After 15 years, a vacated death sentence and a new trial, a Nevada jury found Thomas Randolph guilty of orchestrating the murder of his sixth wife and fatally shooting the apparent hitman he hired to kill her.
The jury on Thursday convicted Randolph, 68, of conspiracy to commit murder and two counts of murder with use of a deadly weapon after five hours of deliberation, according to court proceedings aired on Court TV.
Randolph, who uses a wheelchair and wears headphones for the hearing impaired, looked straight ahead and appeared impassive as the verdict was read.
Colleen Beyer, the daughter of Randolph’s sixth wife, Sharon Causse, gasped and put her hands over her mouth as Randolph was found guilty a second time, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
“I’m so relieved, it’s unbelievable,” Beyer told the outlet.
“It’s been 15 years and it’s been a twisted nightmare.”
“I’m absolutely elated and excited and relieved that he’s no longer on the streets, that he can’t do this to another woman again,” she said, teary-eyed outside the courtroom.
“Because he’s a predator, he’s a serious predator.”
On May 8, 2008, Randolph dialed 911 and told operators that a masked intruder shot Causse, according to court documents.
The jury convicted Thomas Randolph Thursday of conspiracy to commit murder and two counts of murder with use of a deadly weapon after five hours of deliberation, according to court proceedings aired on Court TV.AP
After an overturned death sentence and a new trial, a Nevada jury found Thomas Randolph, 68, guilty of orchestrating the murder of his sixth wife and shooting dead the apparent hitman he hired to kill her.
After shooting the man to death, Randolph told police he recognized him as his friend and handyman, 38-year-old Michael Miller.
But using phone records, prosecutors detailed Randolph’s extensive relationship with Miller in court last week and during the accused killer’s previous trial in 2017, citing hundreds of phone calls between the pair.
In both his most recent trial and the 2017 murder trial, prosecutors alleged that Randolph arranged for Miller to kill his wife so he could collect more than $300,000 in insurance money, pointing to insurance policies he took out on her life in the two previous years. death.
The murder would become the subject of Dateline’s 2021 miniseries “The Widower.”
But the Nevada Supreme Court overturned Randolph’s prior conviction and death sentence in 2020, arguing that Clark County District Court should not have allowed jurors to hear “prior evidence of wrongdoing” related to his arrest in Utah in 1986 for the death of his second wife, Becky. Gault, of which he was acquitted.
Randolph, who uses a wheelchair and wears hearing-impaired headphones, stared straight ahead and was impassive as the verdict was read.
Four of Randolph’s six wives have died: the fifth wife, Leona Stapleton, died of cancer, according to her family’s testimony at the previous trial, and the fourth wife, Francis Randolph, died during heart surgery in 2004.
Another man told jurors that Randolph had offered to pay him to kill Francis before his death on the operating table and that he had suggested that the death be staged as a robbery.
The living ex-wife, Gayna Allmon, testified that she believed Randolph was trying to kill her when a bullet from his gun hit the kitchen wall behind her while she was cleaning his gun during their marriage; Her first wife, Kathryn Thomas, detailed her alleged psychologically abusive behavior.
But prosecutors were relegated to evidence that pertained strictly to the 2008 investigation into the Causse and Miller murders.
The state pointed to inconsistencies in Randolph’s story to police, which included a video tour of the home he shared with Causse, directed by Randolph and shared with jurors earlier this month.
Colleen Beyer, daughter of Randolph’s sixth wife, Sharon Causse, gasped and put her hands over her mouth as Randolph was found guilty a second time, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.AP
An inconsistently small amount of evidence was found in the hallway where the alleged shooting occurred, prosecutors said, and the trajectory of the bullets that killed Miller did not match Randolph’s account.
Randolph “offered to do anything but help [Causse]” while a 911 operator urged him to perform chest compressions on her body, prosecutors said.
But his attorney, Josh Tomsheck, argued that this characterization was unfair.
“He wanted her to have medical assistance; he was the only one who did it,” he said in his closing arguments last Wednesday.
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“There is that silence after hearing the clearance of the house, there is a silence. …Tommy is outside wondering…complaining about [how long it is taking] law enforcement [to respond].”
“They didn’t go to help her,” Tomsheck continued.
“The only person who helped him was [Randolph] – He tried in vain. You can see that nothing can be done.”
Defense attorneys argued that police ignored evidence that Miller acted alone and unfairly targeted Randolph based on his prior arrest in Utah.
The crime scene was not adequately preserved, they argued, and Randolph should not be expected to accurately retell every detail of the traumatic confrontation in repeated police interviews.
But Chief Deputy District Attorney Christopher Hamner told jurors that Randolph “was not a victim” in this case, but rather “a villain.”
“It is very, very difficult to plan a perfect murder; Now that you have the evidence, you can see that [Randolph] “He failed, because his story doesn’t add up,” Hamner said.
“It doesn’t fit with what you physically see at the scene… when you see the insurance policies… it doesn’t fit with the way he talks about his wife. [or] …when you start thinking about her relationship with Michael Miller.”
Randolph’s version of events, Hamner said, “is not supported by other evidence,” but rather “contradicts” and even “disproves” it.
“I know we did everything we could,” Tomsheck told Court TV, adding that Randolph’s defense “did everything they could.” [they] could” although “they expected a different verdict.”
His office did not respond to comments by press time.
District Judge Tierra Jones is scheduled to sentence Randolph during a hearing on October 12.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn