very first murder on Hargrove's list, Suzanne Router, Hargrove's letter said that Suzanne Router was found on November. She was found stuffed into bags on a back porch and she'd been strangled. Darren Vaughan would have been about twenty years old when this took place, and this would have been before he joined the Marines and left the area. I found a newspaper article about Router's death. She was a secretary who disappeared just before Thanksgiving in She was later found dismember bird in a trash bag outside an apartment building. But from the article, it seemed like she wasn't found in Lake County, Indiana, but rather in Chicago, and that she lived in Chicago as well, And it looked like well the case had never been solved. Police had made an arrest and charged someone for the crime, a man named Anthony Pressley. Pressley lived in the apartment building where Suzanne was found, and it turned out that he knew her. According to some they were dating. Others said he was her drug dealer. Regardless, he became the prime suspect in the case, and he was eventually charged with the crime. But I was confused, why was this case on Hargrow's list in the first place if her body wasn't found in Lake County, Indiana. I reached out to Pressley's lawyer, Richard Kling, to see if the case was somehow connected to Lake County. When I emailed you, you know, I wasn't sure if you'd remember the case at all. It's almost thirty years old at this point, what what makes this case stand out to you? You know, I have tried over five cases. Um, there are some cases that stick in your mind, and this was a case that stuck in my mind because Number one, we had we had a good defense to the forensic evidence, if you can call it forensic evidence. And first of all, let me tell you that what we will talk about is not at all based on attorney client privileged issue. It's all based on my observations and what I know about the case from from the case, not from words of Mr Presley. I was appointed to represent him. He was charged with murder of his girlfriend who was found on the back porch and a body back, and his defense was that he had been dealing drugs and that he owed the person he was dealing with a lot of money. The person came and essentially told him, if you don't pay up, something's going to happen. And the next day is when his girlfriend was found in a body back. So I don't think it has anything to do with in the serial killer. It was once in a lifetime thing. The Chicago Police Department aim that they've done a hair analysis that linked Pressley to the murder. There was a hair which was found in the body bag, or a couple of hairs on the back of the body begs under the tape, and they were examined by the Chicago Police Department, and in the opinion of the Chicago Police Departments here analysis he came to the conclusion that the hair on the body bag was morphologically similar to the hair of the defendant. At the time, DNA didn't exist. The only benefit of the hair evidence was that under a microscope you can morphologically tell the difference between Caucasian had hair, Nigroid head hair, and mono head hair. They have different textures, different components inside, and you can definitely tell the difference. Today, the follicles from those hairs might be tested for DNA that could either conclusively link the hair suppressley or show that they belonged to someone else. But at the time the hairs were just examined under a microscope, and this hair analysis could only reliably determine the ray of the person the hairs had come from. My cross was very simple. My cross to the hair examiner was, when you say it's morphologically similar, that's because you know it came from an African American. Is that right? Yes? It is. In fact, the head hair is morphologically similar to the two front jurors, is it not, Yes, it is, And it was morphologically similar to the head hair of the judge, isn't it? Yes, it is, no further question, and that that was essentially the case that that blew apart their case. The only thing they had really was the head hair and the body on the back of his porch. It's not good to find your girlfriend's body on the back of your porch. But he had an explanation as to why she was there, and it was assigned by the person to go old money too that you don't pay up, this is what's going to happen. I think that was a good summary of the whole story. So I came across this case in you know, what I thought was a list of all crimes that had happened in Wake County, Indiana, and then this is actually like a case in Chicago. Do you know if any police from Wake County, Indiana or something like that would have been involved, or if there's some connection where it would have ended up in a database. No, they would not have, and to my knowledge they were not. To my knowledge, it was strictly a body phone on the back of a Portugal County They had the guy who they believed was responsible, and that was the end of the investigation. You know, whether it was tunnel vision. On the other hand, it's a it's a pretty clear tunnel when a dead body is fumed on your back porch and there's a relationship between the defendant and the Yeah, so I don't think Indiana was ever involved. I asked Hargrove if he knew how a Chicago case had ended up on the list. I started looking into Susanne Router. It looks like she was actually murdered in Chicago, Illinois. Yes, yes, just over the line. Okay, And so is that you know it was a case when you're looking at this Chicago metropolitan area, you identified that one and felt like it fit in with the other cluster. Oh. In fact, I think she was originally coded in Lake County and it was a mistake. Okay. Um, so no, I think it was a miscoding originally, although um, she does look like part of the pattern. I was surprised to hear Hargrove say that, because from what I've learned to me, it didn't seem like she was part of the pattern. Then that's one where when you look into it, her body was found in the trash can of this guy who was either her boyfriend or her drug dealer, or maybe both. I think the fact that Router's body had shown up in the trash can of one of her acquaintances, it was just too much of a coincidence for it to have been a random murder conducted by a serial killer. And as they looked into it more, I'm not sure about hargroves explanation for how she showed up on his list. I don't think an error was made in the coding of Router's death because there's another unsolved strangulation case and Gary for the same year, Santina Williams, a thirty one year old black woman who has found hung in the bathroom at Gary Street and Gary. I can see how police investigating Hargrove's list might have dismissed it when the very first murderer is actually in Chicago and police had identified a strong suspect in the case. But you have to remember Hargreave was working with anonymized data. He was trying to link cases from newspaper articles to the cases from the algorithm himself from halfway across the country because the police refused to talk to him. Also, Hargrove had never claimed that every murder identified with the algorithm was the work of a serial killer, just that he'd identified a type of murder where an unusual number of killings had gone unsolved, and that therefore these murders were more likely to have been done by a serial killer and should be given extra scrutiny. But while routers killing in Chicago was likely unconnected to Van, Interestingly, Chicago has his own cluster of strangulations that the algorithm identified, and in his interrogation, Von claimed Chicago was where he went to kill. Illinois probably had a whole lot of They had more in India. They have way more in India. The first time I spoke to Hargrove, I mentioned that police had monitored Von's cell phone shortly after he'd murdered Africa and they saw he traveled into South Chicago. Well, there are plenty of unsolved maybe he had something to do with some of those. Sources told the Chicago Sometimes that after murdering Africa, Von had spent more than twelve hours driving through the South suburbs of Chicago, and police in the neighborhoods of Harvey, Markham and Hazel Crest searched twenty six abandoned homes with a cadaver dog. Hargrove hadn't heard about Bond's connection to Chicago, but he said he was interested in a cluster of over fifty strangulations there. We are convinced that there's a there are active, more than one serial killers working the South and West sides of Chicago. They've all been strangled, almost always sexually disrobed in some way, and a great many of them put into trash cans. I don't think we're done knowing all of the people that Mr. Van killed. You're the first to tell me that he had been hanging around Chicago. Do you know what parts of Chicago? Because if you go to the map we've done of the Chicago murders, there's a very odd element. There is a linear pattern on many of the South Side murders which happens to exactly conform to the Chicago Transit green line. Um. We've told the Chicago police that We've told them we're sure it's not a coincidence, but we don't know what it means it could be that the killer is using mass transit. It could also mean that, um, it's a hooker walk under the elevated trains. That's that's possible too. So we don't know if it's an indicator of the m O of the killer or just where the targets are easily available. We don't know, but I'm pretty sure it ain't a coincidence. The linearity of the pattern is striking. When I talk to Hargrove again about Vond's confessions, I wanted to tell him specifically about what von had mentioned about murders in Illinois. I call it the states your rageous they are still don't go right. I'll look, we're out. Are you try to go to Illinoise where I have my guns? But if I don't have a way to get there or like right now and watching my soups the kids. So if I get upset, I can't just leave up on sketching. You know what I'm saying, and the schedule compressed, that's how to do that. What does that calls you go into a range flash year is brutly pan. I can't work. I'm going to get my idea. Wont to give my idea just so much. I'm just like I'm tired. Doesn't do anything for you. I want to say release is pressure, because really I just rather tell me how crazy got time all the times? Just want to walk and something to blow everything up. I guess what I'm asking, how do you connect the rage with these people that they're right? All? It does take your wrong person to say something or triggers something from my past. That's why I really can't give the Illinoise because Illinois probably has a whole lot of they have more in the Indian Let's say that they away more in India. Vaughn said that he killed more in Illinois than he had in Indiana. And remember what her Grove had said about the murderers along the train line. Here's what Von told detectives when they asked him where he'd stay in Chicago. What were you saying that over there? I don't have the stage where he was just I just I get on the train. But I was like, I know a move. I'm trying to get far away from my family, myself, myself living. Yes, he said there that when he felt himself slipping into a murder rage, he'd go to Chicago. Because he liked to keep his murders far away from his family. But a few days later, in another interrogation, Vaughn changed his story. He repeated that he killed many how many in Chicago? At how many do you recall in Chicago? I ain't know for a fact, at least killed maybe over a dozen, over a dozen of Chicago right. But this time he says that these Chicago killings weren't part of his murder rages. Instead, he says that all of the Chicago killings were gang related and that they've taken place in the nineties, in early two thousand's. Chicago has a lot because that's where of gangs. Vain Chica the first time we Chica about you know, lamon with the deed so obvious. In fact, I love my virginity in Chicago. So as a long time how many of Marko I'm kills more army rue children hart China City? One? How long ago? If it was more our early nineties? So I stayed too long? After I go now into the service, I'm sorry traveling okay? And these would be uh, males and females all e mails, all these are all males, all just all gang relates. They were all these demos between one years eighty nine two thousand, in or towards the end of the final interrogation Forda spawn if he'd ever confess to murders in other states? Did you think that will ever find any of the murders you did in other states? I doubt it. I know what I'm gonna say, y'all won't find and say y'all already found them. I know for a fact the one in California, one of ones California know y'all found. Why do you say that? Because it was everywhere if you need it was, there was everywhere for they know area. It was like they were having the field. They're like, we have murder over here. Know what I'm saying. But I won't worried about it was because all stuff of those trason I didn't go in the house. I didn't load the gun. I just checked to make sure we're fired. And if y'all find a person killed, it ain't gonna be my fingerprints on it. Then like the gun came back the Indiana good old U s steel meal stripped down, dropped in the furnace. I don't have to worry about you all but it's sold out to whoever you want take them. Y'all gonna have them. So y'all have found some of my merriers. I know this for a fact, having and found something. Basically, yeah, Texas and found something. What about girls? Yeah, you'll no found him? No women in Texas. No, I don't do That's what I'm saying. This is a new thing. This is more of my anger to it. Like I got locked up for a processitude I paid. I see in my mind, why was our called five years? I should have just killed her, that was my thing. I was upset. I should have just killed her because supposing the bodies are easy, We're in Texas. Y'all got an ocean. I know that sounds weird, but y'all have an ocean, and the ocean is probably the best. Like like Michigan Lake Michigan probably have so many bodies in it's not funny. They're they wash up every now and that, right, But by telling y'all get them, it's useless if I find a way, because I can be resourceful here and there, say we discover one that's out of state, I won't get you nothing. Now, we'll just foll on the and I can keep you in Indiana, even if it's written out, I can keep you in Indiana. I'm not going on how to say this. I'm not going to open any other jurdictions like I gave you one and Gary because I felt they needed to get and then pretty much you and Zego who all right, guys, Gary, Gary' is a sesspool. I have no respect for nothing in Gary. So if you was a fine thirteen of my murders, dig up with building, or they knock it down and building and find Gary can. I don't wanna be disful. They can kiss me with a sun don't shine. They'll just have unsolved on their books because they got a couple of one songs on the book that's probably mine. Bond said that in addition to the out of state murders he didn't want to confess to, he had also committed additional murders and Gary that he didn't want to confess to you because he hated Gary. But the interrogation ended rather abruptly after police learned that Bond had met with the lawyer. If we found something that that you had done, or I know you're not gonna talk against somebody else or I already know that. Would you ever let us know that we were on the right track anything with gang activity, y'all will never get an answer from me for him. Okay, if y'all actually coming and said we think you killed this person, we know you're probably killed them with somebody else, beaud you tell if you killed him and I know it was a person I killed, that maybe he didn't need to be killed. I don't know how to ask gonna work because I'm not even supposed to be. Not a lawyer came to me that he's a y'all're not supposed to be to him, not supposed to be to y'alla. You said you taught a lawyer name. Yeah, you can't see you that he gave me a lawyer because I don't go to court tomorrow. Who who did? Y'all can't be a lawyer? Math In Finch? You might if I that's right, because he told me I'll speak to y'all. I'm like whatever. Because he wants to do with the Mother's ship. I don't want it. You could have told us that en up beginning, But he's not important to me because I might have to fire because he doesn't agree with my apology. He doesn't believe the capital punish, which I don't understand how y'all gave me a lawyers can cap punish and not toldom lawyers and I don't have right. But I mean y'all spoke to him. They could have told him he I believe the capital punish, probably more than y'all believe in capital punished. I'm more a wild West person. We've got a problem with you. I rather just call y'all three guineas down because it's my way. We're still being overwet. I don't like you. That's going out of back. You know. At the time, Bund said he didn't want to confess to any murders out of state because he wanted to get the death penalty and he wanted to get executed as quickly as possible. But somewhere down the line he changed his mind. So what exactly happened there and might mean that Von would be open to confessing now next time on algorithm. There's not easy answer to your question, man, I mean, it's from the very beginning and want death. I want death. I want death, and all of a sudden, about three days, four days before we cut the play, he changed his mind. Were the second biggest county in the state. I mean, given the numbers that we have seen at our agency of reporting people, I cannot imagine what it would be like for a law enforcement officer with that many cases on their death. They ended up stripping him down naked and putting him in a restraint chair and they put some kind of vest on him. We all him into court and Teresa just went absolutely ship. Do you know if he heard about the whole Hardgrove story? It, Yeah, I talked to him about 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 and mixing by Eric Quintana. The music is by Makeup and Vanity Set and 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. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And Hey, guys, I just wanted to say I really enjoyed all the messages we got after the Q and a episode. There were a lot of great suggestions of cases to look into. I haven't gotten a chance to respond to all your messages yet, but I will. And thanks to everyone who left reviews on Apple Podcasts. I really appreciate that as well.