Hero or Vigilante? Man Could Land in Prison for Fatally Shooting Alleged Abuser

May 18, 2010— -- When Darrell McNeill was shot and killed in the entryway of his home, the town of Fort Bragg, California, was stunned. McNeill was a local businessman, father and husband who had volunteered for Boy Scouts of America, owned a popular store and was considered an all-around nice guy.

But local residents were never prepared for the revelation that McNeill, 63, may have been leading a secret life and that what initially seemed like a cut-and-dry case of revenge would test the town's sense of right and wrong.

It all started with a gunshot in February 2009. Mendocino County sheriff's investigators raced to the scene to find McNeill lying on the ground, dead from a single shot to his stomach. McNeill's wife, Liz, told investigators that Aaron Vargas, a man she had known for decades, was the lone gunman. She said she ran into the room after hearing the shot and saw Vargas standing there with the gun.

Vargas, 32, a father and part-time construction worker, had grown up next door to the McNeills and was his son's good friend. Before he fled the scene of the crime, Liz McNeill told investigators, Vargas had confessed to her a deep and dark secret: Darrell McNeill had sexually molested him since he was a young boy.

But there were more surprises around the corner for sheriff's investigators, the McNeill and Vargas families, and the entire town.

"As far as the case goes, it wasn't a whodunit," Mendocino County Sgt. Greg VanPatten said. "It was very clear that Aaron Vargas shot and killed Darrell McNeill. The only question about this case was what was the motive for the killing."

While investigators spoke with Liz McNeill, Vargas arrived across town at the home of his parents, Bob and Robin Vargas.

"He just stood there," his mother said. "He said that he had shot Darrell, and that he wanted to tell me he was sorry and tell me goodbye. And that's when he told me Darrell had molested him."

Vargas told his parents that the abuse started when he was 11. The molestation, he claimed, had never ended, with Vargas feeling inexplicably locked in a pattern of sexual and psychological abuse.

"I just can't believe that I didn't see the signs," Bob Vargas said, "We've seen a little bit of change in Aaron. You know, when he got in his teens. And we just kind of figured it was his teens."

The timing of the shooting, they say, was especially confusing. Vargas was two weeks from getting married and recently welcomed the arrival of a baby girl.

"'Why didn't you come to me?'" Bob Vargas recalled saying to his son, "'Who's going to raise your daughter? Who's going to take care of your family now?'"