Episode 281

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Sword and scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences.

Listener discretion is advised.

As we got up in here, he kind of rushed up on me a little bit.

And that's when I just pushed him, boom, boom, boom.

And he started going out toward the shed.

I don't know how many times I shot him.

Hello, and welcome.

This is season 12, episode 281 of Sword and Scale.

A show that reveals that the worst monsters

are real.

So, when I started this podcast, I didn't realize I was actually starting a small business.

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Thankfully, though, I have a partner with all the tools that I need to be successful.

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Imagine being able to guarantee that shopping is always convenient.

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All these things are made simpler to customers so they can shop how they want, and staff have all the tools to close the sale every time.

And let's face it, acquiring new customers is expensive.

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We've all had that one friend, right?

The one that dives headfirst into messy, toxic relationships or forms of friendship with people that are clearly a bad influence.

Brushing aside every warning sign, brushing aside everything we try to say to help them get off this track.

It's like they're stuck there in a perpetual loop of disappointment.

From our vantage point, it's clear that cutting ties with this person is the only solution for our complaining friend.

But it never seems to happen for some reason.

Hearing story after story becomes frustrating.

It's like watching them drive their car straight into a brick wall and you can't do anything about it.

It's like they can't see it.

and only they have the power to hit the brakes.

Centennial Hills emerged in the early 2000s as a suburban paradise in the sprawling landscape of Las Vegas.

Driving 25 minutes outside the city brings you to a place where the vibrant energy of the strip fades into quieter outskirts.

Modern family homes line the streets, and on top of being one of the newer suburbs, Centennial Hills is one of the safest places to live if you want to be only a short drive from the strip, which everybody knows is littered with crime.

In fact, I don't even know why anyone would go to Vegas these days.

But let's get back to the story.

On May 8th, 2008, crimes in the city were already beginning to intensify in preparation for the weekend.

It was only Thursday, but the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department expected an influx of calls as usual.

By the evening, cops had been going in and out for hours, mostly focusing on crimes happening closer to the city center.

Certainly not places like Centennial Hills.

As the clock approached 8:44 p.m.,

Dispatch received a call from the peaceful suburban oasis.

It was their

3,131st 3,131st call of the day.

We received information that there had been a shooting at the house on Santa Fe Drive, I think, or wherever.

Branch of Santa Fe.

Yes.

And that the homeowner had shot, that his wife had been shot by a suspect, and that the homeowner had shot the suspect.

911 emergencies were mandated.

My wife's been shot and there was a dying of my house where my son had been

where is your wife in the house.

She's a

This caller was an older gentleman, and in case you didn't hear him, Apparently, this guy, Mike, was

trying to rip him off in some way.

The caller knew the intruder, but not well enough to give his last name.

Oh, fuck her split, everywhere.

Alright, I'm gonna help you, but I need you to listen to me.

I'm not gonna try to help her.

You gotta listen to me so we can try to help her.

Sir?

Oh, God.

You're an old boy.

You can't move her.

I can't control.

You got to try to do CPR.

I need you to try to...

When the caller tried to turn his wife over, he saw her bloodied, distorted face.

911 dispatchers walked him through the CPR process while police officers made their way to Rancho Santa Fe Drive.

As I remember, somebody had, I didn't speak to the person reporting there.

Somebody had gotten some basic information about what happened.

And then I put together either a three or four man team to go in and check on the house and check on the person that had been shot inside.

The first few officers on the scene walked in through the front door, walked through the home, and came upon 57-year-old Sharon Randolph.

When I got inside, there didn't appear to be any ransacking in the living room area.

We walked back into the hallway, which runs north and south between the garage and then the master bedroom, which was on the south side of the house.

And I noticed lying in the hallway, in a supine or face-up position, was a white female victim who was bleeding.

Her head was closest to the entryway to the master bedroom, and she was lying on the tiled floor

between what would later be identified as a music room and then the bathroom.

And then as I walked out toward the garage on the north side of that hallway, there was an African-American male who was lying on his right side against a refrigerator in that garage area.

One officer looked at the other and confirmed that Sharon was beyond help.

Any attempt at resuscitation had been unsuccessful.

The dead man in the garage was Michael Miller, someone Sharon and her husband had met a few months prior.

They had befriended him and hired him to do handyman work around their home.

Sound familiar?

Seems like we repeat the same story over and over again.

It's called human behavior, and it happens all around you.

By midnight, the house was secured, and Sharon's husband, 53-year-old Thomas Randolph, was taken to the police station to give an official witness statement.

So who knew you were going out this evening?

I'm calling my phone.

Alright, what I want to do is let's just take a tape safe,

see if we we can

get all this transcribed and have a further report.

Alright, we'll just cover

basically what we just talked about,

how long you've known Mike, how you met him.

In case you couldn't understand, the detective asked Thomas who knew he and his wife would be away that evening.

And Thomas listed quite a few people.

One of them was Mike Miller.

Mike was a guy in his late 30s, trying to get his life together.

In December of the previous year, he'd moved from Rockville, Maryland to Las Vegas to stay with his aunt-uncle and cousin.

He had no job, no car,

and no money.

He did a few odd jobs here and there, like helping his cousin detail cars or janitorial work for his aunt and uncle's business.

But a few weeks after moving to Vegas, Mike met Thomas Randolph.

Tom not only gave him handyman workaround in his own house, he saw Mike as a friend, took him under his wing and vowed to help him find more work.

Mike even ended up doing some projects at Sharon's daughter's house.

Just before his death, Mike got a girlfriend, but he still had no steady job, no car, and, of course, no money.

Here's Mike's aunt.

Yeah, he told me that he had met a young lady and they were going to move away together and he was getting some money.

He was coming into some money.

Thomas's witness interview went into the wee hours of the morning.

Police wanted to learn everything they possibly could about Mike Miller.

The next day, police conducted a walkthrough of the crime scene with Thomas.

My name is Tom Randolph.

My date of birth is 2255, social security number.

That's my understanding.

We're doing a walkthrough of the house, kind of a reenactment of what happened last Thursday.

And it's your desire to come out here and do this for us, right, so that we can get an understanding of what was going on?

It's my desire, not my desire, but I'm cooperating with you.

Okay.

And you came out here on your own free will, right?

Correct.

Okay.

Thomas then gets into his car and reenacts the night from the moment he and Sharon pulled into the driveway.

About there, we start opening the door up.

I will stop because there's not enough room for both cars to get in there.

We can't get both cars in and get both people out.

So I stop the car.

Sharon gets out.

She had the

steak and

lobster from

Charcoal Grill or something.

Thomas and Sharon had spent the night out on the town for an early Mother's Day celebration.

One of Sharon's favorite date-night activities was going to the movie theater.

So the couple went to dinner and a movie before returning home around half past eight.

So she gets out, closes the door.

She goes on in, starts walking in.

I give her a little bit of head start to get to the door.

I start pulling in.

As I start getting out,

This is about how close it was that night, so that's probably

this is it, just come on in the house.

Now, this door was closed.

I open it up.

I get right here, and Sharon's laying in the floor, face down.

Her head's just barely, I mean barely in the bedroom of that.

And I stopped right about here, had the door, said Sharon,

Sharon.

And I seen the

bag from charcoal steak or whatever, and it's really a bright red.

And this hall light,

this hall light wasn't on at the time.

So it's just like this?

Just about like this.

And I turned the light on myself as we got in.

and about about right here when I was like this I was trying to kind of get a view I thought I just seen like a shadow or

something

over this way

and I remembered that there's a the nine millimeter right up here because earlier I'd taken all my guns put them in a suitcase was going to take them to Utah and switch the guns around I reached right up here

Got the gun and as I got the gun there's also an extra clip There's a few up there, but I got the gun and the clip and i'd already started to run and then i just reached up just like that grabbed it stuck it in my pocket came around just like that and about that time he's right up on me just right up on me and we actually touched right about here

thomas is describing to police how michael accosted him in the same hallway where sharon's body was lying and he's short he's short and when he i don't know if he gave me an elbow but as we came around like that i was kind of of coming out.

I was actually going to try to be slow, you know, and look out, but it just happened too quick.

We came up and he kind of banged into me about right here.

And then he went over to about right here.

And somewhere along here, I bit my mouth or something, trying to say something like, what the fuck or something.

And

he looked kind of like...

And I don't know if he was looking in here to see if there was somebody else or what.

And there was a...

He had on a sweatshirt.

sweatshirt and I don't remember if I seen the handle in the sweatshirt if I seen the handle down his pants but he was doing something going for something down in here and as we got up in here he kind of rushed up on me a little bit and that's when I just pushed him boom boom boom and he started going out toward the shed I don't know how many times I shot him but I just just kept right on going boom boom boom

and he just lay in there just lay in there and I look back because then I'm trying to make sure everything's cool.

Kind of stepping back like that.

And about that time, I heard the really, really loud noise.

And what had happened is I guess he had hit the refrigerator and the

help me hear the

fire extinguisher.

The fire extinguisher fell down.

I didn't know what it was.

but it made a loud clunk and I was kind of, like I said, I was kind of looking back because I don't hear well and I can't tell depth perception anything

and

when I heard the noise I was kind of like I said backing up and kind of trying to make sure there's nothing else going on and when I heard that noise it really did scare me and I boom boom

except the door except the door didn't come down it stayed just like it was open I had

And I mean, I actually got close.

Boom, boom.

And I don't know if I shot him once, I shot him twice, and then started coming back down this way.

He wasn't moving.

He, ugh, some noise.

Come back down this way.

I'm going to be in real, just, you know.

Sharon, Sharon,

Sharon.

And she's not,

but she was laying here.

And by then, I could tell.

She was hurt really, really bad.

I mean, the blood was just, then you could see thick blood.

And I came back over and I went to call 911.

911.

And I came back over

and I didn't have my phone.

And it keeps falling off of me.

I come back through here and

just kind of, you know, just didn't know what to do and just kind of looking around.

And I dialed 911 and the phone didn't work.

I remember saying, fuck, what a time for Avonage to go out.

I stuck the phone in my pocket and I thought about

Sharon's cell phone.

And I looked around because sometimes she sits it on the purse, I mean on the table.

So I don't know how long she'd been because I was for a minute letting the door come down and listen to the song.

Looked on the table,

came back out,

come through here.

I tried actually about right here.

I'll take it back about right here.

I tried 911 again and it was busy.

When I called 911, it was busy.

So I said, good, it's not vonage.

And I got back over here where I could kind of see everything.

And I called 911 again, and that's when whoever said 911 and said, slow down, you're breathing too hard, slow down, whatever.

And what's the emergency?

And I don't remember for sure what I told him, something about my wife been shot.

This guy tried to rip me off.

I shot him.

I think she said, did you shoot your wife?

I don't remember what all was said.

You guys will have to get the tape of that.

I don't remember.

But just said that she'd been shot really bad.

We needed paramedics out here.

Detectives took the information they had gathered at the crime scene from the victim's bodies and Thomas's interview and walkthrough.

And they got to work putting together the pieces of this puzzle.

So, when I started this podcast, I didn't realize I was actually starting a small business.

Yikes.

There's nothing small about a small business.

You're working all of the time.

Thankfully, though, I have a partner with all the tools that I need to be successful.

You may have heard of them.

Their name is Shopify.

Shopify's point-of-sale system is a unified command center for your retail business.

It brings together in-store and online operations across up to a thousand locations.

Imagine being able to guarantee that shopping is always convenient.

Endless aisle, ship to customer, buy online, pick up in-store.

All these things are made simpler to customers so they can shop how they want.

And staff have all the tools to close the sale every time.

And let's face it, acquiring new customers is expensive.

With Shopify POS, you can keep shoppers coming back with personalized experiences and first-party data that give marketing teams a competitive edge.

In fact, it's proven.

Based on a report from EY, businesses on Shopify POS see real results, like 22% better total cost of ownership and benefits equivalent to an 8.9% uplift in sales on average relative to the market set surveyed.

So if you have a retail or online business, then I'll tell you what, Shopify is a fantastic partner to have on your side.

Get all the big stuff for your small business right with Shopify.

Sign up for your $1 a month trial and start selling today at shopify.com/slash sword and scale.

All one word.

Just go to shopify.com/slash sword and scale and sign up.

You'll thank me later.

You will.

Shopify.com slash sword and scale.

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May 8th, 2008 was the evening of Thomas Randolph's final date.

with his wife Sharon.

They had only been married for two years and their relationship was a whirlwind.

Sharon was born in New York and moved to Las Vegas in her late 20s.

By the time Thomas met her, she had a lot of baggage.

She'd been married twice before.

Her first marriage ended in divorce, and her second husband passed away from cancer after more than 20 years together.

Soon after her second husband's death, Sharon's family became increasingly concerned about her behavior and spending habits.

This is Sharon's son-in-law.

She liked to gamble.

She liked to buy things.

She shopped quite often, but spent a lot of time gambling as well.

She spent on many things, but gambling is part of it.

What better place for an avid gambler to live than just 25 minutes from the Las Vegas Strip?

On top of all of this, Sharon began dating again very quickly after her husband's death, which bothered her daughter and further damaged their already fragile relationship.

Within mere months of her husband's death, Sharon had met someone online, someone she wanted to get serious with.

His name was Thomas Randolph.

He was a few years younger than Sharon, but that didn't matter.

Thomas, as she called him, was cool.

Objectively, he looks a lot like someone's grandmother.

But he looked like a rock star to Sharon.

For some reason.

Bitch is blind, I don't know.

Though he was into his mid-50s, Thomas still had a full head of hair.

And he made use of it, that's for sure.

Throughout the decades, Thomas had experimented with various hairstyles ranging from a mullet to pigtails.

He liked classic rock, so I guess that's the inspiration.

But man, that was a long time ago.

You know?

As soon as Sharon connected with Thomas online, their relationship moved quickly.

At the time, Sharon worked on and off as a hairdresser and forged a few very close friendships throughout her career.

Here's her friend, Deodra.

There is a senior living community named Las Ventanas.

It was as soon as it was built, and I would say that would be around the year 2000.

And it's on West Charleston and town center.

Sharon was hired at Las Ventanas to work in the beauty shop as the hairdresser.

I was hired at Las Ventanas to work as the manicurist, and that is how I met Sharon.

These few women were the people she shared everything with.

She may have had an unstable relationship with her daughter, but Sharon spoke to her salon friends multiple times a day, every day.

One woman in particular, Alice Wolf, knew all the ins and outs of Sharon's life.

In fact, she was one of the first to meet Thomas Randolph.

She only said that she had met him,

Mr.

Randolph, and that they had gone to a concert.

She called me and said, Can you come to the shop?

And I said, I never went there on Sunday, but she would go there now and again just to do a client that, you know,

and I guess she was going to give him a permanent.

Okay.

And she had said that she had met this man, this guy,

and that she wanted me to meet him.

I said, oh, I can run by.

I was in the shop, sitting at my station

and waiting for her to come and they walked in

and she sat him down and then she

had already told me a few things about him like

you know who he was and all that and then she went in the back to prepare the the rods or whatever she was going to put used for his hair and so I got up and I stood behind him he's sitting in the chair and I'm standing behind him and I said looking in the mirror, and I said, Well, so Tommy, tell me,

just to get to know him, right?

I said, I understand you like the Cowboys, the

football team.

And he just kept looking down.

He did not ever look at me.

Didn't look at me, didn't look in the mirror, nothing.

I asked him,

How was the concert?

I believe that's what I asked him.

I can't remember really, but he didn't actually

answer.

He seemed a bit antisocial, but Alice didn't think much of it.

What Sharon's friends didn't know was that Tommy Randolph was hiding a lot more baggage than they could have ever imagined.

By the time he started dating Sharon, Thomas Randolph had married five times before.

Not two, not three, not four.

Five!

Five.

There were five Mrs.

Randolphs before her.

This is Thomas's first wife, Catherine Thomas.

He had a lot of extracurricular activities,

namely

other women.

During our marriage, I wouldn't really call it a marriage per se.

There was a lot of

mentality.

Catherine married Thomas when she was only 18, and she gave birth to his only two children.

Pretty quickly, she found out that Thomas was not a good husband, so she left him and remarried, moving from the state of Utah to Washington to get away from him.

The very day Thomas and Catherine's divorce was finalized, Thomas set his vows and tied the knot with a new woman, Becky Galt.

She married Tom the day that

our divorce was final.

And she expressed feeling fear when things escalated with Tom.

And I counseled her to

leave any way she could, and I would help her if she wanted me to.

With so many failed marriages under his belt and something being a little off in his personality, you know,

Sharon's friends and family were concerned.

Sharon was happy.

She was excited.

She had that

new relationship

glow.

She was giddy.

They had dated for a while.

Thomas Randolph had come on weekends to visit.

Okay.

And

then Sharon told me that he was going to move in.

I told her that I had bad feelings.

I could not explain them, but I had very bad feelings and that she should not

get involved.

I advised Sharon that I thought it was a very bad idea to have Thomas Randolph move to Las Vegas.

Sharon, of course, didn't want her friend's advice, and Thomas made the move from his home in Utah to Las Vegas.

It wasn't long before things went visibly downhill.

It was after Thomas Randolph had moved in.

He would continually call.

He called multiple times during the day to speak to Sharon,

a minimum of 15 times a day.

I would answer the phone.

I started to see Sharon become unhappy.

She wasn't giddy any longer.

She was unhappy.

She was

trying to work

and

he kept calling and she would be frustrated

and

she just wasn't happy.

The constant calling became so burdensome to Sharon while she was at work that she eventually had to quit her salon job.

Sharon worked at Las Ventanas for a considerable amount of time.

She had had eye surgery also,

and she said that her eye was bothering her,

but she was under the constant pressure of Thomas Randolph calling her multiple times a day.

Thomas harassed Sharon.

Once he moved in, the goalpost shifted, and he began to push the idea of marriage, even laying down an ultimatum.

He told her that if she did not marry him, he would leave her.

Well, I told her

that

she should go to Mexico with Mr.

Randolph and have a mock wedding.

That it would not be legal within the United States.

That is the advice I gave her.

Did Sharon take this advice?

Of course not.

She and Thomas flew to Cancun in 2006 to have a wedding ceremony, but they also made it legal in the States.

Pretty quickly, things got even worse.

If it seems to you like Thomas had a little bit of an addiction to women,

well, you'd be right.

Things got tense.

She was upset a lot.

She would come to our house, upset, crying

about

being left,

you know,

that

Tom would take off and

supposedly go stay with his girlfriend, do whatever.

He would leave.

She would be upset,

including

over Christmas.

Around the holidays,

it was a very strange thing.

He just

took off.

She was upset.

They were

at odds.

He had supposedly went and hung out with his girlfriend.

Her name was

now you're going to ask me that.

Lizzie.

Yeah.

He would mention it in passing many times in conversations

around, even at Sharon's house.

And I always thought it was very odd to talk about a girlfriend at your wife's house.

Okay.

And it came up many times.

I used to hear her name a lot.

It seems that Thomas's romantic relationships were strung together with quite a bit of overlap.

He made no effort to keep his girlfriend Lizzie a secret from Sharon or her family.

In fact,

he was sort of flippant about his repeated and ongoing infidelity.

Yeah, there was a point where

he actually he was talking about

Sharon about it one day and he said,

man, I loved her, but nobody tells me who I can be with.

And it was

a lot more

gross and colorful than that.

Okay.

But it was very manic the way it was said

with a good deal of anger.

Apparently, Lizzie was a girlfriend Thomas had lived with in Utah.

They had an on-again, off-again relationship.

And during one of their breaks, Thomas met Sharon online, began dating her, and eventually married her.

Through all of this, he continued having regular phone calls and visits with Lizzie.

He called her 30 to 40 times a week, sent greeting cards one after another, and drove out to her house at least once a month, including all the important holidays.

Every time he arrived at Lizzie's, he told her he was in the process of leaving Sharon.

In 2008?

Yes.

Okay, so a couple of months before Sharon passes away.

Yes.

When you gave him that ultimatum of, look, you really just need to decide, what was his response to you?

He said he was going to go out and kill with Sharon so we could be together.

This guy's life was a certified shit show.

Wouldn't it be interesting to get every single wife's take on what it was like being married to Thomas Randolph?

Yeah, I know, right?

Shit, we should do that.

Oh, wait, we already tried, but there's only one problem, you know?

Four out of the six wives are dead.

It's kind of hard to interview in a cemetery.

Not sure our mics are good enough.

Thomas's first wife, Catherine, even offered to help his second wife, Becky, escape her marriage to Thomas.

Catherine was genuinely scared for her.

And then Becky died.

Have you carried a picture of Becky with you for several years?

Yes, I have it with me.

Why?

To

remind me, I've put all these emotions on a shelf for 40 years and now I'm having to pull everything back down.

But I think that

picture gives me strength to

express what I need to express for me and for her.

It was in 1986 that Becky Galt ended up with a bullet in her head.

A presumed suicide.

Supposedly, Becky had a cocaine addiction and she'd attempted suicide before.

At least, that's what Thomas's defense attorneys argued when he was prosecuted for her murder.

That's right.

Thomas went through a full-blown murder trial two years after Becky's death was ruled a suicide.

That's why it's important to look up anybody you're potentially thinking about dating

on Insert Add Here.

I don't know, why haven't we gotten one of those background check companies as a sponsor yet?

Seems like a no-brainer.

Although Thomas was a killer, he was also a bit of a pussy.

He had a hitman.

And 13 days after Becky's death, Thomas's prospective hitman came forward and told police Thomas had offered him $10,000 to kill Becky.

and make it look like an accident.

And he felt pressured by Thomas to carry it out.

Thomas collected $250,000 in life insurance payouts, by the way.

Once this guy came forward, Thomas found himself sitting in a jail cell.

During his time incarcerated and awaiting trial, he was caught trying to put a hit out on a guy who ratted on him to the police so that he couldn't testify.

Well, the guy did end up testifying, but the jury wasn't allowed to hear information about the attempted hit on the hitman.

Despite this, the prosecutors laid out a solid case.

At one point, they played a song for the jury.

It was Rod Stewart's foolish behavior.

A witness took the stand and testified that Thomas had been playing air guitar and singing along to the song while he plotted his wife's demise.

In case you're unfamiliar with the lyrics, here's an excerpt:

I am a man

Been planning for years to get rid of her.

No divorce.

I really do mean to kill her.

She's so full of useless information and trivia.

Should I string her up or strangle her in bed?

Suffocate that little venomous head.

Or perhaps I'll just whip her to death.

Do it for mankind, take Take her life.

Or should I act quite cold and deliberate?

Or maybe blow out her brains with a bullet?

They'll think suicide.

They won't know who done it.

I'm going to kill my wife.

I'm really going to take her life.

Yeah,

that's Rod Stewart's tune.

I hear he's a really nice guy.

Even with all the evidence stacked against him, Thomas was ultimately acquitted.

The jury had to choose between the death penalty and a not guilty verdict.

Based on the evidence presented to them, they decided they could not convict him beyond a reasonable doubt.

So,

Thomas then went on to marry wife number three,

Gana Allman.

She recalled when Thomas was cleaning his gun one night, it accidentally went off.

She thinks he was actually trying to kill her.

You were at one time married to somebody by the name of Thomas Randolph, is that correct?

Correct.

After you're married, just

tell us about the marriage and any unusual events that occurred.

I came home from work one day and I smelled an unbelievable smell in the bathroom.

Couldn't figure out what it was, and I found out that it was guns cleaning solvent.

And was he in the bathroom with the gun?

He was just acting strange and was falling all over the place and fell into the bathtub.

And the smell was just unbelievable.

And then shortly thereafter, is when he was cleaning a gun and it had gone off.

Alright, so

can you tell me about that?

How'd that happen?

He was sitting at the dining room table and was cleaning the gun and I wasn't very far away from him at all and it went off and it was just, you know, within a foot away from me and it was a hole in the floor.

And he said that he didn't realize it was loaded and it went off.

What did you do?

Well, I mean of course I started yelling and I was scared and then I got on the phone and I was talking and then I think I don't remember if I actually left.

Um

I I just don't really recall.

I know is I was extremely scared and it wasn't too long after that that he went to work and I packed up my stuff and I was gone.

Did you have any other contact with with uh Tom Randolph after after you packed up everything?

He followed me.

He caught me on 31 one day and tried to get me to pull over and kept following me.

And I wasn't going to pull over.

And I know the the roads a lot better than him and I ended up losing him.

All right.

Any other incidents?

Were he following you?

Was he calling you?

No, because

I went into hiding, basically.

And I went and stayed at Friends' house.

So after you packed up everything,

you were hiding from him?

I mean, I was scared.

I was literally scared.

With what I was told with the Edinburgh Police Department, what they told me, and everything that had gone together,

I was just scared until I wanted to make sure everything was done and the divorce was finalized.

There's some confusion about about the order of Thomas's fourth and fifth wives.

One of them was a woman named Frances Randolph.

She passed away suddenly after a successful heart operation.

It was much later that a witness came forward claiming that Thomas had recruited him to kill Francis and injure Thomas to make it appear like a robbery.

The guy said he declined because he had a feeling Thomas was going to kill him after he carried out the hit.

Well, when that plan didn't work, Thomas made sure he was the last one to see Francis after her heart surgery.

He told Francis' daughter that he wanted to be alone with his wife and when he came out of the hospital room he announced that her mother was dead.

The other wife was named Leona Stapleton.

We don't know much about her other than Thomas telling people she had passed away from cancer.

What are the odds that that wasn't the case?

This brings us to Thomas's sixth and hopefully his last wife, but who knows?

Because

you ladies like to date dangerous, you know?

I would say it was probably.

Well, it was after she had married Thomas Randolph.

I noticed her body language.

She was moving very slowly and

sore.

She was sore.

Did you see any bruises on her body?

Yes, I did.

She said it was a boating accident.

Okay, who was on the boat?

Her and Tommy Randolph.

She said that Tommy was driving the boat very fast across Lake Mead,

and he made

a sudden, sharp U-turn.

And she was standing in the boat and she fell.

I was alarmed.

I said, Sharon,

I think he's trying to kill you.

I said, whatever you do, do not accept any beverages or food from him.

She looked at me

and

she seemed a little surprised.

She said, do you really think he's trying to kill me?

I said, yes.

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When 53-year-old Thomas Randolph and his wife, 57-year-old Sharon, arrived back at their Las Vegas home after a date night on May 8th, 2008, the couple's friends and handyman Mike Miller was already in the house waiting for them.

When Thomas entered the house several minutes after his wife had gone inside, he found her lying face down in a pool of blood.

Mike had shot Sharon in the head, so Thomas shot Mike.

Make sense?

That's what I thought.

After police did a detailed walkthrough of the crime scene with Thomas Randolph, they took time to pore over the information and realize that many of the details Thomas gave them didn't quite add up.

During the walkthrough, Thomas stated that he had to turn the light on in the house when he came inside.

Does that mean that Sharon entered the house in the dark?

See how that doesn't make sense already?

Thomas also told police that he shot and killed Mike Miller in the same hallway Sharon was in, but there was no blood evidence supporting that story.

And Mike was found in the garage.

To top it all off, Thomas did not attempt to resuscitate his wife during the 911 call.

We didn't play the whole call for you earlier, but the last half features dispatchers essentially begging Thomas to get back to the phone and resume CPR.

I should go to the computer.

No, keep doing what I'm telling you to do.

I need to do this.

Sir?

Be on account as you're doing it.

Sir, can you open the door?

Sir?

Sir.

Sir.

Sir, can you help me?

It's almost as though he hoped his wife would die.

Like many of the other wives, Sharon's death killed two birds with one stone for Thomas.

On the one hand, he had a hefty life insurance payout.

On the other, he was freed up for his girlfriend Lizzie.

This wasn't Thomas's first rodeo, though.

He learned after his wife Becky's suspicious death that he had to make it a lot less suspicious if he wanted to avoid the courtroom.

In the months leading up to Sharon's murder, Thomas and Michael Miller exchanged more than 300 phone calls.

Thomas was trying to forge a relationship with Michael, who was down on his luck.

The two would have private conversations lasting hours on end, ultimately giving Michael the impression that he was coming into some money.

Remember him telling his aunt that he had met a girl, was going to happen into some money and planned to move away?

Thomas had found himself another hitman, but this time, he wouldn't let him live long enough to snitch on him.

In Thomas's mind, this would be the perfect crime.

A week before Sharon's murder, she called her friend Deirdre.

She was

shaken,

she sounded scared,

And she sounded afraid.

She told me she needed to get a divorce.

I happened to be the vice president on the board of the mediators of southern Nevada.

I said, okay, Sharon.

I said,

I'll help you get a divorce.

I had told Sharon, I says, well, it wouldn't be difficult to get divorced because you never married Tommy.

And then she says what?

And she said,

yes, I did, Deidre.

Talked me into getting married.

She had told me she had no money, that her money was gone, that they had gone through all of her money.

And I said, okay.

I said,

that won't be a problem.

I said, I do know

attorneys.

I know paralegals.

Or I will be glad to go down to the self-help center with you at Legal Aid, and we will draw up divorce papers.

I said, What else

are you involved with as far as Tommy is concerned?

And she said, He does have a life insurance policy on me.

I told Sharon,

I said, Sharon,

this is a red flag to me.

I said, now I'm worried for you.

I asked her to come and stay with me.

I told her that I was worried for her

and that I wanted her to come and stay with me because I wanted her to be safe.

She said,

I know, Deidre, and she sounded worried.

But she said,

I want to be in my home.

i said i can't force you to come and stay with me i said however i would like you to i said but please whatever you do do not accept any beverages food or turn your back on tommy i don't trust him i'm worried for you

sharon had no idea that it wouldn't even be tommy she'd need to watch out for.

Their new friend Michael Miller was now doing Tommy's bidding, and Sharon was none the wiser.

The night of the murders, Thomas pulled into the driveway and allowed Sharon to go ahead of him with enough time to encounter Michael Miller.

Though Thomas claimed he couldn't hear the shot due to hearing loss, he likely waited for the sound before going inside to kill Michael.

After giving statements to police, Thomas sat back, waited for his life insurance payout, and hoped Sharon's daughter wouldn't give him too much trouble.

Friday morning, a friend of mine named Tony called me and said she was watching the news, and there was a shooting on Rancho Santa Fe, and she knew that was my mother's street.

I tried to call my mom again.

I've been trying to call her all morning.

Did you reach her?

No.

Who did you talk to?

I eventually, I think I called Randolph next.

He said, what did you do to my mother?

What did he say?

He said, Michael shot and killed your mother.

And then he just hung up on me.

A few days after this conversation, Sharon's closest friend Alice, the one who offered to take her in while she got a divorce, stopped by Sharon's daughter's house and dropped off an envelope.

This envelope contained a secret that threw a wrench into Thomas's plans.

Inside that envelope was Sharon's most recent updated will.

In the meantime, Thomas was completely unaware of this second will and made phone calls to Sharon's family to save face.

I would say this was within

a month to 40 days of her demise.

He seemed upset at her.

for her spending even after she was gone.

Just that she spent a ton of money and and

now I got to get money, and I've got to find

ways to make money.

He seemed preoccupied with money.

After Sharon is killed, do you start to receive phone calls from the defendant?

Yes.

What does he start talking to you about?

He was mentioning that he was going to

come into some money from the estate.

He was going to spend money on us.

He was going to invest in a studio with me.

He kept kind of pushing that at me, which is something I had never asked about.

How did you find that whole conversation?

Extremely odd.

At the time,

had the will been settled yet?

I don't know what you mean by settled.

Well, there was more than one.

Right.

These two wills were kind of floating out in existence.

Is that right?

Do conversations like that happen

before

the defendant becomes aware there's a second will?

No, I'm going to.

Once he found there was a second will, that never happened again.

Those conversations.

Yes, those conversations never happened again.

At first, Thomas hoped to charm Sharon's family with promises of money from her estate.

He thought he had control of everything, but that wasn't the case.

Sharon's second will will was written up with the help of her friend Alice.

Alice said in a confessional, she writes it out.

I'm watching her do it.

And we go to the notary and have it notarized.

And she gives it to me and she says, If anything happens to me, Alice, please give this to my daughter, Colleen.

She had left the house to Colleen.

Once he became aware of this other will,

Thomas began leaving numerous nasty voicemails for Colleen and her husband, saying things like, No wonder your mother didn't like you.

Thomas's true colors emerged when his control over the situation started to disintegrate.

Soon, police were taking a much closer look at Thomas.

In addition to all the inconsistencies in his story and the conflicting evidence at the crime scene, They looked into Thomas's past and discovered that he'd been married a total of six times.

Then they saw that only two of those wives were still alive.

That is some stellar police work right there.

Imagine if they had done that previously.

In January of 2009, police tracked Thomas down at his parents' house in Clearfield, Utah.

Clearfield police, as well as members of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, knocked on the front door, and Thomas answered.

When they showed him the warrant and tried to make an arrest, Thomas resisted and had to be tasered.

Are you surprised?

I'm not.

When they finally got him into custody, he was officially charged with conspiracy to commit murder and two counts of murder in the first degree for the deaths of Sharon Randolph and Michael Miller.

He pleaded not guilty and took it to trial.

The jury on the case spent very little time deliberating before reaching a verdict in June of 2017.

All right, Ms.

Forperson, would you give the verdict to the marshal, please?

We, the jury, in the above entitled case, find the defendant, Thomas William Randolph, guilty of first-degree murder.

We get in, everyone says guilty, and we probably could have gotten it done within 10 minutes.

But we were so afraid of making the wrong decision.

We wanted to be so careful because it is somebody's life on the line.

Was it even a close call for any of you?

No.

We all felt the same, but we still have to go through the evidence and everything else to make sure we're doing the right thing.

Yeah, the defense didn't really have a lot to work with.

They didn't.

I mean, they did the best they could with what they had, but they just didn't have a lot.

The state had everything on their side.

During your friendship with Mr.

Randolph, did the defendant ask you questions that you thought odd or made you feel uncomfortable?

Yes.

he told me that he wanted me to kill his wife didn't becky's death play a role in this case or no not for me

not for me because if they hadn't mentioned the utah case at all you still would have felt the same

the evidence of this case alone was enough

absolutely what did you make of the fact when you heard he was acquitted the first time

I wasn't going to judge 12 other people.

I don't know what they heard, what they didn't hear.

They're finding him not guilty.

They found him not guilty.

I accept that.

They could have saved some lives.

Yeah.

Three lives would have been two lives would have been saved.

Sure.

Had they known.

I have to guess they didn't know what they needed to know.

It comes time you're actually in the

in the room and you have to deliberate okay are we really gonna put him to death?

Is it really worthy of that?

It's so daunting.

Tell me about the different testimony from the different people.

His side, his mom, his daughter,

his son, did that have any effect on him?

Not a lot.

The mother

would be the only one from his side that gave me any sort of emotional connection.

This is where

I

should be as a mother today

to support my son.

Because at the end of the day, it's just lives were taken for greed.

And it's sad.

And I feel for Colleen a whole bunch, too, and all the other families.

I feel like we all absolutely made the right decision.

I think we're all very confident in it.

And

it is a really big relief.

The verdict was a relief for everyone except Thomas.

and his defense team.

Though the first jury decided they didn't think he murdered his second wife, Becky Galt, the second jury finally got it right.

Next came sentencing for the man now known across the country as the Black Widower.

This was a death penalty case like his first trial and the stakes were high.

But you will learn that it isn't just about May 8th of 2008.

In those doors this afternoon and tomorrow morning will walk several people to talk to you about 35 or more years

of pain and anguish that have all been caused by the defendant.

You will learn that it isn't simply just about Sharon Randolph and it isn't just about Becky Randolph.

What you will learn is that the defendant has been married six times.

You will also hear that

for five out of six of those wives,

he either attempted to kill,

hired someone to kill,

or kill five of those women.

The jury unanimously voted on a sentence of death.

Thomas destroyed so many kind-hearted women, ruining or taking their lives entirely.

But his era of evil is

over.

There will be no more girlfriends, fiancés, or wives.

At least, that's what everyone thought at the time.

Fast forward to December of 2020.

In a bizarre turn of events, the Nevada Supreme Court reversed Thomas's conviction on the basis that any mention to this jury of his first trial and acquittal or any other prior bad acts were violations of his right to a fair trial.

I love it when they use your own rules against you, don't you?

Of course, the Clark County DA's office office immediately sought to retry him.

Thomas Randolph's third trial, at taxpayers' expense, I might add, took place in the summer of 2023.

This time, prosecutors weren't allowed to talk about either one of the trials or really provide any negative character witnesses.

Weird, right?

The jury wasn't allowed to hear about his five other wives or that three of them were dead.

The raw evidence against Thomas was stacked against him, though.

Prosecutors built a strong case that Thomas had befriended Michael Miller just months before Sharon's murder and had hired him to kill her so that he could collect the life insurance money and be with his ex Lizzie again.

On August 24th, 2023,

a verdict was reached.

Is that you, Mr.

Dyer?

Yes, ma'am.

Mr.

Dyer, has the jury reached the verdict?

Yes, ma'am.

If you could please pass the verdict form to the march

The clerk will now read the verdict

District Court Clark County Nevada state of Nevada plaintiff versus Thomas William Randolph defendant case number 09C 250-966 Department 10 verdict we the jury in the above entitled case find the defendant Thomas William Randolph as follows Count one conspiracy to commit murder guilty of conspiracy to commit murder count two, murder with use of a deadly weapon, Sharon Randolph.

Guilty of first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon.

Count three, murder with use of a deadly weapon, Michael Miller.

Guilty of first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon.

Dated this 24th day of August, 2023, signed David Dyer.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I knew your verdict is read.

So say you one, so say you all.

Yes.

Thomas Randolph stared ahead with a blank expression as his final verdict was read.

Sentencing was to take place just a few months later.

But Thomas, now very elderly, was still pulling out all the stops to weasel himself out of prison.

A judge delayed the sentence for the convicted murderer known as the Black Widower.

Thomas Randolph and his lawyer submitted a motion to dismiss at the end of the day yesterday on the eve of his sentencing.

Some 700 pages of exhibits, many of them handwritten, were turned in.

The judge says the charges against Randolph are so serious, she's giving prosecutors a month to reply.

Randolph spoke in court for the first time since his conviction, offering to explain his reasoning for the motion.

It would take 90 minutes to put it on the record and you don't have to read it all.

I guess you can't,

the hands,

but

I'm still willing to do that.

90 minutes.

We're going to go ahead and respond to the motion so that the state knows what you're going to say ahead of time because they have to have an opportunity to.

That's what I'm saying.

I can put it in saying it.

These are just tactics to delay sentencing.

This seemingly never-ending case finally came, though.

In April of 2024, despite a 15-minute monologue and a proclamation of his innocence, the judge sentenced old Tommy to 60 years to life in prison.

Some may say he got let off easy compared to his prior death sentence.

But he'll live out his few remaining years trying to appeal this conviction also.

He won't live in peace.

He won't live in comfort.

But he'll be alive.

Unlike all those poor women that had the misfortune to meet him.

There is a lot of collective evidence that Thomas Randolph is not a good guy.

Even when Sharon first met him, everyone told her the same thing.

This is not a good idea.

What are you doing, girl?

Get out of this shit.

When Michael Miller met Thomas and befriended him, Michael's family members told him he'd be better off staying away from Thomas.

Sometimes we should probably

stop and listen to the advice of others, especially our loved ones.

especially when every single one of them is saying the same thing.

So, at the end of 22, early 23, we started on a venture, a brand new project that would take up all of our time and energy.

It's called Sword and Scale Television.

There's 10 episodes available of it right now.

It's the visual component to this podcast.

All new stories.

You can see it at swordandscale.com.

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