Editor's note: This is part of continued coverage of this week's preliminary hearing in State of Idaho vs. Stacey James Wondra.
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Detective: 'Let's give him back'
Michael Vaughan's parents left the courtroom during today's preliminary hearing while listening to videos of Stacey Wondra recounting in detail what allegedly happened to their son on July 27, 2021. After a lunch recess, Brandi and Tyler Vaughan came back visibly shaken but committed to staying and learning more about their child.
There were several hours of interviews from Nov. 10 and Nov. 11 between Wondra and detectives, including Juanita Kelleher from Fruitland Police Department who was on the witness stand today. The videos started shortly after she took the stand as a witness and played until after 5 p.m.
According to the footage, Wondra asked to speak to detectives while incarcerated in Washington County Jail for an unrelated federal gun crime. He was mirandized before the interviews proceeded. He signed papers agreeing that he understood his rights in speaking to detectives without a lawyer present. He said he wanted to talk to them in order to get the same deal he heard was allegedly offered to his wife, Sarah Wondra, regarding Michael's disappearance.
Wondra told detectives that before Michael disappeared Sarah and Lucienne were scheming about a way to make money by selling sex through Snapchat.
From there, what he said happened with Michael was a story that changed frequently.
Wondra repeatedly said it infuriated him when they came home with the child.
"There are four things you don't f*#$ with in my life: friends, family, my friend's kids or food," he said, adding he would be furious if someone did that to his child.
After multiple times of telling the story about Michael being duct-taped and crying for his mom, Wondra began throwing up.
Kelleher encouraged him saying, "Sometimes, things we hold in have a deep effect on us physically. It's a big release."
Initially he told detectives he never saw Michael or what was done to him, but later changed his story. He said he had seen Lucienne and Sarah bring him into the house, with Sarah holding him tightly to try to stop him from wiggling around. He also originally stated he never saw Michael being duct-taped, then later said the boy was taped on his mouth, hands and feet and that he saw him on the couch, then on the floor and at some point in a duffel bag.
At first he said the duffel bag was taken to Kuna then later said Sarah and Lucienne took him to Ontario to sell him. Detectives pressed him on the differing details and he ultimately said Lucienne said he knew more human trafficking people in Ontario and that night Lucienne and Sarah were talking about it.
"If I had to put $150 on that, that's exactly what I would say, that he got sold to someone in Ontario," Wondra said.
He alleged that after Sarah and Lucienne were gone briefly, Sarah came back with a "a couple thousand dollars" sticking out of her wallet, but wouldn't talk about it or what happened.
Sometime after Michael was abducted, Wondra says the four of them talked about corroborating their stories, "making sure we are on the same page."
Attempts to have Wondra call Sarah from a phone that wasn't the jail to try to draw out a confession that night didn't work — the calls went to voicemail.
Kelleher worked at building trust with Wondra, trying to get him to say what happened to Michael, including what may have happened to him if he died. She said sometimes people regret what happens and go to areas to kind of punish themself.
"Where do you go to punish yourself," she asked Wondra.
He mentioned various fishing spots and said they went to church to pray about Michael.
Kelleher asked Wondra if Michael was buried at Blacks Bridge.
"I don't know where he was buried," he responded.
Kelleher coaxed him saying that she wanted to know where Michael was.
"That is the biggest thing I can give back to their family," she said.
She told Wondra that she heard from Brandi that the family got a Christmas tree and was getting ready to decorate it but they wanted Michael there.
"Let's give him back to her," Kelleher said.
She told him that although there was no changing the past, they could change the future.
"Even if we can't save him — If we can get Michael back, you are going to save them," she named each of his immediate family members, then said: "Because right now they are dying. His daddy can't go out of the house without people accusing him of killing his baby. He can't even breathe."
"This time when we go through, tell us the complete story. Only the truth," Kelleher told Wondra at the top of an interview the second day.
As with the first day, he was read his rights and signed papers agreeing to them.
In the series of videos from Nov. 11, 2022, Wondra explained how Shurtliff and Lucienne ended up living with the Wondras, saying it was part of a love triangle with his wife.
He repeated the story from the day before that Sarah and Lucienne kidnapped Michael, but this time said Shurtliff was involved, too.
He described Michael's face and hair. He said he could see the terror in his eyes and that Michael was crying loudly for his mom and being told to shut up by Sarah and Lucienne.
He alleged Sarah was "acting crazy" and he didn't try to stop them because he didn't want to "be a victim of death."
He repeated the story of Michael being taken to be trafficked in Ontario, but Kelleher said she didn't believe him and later he said he didn't believe Michael went to Ontario with Sara and Lucienne.
Wondra said when he went to Kuna with Sarah and Shurtliff he believed Michael was alive in the back of the truck in the duffel bag. When detectives asked how, he said he could hear noise like a muffled sound of distress.
Wondra told detectives he believed Michael was left at Shurtliff's mom's house in Kuna because she was out of town at the time. He said Sarah and Shurtliff went back to Kuna the next day "to take care of what they started," claiming they had left Michael there in a spare room overnight.
Detectives repeatedly urged Wondra to come forward with information about where Michael was buried, saying if he helped them they would be on his side because he did the right thing.
Eventually Wondra said he thought Michael was buried in a plastic bag "pretty close to the back yard by the porch area" of the Wondra's home. He said Sarah told him she buried him there.
He said he was told the following day that Michael had died by suffocation, possibly while at the house in Kuna. He said Sarah told him it was an accident.
When Kelleher asked why they took Michael, he said that Sarah told him she was trying to appease him with a kid.
"She knew I wanted a kid but that's not how I wanted a kid," he said.
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