Jurors deliberated for less than an hour Thursday before convicting a suburban Chicago man of fatally shooting his wife and three children during what he told them was a road trip to a water park.
Christopher Vaughn shot his family, including one of his daughters as she clutched a stuffed animal, because he saw them as obstacles to his dream of starting a new, isolated life in the Canadian wilderness, prosecutors told jurors before they withdrew to deliberate.
Vaughn hunched forward as jurors re-entered the Joliet courtroom, but the 37-year-old computer specialist displayed no visible emotion as their verdict was read. Sitting nearby, his wife's sister smiled and cried quietly, and family members later wept as they fell into each other's arms in a courtroom hall.
This man should be killed this minute! He is very heartless!! How dare him see his family members as obsacles!!!