57: Netflix's THE WIDOWER: The Disturbing Footage They Didn't Show You | Thomas Randolph

Thomas Randolph’s case is one of the most shocking true crime stories spanning decades, and now it’s back in the spotlight thanks to Netflix’s The Widower: ’Til Death Do Us Part. With multiple wives dead, a bizarre murder plot, a second trial more than a decade after the first, and a recent attempt to overturn his conviction, this is a case filled with twists that are almost impossible to believe.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Annie Elise?

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• 1:13Speaker 03

  It's a story that centers around a Las Vegas man and his six wives. Four of those wives ended up dead.

• 1:21Speaker 04

  The ordinary rules of human behavior don't apply to him.

• 1:28Speaker 04

  And he understood the power of attention.

• 1:34Speaker 05

  A nice guy. I'm cocky, but certainly doesn't make me a murderer.

• 1:42Speaker 05

  In the end, I'm gonna win.

• 1:48Annie Elise?

  Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to an all new episode of 10 to Life with me, Annie Elise. Obviously, if you are watching the video version of this, then you're probably looking at me being like, Annie, why are you so fancy? Why are you dressed like you're about to like hit the club? Well, I guess not the club, probably more like a hotel lobby if I was like trolling for a man or something like that. Cause I'm wearing like a full on like satin jumpsuit. And I get it. It's a little aggressive, a little over the top, but I'm going to a charity luncheon immediately following this. And so, you know, had to multitask, had to wear this, doing it all because I wanted to get this episode out to you. Now, first and foremost, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. If you are watching on YouTube, please take a second,

• 2:32Annie Elise?

  hit that subscribe button, hit the like button. It is a free way to support the channel. And if you are listening to the audio version of this, make sure you are following. Now, the reason I wanted to just jump on here today and why I'm kind of, you know, running around a little bit is because today's case is one that is shocking from beginning to end, and it spans over multiple decades. It's also a case that is right back in the center of the media and in the headlines because recently Netflix released a documentary titled The Widower Till Death Do Us Part. And you know, you know how it goes. As soon as it came out, first of all, it immediately was in the top 10 section of Netflix and

• 3:16Annie Elise?

  trending because people were truly just shocked at the amount of insane twists and turns and just how crazy it is. And also the body cam footage, which the footage, guys, the footage, you know, what's the expression? Like, what is it? Something a thousand words? A picture is worth a thousand words? I'm gonna butcher it. You know I am. But this footage, when I tell you, it is so unhinged and eerie. I think that is also why this case has received so much attention. However, when I first covered this case back in 2024, I couldn't even believe some of the stuff that I was finding in my research. So needless to say, I knew I had to reopen this case because unfortunately, no shade at you Netflix,

• 4:00Annie Elise?

  I know it's not your fault, but there's a lot of stuff that was left on the cutting room floor, a lot of footage that wasn't included as well, which I just cannot seem to wrap my mind around. Maybe they're worried about like copyright or not even copyright because you get it via FOIA. I don't know. But so much left unsaid and unshared. So you know me, had to dive in, give you guys the deep dive so that you can see everything for yourself and really see what was left out of what is now trending on Netflix. I think it's like number two today, The Widower. And so you know how it goes. In these episodes, I go back, revisit the old one, give you guys the full story, come back and share all of the new updates that have come out since that recording. That way you have everything

• 4:44Annie Elise?

  in one place. So with that being said, I am Annie Elise and today we are reopening the case of Thomas Randolph. Let's jump right in.

• 5:05Annie Elise?

  On May 8th, 2008, around 8:45 PM, 911 received a very frantic phone call from a homeowner in Las Vegas, Nevada.

• 5:13Speaker 06

  911, please, I'm in 42.

• 5:18Speaker 07

  My wife's been shot and there was a guy in my house.

• 5:24Speaker 06

  Is the inpatient here? Is the inpatient here?

• 5:28Speaker 07

  I don't know.

• 5:38Speaker 06

  Where's your wife in the house?

• 5:40Speaker 07

  She's in the room, right in the house, in the bedroom.

• 5:43Speaker 06

  Where did she go, Anthony? No?

• 5:45Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think he's in the head.

• 5:48Speaker 07

  I couldn't move, we started doing this.

• 5:52Speaker 07

  She was knocked, I don't know what they did exactly.

• 5:54Annie Elise?

  The man on the phone, Tom Randolph, said that he and his wife Sharon had just come back from a night out. Nothing crazy. It involved a dinner at a nearby casino and then they went home. While Tom was picking the car up in the garage, his wife went inside the house. She was on her way to the bedroom and to get there, she had to walk down a hallway that ran by their home office. Tom came inside less than a minute later after his wife, only to find her lying down on the floor in that hallway. At first, he thought that she had tripped, maybe had a bad fall. He called her name a few times, but she didn't get up and she didn't react. It was then that Tom realized that there was somebody else inside the house. He could see the intruder's shadow move in the bedroom at the end of

• 6:36Annie Elise?

  the hall. The good news was Tom kept a gun in the house for protection, so he immediately went to grab it. The man tried to run past him to get out through the garage, but Tom, acting on instinct, shot him over and over and over again. The intruder didn't drop, though. He kept pushing forward, stumbling, and he made his way out to the garage. And that whole time, Tom kept shooting. He even hit this guy twice in the head just to make sure that he wasn't going to turn around and attack. By the time that Tom called 911, he seemed very freaked out about the entire thing.

• 7:14Speaker 06

  And it's the next one, you know?

• 7:16Speaker 07

  So he's in the garage, he pushed and ran on out.

• 7:18Speaker 06

  I know, he was tripping off, he started ripping off.

• 7:26Speaker 06

  Do you know what his name is?

• 7:28Speaker 07

  It was Mike, that was.

• 7:36Speaker 06

  If he wanted, if they're like, I want to do that.

• 7:41Speaker 07

  I don't know.

• 7:43Speaker 06

  He's way on the ground, he didn't get out?

• 7:47Speaker 06

  He's way on the ground, he didn't get out?

• 7:50Speaker 06

  I gotta come with you with medical, okay? Don't hang up.

• 7:57Annie Elise?

  Now, you just heard Tom tell that dispatcher he knew the man he shot, Michael Miller or Mike. He had been working around the house as a handyman for several months. Tom and his wife trusted him, but now Mike had apparently broken in, robbed them and shot at them. Tom told the operator that his wife was bleeding. She was hurt badly and he begged for somebody to come and help her. Well, unfortunately, as soon as the police got there, they pronounced Sharon dead at the scene. Mike was dead too, and his body was in the garage. The detectives found a ski mask that was close to where his body had fallen. He also had a bag with him that was full of all of these random items from around the house. Things like jewelry, but it was Sharon's costume pieces. It wasn't worth a whole lot of money. The

• 8:42Annie Elise?

  house was a mess, like what you would expect after a robbery. Drawers were pulled out, things were thrown everywhere, that type of thing. So it seemed like a fairly simple case. Mike, who was familiar with the house and with Tom and Sharon, broke in on a night that he knew that they were out intending to rob them. Sharon and Tom surprised him during the burglary and then he shot Sharon after being discovered. Tom then shot Mike in self-defense before calling the police. It was all a tragic end, and it was all an end to a marriage that was still only just the beginning. See, Sharon and Tom had met online through a dating website just a couple of years before in 2006. Sharon was recently widowed. Her second husband had passed away in 2005 after 27 years of marriage. This

• 9:26Annie Elise?

  left Sharon single in her mid 50s. She still had a lot to offer, though. She was a very thoughtful, funny person. She had short curly hair, a big smile. Originally from New Jersey, she ended up moving to Las Vegas for a better job, not only for her, but also for her young daughter, Colleen, who was still just a little girl. After getting her cosmetologist's license, she worked as a hairdresser until retirement. Once she found herself out of work and with way more time to focus on her love life, that's when she found Tom, who seemed to be exactly what Sharon was looking for. She showed her friends pictures of her new man looking adventurous, handsome, sitting on a motorcycle. Tom was striking. He had a round face, almost this delicate feminine type looking features, and it made him look

• 10:08Annie Elise?

  younger. He had long blonde hair that was almost white. It hung in curls halfway down his back. I mean, he kind of looked like a cover model from some sort of paperback romance novel, something like that. Like you would spot him on a beach, riding a horse, something like that. And his life also kind of felt like something out of one of those stories. He had a boat, he had a motorcycle, and he took Sharon out on both of them all of the time. There were always plenty of things to do in Vegas, and the two of them went to concerts and different restaurants pretty frequently. Sharon introduced Tom to her daughter, Colleen, who was surprised by their relationship, but was impressed with how happy he seemed to make her mom. In 2006, during a cruise down to Baja California with stops in Mexico, Tom and Sharon decided to get married.

• 10:52Annie Elise?

  It was a shock to her friends and family, but there was no denying that Sharon seemed happy with her new partner. In fact, the two of them said their vows in Las Vegas the following years in 2007, really cementing their relationship. So the fact that Sharon had just recently found her new love made it all the more heartbreaking that she had died so violently and so unexpectedly. She had just spent a nice evening out with her husband and then her life was taken so callously in her own home. It was devastating for her friends and family. Especially because she still had so much to live for. Her daughter, Colleen, now had two sons, but she was pregnant with her first daughter. And Sharon was so excited to have a granddaughter. And now she would never get the chance to meet the baby.

• 11:37Annie Elise?

  So the police began their investigation to find out what exactly happened the night of Sharon's murder. They interviewed Tom, who repeated what he had told that 911 operator. He said he didn't hear Sharon get shot because he is fairly deaf. He just walked into the house and found her there on the ground. And he also shot that intruder multiple times as this man tried to escape running through the garage. But there was an issue that investigators noticed almost immediately. On the 911 call, Tom said that he had heard a shot. The dispatcher asked if the robber was alone in the house. And Tom told him that he didn't know, but that he had just heard one shot. So now, a few hours later, he was telling the investigators that he hadn't heard anything.

• 12:21Annie Elise?

  In fact, he said that he thought that Sharon had just fallen down before he saw that shadow in the bedroom. So why would he think that she just fell down if he heard a gunshot? It was like he couldn't keep his story straight. It was an odd thing to get wrong, sure, but it also had been a chaotic night. Maybe Tom just got confused. Maybe it all got mixed up in his head. So to try and help them make some sense of what had actually happened, the police asked Tom to do a walkthrough for them about a week after the murder. They would film him as he went step by step in detail and described what happened on May 8.

• 12:55Speaker 05

  I opened it up.

• 12:58Speaker 05

  I get right here and Sharon's laying in the floor, face down. Her head's just barely, I mean, barely in the bedroom, if that. And I stopped right about here. I had the door. Said Sharon.

• 13:16Speaker 05

  Sharon. About right here, when I was like this, I was trying to kind of get a view. I thought I'd just seen like a shadow or something over this way. And I remembered that there's a, the 9 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, the clip. Show us in there where it's at. Like that, about that time, he's right up on me. Just right up on me. We actually touched right about here. And he's short. He's short. And when he, I don't know if he gave me an elbow,

• 14:00Speaker 05

  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 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 pushed 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 riding going. Boom. 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

• 14:46Speaker 05

  I don't hear well and I can't tell depth perception, anything. And when I heard the noise, I, 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,

• 15:04Speaker 05

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

• 15:12Speaker 05

  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,

• 15:23Speaker 05

  some noise. Come back down this way.

• 15:28Speaker 05

  I'm being real, just, you know.

• 15:32Speaker 05

  Sharon, Sharon. Sharon. And she's not, whoever said 911 and said, slow down, you're, 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 some, I don't remember what all of a sudden. 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. Had to hurry. She told me not to hang up the phone.

• 16:11Speaker 05

  And he had on a sweatshirt. And I think he still had on the gloves as far as I remember. But I do remember the ski mask was right up here by one of his hands, sort of, or by, up here somewhere. Remember from CPR and stuff that you got to do the counter weights or whatever. So I

• 16:36Speaker 05

  seems like I lifted this arm, kind of lifted her up and pulled this arm under and one of these knees sort of over. And kind of, I, I just had to jerk her. There wasn't, I mean, it wasn't like a, a gentle, loving thing by any means. It was like,

• 16:54Speaker 05

  and about the third time it jerked enough that she got up kind of straight up and I could just kind of push her over. And she came over and it was the, the grossest thing I had ever seen in my life. And my wife that died of the heart defect was pretty gross, but

• 17:15Speaker 05

  just really thick blobby stuff coming out of the mouth. And I don't know if it was blood. I don't know if it was some type of, of matter. And I remember the, the box was under here and it was slick and I tried to push the box like that back, trying to get the leverage. And there was the other gun. Another gun.

• 17:38Speaker 04

  Some clarifying questions to get real specific about.

• 17:44Speaker 04

  You said that, that you had gone into the room and you took the gun from the shoe rack that's hanging in the closet.

• 17:50Speaker 05

  And a clip.

• 17:51Speaker 04

  And a clip. And you put the clip in your pocket. And then when you were coming, you started to come out?

• 17:58Speaker 05

  I did come out.

• 17:59Speaker 04

  Okay, you are actually.

• 18:00Speaker 05

  I'm about right here, about right here.

• 18:02Speaker 04

  Okay. So you're in the doorway.

• 18:04Speaker 05

  And he's coming right by.

• 18:05Speaker 04

  Okay. But then he charged towards you. How far back into the room do you think that you went?

• 18:11Speaker 05

  Well, I went to right here to the door.

• 18:13Speaker 04

  He came towards you.

• 18:14Speaker 05

  No, I just went, I came in here like this, decided, okay, I thought I seen something right there. I just went just like that. Got it, stuck it in there and came back right about that, about right then. He's about right where he is.

• 18:26Speaker 04

  Okay. So he's standing right, right in the area.

• 18:28Speaker 05

  Even closer, about where, take, about here.

• 18:32Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 18:32Speaker 05

  Okay. And then he just kind of comes into, I come out.

• 18:35Speaker 04

  Like I'm facing you now?

• 18:36Speaker 05

  Uh, he's more like going out, but he's looking, uh, he's looking at me. He's looking at me.

• 18:41Speaker 04

  But he's, he's making his motion north towards the door.

• 18:44Speaker 05

  I don't know if he's making his toward the door or more toward just coming around this way. But I'm just saying he wasn't back that far. He was about right here.

• 18:53Speaker 04

  Okay. He's about here and, and he's going towards the garage door.

• 18:56Speaker 05

  He's, I don't know that he's going to where the garage door. He's just going to right here as, as far as I know, because that's where we met.

• 19:02Speaker 04

  Just if you could, not, not me doing it, if you could explain his actions for me, if you could kind of show what you remember him doing.

• 19:10Speaker 05

  He just came up, just, just coming up right up here. Well, he's just about right here. And I don't know what he was doing. I don't know what he's doing because I just turned around and got this and turned around and like, there he was. There he was.

• 19:22Speaker 04

  What was in his head? What was he physically? Really doing what was what were his movements that you remember?

• 19:27Speaker 05

  Just just about. Well, that was about it. He just walking like this and he knew I I think he knew I had went in there. I don't know if he seen me go in there or what. But when he came.

• 19:38Speaker 04

  See him do if you could just repeat his movements.

• 19:41Speaker 05

  Just like that, just kinda.

• 19:43Speaker 04

  So he stepped into the doorway and squared off on you?

• 19:45Speaker 05

  Kind of, yeah.

• 19:47Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 19:48Speaker 05

  More of a about there, about there. Nah, maybe even maybe about right there. He was. He was looking for first. I thought he was looking at something, but I guess he was just looking through me. He seen me, then he just turned around and just just kinda. No, nope. He wasn't running. He was back and the whole time just keep.

• 20:04Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 20:04Speaker 05

  You know, keeping an eye on me. He's, yeah, kinda. He's keeping an eye on me. He's keeping an eye on me. See where I'm going.

• 20:10Speaker 04

  Okay, so now he's gotten over to here and he's still squared off against you?

• 20:14Speaker 05

  Pretty close, pretty close, I think. I I just started shooting. I just started shooting, yeah. I just started shooting. I don't know if I fired the first shot. I just shot.

• 20:23Speaker 04

  Squared on you?

• 20:26Speaker 05

  Don't know, don't know. He's just, he's, I think he's still facing me. I think he's still facing me. He might have been a little more. No, no, I don't think so. I think then he may have had, I may have already shot him and he put the gun up. But he's more maybe kinda like that a little bit. It seems like, seems like it was like that, cause it was just like, it was close. It was pretty close. Might have been a little further. Did just like that.

• 20:49Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 20:50Speaker 05

  Came up here and about right here, I just thought, no, this ain't cool. And started going in to get the gun. And like I said, just as I started to go in here. I don't know if he went in, if he came out, if he jumped across, cause it was just out of the corner of my eye, but I think he was hiding. I think he was in that bedroom and he just stuck his eye out enough that I could just see him.

• 21:10Speaker 04

  In the drum room.

• 21:11Speaker 05

  In the drum room, yeah. I think so. Just enough that I could see him and just out of the corner of my eye. And that's what I I just got scared. I just got scared and I said, fuck it. I know there's a gun in there. And I thought I just. Grabbed it, turned around and he was coming down. I think he was running. I think he was probably gonna run away and we. Yeah, and right around in here somewhere, we actually kinda bumped into each other just for a split second.

• 21:35Speaker 04

  Okay, but he's if he's running, if he's running towards that open door.

• 21:38Speaker 05

  Well, I don't know that he was going toward the door as much as maybe he was coming toward me.

• 21:43Speaker 04

  So show me what you saw.

• 21:44Speaker 05

  In there for sure. I don't know if he was like thinking, maybe I'm just standing here waiting to pop him if he goes by. But he was kinda like just. Kinda just like this and I was right up on him, right up on him.

• 21:57Speaker 04

  Until until you see him first time, does he stay squared off on you?

• 22:00Speaker 05

  No, no, no, he's he he's going.

• 22:02Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 22:02Speaker 05

  And I'm shooting the whole time. Seems like maybe about right here, he actually gets turned away from me.

• 22:08Speaker 04

  Okay, so you fire the first time and he's stepping. Go ahead and go ahead and repeat, repeat his movements for me, whatever you remember.

• 22:15Speaker 05

  Where we're doing something here. And I don't know if I hit him. I don't know if that's when he got his gun out, if he just said, fuck it, I'm running. I don't know what the deal was. It seems like I shot him again, maybe like about right here. And then he started turning like this toward the door. And I just, I I oh, I shot, I shot and shot and shot and shot. I may have emptied the gun. I don't know.

• 22:37Speaker 04

  How many times do you think you fired before you got to the door?

• 22:40Speaker 05

  As many times as I could. I don't know.

• 22:42Speaker 04

  How many times you think?

• 22:46Speaker 05

  I think the gun holds eight. It would have had one in the chamber, um.

• 22:50Speaker 04

  So that's nine.

• 22:51Speaker 05

  It's nine and I don't remember it staying open, so it had to be eight or less.

• 22:56Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 22:57Speaker 05

  But.

• 22:57Speaker 04

  So then what happens after he's now, now he's squared off against you. You fire the first round?

• 23:02Speaker 05

  I fired once or twice, fired again.

• 23:05Speaker 04

  And and as he's going out the door.

• 23:07Speaker 05

  I'm I'm firing and firing.

• 23:09Speaker 04

  Okay, and then?

• 23:10Speaker 05

  He he he, yeah, he is. Uh, by then I'm I'm here and he's down. He's down laying, falling or laying down. I don't know.

• 23:20Speaker 04

  He land face first?

• 23:21Speaker 05

  Uh.

• 23:26Speaker 05

  I think he does because when I, well, maybe on his shoulder, but kind of his head turned down.

• 23:32Speaker 04

  Some some more on his uh right side you're showing?

• 23:36Speaker 05

  Kind of like.

• 23:40Speaker 05

  Kinda under his hand, but like that, but laying down, cause the car was further back and he's small.

• 23:48Speaker 04

  Did you flip him over?

• 23:50Speaker 05

  He I I pushed him over, yeah, with my foot.

• 23:52Speaker 04

  Alright, so he's mostly on his right side and you pushed him the fur- further over?

• 23:55Speaker 05

  Right, to find the gun, was the guy told me to. But I shot him before that again. I shot him before that again.

• 24:02Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 24:02Speaker 05

  I was standing right around.

• 24:04Annie Elise?

  So again, according to Tom, he and Sharon got home and she went into the house first and she came in through the garage. He parked, closed the garage door and then followed her inside where he found her face down on the ground in the hallway. He called out her name and noticed what he called a shadow in that bedroom, just beyond where Sharon was lying. And then he went into his office and he grabbed his gun. Once he was armed, he turned back into the hallway and he saw a black man wearing a mask just rushing past him. He shot this guy multiple times as he ran into the garage until finally the man collapsed on the ground and was groaning. Tom went back down the hall checking to make sure that there wasn't anybody else inside his house. And that's when he finally turned his attention to Sharon.

• 24:48Annie Elise?

  He called nine one one, who walked him through all of the steps that he needed to follow to try to save her life. He rolled her over so he could do compressions and all of the other things that are a part of CPR. And Tom got really detailed when he told the police about the process and how tough it was for him. He even included the fact that he struggled to turn her over at first. Even with all that effort, though, there was nothing that he could do. Sharon had been shot in the head and she died of her wounds. But by this point, the police knew the case pretty well. They had been investigating the house and the evidence for about a week by now. So they started to notice a bunch of inconsistencies in Tom's story.

• 25:27Annie Elise?

  Based on the video walkthrough, Tom made it seem like he shot Mike multiple times while Mike was directly across from the office in the hallway, you know, at very close range. However, there were hardly any bullet casings or any other evidence of gunshots in the actual house. They should have been in the hallway or even in the office since Tom made it sound like he was standing in that doorway. But the police found most of the bullet casings in the garage. This was also where most of Mike's blood evidence was found. There was also a question of the timeline. The detective confirmed that in the evening before the supposed break in, Tom and Sharon went to a casino down the road for dinner. Then they stopped to get gas, leaving at around eight twenty PM or so.

• 26:08Annie Elise?

  There were timestamped video recordings of the couple arriving and leaving the casino, walking to their car and also stopping at the gas station. They got home at about eight thirty and Tom came in just a few seconds behind Sharon, but she had already been shot by then. A neighbor across the street reported to the police that he had heard gunshots a little after eight thirty PM too, which checked out with the surveillance videos. The neighbor was on the phone with a friend and had mentioned what he had heard to them. So police checked these phone records and confirmed that the neighbor was on the phone at the right time. So there was pretty much confirmation at every possible level. Sharon and Mike were shot around eight thirty PM. But Tom didn't call nine one one until closer to eight forty five.

• 26:52Annie Elise?

  And when someone is bleeding to death, we know that time matters. Tom said it took him just a few minutes to check the house after he shot Mike. But in reality, he waited almost fifteen minutes to call for help, all while his wife was bleeding to death on the ground. And then he didn't start trying to render aid until after he called nine one one and they told him to do so. In his reenactment, he made it seem like he stayed in the hallway where Sharon fell. So what was he doing for those ten to fifteen minutes if he wasn't trying to get help for his wife? Additionally, when the very first investigators arrived, the mask that Tom described Mike as wearing was found in the garage, not on Mike, but near his body. Tom said that Mike was wearing the mask when he shot him.

• 27:37Annie Elise?

  And he says he didn't know who Mike was until after he was hit specifically because he was covering his face. But there were no holes or blood on the mask that Mike should have been wearing according to Tom's story. There was also a question of why Mike was trying to rob the house in the first place. He had been working for Tom for months. The two of them had a friendly relationship. Mike fixed things around the house and Tom paid him. During an interrogation that happened about a month after Sharon was killed, Tom said that Mike probably knew that he kept a lot of cash in the house. He recently had moved something like twenty thousand dollars to his house from Utah, where he had been living before meeting Sharon. Which who does keep that much cash just sitting around and why would you vocalize that? But either way, robbery is a motive. It did make some sense.

• 28:21Annie Elise?

  It was enough for the investigators to go to North Carolina to talk to Mike's family and and see if they had any more information on what the relationship between Mike and Tom was like. According to Mike's brother, Mike had been hired by Tom to do some handyman stuff around the house and that was really all he knew. But when detectives looked at the phone records between the two of them, it looked like Mike and Tom were in constant contact for months. And also regularly in contact in the months leading up to the break in. We're talking anywhere between two and five phone calls or messages per day for months.

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• 30:39Annie Elise?

  Now, the police weren't the only people who were asking questions and were not liking the answers that they were getting. After Colleen discovered that her mother had been killed, but not understanding how or why, she called Tom and asked what he had done to her mother. He told her very coldly that Mike had killed her. Then he hung up the phone. Colleen was horrified by the cruel way that he just dismissed her right after her mother had just been murdered. But she didn't want to cut Tom out of her life just yet because she was getting extremely suspicious. She didn't think that it would be good for her or her family to accuse him of anything, though, without hearing from the police. Not to mention that he was her mother's husband. He was one of the closest people to her, one of Colleen's last connections to Sharon.

• 31:24Annie Elise?

  So she told Tom that they were still family and that he needed to still be the grandfather to her children. So things were cordial for a little while, but then Tom discovered that Sharon had rewritten her will. Sharon had left her house and everything else that she owned to Colleen, not Tom. And Tom had no idea of this until after she was dead. Before her murder, she had gone to one of her good friends and she had told her that she had this new notarized will. She wanted the friend to hold on to it and to give it to Colleen if anything ever happened to her. And we know any sort of disclosure like that is never a good sign. Well, Tom was pissed when he found out and he called Colleen, leaving all sorts of nasty

• 32:08Annie Elise?

  voicemails and accusing her of lying to him. He also said that he had the right to half of the house since he had been married to Sharon. He eventually calmed down and apologized, but it was clear that a bridge had been burned. He and Colleen wouldn't even pretend to be civil with one another after that. Tom even moved away from Vegas and went back to his mother's house in Utah where he was living before he had moved in with Sharon. While he was gone, Colleen went over to her mom's house and with the police to get the locks changed, and that just further pissed Tom off because now he couldn't even come back and get his own stuff. Of course, I've got to imagine that Colleen had no regrets whatsoever about shutting him out because the police were pretty open with Colleen about how they thought he was pretty suspicious.

• 32:52Annie Elise?

  The forensic evidence made it clear that Sharon couldn't have been shot at the way that Tom described. The angle, it just didn't make sense. It seemed obvious to the police that Tom was lying and he was actually the one who shot and killed Sharon. But the detectives didn't think that Tom had planned all of this on his own. In fact, they suspected that Tom was involved in a murder-for-hire plot with Mike, but then that Tom betrayed Mike and gunned him down just so that he could hide all of the evidence of what had happened. In fact, a longtime female friend of Mike's actually came forward to the police and said that Mike had called her and told her that Tom specifically asked him to kill his wife. The friend told Mike not to get involved, but we know that Mike did.

• 33:35Annie Elise?

  Mike's brother also gave police some new information. According to Mike, Tom had given him a 9mm handgun at some point in their relationship. So this was all extremely compelling evidence, but it was just secondhand testimony, nothing concrete, not yet anyway. We all know that people can lie or exaggerate, and even if they don't, somebody can accuse them of being dishonest in a trial. So it's hearsay and it's not usually enough to get a conviction. But it was enough for the police to be more and more certain that Tom was involved in the deaths of Sharon and Mike. This was not some interrupted home invasion, but rather a calculated, premeditated murder. But the biggest question was why? What was Tom's motive?

• 34:18Annie Elise?

  Why kill his new wife? Well, the answer is probably obvious, especially given how upset Tom was when he learned that Sharon had changed her will. He wanted money. And even without the will and the inheritance, Tom had taken out four separate life insurance policies on his wife, all together worth an estimated $350,000. And the police figured it wasn't like he was getting short on cash one day and hatched this plan out of nowhere. They thought that Tom married Sharon with the intention of killing her for money, all from day one. Then he found and befriended Mike and hired him for all of these little odd jobs around the house, basically creating a situation where Tom was responsible for a lot of Mike's

• 34:59Annie Elise?

  income, so it would be harder for Mike to say no to any new paid work that he was offered, even if it was something as sinister as murder. So that's how Tom convinced Mike to kill his wife. And here's exactly how the police theory went. On March 8th, Tom took Sharon out to dinner, knowing he was keeping her out of the house just long enough for Mike to sneak in and wait. Then he drove her home and he waited for her to get out of the car and go into the house. Sharon made it almost all the way into the bedroom before she was shot once in the head by Mike, who was in the shadows and wearing that ski mask. That's when Tom came into the house and Mike let his guard down. That's when they started to talk. I mean, after all, they had planned this murder together.

• 35:41Annie Elise?

  He didn't need to hide his identity anymore or anything like that, so Mike took off the mask and then walked by Tom and headed towards the garage so he could leave. It wasn't this big frantic attempt to escape, which Tom later described to the police. It was more casual, like, job well done, gotta go home now. But Tom followed after Mike, knowing that he couldn't have a living witness to testify that he had planned the murder from the beginning. So the both of them got into the garage, and that's where Tom turned the gun on Mike, shooting him multiple times, including a few shots to the head. The mask wasn't on, which is why it didn't have any blood or bullet holes in it, even though Tom said Mike had the mask on the entire time in his original statement.

• 36:24Annie Elise?

  So after that, he then waited between 10 to 15 minutes before calling 911 and telling that elaborate story about a masked intruder shooting his wife. He wanted to make absolutely sure that both Mike and Sharon were well beyond any lifesaving measures before he even tried to get them help, because if either one of them survived, his plan would be ruined. All to say, the police had a pretty good idea of what had happened, but they weren't sure if they could prove it in a court of law. They needed more, especially because when the investigating officers went to the district attorneys to ask for an arrest warrant, the DAs were not convinced. They believed the police, but they also could see how a jury would take Tom's side.

• 37:06Annie Elise?

  The inconsistencies in his statements could be explained away by his shock and his confusion after finding this armed intruder inside his house and discovering the body of his wife. And since it seemed like Mike had actually shot Sharon, it would be harder to convince the jury that Tom was in on it and not just a homeowner defending himself. So again, it was back to more investigating, trying to find more evidence. And since they already had found all that there was to find at the crime scene itself, the next step was to look into Tom's past, see if there was anything in his history that helped make him maybe look more like a killer. And what was found was so much more. Tom had been Sharon's third husband, but Sharon had been Tom's sixth wife.

• 37:51Annie Elise?

  And out of all six of those wives, four of them were dead. So already super suspicious, but the most suspicious part of it all? Tom had actually been arrested for the murder of one of his previous wives. And what the police were about to discover was only the beginning of this extremely wild roller coaster case. Tom Randolph met his first wife, Kathy, back in 1975 after they met in Utah. Kathy was only 18 years old on her wedding day while Tom was 20 years old. It's no surprise she got married so young because Kathy was so in love with Tom. He was smart, outgoing, could be very charming. They ended up having two children together, a son and a daughter.

• 38:34Annie Elise?

  However, not too long after they got married, Kathy noticed that Tom was changing. The witty man that she had married was almost obsessed with having control. He wanted Kathy to do exactly as he said, and he did not like when things didn't go his way. Kathy told investigators that one time Tom literally threw a bowl of oatmeal against a wall, shattering it, all because it didn't have sugar in it. So as I'm sure you can imagine, things fell apart quickly after that. On top of Tom's weird need for control, he also started seeing other women. He was doing drugs, even selling them. So it didn't take long for Kathy to feel very afraid of her husband. He wasn't physically abusive, but he did intimidate her.

• 39:17Annie Elise?

  She filed for divorce in 1983 and she was very happy to be freed from his toxic and controlling behavior. Kathy ended up marrying a former friend of Tom's named Steve, who told detectives that Tom had asked him more than once if he would kill someone if he knew that he could get away with it. And Steve felt like Tom was trying to hint at something. And Tom was furious when Steve and Kathy got together, so that friendship ended. On literally the same day his divorce from Kathy was finalized, Tom married his second wife, Becky Galt. Becky was a fun-loving prankster, quick to make a joke, make people smile. She was slender with long auburn hair in the typical eighties style, kinda like feathered and framing her face.

• 39:59Annie Elise?

  She was close to her family, especially her cousins. She always looked out for them and always had time to make them feel better if they were having a rough day. And basically Becky was the leader of the family group and everybody enjoyed spending time with her. Tom and Becky got married and seemed happy at first. But before long, the marriage started to deteriorate. It was just like what had happened with Kathy, where Tom was now dabbling in drugs and behaving erratically. And this time around, he got Becky addicted as well. And then when Tom got to sleeping around, he made Becky watch him have sex with other women. So really, it wasn't just a repeat of Tom's first marriage.

• 40:37Annie Elise?

  Everything was also escalating, taking those problems from one relationship and now dragging Becky into more problems, more severe bad habits. Becky confided all of this in her aunt, who hadn't liked Tom from the very beginning. She didn't understand why Becky would consent to watching Tom have sex with other women when it clearly upset her. She wasn't a willing participant in these sex games that Tom wanted to play. She was forced into it by her controlling husband. On top of that, money was a problem. Throughout his whole life, Tom had always had trouble keeping steady jobs for very long. He tended to drift from one to another and that made it very difficult for him to build up any savings account or even climb the corporate ladder to get better paying jobs.

• 41:20Annie Elise?

  He and Becky had to borrow money from family members a lot of the time just to pay their bills. But the bills that he did always pay, no matter what, were the premiums for Becky's life insurance policies. Three of them to be exact. Three life insurance policies on his young, healthy wife. And he never missed a payment, even when he was falling behind on all of the other bills, not missing a single one. Becky knew that their relationship was troubled. She told her family that she was afraid to leave Tom. She wasn't sure what he would do to her. She actually called Tom's first wife Kathy to talk to her about her fears and get advice. And Kathy told her over and over again, she needed to leave, just pack up and run. But Becky didn't know how to do that, so instead, she stayed.

• 42:05Annie Elise?

  Everything came to an end on November 7th, 1986. Becky was found in her bed, shot through the head in an apparent she was only 29 years old. When her family heard the news, they were devastated and they told the police Becky wouldn't do that. She would never kill herself. There must be something else going on. But the police found a note that she left behind in their kitchen. The gun was in Becky's hand. So at first glance, it seemed like Becky, who was in a troubled marriage and struggling with addiction, took her own life because she didn't see any other way out. However, one of the investigators was concerned because the position of the gun was found in an unnatural way.

• 42:46Annie Elise?

  Becky wouldn't have been able to hold it in this upside-down weird angle to shoot herself. It just wasn't making sense. The investigator thought that the house had been locked down as a crime scene, but it hadn't been. Tom had actually gone into the house and cleaned up the bedroom, top to bottom, new paint, new carpet replaced, pretty much everything was cleaned. So now any potential to treat it as a crime scene, it was ruined and any potential evidence was lost. Meanwhile, Tom collected nearly a half a million dollars in life insurance on his now deceased wife. It was infuriating. Clearly there was more going on, but the police couldn't prove it. So they couldn't stop Tom from getting that big payout for his wife's death. A few years went by, but one detective in Ogden, Utah just could not let it go.

• 43:31Annie Elise?

  He was familiar with Tom. In fact, he thought that Tom wanted to create his own drug empire. Well, a woman came to this detective and said that Tom had asked her husband to kill Becky for him. Tom had befriended this man, Eric Tarantino, over the course of a few years before Tom ever brought the idea up to him of killing somebody for money. But we know that he had been thinking about it a lot longer because remember, he had been talking about killing people all the way back from when he was married to Kathy. Eric did odd jobs for Tom and Tom paid him for his help. Then when Tom felt like the relationship was solid enough, he asked Eric to help him kill somebody for money. Sound familiar? So police went to Eric to get his side of the story.

• 44:12Annie Elise?

  According to Eric, he helped Tom with his drug dealing, collecting money and doing other things. Then one day when they were out shooting, Tom told Eric that he wanted Eric to kill his wife. Eric said no, and Tom told him that he didn't have a choice. Either Becky would die or Eric would die. Eric apparently knew too much to just say no at this point. Tom also intimidated and attacked Eric repeatedly. He once chloroformed him. He would point guns at him when he walked into his house. Sometimes they were loaded, sometimes they weren't. So Eric went along with everything because he was scared. He didn't know where to go for help. Some of Tom's drug clients were cops. They were judges. So he didn't feel like it was even an option to call the police and ask them for help.

• 44:55Annie Elise?

  Eric did end up calling and telling Becky that Tom wanted to try to kill her. And after he called, he packed up and ran. He left town in order to get away from Tom. And within a year, Becky was dead. So with Eric's testimony, two years after Becky's death, Tom was arrested and charged with her murder. Becky's family was overjoyed that Tom would be held responsible. They never believed that Becky had taken her own life to begin with. So now Tom going to trial was everything that they had hoped for. Eric was the star witness and the backbone of the prosecution's case, which is probably why Tom allegedly tried to arrange a hit on Eric. That's right. Despite being arrested for murder, Tom apparently decided to try to have another murder committed.

• 45:38Annie Elise?

  Because without Eric, there wouldn't be a case against him. Luckily Eric was taken into protective custody, so he would be able to testify. But in the meantime, Tom testified on his own behalf, describing life with his drug-addicted, emotionally unstable wife. Becky's family seethed, listening to Tom describe this version of his wife as this troubled, depressed mess, knowing full well that he had made her that way. So after the very emotional trial ended, the jury came back with a verdict. Not guilty. Officially and in the eyes of the law, Becky had died by all in spite of Eric's testimony, in spite of the fact that Tom took a hit out on Eric, in spite of everything. It made no sense whatsoever. Tom was released.

• 46:24Annie Elise?

  He was free to go and he was acting like a very smug jackass about it. Even if he hadn't killed Becky, his reaction to her death was so callous and cold and twisted and it just really broke the hearts of Becky's family. Tom wasn't quite free though, however, because there was still the charge of trying to hire somebody to kill Eric, which Tom had to face at a separate trial, or he would have if he had fought those charges. But instead, he pleaded down to a tampering with a witness. Which is so crazy to me, but I guess the prosecutors weren't willing to risk another acquittal. So Tom was only sentenced to up to five years in jail. Then incredibly, after he was released, he sued the different police departments for the investigation that led to his arrest.

• 47:09Annie Elise?

  And they settled with him. They paid him off. And Tom, richer than ever, was now free to find a new wife. Of course, a person like Tom doesn't stay out of the game for long. And he met his third wife, Leona, and they married in 1994. And this happened to also be the same year that he got out of jail. They moved to Indiana for a fresh start, away from his dead wife and his conviction for allegedly trying to have somebody murdered. Leona and Tom were married for less than a year, only about 11 months before they got divorced. It's hard to find much information online about Leona. People don't really know much about the relationship. But based on Tom's prior two marriages, I think it's safe to say that Tom probably was a controlling narcissistic jerk.

• 47:53Annie Elise?

  And I imagine that she had to deal with his rages and his infidelity before finally leaving him. Leona unfortunately died of cancer about a decade after their divorce. The very next year in 1995, Tom met his fourth wife, Gayna Allman. The two of them met through a dating ad in a newspaper and before long, Tom had charmed Gayna just like he charmed Kathy, Becky, and Leona. The two of them married and they settled in Indiana. Shortly after getting married, Tom was arrested for getting into a bar fight where people were shot and wounded. The police started looking into Tom's past and they asked Gayna if Tom had taken out a life insurance policy on her, which he had, almost immediately after they had got married. And that's when the police told Gayna about how Tom had been arrested but acquitted of

• 48:38Annie Elise?

  murder in Utah and how he had also served time for trying to hire a hitman to kill the star witness. Now, of course, Tom had not told Gayna about any of this and I cannot even imagine how she handled learning all of that. But I do know that she did not leave Tom right away. She was still around once he was released from jail for that bar fight. Later on, when they both were at home, Tom was cleaning his gun at the end of the dining room table when suddenly it discharged and a bullet missed hitting Gayna by just a few inches. Tom apologized, saying he didn't know that the gun was loaded, but Gayna was furious and absolutely terrified. A little while later, while Tom was at work, Gayna packed up and she moved out of the house and away from her husband.

• 49:21Annie Elise?

  She didn't trust Tom and she didn't believe that his gun had just accidentally discharged. She had heard enough about the situation in Utah to know that she was in danger.

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• 51:30Annie Elise?

  So from there, she went into hiding in order to get away from him. She said that once he saw her in her car and he tried to chase her down, but luckily she lost him. She wouldn't pull over no matter what he did. The two of them divorced at some point before Tom met his fifth wife, Frances. Now, as was usually the case with Tom, he wanted to get married to Frances right away, very early in the relationship. The only problem was she needed to get a divorce from her previous husband first. But within six months of their first meeting, Tom and Frances were married in 1997. Frances was short with blonde hair that she always wore at maximum volume. Everything about her fashion sense was big. I mean, think bright makeup, huge smiles.

• 52:12Annie Elise?

  Frances was an incredibly sweet and kind woman who knew how to have fun and you could just tell from her pictures that this is the kind of woman who will literally make you belly laugh. She had a daughter named Rachel and the two of them were incredibly close. At first, Rachel was happy to see her mom get married. Tom was a great stepdad, quick to support his stepdaughter in different activities like cheerleading and gymnastics. They seemed like a happy family. But as time passed, Rachel noticed that her mom and Tom were fighting more and more. On top of that, Frances had been born with a heart condition and she needed surgery, but not immediately. After they got married, however, Tom pushed Frances to get this surgery and she finally did in April of 2004.

• 52:53Annie Elise?

  It went well at first and Frances seemed to be well on her way to a full recovery. She was talking and eating, definitely weak, but improving. But then one night while Rachel and Tom were at the hospital with Frances, Tom asked Rachel to step outside. He wanted to talk to her mom privately. Rachel agreed, left the two of them alone, but 45 minutes later, Tom came out and told Rachel that her mother had just passed away. Rachel was distraught and devastated and to all appearances, Tom also seemed very upset. He held her and cried about losing another wife. And when someone asked him if he wanted to do an autopsy, Tom immediately said no. He didn't want her cut up.

• 53:35Annie Elise?

  And then he had her cremated in less than 24 hours. Now, how this didn't raise red flags with the hospital is absolutely shocking to me, but of course, they didn't know about Tom and his history. And I guess they didn't feel like they had any reason to dig deeper. Frances, after all, was just out of surgery for a heart condition. It's upsetting, but sometimes patients do die suddenly. I mean, we know that it happens. Frances's family, however, was not so convinced that everything just happened naturally. Rachel couldn't understand how her mom went from talking normally to her one minute to being dead less than an hour later. I mean, what are the odds that Frances died while she was alone with Tom with no nurses, no doctors, no other family members? And what was it that actually killed her?

• 54:21Annie Elise?

  Unfortunately, even to this day, we don't know. Tom moved fast to get Frances cremated, so anything that might explain her death was gone. He, of course, collected on her life insurance policies and he also sued the hospital for wrongful death. And he won. It's insane that he was able to keep doing this, just going from one place to another, finding a wife, losing a wife, then getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in life insurance and settlement money. Now Frances also had made a videotaped last will and testament, which was filmed and directed by none other than Tom. She said she loved him several times, told him that she wanted to be cremated and that she wanted Tom to raise Rachel, which just felt super weird because what mostly healthy

• 55:06Annie Elise?

  woman sits down and makes a video will? Frances had a heart condition, but she wasn't on death's door. She was totally fine. But here she was with a videotape telling everybody exactly what Tom wanted everybody to hear, that he was going to have everything, that he was this great guy. But there was, of course, more to this story. The detectives found yet another man who told them that Tom had befriended him and then asked if he would be willing to kill someone for money. Which, I mean, the insane audacity of this man, I just cannot believe it. The man in question, Glenn Morrison, said that way before Frances ever had her surgery, Tom came to him with his bizarre plan. Tom wanted Glenn to pretend to rob their house, kill Frances, shoot Tom in the leg,

• 55:50Annie Elise?

  then steal the car. But Glenn had no interest in killing anyone and he absolutely did not trust Tom, so he flat out refused to be a part of anything like it. So Tom evidently then went with Plan B. He encouraged Frances to get the surgery, crossed his fingers that she wouldn't survive it. And when that didn't work out for him either and Frances was doing great and recovering, he took matters into his own hands, allegedly. It's unclear what he did to her alone in the hospital room, but he finally got what he wanted, namely Frances dead. Anyway, Tom kept falling into this exact same pattern over and over again. He would find a woman, marry her, take out a life insurance policy, and then try to manipulate somebody into killing his wife.

• 56:34Annie Elise?

  He was only successful one time, though, with his last wife Sharon and with Mike Miller. It took the police months to piece together all of this background information. They traveled all over the country, talking to Tom's past wives, their friends, and anybody else who had anything to say. And finally, once they had all of the information, the detectives went back to the prosecutors to tell them about everything they learned, especially the testimony they had from Eric and Glenn, those two former friends that Tom had approached at different times to ask if they would be willing to help him murder his current wife. And if you're keeping track, Eric is the guy who was around during Tom's second marriage to Becky and Glenn was that friend that Tom tried to rope into murdering his fifth wife, Frances. So the cops were basically like, okay, can we arrest him now?

• 57:18Annie Elise?

  And again, this whole process took months. And it's not like Tom just put his life on hold in the meantime. You'll remember that he was shut out of the house that he used to share with Sharon and Sharon's daughter Colleen wasn't letting him back in. So it took lots of legal back and forth, but Colleen finally let him come collect his belongings. While he was there, the police served him a notice that he was about to be indicted for murder. He calmly accepted that information and then they went their separate ways. Eight months after Sharon and Mike's murder, on January 7, 2009, Tom was officially arrested at his mother's house in Clearfield, Utah. At first, Tom refused to show one of his hands and he kept it hidden behind the door of the house. Knowing his obsession with guns, police tased him to make sure that he wouldn't hurt anybody else.

• 58:03Annie Elise?

  Tom acted all put out and annoyed and told the police that he needed the door to stand because he was infirm and yet he was okay in videos that were recorded later. He walked just fine. So to me, it seems like more of a move for power and control, which his surviving wives all said he deeply cared about. Even after being arrested, again, for murdering his wife, Tom was certain that he would be found not guilty. I guess he liked his odds after apparently getting away with things so many other times. He almost seemed happy and when he would talk to people going on and on about how he was going to be acquitted. He even seemed delighted when he learned that the prosecutors were asking for the death penalty. He said he'd have been insulted

• 58:44Annie Elise?

  otherwise, since this was certainly a case worthy of the death penalty. But he was also certain that he would be exonerated, and then he planned to sue everybody for these supposedly false charges, of course. The investigators were excited, too. They called Colleen and they told her that finally, finally, the man who had killed her mom was arrested. It was a huge relief. Colleen had been living in fear since Sharon's murder, terrified of what Tom might do to her or her family. So, she had a party to celebrate his arrest. Now, when it came time to lawyer up, Tom wanted the lawyers from the OJ Simpson Vegas robbery trial, and he got Gabe Grasso. Gabe told his new client not to talk to anyone.

• 59:25Annie Elise?

  He honestly believed that as long as Tom didn't actively confess to hiring Mike, they would be able to convince the jury that Tom's original story was the accurate one. The one where Tom and Sharon went to dinner, came back, a robber killed Sharon, and then Tom killed this robber as he tried to flee. But if Tom started running his mouth, he might make himself look guilty after all. And this is just my opinion, but knowing what Gabe has said about Tom, I don't think that he liked him very much. I don't think any of his lawyers really liked him. Gabe said that Tom tried to act more like a co-counsel, not a defendant, and that he came off as just overly confident. Maybe that's because Tom has worked as a paralegal and was supposedly trying to become a lawyer himself. Given

• 1:00:08Annie Elise?

  his history of being controlling, he probably thought he knew better than the real lawyers and maybe wanted to have more of a say in his case. Gabe didn't say it in so many words that he found Tom obnoxious and annoying, but I feel like it is clear, and honestly, I don't blame him. Tom is obnoxious, and that's being very, very generous, more than he deserves. Then, after working with Tom for about four months, Gabe withdrew from the case because Tom apparently had no money to pay him. He had spent all of that cash that he had gotten from his lawsuits and insurance policies, which is horrifying because what was he spending that money on? It's insane. This meant that Tom now had to hire new lawyers, too, which meant that there was a huge delay before his trial could begin. From the beginning of the trial, the biggest issue for both sides was the previous murder case for Becky.

• 1:00:53Annie Elise?

  The prosecutors argued that her case was relevant. It was so similar to what happened to Sharon. The jury had to hear about it to learn about the pattern with Tom. Of course, the defense didn't want anybody mentioning her murder trial, or as they called it, the Utah case, because according to them, Tom had been acquitted, so it wasn't fair to bring this unrelated case that might bias the jury. Well, the judge decided to allow it, which was a huge blow for Tom and for his lawyers. He ended up firing his entire legal team over it, which meant that the trial was delayed again, which was actually pretty bad news for Tom. His lawyers had been telling him the whole time not to talk to the press because he might say something that would hurt his case. But now, Tom agreed to do an interview with Dateline. On camera, he talked about

• 1:01:38Annie Elise?

  his first marriage to Kathy, and he took responsibility for it going so poorly. He admitted that he was doing too many drugs. Tom said that his second wife Becky was, quote, "the perfect wife who would do anything," but she was depressed. According to Tom, he told her that he was sick of listening to her talk about killing herself and that if she wanted to do it so badly, she should just go for it. He even offered her some rope. Which I know, what the heck? Like, did he think that saying that would somehow make him look better? He said that he regretted that conversation, but, you know, he also probably killed her, so who even knows if this whole exchange actually happened? Just my opinion. In the interviews, Tom said Leona was a party animal, and that Gayna was lying about

• 1:02:19Annie Elise?

  the gun going off and nearly hitting her. He also said that he loved Frances, but he wasn't surprised that she died. She had a heart condition, of course. And the video will, they wanted to be sure that their daughter would be okay if the surgery didn't go so well. So basically, Tom made it sound like he was just being careful, not this money-hungry killer. And finally, when it came to his wife, Sharon, wife number six, Tom said that Sharon was just a lovely woman who he missed. So while he didn't exactly knock the Dateline interview out of the park, I mean, he didn't implicate himself or anything either, there was a lot up in the air leading up to the trial, which just kept getting delayed again and again. It didn't start until 2017, eight years after he was arrested. And a lot of

• 1:03:02Annie Elise?

  those delays were because Tom kept hiring and firing lawyers. Sharon's family members thought that Tom was trying to control the entire process, like the trial would begin when he was good and ready for it, and if he didn't want to start yet and his court date was coming up, he would just throw a wrench in the whole process with another firing. This was a case that took 10 years to investigate and prosecute, and it was over 30 years in the making, if you count from Becky's death in 1986. Tom had left a path of devastation in his wake, going from state to state, wife to wife. Everyone who worked on this case was determined, Tom would not be leaving jail this time. So jumping ahead to the summer of 2017, which is finally when the trial began. Each side

• 1:03:45Annie Elise?

  gave their opening statements. Keep in mind, this trial was just about Sharon and Mike's murders. All of Tom's other wives' deaths only ever came up to help establish a pattern on Tom's part. The prosecutor said that Tom had planned everything. He brought in Mike to stage the break-in gone wrong, then he killed Mike to cover his tracks. The defense said that the crime was just what it looked like. Mike was a bad guy who robbed Tom and Sharon, killed Sharon before Tom then shot him in self-defense. There were lots of witnesses, including Tom's surviving ex-wives, also Sharon's friends, Eric, Sharon and Tom's neighbor who heard the gunshots, and the daughter, Colleen. Experts and detectives testified about all of the things that they had discovered about Tom during their investigation. They

• 1:04:29Annie Elise?

  especially hit hard on the motive, the life insurance money, and how he would try to get people to kill his wives for him. First Eric, then Glenn, then Mike. So after they heard all of the evidence, the jury took two days to deliberate. Then, they had their verdict. Tom was guilty of the murders of Sharon and Mike. During the sentencing trial, there were even more witnesses, and they came forward for both sides. Tom's mother and both of his children begged for his life and for him to not get the death penalty, and Tom also spoke out on his own behalf. But after just a few days on July 5, 2017, the jury sentenced him to death. So finally, at the age of 62 years old, Tom was being held responsible for at least two of the deaths that he was

• 1:05:14Annie Elise?

  responsible for. And hopefully, this brought some kind of peace to the families of Becky and Frances, too, and even the families of Kathy, Leona, and Gayna. Now, with any death sentence case, there are automatic appeals, and Tom's appeal worked through the Nevada court system over the next three years until finally, a very stunning decision in 2020 happened. His verdict was overturned. It came back to that issue that I mentioned before. The defense didn't want Becky's murder trial to come up during Sharon's trial. They thought that it violated laws that are supposed to prevent prosecutors from talking about a defendant's previous crimes in a current unrelated case. A judge thought it wasn't fair that Becky was mentioned at all, so they ruled that Tom would get

• 1:05:55Annie Elise?

  a retrial. That trial began in August of 2023. This time, the trial focused specifically on Sharon and Mike, and they focused primarily on testimony from the night that they were murdered. The prosecution called in Mike's family to talk about what they knew about Tom and Mike's relationship, and also how Mike was pulled into Tom's orbit and his evil plan. There was also a new witness. A woman named Elizabeth, who was Tom's girlfriend off and on for the entirety of his marriage to Sharon, which means that Tom was cheating on Sharon basically the entire time that they were married. Tom and Elizabeth had met online and had a long-distance relationship while Tom was living and married to Sharon in Las Vegas. Even before he was able to

• 1:06:37Annie Elise?

  try and convince her to marry him, he told Elizabeth to take out a life insurance policy, although he would only receive half the benefits, which, again, the audacity of this man, it's unbelievable. In 2008, Elizabeth told Tom she wouldn't be doing the long-distance thing anymore, so he needed to make a choice. And he told her that he would take care of Sharon and then be with her, which I have no doubt in my mind that if he and Elizabeth had gotten married immediately, he probably would have taken out a few more insurance policies out on her, and she probably would have had an unfortunate accident, too. So the second trial lasted for 10 days, and once again, the jury only deliberated for two days before finding Tom guilty of all charges, including one count of conspiracy

• 1:07:19Annie Elise?

  to commit murder and two counts of murder in the first degree. Now, by now, Tom was quite a bit older, and he also was not in the best health. So the prosecutors decided not to seek the death penalty because of his age. Months later, on April 24, 2024, the jury sentenced him to at least 60 years in prison. Poor Colleen celebrated the verdict again, and was glad that Tom had been found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. I guess we'll never know for sure what happened to Becky and Francis, but I personally just don't see any possible way that Tom was not involved in their deaths. It's just too big of a coincidence. He was a man of habit and his habit was tricking women into marrying him, taking out life insurance policies and then killing them and getting a bunch of money.

• 1:08:04Annie Elise?

  Most of his marriages only lasted two or three years before his wives died or left him. His marriages to Kathy and Francis lasted longer, but that's because there were children involved. Tom had lots of expensive habits and toys, drugs, motorcycles, hobbies like scuba diving and taking trips. Given all the life insurance payouts and the lawsuits that he filed, Tom probably over time made over a million dollars, probably multiple millions. And yet he had no money to pay for a lawyer for his murder trial, which means what was he doing with all of that money? This case is horrifying on so many levels. Tom absolutely ruined the lives of dozens of people, not just his wives and other victims like Mike, but also everybody who loved them.

• 1:08:47Annie Elise?

  Think of the people like his ex-wife Gayna and his former friend Eric, both of whom went into hiding because they were so afraid of what Tom might do to them. And the families of the women that he hurt are still grieving. It's been decades, but Becky's family, especially her cousins, still miss her terribly and they wonder what she would have been like if she had survived. Colleen and Rachel have to live without their mother, who were their best friends. And I hate that Tom got to live so many years as a free man. Finally, justice has been served. Tom will rot in jail and his victims can finally breathe easy, knowing this violent man is off the streets. He could try to manipulate all the people he wants, but he is not leaving prison. He's right where he belongs and it will also be where he dies.

• 1:09:30Annie Elise?

  Now, since those major updates in 2024, things have been, for the most part, pretty quiet with Tom. He's still serving the rest of what is hopefully a miserable, lonely existence. But to nobody's shock, he has tried going through the appeals process yet again. And the reasonings for this, it's gotta, I mean, I'm gonna just call bullshit on it. However, luckily in September of this year, the courts ultimately denied his appeal and they upheld his conviction. And even though none of it really matters at this point, I do want to highlight a few different things that Tom and his team were trying to argue. Because there were seven different issues on the appeal and I'm only gonna touch on a few, but that way you can really see why I'm saying it's such bullshit.

• 1:10:15Annie Elise?

  One of the things that Tom argued was that the walkthrough video that he did after Sharon and Mike's murders was allegedly involuntary. He claimed that he was being coerced by law enforcement and that he was impaired by his pain meds, which like I said, complete BS. The detectives who were present through the walkthrough testified that he was never threatened with an arrest, he was never coerced, or even any other consequences threatened to him for that matter. So that didn't really add up or make any sense. And obviously the judge didn't think he had a leg to stand on, so out. But Tom also argued that his right to a speedy trial was violated because of the 15-year delay between the original charges and his second trial.

• 1:10:59Annie Elise?

  However, the courts evaluated this claim and they disagreed with that as well. So like I said, it was a lot of just random things where he was kind of grasping at whatever straw is possible. But I think it's pretty clear that Tom will never take accountability for any of the harm that he's done. The countless lives that he has ruined has just seemed to mean very little to him over the years. And personally, I don't think that that's ever going to change. But I'm curious to know what you guys think about this case. Have you watched The Widower? Are you surprised with information that was left out? What do you think about that footage? I always laugh because I describe him as like, you know, a good-looking, long-haired, uh, not Rico Suave, who am I thinking of? Gosh, why do words always fail me?

• 1:11:44Annie Elise?

  The guy who was on all of the covers, not Pablo? Hold on, who am I thinking about? Oh my God, this is gonna bug me, hold on. Who is like the heartthrob, not Rico Suave, but the guy who's on all the book covers? Fabio, Fabio, I see, not Pablo, okay, Annie, get your life together, Fabio. And I always die laughing because I described that and you guys are so quick to correct me and troll me. You're all, Annie, did you take a hit of acid? What on earth are you thinking? He never looked like Fabio. But I guess like at the time, I didn't really know how to describe it, like the long wavy hair, whatever. I get it, more like a bootleg Pablo and not a Fabio. But anyways, thank you guys for tuning in.

• 1:12:29Annie Elise?

  Let me know what you think about that footage, about the case as a whole. And thank you so much today for tuning in. Don't forget, subscribe, like, follow, share the episode, all of those things. And I will be back with you with an all-new episode very, very soon. Until then, stay safe, bye.

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