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 journalist Thomas Hargrove warned police in northwest Indiana that they might have a serial killer and the loose. Starting in the nineteen nineties, we've seen several women who were found strangled in or near abandoned buildings, and four years later, after the murder of Africa Hardy, police arrested Darren Vaughan and Detective Shaan Ford began interrogating him. In your own words, what would you say? Has brought you here today? Why do you think you were arrested? Will say a hard Vaughn confessed to strangling Africa Hardy, and he told Ford and Captain Hinojosa that he had killed many more. How many people are you responsible for killing? His lifetime or couldn't even two? Vaughan took police to the body of one of his victims to provide evidence for his murders, but he wanted to make a deal. What are you trying to get out of this? Before? On a birthday? From iHeart Radio and Tenderfoot TV. This is algorithm. I'm ben Kee Brick. At one am on Sunday, October, Vaughan had just led investigators to the body of Anneth Jones, and just as Vaughan had described, they'd found her buried under a pile of stuft animals in the basement of an abandoned building. It appeared that Vaughan was a serial killer and his m O was the same one that Hargrove's algorithm had identified a hiller strangling women in Gary. But how many murders was her responsible for and were any of them on Hargrove's list. After police found anne jones body, they knew the investigation was going to get big and they wanted to keep Vaughan cooperating as long as they could. Detective Seawan Ford and Kelly Mickey convinced Vaughan to take them to another body, and Vaughan guided them ten minutes north to afforded up building on nineteen Avenue. Eerily, it was next door to a house that had a banner advertising Miss Deed's Hugs and Kisses Daycare. Here, Vaughan told detectives they'd find another body lying in the garage covered in plywood. He warned them to announce their presence before entering the building in case someone was quote using the house, and once again, detective found the body just where Von said it would be, in the building's garage, under a pile of plywood boards. This victim, later identified as Tiara Baby, appeared to have been dead for months. She was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, and her body looked sunken in because her flesh had putrified inside her clothes. Detective Mickey tried to keep Von talking while she recorded on her cell phone. The audio quality is rough, but you can hear Detective Forward returning to the car and asking Van to take them to one more body complete jagg Off. I have a partner I worked with on regular basis and he dreams of stuff like this. He asked Vaughan to do it as a favor for his coworker. He just got into path. Do you have another one? I know it's dumb to ask, that's ins ridiculous. You're going to take the stone? I one th right. I won't point on all somebody. I hope you're prosecuted. Well, let me tell you this. You do, you do one more and you're definitely I'm a prosecutor's attention to why you can't be we're supposed to. Vaughn said he'd been back to the site where he left this body, and that he thought a worker that was demolishing abandoned buildings in the area might have come across this victim. So Ford called the Gary Police Department to ask them if they had found any bodies and the area of van was describing. This is a girl. It's a girl. They're all girls. They're all the guys. I can't give you all the guys are jobs. I can't. You'll probably figure out you guys who hired you know what. At this point, I don't think anybody's interested in the hiring. Well, I know one of them pass FBI ramifications. Believe the things will be very interesting. They want to know how we got to one of the federal faras. I don't know if he's a federal Winds or fay it my dear cop. I think he was an undercover cop. Yeah, I think he's on the cover cop. You killed him? Yeah? And then it's more than one person of all, so I can't give you that boblem So how many women do you thinkers throughout the area? Here? Me or that I know personally either or okay, and that I know personally, maybe thirties me, maybe Quail, thirteen or year and none of them, no, mine don't get found. So I don't know. Some of these bodies should have been found. In fact, I know Gary found three, but since no DNA, no sex, none of head, they'll never know who killed him. Person to recap, Vaughn was now claiming he was responsible for killing thirty teen women and Gary in just the last year. Ford returns to the car and says Gary hadn't found anybodies recently in the area of Vaughan had mentioned, Did they say found me he hadn't heard of. Well, at least we're not far from all right. That's now you're going a brawl away. As they drive to the next crime scene. It's hard to tell Ford is trying to apply Vaughan for information, where if he's just making small talk. Do you got any good drug robbery guys in the streets that you must specialty? They don't have that specialty, written no more, no best I know they don't report it. Of course they don't. That's why it's the best crime. Maybe he is just making conversation figuring it will pay dividends later in the investigation. Now, I don't want to be putting all this in your head. But I've already done. I know. I've been all of Florida and sex since that's Florida. That's where it really and it jumped off big down there California. All I say, only stuff Indiana or we'll be tied up for a long time. You can take me on vacation, man, no on, stop my wrist me and you will be my ties. So what is the worst part about Like when you kill somebody, like you're like part no. But I mean, like like you said, you're moving that one girl down in the basement and like she started leaking. What is it that you're like, dad? But bless it she leaking? We take them away from the murder site. I really don't care if they leak, because you're not gonna find no evidence on the murder site. It's all I'm saying. Oh yeah, I hear you. On So is that why you move him? Right? And how long did it take you before you started moving them? I'll always move him tough to move right? And at what age did somebody start teaching me the first person should? Oh, you didn't do that alone. No, somebody had to teach me. You know you don't. But I didn't know if it was like, you know, something happened, you know what I mean, just happened. They arrived at a third abandoned house. This one was a two story building. At the top of the stairs, in a closet, police found another body, and this time the body was skeletal as it be for bo. Yeah, her bones are showing, her skull is showing, saying, son of the other ones. I couldn't bring you too, because y'all wouldn't be at the tail. How what kills and does invation? You really be for cold? Yeah, but at least the families could have some peace, right. I gotta take you too once. I know, like I'd like to say, mama's stays, I'm taking all the MoMA's, These all mama's stakes, and these keeping one's supposed to be killed. Okay, get other people that are causing it? Said, they were pretty don exist in the wrongs. Fie Long time. How many just between me and you know? How many people you think keeps killing? Yeah? Do you keep track? No? I know, I know. I was upset when I found out there was a guy who mixed I killed over five hundred. That upset because you haven't because I hadn't. Oh so you wanted to kill five time? I want to kill five hundred. I was just used to being in Geary. I was known at one time the best it was a year. And then when he was looking at history and started reading that hundred for my reason murder stuff, that people a whole lot of more murders, so how many things? Told him, Yeah, I'm under the hundred. I know that under a hundreds. Since you were nine, I'm right over a hundred. I've had to be years. What thirteen this year? I have way more than thirteen this year month. Wow. At first, when I heard Vaughn's claim of three murders a month, I thought Vaughan was again contradicting himself, because earlier he said he'd only killed thirteen women in Gary that year. But then I remembered he also said he'd killed men as well, and people out of state, so he's not necessarily being inconsistent here. Still, there's something about his tone that makes me think he's embellishing his story. The investigation was just beginning, though. The next day, officers continued their interrogation, and the next night Vaughn led them to even more victims. On October twenty, two, days after Vaughan's arrest and the discovery of bodies and abandoned home, two press conferences were held. My name is Karen Freeman Wilson. I'm Mayor of the City of Gary, Indiana. We are here to discuss the apprehension of a suspect who was in the custom of the Hammond Police Department. This initially started with a murder in the city of Hammond at Motel six. The Hammond Police Department began an investigation which led them to a suspect. They began questioning him and learned that there were additional victims, and he led them to the bodies of those victims. Has there been any indication on how many victims may be out there at this point, we are unsure of the number. As of last night, he was continuing to lead police to the bodies of victims as he made any statements that they're all here. In GARYA I mean, I know the one. We believe there may be people in other parts of Northwest Indian to be a little bit lord. The second press conference was held by the Hammond Police Chief good afternoon. As a result of our investigation, it is believed that the suspect is a registered sex offender in the state of Texas, a forty three year old resident of Gary by the name of Darren Van. The investigations of at least six are ongoing. It is possible that investigation will lead to more victims, so we have to be careful about what we say at this point. So I'll take at least a couple of time. We're dealing with police. It could go back as far as twenty years based on some statements we have and that's yet to be coaberative. Ham And Police had found exactly what Hardgrive described in this letter as serial killer, strangling women and Gary crimes going back to the nineties and women's bodies left in abandoned billldings. A television production company called me and they said, had you heard about Gary? And I said what? And they told me all about the arrest of Mr Van. He said he had been active going back to the nineties and took them to the scenes of abandoned buildings in Gary, Indiana, where they recovered six previously unknown murder victims. So something I think about sometimes is was there something I could have done better? Because they weren't even looking and seven women died after two thousand ten, I at least knew that there was a serial killer active in Gary. Eventually, Vaughan was charged with murdering seven women and Jones, Christine Williams, Suna Billingsley, Tanya Gatwin, Tracy Martin, Tiera Beatty, and Africa Hardy. But none of these seven victims were in hargross list. Hard group had generated his list back in and the seven murders that von had confess us too weren't cold cases. They were all recent murders committed in the last year. Some of the victims hadn't even been reported missing. This was one of the aspects of the case that confused me when I first learned about it. Vaughan had only been charged for these recent murders, but according to the press conference held shortly after Vaughan's arrest, Vaughan had alluded to crimes going back twenty years and also In a since deleted Facebook post, Hammond's mayor wrote that Vaughan had admitted to quote a couple of homicides in Hammond back in ninety four, and based on those statements, Hargrove became convinced that Vaughan is responsible for at least some of the murders his algorithm identified. How convinced are you that this is the work of Van or another serial killer? And kind of what what makes you think that? Well, first of all, that's what he told Hammond police, that he had been active going back to the mid nineties, and I would take him out his word that he was responsible for some of these women who were found in abandoned buildings. I think that's his them all, but I don't have proof. When I started researching the case and speaking to Hargrove, only a tiny trickle of information had leaked out about Von's crimes. To try to avoid biasing a jury, the judge put a gag order on the case, preventing the lawyers involved, law enforcement or politicians from discussing it publicly, and the trial faced delay after delay. So for years, no one in the public, not even Hargrove, knew the extent of Vaughan's crimes, or even what exactly Vaughan had confessed to. Vaughan pled guilty to the seven murders, but in a highly unusual move, the judge kept the gag order in place after the trial ended, even though Vaughan didn't seem interested in appealing the case. I'd never heard of this happening before, and I began to wonder if there was more to the story, something Lake County was trying to cover up, but I also didn't want to jump to conclusions. Yeah, it's interesting, So, yeah, there there's a couple of statements in this press conference with the police chief where it alludes to crimes that could go back as far as twenty years. Then they kind of put a gang order during the trial that then justified not releasing information about his confession, even though the case is now closed. So I'm still kind of in the in the process of trying to get some of that information. But you know, it almost feels like maybe they did find some stuff and want to just sweep it under the rug. I think that they were very paranoid about making a reversible error. I couldn't tell you more than that, I really don't know. What does that mean, fear of reversible error, that maybe something about the way les confession was obtained would be improper, yeah, or um speculation that he's responsible for other murders beyond the step for which he was convicted. I don't know. I don't understand. Why do you have any theories as to why no attempt has been made to link than to any of these other murders, at least not to my knowledge. My working theory is because you warned them about it, and if it came out that indeed he was responsible for them, that that could politically embarrassing that. I mean, that's that's kind of just what in my head. But I have no idea how people actually make these kinds of decisions. No, that was the conversation I had with hard Grow before I got my hands on Vond's confessions. So after him and sent me the interrogations and police reports, I started combing through the hours of audio and hundreds of pages of documents. I was looking for any evidence that Vaughan might be responsible for the crimes on Hargrow's list, But also as I read and listened, I was trying to figure out whether Von's confessions were even credible. The Hammond Police Department had sent me twelve hours if Darren Vaughn's recorded confessions, as well as dozens of interviews with Vaughn's relatives and the friends and family of Vaughn's victims. As I listened through them, I was especially curious to find out what the Hammond Mayor had been referring to when he said Vaughn had confessed to quote a couple of homicides and Hammond in But I also wanted to know how much I should trust Vaughan in the first place. And as I kept listening through his interrogation, some of his claims just sounded bizarre or grandiose. To try to put vaughn story into context, I went back and re listened to an interview I've done a couple of months earlier. We created Darren. Darren at age six, was taken from his mother put in even a worse situation. This is Goeko Cossage, one of the public defenders who was assigned to Vaughan's case. And then my name is pronounced Goeko Cossage. It's like crotch itch, but it's costage um. When I got your email. You know, you told me that the gag order was still in place. So I'm curious kind of like, what can you talk about? What can't you talk about? Well, I think specifically I can certainly talk about anything from the public record, and I can also probably just kind of generically tell you a little bit about Darren's background without getting into too many specifics. To say the least Costage doesn't mince words. You have to understand Darren Van was the product of his fourteen year old mother being raped by the landlord. Cost It said that when Von's mother gave birth to him in nineteen seventy one, she was just fourteen years old. She had three more daughters after that in very short order. So this woman who was completely unequipped to probably have a pet, had four children. When Vaughan was six, the Department of Family and Children put him into foster care. For good five six years. He was passed around through foster homes. Almost in every foster home he was mistreated, and then an eight two, he got placed at Thelma Marshall. The Thelma Marshall Children's Home was a residential institution for foster kids. They had I think it was sixteen boys, sixteen girls. Eight of the boys were small and the girls were small. Eight to the boys were teenagers, eight of the girls were teenagers. They would go to neighborhood schools. They would just stay at the home. The basketball court there, and he had stuff down in the basement as far as a ping pong table or in a pool table. In the bedrooms were upstairs, in the kitchen was upstairs. According to Vaughan, things might have looked fine if you visited during the day, but after dark it turned into a nightmare. The adults would leave at five o'clock and at night they would be left with the counselors who were and they would go down in his hellhole of the basement and they would have gladiator games where they would have the kids square off and have to fight each other. Darren told us when he was being disciplined, they would put him in a completely dark room with the dog that he would have to climb on the pool table and be up on the pool table pretty much all night long, with his dog running around the outside of the pool table barking at him to get at him. When Von described his childhood to Detective Ford, he didn't mention the years he'd spent living with the foster families at all, but Vaughan said his time at the Thelma marshal Um was formative. Where did you live as a kid that you remember besides the boy's homes? That's all that you know? That's all I remember that somebody had to tell me family history when I came home because I didn't like nobody to okay. I was hitting people with objects, so they had to come over with some reason for Okay, So you were, you were violent even as a young young kid. What you're saying put to be an environment where I had to be valid. So okay, So due to this is that way you were originally taken? No, I was. I was a kid. I had a violent streeting me as a young young kid. But when you go to the homes you deal with people. Is in there for a criminal activity? What year do you think you've got? How old do you think you are when you went to the homes? I can tell you that's the only place I remember is being home. Like when I get depressed, I go there. I sit outside of it really still today because my home it's not only home I've ever known. That's insane. Well, what did you go when? I understand what you're saying, but like it's where I was made. Vaughn said that shortly after coming to film and Marshall, one of the teenagers at the home started targeting him. What did he do to mess with you? You know, I'm trying to turn him into a girl. Okay, So he was actually a predator. He's trying to break and we don't really call them predators. Y'all call them predators. We don't call them predators. What would you call him? He's just what he is. That's why terror. Everybody is what they is. Everybody has some kind of busing thing. But Vaughan says, one of the other kids, an eighteen year old, he went by big Ee, found out about the team that was messing with. Vaughn wanted to older kids older than you go to Obhi and being his homeies. Gentleman, I remember it's Timo missing. So the nailed him in home? Yeah? Are we always asked jumping going on? There's always something going on in the home. And then he came up missing later right, it was ever found? When you say he's missing, when I mean was he killed? Ya? Oh? Yeah? He was killed. It was coming, It was coming. Fawn says that Big E was a gangster disciple at g D, a member of the nationwide gang that had its nerve center in nearby Chicago, and after saving Vaughan, BIGI recruited him to join the gang. Remember Drew Elementary School. Biggie's hit Massy. It's like, make sure you looked after because you're always gonna be going somewhere doing something for somebody. You might be the best guy right now, really best guy. How come he had one of the best codes of honor. I've never seeing him break a g D rule. He's a really good guy. As long as you do funk around where he believed in, he was perfectly safe. I remember he was a star on the Roosevelt basketball squad. But you quit, guess some kind of trouble, okay. Joining the Gangster Disciples was a multi step process. The first step, getting jumped in meant getting beat up by the other members of the gang. And I got jumped and for real elementary schools, do you remember you're jumping for reading? Really busted arm messed up? Remember all that. Yeah. Vaughn says that before long he was spending more time with the gang than he did in school, and his new recruits got further initiated into the gang. They would be asked to commit crimes, crimes that grew more and more violent. Now, you said when you first became a g D that stuff. You had an incident where you killed the first person that you ever killed, right, and what made you kill him? That's part of all being blessed in Chicago? What does it mean to be blessed? You put on the books, you can always call for get support if you need it. You kind of like an official or member your official. Remember, if you're not the own book, you're not really a member. You're just sing you agg did you kill somebody specific to get blessed in? I mean, I hear who they told me to kill, and I really don't know who. World didn't care, so they just gave me an assignment. Right, But it wasn't enough for a recruit just to kill someone. It was also how they acted after they'd done the deed. Van brought this up with Officer Mickey the night he was arrested. Now that the kids ever not want to do it, you who have a choice, So like when the kids do it for the first time, do they flip out, like do you come from them? Or you break down too much? If you're getting rid of black kills, that's always been a gang thing. They can't take no chance. And some of you spell in the bank, bill in the vein for some keys y'all think are like random ers. They're not random ers. Ideas something they can live with. It started talking and start had to be get rid of the gang that Von has been talking about. The Gangster Disciples or g DS, was formed in Chicago in nineteen four. The Gangster Disciples were founded by Larry Hoover. At the time, he was serving a life sentence in an Illinois prison for murder, but using coded messages, he ran the gang's drug dealing and prostitution rackets from behind bars for decades. Hoover created what he called the sixteen Rules of proper behavior for the Disciples. These rules included silence about gang business. They'd say, nothing will hurt the duck but its own bill. Other rules prohibited homosexual rape, using addictive drugs, and stealing from other gangster disciples. These sixteen rules were to be followed strictly. If rules were by related gang leaders would order punishments to be dealt out by gang enforcers. The punishments could range from beatings to death. Vaughn says he was taught how to kill by the gang and became one of the gangs enforcers. Von's lawyer, Cossage, says that as a public defender in Lake County, Indiana, he's had many clients and gangs. You can't even imagine, imagine what they went through in their lives. You know, you can go ahead and talk about all these gang manners and all these shootings and until you you really break it down. You know, these kids are eight nine years old and they live in these neighborhoods where they're getting harassed and either they're gonna keep getting picked on and keep getting beat up, or they're gonna join a game, and they grow into these gangs, and these gangs become their only family, and they do what they're told. What never sees us to amaze me. You know, they give you the Latin King Manifesto or the Gangster Disciple Rules, whatever the hell they have, and like the first page, first page says, I will never cooperate with the police. I will never give evidence to the police, or stay us to the police, that may implicate a brother. But the sons of bitches on the very top, when they get busted within forty eight hours, they are singing like the loudest damn canaries you've ever heard, to save their asses. They're telling them about murders they ordered, who did them, to save their asses. And the guys on the bottom never figure that out, never figure out, but they're gonna get sold out by the guys on the top. Fons lawyers wanted more information about fons early life and gang involvement, so they tried to find out more information about Big E. He was challenging though, because Von didn't know Big EA's real name. We really really wanted to track him down. We thought at one time it was someone who played basketball and one of the local high schools there, and he was on on the bench on one of the state champ bionship teams, but that ended up falling by the wayside. It wasn't him. We never couldn't find him. The police were also interested in finding Big E to verify Von's story and to investigate the early murders Vaughan had mentioned. They asked Von's half brother Reginald about it. Reginald new big e by a slightly different name. Okay, his friend Big talk about him, a big white girl in the homes gather him big whit him big white being bad. But nobody in my family knows being white. Nobody's ever seen big white. You know what I'm saying. Come on, then it's not plausible? And what is a fictional character? Because I dug further into Vaughan's confessions, it was not at all this story I was expecting. But I did discover or what I suspect is the reason why authorities wanted to keep this case quiet for so long. Next time on algorithm, be it from the organic injury or something he had convinced himself. There were episodes in Darren's life that he remembered completely different than what we had incredible evidence for. All went back out of control again. I never made it back un Once you I don't know how to play with y'all, y'all don't have the same or once you start killing again. Now when you say abuse of like verbally, abuse of physically, I don't recall all the different actually with all her y'all probably caught me years ago this episode was written and produced by me ben Kiebrick 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. K Ali, Trevor Young, and Josh Thane for their help and notes, and thanks for listening. The story is only going to keep getting crazier and soon I'm going to need you all to help me solve some of the mysteries regarding this case. Please help spread the word about this podcast, especially if you have any friends in Indiana, Illinois, or Texas. I hope that through this podcast we can shed some light on some really important issues and maybe even bring justice and closure to additional victims. If you do have any information about Big E, Daryn Vaughan, where crimes that you think might be related, or if you just have questions you want addressed on the podcast, please call and leave me a voicemail with your contact information at eight eight five zero one three three zero nine. That's eight eight five year one three three zero nine, or you can also reach out to me on Twitter. I'm at ben Underscore Keybrick. That's b E N Underscore k U E b R I c H. Thanks

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 journalist Thomas Hargrove warned police in northwest Indiana that they might have a serial killer and the loose. Starting in the nineteen nineties, we've seen several women who were found strangled in or near abandoned buildings, and four years later, after the murder of Africa Hardy, police arrested Darren Vaughan and Detective Shaan Ford began interrogating him. In your own words, what would you say? Has brought you here today? Why do you think you were arrested? Will say a hard Vaughn confessed to strangling Africa Hardy, and he told Ford and Captain Hinojosa that he had killed many more. How many people are you responsible for killing? His lifetime or couldn't even two? Vaughan took police to the body of one of his victims to provide evidence for his murders, but he wanted to make a deal. What are you trying to get out of this? Before? On a birthday? From iHeart Radio and Tenderfoot TV. This is algorithm. I'm ben Kee Brick. At one am on Sunday, October, Vaughan had just led investigators to the body of Anneth Jones, and just as Vaughan had described, they'd found her buried under a pile of stuft animals in the basement of an abandoned building. It appeared that Vaughan was a serial killer and his m O was the same one that Hargrove's algorithm had identified a hiller strangling women in Gary. But how many murders was her responsible for and were any of them on Hargrove's list. After police found anne jones body, they knew the investigation was going to get big and they wanted to keep Vaughan cooperating as long as they could. Detective Seawan Ford and Kelly Mickey convinced Vaughan to take them to another body, and Vaughan guided them ten minutes north to afforded up building on nineteen Avenue. Eerily, it was next door to a house that had a banner advertising Miss Deed's Hugs and Kisses Daycare. Here, Vaughan told detectives they'd find another body lying in the garage covered in plywood. He warned them to announce their presence before entering the building in case someone was quote using the house, and once again, detective found the body just where Von said it would be, in the building's garage, under a pile of plywood boards. This victim, later identified as Tiara Baby, appeared to have been dead for months. She was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, and her body looked sunken in because her flesh had putrified inside her clothes. Detective Mickey tried to keep Von talking while she recorded on her cell phone. The audio quality is rough, but you can hear Detective Forward returning to the car and asking Van to take them to one more body complete jagg Off. I have a partner I worked with on regular basis and he dreams of stuff like this. He asked Vaughan to do it as a favor for his coworker. He just got into path. Do you have another one? I know it's dumb to ask, that's ins ridiculous. You're going to take the stone? I one th right. I won't point on all somebody. I hope you're prosecuted. Well, let me tell you this. You do, you do one more and you're definitely I'm a prosecutor's attention to why you can't be we're supposed to. Vaughn said he'd been back to the site where he left this body, and that he thought a worker that was demolishing abandoned buildings in the area might have come across this victim. So Ford called the Gary Police Department to ask them if they had found any bodies and the area of van was describing. This is a girl. It's a girl. They're all girls. They're all the guys. I can't give you all the guys are jobs. I can't. You'll probably figure out you guys who hired you know what. At this point, I don't think anybody's interested in the hiring. Well, I know one of them pass FBI ramifications. Believe the things will be very interesting. They want to know how we got to one of the federal faras. I don't know if he's a federal Winds or fay it my dear cop. I think he was an undercover cop. Yeah, I think he's on the cover cop. You killed him? Yeah? And then it's more than one person of all, so I can't give you that boblem So how many women do you thinkers throughout the area? Here? Me or that I know personally either or okay, and that I know personally, maybe thirties me, maybe Quail, thirteen or year and none of them, no, mine don't get found. So I don't know. Some of these bodies should have been found. In fact, I know Gary found three, but since no DNA, no sex, none of head, they'll never know who killed him. Person to recap, Vaughn was now claiming he was responsible for killing thirty teen women and Gary in just the last year. Ford returns to the car and says Gary hadn't found anybodies recently in the area of Vaughan had mentioned, Did they say found me he hadn't heard of. Well, at least we're not far from all right. That's now you're going a brawl away. As they drive to the next crime scene. It's hard to tell Ford is trying to apply Vaughan for information, where if he's just making small talk. Do you got any good drug robbery guys in the streets that you must specialty? They don't have that specialty, written no more, no best I know they don't report it. Of course they don't. That's why it's the best crime. Maybe he is just making conversation figuring it will pay dividends later in the investigation. Now, I don't want to be putting all this in your head. But I've already done. I know. I've been all of Florida and sex since that's Florida. That's where it really and it jumped off big down there California. All I say, only stuff Indiana or we'll be tied up for a long time. You can take me on vacation, man, no on, stop my wrist me and you will be my ties. So what is the worst part about Like when you kill somebody, like you're like part no. But I mean, like like you said, you're moving that one girl down in the basement and like she started leaking. What is it that you're like, dad? But bless it she leaking? We take them away from the murder site. I really don't care if they leak, because you're not gonna find no evidence on the murder site. It's all I'm saying. Oh yeah, I hear you. On So is that why you move him? Right? And how long did it take you before you started moving them? I'll always move him tough to move right? And at what age did somebody start teaching me the first person should? Oh, you didn't do that alone. No, somebody had to teach me. You know you don't. But I didn't know if it was like, you know, something happened, you know what I mean, just happened. They arrived at a third abandoned house. This one was a two story building. At the top of the stairs, in a closet, police found another body, and this time the body was skeletal as it be for bo. Yeah, her bones are showing, her skull is showing, saying, son of the other ones. I couldn't bring you too, because y'all wouldn't be at the tail. How what kills and does invation? You really be for cold? Yeah, but at least the families could have some peace, right. I gotta take you too once. I know, like I'd like to say, mama's stays, I'm taking all the MoMA's, These all mama's stakes, and these keeping one's supposed to be killed. Okay, get other people that are causing it? Said, they were pretty don exist in the wrongs. Fie Long time. How many just between me and you know? How many people you think keeps killing? Yeah? Do you keep track? No? I know, I know. I was upset when I found out there was a guy who mixed I killed over five hundred. That upset because you haven't because I hadn't. Oh so you wanted to kill five time? I want to kill five hundred. I was just used to being in Geary. I was known at one time the best it was a year. And then when he was looking at history and started reading that hundred for my reason murder stuff, that people a whole lot of more murders, so how many things? Told him, Yeah, I'm under the hundred. I know that under a hundreds. Since you were nine, I'm right over a hundred. I've had to be years. What thirteen this year? I have way more than thirteen this year month. Wow. At first, when I heard Vaughn's claim of three murders a month, I thought Vaughan was again contradicting himself, because earlier he said he'd only killed thirteen women in Gary that year. But then I remembered he also said he'd killed men as well, and people out of state, so he's not necessarily being inconsistent here. Still, there's something about his tone that makes me think he's embellishing his story. The investigation was just beginning, though. The next day, officers continued their interrogation, and the next night Vaughn led them to even more victims. On October twenty, two, days after Vaughan's arrest and the discovery of bodies and abandoned home, two press conferences were held. My name is Karen Freeman Wilson. I'm Mayor of the City of Gary, Indiana. We are here to discuss the apprehension of a suspect who was in the custom of the Hammond Police Department. This initially started with a murder in the city of Hammond at Motel six. The Hammond Police Department began an investigation which led them to a suspect. They began questioning him and learned that there were additional victims, and he led them to the bodies of those victims. Has there been any indication on how many victims may be out there at this point, we are unsure of the number. As of last night, he was continuing to lead police to the bodies of victims as he made any statements that they're all here. In GARYA I mean, I know the one. We believe there may be people in other parts of Northwest Indian to be a little bit lord. The second press conference was held by the Hammond Police Chief good afternoon. As a result of our investigation, it is believed that the suspect is a registered sex offender in the state of Texas, a forty three year old resident of Gary by the name of Darren Van. The investigations of at least six are ongoing. It is possible that investigation will lead to more victims, so we have to be careful about what we say at this point. So I'll take at least a couple of time. We're dealing with police. It could go back as far as twenty years based on some statements we have and that's yet to be coaberative. Ham And Police had found exactly what Hardgrive described in this letter as serial killer, strangling women and Gary crimes going back to the nineties and women's bodies left in abandoned billldings. A television production company called me and they said, had you heard about Gary? And I said what? And they told me all about the arrest of Mr Van. He said he had been active going back to the nineties and took them to the scenes of abandoned buildings in Gary, Indiana, where they recovered six previously unknown murder victims. So something I think about sometimes is was there something I could have done better? Because they weren't even looking and seven women died after two thousand ten, I at least knew that there was a serial killer active in Gary. Eventually, Vaughan was charged with murdering seven women and Jones, Christine Williams, Suna Billingsley, Tanya Gatwin, Tracy Martin, Tiera Beatty, and Africa Hardy. But none of these seven victims were in hargross list. Hard group had generated his list back in and the seven murders that von had confess us too weren't cold cases. They were all recent murders committed in the last year. Some of the victims hadn't even been reported missing. This was one of the aspects of the case that confused me when I first learned about it. Vaughan had only been charged for these recent murders, but according to the press conference held shortly after Vaughan's arrest, Vaughan had alluded to crimes going back twenty years and also In a since deleted Facebook post, Hammond's mayor wrote that Vaughan had admitted to quote a couple of homicides in Hammond back in ninety four, and based on those statements, Hargrove became convinced that Vaughan is responsible for at least some of the murders his algorithm identified. How convinced are you that this is the work of Van or another serial killer? And kind of what what makes you think that? Well, first of all, that's what he told Hammond police, that he had been active going back to the mid nineties, and I would take him out his word that he was responsible for some of these women who were found in abandoned buildings. I think that's his them all, but I don't have proof. When I started researching the case and speaking to Hargrove, only a tiny trickle of information had leaked out about Von's crimes. To try to avoid biasing a jury, the judge put a gag order on the case, preventing the lawyers involved, law enforcement or politicians from discussing it publicly, and the trial faced delay after delay. So for years, no one in the public, not even Hargrove, knew the extent of Vaughan's crimes, or even what exactly Vaughan had confessed to. Vaughan pled guilty to the seven murders, but in a highly unusual move, the judge kept the gag order in place after the trial ended, even though Vaughan didn't seem interested in appealing the case. I'd never heard of this happening before, and I began to wonder if there was more to the story, something Lake County was trying to cover up, but I also didn't want to jump to conclusions. Yeah, it's interesting, So, yeah, there there's a couple of statements in this press conference with the police chief where it alludes to crimes that could go back as far as twenty years. Then they kind of put a gang order during the trial that then justified not releasing information about his confession, even though the case is now closed. So I'm still kind of in the in the process of trying to get some of that information. But you know, it almost feels like maybe they did find some stuff and want to just sweep it under the rug. I think that they were very paranoid about making a reversible error. I couldn't tell you more than that, I really don't know. What does that mean, fear of reversible error, that maybe something about the way les confession was obtained would be improper, yeah, or um speculation that he's responsible for other murders beyond the step for which he was convicted. I don't know. I don't understand. Why do you have any theories as to why no attempt has been made to link than to any of these other murders, at least not to my knowledge. My working theory is because you warned them about it, and if it came out that indeed he was responsible for them, that that could politically embarrassing that. I mean, that's that's kind of just what in my head. But I have no idea how people actually make these kinds of decisions. No, that was the conversation I had with hard Grow before I got my hands on Vond's confessions. So after him and sent me the interrogations and police reports, I started combing through the hours of audio and hundreds of pages of documents. I was looking for any evidence that Vaughan might be responsible for the crimes on Hargrow's list, But also as I read and listened, I was trying to figure out whether Von's confessions were even credible. The Hammond Police Department had sent me twelve hours if Darren Vaughn's recorded confessions, as well as dozens of interviews with Vaughn's relatives and the friends and family of Vaughn's victims. As I listened through them, I was especially curious to find out what the Hammond Mayor had been referring to when he said Vaughn had confessed to quote a couple of homicides and Hammond in But I also wanted to know how much I should trust Vaughan in the first place. And as I kept listening through his interrogation, some of his claims just sounded bizarre or grandiose. To try to put vaughn story into context, I went back and re listened to an interview I've done a couple of months earlier. We created Darren. Darren at age six, was taken from his mother put in even a worse situation. This is Goeko Cossage, one of the public defenders who was assigned to Vaughan's case. And then my name is pronounced Goeko Cossage. It's like crotch itch, but it's costage um. When I got your email. You know, you told me that the gag order was still in place. So I'm curious kind of like, what can you talk about? What can't you talk about? Well, I think specifically I can certainly talk about anything from the public record, and I can also probably just kind of generically tell you a little bit about Darren's background without getting into too many specifics. To say the least Costage doesn't mince words. You have to understand Darren Van was the product of his fourteen year old mother being raped by the landlord. Cost It said that when Von's mother gave birth to him in nineteen seventy one, she was just fourteen years old. She had three more daughters after that in very short order. So this woman who was completely unequipped to probably have a pet, had four children. When Vaughan was six, the Department of Family and Children put him into foster care. For good five six years. He was passed around through foster homes. Almost in every foster home he was mistreated, and then an eight two, he got placed at Thelma Marshall. The Thelma Marshall Children's Home was a residential institution for foster kids. They had I think it was sixteen boys, sixteen girls. Eight of the boys were small and the girls were small. Eight to the boys were teenagers, eight of the girls were teenagers. They would go to neighborhood schools. They would just stay at the home. The basketball court there, and he had stuff down in the basement as far as a ping pong table or in a pool table. In the bedrooms were upstairs, in the kitchen was upstairs. According to Vaughan, things might have looked fine if you visited during the day, but after dark it turned into a nightmare. The adults would leave at five o'clock and at night they would be left with the counselors who were and they would go down in his hellhole of the basement and they would have gladiator games where they would have the kids square off and have to fight each other. Darren told us when he was being disciplined, they would put him in a completely dark room with the dog that he would have to climb on the pool table and be up on the pool table pretty much all night long, with his dog running around the outside of the pool table barking at him to get at him. When Von described his childhood to Detective Ford, he didn't mention the years he'd spent living with the foster families at all, but Vaughan said his time at the Thelma marshal Um was formative. Where did you live as a kid that you remember besides the boy's homes? That's all that you know? That's all I remember that somebody had to tell me family history when I came home because I didn't like nobody to okay. I was hitting people with objects, so they had to come over with some reason for Okay, So you were, you were violent even as a young young kid. What you're saying put to be an environment where I had to be valid. So okay, So due to this is that way you were originally taken? No, I was. I was a kid. I had a violent streeting me as a young young kid. But when you go to the homes you deal with people. Is in there for a criminal activity? What year do you think you've got? How old do you think you are when you went to the homes? I can tell you that's the only place I remember is being home. Like when I get depressed, I go there. I sit outside of it really still today because my home it's not only home I've ever known. That's insane. Well, what did you go when? I understand what you're saying, but like it's where I was made. Vaughn said that shortly after coming to film and Marshall, one of the teenagers at the home started targeting him. What did he do to mess with you? You know, I'm trying to turn him into a girl. Okay, So he was actually a predator. He's trying to break and we don't really call them predators. Y'all call them predators. We don't call them predators. What would you call him? He's just what he is. That's why terror. Everybody is what they is. Everybody has some kind of busing thing. But Vaughan says, one of the other kids, an eighteen year old, he went by big Ee, found out about the team that was messing with. Vaughn wanted to older kids older than you go to Obhi and being his homeies. Gentleman, I remember it's Timo missing. So the nailed him in home? Yeah? Are we always asked jumping going on? There's always something going on in the home. And then he came up missing later right, it was ever found? When you say he's missing, when I mean was he killed? Ya? Oh? Yeah? He was killed. It was coming, It was coming. Fawn says that Big E was a gangster disciple at g D, a member of the nationwide gang that had its nerve center in nearby Chicago, and after saving Vaughan, BIGI recruited him to join the gang. Remember Drew Elementary School. Biggie's hit Massy. It's like, make sure you looked after because you're always gonna be going somewhere doing something for somebody. You might be the best guy right now, really best guy. How come he had one of the best codes of honor. I've never seeing him break a g D rule. He's a really good guy. As long as you do funk around where he believed in, he was perfectly safe. I remember he was a star on the Roosevelt basketball squad. But you quit, guess some kind of trouble, okay. Joining the Gangster Disciples was a multi step process. The first step, getting jumped in meant getting beat up by the other members of the gang. And I got jumped and for real elementary schools, do you remember you're jumping for reading? Really busted arm messed up? Remember all that. Yeah. Vaughn says that before long he was spending more time with the gang than he did in school, and his new recruits got further initiated into the gang. They would be asked to commit crimes, crimes that grew more and more violent. Now, you said when you first became a g D that stuff. You had an incident where you killed the first person that you ever killed, right, and what made you kill him? That's part of all being blessed in Chicago? What does it mean to be blessed? You put on the books, you can always call for get support if you need it. You kind of like an official or member your official. Remember, if you're not the own book, you're not really a member. You're just sing you agg did you kill somebody specific to get blessed in? I mean, I hear who they told me to kill, and I really don't know who. World didn't care, so they just gave me an assignment. Right, But it wasn't enough for a recruit just to kill someone. It was also how they acted after they'd done the deed. Van brought this up with Officer Mickey the night he was arrested. Now that the kids ever not want to do it, you who have a choice, So like when the kids do it for the first time, do they flip out, like do you come from them? Or you break down too much? If you're getting rid of black kills, that's always been a gang thing. They can't take no chance. And some of you spell in the bank, bill in the vein for some keys y'all think are like random ers. They're not random ers. Ideas something they can live with. It started talking and start had to be get rid of the gang that Von has been talking about. The Gangster Disciples or g DS, was formed in Chicago in nineteen four. The Gangster Disciples were founded by Larry Hoover. At the time, he was serving a life sentence in an Illinois prison for murder, but using coded messages, he ran the gang's drug dealing and prostitution rackets from behind bars for decades. Hoover created what he called the sixteen Rules of proper behavior for the Disciples. These rules included silence about gang business. They'd say, nothing will hurt the duck but its own bill. Other rules prohibited homosexual rape, using addictive drugs, and stealing from other gangster disciples. These sixteen rules were to be followed strictly. If rules were by related gang leaders would order punishments to be dealt out by gang enforcers. The punishments could range from beatings to death. Vaughn says he was taught how to kill by the gang and became one of the gangs enforcers. Von's lawyer, Cossage, says that as a public defender in Lake County, Indiana, he's had many clients and gangs. You can't even imagine, imagine what they went through in their lives. You know, you can go ahead and talk about all these gang manners and all these shootings and until you you really break it down. You know, these kids are eight nine years old and they live in these neighborhoods where they're getting harassed and either they're gonna keep getting picked on and keep getting beat up, or they're gonna join a game, and they grow into these gangs, and these gangs become their only family, and they do what they're told. What never sees us to amaze me. You know, they give you the Latin King Manifesto or the Gangster Disciple Rules, whatever the hell they have, and like the first page, first page says, I will never cooperate with the police. I will never give evidence to the police, or stay us to the police, that may implicate a brother. But the sons of bitches on the very top, when they get busted within forty eight hours, they are singing like the loudest damn canaries you've ever heard, to save their asses. They're telling them about murders they ordered, who did them, to save their asses. And the guys on the bottom never figure that out, never figure out, but they're gonna get sold out by the guys on the top. Fons lawyers wanted more information about fons early life and gang involvement, so they tried to find out more information about Big E. He was challenging though, because Von didn't know Big EA's real name. We really really wanted to track him down. We thought at one time it was someone who played basketball and one of the local high schools there, and he was on on the bench on one of the state champ bionship teams, but that ended up falling by the wayside. It wasn't him. We never couldn't find him. The police were also interested in finding Big E to verify Von's story and to investigate the early murders Vaughan had mentioned. They asked Von's half brother Reginald about it. Reginald new big e by a slightly different name. Okay, his friend Big talk about him, a big white girl in the homes gather him big whit him big white being bad. But nobody in my family knows being white. Nobody's ever seen big white. You know what I'm saying. Come on, then it's not plausible? And what is a fictional character? Because I dug further into Vaughan's confessions, it was not at all this story I was expecting. But I did discover or what I suspect is the reason why authorities wanted to keep this case quiet for so long. Next time on algorithm, be it from the organic injury or something he had convinced himself. There were episodes in Darren's life that he remembered completely different than what we had incredible evidence for. All went back out of control again. I never made it back un Once you I don't know how to play with y'all, y'all don't have the same or once you start killing again. Now when you say abuse of like verbally, abuse of physically, I don't recall all the different actually with all her y'all probably caught me years ago this episode was written and produced by me ben Kiebrick 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. K Ali, Trevor Young, and Josh Thane for their help and notes, and thanks for listening. The story is only going to keep getting crazier and soon I'm going to need you all to help me solve some of the mysteries regarding this case. Please help spread the word about this podcast, especially if you have any friends in Indiana, Illinois, or Texas. I hope that through this podcast we can shed some light on some really important issues and maybe even bring justice and closure to additional victims. If you do have any information about Big E, Daryn Vaughan, where crimes that you think might be related, or if you just have questions you want addressed on the podcast, please call and leave me a voicemail with your contact information at eight eight five zero one three three zero nine. That's eight eight five year one three three zero nine, or you can also reach out to me on Twitter. I'm at ben Underscore Keybrick. That's b E N Underscore k U E b R I c H. Thanks