True Crime Vault: What the Little Girl Saw

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Speaker 2 Welcome to the 2020 True Crime Vault, where heart-stopping headlines come to life.

Speaker 6 We don't tell people we love them often enough, and if you learn anything from this, you don't know how much day

Speaker 9 you have ever.

Speaker 7 Ever

Speaker 10 911, help me help me, my wife death.

Speaker 2 So tell me about that night, September 28th, 2015.

Speaker 12 You were on duty.

Speaker 5 Yep, on duty. 11825.

Speaker 8 In route up there.

Speaker 6 I just ended up feeling something was wrong.

Speaker 2 So you weren't really prepared for what you were about to find.

Speaker 13 No.

Speaker 9 Okay, where's she at?

Speaker 14 Oh.

Speaker 9 Oh, okay.

Speaker 15 One day you wake up and the music stats and the rugs pulled out.

Speaker 16 And these poor kids went to bed and woke up and they had lost everything.

Speaker 9 I got a female, mid-30s, early 40s.

Speaker 18 Her face is completely beaten in.

Speaker 20 She definitely fought for her life and her children's life.

Speaker 16 She fought to her last breath to save their life.

Speaker 23 Family and friends are mourning the loss of the mother of two.

Speaker 25 My daughter said there was a robber in the house and she saw them.

Speaker 27 And she said she saw the man kill Molly.

Speaker 28 He came in when in my mom's room started hitting.

Speaker 2 She had seen her mother killed, beaten to death.

Speaker 16 Everyone says the same thing. This couldn't happen in my town.
This couldn't happen to me.

Speaker 31 Well, yes, yes, it can.

Speaker 32 In the southern tier of New York, we border on Pennsylvania. It's kind of a rural area.

Speaker 27 We have the finger lakes here. When you look at them on a map, it looks like someone placed their hand on the topography of this area and pressed them in, and that's what was left was the lakes.

Speaker 34 The summertime is a very big tourist area, and we get a lot of people to come through and stay at the lake, also hit our wineries.

Speaker 39 When the weather gets cold and the days get shorter, there's a little less to do outdoors and I think when the Jackals arrived in 2000 it really gave the community of the town something to rally around on those winter nights.

Speaker 39 Jackals played in the United Hockey League are about two steps below the NHL.

Speaker 32 They were superstars.

Speaker 16 Everybody was in awe over these

Speaker 16 guys.

Speaker 40 The agitator award goes to Tom Clayton.

Speaker 24 Clayton coming back at him.

Speaker 41 You could say Tom Clayton was a local celebrity.

Speaker 42 Tom was chippy, aggressive.

Speaker 24 His job was to go out there and instigate trouble. He would slash other players.
He would just try to get them agitated to the point where they would draw a penalty.

Speaker 38 Get one of their top guys off the ice for two minutes, five minutes.

Speaker 38 It's a job done.

Speaker 38 You guys want to fight someone. Just like when you're a little kid and you get so mad, you just want to fight, you you know.

Speaker 44 Clayton is most certainly one of the jackals' biggest antagonizers on and off the ice.

Speaker 45 You might remember a certain shaving movement today.

Speaker 26 Oh, who was that, Clayton?

Speaker 24 Tom's personality off the rink was the exact same.

Speaker 37 He was aggressive. He was sure of himself.

Speaker 47 He and some other jackals were at a bar.

Speaker 47 And he got up on a bar and he stripped down the nothing and danced in front of the bar.

Speaker 39 There was kind of a scuffle that ensued over some of those clothes that went missing. Some punches were thrown.
I think definitely it was an embarrassing moment for the team.

Speaker 47 And they would say, oh, that's just Thomas.

Speaker 2 When he would walk into a bar, what was that like?

Speaker 16 He would have a harem of girls following him. I mean, he didn't have to buy a drink anywhere he went.
He wouldn't have to pay for dinner.

Speaker 2 And one of the women who caught Tom Clayton's eye was Kelly Stage.

Speaker 22 Sunday's coming on, it's close to midnight.

Speaker 48 She was my old sunshine.

Speaker 16 We actually lived west, Elmyra.

Speaker 16 And my father was the fire chief there for many years.

Speaker 49 Kelly was definitely outgoing, spontaneous, sassy, definitely sassy.

Speaker 50 Didn't put up with anything.

Speaker 15 She loved music. We would drive around in the car.
We would ride ride and listen to music and sing.

Speaker 2 As a young woman, Kelly loved hanging out with her friends and she loved country music. So they would often head to Nashville to party at the Country Music Awards Festival.

Speaker 30 She loved Lou Bryan.

Speaker 15 It was unlike anything we had experienced, you know. We just lived it up for maybe a week.

Speaker 2 What were her hopes and dreams as a young woman?

Speaker 16 Well,

Speaker 16 she had

Speaker 16 initially gone to school to become a teacher and she came home and then she's like, I'm moving to Vegas. I don't want to be a teacher.

Speaker 10 We were all, we were all like,

Speaker 4 really?

Speaker 16 And they like packed their car, drove cross-country, and she moved to Vegas. She cocktail waitressed.
She also did a little bit of modeling out there. I have a picture of her.

Speaker 16 I love this, where she has a 30-pound feather headdress on.

Speaker 15 And she absolutely was the girl who didn't want to have regrets, and I don't think she did.

Speaker 2 So she did that, and then she wound up back here.

Speaker 16 She came back here to visit for Christmas, and

Speaker 16 we went to an

Speaker 16 Elmira Jackals hockey game. And that

Speaker 16 night is when she first saw Thomas Clayton.

Speaker 16 He got checked into the boards and his helmet flies off and my sister's like, holy cow, he was good looking.

Speaker 16 And she went out that night to a bar after the game with her best friend Andy.

Speaker 15 He was sitting at the bar and I asked him, do you have a girlfriend?

Speaker 3 And he said, who are you asking for?

Speaker 3 I said, not me.

Speaker 15 He said, the blonde. She's unbelievable.

Speaker 2 What was it about him that attracted attracted such attention?

Speaker 16 He was smooth, would try to make you feel like you were the most beautiful girl in the room.

Speaker 49 He was a good time, but sometimes took things too far.

Speaker 15 I loved him as a brother. He just was, I hate to say it, he was obnoxious and he loved to make people uncomfortable.

Speaker 4 He would say things that were inappropriate maybe in front of me, and I would often say to him, Thomas,

Speaker 12 I'm her mother.

Speaker 4 Don't talk to me like that. And he'd think it was funny and then everybody would just say, oh, that's Thomas.

Speaker 49 She loved him and defended him and told everybody that that's just Tom.

Speaker 2 One year after Tom and Kelly married, Tom was injured and his hockey career came to an end.

Speaker 38 We're not here for a long time, we're here for a good time, you know, and you can only play pro hockey for so long, then you have to go to the real world and get a job, you know, work nine to five.

Speaker 47 After he retired from hockey, they started a remediation company. After a flood or something, they could come in and fix your home up.

Speaker 44 Cleanup crews tell me that the work has really just begun.

Speaker 2 Clayton even made the local news with his new business after there was a disaster and his company was hired to do the cleaning up.

Speaker 38 And the houses are going to be demoed and backfilled, and there's going to be pretty much vacant lots, and the homeowners are going to decide whether they want to rebuild or not.

Speaker 2 He was soon in charge of running a Serve Pro franchise.

Speaker 54 The fire and water cleanup team at 1-800 Serve Pro like it never even happened.

Speaker 48 Thomas was actually a fairly successful businessman.

Speaker 2 Another big change in their life, children. First came a little girl they called Charlie, followed three years later by a boy named Cullen.

Speaker 15 She loved being a mom.

Speaker 53 She did everything for those kids.

Speaker 4 I thought they were an ideal family. They did everything together.

Speaker 32 Were they happy?

Speaker 16 She was very happy, and as far as I knew, he was happy too. My sister truly, truly loved him.

Speaker 2 Were they doing well financially as a family?

Speaker 16 They had purchased a home that Kelly absolutely loved and life appeared to be wonderful for Kelly, Tom, Charlie, and Cullen.

Speaker 2 But then one night, Tom Clayton comes home late from a poker game. and makes a horrifying discovery.

Speaker 12 Help me, help me, my wife and dad.

Speaker 41 The 911 call was pretty eerie. He had just found his wife.

Speaker 56 Is she breathing at all? Nothing?

Speaker 12 No, got me, Trusty.

Speaker 57 Okay, she'd be on CPR.

Speaker 13 Yes, yes.

Speaker 2 And what police did see when they arrived shocked even veteran investigators?

Speaker 2 911.

Speaker 12 Help me, help me, my wife.

Speaker 8 She's 10.

Speaker 5 Three.

Speaker 58 We'll get help to you as quick as we can.

Speaker 2 So tell me about that night, September 28th, 2015. You were on duty.

Speaker 5 Yep, on duty.

Speaker 6 I'm patrolling.

Speaker 33 It was, I believe, a little after midnight when we got the call.

Speaker 5 Show you moving to the man road.

Speaker 6 What do you understand the call is about?

Speaker 19 The call came in as a woman down, a medical situation.

Speaker 12 How long has she been down? I don't know. I don't know.
I just got home.

Speaker 2 Deputy Sheriff Dean Swan drove me along the route to the crime scene. It was his new body camera that documented every minute that night.

Speaker 5 What's your location?

Speaker 9 2-2, I'm on Whiskey Creek almost to Ganan now.

Speaker 32 What were you thinking?

Speaker 3 Something was wrong.

Speaker 6 I just had a gut feeling something was wrong.

Speaker 6 Now, this was the neighbor. This was the neighbor.
Yep.

Speaker 9 How you doing?

Speaker 8 Okay.

Speaker 9 What's going on?

Speaker 36 Tom just came. I'm the neighbor.
Okay.

Speaker 56 He came and got me out of bed.

Speaker 54 I could see he was visibly shaken.

Speaker 34 I could see there was something wrong.

Speaker 9 Hey, what happened?

Speaker 9 His wife is in there. Okay.

Speaker 34 So I entered the home.

Speaker 9 Anybody else in the house, Tom? Just you?

Speaker 8 I got the kids over at the neighbor's house.

Speaker 9 Okay, where's she at?

Speaker 52 He's directed to the kitchen. When he saw the scene, it must have taken him aback.

Speaker 14 Who?

Speaker 9 Whoa, okay.

Speaker 58 The victim lay dead on the kitchen floor.

Speaker 13 Her head based in.

Speaker 40 She was hit with some kind of heavy object.

Speaker 9 Come on out here. I want you to have a seat.
You don't need to see that anymore, okay?

Speaker 7 It was gruesome.

Speaker 59 There was blood spatter pretty much everywhere.

Speaker 9 Con,

Speaker 34 where

Speaker 9 were you when this all went down?

Speaker 8 Waiting told her with my buddy.

Speaker 9 Okay. She was home alone? I came home and my daughter said there was a robber in the house and she saw them.
Okay, come on out here, man.

Speaker 37 So the officers brought him outside the house.

Speaker 57 The trauma level of interviewing him in a house where his wife has been killed would just be too much.

Speaker 7 Get that water.

Speaker 9 Yeah, we'll get you the water. Take it easy, bud.
Take it easy.

Speaker 33 We were just trying to get him to sit down, try and take some deep breaths and try to calm down.

Speaker 34 You're not in trouble, okay?

Speaker 9 I'm just going to have a seat so we can talk to you. All right.

Speaker 27 He had checked his clothes and his hands.

Speaker 9 Let me see your hands real quick, man. You ain't hurt or anything.
Okay, good. Okay.

Speaker 27 For any sign of struggle or blood or any other evidence that would indicate he was part of this and found none.

Speaker 9 Come talk to me over here for a second.

Speaker 33 The only one I had actually talked to after that was the neighbor. Mr.

Speaker 27 Almey was just off to the side with a look of complete shock.

Speaker 9 He say anything to you about

Speaker 9 and he didn't.

Speaker 9 Oh, I was sound asleep. He knocked on the door.
He asked my wife if we would take the kids. He said, Derek come with me quick.
I got in the truck and he flew back over.

Speaker 62 Okay.

Speaker 9 Is there any problems here? Have you ever seen any problems here? I haven't. Okay.

Speaker 52 Officer Swan knew he had a crime scene. So the first thing he had to do was make sure there were no more suspects in the house and no one who could possibly be in danger or in distress.

Speaker 9 We got to clear this house. I'm going to go this way.

Speaker 9 Just cover me. I'm going to go upstairs.
I got to go up and clear it. So I got blood on the wall, blood on the steps.
Looks like she was attacked in bed.

Speaker 34 Whenever you search a building, you just go from room to room, but you don't ever pass a door.

Speaker 9 I gotta clear over here. The kids' rooms are over here.
This one's clear. I'm gonna check this last room.
Clear. There's blood all over.
She's been dragged.

Speaker 9 Blood on the wall.

Speaker 18 Blood with a hole in the wall.

Speaker 9 It looks like a faceplant into the wall.

Speaker 9 Alright, I'm gonna get a paramedic, come in, and verify.

Speaker 9 Nobody, I mean, nobody comes in unless you see me first, or I gotta supervise you here.

Speaker 2 Deputy Swan brings in a paramedic, but sadly, it's really just a formality at this point.

Speaker 9 You follow me and just stay, I'll show you where stuff is. Try to stay to the right here a little bit.
Her face is complete, yeah.

Speaker 5 Oh my god. Yeah.

Speaker 27 Her face was basically destroyed. It was one of the more brutal scenes I've ever seen in my career.

Speaker 27 To know that there's a person out there capable of that that's not in custody at that moment in time was all hands on deck, everyone involved.

Speaker 9 We're going to need all investigators. Homicide.

Speaker 2 Soon after dialing 911, Tom Clayton had called Kelly's sister, Kim.

Speaker 16 Kim, Kim.

Speaker 2 Kelly's dead.

Speaker 15 I said, what?

Speaker 16 I don't know.

Speaker 16 She's dead. Somebody broke in.
She's dead.

Speaker 9 Here they're coming. You're going to have to stop them.

Speaker 27 Kelly's sister showed up very soon after we established a perimeter with Kelly's mom.

Speaker 4 It was all crime scene tape all over her whole property. This was lit up like a Christmas tree.

Speaker 9 Sarge family coming.

Speaker 16 I remember running to the ambulance expecting to find them working on my sister.

Speaker 27 She was very upset when she couldn't see her sister and I said no

Speaker 27 that she doesn't look like she did in life. You don't want to see her.

Speaker 49 I just remember hearing Kim screaming.

Speaker 16 I didn't know how she died.

Speaker 3 I didn't know what happened to her.

Speaker 5 I didn't know where she was. And I just wanted to go to her.

Speaker 3 And I wanted to hold her.

Speaker 3 But I couldn't.

Speaker 27 When the coroner's van left with the body, they asked if they could pray over the body as it was being loaded.

Speaker 4 We finally got to say a prayer for her, and then they took her away.

Speaker 2 As the night wears on, investigators are combing through everything for evidence. No murder weapon turns up, but they do find suspicious tire tracks.

Speaker 32 They were really just investigating a robbery at that point. It was a robbery gone bad.

Speaker 9 I just want to make sure there's no forced entry.

Speaker 52 Is this a random killing at a house in the middle of the woods? And they start digging. And they don't have to dig too deeply to start getting some real answers.

Speaker 9 I got a female, mid-30s, early 40s, beating the death.

Speaker 47 The assault initially took place on the second floor up in the master bedroom.

Speaker 9 Blood all over her. She looks like she was attacked in bed.

Speaker 47 Kelly Clayton was struck there.

Speaker 47 She jumped up, she ran down the hall, first to her children's room.

Speaker 9 There's blood in the kids' room.

Speaker 66 You could tell that she had went to Charlie's room and actually we're pretty sure shut the door and tried to keep this intruder outside the children's room.

Speaker 20 She definitely fought for her life and her children's life.

Speaker 9 Blood on the wall.

Speaker 9 Blood with a hole in the wall.

Speaker 47 Proof suggests that she was shoved down those stairs because her hip and buttocks area slammed into the side of the landing, leaving a hole.

Speaker 9 There's blood all over.

Speaker 9 She's been dragged.

Speaker 32 Then down the stairs through the kitchen, it looks like maybe she ran around the island in the kitchen. I mean, it was a long battle.

Speaker 47 And on the kitchen floor, where he clubbed her to death, striking her in the face. The last moments of her life are absolutely horrific.

Speaker 66 One theory is that the reason she went downstairs was to take the intruder away from the children.

Speaker 16 She fought to her last breath

Speaker 16 to save their life.

Speaker 2 Now police have got to figure out who that intruder is. They've already got one big lead based on something Tom Clayton had already told them.

Speaker 9 You should came home and the kids were up and they said there was a robber in the house.

Speaker 32 When the police arrived, it didn't look like there was any forced entry.

Speaker 9 The side door is open. That door looks no forced entry on you.

Speaker 27 We checked the safe. We checked her jewelry there was no sign of theft at all

Speaker 57 you don't beat people to death if it's a robbery could you strike somebody could you shoot them sure

Speaker 2 i think that was kind of the perspective was okay we have no evidence of a robbery so what do we have as investigators dig deeper into that puzzle tom clayton is outside the house pacing back and forth nervously Just take some deep breaths and stuff.

Speaker 9 Just try to stay calm.

Speaker 64 Yeah, now.

Speaker 9 Well, sit down then. Come on over here, Sit down.
Yeah, you're fine.

Speaker 47 As the family members arrived, Thomas was up by one of the police cars.

Speaker 2 Was Tom distraught when you saw him? What did, how did he appear?

Speaker 16 All I remember is that his head was down in his hands. I couldn't hear him.
I also couldn't get near him.

Speaker 4 I saw him sitting inside the crime scene.

Speaker 5 He did not acknowledge

Speaker 7 me.

Speaker 47 Here, their sister, their daughter, their friend, his wife is dead and it didn't sit well. It didn't look right.

Speaker 18 I'm wondering if he had a domestic whether she could see how her face is beaten.

Speaker 27 When you see that kind of damage, especially to someone's face, it tends to lead you to a crime of passion. It tends to make you believe that it was someone that was known to the aggressor.

Speaker 9 All I think I can think is if he was domestic, she hit here. Boom, gone.
He's trying to cover it up now.

Speaker 58 This hath the earmarks of a domestic violent dispute.

Speaker 45 Thomas Clayton had an alibi.

Speaker 58 He said that he was at a poker game. He couldn't have possibly have committed this crime.

Speaker 31 Husband's claiming he was out playing poker.

Speaker 9 Came home, kids said, Daddy, there was a robbery.

Speaker 2 And when Deputy Swan questions neighbor Derek Almey for a second time, he doesn't have anything suspicious to report.

Speaker 9 Did you know these guys real well at all?

Speaker 20 Yeah, we've been neighbors for a while. Okay.

Speaker 9 You don't know of any troubles, though, between anybody here, him and her, or somebody else and them or anything?

Speaker 7 I really know.

Speaker 9 He was really upset. Oh my god.
He was all upset. Okay.

Speaker 9 Did he have any blood on him that you saw when he first came over? Did he change his clothes ever when you were here with him?

Speaker 9 Here? Yeah, no, no, okay.

Speaker 2 And remember, Tom Clayton brought his two young children over to Derek Almey's house right after he made that 911 call.

Speaker 47 Charlie and Colin stayed at Talme's while Derek went back to

Speaker 47 Clayton's house with Thomas Clayton.

Speaker 16 Colin was three, Charlie seven, and these poor kids went to bed and woke up and they had lost everything.

Speaker 16 Life as they knew it was gone.

Speaker 58 In the midst of this heinous crime, the world goes on. That morning before the community understood what had happened, the school bus shows up.

Speaker 16 I remember the school bus driving by when finally in the morning and they were gonna stop at the end of the driveway to get Charlie.

Speaker 16 And I remember all the little kids like looking, looking at the window, you know, looking for Charlie.

Speaker 2 But little Charlie is down the street and about to play a big role in this investigation. That's because it turns out she's the only eyewitness to her mother's murder.

Speaker 20 Daughter, God.

Speaker 70 Okay.

Speaker 9 We'll talk to him more here in a moment.

Speaker 9 Okay.

Speaker 16 Charlie had witnessed the entire brutal murder of her mother.

Speaker 2 She had seen her mother killed.

Speaker 16 Yes.

Speaker 8 Beaten.

Speaker 2 Beaten to death.

Speaker 16 She described Kelly's last breaths.

Speaker 2 A seven-year-old.

Speaker 16 Yes.

Speaker 2 And now, Charlie is sitting down with investigators, about to tell them everything she saw.

Speaker 28 Can you tell me what you look like? He was wearing teens, a black cloud sleeve shirt and a mask.

Speaker 2 And what Charlie tells them next immediately changes everything.

Speaker 46 I...

Speaker 53 I couldn't believe it.

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Speaker 47 You can never imagine the horror of hearing that one of your children was brutally beat to death.

Speaker 30 Ever.

Speaker 2 Investigators are trying to piece together those last minutes of Kelly Clayton's life.

Speaker 27 That's when the investigators took Mr. Clayton back to the state police barracks and painted post and started interviewing him.

Speaker 20 He was visibly upset. He wasn't crying.

Speaker 66 He was just kind of excited.

Speaker 47 He said he had left work, went to a place for gymnastics, that he eventually went home, was home briefly, and then he went off to play poker.

Speaker 47 And that he discovered Kelly upon his return.

Speaker 43 Yeah, we asked him several times if he had killed his wife Kelly, and he absolutely denied any involvement at all in it.

Speaker 2 While they're talking to Clayton at the crime scene, investigators are beginning to hear rumblings about a possible eyewitness.

Speaker 2 And at the same time, Sheriff Allard is talking to Clayton's seven-year-old daughter, Charlie, at a neighbor's house.

Speaker 27 I walked in to the residence and just kind of sat down and started talking to Charlie.

Speaker 27 And we just started a little chat. And I said, you know, what did you see?

Speaker 27 She told me that a man was hurting mommy and mommy was yelling, run, Charlie, run.

Speaker 52 In her room, she hears her mother yelling, run, Charlie, run.

Speaker 52 Her mother actually got to her bedroom doorway and may have like actually taken a step inside. Charlie follows the fight.

Speaker 47 Charlie had told that she had seen somebody hitting her mother with what she described as like a white stick.

Speaker 27 And she kept saying, he did did this and he did that. And so finally I said, how do you know it's a he?

Speaker 27 And she said, his eyes look just like daddy's.

Speaker 2 Those three little words, eyes like daddy, opened a Pandora's box.

Speaker 52 And that had to have turned this investigation for sure onto Thomas Clayton.

Speaker 27 That was a chilling moment for me.

Speaker 27 And I knew that at that moment in time, before we went any further, I needed some help in this interview.

Speaker 28 So definitely lots more toys.

Speaker 28 You get to teach me how to tell time.

Speaker 58 Police do the best they can to make the space comfortable for the seven-year-old child.

Speaker 13 There are blocks in the room.

Speaker 28 James!

Speaker 28 Well, Charlie, do you know why we brought you here today? Okay, we're going to have to talk a little bit about last night, okay?

Speaker 28 Or if I ask a question that you're not certain about or that you don't understand, can you let me know?

Speaker 5 Okay, all right.

Speaker 47 She's lost her mother. She's not with her father.
So she's with some strangers at this point being interviewed. And you kind of got to treat

Speaker 47 this kind of witness, obviously, with kid gloves.

Speaker 57 So one of the key factors in interviewing children is that you have a professional child interview or with you because it's a real art.

Speaker 28 Do you know what a truth in a lie is?

Speaker 28 What the truth?

Speaker 28 It means that it really happened and a lies that it didn't happen. Right, right, very good.
So you're so smart.

Speaker 2 And why do you say that? 2020 obtained this video from authorities of Charlie's interview with investigators.

Speaker 2 She tells them that her dad put her to bed and then left to go play cards with some of his friends.

Speaker 28 And then in the middle of the night,

Speaker 28 this guy came and started, hey, my mom with like this pipe thingy.

Speaker 28 Okay.

Speaker 28 Can you tell me more about that?

Speaker 28 Um there was blood everywhere.

Speaker 29 Okay.

Speaker 28 Um on my door, on the floor, not on the carpet though.

Speaker 28 And I thought she was dead when she was lying on the ground. And daddy was out with cards.
We were basically alone for like like 20 minutes. Then he came home and he was like, oh my god,

Speaker 28 'cause he saw my mom

Speaker 28 coming forward with blood over.

Speaker 28 Okay.

Speaker 47 She appears not to really know what's happened to her mother. She appears detached.
She's not emotionally distraught. She's not crying.

Speaker 27 So here's a seven-year-old girl that saw one of the most traumatic things you're ever going to see in your life. And she's a smart girl, super smart girl.

Speaker 27 And I think her mind was trying to work through it and figure out what did I just see.

Speaker 28 Do you remember what the thing looked like he was hitting mommy with?

Speaker 28 A little pipe.

Speaker 28 How did the robber leave? The garage.

Speaker 28 And what did you see after that?

Speaker 28 She was sort of suffering.

Speaker 28 I capped her with boosted head. Then I hugged her leg.
Okay,

Speaker 75 alright.

Speaker 28 And where was mom when you hugged her? Play down in the kitchen with the little

Speaker 28 cake.

Speaker 16 My first thought,

Speaker 16 Charlie has the most beautiful blue eyes.

Speaker 16 The most beautiful eyes.

Speaker 16 And all I could think of was what those eyes saw.

Speaker 28 Could have been my dad, but he looked really like

Speaker 28 he looked like my dad. How did he look like your dad?

Speaker 28 The mask in his shoes.

Speaker 28 Have you seen anybody wear that mask before? My dad.

Speaker 28 Did the robber say anything?

Speaker 28 Barbara looks in because one of the things my daddy

Speaker 28 could recognize his voice.

Speaker 27 Everything was just like daddy. Yeah.

Speaker 27 And then she looks at me, she goes, but it couldn't have been daddy, because then who would take care of us?

Speaker 2 After answering questions for Sheriff Allard, Charlie now has a heartbreaking one of her own.

Speaker 28 It's about my mother. Like, where is she at?

Speaker 52 And she hasn't comprehended that her mother's dead, right? Then she wants to know where her mother is. Like, how is Monty?

Speaker 28 You know, we know we need to find that out for you.

Speaker 28 Okay.

Speaker 28 We'll find that out. Okay.

Speaker 27 I said, I don't know, sweetie. I knew at that time.
Obviously, but she needed to be with family when she learned that, not with police officers.

Speaker 2 No doubt Charlie's statement is damning, but there's one little problem.

Speaker 41 When police talked to Thomas Clayton, he said he was at a poker game in a nearby town.

Speaker 63 And when they looked into it, Tom sat here the last night that he played.

Speaker 41 His alibi was true.

Speaker 52 There was an eerie atmosphere because of this horrible, brutal, mysterious murder at the house in the middle of the woods.

Speaker 23 Family and friends are mourning the loss of the mother of two while police continue their investigation at the home.

Speaker 41 A lot of people were struggling to come to grips with this beautiful mother of two who was brutally murdered.

Speaker 2 Back in 2018, I spoke with one of the state police investigators who interviewed Thomas Clayton in the early morning hours after the murder.

Speaker 2 Was his thinking this was a burglar, this was somehow a robbery?

Speaker 43 Correct, and the robber's the one that committed the murder.

Speaker 2 Did that seem consistent with what you have seen over the years, with how a lot of robberies turn out?

Speaker 59 No, that was a brutal murder. That was not a robbery.

Speaker 20 We were basically telling him that your daughter is pointing the finger at you, that you were the robber.

Speaker 52 Thomas said things during the course of the next hour or two that raised some red flags.

Speaker 57 You were looking at the blood spatter.

Speaker 34 She was hit numerous times.

Speaker 57 You don't beat people to death if it's a robbery. Perhaps maybe killing Kelly was the real goal.

Speaker 43 He just wasn't acting as a normal person would if they just discovered their wife brutally murdered.

Speaker 76 A little more composed.

Speaker 43 He was definitely calmer than I would say a normal person would be. He wasn't agitated.

Speaker 2 Was he confused and wondering who could do this, why somebody would do this?

Speaker 59 He couldn't mention one suspect who might want to harm his wife or his family.

Speaker 2 And there was something else that raised big suspicions. His initial call to 911.

Speaker 32 At first, he sounds so frantic. He's like, it almost seems like he's hyperventilating when he's talking to the 91 operator.

Speaker 10 I'm going to take my kids. I'm going to take my kids.
I'm going to take my kid.

Speaker 12 How long has she been down?

Speaker 10 I don't know. I don't know.
I just got home.

Speaker 47 But that 911 call remained open.

Speaker 32 And then all of a sudden, when he believes that no one is listening, his whole tone changes. It's not frantic.
He's very calm and very quiet-spoken. Did you see mommy?

Speaker 32 You two? Did you see a garber?

Speaker 32 Was it a robber?

Speaker 32 It appeared that he was suggesting to the children to perhaps talk about a robbery if asked about it.

Speaker 57 You have to look at the circumstantial stuff, like what does his daughter say?

Speaker 15 What does the crime scene look like?

Speaker 57 How was the person killed? All of those things in this case would suggest that this is a domestic homicide.

Speaker 52 After being questioned at the New York State Police Barracks, Thomas Clayton was arrested and charged with the murder of his wife.

Speaker 25 This description from Charlie of this assailant looking like her daddy, eyes, mask, clothes, he gets charged, largely based upon charlie's words a mother of two is dead and now her husband is charged with the murder thomas clayton was arraigned in caton town court tuesday on a second degree murder charge for the death of kelly clayton

Speaker 2 so your sister has been brutally murdered and now your brother-in-law is being charged with her murder how did you even begin to fathom this?

Speaker 16 You can't. This is a part of your family.

Speaker 16 And now he's charged with killing one of my most favorite people in the entire world.

Speaker 17 It's awful.

Speaker 3 This is someone I loved as a brother.

Speaker 15 And one day you wake up and everything that was safe and normal and life is, it's just

Speaker 15 the music stops and the roads pulled out.

Speaker 58 While authorities suspected early on this could be a domestic dispute, Thomas Clayton had an alibi.

Speaker 52 Thomas Clayton's alibi was that he was playing a Monday night poker game at the home of Greg and Linda Miller, a place he would go most Mondays.

Speaker 79 This is where we played poker on Monday evenings, every Monday at 7 o'clock.

Speaker 2 Where did Tom sit?

Speaker 79 Tom sat here the last night that he played, and I would be the bank over here.

Speaker 2 What did you think of him lucky? Tom?

Speaker 2 Tom was very likable, very flirtatious, but overall you got along with him.

Speaker 31 We got along great.

Speaker 2 So take me back to September 28th, 2015.

Speaker 63 His mind was not into poker, you could tell.

Speaker 63 Usually he maybe jokes around a lot more and there was none of that. He was doing a lot of texting on his phone.

Speaker 52 He was there until until the game broke up.

Speaker 52 And Greg Miller recalled that Thomas left his home at about 12.15 for the 10 to 15 minute ride home.

Speaker 2 At what point did you hear that there had been a tragedy at the Clayton home?

Speaker 80 The next morning in the six o'clock range, there's someone knocking at the door.

Speaker 63 And he says, you had a poker game last night? I says, yes. He says, a guy that you know as hockey puck was here, Tom Clayton? I go, yes, he was.
And then he says,

Speaker 63 Tom went home last night and found his wife murdered.

Speaker 2 What are you thinking? You hear that Kelly was killed?

Speaker 6 I was numb. I was like,

Speaker 70 I think he talked to us and I didn't even know what they said.

Speaker 63 But I said, there's no way Tom could do anything like this. I said, there's no possible way.

Speaker 18 I said, you're looking at the wrong guy.

Speaker 52 Thomas Clayton wanted the police to get off of him. Stop looking at at him and look elsewhere.
Check the GPS in my truck. I got a solid alibi.

Speaker 2 And the GPS records from his work truck confirm Clayton's alibi. He didn't get back home until around 12.35 a.m.
911. He called 911 at about 1238.

Speaker 47 He was not present at the time Kelly Clayton was murdered.

Speaker 52 Clearly, police knew they still had a lot of work to do. They've now charged Thomas Clayton with with the murder of his wife, even though he had a rock-solid alibi.

Speaker 2 Is it possible police have arrested the wrong man?

Speaker 58 And police discover there was another person in the house.

Speaker 68 Open the door, walk said, and get the shock on my life.

Speaker 52 This was a case of rage,

Speaker 7 A brutal murder.

Speaker 52 In a home set in the woods to find this mother of two who's in her mid-30s, but she fought.

Speaker 16 Charlie had witnessed the entire brutal murder of her mother.

Speaker 2 She had seen her mother killed a seven-year-old.

Speaker 28 Could have been my dad, but he wore true, but like

Speaker 28 he looked like my dad.

Speaker 28 How did he look like your dad?

Speaker 28 The mask in his shoes.

Speaker 41 Up until that moment, we thought that Tom and Kelly had this loving, almost perfect relationship.

Speaker 52 Thomas had an airtight alibi. Tom did you do it?

Speaker 2 Is it possible police have arrested the wrong man?

Speaker 26 You called us why?

Speaker 68 Walk say I didn't get the shock of my life.

Speaker 68 I see her laying on the floor.

Speaker 52 They need to get to the bottom of it. Who went into that house? Who bludgeoned Kelly Clayton to death?

Speaker 37 And why?

Speaker 23 The man accused of killing his wife in their Caton home back in September appeared in court today.

Speaker 53 Clayton remains out of jail after posting bail in October. Clayton pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder.

Speaker 32 After Thomas gets bailed out, he ends up cleaning the house himself from the murder of Kelly, and he stays living in that house.

Speaker 47 We know that within a month or two of this horrendous crime, he was having a sexual fling with a woman.

Speaker 32 We found that Thomas had been dating women even before the murder of Kelly, but certainly after the murder of Kelly as well.

Speaker 16 He goes and gambles at the Borgata in Atlantic City.

Speaker 16 He's living life.

Speaker 16 Definitely not the life of a mourning husband.

Speaker 47 He didn't seem to be profoundly upset that his wife was deceased. After the crime, he continued to profess his innocence.

Speaker 49 He called me and he had just said, you know, that it wasn't him. He loved her.
He never would do anything like that to hurt her.

Speaker 2 Lucky Miller says she remembers having an uncomfortable run-in with Thomas Clayton at a local casino.

Speaker 55 I came down the escalator and I hear, lucky.

Speaker 3 Lucky.

Speaker 22 He's like, I'm lucky.

Speaker 2 He goes, I didn't do it. So he pleaded his innocence with you too.

Speaker 52 I didn't do it.

Speaker 55 You know, I was going to take her away on a second honeymoon.

Speaker 3 And I'm like, Tom, I don't know what to believe.

Speaker 2 As police begin interviewing all kinds of people close to Thomas Clayton, a name comes up, Michael Beard.

Speaker 32 Thomas Clayton and Michael Beard knew each other for at least five years.

Speaker 36 I had learned that he was jack of all trades for Thomas Clayton and had been to the Clayton family home to do jobs there occasionally.

Speaker 58 Mr. Beard, I'm Byron Pitts.

Speaker 2 My colleague Byron Pitts sat down with Clayton's former employee, Michael Beard.

Speaker 68 Anytime something needed to come up, he called me, I would go fix that.

Speaker 45 You like his go-to guy, if you need something done, his handyman, how would he describe?

Speaker 68 He described me as being a reliable worker. I'm the first one he called.

Speaker 68 If he needed someone to stay longer, he knew I would stay longer, first there, last to leave.

Speaker 58 Michael Beard worked for Thomas Clayton. Initially, he was hired to work for Clayton's cleaning service.
They would go in and clean homes that were flooded or after a fire.

Speaker 58 He became Thomas Clayton's go-to guy, his handyman.

Speaker 47 If you have water damage at your home as a result of a hurricane or flood, an insurance company might hire a Serve Pro, send them to your home.

Speaker 68 I would come in and cut the drywalls, pull up the rugs, anything that got infected by your water that was there, we would just basically remove.

Speaker 58 One of the extraordinary things about Michael Beard is how incredibly ordinary he is. He had children in South Carolina.

Speaker 40 He also had a child in upstate New York.

Speaker 58 He was the primary Brett winner.

Speaker 40 He was living paycheck to paycheck. And so when he met Thomas Clayton, this local sports hero who had a business, he thought his life was changing for the better.

Speaker 68 I would work hard for him. He would give me little rewards like he brought me a bicycle because one job where we was working at, I ended up catching a cab.

Speaker 68 So I told him like I couldn't afford the cab every day to get to this job. So the deal was to him was

Speaker 68 if he brought me a bike,

Speaker 68 To pay that back, I would just have to work hard for him. I said, well, you know, I'm doing that already.
And one day he came back with a bicycle.

Speaker 37 How would you describe your relationship with Tom Clayton?

Speaker 68 How would you characterize it? My relationship was more of a work relationship. I never hung out with him after work or nothing like that.

Speaker 1 Tell me about his wife, Kelly.

Speaker 19 What was she like?

Speaker 34 She was a pretty cool person.

Speaker 68 There's been a few times where she went to go pay bills or something and the kids didn't want to go. So she asked if I mind watching them for her until she come back.

Speaker 68 I'm like, hey, that gave me time to quit working.

Speaker 29 Plus, I'm getting paid.

Speaker 61 So,

Speaker 68 you know, we was pretty cool.

Speaker 40 And how would you describe the kids, Charlie and Cullen?

Speaker 68 Beautiful, respectful, smart, intelligent.

Speaker 45 So you knew them and they knew you?

Speaker 68 Very well. I basically seen them grow up.

Speaker 2 Thomas Clayton also owned the building where Beard lived with his family.

Speaker 45 So Thomas Clayton Elling was your boss.

Speaker 40 He was your landlord.

Speaker 22 Correct.

Speaker 47 He had to pay Thomas Clayton $1,000 month rent.

Speaker 32 Thomas Clayton was kind of like his lifeline. He depended on him for not only work, but also for where he lived.

Speaker 32 When there was no work to be done, there was talk that what Thomas would do was make sure that Beard was employed.

Speaker 16 My sister had made lunch for him when he did work on their home. My sister gave Hammy Down clothes to his children.

Speaker 47 Financially, Beard depended on him.

Speaker 68 I was his basically like his A-man.

Speaker 2 But just a couple of weeks before Kelly's murder, Clayton fires his A-man. There were accusations that Beard had been drinking on the job.

Speaker 16 I remember my daughter coming to me saying, Mom,

Speaker 16 Tom just told us he fired Michael Beard.

Speaker 16 And I remember us going, you know, to the investigator and giving them that name.

Speaker 40 When they said you were fired, did you push back?

Speaker 45 Did you say, I'm not drinking on the job? It's not true.

Speaker 68 I spoke in my defense. There was no proof of me drinking on the job.
I mean, I do drink, but I don't drink on the job.

Speaker 58 What state did it leave you in? You lost your job?

Speaker 69 I was basically in broke.

Speaker 58 This was a guy who was living hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck, when he had a job. Now without a primary job, a man who was struggling is now really beginning to struggle.

Speaker 2 And to make matters worse, he's now behind on the $1,000 a month rent that he owes Thomas Clayton.

Speaker 32 According to Beard, Thomas had started addiction proceedings against him, and he had to move out. out.

Speaker 41 Police go and talk to Michael Beard and they ask him where he was that night and he said it was a tragedy that Kelly had died but that he was home that night.

Speaker 36 Initially we pick him up, we take him to the barracks and he denies any involvement with the murder.

Speaker 36 He says that he had been at home the night of the murder drinking the entire night, never left the house.

Speaker 2 After talking to police, Lucky Miller begins replaying the night of that poker game back in her mind. And after rethinking every second, she remembers something.

Speaker 55 He walked up and asked me if he couldn't borrow my phone.

Speaker 22 I'm like, yeah, sure.

Speaker 2 When he handed you the phone back, did he seem bothered or no?

Speaker 55 He just put it on the table and goes, thanks, Lucky. And he went back downstairs.

Speaker 2 So you thought nothing of it? Nothing.

Speaker 2 After she has that memory that he borrowed her phone, She immediately checks to see who he called.

Speaker 55 I look at the phone. I'm like, there's nothing.

Speaker 18 And she's yelling at me, God, look at my phone.

Speaker 18 And she's shaking like this.

Speaker 80 I instantly thought the worst.

Speaker 53 Silent nights?

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Speaker 2 Lucky Miller, who hosts poker nights with her husband Greg, has just had a major revelation that Thomas Clayton asked to use her cell phone when his seemed to be working fine.

Speaker 2 This was on the night of the murder.

Speaker 55 I look at the phone, I'm like, there's nothing.

Speaker 2 No evidence of a phone call.

Speaker 60 Nothing.

Speaker 48 And she's yelling at me, get your glasses, you gotta look at my phone.

Speaker 18 She's shaking like this. And I look, I go, no, he didn't use any phone call.

Speaker 63 She goes, no, he used my phone. I go, then he deleted him.

Speaker 18 She goes, you can delete phone numbers? I go, yeah, you can delete phone numbers. She goes, I didn't know you could delete phone numbers.

Speaker 20 We determined through her records that Tom had used her phone, that he had actually had a conversation with that person, then deleted it from Mrs. Miller's phone.

Speaker 20 At the time, you could plug in a phone number to Facebook and it would spit up the account.

Speaker 41 Police find out that this suspicious call that was made was Michael Beard.

Speaker 2 Beard had just been fired from Clayton's company and he was also renting from him. So the two men were connected.

Speaker 38 Michael Beard

Speaker 11 was,

Speaker 74 from my knowledge, what I would call a gentle giant. He was a man with a very physical presence, soft-spoken, kind,

Speaker 74 and often desperate financially.

Speaker 20 You have a justified reason to call Michael.

Speaker 66 Why are you deleting the calls and why did you not just use your own cell phone?

Speaker 20 Matt Lambert, who is a state police investigator, was familiar with Mr.

Speaker 66 Beard from work in the city of Elmira.

Speaker 20 After the phone records came forward, Matt went back out and talked to Mr.

Speaker 54 Beard again.

Speaker 36 So we picked him up at his house on Grand Central Ave in Elmira. At that point, drove him to the state police barracks in Painted Post.
I discuss

Speaker 36 the findings that we had with him. He denies any involvement with the murder.
He says that he had been at home the night of the murder drinking with his wife the entire night, never left the house.

Speaker 33 My name is James Vaughan. I was an investigator for the New York State Police.
I was a polygraph examiner.

Speaker 2 Back in 2018, Investigator Vaughn showed me the area where he performed that lie detector test. on Beard.

Speaker 26 Polygraph chair?

Speaker 33 Polygraph chair.

Speaker 56 That's the same chair he was sitting in.

Speaker 36 So we we decided that a polygraph is the best course of action to determine what exactly, where we stand with this guy, if he's telling the truth, if he's lying, because we don't really have a lot to go on at that point.

Speaker 2 How did he handle the polygraph?

Speaker 56 He denies all involvement in it.

Speaker 27 He was deceitful.

Speaker 36 At that point, we began a more intense, more pointed interrogation.

Speaker 52 Holly Barrett was Michael Beard's partner. They lived together in this apartment owned by Thomas Clayton.
They had to interview her once they were looking at Michael Beard.

Speaker 37 They separated them and they were talking to them.

Speaker 32 Holly was frustrated with Michael Beard because they were in financial troubles, him being not having a job and apparently her job not being quite enough to keep the family afloat.

Speaker 52 They had been fighting and he left around 1130 and then he came back like an hour and a half later. That fits in with getting a call from Thomas at 10.53.

Speaker 52 Holly also says something that actually really cracks the case. Thomas Clayton had approached Michael Beard about burning his house out for $10,000.

Speaker 57 So in the other room they're interviewing Michael. Obviously he doesn't know that she's actually telling that he was gone for a period of time.

Speaker 56 My boss came into the interrogation with that information. Said, Michael, we know about the $10,000.

Speaker 36 He, throughout the entire interview, became more and more emotional. Started exhibiting signs of like nervousness, like his stomach was growling.

Speaker 36 Signs that in my experience are very typical of somebody that's guilty of something and just kind of waiting and stressing about the truth actually coming out.

Speaker 36 And he kind of put his head down and I was close to him, sitting in front of him. I was like, Mike, is $10,000 the reason that you killed Kelly?

Speaker 36 And he kind of paused for a second, then responded, yeah, that's why I did it.

Speaker 2 It's a surprising twist for investigators. Beard making a full confession to murdering Kelly Clayton has another job for his boss.

Speaker 56 He didn't even get any money up front.

Speaker 6 I mean,

Speaker 60 he was going to go do this on the promise from Tom Clayton that he'd be paid $10,000.

Speaker 2 In a signed written confession, Beard lays out all the grisly details of the plan.

Speaker 2 He wanted me to go to the house, kill Kelly, then light the house on fire. He said the kids would be at her sister's house.
There was also gas in the garage.

Speaker 2 He wanted the cars to burn also so that he could collect insurance money. And why did he do it? Beard's explanation is pretty simple.
I needed the money.

Speaker 2 He was supposed to set the house on fire. Why didn't he do that?

Speaker 60 I think the homicide itself was more brutal than he had anticipated. And he said in his words that he got scared.

Speaker 2 Then another man comes forward.

Speaker 75 And along the way, you know, he says, I'm at the killer.

Speaker 2 Does this story point to a more sinister plot?

Speaker 65 It was shocking to see somebody would be driven this far to make plans like that.

Speaker 16 Every day,

Speaker 41 you find out more

Speaker 16 and more. And now you find out he is a monster, a sociopath.

Speaker 31 After the murder of Kelly, and even now, the community just really got behind the stage family in support of Kelly.

Speaker 70 Purple ribbons were tied around utility poles and fence posts.

Speaker 65 Every time you saw a purple ribbon, you knew what it was for.

Speaker 69 They were all over the area.

Speaker 2 Michael Beard is behind bars. Clayton has made bail, but both of them are still under investigation.
Clayton's children are staying with Kelly's sister, Kim.

Speaker 52 Frankly, the well-being of those children was first and foremost.

Speaker 5 Aunt Kimmy,

Speaker 16 have a good day, okay?

Speaker 16 They will

Speaker 16 see purple ribbons and they'll say, oh, purple for mama, purple for mama. That's all they know.

Speaker 64 The Jackals don't exist anymore, but on the last hockey game that they had, they held a benefit.

Speaker 37 We're honoring the family of Kelly Stage, and here comes Kelly's children.

Speaker 64 All of the money raised is going to go towards the kids.

Speaker 2 It's been a while since Kelly Clayton's murder, and investigators are trying desperately to offer answers to a shaken community.

Speaker 2 Beard has just signed a confession admitting to being offered $10,000 to set the Clayton house on fire, which never happened.

Speaker 2 But he has admitted to killing Kelly Clayton and the police investigation goes on.

Speaker 7 At some point later in the evening, it became obvious that he was becoming distressed.

Speaker 36 That's when we basically went out back of the barracks and I gave him a cigarette.

Speaker 36 He became very emotional, started crying,

Speaker 36 and said, I can take you to the murder weapon.

Speaker 43 There was a piece in the house that matched the maul handle that was found off the side of the road here.

Speaker 2 So you knew that was your murder weapon once that was found.

Speaker 59 The maul is like a sledgehammer, but there's no actual sledgehammer head on it, so it's just a handle.

Speaker 2 And he used that?

Speaker 80 He used that to kill her.

Speaker 27 It was positive for DNA of Kelly Clayton and blood still on the murder weapon. There were shards of that same handle at the scene.

Speaker 2 In addition, Michael Beard is now offering to take investigators to two more pieces of evidence that tie him to the crime.

Speaker 36 He did provide the keys to the house that Tom Clayton gave him and the clothes that he wore the night of the homicide.

Speaker 2 So they had been thrown over in this area?

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 8 Bloody clothes?

Speaker 62 Yeah, they had blood on them.

Speaker 52 Mark Blamford is a friend of Michael Beard's, and Michael Beard actually called him that night to see if he'd come along and be a lookout.

Speaker 52 Blamford agreed, but he says he really didn't know much about what was going on. He just sat in the truck.

Speaker 75 He asked me about doing the job.

Speaker 75 I'm thinking maybe it might be some type of drug deal or something.

Speaker 75 As we start ran out, Mike's talking about the job, just saying, he's getting a street grinding. He's getting, he said, I'll pay you 500.

Speaker 5 I'm like, all right.

Speaker 75 And along the way, you know, he says,

Speaker 75 I'm at the killer bitch. I do remember him saying that.

Speaker 75 This bitch black.

Speaker 5 There's no street light, nothing.

Speaker 75 It's bitch black.

Speaker 75 And he went walking down the street.

Speaker 75 And I said, 15, 20 minutes pass.

Speaker 75 He back.

Speaker 75 He said nobody was supposed to be there. The kids were supposed to be at the grandmothers.

Speaker 75 He said, I don't mention.

Speaker 75 He didn't tell me any killer.

Speaker 75 He didn't tell me who was in the house.

Speaker 47 Beard was then arrested for murder.

Speaker 37 Beard confesses to the murder, tells him where the murder weapon is, tells him where the bloody clothes are buried, but adds the critical detail.

Speaker 79 The reason he did it was because Tom Clayton offered him $10,000 to kill his wife.

Speaker 2 But if Beard is the perpetrator, what about Charlie saying that the intruder looked like her dad?

Speaker 62 After further interviews of Charlie and further analysis, the person that was in there, he had a mask on.

Speaker 43 So we're pretty sure that when she says, well, it looks like daddy, it was more of the clothing he had on looked like daddy.

Speaker 27 I observed no deceit in the statement she gave. I believe it was true in her mind when she told it.

Speaker 47 And as she related it, the focus shifted from Thomas Clayton doing the crime himself. Now it became a murder for hire.
Clayton was all about money.

Speaker 20 There was a substantial life insurance policy that Tom had on Kelly.

Speaker 19 We determined throughout the investigation that it had actually been recently upped.

Speaker 41 A year before Kelly's death, Thomas Clayton doubled the family's life insurance policy. His life insurance policy was increased to $2 million.
Kelly's was increased to $1 million.

Speaker 20 He couldn't get divorced because it would cost him too much money, which he had mentioned. It would cost him too much because Kelly would take everything.

Speaker 65 When I found out the true scope of what we were dealing with, it was shocking to see somebody would be driven this far to make plans like that.

Speaker 2 Investigators came to the conclusion that Clayton not only wanted to kill his wife, but wanted to kill his kids too.

Speaker 2 He was going to set the house on fire with Kelly and the children in the house?

Speaker 7 That's correct.

Speaker 27 This was a cold-blooded attempt to remove your own wife and children from this earth.

Speaker 2 Thomas Clayton denies this allegation.

Speaker 47 I don't think Thomas Clayton cared that the children were in the house when his wife was to be murdered.

Speaker 47 That was callous on his part, but ultimately, I chose not to indict for the attempted murder of the children.

Speaker 2 So, your sister has been brutally murdered, and now your brother-in-law is being charged with her murder. With her murder.

Speaker 2 How did you even begin to fathom this?

Speaker 16 I stood there as her matron of honor

Speaker 17 and smiled and watched her marry him.

Speaker 16 Now you find out he is a monster, a sociopath.

Speaker 37 With Beard's confession, prosecutors are thinking we've got an airtight case here.

Speaker 43 Then he recants and now they've got a mess.

Speaker 55 He recants before the trial is supposed to start.

Speaker 31 Actually, it wasn't me.

Speaker 40 What evidence can you point to that shows that you're innocent?

Speaker 2 With Beard's confession, prosecutors feel pretty confident they've got an airtight case.

Speaker 41 He leads police to his own evidence in this crime. The bloody clothes that he wore that night.
to the murder weapon that he used.

Speaker 2 But then, just before the trial, Beard recants. And now prosecutors have got a mess on their hands.

Speaker 41 He says, I didn't kill Kelly. He says he was there that night.
He says he was there to set the house on fire, but that he got scared, backed out.

Speaker 65 And then he looks up, and there's a mysterious figure who was already there at the house, handed him a murder weapon.

Speaker 2 So, which is it?

Speaker 26 This doesn't happen often in broadcast journalism.

Speaker 56 Michael Beard called us.

Speaker 43 He wanted wanted to tell his side of the story exclusively to 2020.

Speaker 26 You called us.

Speaker 29 Why?

Speaker 68 Because the actual story needs to be heard versus to what you've heard and what they wanted you to know.

Speaker 58 My initial impressions of Michael Beard, pleasant enough, well-spoken,

Speaker 68 bright,

Speaker 58 and he had conviction about what he thought was true. Financially, what state did it leave you in? You lost your job?

Speaker 69 I was basically in broke.

Speaker 45 At some point,

Speaker 20 did Tom Clayton come to you with a proposal?

Speaker 68 No, not a proposal of anything like the way they portraying it to be.

Speaker 19 Okay, tell me what happened.

Speaker 68 It was just a proposal of asking me if I wanted to take this side job.

Speaker 2 There is something that Beard maintains is true. that he went to the Clayton home on the night of the murder.
He says that a job came up last minute and that Clayton asked him to help.

Speaker 45 And why is all this happening so late at night?

Speaker 68 During the 24-7 restoration company, calls could come in at any time.

Speaker 45 You'd gone to his house this late at night?

Speaker 68 I've been to his house like three o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 68 So I goes down there, I get the key, open the door, walks in, and get the shock of my life.

Speaker 68 I see her laying on the floor. And I get scared from that point, which not using it for an excuse, but I never called 911 that night.

Speaker 51 Why not?

Speaker 68 I wanted to get out of that situation. I had walked into something that had nothing to do with me.

Speaker 58 Did you know she was dead?

Speaker 68 I never checked her.

Speaker 68 I didn't expect to walk into what I had walked into.

Speaker 45 You're a grown-ass man.

Speaker 58 When you walk in and you see a woman dead on the ground, or at best unconscious on the ground, blood everywhere.

Speaker 40 And you don't think to

Speaker 24 offer her assistance.

Speaker 45 This is someone who you know, right, that you're cool with, cool with her and her children. And you don't think to assist her.

Speaker 68 Put yourself into my shoes. I'm a black man in the middle of a white neighborhood in the middle of the night

Speaker 68 where a white woman's laying dead on her kitchen floor. I didn't want nothing to do with that.

Speaker 61 And I'm sorry.

Speaker 9 Okay.

Speaker 58 Now, this is, in layman's term, is a signed confession.

Speaker 68 That's this.

Speaker 58 Where they ask you about the crime.

Speaker 29 Yes.

Speaker 58 When I got to the kitchen, she was following me about five or six steps behind me. I turned around and struck her again, and that's when she went down.

Speaker 69 Those aren't my words.

Speaker 68 Prior to that statement, they came and they laid down the whole scenario to me on what I supposedly had done. So the more resistance that I gave them,

Speaker 68 my family starts to come into play with this. So I'm telling them, if you keep my family out of this, I said, you can say whatever whatever you want to say, and I'll deal with it.

Speaker 56 That, in my opinion, would not be helpful to an interview to threaten them.

Speaker 33 People need to give confessions voluntarily in order for them to be believable,

Speaker 33 in my experience.

Speaker 45 So you sign this confession.

Speaker 68 Yes.

Speaker 40 Admitting to killing Kelly.

Speaker 11 Through them, yes.

Speaker 36 I wouldn't want to coerce a confession. from somebody that didn't do it.

Speaker 60 Just morally, it's wrong.

Speaker 36 Like, I wouldn't go to sleep at night if I did.

Speaker 58 So you sign this, you go to trial.

Speaker 69 Yes.

Speaker 53 We interrupt this programming to bring you breaking news. Michael Beard has been found guilty on all charges in the death of Kelly Stage Clayton last year.

Speaker 52 Michael Beard was found guilty of one count of first-degree murder.

Speaker 52 He was sentenced to life without parole.

Speaker 58 What evidence can you point to that shows that you're innocent?

Speaker 68 In the victim's hands is the DNA of an unknown source. Doesn't match my profile.

Speaker 37 On the victim's clothing, again,

Speaker 68 DNA that does not match my profile. So how is it that Kelly Clayton fought for her life with Michael Beard when you got someone else's DNA on her?

Speaker 58 Whose DNA is it, you know?

Speaker 5 I don't know.

Speaker 2 In fact, authorities do say that the DNA on Kelly's clothing was likely from her son or her husband, not Beard.

Speaker 2 But the DNA sample found under her fingernails wasn't sufficient to either identify or exclude anyone, including Beard.

Speaker 27 The fact that there may or may not have been other DNA on Kelly Clayton really to me has no bearing on this case whatsoever.

Speaker 47 When Kelly Clayton ran down the hall, we found her palm prints on the door. And mixed in with that blood, we found Michael Beard's profile.

Speaker 47 His DNA was in that blood swap that was recovered from that bedroom door.

Speaker 58 Police say you led them to the murder weapon.

Speaker 68 They said I led them to the murder weapon. They also said I gave a confession.

Speaker 47 The mall hand was examined. We believe that Beard was wearing gloves at the time of the crime.
That would eliminate his DNA on it, but it was Kelly Clayton's.

Speaker 58 As the interview continued, Beard told me something new and unexpected.

Speaker 68 But what I did see was someone else down there.

Speaker 68 Who it was I couldn't tell you at that point in time because I never seen a face.

Speaker 40 I'm sorry, so so you're saying you did see someone there?

Speaker 66 Yes.

Speaker 68 Well I seen somebody in there in like coming out of the house once I once I went in the house someone else was coming in.

Speaker 37 Okay how close was he to you?

Speaker 68 Basically about this distance right here.

Speaker 58 And so you guys were close enough to each other to touch each other?

Speaker 68 I knocked them down getting past them.

Speaker 37 How could you leave out that kind of detail that seems so significant?

Speaker 43 That's when, at least from my perspective, his version of what happened seemed to begin to fall off the rails a little bit. We got to this point here, and he said, this is the area.

Speaker 2 So the murder weapon, he discarded up here.

Speaker 26 Yes.

Speaker 53 Those details that he gave to police.

Speaker 76 He threw the keys into this small creek.

Speaker 31 Combined with all of the physical evidence from the scene, there was no way, I think, for a jury to say that there was any reasonable doubt that it couldn't have been him.

Speaker 47 You were hired, you were the hitman, you killed her, and that's that.

Speaker 58 There's three sides of every story, your side, my side, and the truth. I'm not sure the story that Michael Beard told me seemed to live on the side of the truth.

Speaker 58 Michael Beard, in some ways, told us the story in which he was both the hero and the victim.

Speaker 76 The evidence was really overwhelming that Michael Beard had actually killed Kelly Clayton.

Speaker 67 The question was, what evidence was there that Tom Clayton actually hired Michael Beard?

Speaker 47 This case really became all circumstantial. We don't have a smoking guy.

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Speaker 31 12 jurors will decide the fate of Thomas Clayton.

Speaker 62 Clayton is accused of hiring Michael Beard to kill his wife, Kelly Clayton.

Speaker 78 Opening statements are set to begin tomorrow at 9.30 a.m.

Speaker 27 Tom Clayton's trial was a very big trial for our county.

Speaker 31 The courtroom was packed every day, not just with Kelly's family and Tom Clayton's family, but people who knew them.

Speaker 74 He was a local celebrity of types. Not only that, but Kelly was well known throughout the community too.
I think that's where a lot of this media attention came from.

Speaker 41 It was a long and in-depth trial. There was more than 75 witnesses.

Speaker 20 Tom showed up to court, almost no emotion, I'd say.

Speaker 41 Tom was cool, calm, and collected. Every day when he walked into court, he would never realize that he was on trial for his wife's murder.

Speaker 2 That could be because Thomas Clayton knows that the case against him isn't exactly a slam dunk.

Speaker 52 With Michael Beard's recantation, The prosecution realized they cannot use him as a witness.

Speaker 47 This case really became all circumstantial. We don't have a smoking gun.
We have to build our case piece by piece.

Speaker 27 That's when the real investigative work comes in in proving that everything he originally said was true.

Speaker 52 The prosecution had to show that there was this ongoing relationship before and after the murder, the night of the murder, and close in time.

Speaker 43 But at that time, we had enough documentation again, the recoveries and the statements made by other people so blanford testified we eventually allowed him to plead to a lesser crime in exchange for his cooperation the evidence was really overwhelming that michael beard had actually killed kelly clayton the question was what evidence was there that tom clayton actually hired michael beard and there really wasn't any evidence The cell phone records turned out to be very pivotal in the investigation.

Speaker 47 Psy of ZX Corporation. That's what broke the case.
The geolocation data.

Speaker 57 ZX specializes in taking large amounts of big data and visually mapping it.

Speaker 32 Once we got Cy Ray involved, he was able to track where the phones were by using the cell towers.

Speaker 57 So in this particular case, we took all 67,000 points and we combined them together on a map synced by date and time.

Speaker 27 The phones really provided a timeline of interaction, of planning. It showed the number of times that Michael Beard and Thomas Clayton interacted leading up to the murder.

Speaker 47 It corroborated everything our

Speaker 47 14-15 months of investigation had uncovered.

Speaker 2 And most telling, a pair of phone calls made on the exact day that Kelly Clayton was killed. The first one from a used car lot that had no connection to Thomas Clayton.

Speaker 57 There's an incoming call to Michael Beard from M ⁇ M Auto. Michael Beard doesn't own a vehicle, so there's a kind of a question there of why M ⁇ M Auto would call him.

Speaker 47 Again, he's equipped with his own phone, but he's claiming I got terrible cell phone coverage, so he asked to use their phone. So who does he call using their phone? He calls Michael Beard.

Speaker 57 In looking at Tom Clayton's phone, we can actually put his device in the parking lot of M ⁇ M Auto when this call is made.

Speaker 47 To me, it's circumstantial evidence of

Speaker 47 guilt. He's trying to hide his tracks.
He probably didn't realize police methods, the investigative methods, to the extent that they can recover evidence from phones.

Speaker 2 And then hours later, Clayton makes a second call to Beard from somebody else's phone. That's right, Lucky Miller's at that poker game.

Speaker 57 And this is basically the go-call.

Speaker 47 Beard, shortly after that phone call, drove out to Clayton's home and committed the murder.

Speaker 67 There was no evidence as to the content of those calls and Cy Ray's testimony was skewed in trying to make much more of those calls.

Speaker 76 I think it's important to look at the cooperative data.

Speaker 57 We know Michael Beard received a phone call from Eminemato. The Verizon phone records puts Tom Clayton at Eminemato and when we look at all this known information, the phone records align with it.

Speaker 27 It was very well planned out. As a matter of fact, according to Michael Beard two weeks prior, there was a dry run.

Speaker 57 They had set up that Tom would either be out of town or at least away from the house when it occurred, so Tom would have an alibi.

Speaker 52 He took steps that he thought would cover him, used a SurfPro truck with a GPS so it would show where he was that night.

Speaker 2 Clayton even arranged for Beard to use a borrowed truck that nobody from the neighborhood would recognize.

Speaker 20 We do see on the video Tom leaves with one vehicle with the Surf Pro vehicle and Michael Beard leaves with the red truck, which is ultimately used in the murder.

Speaker 47 After he returned the truck to Surf Pro, he rode home on his bike. It's a pattern that clearly shows that Michael Beard and Thomas Clayton did this together.

Speaker 67 There's no direct proof that Tom Clayton engaged in a plot with Beard to kill Kelly. There was no record of any payment.

Speaker 2 Even if there is evidence linking Clayton to Beard and potentially to the crime, what was the motive? Why would Clayton want to have his wife killed?

Speaker 47 The motive was to get rid of Kelly. He didn't want to go through a divorce.

Speaker 47 He wanted money, substantial insurance monies, and part of our proof of trial was to show that he indeed engaged in extramarital affairs.

Speaker 78 Testimony from one of the women who claims to have had an affair with Thomas Clayton.

Speaker 52 Even the insurance agent, he ended up having an affair with her.

Speaker 16 The women, the multiple affairs that he was having right under Kelly's nose, my nose, I never heard of an affair, ever.

Speaker 32 Some of the women that we called at trial talked about Thomas Clayton and his relationship with Kelly. Did say that Thomas would say bad things about Kelly.

Speaker 52 He was telling them about her. She's lazy.
She wants to go to every concert there is, and she spends all my money, she only works one day a week.

Speaker 52 And it's like, she says, mother, you're your kids, crying out loud. Yet, he didn't want a divorce.

Speaker 36 He had mentioned to me, divorce was never going to be a possibility because she would take him to the cleaners, was his words.

Speaker 42 It's a distraction. The question isn't whether it was right that Tom Clayton had affairs.

Speaker 54 The question is, did he do this crime?

Speaker 2 But would the jury see it that way?

Speaker 2 All eyes have been on the Thomas Clayton murder trial for several weeks. Now, the former hockey player's fate is in the hands of the jury.

Speaker 53 Nobody knew what to expect, but after just about six hours of deliberating, they came back with that verdict.

Speaker 23 Breaking news out of Steuben County Court.

Speaker 41 Thomas Clayton guilty on both first-degree and second-degree murder charges.

Speaker 70 I think that there was an absolute sense of relief.

Speaker 31 The people that were responsible for taking Kelly's life were held accountable.

Speaker 31 We did it!

Speaker 65 We did it!

Speaker 61 The family of Kelly walked out of the courtroom.

Speaker 20 They were sobbing, but almost tears of joy because of the fact that justice was delivered.

Speaker 3 I told my sister from the night she was murdered that we would not stop fighting for her.

Speaker 2 At his sentencing, Clayton is given life in prison without parole, and he doesn't go quietly.

Speaker 65 He delivered a profanity-laced just rant about how the jury got it wrong, screaming at the top of his lungs that he didn't kill his wife.

Speaker 41 Everyone in the courtroom was shocked.

Speaker 29 First and foremost, I am extremely proud and honored to call Thomas my son.

Speaker 2 In a statement to ABC News, Clayton's family says their support for him is unwavering and they pray that the justice system will right this incredible wrong.

Speaker 41 One of the most memorable moments of the sentencing was when a statement was read by Kelly's sister. The statement was from Kelly's daughter.

Speaker 16 Charlie actually wrote a letter

Speaker 16 on her own that she loved her mom, she loved her dad, but that her dad was a coward because he made Michael Beard kill mommy.

Speaker 3 What a heartbreaking statement.

Speaker 23 These children have now lost both of their parents.

Speaker 2 Was Michael Beard a victim of Thomas Clayton?

Speaker 16 I believed that Thomas Clayton was a white, privileged man.

Speaker 2 He used Michael Beard.

Speaker 16 Michael Beard

Speaker 16 would do just about anything for money, for his family.

Speaker 2 Do you think Thomas Clayton set you up?

Speaker 68 Hands down, I would say so, yes.

Speaker 2 In this small community, So many lives have been changed forever. Do you still play poker here?

Speaker 79 No, we haven't played poker here since that evening.

Speaker 79 Lucky says nobody comes in the house anymore.

Speaker 14 Nobody.

Speaker 2 So, this table's basically closed?

Speaker 68 Done.

Speaker 17 It's hard for me in this small town to go places. People say things to you that can trigger you.
I can't imagine for these kids to grow up.

Speaker 15 And this is the only way people know them.

Speaker 47 The children are in the custody and care of Kelly's sister.

Speaker 47 And it's my understanding that both kids are thriving.

Speaker 16 Kelly spent a lot of time here, and

Speaker 16 Kelly would also bring her children here.

Speaker 2 When you come here, what do you...

Speaker 16 I feel comfort when I come here. I don't feel sad.

Speaker 12 And Colin calls it my mommy's. My mommy's bench.

Speaker 16 You took her life,

Speaker 3 not her light.

Speaker 16 And her light will shine forever.

Speaker 3 Through Charlie, through Cullen, through me, forever.

Speaker 16 And we'll be okay.

Speaker 2 Both Thomas Clayton and Michael Beard have exhausted their appeals and are serving life sentences. Clayton declined our request for an interview.
That's our program for tonight.

Speaker 2 Thanks so much for watching. I'm Deborah Roberts from all of us here at 2020 and ABC News.

Speaker 52 Good night.

Speaker 2 Thanks for listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault. We hope you'll join us Friday nights at 9 on ABC for all new broadcast episodes.
See you then.

Speaker 21 An all-new season of the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is now streaming on Hulu.

Speaker 44 Mom Talk started as a sisterhood and that's gone to flames. New secrets and lies are coming out.
This is going to be catastrophic.

Speaker 44 We're fighting for our marriages and the girls are just putting us through hell.

Speaker 71 They make everything about themselves. I can't.

Speaker 44 Hopefully, this doesn't end in a bloodbath.

Speaker 21 Watch the Hulu original: The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.