Illinois Man Guilty of Murdering Wife, Kids in 2007

JOLIET, Ill. (AP) - It took five years to get to the case to trial and five weeks to get through all the testimony. But jurors took only 50 minutes to find 37-year-old Christopher Vaughn guilty of killing his family.

Jurors on Thursday convicted the suburban Chicago computer specialist of fatally shooting his wife and three school-age children during what he told them was a road trip to a water park in 2007.

Vaughn slaughtered his family because he saw them as obstacles to his dream of starting a new life subsisting in the Canadian wilderness, prosecutors told jurors before they withdrew to deliberate.

Vaughn displayed no emotion as their verdict was read. Sitting nearby, his wife's sister smiled and cried quietly, and family members later embraced and wept in a courtroom hall.

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