Christmas Special: The Disappearance of Patty Vaughan

hello everybody welcome back to another brand new episode of the casual criminalist i as always i'm your host simon in this one merry christmas everybody i'm recording this in november but we record these things ahead of time so you get them at uh times that are relevant rather than me so i'm going to be feeling rather christmasy in november you're going to be feeling rather christmassy around christmas this is a big script written by callum what we do here is i will look into something today is the disappearance of patty vaughan i'm gonna read through this script you're gonna come along with me i'm gonna add some comments if i feel like it and uh let's just jump in shall we this is all about i think i said this already the disappearance of paddy vaughn [Music] christmas is coming have you noticed by this point we've been suffering through mariah carey's sugary sweet whaling every time we visited the shops about six weeks so by my reckoning that means it's just another few days until the main event itself uh callum who writes this is also british i don't know about you guys but uh that that song is just everywhere around christmas and it makes me slightly sad because it's just yeah sugary sweet anyway enough of being a grinch it's a day for coming together as a family for splashing sickening amounts of cash and something to do with a guy called jesus i'm told well that depends on your beliefs although i guess if you say look i'm not religious and i celebrate chris everyone celebrates obviously not everyone celebrates christmas but a large proportion of people in europe and america and i guess other places in the world celebrate christmas i'm not sure i really got anything to do with jesus anymore at least for me whether you're a follower or jc or not there's a good chance you'll be having a family get together on his birthday and depending on your family dynamics that'll be a blessing or a curse the christmas dinner table can either be an altar of togetherness or a battlefield for settling all the years repressed grudges my personal my experiences i don't know i quite like my family we normally have a good time on christmas we have a long meal and we talk about all sorts of stuff and then we fight about politics but all in good spirits you know uh but no matter what kind of dysfunction your family unit suffers from not to say that my family unit doesn't have any dysfunction because it does you can count yourself lucky in one respect nobody's gonna die right i mean you might feel inclined to strangle your uncle when he starts ranting about politics after one too many sheries but you wouldn't actually go through through with it probably apparently though some murderously inclined individuals can't even suspend their violent ambitions during the season of goodwill they turn up at xmas with knives in ha and guns in hand rather than presents and candy canes which brings us to the case of patty vaughan a mother of three in texas who went missing under mysterious circumstances on christmas day 1996. i'm warning you today's story is a world away from the usual miracle on 34th street you might want to have a glass of mulled wine on a hand or eggnog or whatever weird stuff americans drink i feel like we don't really drink do we drink eggnog in the uk i don't live in the uk anymore and i feel really out of touch um i thought that was an american thing but uh it doesn't really matter all that now i'm regretting is that because it's november rather than christmas when you're listening to this i'm just having coffee instead of mulled wine this could be kind of fun if i was drinking wine another another channel of mine is sponsored by a company called bright sellers who who ship out boxes of awesome wine like based on your you know wine preferences come on bright sellers get on the casual criminalist train and we'll drink while doing these they could become substantially worse what are we talking about can you imagine the rambles that i would go on if i was drinking i already rambled too much uh let's crack on setting the scene it's christmas eve 1996 and with an imaginary drone shot we're panning high over the town of lavernia texas about half an hour east of san antonio all of that means nothing to me i mean i've been to san antonio but still i don't know where it is in texas i guess it's somewhere in the middle who really knows it's a small place a few main roads with pockets of housing leading off all surrounded by sprawling miles of pasture and woodland yes this is texas in the city park you can still see the lights of the christmas tree towering over the central pavilion and the glistening of the slowly melting sledding run made with imported snow to give southern kids the taste of a proper white christmas does that really happen wow some families are still milling about here we can see them putting the finishing touches on miniature snowmen as the evening starts to darken but of the thousands or so people who call this place home most already tucked away inside having dinner with loved ones this is a deeply religious part of the united states after all and it's a place where family is everything if you don't have the whole family tree crammed inside someone's dining room it's not really christmas time at all one such family is just sitting down as our imaginary drone drops down hovers by their window callum you have missed your calling as a screenwriter i'm afraid this is dis all people you know most people are just listening to this as a podcast some people watching on youtube are probably watching my face being like simon your production value could be higher couldn't it mate get some drones go to wherever this place was lavernia or whatever do some shots but i won't okay this is definitely illegal nowadays but it's the 90s and i don't think any drone legislation has been written yet so relax also back in the 90s there were no drones if you wanted a shot like a drone you had to run a helicopter and a camera crew and all sorts of crazy stuff as long as nobody gets naked we're not breaking any laws all right then anyway inside we see a table set with heaped plates of all the christmas fair sat along one side is a woman early thirties blonde hair styled into a perm this is patty vaughan by her side is gary an ex-boyfriend with whom she's recently fired up the old flame that's gonna be fun for christmas dinner who did you bring patty oh i bought my old boyfriend who he recently got back together with and i don't know someone's gonna kill someone so i'm also speculating that it's it's to be a bad time this is the first time she's ever introduced him to her family and by the looks of things it's going really well i spoke too soon apparently he's good with patty's children who has sat at the kids table with their cousins her sisters barbara jenny and kathy seemed to like him too as does their mother patsy wallace but most importantly for all of them patty looks happy this is the best christmas gift they could have ever dreamed of because for too many holidays just like this one they've had to watch her cry for that they had jr to thank this got dark and i get the feeling it's going to get a whole lot darker because this is the casual criminalist at some point someone's going to get murdered j.r was patty's estranged husband full name jerry ray vaughan despite having a name fit for a country music career i was trying to think of a good anecdote i was like oh what does he sound like what he's but i'm not quick enough fortunately callum is quicker he also has time to think about these things when he writes it he actually made his living as a construction contractor he wasn't a bad looking guy with his slicked back hair and black moustache but he's not the but he wasn't the best looking in the world either a young patty must have seen something in him they met just a few years after patty graduated high school in okinawa wait isn't okinawa in japan and got married in 1985 in san antonio over the next five years the couple moved around a lot with stints in maine georgia and virginia before settling down in lavernia along the way they had three kids together a daughter then two sons patti doted on her kids and did everything possible to give them a happy childhood a little sister jenny later told reporters she was the kind of mother who did everything for her children she made them clothes she made curtains for the house she did everything even for me she was like a second mom to me oh and callum you've started using the past tense she was the kind of mother like we say this is the casual criminalist somebody is getting murdered and it seems likely that it's going to be oh well she disappears that was that was spoiled in the title by the time the vaughn settled down in lavernia they had the perfect church-going nuclear family image a hard-working blue collar dad musically talented housewife mother and three beautiful kids filling their house with noise but as is often the case with small town suburban bliss the joy was just surface level over the course of their relationship jr had become progressively more and more controlling of patti she was prohibited from working outside their home and he was known for dishing out demeaning comments sounds like a bit of a [ __ ] there were even rumors circulating that he had thrown a mayonnaise jar across the room in anger when a family member was visiting by the time the mid-90s rolled around several people had noticed some suspicious bruises on patty's body okay i mean throwing the mayonnaise jar across the room in anger doesn't seem as bad as like dishing out demeaning comments to your wife i've probably broken something in anger or like frustration but i don't demean my wife throughout 1996 the tensions between the couple rose to a boiling point and patty eventually accepted the advice which her loved ones have been giving her for years now this guy was no good the relationship had to end surprisingly the next episode was relatively amicable patty and jr agreed to a six-month trial separation in october he went off to find his own place in san antonio where patty stayed with in the house with the kids after 11 years of stress as her relationship declined into misery patty was born anew she returned to work at a local company quinney electric and rediscovered much of the woman she lost in those tumultuous years of married life this just six months trial separation paddy ain't coming back by this point it was safe to assume that she was thoroughly enjoying the trial separation callum and i same page and she wanted to purchase the full lifetime subscription boy there are so many good options for sponsors come on sponsors like right now i could be like like a trial subscription to the great courses plus that one's for free the great courses plus they sponsor some of my other channels pretty great sponsor actually if anyone was in doubt uh over whether the divorce was really on the cards well along came gary he and patty had dated many years before and just happened to run into each other about a month after a separation as it turned out he himself had just finished up a divorce so they would have plenty to talk about yeah that'd be great what do you have in common we're both divorced the basis of a solid relationship i don't know maybe it is i don't know what i'm talking about i've never been divorced and that basically brings us that's really weird i'm like i say i've never been divorced and i haven't but i also think i'm far too young to have been divorced and then i realize i'm 33 and i'm way older than i think so uh and then basically brings us back to christmas eve 1996 patty and gary are sitting side by side surrounded by loved ones with empty plates in front of them it looks like the next chapter in their lives is said to be far happier than the one that came before but of course separations are never quite as clean and as simple when there are kids involved with this of course being the first christmas since the split patty wanted to give her kids a semblance of normality even if it meant putting up with an embitter jr for her the kids came first no question asked good for you uh i agree that's the way you should do things so the plan was that jr would come around to the house to celebrate with them they'd swap presents have some lunch and then patty would take them off to her sister kathy's house for a big family dinner in the evening however there would be some empty seats at the gathering because patty never made it there at all to hear jr tell it they had been bickering throughout the entire day until patty decided to take off in a car at around 6 30 p.m leaving her kids at home patty's sisters later told reporters that that sort of thing was completely out of character for her to be apart from her kids on christmas day was simply unthinkable but nonetheless here they were patty was nowhere to be found i get the feeling like j.r might be lying uh allegedly patty was nowhere to be found and the last person to have seen her was jr sure other people had tried to visit that day but patty refused to see them instead they were met by j.r who told them his soon-to-be ex-wife was holed up sick inside her bedroom so suspicious anyway again this was completely out of character for the family-oriented patty judging by what her family had said about her character over the years nothing short of a full-on heart attack would have prevented her from put from putting herself together and coming out to greet them maybe she really was having some sort of nervous breakdown at any rate they knew she wasn't having a particularly merry christmas a family member had called in the morning to check in and patty answered it was clear that she had been crying she said that her and jr had been arguing since he arrived he could be heard in the background telling her to get off the phone that kind of toxic environment doesn't make for a happy holiday which is why jr decided it was best to send the kids off to his sister's place for the evening there they stayed the night blissfully unaware that they already had already seen their mother for the very last time a long christmas dinner went by with no word from patty which got her family worried on the 26th of december one of her cousins filed a missing persons report with the sheriff's office and a search began interesting the search began so quickly i always thought maybe i've just been watching too much csi but it's like when an adult goes missing normally they're like the adult just decide like when a kid goes missing it's like red alert or amber alert whatever they call it in the u.s we're going to find that missing kid when it's an adult that goes to see us like they probably just left to be honest so well good for the police going after uh going after them right away nice search begins the police started out as they always do in these cases by putting out a call with a description of patty's appearance and vehicle a light blue 1991 dodge caravan i should mention for our british listeners i don't mean caravan as in the mobile holiday home sense oh okay i definitely assumed she was in like a caravan you know what people go on holiday then it's just the name of a model of minivan okay and if patty why would you call it a caravan then and if patty really had taken off in her minivan at 6 30 on christmas day the authorities assumed she couldn't have gotten very far within the 16 or so hours that had passed the day after christmas the dodge was spotted along the side of the highway near loop 1604 in south bexar county it was patti's boss from the electric company who spotted the car because it was located just five miles from their office and only 15 miles from our home strangest of all he had told the police that he had driven the same road about 90 minutes earlier the car hadn't been there implying that someone had parked it there in the brief interim with the idea of her skipping town out of the question and her family raising concerns over the abusive character of j.r it now looked increasingly likely that the bexar county pd were no longer dealing with a simple missing person's case the kind that is usually cleared up when the person rolls up at a friend's house but rather they were dealing with a highly suspicious disappearance so let's take stock of what we know so far there's an estranged husband and a new boyfriend on the scene an abandoned vehicle but no sign of patty anywhere to be found no reports of violence or gunshots but a suspicious set of circumstances on the day for sure in cases like this suspicion naturally falls the next word is going to be husband upon the husband i've seen enough csi is always the husband sometimes it's the wife but it was too early in the going it was too early going to make bold claims especially with two competing men involved don't go jumping the gun and accusing j.r just yet no but definitely look into him first allegedly 100 if i'm a cop i'll be like look jr you got to come down the station to ask us answer some questions son sure he sounds like a piece of work but there might be a twist in store to absolve him we have to figure out where patty took off to that night and why first let's act like proper detectives all right callum if we have to i'm just happy to blame j.r immediately but if you insist we will look at the evidence there was plenty for the police to chew on in those early days on the 27th of december they were told about the abandoned dodge patty's family had gone out to verify it was hers the day before and now deputies ramirez and johnson of the bexar county pd were the ones assigned to follow up their report from that day offered up some pretty worrying suggestions the first apparent abnormality was and we quote here a dark colored stain on the bottom portion of the rear center seat johnson leaned into the minivan to take a closer look resting his knees on the flooring between the front seats and the door when he stood up he noticed dark patches on his trousers the carpeting inside was damp as if someone had recently scrubbed it clean needless to say there were no fingerprints inside what's more when they lifted out the seat itself they noticed some of the cupholders on the doors had water pulled inside them someone has wiped that car down and cleaned it and look things are not looking good for paddy at this point when they removed a plastic covering from one of the seats ramirez noticed what he described as some red and brown stained condensation under the larger this is a quote under the larger piece of plastic that holds down the seat belt strap in case you're still not caught on to what that red and brown staining was the report uh concludes that chief forensic serologist lonnie d ginsberg positively identified human blood from the area under the rear seat of the van we weren't in any doubt about that callum this is the casual criminalist if it's red and it's brown it is blood this wasn't the only anomaly inside the pan was a pile of men's clothing most significantly a jumpsuit of the kind worn by plumbers and mechanics rjr that's you it was embroidered with the issues oh jm jm which to my keen detective eye clearly implicates james mcavoy julianne moore and john malkovich as potential suspects i blame john malkovich i don't know anything about the girl but the investigators were somehow oblivious to the hollywood abductor angle and continued gathering clues the final strange detail was the flat tire suggesting the outside possibility that a heavily bleeding patty had run over a nail cleaned her car and then hitchhiked the rest of the way if i was in court and i was the lawyer defending this guy look all you've got to get is reasonable doubt that is not it but a that's ridiculous callum and i same page and b there was no puncture mark the tire had been intentionally deflated as if someone had wanted to nudge the investigators towards that unlikely interpretation of events so someone's tried to clean this up badly they've tried to stage the scene badly someone's now we this has been titled the disappearance of patty vaughan so i'm guessing that maybe we don't know what happened to her has it been called the murder of patty vaughn or something like that so i'm like i don't know this person seems really sloppy come on police let's see why you didn't catch them all of this painted a grim picture patty was at the very least severely injured probably worse someone had made active efforts to hide that fact and in all seriousness who did the jumpsuit belong to probably not john malkovich i will see you in court now that they expected a body to turn up sometime soon police could turn their attention towards these suspects gary was a relative unknown to patty's family strange in a region of small towns where everyone knew everyone else whatever instinctive country folk doubt that might have inspired the officers was quickly assailed by a stellar alibi i mean it was christmas day after all most people had at least half a dozen people who can attest to their whereabouts gary was no different he had been spending time with his own family and he had only been out of sight long enough to slip off to the bathroom if he had pulled off a kidnapping and cover-up within those tiny windows of opportunities he was a true criminal mastermind but and we know the person who did this crime is not but surely a master criminal wouldn't go straight to the police station to take part in a lie detector test that's just what good old gary did with the intent of clearing himself as quickly as possible so the police could focus their search where it mattered he's a good bloke gary i've always liked him all right callum we don't i don't really know much about him also lie detectors don't hold up in court right and also i heard that you you know if you know what you're doing you can trick a lie detector test someone said if you uh if you clench your butt cheeks when you're answering the question apparently it throws it off i don't know if that's true but apparently lie detectors are not you know definitely not 100 and despite only meeting them once over the following days gary won the trust of the family too jenny later recounted we didn't really know him we only really got to know him while we were searching for patty he was out there searching with the rest of us except jr he never came out to help look for his own wife allegedly that's because j.r knows where she is her body is maybe that's right jr couldn't even be bothered to join the crowds combing through the fields and brooks for a sign of patty barbara even took a stack of flies over to him so that he and the kids could pass them out when she returned a few days later to grab some personal effects for the search dogs she noticed the flyers were still there untouched and look j.r we've already established that you're a dick um one thing is like yeah you don't want to look for your wife because you don't like her anymore because you got divorced fine but how about looking for your kid's mom jr that'd be good jr was faking tasks very suspicious uh that's a fact which modern parlance would call highly sus oh i shouldn't try and sound cool callum it doesn't suit me with suitor number one eliminated from suspicion the cops had all the more reason to suspect number two jr he didn't exactly do much to win over public opinion which almost seems like a counter-intuitive point in his favor surely if you were guilty you wouldn't act so damn guilty that is fair like if i was in jail's position i definitely murdered my wife and dear more people i'd be like no no no i got it we got to go look for her let's try all of the places that i haven't hidden the body uh i mean he actually filed for divorce on the 26th the same day patty's family were just starting to figure out that she probably wasn't coming home dude sure a christmas day bust up might do you look so guilty you you're trying to look guilty it's like some reverse psychology thing sure a same-day christmas bust-up might have been enough to tip him in favor of full separation but surely he could have waited until his wife showed up alive first interviews also revealed that jr had already told his landlord that he would be moving out in december perhaps expecting a reconciliation or maybe not because barbara revealed that patty had asked her about how to get a restraining order while they cleaned up dinner on christmas eve despite all these shady circumstances jr started off by cooperating with the police he told his story of how patty and he were fighting all day still he'd found out that about her new boyfriend on the 13th of december and this was the first opportunity he had to really hash it out with her arguing is not illegal though so there was nothing to directly implicate him in foul play just yet but it all adds up doesn't it jr the arguing the craziness the fact that you're a massive [ __ ] judgment would have to be withheld until they could search patty's house now legally occupied by jr motive whose name was on all the paperwork they would also need to get a hold of dna from all the parties involved to compare against samples found in the car so jl welcomed deputies ramirez and johnson with open arms and gave them the samples they needed eager to clear his name of any wrongdoing and set them on the trail of the real culprit oh no he didn't oh i mean i get it like but they're going to come back with warrants and they're going to take that stuff anyway you're just making yourself look mad guilty jr jerry ray vaughan instead started to batten down the hatches he lawyered up and refused to give dna samples for himself or his children unless the deputies could provide a warrant okay so now we can go ahead and start accusing jr sorry for the delay callum i've been accusing jr since page two yes with his sister and personal attack dog marion by his side jr hunkered down at his home that he once lauded over as a domestic despot throwing mayonnaise all over the place the children were just six seven and nine years old at the time old enough to generally know what was going on but not nearly old enough to understand the full implications of this new arrangement you're living with your murderer dad allegedly it'd be really bad if we end this and it turns out jr was totally innocent or something like that i i don't read these ahead in case you couldn't tell the poor kids couldn't even relax for a few days to let it all sink in because they would have to be ferried out of the house once again it was time to search the place somehow j.r and maryland were allowed to stay in the house during the whole thing and the investigators suspected that they were conspiring to interfere with the forensic team's efforts marilyn in particular refused to leave the technicians to work in peace i'd like to think that the technicians in this case they would be aware of this and they would just ignore her and get on with their jobs why might that be you ask well let's take a look at the police report dated the 29th of december 1996. the forensic technicians who attended the scene used a substance called luminol i know all about this because of csi for those unfamiliar with this nifty bit of chemical wizardry luminol is a substance which radiates a blue light when it comes into contact with an oxidizing agent i believe unless csi lied to me that you spray the luminal on and then you shine a light on where you've sprayed and if it's come into contact with blood it glows all blue and i remember this because there was an episode of csi where the dude i think his name was greg he was demonstrating like how it works and he sprayed on too much and it corrupted the dna of the blood and so the guy got away with murder or something poor greg so what's an oxidizing agent well blood is a pretty good one so much so that it will cause luminal to light right up with its signature luminescent glow even if only small traces are present say for example after a crime scene has been cleaned up leaving only amounts of blood invisible to the human eye look j.r you should have set the car on fire really i mean it was a badly staged crime scene it can also reveal hidden footprints drag marks and clean up patterns in a crime scene painting a clearer picture of what might have happened there needless to say by this time the detectives got into full swing patty's house was glowing like a full moon party in thailand that's not to say that the place had been totally coated in blood substances like bleach can also cause luminal to shine and that accounted for much of the patterns in the house although in the car or whatever in the house it's like yeah what did you find well lots of blood and more bleach what do you think that bleach was used for guys clearly someone had been very busy doing a bit of post-christmas cleaning i wonder who it was jr the greatest reactions were in the bathroom the bathtub itself and the bedroom floor follow-up tests revealed that patty's blood did account for much of the staining and that it was even found in significant amounts on a mop and bucket inside the garage it's pretty clear that whoever cleaned up the house was not just dealing with an overturned gravy boat indeed so we have our smoking gun a sodden mop perhaps not the most glamorous piece of evidence but it should do the trick i mean this couldn't be any clearer if jr had sent the detectives a card with a message merry christmas i did it so why do i have the feeling that things aren't going to wrap up in a nice neat ending because if they did this wouldn't be that interesting of an episode also i wouldn't have a big sick stack of pages yet to go through that's how i know and now you guys know when interviewed in 2007 barb revealed that the house wasn't actually ever sealed off as a crime scene even after all of those damning tests came back from the lab there wasn't a single strip of police tape across any of the doorways and jr was allowed to continue living in the place more disturbingly he was allowed to bring the kids back in why we can hear you shouting why even with so much circumstantial evidence were the police reluctant to point the finger well there are a few reasons bob attributes it to mismanagement in the investigation you see the town of la vienna is located in wilson county but patty's car was found in bexar county this led to a lot of tossing back and forth between the two jurisdictions as well as some involvement by the texas rangers resulting in miscommunication all sorts of administrative impediments which you really don't need in the early days of a disappearance case yeah i feel this is just something i know from movies but every time there's a crime scene someone from another agency shows up and starts shouting that this is my jurisdiction or something like that and apparently it's not good for solving cases the second reason was that this happened in texas every country and indeed every state has its own approach to murder investigation in texas things mostly revolve around the mantra no body no crime really texas really because getting rid of a body is impossible there have only been a few limited murder convictions in the state without a body to back up the case meaning that circumstantial evidence just doesn't hold as much weight there as in other parts of the world and so the investigation avenue labeled jr obviously did it boulevard was seen as a dead end if that doesn't if that sounds counterintuitive to you well wait until you hear this the warrant which the detectives acquired for dna samples from jr and the kids even stated in words carrying legal weight that enough evidence had been gathered to surmise that a murder had been committed in the house don't clench your jaw too much it is ridiculous so where do we go from here i don't know i'd like to see going to a courtroom where jr ends up going to prison but i get the feeling that's not gonna happen because apparently in texas nobody no crime i feel like this is something jr would just shout at the police like no with a knowing smile like hey guys guess what nobody where's the body guys no body no crime no body no crime oh jr classic jr i think it's fair to say we haven't jumped to any conclusions but rather the conclusion has jumped at us like one of those fish which leaps right out of the water and into a fisherman's boat great we've caught a nice bit of dinner but we still haven't caught the culprit in lieu of a body there was little hope of any major progress so finding patty was the number one priority the usual procedure of combing through the surrounding woodland continued on but there were another few possibilities which patty's family believed would likely yield the devastating results that they half needed and half feared one was of course the family home why go to all the trouble of taking a body into the woods when there's a perfectly good burial lot out back i don't know because that's where i'd immediately look for the body if i was a policeman oh look there's freshly turned over soil in the garden in the shape of a body let's definitely look there not look there the other possibility was a little less conventional remember i told you that j.r was a contractor oh he buried her in the cement dinner oh no well have you ever seen a mafia movie i have callum and that's how i drew that conclusion at the time he was working on two different projects both of them schools oh no and he buried a body in a school allegedly oh no the closest to patty's home was natalia high school in the town of divine just short of 60 kilometers away at that site jr was in charge of pouring the concrete for the foundations this is i come on this guy come on really police really justice system unfortunately family would have to wait several years before either of these potential burial spots were investigated properly so we're going to have to share the frustration and wait a little while before we go snooping around in the meantime a word on the aftermath what did jr after seemingly getting away with murder go on to do i really hope it's not more murders but i sense it's more murders or at least more bad crimes well after staying in the house which he once shared with patty for a while longer he then moved out of town it must be pretty hard to go out and run errands when everyone in town is pretty convinced that you killed your wife his new home was down south near the border of mexico i don't want to slip into base of speculation here sorry callum i realized like the first eight pages all i've been doing is slipping into i wouldn't call it baseless but i would call it speculation or as i like to refer to it allegedly but i will say that if i were anticipating a body might soon be found i'd want to live awfully close to the mexican border although with that giant wall that trump has now completed not really he's not going to get very far of course he took the kids with him there was no legal basis which could force him to surrender custody so as much as it broke their hearts patty's family had to watch as their children disappeared from their lives although clearly a horrific and vindictive move her sister barbara actually saw a bit of twisted protectiveness in it she admits herself that her family weren't shy in calling j.r.jayar out why would you be imagine the rage of having to watch him walk around town with your niece and nephew knowing in your heart that what he had more than likely done so j.r chose to spare his kids all the gossip and animosity which now surrounded their little lives what a saint yeah jr just just i'm sorry why it's hard because it's like maybe you didn't do all this crime stuff i mean i mean come on but like you know what i'd feel bad if his kids were taken away would i no he went off without even as much as an explanation robbing the family of a further three loved ones since they were so young at the time j.r and his sisters particularly maryland were able to control the narrative and bring them onto the opposing side of what became an ongoing feud against patty's tribe years passed like this with the case not quite going cold but never really exactly warming up above tepid the family burned through piles of cash within the first year or so pooling their funds private investigators and they hope to catch that one key piece of evidence which would lead to justice and more importantly closure look this is texas apparently the one piece of evidence they need to find is her body which he's probably dealt with if he hasn't well he is an idiot he does seem very incompetent so maybe he hasn't destroyed the body now i know i caught your attention with the mention of the concrete foundations at the school you sure did callum it's too unique of a detail to just slip by so let's take a look it took five years before investigators decided that they had enough due cause to investigate the site bringing us forward to 2001 which for those keeping track that's four years from the christmas when the murder happened allegedly thankfully they didn't have to tear up the entire floor during class time because modern science offers some less invasive solutions oh can they scan into the concrete that's cool ground penetrate penetration radar can reveal anomalies in a solid substance which would allow officers to identify exactly where they needed to dig if anywhere now there are two somewhat conflicting accounts of what happened next depending on who you believed hear detective ruben aravela's talent they searched multiple times and found nothing worth following up on patty's aunt jane clabasa really i might be pronouncing that wrong or her name might be clabasa on the other hand claims that the uh claims that on abnormalities were found and they weren't allowed to continue looking into it further that seems a bit unlikely i'm going to go out on a limb and side with the investigators here me too often a family's drive to find their loved one can amplify any little bit of hope any minor piece of evidence which normally wouldn't even register at all that would account for the visions of another of patty's aunts kathy greiner who said she had vivid dreams that her little niece has buried under that school nothing to convince her otherwise yes uh cassie but unfortunately while we do have all of this evidence of circumstantial stuff your dreams and not evidence or anything we should go off uh in reality official records state that the concrete pouring was completed around four days before christmas the dates just don't quite align this is probably why likely took so long to pursue the angle in the first place and so time ticked on as it tends to do another four years of hurt another four years of not knowing just as things seemed to have gone totally quiet again jr pulled a stunt which ripped open the old scars he had patty legally declared dead in 2005. it has been nine years so you got to do it at some point right you can't just leave it open forever this meant he would be eligible to collect her life insurance money effect which drew a resounding hell no from the pro-patty clan they took him to court with a wrongful death lawsuit which prompted jayhard to tell the media that they were trying to get their hands on the cash themselves his best legal gambit was to roll out roll out his eldest britney who is now in her mid-teens she was there to tell the court what a fantastic father jr was despite her very presence suggesting the exact opposite this was the first time she had seen our aunts uncle and grandmother since her mother's death either following orders or unable to bear the stress she shielded her face from their side of the room yeah i mean she's been brainwashed into it or on the other hand if against all odds jr is innocent i don't think that i would want my if i was in jr's position and it turned out i was completely innocent and this was awesome big stitch up and mistake but my family or like my family-in-law were all accusing me of murdering my wife the whole time i'm not sure i would want my kids to see them either the judge took one look at the family circus setting up in front of him and decided that he wouldn't let a young girl be exploited in his courtroom for the sake of scoring a few sympathy point points he gave jr a telling off and had the girl sent out to the room and thankfully he also blocked the ex-husband's collection of the money too instead it went into a trust to be collected by the children when they came of age the lawsuit itself never reached a final conclusion however as patty's family chose to drop it out of fear that the financial burden on jr might have a negative impact on the kids well this is the result you would want right you wouldn't want the money for yourself assuming you're you know a good person you'd want it for the kids and it seems the judge set up a trust so that well that family don't have it jr doesn't have it the people who should have it habit that sounds like a win the patience and restraint of that decision must have been pretty superhuman so things fizzled out again and the family had to make do with waiting for leads to trickle in little by little then in 2008 the detectives of bear county received the cold case file from their neighboring jurisdiction and decided to take another run at it this time they specifically focused on the jumpsuit found inside the car was this piece of evidence relevant or just a ruse put there to throw them off the trail i mean an embroidered logo with someone's initials placed inside a crime scene is pretty conspicuous maybe too much so at any rate it should have received far more attention back in late 1996 than it did running through all the old evidence and statements the police managed to add a bit of life to the dying case they surmised in december 2008 that given the relatively short time between disappearance and investigation and the amount of cover-up which had been achieved the prime suspect couldn't have done it alone they identified three potential accomplices who may have helped in the disposal of the body however they weren't willing to identify them to the press as no arrests were planned at that point i think there's one person we can safely assume might have made that list yeah it's marilyn the sister for sure a certain sister yes of a suspected murderer who went out of her way to impede a team of forest forensic investigators hold that thought for a moment it'll soon become even more relevant we're jumping forward another four years to 2012. we're now firmly in the middle of the blu-ray era following a case which began on vhs thank thanks to callum for those 90s references making me feel old it's taken this long to discover one of the most crucial elements in the entire case ten years after he first looked inside the old dodge 1991 caravan abandoned off the freeway deputy ramirez ran over it with a tooth comb once again further analysis of the dna in patty's van revealed that mixed in among her own were traces of someone else's it belonged to a mystery woman who had in some way been involved in the disappearance of patty now ramirez obviously had a good idea who it might belong to it's the sisters that's what the smart money says and i've already dropped a hint heavily enough to crush you guess i'm not as smart as i thought calum but unfortunately to get a dna sample from the most likely suspect he would have to demonstrate probable cause something which he simply wasn't able to do at this point anyway that's not exactly new information we always suspected marilyn but it is a clear physical link which could implicate the alleged killer's alleged accomplice should a body then be found remember it's texas and we might yet have one last shot at finding it it's 2014 and finally the police are going to dig up the garden at patty's old home it really took this long we were scanning in the concrete before we looked in the garden by this point jr is of course long gone there's no one to demand a warrant or disrupt the dig even more significantly the investigators have a solid tip to go on a neighbor reported hearing equipment being moved around the garden on the 25th and 26th of december 1996. that dude's got a good memory he left the tip with the authority several times but this was somehow the first time anyone followed up on it really so back in the day they were like it seems like someone's burying something in let's definitely not look into that let's not look into that at all a team of texas rangers went along to the house accompanied by some fbi advisors together they dug up the area at the bottom of the lawn and they found nothing nothing but frustration are expecting more another person who shared that pessimism was jolene molenkov one of the vaughan's neighbors back in 1996 she was pretty scornful of the ranger's efforts which came along almost 18 years after the fact in her eyes there ever really was a body buried there it had long since been shifted too little too late absolutely agree with joanne on this one also j.r is of course long gone where did he go did he finally go to mexico i mean i guess if you know you've buried a body somewhere in the garden you're like yeah i'm you know at some point you're going to flee i'm sorry to tell you but our story doesn't go much further than that i'm afraid this is one of those cases in which the detectives seem to do most things right and which wasn't obstructed by any major mysteries for all intents and purposes the damn thing seemed solved but due to a few technicalities and a smidgen of red tape the whole thing faded out without any arrest ever being made two thousand hours of police time and no payoff the story is left without an ending which means that it's either still to come or to be forever left unfinished but if we can't have the story we want let's indulge in the story which the evidence seems to tell before i go any further i'll state that everything which follows is essentially just conjecture yeah really important with all of this stuff that we just restate that this is definitely most assuredly allegedly although jr's run off somewhere so i guess we don't have to worry about him but you know all of this is just callum's wild speculation which i'm probably gonna fully agree with with that little disclaimer out of the way here's the story of how a murder suspect jerry ray vaughan probably allegedly murdered his wife on christmas day 1996 j.r came around to the house of his estranged wife patty he greeted their three children with hugs and wished the merry christmas the performance of normality seemed to be starting off well after giving the kids their presents and seeing what else sandra brought them the adults took some time aside to talk the boys went out to play basketball while their daughter played with her new toys in the other room jr again callum you're missing missy you've missed your calling as a screenplay writer j.r had found out about patty's new boyfriend and he wasn't happy the shock was probably still quite fresh as he only discovered the fact less than two weeks before his wife had a boyfriend suddenly the idea that their separation was just temporary became a naive and humiliating fantasy of course for a man used to controlling his wife's life a major transgression like that couldn't go unanswered the discussion turned as it always had in the dying months of their relationship heated insults were hurled past grievances renewed maybe mayonnaise was held it was a mess much of it likely overheard by brittany who had already grown used to blocking it all out at some point early on in the whole thing the phone started ringing patty answered and was hit with a cheery merry christmas words with a bittersweet sting to them considering how little merriness was filling her home after a brief exchange she hangs up the phone and goes back to the argument trying to explain to j.r that it was all over the back and forth continued for who knows how long with the phone ringing on unanswered in the background it became clear that patty was no longer the kind to bend and bow to jr's commands she tells him that she's moving on that she wants to be with gary what happened next is a tale as old as time an alleged tale as old as time in a blind rage the scorned husband attacks his wife maybe with mayors he likely used a weapon which would leave enough blood for the search to later find the knife perhaps within a second it's over patty drops the floor bleeding out the phone rings again as the last few moments of patty's life slip by on the other end is gary calling to see how things are going he's worried about her because he knows what j.r is capable of but he never expected anything like this with a body lying dead in front of him jr panics he doesn't know what to do caught in that moment of come down in which a callous killer is reduced to a terrified child he calls his sister and he has her take the kids out of the house one of them contacts some other associates and has them help clean up the house and dispose of the body jl might be a [ __ ] but apparently he's got some great friends i cannot possibly imagine murdering anyone i i don't think there's a single friend i could call he'd be like yeah simon i'll help you dispose of a body and not because i don't have good friends but because i'd kind of expect my friends to call the police on me i'd probably call the police on my friends while waiting for his am i a bad friend while waiting for his help to arrive jl moves the body to the bathtub over the course of the next few anxious hours he has to turn friends and family away at the door with a bogus story eventually his morally questionable helpers arrive together they scrub every inch of the bathroom and the bedroom with bleach and drag the corpse of the victim out to her car as dinner time rolls around jr deals with all of the inquiries from concerned relatives telling them that patty won't be coming around for dinner because she's gone she's just taken off bye it's now well into the small house of the 26th and whoever's in charge of the disposal drives the body too well if i knew that would be calling the police not revealing here on this podcast sorry to disappoint you after getting rid of this crucial piece of evidence they scrub the car clean deflate a tire and leave it on the side of the freeway with that the physical practicalities were dealt with and all that was left to do was to set up some legal barricades and retreat into a post-murder life with full custody of the children the women who brought each of them into the world was gone jr had beat the system but faced a lifetime of knowing exactly what he had done who knows what kind of toll that can take on a person i hope it's a heavy one yeah i mean i couldn't do this i couldn't kill anyone because i'd just be living in like oh no i killed someone and they're gonna find out um and also because it's you know morally terrible uh but jl is a bit of a dick i think he probably was okay with it no matter how shoddy it might have all been allegedly carried out without a body there was nothing anyone could do to crack the case end of story and now we've got a bit of a rap this is this is sad i mean we never get to find out i guess you know a lot of crimes are not solved this is one of those times and now we've got to wrap up now again that's just all conjecture but come on you're with me aren't you yes callum we're with you we're definitely with you allegedly maybe a few details are off like perhaps j.r actually loaded patty into her car alive in an attempt to save her who knows not that it matters unless a major development comes along to break the case back open again it's unlikely we'll see it solved anytime soon all that's left is to look at where things stand in the present to see if there's any hope of a conclusion first of all what happened to jr well now he's living in colorado under a completely different name on account of all the media attention that was piling on his head and no we're not gonna dox him on the show this is the casual criminalist not the casual vigilante okay okay callum if you say so to add i like being the casual vigilante that could be a new podcast to add to the sadness of the whole affair none of the children have ever seen patty's side of the family since brittany was ushered out to the courtroom in 2005. by now they're not children they're all in their 30s some of patty's family suspect that they might actually hold the missing piece to the whole puzzle but as of yet none of them have come forward to reveal what happened on christmas day all those years ago britney was in the next room according to jail's police statements after all one of the family members attempted to contact her through myspace remember this took place back in the day but shortly after the message was sent her account was deactivated it seems that whatever petty's children think of the whole affair it's been coloured by decades of exposure of jr's side of the story but the families still haven't given up in their eyes it's not even about vengeance anymore patty's aunt has gone on the record saying that she wouldn't care if the culprit didn't spend a single night in jail their main goal is to find her remains and leia to rest with the proper funeral yeah but if they found out who did it that you know it'd be good to see him go to prison as jenny put it in a recent interview it's just devastating to lose my sister and to lose those children they were like my siblings we just want this nightmare to be over and even more than justice we just want to be able to lay her to rest we want to be at peace her sister barbara spent much of the 90s and early 2000s leading her own search for information with a website called findpattyvaun.com nowadays the url is dead with a 404 screen just the symbol of the family's withering hopes with patty's mother pushing 80 years old and suffering from cancer they hope now more than ever that a break might come soon which brings us to the final part of the show where we ask is there any chance that you at home might know something that can help the charlie project is a database of missing people across the usa and they describe patty as follows height five six to five seven weight 120 pounds distinguishing characteristics blonde hair green eyes patty's ears are pissed her maiden name is brightwell and her last main name may be spelled vaughn by some agencies so just a slightly different spelling of porn she has a small mole on her right side of her chin and an appendectomy scar on her abdomen if that description or anything else in the show rings any bells then contact the bexar county sheriff's office who are still in control of the cold case today perhaps my appeal isn't hitting home enough for you so i'll wrap up with the words of barbara in 2007 she sent out a message to patty's oldest child during a radio show and i think it's worth rebroadcasting it now 13 years later i'll read it i would tell brittany that we love her so much and her brothers rae and tyler and that her mother loved her more than life itself and would have done anything for her i promised her the last time i saw her that i would find her mother and i still mean that today best of luck we are rooting for you so there you have it a christmasy tale of murder and the merry perversion of justice it's by no means a cheery story to tell when you're sitting around the fireplace but but you didn't tune into the casual criminalist for that did you but it's an interesting case nonetheless while we wait to see if anything comes of it in the years ahead it's left to me to try and extract a non-depressing takeaway from all of it okay calib good luck with that one here goes it took paddy's family another 10 years before they could bear to celebrate christmas again it's not a good start callum so far it's just miserable when they were finally able to bear the emotional strain and come together they left an empty seat at the dinner table for her an altar to a memory dressed with cutlery and napkins but unlike on that unhappy christmas night in 1996 the empty seat wasn't a source of anxiety this time it actually brought them comfort because acknowledging the absence allowed them to hope wherever patty might be that ultimately she was at peace so i guess the next time you sit down with your family whether on christmas or not let's be thankful for the seats which are filled merry christmas that's a very nice ending you achieved it calum well done dismembered dismembered appendices number one during the first two years of the search a woman claiming to be a sidekick contacted patty's mother oh no i'm so skeptical anytime the sky psychics get involved oh god this woman went on to create a pretty grim and melancholy website to try and spread awareness but the forum page descended into into a vitriolic brawl between jails accusers and defenders and the whole thing was taken down people acting uncivil online surely not uh second despite the family bringing out national networks nbc fox cbs and abc within the first days of the whole affair they soon packed up and lost most of their interest why because the disappearance happened on the exact same day as that of six-year-old john bennett ramsay in colorado which is a much more famous case and possibly one we could cover here on the casual criminalist in the future if you would like if you're watching on youtube let me know in the comments below or um if you're watching on a podcast i haven't set up an email address for this show but i will because then you can write in and suggest things number three in february 1997 patty's mother did something which i'm sure a lot of others have imagined giving a go desperate for answers she barged into jail's home at 3 am and attacked him with a baseball bat she was charged with burglary and assault then released on a 50 000 bond all in all it was probably a small price price to pay for that satisfaction and that is where we end this christmas special of the casual criminalist i do hope you enjoyed it if you did if you're listening on youtube give this uh if you're watching on youtube give this a thumbs up if you're listening on podcasts wherever you get those please do leave us a review it really does make a big difference it gets this show into the earbuds of more people listening out there so that would be great and yeah just to reiterate have a very merry christmas i'll see you in the new [Music] year you

Channel: The Casual Criminalist

Views: 283,177

Keywords: true crime

Id: MEIVomtH2D8

Length: 54min 12sec (3252 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 12 2021