the case. if the detectives had not asked him to remove his clothing, we could never have convicted him of a crime. he definitely would be walking free today. there was a break-in. and a murder. >> i think my dad's been shot. >> it looked like an execution. >> my first thought was, this was a hit. >> until a closer look at the forensic evidence revealed the truth. >> that was definitely a staged scene. one of the best defense lawyers in san antonio, texas, was leslie bond. >> leslie was a workaholic, if you know anything about guys trying to reach that status of professionalism, leslie was a perfectionist, he really was.

>> not surprisingly, as a defense attorney, vaughan's practice also included problem clients. >> he did have clients involved in the drug trade. he did have clients that identified themselves with different, like, organized crime groups. >> on the night of november 10th, 1998, leslie's wife was working the night shift as a nurse at the local hospital. leslie and his two sons were home that night. around 1:30 a.m., 16-year-old brian said he heard a loud bang coming from his father's bedroom. when he tried to get in, he discovered the door was locked. >> he hears some more alarming noises in the nature of gurgling or breathing, he can't get into his dad's room. and that concerns him. >> in a panic, brian called 911.

>> this is 911, what is your emergency. >> i think my dad's been shot. >> what do you mean? >> about 1:30, a shot went out and upstairs, the door's locked. >> have you heard from him? >> a shot rang out in the room. i cannot get in the bedroom. the door's lock. >> after the call, brian took his 11-year-old brother to his neighbor's house. >> he indicated it might have been somebody in the house, that's why he was getting his brother out to make sure his brother didn't get hurt. >> when paramedics arrived, they broke down the bedroom door and found leslie vaughan dead. there was a single gunshot wound to his head. there was a large limestone rock on the bedroom floor and a broken window. the killer's apparent point of entry. >> french doors opened to a balcony. and one of the doors had a very

large gaping hole in it, someone had thrown rocks through the doors. and the size of the glass could accommodate a grown person walking through that opening. >> i was pretty sure we were dealing with a murder scene. >> there was a spend shell casing on the floor. and the spent bullet was pound in the pillow under vaughan's head. >> bullet hole would probably indicate a smith & wesson semi automatic 9 millimeter handgun. >> but the motive was unclear. >> the television was still on. there was no indication of drawers open, somebody ransacked, searching for something, when it be jewelry, money. so there was no indication at all of the burglary. >> leslie vaughan was just 44 years old. >> my first thought was, this was a hit. >> just a day earlier, a federal

prosecutor overheard vaughan say he fear head would be targeted for violence. that's sometimes the risk you take when you lose a case for a client who happens to be a drug dealer. >> what went through my mind, maybe it was a disgruntled client. >> homicide detective alfred donley broke the news to leslie's wife. >> i made a lot of notifications, the definite initial shock. then it's how did it happen? and she never, ever asked that. >> and they found another surprise on the 911 call. [ male announcer ] away...

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find your away. for a dealer and the rv that's right for you, visit gorving.com. at leslie vaughn's funeral, prosecutors came together with felons and drug dealers to mourn his death. >> you had these grown men by society's standards they were thugs, but they were actually reduced to tears because leslie vaughn was in that box, about to be put in the ground.

>> the vaughn family told police they were getting harassing telephone calls in the weeks before the murder. >> the family would pick the phone up and nobody would say anything. they were just dead air. >> unfortunately, phone records couldn't determine the origin of the calls. for investigators, the first task was to eliminate the victim's wife, madelyn, as a possible suspect. hospital records confirmed she was working on the night of the murder and had never left the premises. >> madeline was -- she was grieving. she was stunned. she was in shock. she was all the things that you would expect her to be. >> and, remember, i showed you the pictures of leslie and madeline and they looked real happy. does that look like a picture of somebody knocking each other out? i mean, that's what i saw. >> on the night of the murder, as a matter of routine, police swabbed brian vaughn's hands for gunpowder residue, since he was in the house when the crime occurred. >> these are the small micro scopic particles that are left

behind when a gun is fired. within a 24-hour period, it is very likely that i will be able to find gunshot residue. >> but under the scanning electron microscope magnified up to 10,000 times, the tests on brian's hands were negative. >> investigators suspected the killer somehow climbed up to a second-floor balcony, broke through the french doors and then shot vaughn in the head with a 9 millimeter gun. the balcony was about 15 feet from the ground. >> this is a balcony without access to the ground level. there's no stairway and no other way to access that balcony except through those doors. >> i think someone could have scaled that balcony. i would have to say someone who did that would have to have been pretty fit, and in pretty good shape. i don't think it would be an easy thing to do necessarily, but it could be done.

>> but when investigators looked at the dirt below the balcony, they couldn't find any evidence of a ladder or foot impression, despite three days of constant rain. >> how did this person get up here? how did this person climb up here and get up to the second floor of this wooden deck and gain entrance to this residence? >> if the ground had been disturbed by heavy footprints or ladder or some sort of equipment, it should have shown up in its soil. >> and investigators felt it would have been impossible to throw the rock from the yard. it weighed close to 10 pounds. >> that person had to be very strong to be able to throw that rock from the bottom floor and make it go through that glass. >> we found no evidence there was any activity or anybody walking around back there, no evidence of it. >> and investigators found another inconsistency. there was broken glass all over the bedroom floor and all over leslie vaughn's body as well. >> the rock that was thrown through that window didn't even phase him.

it didn't even wake him up. the obvious conclusion you have to draw from that is the guy was probably dead already. >> toxicology tests found no drugs or alcohol in leslie vaughn's system. so there was no evidence he was unconscious before he was killed. next, investigators sent the rock to the forensic lab for testing. >> i talked to a scientist and asked him if there was a process which he planned to use to attempt to raise these latent prints? >> the process is called super glue fuming. heated super blue produces fumes that adhere to a fingerprint, and the add he's is greater than fingerprint powder. >> you want to preserve anything on that rock as far as latent prints and fingerprints and want to make sure there's no way that, by using a brush, it's going to come off. >> unfortunately, the surface of the rock was too jagged.

the test was unsuccessful. then investigators found an inconsistency in brian vaughn's story. brian called 911 to report the shooting at 1:46 a.m. >> what's your last name? >> vaughn. is there anybody else there with you? >> i took my brother down the street to the neighbor's house. >> brian took his brother to the neighbor's house 20 minutes earlier. at 1:24. >> brian told the floyds that he had already placed a 911 call and that he was going back to the house to wait for the police. >> when i asked both mr. and mrs. floyd what time it was yankees they both told me it was exactly 1:24 a.m., according to this clock that they had in the bedroom. >> brian arierchd at the floyds' house at 1:24 a.m., did not call

911 until 1:46. >> what was brian doing for these 20 minutes?

there were only three people in the house on the night of leslie vaughn's murder. the victim, and his two sons. a background check revealed 16-year-old brian had a previous arrest. >> he got into an argument with

one of the security guards there at the bowling alley, who actually was an off-duty bexar county sheriff's deputy. in that altercation, he ended up striking this deputy and, in fact, fleeing and evading from the scene. those were pending charges at the time leslie was murdered. >> investigators also learned brian's car caught on fire three months before his father's murder. the origin was suspicious. >> there was an emergency call the vehicle was totaled and had to be put out. there was some question whether or not brian was responsible for starting that fire or being there when the fire started. >> whether leslie vaughn suspected this or not is unclear. but he offered to buy brian a used car to replace the one ruined in the fire. apparently brian wanted a new one. a car salesman told police he witnessed a heated argument between the two on the afternoon of the murder.

>> his academic grades were poor, which was the reason his father wouldn't buy him a car in the first place. >> according to brian's younger brother, chris, the argument continued until they got home, up until the early evening hours of the night of the murder. according to chris, brian retaliated by threatening to quit his high school basketball team, relinquishing any chance of a college scholarship. >> in chris' statement, he said there was a heated exchange between him and his father in brian vaughn's bedroom and this occurred about 11:30 at night. >> investigators dusted the entire bedroom for fingerprints and found no foreign prints, only those of family members. on the french door, with the broken window, investigators found only one set of prints. brian's. >> to have your own prints in your own house is not that significant.

but given the fact we have this story about what happens and the door is really clean otherwise, it's just one more piece to the puzzle. >> investigators found shards of glass in the hallway outside the bedroom leading towards the bathroom. it was easy to see it was from the killer. >> there's some trace evidence, transfer blood and tissue to a wall right next to the door that exits the bedroom and that's significant. >> we followed the glass shards to the bathroom, and then inside the bathroom, we found an additional glass shard. and then we found two black hairs in the sink area. >> all of the hairs from that bathroom were sent to the forensic lab for analysis. >> these hairs had a very dense pigmentation pattern. they contained overall characteristics of what one would conclude as being a negroid hair. >> finally, investigators

listened to the entire conversation between brian and the 911 operator on the night of the murder. brian said his father's bedroom door was locked. but he told the operator one small detail that only the killer would know. >> i think my dad's been shot. i'm calling him and no answer. he's bleeding around the mouth area. >> did you go in the bedroom? >> i can't. the door's locked. >> how do you know he's bleeding from the mouth area? >> a shot rang out from the bedroom. >> you told me that you cannot get into the bedroom, right? >> the door is locked. >> how do you know he is bleeding from the mouth? >> i don't know that. >> there's no way that brian vaughn would have known that his dad was shot if the door was locked and he could not gain entry. >> the biggest evidence against brian vaughn was brian vaughn.

>> investigators suspected brian used a 9 millimeter gun from his father's own collection. >> we believe, from talking to his friends and his office manager, he would have had a gun in his nightside table. on the night of the murder, no gun was found there. we understood he has had 9 millimeter guns in the past as well and leslie was killed with a 9 millimeter. the gun was, in this case, never found. >> finally, investigators interviewed the only other person inside the house at the time of the murder, brian's younger brother, chris. >> we asked chris, would brian kill your dad? and chris answered, i don't know. we asked him, would brian -- could brian kill your dad? i don't know. he's very athletic but i don't know if he could. would he kill your dad? i don't know. which is an unusual response opposed to, no, he wouldn't do it, no, he couldn't do it, no, he would never do it. >> brian was arrested and charged with his father's murder.

but would the jury convict on so little evidence?

three months before leslie vaughn's murder, prosecutors believe his son, brian, may have set fire to his car as a ploy to get a new one.

but his father refused, offering to buy him a used car instead. apparently, they fought about this and other issues like his grades in school and how he was jeopardizing his chances for an athletic scholarship to college. according to chris vaughn, the two argued until close to 11:30 on the night of the murder. prosecutors believe brian waited until his father went to sleep. then, woke his little brother and took him to the neighbor's house. he told his neighbor that he heard a noise from his father's bedroom and it might have been a gunshot. he said he already called 911. but that was a lie. prosecutors believe he used the time to return home and shoot his father in the head.

finally called 911. the call was full of inconsistencies. >> he's all bleeding around his mouth area. >> did you go inside the bedroom? >> i can't. the door is locked. >> so how do you know he is bleeding from the mouth area? >> in january of 2000, brian

vaughn went on trial for the murder of his father, and he was tried as an adult. >> i don't think that you can be in your right mind to pull off something as horrendous as that was if you were in your right mind. >> the defense said an intruder committed the murder. but the lack of mud on the balcony outside the bedroom made it clear that the shooter came from inside the house. and brian's fingerprints were the only ones on the broken french door. brian also lied about the 911 call and clearly knew information only the killer would know. the jury found brian vaughn guilty. >> would the injury assess the punishment of the defendant, brian vaughn, confinement of 33 years. >> he'll be eligible for parole in 2017. >> this is a kid that probably

would have figured out a way to do well enough in school to graduate from high school and probably would have had a college career playing basketball. and instead, he's spending his life in jail. >> few people can imagine a child killing a parent. but the evidence at the scene and evidence missing from the scene clearly showed what happened. >> forensics played a big role in this, but not in the normal sense. the lack of it, in some ways, was kind of compelling. >> it is something he probably just thought of either days before or that night, just planned it, and -- but he slipped. and he wasn't able to cover his tracks. >> he provided all the necessary pieces to convict him. in fact, he provided evidence that was so strong you could not find him not guilty.

>> it takes days and weeks of investigation, okay, it takes lives that you destroy and you don't realize that when you're pulling the trigger. once you pull that trigger, you can't take that bullet back. happening right now, a huge winter storm. pounding millions, schools cancelled. planes grounded. this is a commuting nightmare. snow, sleet, freezing rain all coming down at this minute. looks like it's going to stick around. chad myers is tracking that. four people arrested in the death of philip seymour hoffman. the very latest on this investigation. good morning, everyone. welcome to this snowy early start. i'm john berylen. >> and i'm christine romans, it's 5:00 a.m. in the