Christmas Day 1996

Laverna, Texas

Patty Vaughn, a 32-year-old mother of three, vanishes without a trace, and her van is found

abandoned by the side of the road the following day. According to a strange husband, J.R. Vaughn,

patty had stormed out of the house following a heated argument, and J.R. raises some eyebrows by

immediately filing for divorce. Cases of patty's blood are found inside her van and house,

and seem to indicate that she was a victim of foul play. While J.R. becomes the main person

of interest, there is not enough evidence to file charges against him, and patty's body

is never found. After that, the trail went cold.

Hello everyone and welcome to our latest episode of The Trail Went Cold. I'm your host

Robin Warner, and we've got an unsolved missing persons case to cover today, the 1996

disappearance of patty Vaughn. Throughout the month of December, our podcast is going to be

covering cold cases which took place around Christmas time, and this particular episode is the

tragic story of a mother who went missing on Christmas Day. If you're a fan of the true crime

TV show disappeared, you might have seen the episode they did about this case several years ago,

and sadly, this type of story is all too common. We have a woman who was in the middle of an

unhappy marriage and had recently separated from her husband, but just as she was discovering

happiness again with another man, patty vanished without a trace. Of course, suspicion instantly

turned towards patty's estranged husband, J.R. Vaughn, but without a body or enough direct evidence

to implicate him, J.R. was able to attain custody of their three children and move away.

Well, the solution to this case might seem cut and dried on the surface. There have been some

interesting developments over the years, including DNA evidence which seems to point towards multiple

...