Speaker 1: Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence, and is
not intended for all audiences.
Speaker 2: Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3: So we got up in here and he kind of
rushed up on me a little bit, and that's when
I just pushed it. Boom boom boom, and he started
going out toward the shed. I don't know how many
times I shot him.
Speaker 1: Hello and welcome. This is season twelve, episode two and
eighty one of Sword and Scale, a show that reveals
that the worst monsters are real. 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 morning sign, brushing
aside every thing 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
two thousands as a suburban paradise and the sprawling landscape
of Las Vegas. Driving twenty five 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 eighth, two thousand and eight, 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 eight
forty four pm, dispatch received a call from the Peaceful
Suburban Oasis. It was there three thousand, one hundred and
thirty first call of the day.
Speaker 4: We received information there had been a shooting at the
house on Santa Fe Driveay think or whereber yes, and
that the homeowner had shot that his wife had been
shot by suspect, and that the homeowner had shot the suspect.
Speaker 5: My wife and you know, I know, you know what.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 7: Running over, running over.
Speaker 1: When the college tried to turn his wife over, he
saw her bloodied, distorted face, nine one one. Dispatchers walked
him through the CPR process well. Police officers made their
way to Rancho Santa Fe.
Speaker 8: As I remember somebody.
Speaker 4: 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.
Speaker 1: The first few officers on the scene walked in through
the front door, walked through the home and came upon
fifty seven year old Sharon Randolph.
Speaker 9: 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.
Speaker 1: 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, fifty three year old Thomas Randolph,
was taken to the police station to give an official
witness statement.
Speaker 6: So who knew you were going out?
Speaker 5: All right?
Speaker 6: For one of his sad almost transcribes and head a
further report. All right, we'll cover basically what we just
talked about. How long you know Mike? How you met him?
Speaker 1: 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
thirties 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 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 work around
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.
Speaker 10: 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.
Speaker 2: He was coming into some money.
Speaker 1: 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 walk through of the
crime scene with Thomas.
Speaker 3: My name was Tom Randolph. My date of birth is
two two point fifty five social security number, and that's
my understanding. We're doing a walk through of the house,
kind of a reenactment of what happened last Thursday.
Speaker 9: And it's your desire to come out here and do
this for us, right, So, that we can get an
understanding of what.
Speaker 6: Was going on.
Speaker 3: It's my desire, not my desire, but I am cooperating
with you.
Speaker 9: Okay, and you came out here on your own free will.
Speaker 3: Correct.
Speaker 1: Thomas then gets into his car and reenacts the night
from the moment he and Sharon pulled into the driveway.
Speaker 3: 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 stopped the car. Sharon
gets out. She had the staken lobster from shark old
grill or something.
Speaker 1: 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 in a movie before
returning home around half past eight.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 7: This is about how.
Speaker 3: Close it was that night, so that's probably doing now
this is it just coming in the house now this
door was closed. I helped 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.
Speaker 6: Right about here.
Speaker 3: I had the door, said Sharon. Sharon, and I seen
the bag from Charcoal's steak or whatever, and it's really
a bright red and this halllight, this halllight wasn't on
at the time, so just about like this, and I
turned to light on myself as we got in and
about right here when I was like this, I was
trying to kind of get a view. I thought I
just seemed like a shadow or something over this way,
and I remembered that there's the nine Milimurray right up here,
because earlier I'd taken all my guns, put him in
a suitcase, was going to take him 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 up in my pocket, came around just
like that, and about that time, he's right up on me,
just right up. I mean we actually touched right about here.
Speaker 1: Thomas is describing to police how Michael accosted him in
the same hallway where Sharon's body was lying.
Speaker 3: 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 coming out.
I was actually going to try to be slow, you know,
and look out, but it just happened too quickly. Came
up and he kind of banged into me about right here,
and 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 here to see if there was somebody else
or what.
Speaker 8: And there was a.
Speaker 3: He had on a 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, and 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 laying there, just laying there, and I
look back because 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
except the door, except the door didn't come down. They
had stayed just like it was open. I had. And
I mean I actually got close 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 some noise, come back down this.
Speaker 6: Way and being real.
Speaker 3: Just you know, Sharon, Sharon, Sharon, 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 it came
back over and I went to call nine one one,
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 nine one one and the phone didn't work.
I remember saying, fuck, what a time for a vannage
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 here. I tried actually
about right here, I'll take it back about right here.
I tried nine one one again, and it was busy.
When I called nine one one, 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 nine one one again, and that's when whoever
said nine one one 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's tried to rip
me off. I shot him. I think she said, did
you shoot your wife or something. 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 had been shot really bad. We needed paramedics out here.
Speaker 1: Detectives took the information they had gathered at the crime
I'm seen from the victims' bodies and Thomas's interview, and
walked through and they got to work putting together the
pieces of this puzzle. May eighth, two thousand and eight,
was the evening of Thomas Randolph's final date with his wife, Sharon.
They had only been married for two years. In their
relationship was a whirlwind. Sharon was born in New York
and moved to Las Vegas her late twenties. 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 twenty 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.
Speaker 11: She liked to gamble, she liked to buy things. She's
shopped quite often. It's spent a lot of time gambling
as well. She's spent on many things, but gambling was
part of it.
Speaker 1: What better place for an avid gambler to live than
just twenty five 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 they're 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.
Speaker 12: Was cool.
Speaker 1: 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 fifties, 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,
do you draw.
Speaker 13: There is a senior living community named Los Spentanas. It
was as soon as it was built, and I would
say that would be around the year two thousand and
It's on West Charleston and Town Center. Sharon was hired
at Los Bentanas to work in the beauty shop as
the hairdresser. I was hired at Los Fentana's to work
as the manicurist, and that is how I met Sharon.
Speaker 1: 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 Wolfe, knew
all the ins and outs of Sharon's life. In fact,
she was one of the first to meet Thomas Randolph.
Speaker 14: She only said that she had met him, mister 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.
Speaker 2: And I guess she was going to give him a
permanent okay.
Speaker 14: 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 she had already told me a few
things about him, like you know who he was and
all that.
Speaker 2: And then she went in the back to prepare the
rods or whatever she was going to put used for
his hair.
Speaker 14: 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.
Speaker 2: And I said, well, so Tommy, tell me.
Speaker 14: Just to get to know him, right, I said, I
understand you like the Cowboys 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.
Speaker 2: Nothing.
Speaker 14: 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.
Speaker 2: Answer.
Speaker 1: He seemed a bit anti social, 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,
No four, five five. There were five missus Randolph's before her.
This is Thomas's first wife, Catherine Thomas.
Speaker 10: He had a lot of extra curricular activities, namely.
Speaker 15: Other women.
Speaker 16: During our marriage.
Speaker 10: I wouldn't really call it a marriage, per saying.
Speaker 17: There was a lot of.
Speaker 6: In shelity.
Speaker 1: Catherine married Thomas when she was only eighteen, and she
gave birth to his only two children pretty quickly. She
found out that Thomas was not a good husband, so
she left them and remarried, moving from the state of
Utah to Washington to get away from them. The very
day Thomas and Catherine's divorce was finalized, Thomas set his
vows and tied the knot with a new woman, Becky Gault.
Speaker 10: She married Tom today that our divorce was final. She
expressed fear and fear were things escalated with Tom, and
I counseled her to believe anyway she could, and I'm
going to help her if she wanted me to.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: Sharon was happy.
Speaker 13: She was excited, she had done new relationship glow.
Speaker 8: She was giddy.
Speaker 2: They had dated for a while.
Speaker 13: Thomas Randolph had come on weekends to visit ok 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.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: It was after.
Speaker 13: Tom mus Randolph had moved in. He would continually call.
He called multiple times during the day to speak to Sharon,
a minimum of fifteen times a day.
Speaker 2: I would answer the phone.
Speaker 13: I started to see Sharon become unhappy. She wasn't giddy
any longer.
Speaker 2: She was unhappy.
Speaker 13: She was trying to work and he kept calling, and
she would be frustrated, and she just wasn't happy.
Speaker 1: The constant calling became so burdensome to Sharon while she
was at work that she eventually had to quit her
salon job.
Speaker 13: Sharon worked at Las Bentanas for 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.
Speaker 1: Thomas harassed Sharon. Once he moved in, the goalpost shifted
and he began to push the idea of marriage, even
laying down an ultimatum.
Speaker 13: 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 mister Randolph and had a
mock wedding, that it would not be legal within the
United States. That is the advice I gave her.
Speaker 1: Did Sharon take this advice, of course not. She and
Thomas flew to can Kuhn in two thousand and six
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.
Speaker 11: Things got tense. She was upset a lot. She would
come to our house upset, crying about being left.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 8: That Tom would take off.
Speaker 11: And supposedly go stay with his girlfriend, do whatever.
Speaker 8: He would leave.
Speaker 11: She would be upset, including including over Christmas.
Speaker 8: Around the holidays. It was a very strange thing. He
took off, she was upset. They were at odds. He
supposedly went and hung out with his girlfriend. Her name
was Now you're gonna ask me that, Lizzy. Yeah.
Speaker 11: 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.
Speaker 1: 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 Sharmon or her family.
In fact, he was sort of flippant about his repeated
and ongoing infidelity.
Speaker 8: Yeah, there was a point where.
Speaker 11: 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.
Speaker 6: And it was.
Speaker 11: A lot more colorful, gross and colorful than that, Okay,
but it was very manic the way it was said,
with a good deal of anger.
Speaker 1: 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 thirty to forty 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.
Speaker 18: I got very.
Speaker 6: Tired of it and told him, it's not going to
work anymore for me. He means to make a decision.
Speaker 7: I think around Valentine Day?
Speaker 8: Is it in two thousand and eight?
Speaker 19: Yes, okay, so a couple of months before Sharon passes away.
Speaker 6: Yes.
Speaker 19: When you gave him that ultimatum of look, you really
just need to decide.
Speaker 8: What was his response to you?
Speaker 20: He said he was going to go out and phil
with Sharon, so in convene together.
Speaker 1: 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?
Speaker 20: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I know, right, Should 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 the cemetery. I'm not sure
our MIC's 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.
Speaker 21: Had you carried a picture of Becky with me for
several years? Yes, it was me.
Speaker 22: Why to remind me I've put all these emotions on
a shelf for forty years, said, now I'm having to
pull everything back down.
Speaker 16: But I think that picture gives me strength.
Speaker 10: To express what I need to express for.
Speaker 5: Being for her.
Speaker 1: It was in nineteen eighty six that Becky Galt ended
up with a bullet in her head, presumed suicide. Supposedly,
Becky had a cocaine addiction and she'd attempted to suicide before.
At least that's what Thomas's defense attorneys argued when he
was prosecuted for her murder.
Speaker 8: That's right.
Speaker 1: 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 ad 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 thirteen days after Becky's death, Thomas's prospective
hitman came forward and told police Thomas had offered him
ten thousand dollars to kill Becky and make it look
like an accident, and he felt pressured by Thomas to
carry it out. Thomas collected two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars 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
rated on him to the police so that he couldn't testify.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 1: The guy did end up testifying, but the jury wasn't
allowed to hear information about the attempted hit on the
hit man. 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 of panache and wealth,
sound in mind, body, soul and health. Why I want
to kill my wife? I have this urge to take
her life. 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 her life? Or should I
act quite cold and deliberate, or maybe blow out her
brains with a bullet. Theyn't think suicide. They won't know
who'd done it. I'm going to kill my wife. I'm
really going to take her life. Yeah, that's Rod Stewart's tune.
Speaker 6: I hear.
Speaker 1: 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 resented to them. They decided
they could not convict him beyond a reasonable doubt, so
Thomas then went on to marry wife number three, Gaina Allman.
She recalled when Thomas was cleaning his gun one night
it accidentally went off. She thinks he was actually trying
to kill her.
Speaker 18: You were at one time married to somebody by the
name of Thomas Randolph, Is that correct?
Speaker 8: Correct?
Speaker 18: After you're married, just tell us about tell us about
the marriage and any any unusual events that occurred.
Speaker 20: 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 gun's
thinging solvent. Was he in the bathroom with acting strange
and was falling all over the place and fell into
the bathtob and the smell was just unbelievable. And then
shortly thereafter is when he was pinny again and it
had gone off, all right, So.
Speaker 8: Can you tell me about that? How'd that happen?
Speaker 20: He was sitting at the dining room table and was
missing cleaning the gun, and I wasn't very far away
from him at all, and it went off and it
was just, you know, was away for me, and it
was a hole in the floor. And he said that
he didn't realize it was loaded and.
Speaker 18: It went off.
Speaker 20: What'd you do?
Speaker 21: Well?
Speaker 20: I mean, of course I started yawing, and I was scared.
And then I got on the phone and I was
talking and then I think, I don't remember I've actually left.
I just don't really recall. I know, as I was
extremely scared, and it wasn't too long after that that
he went to work and I packed up my stuff and.
Speaker 18: I was gone, Do you have any other contact with
Tom Randolph after you packed up everything?
Speaker 17: All?
Speaker 20: I mean, he caught me on thirty one 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 road's a lot better than him, and
I ended up losing.
Speaker 18: All right, any other incidents and de I knew was
you calling you?
Speaker 15: No?
Speaker 20: Because I mean I went into hiding basically, and I
went and stayed at friend's house.
Speaker 18: So after you packed up everything, you just you were
hiding from.
Speaker 20: Him, I mean, because 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, and I was just scared and I
wanted to make sure everything was done and the divorce
was finalizing.
Speaker 1: There's some confusion about the order of Thomas's fourth and
fifth wives. One of them was a woman named Francis 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, Tomas made sure he was
the last one to see Francis after her heart surgery.
He told Francis's 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 then hopefully
his last wife. But who knows kise you ladies like
to date dangerous, you know?
Speaker 13: 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.
Speaker 2: She was sore.
Speaker 19: Okay, did you see any bruises on her body?
Speaker 17: Yes?
Speaker 2: I did. She said it was a boating accident.
Speaker 13: Okay.
Speaker 2: Who was on the boat, Her and Tommy Randolph.
Speaker 13: 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.
Speaker 12: Okay.
Speaker 13: 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.
Speaker 1: When fifty three year old Thomas Randolph and his wife
fifty seven year old Sharon arrived back at their Las
Vegas home after a date night on May eight, two
thousand and eight, 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.
Makes sense, That's what I thought. After police did a
detailed walkthrough of the crime scene with Thomas Randolph, they
took time to pour 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 nine to one to one 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.
Speaker 6: Did you get her on her back up the door?
Speaker 1: 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 three hundred 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 own
that he had met a girl, was going to happen
into some money and plan 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.
Speaker 10: She was.
Speaker 13: 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. Okay, 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.
Speaker 8: And then she says well, and she.
Speaker 13: Said, yes, I did. Dedra 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 pair ofalegals. 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 Dedra, 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 too, 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.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 15: Friday morning, a friend of mine named Tony called me
and said she was watching the news and there was
just shooting on Rancho Santa Fe and she knew that
was my mother's street.
Speaker 2: I tried to call my mom again.
Speaker 15: I'd been trying to call her all morning.
Speaker 6: Did you reach her?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 6: Did he talk to.
Speaker 15: I avenged? I think I called Randolph next 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.
Speaker 6: Up on me.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 11: I would say this was within a month to forty
days of her demids. He seemed to upset at her
for her spending even after she was gone.
Speaker 8: She spent a ton of money.
Speaker 11: And now now I got to get money, and I've
got to find, you know, ways to make money.
Speaker 8: He seemed preoccupied with money. After sharing is kill?
Speaker 19: 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.
Speaker 11: 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.
Speaker 19: How did you find that whole conversation extremely odd?
Speaker 8: 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.
Speaker 19: Wills were kind of floating out and it exists.
Speaker 6: Is that right?
Speaker 19: Do conversations like that happen before the defendant becomes aware
there's a second will?
Speaker 8: No, I'm going to once.
Speaker 11: Once he found there was a second will, that never
happened again, those conversations, Yes, those conversations never happened again.
Speaker 1: 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
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 news 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 two thousand and nine,
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 twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: Kitness four person, would you give the verdict to the marshall?
Speaker 8: Please?
Speaker 23: We the jury in the above entitled case find the defendant,
Thomas William Randolph.
Speaker 8: Guilty of first degree murder.
Speaker 16: You get in and everyone says guilty, And we probably
could have gotten it down in ten minutes, but we
were so afraid of making the wrong decision. Who wanted
to be so careful because it is some of his
life on the line.
Speaker 8: Was it even a close call for any of you?
Speaker 9: Now you 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.
Speaker 8: Yeah, the defense didn't really have a lot to work with.
They didn't.
Speaker 4: I mean, they did the best they could with what
they had, but they just didn't have a lot.
Speaker 8: The state had everything on their side.
Speaker 21: During your friendship with mister Randolph, did the defendant ask
you questions that you thought odd or made you feel uncomfortable?
Speaker 15: Yes, he told me that he wanted me to kill
his wife.
Speaker 7: Didn't Becky's play.
Speaker 8: A role in this Gazer?
Speaker 20: Not for me, because if they had to mention the
Uakies at all, you still would have felt the same.
Speaker 14: The evidence of this case alone was absolutely.
Speaker 19: What did you think of the fact when you hear
he was acquitted the first.
Speaker 23: I wasn't going to judge twelve other people. I don't
know what they heard, what they didn't here they're finding
him not guilty. They found him not guilty.
Speaker 17: I accept that.
Speaker 8: They could have saved the lies.
Speaker 7: Mm hmm.
Speaker 8: Three live, two lives, we have been saved. Sure, had they.
Speaker 23: Known if I'm gonna I have to guess they didn't
know what they wanted to know.
Speaker 8: It concerned.
Speaker 16: 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?
Speaker 6: It's so daunting.
Speaker 19: Tell me about the different testimony from the different people
his side, his mom, his daughter, his son.
Speaker 16: The mother would be the only one from his side
that gave me any sort of emotional connection.
Speaker 22: This is where I should be as a mother today
to support my son.
Speaker 2: Just at the end of the day, it's just were
taken for greed.
Speaker 23: And it's sad, and I feel for calling a whole
bunch two and all the other families.
Speaker 16: I feel like we all absolutely need the right decision.
Speaker 6: I think we're all very confident in it.
Speaker 2: And it is a really big belief.
Speaker 1: 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 Gault, 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.
Speaker 21: But you will learn that it isn't just about May
eighth of two thousand and eight.
Speaker 24: In those doors this afternoon.
Speaker 21: Tomorrow morning will lost several people to talk to you
about thirty five or more years of pain and anguish
that have all been caused by the defendant.
Speaker 24: You will learn that it isn't simply just about Sharing Randall,
and it isn't just about Becky Brandaw. 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 killed.
Speaker 6: Five of those women.
Speaker 1: 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, Fyonce says, or wives. At
least that's what everyone thought at the time. Fast forward
to December of twenty twenty. In the bizarre turn of events,
the Nevada Supreme Court reversed Thomas's conviction on the basis
that any mentioned to this story of his first trial
and acquittal, or any other prior bad acts were violations
of his right to a fair trial. I love that
when they use your own rules against you, don't you.
Of course, the County DA's office immediately sought to retry him.
Thomas Randolph's third trial at taxpayer's expense, I might add
took place in the summer of twenty twenty three. 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 rye 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 twenty fourth,
twenty twenty three, a verdict was reached. Is that you,
mister Diet, mister Dyer, has the jury reached the burden?
Speaker 12: Yes?
Speaker 23: If you can please pass the verting forum.
Speaker 8: To the marsh The clerk will now read the Verdens.
Speaker 21: District Court, Cork County, Nevada, State of Nevada, Plaintiff versus
Thomas William Randolph, Defendant, Case number zero nine CE two
five zero nine sixty six, Department ten verdict.
Speaker 10: We the jury in the above entitle case find the defendant, Thomas.
Speaker 8: William Randolph, as follows.
Speaker 19: Count one conspiracy to commit murder, guilty of conspiracy to
commit murder, Count.
Speaker 8: Two murder with use of a deadly weapon.
Speaker 16: Sharon Randall guilty of first degree murder with use of
a deadly weapon.
Speaker 8: Count three murder with use of a deadly weapon.
Speaker 17: Michael Miller guilty of first or gree murder with use of.
Speaker 2: A deadly weapon.
Speaker 19: Dated this twenty fourth day of August twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: Sit David Dyer, Ladies and gentlemen of the jury.
Speaker 8: Are these are verdicts?
Speaker 5: Is rd?
Speaker 2: So say you one?
Speaker 4: So say you all?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 1: Thomas Randolph star it 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.
Speaker 17: A judge delayed the sentence for the convicted murderer known
as the Black Widower.
Speaker 2: Thomas Randolph and his lawyer.
Speaker 17: Submitted a motion to dismiss at the end of the
day yesterday, on the eve of his sentencing, some seven
hundred 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.
Speaker 5: It was.
Speaker 6: Put it on the record, and you don't have to
read it all the hands. But I'm still willing to
do that.
Speaker 20: Nine respond to the milshits of the distegus what you're
gonna say ahead of time because they have to have
an opportunity to this.
Speaker 3: Office, or I'm saying I couldn't say it.
Speaker 1: These are just tactics to delay sentencing. This seemingly never
ending case finally came though, in April of twenty twenty four.
Despite a fifteen minute monologue and a proclamation of his innocence,
the judge sentenced Old Tommy to sixty 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's a lot of
collective evidence that Thomas rand On 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,
you'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 twenty two early twenty three, 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 ten episodes available of it right now. It's the
visual component to this podcast, all new stories. You could
see it at Swordinscale dot com.
Speaker 12: Yeah yeah, yes, yes yes, bees be yah