00:00:07
a husband gets home to find a scene of Carnage 911 help me help me my wife she's
00:00:16
dead okay just stay on the line with me in the frame for what appeared murder an
00:00:22
ex employee with a grudge he denied all involvement but he agreed to a polygraph test after he was
00:00:30
photographed he um failed he failed miserably but then police discover an extraordinary witness a 7-year-old girl
00:00:39
maybe they had the wrong guy what did the Rober look like he looked like her dad just one of a catalog of twists and
00:00:48
turns that detectives have to follow to discover what really happened to cheerleader turned mum Kelly Clayton as
00:00:55
more and more sorted details came out uh it just kind of fueled the Flames of that drama it was almost like watching a
00:01:03
made for TV movie [Music] in Upper New York State a young Sportsman was making a name for himself
00:01:46
in the early 2000s on the surface Clayton was a very Charming fellow uh he came across as
00:01:55
being very uh open and G and fun sort of guy and friendly he was a charmer once he graduates from high school he goes on
00:02:05
to college at Niagara University and he's playing for the ice hockey team there in the men's division and then the
00:02:11
year that he graduates from college he's recruited by the Elmyra [Music] jackals Tom was a hockey player quite
00:02:23
popular uh loved by a lot of people um especially women he had a reputation of being a bad boy it was the reputation he
00:02:30
worked hard to maintain he was described as not being very big but play like a person twice his size and that usually
00:02:39
kind of indicates that someone um wants to be bigger or more aggressive or prove
00:02:44
a lot and um he seemed to have that type of Personality I've been to hockey matches
00:02:51
before where somebody's been pushed up against the the Plexi glass you know and
00:02:54
you can see the blood and you would think the people would be concerned but the whole crowd just you know erupts
00:02:59
both sides they love this he's what they call in hockey Aon he's a guy that likes
00:03:04
to start fights on the ice and and basically the whole idea is that you know you get the guys rattled and then
00:03:10
you force errors so that's his job and apparently did it pretty well you can
00:03:14
get one of their top guys off the ice for 2 minutes 5 minutes you know it's it's a job done I think he used it as an
00:03:20
excuse to start fights you know I think he thought of himself as this sort of powerful athlete and he used it to
00:03:26
dominate people both socially and also in his sport [Music] Clayton coming back at him you want to
00:03:33
drop you want to fight someone just like when you're a little kid and you get so
00:03:36
mad you just want to fight you know and it wasn't just as a sportsman that he
00:03:39
had a reputation for trouble Tom Clayton was always a hotthead he would be a hotthead on and off the ice Clayton's
00:03:49
Behavior was was pretty aggressive and it got to the point where it spilled over into his personal
00:03:55
life if you're a narcissist right and you're looking for attention one way to
00:04:01
stand out in a team sport is to be aggressive the thing to be worry about is when this aggression um uh occurs off
00:04:08
the ice one night in 2003 Clayton and a hockey buddy got into a bar fight nothing too unusual for Tom Clayton
00:04:18
except for his opponents a group of police recruits supposedly it had to do with
00:04:25
Tom being a little lewd dancing almost nude on top of some tabletops he at one point was
00:04:33
dancing almost naked and challenged or was challenged by four police Cadets and it turned into a big brawl and he ended
00:04:39
up being arrested for that you pick a new fight you you keep the you keep the title it's the same thing he was doing
00:04:45
on the ice but he was doing it in a bar and lucky for him he was only charged with disorderly conduct the Mr meanor
00:04:52
and he pretty much got a slap on a wrist for Clayton it was just another badge of honor to enhance his reputation
00:04:59
one that was winning him a posy of female fans he could uh charm the ladies when he wanted to and be be he could be
00:05:09
flirtatious um came across almost a sort of like a Playboy sort of fellow but he definitely
00:05:16
was popular with the with the women Tommy is known as a as a bad boy but he's a real charmer the ladies love him
00:05:23
he never has problems um attracting women he makes you feel like you're the most important girl in the room you're
00:05:31
just the most beautiful girl alive I think sometimes women are attracted to these bad boy personalities because they
00:05:38
seem very Brazen they seem very bold and many women like that in a man they like
00:05:44
men who are powerful and strong for 5 Years Tom Clayton wore the number 18 shirts for the alir jackals
00:05:52
playing pokon nights on his nights off and enjoying the attention and Adoration of the fans but one of them was
00:05:59
different Elmyra jackals are playing and you know as normal the the the stands are just
00:06:06
packed with these cheering fans and one of these fans is Kelly stage Kelly was herself a talented
00:06:14
athlete born and raised in alir where her family were well known they were fairly prominent primarily because of
00:06:21
their father her father was a a fire chief uh in West elmeer for many years it's a small town in the fingerlakes
00:06:31
region of New York State it's a beautiful area the kind of place people go on vacation because the Fall colors
00:06:38
especially are striking Kelly went to school here at the alira Free Academy where she was a
00:06:46
model student she played softball she excelled in athletics and she was a cheerleader she was involved in a lot of
00:06:53
different things she was outgoing her sister called her sassy and bold and she was just a really funl
00:07:00
um that she had that she was beautiful but she had that kind of girl next door kind of quality about her Kelly was more
00:07:06
reserved she had aspirations of being a model at one point and was a well like Community type
00:07:14
person in 2005 on a night out with her friend Andrea to watch the Amir jackals play Ice Hockey she spotted someone the
00:07:23
cute guy wearing the number 18 jersey he's playing forward his name is Tom Clayton
00:07:32
she's she she's she's got her eye on him in a bar after the game the girls
00:07:40
run into him again coincidence or did Kelly plan it that way Andrea goes up to Tom and she says are you dating anyone
00:07:51
and he says who's asking and she says well not me and then she points over to
00:07:57
her friend sitting at the bar this cute bubbly blonde named Kelly and Tom looks over at Kelly and he says the blonde
00:08:06
she's incredible Tom Clayton the cool good-looking pro hockey player with a gambling habit on the side Kelly stage
00:08:14
the bubbly blonde cheerleader they seemed a perfect match and in 2006 they were married it's possible that Kelly
00:08:23
actually thought that was attractive that this person was an alpha male and sometimes that signals to people that
00:08:29
they might be more protective in nature Kelly was just so happy to be marrying Tom and she is just this adoring wife
00:08:38
she goes to all of his hockey games she is the perfect hockey wife on the outside Kelly seemed like she had it all
00:08:45
but events were about to force Tom Clayton to reconsider his entire life he has an accident and Tom's career
00:08:54
basically comes to a crashing halt right there on the ice when Tom mom's hockey career ended
00:09:00
because of injury it took away a huge source of his self-esteem and probably robbed him of this identity that he had
00:09:06
held on to for years when you take that out of the mix and you're sort of left
00:09:11
without that um that outlet uh yeah I could imagine it it affected him um pretty deeply and he realizes that this
00:09:20
is probably time to retire he says I got injured I got married it's kind of the
00:09:26
way he sees it it's time to do something different and start a family could this poker playing bad boy really
00:09:33
settle down to domestic Bliss with his wife Kelly when their baby daughter was born in 2007 that question was put to
00:09:41
the test and that's when Tom went into business for himself um with a a franchise of a company that did um like
00:09:50
deep cleaning and restoration after fires and floods and things like that money was an instrument for him to
00:09:57
continue because he' lost his career just like with hockey he became singularly focused on wealth as a way to
00:10:05
supply him with a self-esteem he so desperately needed Tom is becoming this successful businessman he um he's
00:10:11
acquired some rental properties he's a landlord um and um he's making some good
00:10:17
money little by little he acquires more properties three years later Tom and Kelly had another baby business was good
00:10:26
Tom liked to show off about it he was definitely obsessed with making money and spending it gambling it what
00:10:32
whatever one friend remembers that you know the friend borrowed a car from Tom at one point and inside was this thick
00:10:39
stack of $22,000 I mean who carries that kind of money around and leaves it in their car
00:10:46
in 2012 the couple bought a new home in ginan Road Kon Kon is this small little rural uh outside of El Myra it's in this
00:10:57
really peaceful really ilc setting just gorgeous a lovely place to raise children where they live is a very
00:11:04
remote there only only a couple of other uh houses on that particular road behind
00:11:10
the happy family facade Clayton was living a second life as well as splashing the cash at high stakes poker
00:11:17
games he'd also returned to his womanizing ways Tom was kind of a Wanderer uh he you know he presented
00:11:25
this image of the of the uh doting husband and and a devoted family man uh but he had a Wandering eye clearly this
00:11:35
was headed for disaster because it doesn't seem like he had much impulse control at all Tom had been getting
00:11:42
around he had been seeing lots of women and he'd been telling these women things
00:11:50
about Kelly he'd been saying she's a [ __ ] he'd been saying she's lazy he'd
00:11:55
been saying he wants a divorce but divorce is out of the question question because she'd clean me out obviously Tom
00:12:03
was not so enamored with his wife he seemed to think everything was okay and was not aware that her husband was
00:12:09
running around shooting on her with other women if divorce was not an option for
00:12:14
financial reasons maybe Tom Clayton had other plans in 2014 Clayton doubled his wife's life insurance policy he took it
00:12:24
from a half a million dollar to a million dollar it was in his mind that he was starting to lay the ground work
00:12:29
at that point for whatever he had planned it was the first sign that all might not be what it seemed in the
00:12:37
marriage but what was it that Tom Clayton had in mind he did intimate to some people that
00:12:45
that he was planning on getting out of his marriage [Music] on the night of September 28th 2015 Tom
00:13:03
Clayton was out at his regular Monday night poker game at Greg and lucky Miller House in nearby Corning Jeff
00:13:09
Murray is a reporter for the Amira star Gazette covering the area where Tom and Kelly Clayton lived in Kon New
00:13:16
York tragedy strikes uh had all the makings of a real dramatic story round about midnight the poker
00:13:25
game breaks up Tom gets back in his his truck and he drives back the 15 minutes back to Kon to his
00:13:36
home he walks in the door and there on the kitchen floor his wife Kelly is lying in a pool of
00:13:45
[Music] blood his 911 call gave just a hint of the horror that he had found 911 help me help me my wife she's
00:13:56
dead hurry okay just stand lying with me how long has she been down I don't know
00:14:01
I don't know I just got home how you doing what's going on I'm just came I'm the neighbor just
00:14:12
came and got me out of bed inside the house the officer encounters a distraught husband who reveals the scene
00:14:17
of the crime anybody else in the house time just youer help okay where's she at
00:14:31
oh oh okay so the murder scene was pretty atrocious you know some scenes even seasoned cops aren't prepared for he
00:14:42
sees this mother of two lying in this pool of blood on the kitchen floor and there's blood splattered
00:14:51
everywhere I got a female mid-30s early 40s her face is completely beaten in Kelly had been bludgeoned to death and
00:15:02
her half naked body dumped in the kitchen there's blood all over she's been dragged it looked like it began
00:15:10
upstairs there's blood all over up here she tries to get away and she runs from
00:15:16
him and she goes toward the stairs and that's when they tumble down the stairs
00:15:19
and he's dragging her down the stairs picture flying off the wall comes down
00:15:24
the stairs the blood I mean he's bashing her with something because there's blood
00:15:29
all over the place there was a hole in one of the walls in the hallway that was police believed were were from Kelly's
00:15:35
face L on the wall looks like a face plant into the wall even the the the first responder to
00:15:43
the scene was disturbed by that all the signs suggested that Kelly had put up a fight against her attacker it was clear
00:15:51
that in her last moments Kelly really fought back and she was fighting desperately for her own life but also to
00:15:56
keep her children safe as well I think that's probably why she fought so hard
00:16:00
because she knew that that she was really the last thing standing between that perpetrator and her children I am
00:16:06
sure she put up a fight because that's the type of person that she was the first officer on the scene noticed some
00:16:12
curious things first Tom had claimed that his daughter had called to say there had
00:16:17
been a robbery at the Family Home Clown where were you when this all went down playing poker with my buddy I came home
00:16:28
and my daughter said there was a robber in the house and she saw them this story
00:16:32
about a robbery just isn't working there doesn't seem to be any sign of forced
00:16:36
entry but if that that's the case how did the robber get in there was no rumaging through through drawers or
00:16:44
anything that would suggest a burglary um it was odd that none of that was present at one point he says something
00:16:54
curious he says well you'll know it wasn't me because my truck has GPS on
00:17:01
it it was something he would repeat in this official statement to police later that
00:17:06
night as the Emergency Services descended on the house and began picking their way through the horrific scene
00:17:12
Kelly's older sister Kim arrived alerted by Tom Clayton she and other family members
00:17:28
were question by police their suspicions fell on a disgruntled ex-employee of Clayton's his name Michael
00:17:36
beard beard worked for his company as a laborer also did some work for him uh personally around his home just just you
00:17:45
know different projects needed done like you know mowing things mowing grass and
00:17:51
and digging things and cutting things down whatever needed to be done beard had been fired actually from serf Pro
00:17:59
when the owner got complaints from customers that that beard was stealing items from homes where he was working
00:18:06
Michael beard also is a tenant at one of of Tom's properties so now he doesn't
00:18:12
have a job so he doesn't have any money and can't pay the rent so now Michael
00:18:16
beard is facing eviction seemingly bearing at least two grudges against Tom Clayton beard made
00:18:23
an obvious suspect they blame it all on Michael beard I see I mean you know the guy needed money um you know the guy he
00:18:32
just got fired and and he was about to be evicted and oh by the way he used to work some odd jobs at the house so he
00:18:39
knows his way around Michael beard was brought in for questioning he denied all involvement
00:18:46
but he agreed to a polygraph test polygraph tests are are used to Aid at the investigation not necessarily
00:18:56
determine guilt or innocence but to see a certain response or physical response from someone when they're asked the
00:19:03
[Music] question he um failed he failed miserably and it wasn't just the polygraph test that police had over
00:19:11
Michael beard investigators found Holly bar Michael Beard's girlfriend uh she pretty much told investigators what
00:19:21
she knew and what happened with nowhere left to hide beard began talking beard became extremely
00:19:29
Cooperative with police he led them to the physical evidence evidence that proved that he had been intimately
00:19:35
involved in the murder of Kelly Clayton first he showed officers where he had dumped the murder weapon the distinctive
00:19:41
yellow handle of a sledgehammer beard threw the stick on the side of the road beard told them that's where he
00:19:51
left the murder weapon the the the mall handle that he used to attack Kelly next he took them to a swamp just
00:19:58
behind a roadside in they retrieved the bloody clothing that was tossed into that swampy
00:20:06
area the clothing that has Kelly Clayton's DNA all over it and there was something else he led
00:20:16
police to the creek where he' disposed of one more vital piece of evidence police then find the house keys that Tom
00:20:25
Clayton gave to Michael be claimed that he'd been given the keys by his former boss the reason
00:20:33
Tom Clayton was giving Michael beard one last job Clayton said I know you're hard
00:20:38
up I will pay you $10,000 if you will kill Kelly the plan was that he was To Kill
00:20:46
Kelly then set the house on fire and then burn the cars and it was all part of this insurance
00:20:55
scam the million dooll life insurance policy on Kelly that Clayton had doubled just a year earlier the evidence against
00:21:02
Tom Clayton was growing by the day but there was a serious problem with Clayton's poker Alibi how were police
00:21:09
going to link him conclusively to the murder of his wife investigators did find a
00:21:18
witness can you tell me what he looked like [Music] detectives hunting the killer of mother
00:21:34
of two Kelly Clayton had one man in custody Michael beard now they were pursuing a new line of evidence the
00:21:42
challenge the prosecutors fa is that all the physical evidence was linked to beard the casaste I had against him was
00:21:50
very strong uh you know they had DNA evidence on the mall handle the bloody clothing uh they had him pretty had the
00:21:59
rights so how could investigators follow up Michael Beard's claim that he'd been
00:22:04
acting under instruction from Kelly's husband the successful businessman the
00:22:08
hockey hero Tom Clayton unless there was someone who might be able to identify a
00:22:13
masked man seen in the house that night there was little they could do but was there
00:22:19
someone unfortunately the children were witness to this very brutal and bloody murder of their mother
00:22:29
Clayton's daughter would need delicate handling by specially trained police interviewers in the middle of the
00:22:35
night this guy came and started hitting my mom with like this pipe thing me can you tell me more about that um
00:22:45
there was blood everywhere on my door on the floor not on the carpet though what did you hear like my mom ran
00:22:54
to the door screaming she told officers everything she could about the man she'd seen the
00:22:59
night her mother was attacked can you tell me what he looked like he was wearing jeans a black
00:23:07
longsleeve shirt and a mask okay what did the robber look like he looked like my dad and and why do you say that how
00:23:15
did he look like your dad the mask and CH she says the mask looked like one that Daddy wears when he goes
00:23:25
hunting the detectives listened in horror as recounted her memories of the traumatic evening I saw the rocker like
00:23:33
hitting her until she was on the ground she was sort of suffering Kelly's last words were run
00:23:40
run obviously concerned that her children were going to be next cap [Music] with and I H her leg and she
00:23:52
says but it couldn't it couldn't be Daddy because then who would take care
00:23:57
of us and then she asked the cop where's Mommy as investigators pursued this new
00:24:05
line of inquiry One By One The Pie has fell into place now police are continuing to collect more evidence on
00:24:14
Tom Clayton after firing beard Clayton had tried to find him other work and promised to pay an outstanding fine be
00:24:22
was very vulnerable and um Clayton was taken advantage of that um put him in a situation where he had some control over
00:24:30
beard when you consider that Clayton was a narcissist right and that the people in his lives were instruments for him to
00:24:36
either get ahead um become more successful um then it it's no surprise that Michael beard was a tool in
00:24:44
Clayton's toolbox Tom saw that maybe this is a person who's a bit crooked
00:24:48
who's a bit lost and Tom with his power and with his lure of money could cause
00:24:53
the tip in the scale for him to say yes to an egregious act and that's in fact
00:24:58
what Tom did Tom saw that opportunity and basically lured him in by saying I can provide you with more Financial
00:25:05
Security if you just do this one thing for me phone records revealed the relationship between the two men one a
00:25:12
wealthy and popular local figure the other a sacked employee about to be made homeless the most compelling evidence
00:25:20
had to do with cell phone use because uh Clayton and beard were in a constant contact either by by phone or
00:25:29
text message in the days leading up to the murder and even though Tom no longer employs Michael he is on the phone with
00:25:39
him a lot they're in sort of Constant Contact they thought they were being clever there were no text messages that
00:25:45
said okay you show up at my house on this night and kill Kelly and then the next day I'll pay you $10,000 there was
00:25:51
no Smoking Gun like that but there were different messages indicated that something was in the
00:25:59
works his cell phone record showed an inordinate amount of phone calls between him and beard um leading up to the day
00:26:07
of Kelly's murder Clayton even went so far as to buy beard a gift later that day Michael
00:26:14
beard texts Clayton and said he needed a bike and later that day Clayton bought him the
00:26:20
bike Michael beard texts Tom Clayton again this time the text simply says I need a little bit he's asking for
00:26:32
money in another call traced by detectives Clayton made inquiries about a swampy area behind a roadside Inn a
00:26:40
couple of days later Tom calls an acquaintance and asks if there are surveillance cameras outside a certain
00:26:49
Inn located in Elmyra and the acquaintance says well you know I'm not really sure I can check and get back to
00:26:55
you and he says no no no don't bother don't worry about it it was the Inn where Michael beard would
00:27:00
later dump his bloody clothes and there was one more call that Thomas Clayton made which would prove crucial to the
00:27:06
police investigation Clayton borrowed Ash the his friend's wife when he was at the
00:27:13
poker game asked her friend's wife can I borrow your phone to make a call Lucky Miller the woman who hosted
00:27:21
the poker game the phone she lent to Tom lucky tells police you know I thought it
00:27:28
was a little odd could he borrow her cell phone because he had left his in the truck so he takes lucky cell phone
00:27:35
he goes down the hall and he has this hushed conversation and when he's finished he
00:27:42
comes back and lucky realizes when she looks at her phone that there's no trace
00:27:48
of that phone call Tom has apparently deleted the phone call from her phone Clayton thought that he'd covered his
00:27:55
tracks but police were able to retrieve the call from Lucky Miller's phone records the call Clayton made 10:30 that
00:28:02
night was to Michael beard that was the go call once he made that call Michael beard went to the
00:28:10
house and murdered Kelly that was the evidence that these two were inextricably connected and yes
00:28:19
Clayton was definitely involved in the murder of his wife the theory looked like it was coming together but it was
00:28:25
still just a theory the evidence against Tom Clayton remained circumstantial at best detectives were relying on the
00:28:32
testimony of Michael beard a man about to face trial for the murder of Kelly Clayton he told police that Clayton
00:28:40
asked him to Kill Kelly uh and if the kids were there you know not to leave any Witnesses he actually told Michael
00:28:49
beard to burn down the house to try to destroy any evidence that this was a murder so that he could collect on the
00:28:55
life insurance it was the version events that had led police to investigate Tom Clayton over the killing but Michael
00:29:02
beard was about to change his evidence his initial story was that Clayton offered to pay him $10,000 to Kill
00:29:10
Kelly he confessed to that but when he he he came up to trial he told a different story he later said Clayton
00:29:18
told him oh no I just want you to burn the house down for the insurance money I guarantee nobody will be home there
00:29:22
visiting relatives or whatever well maybe what happened here was that he got scared because the kids were there and
00:29:30
they weren't supposed to be there so it freaked him out whatever Michael Beard's
00:29:34
intentions were that September evening he was very clear to the jury at his trial about one thing in particular he
00:29:41
went into the house with the idea just to burn it down and then and and found Kelly already dead now he's recanted his
00:29:48
confession and he says this was all Tom Clayton he says this was all supposed to
00:29:54
be I was supposed to burn the house down burn the cars it was all part of this insurance scam it never was supposed to
00:30:03
be a murder I'm not the killer Tom Clayton is the killer Beard's evidence
00:30:10
in court didn't hold water for one simple reason he recanted his confession despite the fact that he had led
00:30:18
officers to the actual murder weapon and other physical evidence the jury refused
00:30:24
to believe that he had nothing to do with Kelly's death in November 2016 Michael beard was convicted of first and
00:30:31
second degree murder Michael beard is sentenced to life without parole on the first degree
00:30:40
murder plus 25 years on the second degree murder he will serve those sentences concurrently convicted of killing Kelly
00:30:50
Michael beard had been proved in court to be a liar but if his version of events wasn't true where did that leave
00:30:56
the investigation into Thomas Clayton a man Detective still believed was intimately involved in the murder of his
00:31:07
[Music] wife Thomas Clayton was first arrested the day after his wife's murder in
00:31:18
September 2015 detectives though had a problem there was no concrete evidence linking him to the crime Tom posts
00:31:26
$250,000 and gets out on Bond and while he was out police investigators um continued to investigate without the
00:31:36
restrictions of married life Tom Clayton quickly returned to his free willing single lifestyle he doesn't seem like a
00:31:43
grieving husband at all he was ready to move on to this new life of luxury and social prowess and making new friends
00:31:54
and basically just being powerful in a completely new way and I don't think at
00:31:58
this point he was thinking at all about anybody else but himself and it's almost
00:32:02
as if Kelly and the children never existed meanwhile detectives investigating Kelly's murder were
00:32:08
turning up the new details of Clayton's womanizing they talked to a lot of his
00:32:13
girlfriends and and female Witnesses who gave a lot of information that implicated
00:32:19
Clayton his relationships with other women were ranging from him having a relationship with one of Kelly's closest
00:32:27
friends uh a relationship with even a 15-year-old girl police discovered that at the same
00:32:33
time as he was fooling around with other women Clayton was playing the devoted husband with Kelly he'd sent her loving
00:32:39
messages while he was sending sexually suggested messages to his other girlfriends she had no idea what was
00:32:46
coming it was a painstaking process but piece by piece detectives built their case against Thomas
00:32:53
Clayton they had so many witnesses who had maybe one or two things that add to the pile but that pile got Higher and
00:33:01
Higher and each piece of circumstantial evidence added to the last so by the end
00:33:07
they had a fairly compelling case but it took a lot of pieces and a lot of dots they had to connect to make that case
00:33:14
happen January the 9th 2017 more than 15 months after the killing of Kelly Clayton her husband Thomas was finally
00:33:21
brought to trial accused of her murder I've covered a lot of murder trials and and other trials other
00:33:28
serious crimes uh some of which have kept me up at night uh some of which some of which have uh have haunted me
00:33:35
for months this was one of them in the dock a popular local Sportsman turned businessman for the prosecution a case
00:33:43
built on circumstantial evidence this is a crime that happened behind closed doors without Witnesses
00:33:50
they didn't have anybody could forward could come forward and say I saw him do
00:33:54
it so they had to rely on the evidence and a lot of that evidence would not have been available without the the sort
00:34:03
of technology that we have today at the trial evidence was revealed about Clayton's true
00:34:09
character these women that had come forward to police these women that he'd been having affairs with take the stand
00:34:17
some of whom were single some of whom were married some of whom were not even of age one was 15 years old a minor when
00:34:27
Tom was seeing her another was a close friend of Kelly's and then there was the life
00:34:35
insurance agent who tells the jurors about a threesome that she had with Tom and another life insurance agent the
00:34:43
testimony of the women uh that Clayton had affairs with pointed toward motive Tom had said in casual passing that he
00:34:52
couldn't divorce Kelly even though they were unhappy because she would take him
00:34:55
to the cleaners and take him for all of his money all the witnesses described what a [ __ ] Clayton said his wife was
00:35:02
and how much he stood to lose in a divorce it Illustrated how much you really wanted to kill
00:35:09
her wanting to Kill Kelly and actually going through it would too entirely different things and for a husband who
00:35:15
doubled his wife's life insurance a year earlier it would have to be done properly if Clayton was afraid she was
00:35:22
going to take him to the cleaners he needed to be absolutely sure that she was dead the defense argued that another
00:35:28
man was already guilty of this murder Clayton and his attorneys denied everything they wanted to pin everything
00:35:35
on beard and said that Clayton had nothing to do with it as the evidence against him mounted however the
00:35:42
prosecution's theory about Clayton's involvement looked stronger and stronger
00:35:47
as more and more sorted details came out uh it just kind of fueled the Flames of
00:35:53
that of that drama and it just you know it was it was almost like watching a made for TV movie it was like this was
00:36:00
made to be it was scripted to be like that almost Clayton's play boy lifestyle his
00:36:06
younger days as a hockey goon his running with the law it all added to the case against him we know that Clayton
00:36:14
liked to instigate fights right on the rink so professionally and in the bars right so in his personal life as well it
00:36:22
shouldn't shock anyone that he would use aggression and in this case the form of
00:36:28
aggression the ending of someone's life um to you know further his own his own
00:36:34
cause police think it's possible actually that Tom's plan was that the kids were going to be in the house that
00:36:43
he was supposed to have the house set on fire with the kids in there this automatically tips me off to an extreme
00:36:51
lack of empathy callousness for Jeffrey Murray what he saw in front of him in the courtroom
00:36:58
was a coldness about Clayton if somebody was up there giving some rather compelling or jamming testimony I'd look
00:37:04
over to see how was Tom Clayton reacting and he wasn't he wasn't reacting he just
00:37:10
kind of just like he was staring at a wall almost expressionless which way would the jury
00:37:20
go guilty or not guilty when they came back with a verdict in only 6 hours I have to admit I was pretty surprised I
00:37:27
said wow that that was amazing I I didn't expect that so they must have just realized
00:37:31
that some of the evidence was pretty compelling in February of 2017 Tom Clayton is found guilty first-degree
00:37:42
murder oh oh okay and second degree murder in the killing of his wife Kelly people started crying they were
00:37:54
hugging each other uh it was very emotional I'm sure they had so many emotions
00:38:00
running through their heads you know that the the satisfaction of getting a guilty verdict so just the reminder of
00:38:07
the sadness that their their their their daughter their sister was gone um all those things collided at once and you
00:38:14
could read it so clearly in their faces that's what sticks out for me the most in April 2017 Thomas Clayton was
00:38:22
sentenced to life in prison without parole for first-degree murder plus 25 years for second degree murder this was
00:38:30
all about Tom just wanting to get rid of his wife and his children and go back to
00:38:36
being a single Bad Boy again this is a case in which financial motivation was absolutely the primary
00:38:44
and possibly even the only drive for why he decided to kill her instead of just divorce her or leave her this is
00:38:50
somebody who wants to protect his ego at all costs and the money that he had amassed is his entire self-concept and
00:38:58
so he wasn't going to allow Kelly to benefit in any small way from what he believed was rightfully
00:39:05
his all the elements were there you had this family that appeared on the surface
00:39:10
to have an idolic lifestyle they were happily married you see them they were always smiling and they're playing with
00:39:16
the kids and they lived in this beautiful house on top of a hill and it was the American dream and they had this
00:39:22
whole dream life and and it just all Came Crashing Down people couldn't believe that Clayton
00:39:30
could commit such a a heinous act but this is all part of the narcissist's act
00:39:35
right to to create the story for you and control that story so that you know at the end of the day when things like this
00:39:42
happen people won't pin the blame on you automatically I don't think anybody
00:39:47
understood his true nature I think this is somebody who basically put on a face whenever he was in public and he was
00:39:54
this very Charming individual and it was easy for him to show that superficial charm for a little while and then he
00:40:00
would go back into his own space where he would actually be the person he truly was Thomas Clayton was convicted of his
00:40:07
wife's murder in part thanks to the identification of his daughter now she and her younger brother have been left
00:40:13
to grow up without either of their parents it's really the children who have suffered the most in all of
00:40:24
this they were both young children this obviously had to be very traumatic for them Tom Clayton the bad boy who killed
00:40:35
his wife to get his freedom back will never be free again [Music] [Music]