She Made Them Use Buckets As Toilets The Story of Dennis “Boo” Vaughan Jr

She Made Them Use Buckets As Toilets The Story of Dennis “Boo” Vaughan Jr

Her kids had just recently been taken away from her, but it was the wake-up call that she finally needed to fix her life, and she did just that. However, her children were still left in a high-risk home instead, and it seemed like there was nothing she could do, no matter how hard she tried. That is, not until it was already too late for one of her children.

It happened very close to and around the same time that the Harmony Montgomery case that I covered happened, as well as the Elijah Lewis case that I have over on Patreon; that one happened in the same area as well, if you want to check that one out. But the reason why this one needs to get more attention is because this little boy still has not gotten justice, and there was only one adult around at the time of his death. So yeah, this is the story of Dennis Vaughan Jr.

Dennis Vaughan Jr. was born on July 11, 2014, in Laconia, New Hampshire, which is a town near Lake Winnipesaukee in eastern New Hampshire. Dennis’s mother was named Danielle Vaughan, and his father is Dennis Vaughan Sr. Having the same name as his dad, Dennis Jr. was often lovingly referred to as “Boo” instead. He was a silly, smart, and happy little boy who just loved eating pizza and watching Barney the Dinosaur, among other things. Boo also wanted to grow up to be a firefighter one day. He had two older siblings and one younger sibling.

Dennis’s mother, Danielle, had a tough upbringing. Her mother was abusive, and when Danielle was only 15, her mother, Sherry Connor, decided that she wanted to up and start a new life without her daughter, so she left her in the care of a 48-year-old man by the name of Dennis Vaughan Sr. and his wife at the time. Given that’s Dennis’s dad’s name, you can tell what happened next. Danielle and Dennis ended up becoming romantically involved, and only three years after Danielle was left in his care, she became pregnant. So, Danielle was a mother by the time she was 18. She and Dennis ended up getting married and having four children total. Over the years, Dennis Sr. had grown consistently more controlling and abusive, and he and Danielle started using heroin. Dennis Sr. was repeatedly arrested on drug charges, and then in 2016, police raided their home, all four children were removed from Danielle’s care, and he was sent to jail.

Boo was only three when he was removed from his mother’s care and placed into foster care along with his other siblings. But having her children taken from her did not make Danielle sink even lower. In fact, she decided it was time to get her life together. She was determined to get her children, whom she loved, back in her care. Danielle left her violent relationship and then kicked heroin. She also submitted to state-mandated drug tests to make sure that she was clean at all times. Danielle found stable housing on her own, and she then completed multiple mental health counseling programs as well as multiple substance abuse programs. But still, certain obstacles stood in Danielle’s way of getting her children back.

Unfortunately, there were disputes between Danielle and the children’s foster family, as they did not comply to give her her mandated calls and visits with her children, and this was impeding her from gathering all the documents that she needed to prove that she was a fit parent. Now, DCYF, who knew about the situation, did nothing for her. So, in 2017, Danielle went to the court and pleaded with them to ensure the cooperation of DCYF. So, in response, in June of 2017, the court urged DCYF to place the children in the care of Danielle’s mother, Sherry—yeah, that one. But the court also said that DCYF needed to consistently monitor them while they were living in Sherry’s home, as well as do a thorough check on her before they placed the children in her custody. Did they do either?

DCYF agreed with the courts and decided to place Boo, along with his three siblings, in his grandmother’s home. Now, this was only supposed to be until Danielle completed the requirements that were necessary to get the children back, and she’d already completed most of them. So, you figure it would be a very temporary situation, because Danielle was also reluctant to have her children there; she knew how her childhood was, but she had the hopes that her mother would not hurt her own grandkids.

In a preliminary evaluation of Sherry for guardianship—not even the second level, just the first level—preliminary DCYF deemed her unfit. They had received reports that Sherry associated with known drug dealers, drank alcohol regularly to the point of intoxication, frightened the children, hit Danielle, and one of Boo’s siblings even said that Sherry, his grandmother, would play with his penis when she got drunk. Okay, are you hearing all this? These children went into Sherry’s care. I kid you not. It’s unbelievable.

On July 10, 2017, only 12 days after Sherry had brought the children into her home, she went to the DCYF district office with three of the children in tow. She went in there complaining that she was not getting enough money for the children and that DCYF had dropped them off with nothing. Then, only two months after Sherry was given guardianship of Boo and his siblings, a report was filed with DCYF by police who had responded to a situation at a campground. Police had been called after several people had witnessed Sherry screaming at the then four-year-old Boo, grabbing him by his neck and face, and striking him several times. She then dragged him by the arm and threw him into a tent. Crying and screaming was heard by multiple people, which prompted them to call the authorities. At that point, four days after the campground incident, DCYF assigned a Child Protective Service worker to the case to have it further investigated, and an interview was done in Sherry’s home.

So, even though it seemed they might be doing their job properly, there were several issues with the visit that took place. First, the interviews of the children were done right in front of their grandmother, so they were not allowed to freely speak. And second, they had never contacted the police officer who had responded to the scene when this happened, so they didn’t have very much information about the actual situation. The report remained open until March of 2018, over eight months after it had been opened, and then it was closed and marked as “unfounded,” which means they found no reason to believe that there was any abuse occurring. Right.

In January of 2018, less than six months after the campground incident, DCYF filed with the courts to make Sherry the children’s legal guardian, and in March of 2018, the courts granted this request and made her the legal guardian of Boo and his siblings. Along with this, it was at Sherry’s discretion as to when Danielle would see her children. In April of 2018, Danielle contacted the Laconia Police Department because Sherry was not letting her see her children.

Between April 17 and April 30 of 2018, a staggering six reports were made. Six separate reports alleging abuse were filed by reporters throughout the children’s elementary school. A school nurse observed on one of Boo’s siblings multiple bruises and scratches to his arm, as well as bruising, scratching, and abrasions to his face. He also had a contusion on his head, and due to the severity of the contusion, the school contacted their grandmother and let her know that he would need a medical evaluation in order to return to school as they feared he might have a concussion. Now, surprisingly, Sherry actually did take Boo’s brother to an emergency room, but she made sure the ER was almost an hour away from Laconia because in Laconia, nurses and doctors had already raised concerns about previous incidents with the children. So, despite her best cover-up efforts, this emergency room staff also noticed the red flags.

During this hospital visit, many other injuries were documented on the little boy, as well as all the excuses that Sherry tried to give to explain away the injuries. Sherry initially tried going the “ignorance” route; however, when this didn’t work, she said that the injuries were from this little boy playing with his brother, Boo, and getting too rough. And during this ER visit, Sherry even said at one point that the little boy had fallen head-first into a set of bleachers at school. It was later confirmed that those bleachers don’t even exist. At the hospital, 90 photographs were taken documenting the signs of abuse on the little boy, and it was well-documented in the registered nurse’s report that these injuries were non-accidental. It was clear that the little boy had been beaten as well as grabbed hard by the face and ears. It was also noted that the bruising on his arms was due to the little boy being confined in handcuffs for hours each day.

Now, had DCYF gone to the home after this, they would have noticed that Dennis and his other siblings had similar marks on their bodies. In spite of this, DCYF ignored Danielle’s continued pleas for further investigation, and they even had the nerve to tell her there was not enough information to remove her children from the home. Was the report not sent to them? Because if it clearly stated in the registered nurse’s report, then what is the issue? How is that not enough documentation? The social worker who was assigned to this case said he would do follow-up visits as well, and those were never done.

Now, Danielle continued to visit her children when her mother allowed it, and she noticed bruises on their cheeks, and she knew exactly what they were from because, as a child, her mother had grabbed her by the face and given her the exact same marks that the children had. Danielle also believed that all of her kids looked too skinny. On another visit to her mother’s home for Christmas in 2018, Danielle discovered that their living conditions had gone from pretty messy to deplorable. Sherry’s home in Laconia was vile. There were human as well as dog feces scattered throughout the place on the floor. She also had locks on the cabinets and refrigerator so that the children had to ask in order to get anything to eat or drink, which she would often not allow, so they were drinking out of the toilet, and when they did that, they were punished for that as well. The kids were also being forced to use buckets as a toilet.

After this, Danielle said she called DCYF every single day, but her reports either got screened out or the cases ended up closed as “unfounded” again. Several of Sherry’s neighbors remember hearing bangs, thuds, and screams through the walls, and they all called authorities multiple times. In many of these recorded calls, officers can be heard saying things to the effect of, “We’re familiar with that address, but it isn’t a concern,” or, “I was at that address the other day; I didn’t follow up.”

One time, on January 5, 2019, one of Sherry’s neighbors called the Laconia police. She reported yelling and banging coming from Sherry’s apartment. She thought that Sherry was probably, quote, “beating the crap out of the kids.” She told the police—she said it was 11:00 at night, and all she could hear was Sherry screaming and the kids screaming back. The officer that responded to the call just wrote it off as a simple noise complaint after Sherry told him that she was making one of the children run up and down the stairs 10 times after they had urinated on the wall, and after the child confirmed this account—scared of their grandmother, I’m sure—the police officer just told her to be more mindful to neighbors because it was late, and left.

One day, Danielle received a voicemail from her mother. Sherry had accidentally pocket-dialed Danielle and left a long message in which you can hear her screaming obscenities and insults at the children. You can hear her screaming things such as, “I hate you,” and, “You’re a dirty effing dog.” Danielle shared this voicemail with the police, and still, nothing was done. It’s, frankly, quite scary how little regard the Laconia Police Department had for these children in this case.

Then, in July of 2019, Danielle was informed that one of her children had been duct-taped to a chair at a campground and left outside overnight and part of the next morning until bystanders intervened. This horrifying event resulted in another case and review from DCYF; however, it was only after Danielle filed an emergency motion to terminate her mother’s guardianship rights. In this time, they did kind of the right thing. The child that had been duct-taped to the chair overnight was removed from Sherry’s home and placed back into Danielle’s care. However, the other three children were left in Sherry’s home. For what reason? I have no idea. They think she’s only going to do it to him, and then once he’s gone, everything’s good? All the other kids have bruises and marks, too. Wake up! Instead of removing Boo and his other two siblings, they simply put a safety plan in effect, which does absolutely nothing, as we’ve seen so many times before.

When Danielle’s son was placed back into her care, he was interviewed by investigators, and he told them that his grandmother had duct-taped him to the chair, and she had also hit him and Boo with a belt. And, you guessed it—still, nothing was done. Terrified for Boo as well as her other children’s safety, Danielle started calling for help multiple times every day. She called the Office of the Child Advocate, police, every authority that she could think of. She was absolutely frantic and begging people to take those children away from her mother and literally put them anywhere else but there. Despite the gravity of the situation, as well as all her efforts, the court system would fail Danielle and her family, and she would never see one of her children again, because following this, Sherry stopped letting Danielle see her children altogether.

Months later, on Christmas Eve of 2019, Danielle had gone in early for her cleaning job at Elliot Hospital. She was there for less than an hour when a state police officer came walking in and asked to talk to her. She said she felt a giant knot in her stomach as they walked into an empty room. The officer looked at her and told her that Boo was dead. She was absolutely devastated, but she was also angry—angry that she knew that something was going to happen, and she had tried to ask for help anywhere she could think of, and nothing was done. She tried so hard to get her kids back. The officer told Danielle they weren’t sure what happened, but Danielle did. There was only one adult in the house at the time. You do the math.

A 911 call had been made around 8:00 a.m. on the morning of December 24, 2019, about an unresponsive child at Sherry’s 103 Blueberry Lane apartment in Laconia. When the first responders arrived at the scene, Boo was unresponsive. He was then transported to Lakes Region General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Now, it wasn’t until May of 2020 that an autopsy was performed on the little boy, and at that time, it was determined that his cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head and neck. It was ruled a homicide.

Now, you would think that police would go immediately after Sherry, right? No. No. From July 2017 up until the day that Boo was murdered, Christmas Eve of 2019, there were at least 27 credible reports that DCYF received from family members, law enforcement, school administrators, teachers, social workers, nurses, a guidance counselor, hospital personnel, and anonymous reporters who had all told them that Boo, along with his siblings, were being abused by Sherry. They had reported that Dennis and his siblings, among other things, had been hit, pushed, kicked, slapped, denied food and water, forced to run up and down the stairs over and over, locked in the basement, tied up with duct tape and handcuffs, forced to use buckets as bathrooms, suffocated, forced to take cold baths, and left outside for hours in the cold wintertime without protective clothing or shoes.

Sherry said that she was only interviewed by police for about an hour after her grandson’s death; that’s it. And from then until the time that the autopsy report came back, she gave so many conflicting stories. But after the autopsy had come back and it was discovered that his cause of death was blunt force trauma, Sherry started sticking with the story that first responders had actually banged his head into the ambulance on the way out. But did they throw him or slam him into the ambulance? Because bumping his head on it, while it would hurt, would not have killed him, Sherry. Okay, these bizarre changing stories, as well as Sherry’s suspicious behavior right after his death, went unnoticed by police, just like all the other reports that had gone into them prior.

Sherry has not spoken with law enforcement since and has said that they were “mean” to her. She has also left the state and gone to live in Maine. She has also said that she was unaware of all the reports that were filed with DCYF against her, and she tried to claim that she was still never given enough food or clothing or money for the children. And more recently, Sherry also has another theory that she’s throwing out there: she’s saying that Boo had a problem with drinking—not that kind of drinking. She said that he had been seen at the hospital for concerns of dehydration before; however, this was a year before she was even given the children and three years prior to Boo’s death. So, what does it have anything to do with it? Nothing, right? Nothing. She also said that he would make his pajamas wet before bed so that he could suck the water out of them. Maybe because you denied them water, not because he had a dehydration problem!

She has also said that Boo was sick hours prior to his death but won’t give any symptoms, and then she said, “Maybe the mold in my apartment was what did it to him.” But everyone else was fine, and mold now causes blunt force trauma? Huh? Sherry had also told Danielle at one point that leading up to Boo’s death, he had been hallucinating and unable to eat or drink. She said that he knew he was going to die and that the devil was there to take him.

As of 2023, Danielle Vaughan, who is desperate to get answers and give her son justice, has filed a lawsuit against the state of New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services (DCYF). She’s retained custody of her remaining children and continues to fight for the justice that Dennis “Boo” Vaughan Jr. rightfully deserves. She says the lawsuit is not what she wanted to do, and she’s not doing it for any money; it’s only because she could see no other way to push the investigation forward and get this solved. Danielle’s son was killed within days of Harmony Montgomery’s alleged murder, but Danielle says no officials are speaking up for her little boy the way they did for Harmony.

So, she’s posted signs like this all over Laconia, determined to hold someone accountable for her child’s death. Danielle is leveraging the system before the law says it’s too late; she’s suing DCYF for damages. She filed in December last year, days before the statute of limitations ran out—75 pages of heartache and frustration. 27 reports to DCYF starting in 2017, most from professional reporters, teachers, nurses, police, culminating in the final months of Boo’s life with a flurry of calls from Danielle to DCYF begging the agency to take action to protect her children.

Here these people are saying that you’re not fit enough to take care of your kids, and “We’re going to take them from you, but we’re going to protect them, and we’re going to do what you should have done.” The Attorney General’s office and police have never publicly identified a suspect, but Danielle’s lawsuit states the emergency motion filed by DCYF on the day Boo died refers to Sherry Connor as the primary suspect. In response, the state does not refute it. Sherry Connor lives out of state now. Our calls and Facebook messages were not returned.

Danielle was awarded full custody of her surviving sons and daughter in 2020 but says she will not rest until she gets justice for Boo. Danielle’s lawsuit alleges that DCYF violated investigative protocols as well as did not tell her about the abuse and neglect that had been reported by others. They also had failed to do home visits and neglected to follow up thoroughly. No arrests have been made, and there’s no other information from the Attorney General’s office other than it’s open and being worked on. Of course, in the lawsuit, the state denies that it or any of its employees failed to do their jobs properly.

When Laconia Police Chief Matthew Canfield, whose department responded to the 911 call that day, made a public statement, he said that they have not forgotten about or don’t care about the case; it’s actually on his mind every day, and he is also frustrated by the lack of movement on the case. He claims, however, that the police’s hands are tied, as the Attorney General has it in his hands right now. However, his department never announced Dennis’s homicide on Twitter, and their Twitter feed includes many other crimes, including the search for Harmony Montgomery, but no Boo, no Dennis. Nor do the department’s social media feeds include the May 2020 press release from the Attorney General’s office in regards to Dennis’s autopsy with the name and phone number of the State Police Trooper taking tips.

Michael Garrity, who was a spokesperson for the Attorney General’s office, said there has been significant work put into the investigation but would not give any details. He also would not say why, in the absence of an arrest, they have not sought the public’s help since 2020. Dennis “Boo” Vaughan was cremated, and his mother, along with many others, including a Facebook group called “Justice for Dennis ‘Boo’ Vaughan,” are dedicated to making sure that justice is served for the little boy. And for some reason, there is not much attention being paid to this case. As I had said, I’m in Massachusetts, a little under two hours away from Laconia, and I had never heard of this until one of you suggested it, and I looked into it. Why do you think there hasn’t been much attention paid to this case? Because this is an innocent, sweet little child, and whoever is delaying this investigation needs to just do better next time. But give Dennis his justice now.

Well, thank you for listening to all of Dennis’s story today. Even though his mother was the one who lost custody of him in the first place, I have respect for her because she realized the mistakes she made when she was younger, though I don’t think all of the mistakes were on her. Some were definitely on Sherry, leaving her with this creepy 48-year-old man that got her pregnant. But anyways, Danielle did everything in her power to get her children back; she did everything right, but the court system completely failed her family. Personally, I would love to see Sherry Connor be prosecuted, not only for what she did to Boo but also for what she did to his other three siblings because they were living in hell too, I’m sure.