Cold Case Files - The Unluckiest Man

Episode Date: March 5, 2024

After four house fires, the death of his first wife and the near death of his second wife and child, John Veysey's "unluck" is up. Federal prosecutors finally take a closer look at the tally of tragedy stretching back for the better part of a decade and netting Veysey over $800,000 in insurance payouts. Sponsors: Hydrow: Head over to Hydrow.com and use code COLDCASE to save up to five hundred dollars! Progressive: Progressive.com  Rosetta Stone: Cold Case Files listeners can get Rosetta Stone’s lifetime membership for 50% off when you go to RosettaStone.com/coldcase Thrive Market: Go to ThriveMarket.com/coldcase for 30% off your first order, PLUS a free $60 gift! 

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and let's unravel these captivating stories together. Two fires in the same house. Now he's got another fire. Something's wrong. What he did for a living was defraud insurance companies. That was the incident. I didn't know my daughter was killed. From A&E, this is Cold for love in all the wrong places, such as the personal section of the local paper.

In the fall of 1992, her ad draws a response from a would-be Romeo named John Vasey. This is Betty DeBryan, Patricia's mother. Oh, yeah, he was ideal. He was a real Sir Galahad. He was the knight in shining armor. He was all those things. Patricia's father, Jerry DeBrian. She was so much in love,

and it was the first time we'd seen her truly happy. So you don't dispute this. The romance finds fertile soil and blossoms. On June 19, 1993, the couple marries with Patricia's two children in tow. They move to Galena, Illinois. The town itself is a throwback to a more romantic time and place. The happily ever afters, however, do not follow. Patricia's mother is among the first to notice. She wasn't forthcoming to me. She was holding something back to me, but I didn't know quite what.

A mother's instinct tells Betty DeBrian her daughter's marriage might be in trouble. Less than two years after the vows were read, those fears are made manifest, but not in a way anyone might have expected. Around 3.20 in the afternoon on May 15, 1995, near Galena, Illinois, River Ridge Elementary School lets out. Patricia Basie's 10-year-old daughter, Cassie, finds her stepfather, John Basie, waiting for her at the curb. He picked us up from school. We stopped at a few places. He stopped and got ice cream. And then he stopped at his work for a few minutes. And then we went back to my house.

When Cassie finally arrives home with her stepfather, she's surprised to see the shades drawn. John Basie unlocks the door, and Cassie runs in. She finds her mother lying face- up on the dining room floor. The first thought that occurred to me was that maybe she had hurt her back or something, so she laid down. But she did look discolored. The body looked discolored. I knew something was wrong, but I was trying to keep cool. John Basie calls 911. Minutes later, an ambulance arrives to take his wife to Galena

Stokes Hospital, where the 34-year-old woman is pronounced dead on arrival. An autopsy is scheduled for the next day. When they open up Patricia's body, they discover a congenital heart defect. Joe Davis County Detective Mike Ulrich is in attendance. Most of the blood vessels run on the outside of the heart. In Patricia's case, there's a vessel that ran through the inside of the muscle of the heart, and he indicated that in some people, when that vessel does go through there, just the pumping of the heart action can cause the heart to go into arrest. The pathologist rules that Patricia Vasey died from a sudden heart arrhythmia caused by the congenital heart defect. Patricia's family doesn't buy it.

Betty's family, my family, none of them has ever died from a heart attack. No one's even had a heart attack. There's just never been any history of heart attacks in our family. As for the grieving husband, John Vasey largely disappears until one winter morning nearly three years later. On January 14, 1988, in the small moments of night, the village of Cary, Illinois, sleeps when a call comes across a police radio.

911, what is your emergency? call comes across a police radio. 911, what is your emergency? There's a fire next door. What's the address in the? 342 High Road. Okay, so you're inside the house right now? Yes, there's wife and children in the house. Okay, stay on the line. A small home is ablaze

with a family believed to be trapped inside. Carrie's police and firefighters respond to the scene. Ed Fetzer and Andy Vieth are two of the first to arrive. A man came running out, and he came towards me, yelling that his family was still trapped inside the house. Then the thought in my mind was, OK, it's showtime. This is what we've been trained to do. It's time to get in there and get to work. While fire trucks begin to pour water on the blaze,

Veith and fellow fireman Brad De La Torre get on their hands and knees and crawl into the inferno looking for survivors. We made entry into the hallway. It was real high temperature. On our way down the hallway, we couldn't see anything in front of us. It was all by us. It was all by feel. It's kind of scary, but at that point when you know that somebody's trapped, all you

want to do is get to them and get them out. So your adrenaline kind of takes over. Unable to see because of the smoke, the two firefighters use the walls as their guide. At the end of one hallway, they find an open bedroom. Inside it, a woman facedown next to a bed. And we picked her up, and as soon as we picked her up, I said, here's a little guy. He was right underneath her. At which point I picked him up, and there was a window on the other side of the bedroom, so I made my way to the window. Captain Dennis Kranz is on a ladder outside the window.

Vieth hands the boy over. I noticed that the boy was laying limp. Until I got in the ambulance, I wasn't sure if the boy had passed away or what, but as soon as I opened the airway and the boy took a breath, that's the best sign you could get right there. Meanwhile, De La Torre and Vieth

carry the woman through the burning house and out the front door. She too is still breathing as her ambulance pulls away into the night. Cary Police Sergeant Ed Fetzer follows the ambulance in the squad car. With him is the boy's father and the woman's husband. His name? John Vasey. Later that morning, Jerry DeBryan is heading south on Interstate 355, listening to the morning news.

I'm going down the expressway and I'm listening to the news and they talk about a Christmas tree fire. They close the signal by saying it was the home of John Vasey. That's the morning I knew it was all bad, bad, bad. Jerry DeBrian pulls off the highway and calls his wife, Betty. They're concerned because they know something about their former son-in-law that the Cary authorities do not. This is John Vasey's fourth house fire in seven years. There was two fires in the same house in Twin Lakes. There was a fire in Galena. He collected insurance on all of those and now he's got another fire. Something's wrong.

That was the incident. I knew my daughter was killed. The DeBriens are spurred to action. Betty creates a fact sheet listing all the occurrences surrounding John Vasey, a number of suspicious fires, and the unexpected death of their daughter Patricia due to sudden heart failure. And I think we titled it, Is This Bad Luck or What? And we faxed that to every news media, every radio station, just hoping that we would get to somebody who would start looking at this differently. When I was young, I didn't have the opportunity to learn a new language. And now my daughter is learning Spanish in school. So I want to be able to keep up and learn with her. For someone like me, Rosetta Stone is a perfect tool to do exactly that. Rosetta Stone is the most trusted language

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I had a problem with the fact that we had a father outside of a burning home with his family inside. That struck me as unusual and odd. The uncomfortable feelings gather strength when Vasey's former in-laws contact D'Alelio and inform him that misfortune seems to follow John Vasey wherever he goes. Two fires in the same house in Twin Lakes. There was a fire in Galena. He collected insurance on all of those and now he's got another fire. How can this guy keep getting insurance? Something's wrong. Of course, I was making telephone calls to these jurisdictions to try to ascertain exactly when this occurred, how it occurred, and what the outcome was.

Was there an investigation? Was there an insurance payout? This is what DiLelio discovers. A 1991 fire damages Vasey's home in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin. He collected almost 200,000 and rebuilds. In September 1993, a natural gas explosion rips through the newly rebuilt home, injuring no one but destroying the house. Vasey collects over $350,000. In May of 1995, Patricia Vasey dies suddenly from what the coroner determines to be cardiac arrhythmia.

John Vasey collects just over $200,000 in insurance benefits. In December of 1996, Vasey's Galena home burns. The fire is ruled an accident and Vasey collects over $240,000. That brings DiLelio up to 1998 and the fire in Vasey's hometown of Cary that almost killed John's son, Little John, and his wife, Desiree. The fact that he had collected so much money,

I thought coincidental, impossible, impossible. With four fires and a suspicious death linked to Vasey, D'Alelio realizes he is in over his head and reaches out for help to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. On January 27th, ATF fire investigator Jack Maluli visits the most recent fire in Cary, Illinois. His job? Find the point of origin. Malouli begins in the Vacy's living room. And it was apparent to me that the living room had progressed to full room involvement. The term of art that we use is flashover. And looking at the burn patterns that were left in the room, I determined that the first fuel ignited and the substantial fuel that

led to the room going to flashover was in the corner of the living room. Malouli believes the most likely point of origin to be a large overstuffed chair found in the corner of Acy's living room. He tests his theory by placing an identical chair in a laboratory setting. If Malouli is right, flashovers should occur within minutes. When the chair is burning in the corner, the hot gas layer develops and begins to bank down,

and then flame goes across that layer, and then you can actually see the targets, the pieces of cardboard and wood, auto-ignite. They're just receiving so much radiant energy just traveling through the air down to the floor level that they burst into flames. And that's what happens during the process of flash over. The tests confirm Maluli's belief that the chair acted as a point of origin for the fire. With no smokers in the house and no electrical appliances near the chair to ignite it, it seems likely the fire was set.

That suspicion deepens when investigators find two smoke alarms in the house, both disabled. ATF investigators rule the case of the Cary fire not an accident, but arson. Meanwhile, Rondellelio accesses John Vasey's credit card statements. There, he finds an entry that shifts the investigation's focus from possible arson to attempted murder. One of the transactions on that bill showed a purchase from a business that sounded, or at least I felt was a chemical company bontech clayburg bontech kleebrig had previously been charged with selling ghb also known as the date rape drug one of their clients it appears had been john vacy atf special agent jane balkima presents the team's evolving theory of murder. Our theory was that John gave Desiree GHB,

the date rape drug, and basically knocked her out. And at some point after that he took her into the bedroom and put her in there with little John. And then at some point after that he started the fire. With the Cary fire now officially a criminal investigation, ATF widens its scope of interest to include all the other accidental fires involving Vasey. Piece by piece, they take each fire apart, looking through old photos for any hint of foul play. The more agents look, the more they find. In 1996, Vasey claimed his Galena home burned due to faulty wiring. ATF says that's impossible and concludes the fire was set most likely at a nearby sofa.

When I look at the photographs of the utility room, that room did not go to flash on. The adjacent room did go to flash on. And the only substantial fuel in that room was all the way across the other side of that room where the sofa was that's what it was ignited to drive the room to flash over in 1993 a natural gas leak caused an explosion inside vacy's home maluli agrees it was a gas leak caused by someone who intentionally ruptured the flux connectors. Somebody had intentionally flexed it back and forth, causing metal fatigue. And that's why it had cracks in the bottom side and there was cracks in the top side, 180 degrees apart. How can that happen accidentally?

Somebody had to intentionally move it back and forth until it starts to split and then stop. So it's going to flow gas out, mix in with air, and eventually cause an explosion. Cary in 1998, Galena in 1996, Twin Lakes in 1993. Three fires, all once classified as accidents, all now believed to have been set. Even as agents develop evidence, their suspect is on the move. John Basie is back in Galena, where there are fears he will bring more bad luck

into someone's life. A year and a half after the fire in Cary, Illinois, John Basie has yet another fiancée, and it appears yet another potential victim. We became aware that John had a new girlfriend. We also became aware that she basically fit the pattern of his previous victims. They had met through the personal ads in the newspaper. She was a divorced mother of two.

And we became concerned that she might become his next victim. ATF agents contacted the woman and shared Vasey's history and investigators' suspicions. Initially, she was in denial. She wasn't interested in hearing what we had to say. But she thought about it for a while, and then she recontacted us. Facey's new girlfriend shares with investigators an email from John, one that reads like a blueprint, culled from the remnants of his past.

Facey writes, What if something happened and you were incapacitated? Get two insurance policies, $250,000 each. Five to ten year term policies that are converted to whole or universal with accidental death benefits naming me the beneficiary. That way if something happened, which it's not going to, the children will be taken care of. To prevent John Basie from turning his latest girlfriend into his latest victim,

prosecutors swear out a warrant for his arrest. The charge is arson. The hope is that it matures into a case for murder. Cold Case Files is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Let's face it, sometimes multitasking can be overwhelming. Like when your favorite podcast is playing and the person next to you is talking and your car fan is blasting, all while you're trying to find the perfect parking spot. But then again, sometimes multitasking is easy, all while you're trying to find the perfect parking spot. But then again, sometimes multitasking is easy, like quoting with Progressive Insurance. They do the hard work of comparing rates so you can find a great rate that works for you,

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a house explosion in 1993, the death of his first wife in 1995, followed by another house fire in 1996, and the near death of his second wife and child in yet another house fire in 1996, and the near death of his second wife and child in yet another house fire in 1998. Buried in the rubble of all this chaos, federal prosecutor Pat Lang sees a foundation of criminal behavior. We charged an insurance fraud scheme because really what he did for a living

was defraud insurance companies. He did it different ways, through arson, through murder, but it was all to defraud the insurance company for proceeds. By tracking bank records, prosecutors uncover over 800,000 paid out in insurance claims over a three-year period. The name on the check? John Basie, a confidence man of the first order. This is former Assistant U.S. Attorney Lori Lightfoot. Every incident that resulted in

an insurance win-fall for John was preceded by a very severe financial crisis. Vesey worked very little throughout the 1990s. He earned most of his income, almost all of it, from insurance proceeds. An 18-count indictment lays bare the pattern of arson activity and the money it generated. Then prosecutors go one step further and take a second look at one accident in John Vasey's life where fire was not involved. The sudden heart failure suffered by his wife Patricia four years earlier, a death that netted Vasey more than $200,000 in life insurance proceeds. In the office of prosecutor Pat Lang is a timeline. It charts the final moments on the final day of Patricia Vasey's life.

With no physical evidence tying Vasey to his wife's death, Lang hopes this timeline might provide the hook upon which to hang his case. We figured this. If we can show that he left the house after she was already dead, there's only one person that could have killed her. Facey told investigators that on the day his wife died, he left the house somewhere in the neighborhood of 215 to pick up the kids from school. We have a neighbor though who actually notices him leave that day. And she says he's gone at most. It was not an hour. It was probably 45 minutes he was gone.

And we know when he gets back, he says he gets back about 3.40 or something like that. So we think he left closer to quarter to three maybe. Prosecutors then asked pathology experts if they can get an exact fix on the moment Patricia Vasey passed. When the first responders and the other EMTs arrived on the scene, there was already clear signs of rigor mortis. Luckily, the emergency personnel were very good at keeping notes about her skin temperature.

She was cold, and that was at 408. And through that kind of evidence, how cold she was, the lividity, the rigor, she had a stiff jaw and tongue. Our pathologist said that she was, the lividity, the rigor. She had a stiff jaw and tongue. Our pathologist said that she was dead two hours. Two hours, which would put Patricia's time of death at approximately 2 p.m., at least 45 minutes before John Vasey is believed to have left the house that afternoon.

Lange also asked the pathology team to review the old autopsy notes. Buried in the details, they find a small item that suggests the death scene might have been staged. One of the things he notes on the autopsy report is that she has a contusion above her eyebrow that occurred at death. He merely said that it happened when she collapsed. She fell and hit her head. The bruise is on Patricia Vasey's forehead, yet her daughter Cassie discovered Patricia lying flat on her back. When Cassie comes in the house, her mom is not on her face,

not crumpled forward, not on her side, but completely on her back. And she's not somewhere where she hit her head and fell backwards. She's laid out. You wouldn't expect to find a body that was perfectly laid out, almost like she's in a coffin, with her fingers just barely interlocking. That doesn't make sense. How does a woman who is lying flat on her back get a bruise on her forehead?

For prosecutors, there could only be one answer, and it leads to murder for money. It wasn't such a departure when you see that this is a guy who, in 1998, tried to kill a second wife in his own flesh and blood, his very young son, for money. In January of 2001, John Vasey goes to trial on 18 counts of fraud relating to the three separate arson schemes, including the Carrie fire, where the indictment states he attempted to kill

his wife and child for money. Federal prosecutors, however, did not charge Vasey with murdering his wife Patricia by inducing a heart attack. Instead, they rolled that allegation into the overall indictment for fraud. There was no federal murder statute that applied in our case. So many people make a big deal of, well, you didn't charge him with murder. We did, because in the fraud scheme, we said he intentionally killed his wife. And we told the jury that from the very beginning, that this case is about him murder killed his wife. And we told the jury that from the very beginning,

that this case is about him murdering his wife. After six weeks of trial, the jury returns a verdict of guilty on all counts. Eight months later, John Basie is sentenced to 110 years in federal prison. For Ron DeLelio, it was a rewarding resolution. I guess I was the fortunate one that all these years' worth of incidents and insurance claims and fraud and deception landed right on my lap.

I had no choice. I was driven to finding the answers. One question, however, was never answered. And that is how Patricia Vasey died. For Patricia's parents, the question of how is not nearly as important

as the simple fact that the man they believed killed their daughter is in jail for the rest of his life. We know he had something to do with it. We know that he did it.

Just knowing he's out of circulation, we don't want him to kill anybody else. We don't want any other family to go through this stuff. Cold Case Files is hosted by Marissa Pinson, produced by Jeff DeRay, and distributed by Podcast One. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and hosted by Bill Curtis. Check out more Cold Case Files at A&E TV dot com. Pluto TV is TV the way it should be, free. With over 300 channels, thousands of movies and TV shows, costing zeros of dollars. So if you want to watch shows like Ghost, The Walking Dead, CSI, Star Trek, or The Price is Right, well, The Price is Right, it's free. Hit movies like Braveheart, Sonic the Hedgehog, Anchorman, The Legend of Ron Burgundy, or Mean Girls won't cost you a thing because everything is free. All you have to do is download the app, which, by the way, is also free. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never.