Clara Rector

In April 2004, friends of 48-year-old Tommy Hope became concerned after not hearing from him for several days. When they went to his Camdenton, Missouri, home, they discovered Tommy brutally murdered inside. Investigators learned that Tommy’s troubled past, struggles with addiction, and complicated relationships had brought several people into his orbit who might have had reason to want him dead. Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss Clara Rector. Despite numerous interviews and promising leads, the investigation eventually stalled and remained cold for nearly a decade. Then, in 2013, an unrelated stalking and harassment case produced a stunning revelation that finally gave investigators the break they had been waiting for. You can help support the show at patreon.com/truecrimeallthetime Visit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for contact, merchandise, and donation information An Emash Digital production See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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  Please play responsibly. 21+, physically present in Connecticut, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia only. Void in Canada. Eligibility restrictions apply. Non-withdrawable spins issued at 50 spins per day for 20 days. Valid for select games only and expire each day after 24 hours. Spin values vary. See terms at casino.draftkings.com/promos. Ends November 22, 2026 at 11:59 PM Eastern Time. Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 533 of the True Crime All the Time Podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson, and with me as always is my partner in true crime, Mike Gibson. Gibby, how are you?

• 1:24Speaker 01

  I'm doing good, man. You?

• 1:25Speaker 00

  I'm doing great.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, 533.

• 1:28Speaker 00

  It's a lot of episodes.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  I've done 532 because you left me out on one of the episodes early on.

• 1:34Speaker 00

  I did. I did. I don't remember why, but we rectified it and redid it with you.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  We did.

• 1:40Speaker 00

  And it was much better, people said.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44Speaker 00

  So we're talking about Clara Rector. When Clara Rector was arrested for stalking and harassing her pastor in April 2013, she shocked investigators by confessing the murder, solving a case that had been cold for nearly a decade.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Wow, she must have needed to get something off her chest.

• 2:04Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, we're going to find out. But it's also, you know, stalking harassing your pastor.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:11Speaker 00

  That seems like such a strange thing.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  You ever had anybody stalk or harass you?

• 2:16Speaker 00

  No.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  No? Not yet.

• 2:18Speaker 00

  I'm not memorable enough for... Not that I want to be, obviously, but, you know, I'm pretty plain, Jane.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  It'd be hard to stalk you.

• 2:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, because I'm in my basement fortress.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  They'd be like, after four days, like, I give up. He is not coming out.

• 2:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, if you're doing the stakeout on me, you're going to be sitting there for a long time.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, going to get kind of bored.

• 2:41Speaker 00

  Tommy D. Hope was born in Houston, Texas on June 28, 1955. He grew up with two siblings. Tommy had a difficult childhood. He and his siblings were abandoned by their parents for days at a time, and then they were eventually put into foster care. According to Tommy's friend Brenda McKay, Tommy experienced abuse in foster care and was neglected and beaten. So horrible, right? Parents abandoning their children for days at a time.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  I don't know how parents do that. Like, how do you leave your kids alone? What do you do? Like, get some food, throw it in the fridge, or give them some pizza money and just be like, we'll be back in a few days?

• 3:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. Now, I mean, how old were these kids at that time? Because that makes a difference. If you're talking about a 16 or 17-year-old.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:36Speaker 00

  You know, you could go away for a little bit and probably trust them to take care of themselves. But if you're talking about four, five, six, seven-year-olds, that would be...

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Wrong.

• 3:47Speaker 00

  You know, so incredibly wrong, as you said. And that's how you get your kids taken away from you.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:55Speaker 00

  Now, we've talked about foster care before. It can be a great thing, right? There are kids who need a home.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  There is.

• 4:03Speaker 00

  And there are people out there willing to help. Unfortunately, some of those people aren't always the best people in the world.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  They abuse the system.

• 4:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  Right?

• 4:13Speaker 00

  They end up using the kid.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're in it sometimes just for the money.

• 4:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  And other times they're in it because they are just some sick individuals.

• 4:21Speaker 00

  Now, hopefully, as with most things, that's a small percentage of the population. Most people are in it for the right reasons and want to do the right thing by these kids. And they want the kids in their lives. But like with anything, there are going to be bad actors or bad apples in any profession, anything you talk about in life.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 4:46Speaker 00

  Nobody is going to be all good.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  No.

• 4:50Speaker 00

  It just doesn't happen. Tommy joined the military as soon as he was old enough. Then he left the military in his 20s, and he did odd jobs to make ends meet. According to his obituary, Tommy worked in carpentry and loved rebuilding cars.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  He liked working with his hands, it sounds like.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  It does. By his early 40s, Tommy was living in Camden Town, Missouri, a small town near the Lake of the Ozarks. He had a lot of friends that he had met at local bars. He worked as a maintenance man at a bar in Osage Beach. You know, one place I've never been, but I really want to go, is Lake of the Ozarks.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  Because of the series?

• 5:35Speaker 00

  Because of the series, yeah.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  I knew it.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  Now, I didn't realize, I knew it was big.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  I didn't realize how big.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  It spans multiple areas.

• 5:46Speaker 00

  Estates. I mean, multiple states.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:49Speaker 00

  So I don't know, you know, what the best part of it is to go. I'd have to do some research on that.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Just stay on a houseboat and float around.

• 5:56Speaker 00

  I know, that'd be great. That actually would be a lot of fun. We have rented a houseboat once before on Lake Cumberland.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:04Speaker 00

  And it was, it was fun.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  It was, it's a good time.

• 6:07Speaker 00

  I was younger.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:08Speaker 00

  And now my dad was too cheap to spring for the air-conditioned model. So that part was not great because it was about 100 degrees out.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  He was probably thinking, there's a lake outside. If you get hot, jump in it.

• 6:22Speaker 00

  No, I know what my dad was thinking. He's thinking, I don't want to spend the money.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  I don't want to spend the money. That's a, that's a $50 right there I can keep in my pocket.

• 6:28Speaker 00

  Exactly. According to the Lake Sun Leader, police had dealings with Tommy several times for alcohol-related offenses and one drug-related offense. Tommy was arrested two weeks prior to his death for possession of a controlled substance. Charges were still pending at the time of his death. So obviously, we're getting ready to talk about, you know, how he died, who was involved. But, you know, it's important to talk about him, his childhood, kind of, you know, everything that he had going on in his life leading up to it. Tommy was assaulted and suffered severe cuts to his face in March 2003. A man named Robert Lewis was convicted of assault

• 7:13Speaker 00

  and unlawful use of a weapon in October 2003. In connection with that incident, Lewis was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Some decent time for assaulting somebody.

• 7:27Speaker 00

  It is, but, you know, sounds like to me warranted.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:32Speaker 00

  But also confusing because, you know, look back at some of the cases we've done. You're talking about incredibly heinous sexual assaults, even murder, where somebody doesn't get 11 years in prison.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  You wonder if it's just, it's probably a combination, you know? Is it, is it just because the law is bad? Is it because maybe the prosecution wasn't as good on some of those cases? Or the defense attorney was better? Or the jury was just more relaxed? I don't know.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it's a bunch of different factors, like you said, right? Some of it's just the time.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:15Speaker 00

  And how some of the crimes were looked at, how the laws were written for those crimes. No doubt that laws regarding sexual assault and sentences for those crimes have changed dramatically, right, over the last 40, 50 years? On the morning of April 28th, 2004, Tommy's friends Cindy Christiansen and Brian North went to check on him because they were worried. No one had heard from Tommy in days, which was unusual, right? He was a type of guy who kept in touch. They arrived at his home around 6:30 a.m. They knocked on the door and received no answer. So Cindy crawled through a window.

• 8:58Speaker 00

  Inside, she found Tommy dead on the floor in a pool of blood. Tommy's body was lying in the doorway between the kitchen and living room. So horrible for you to go over to a friend's house because yeah, you're worried. You haven't heard from him.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:18Speaker 00

  I don't think most people jump to, oh, well, they're probably laying dead in their house.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  No, I'm sure when Cindy crawled through that opening, she probably thought, I won't find him here, but let me just go through and just double check.

• 9:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  And then come across that body.

• 9:32Speaker 00

  No, we did mention some drugs, right?

• 9:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:35Speaker 00

  Could it have been possible that he went on a bender? You know?

• 9:38Speaker 01

  Overdose?

• 9:40Speaker 00

  Or that. But to be found dead in a pool of blood, that's gotta be unbelievably shocking.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:49Speaker 00

  Investigators used luminol inside the house, which revealed bloody footprints leading to the window, as well as prints on the window frame.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  That stuff's not cheap.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  Luminol?

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 10:02Speaker 00

  I know you use a lot of it. I don't know why.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  I carry it with me.

• 10:05Speaker 00

  But you do have a really large supply of it.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  You need to know that things are cleaned up.

• 10:11Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  For, you know, for whatever reasons.

• 10:14Speaker 00

  And that's the only reason that you can really tell, right?

• 10:16Speaker 01

  I mean, I want to know when my kitchen looks good again, you know, like there's nothing I need to worry about, you know?

• 10:20Speaker 00

  Oh, did I ever tell you that my wife wanted one of those black lights?

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Oh, did she?

• 10:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, because she wanted to know if the puppy was weeing on the carpet.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:32Speaker 00

  And very quickly found out that you should never use a black light in your house because as clean as you think it is, it's not.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  She didn't come down here and use it, did she?

• 10:43Speaker 00

  No.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  That's good. She really.

• 10:45Speaker 00

  But you know how my wife is about cleanliness?

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:48Speaker 00

  And she thinks like this place is spotless, which it is very clean.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  It is clean. I mean, from the stairs up. Yeah.

• 10:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:59Speaker 00

  But you shine that black light, there's stuff everywhere.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I mean.

• 11:03Speaker 00

  Don't even know what it is.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  So the autopsy found that Tommy died from eight stab wounds to the torso and left arm. And he had a laceration on his neck. The medical examiner determined he died three or four days earlier on the night of April 24th or the morning of April 25th. So that does, you know, kind of go along with the timeline, right? Friends hadn't heard from him in a few days. That's when they started getting worried. And it sounds like at least, you know, from the medical examiner that he had been dead for three or four days.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  And that would be even worse to come into that home where that body's been sitting there for like three days? Just festering?

• 11:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's never going to be good, but right. Obviously the longer the body is there, the worse it's going to be.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:00Speaker 00

  Tommy's friends told investigators he used drugs as a means to cope with the trauma he suffered in his childhood and while in the military.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Not surprising.

• 12:10Speaker 00

  No, I think a lot of people use drugs and/or alcohol to cope with trauma. You know, rightly or wrongly, you can look at it a bunch of different ways, but I do think a lot of people use that as a way to cope.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  I mean, people want to feel numb. They don't want to feel.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  The pain.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  The pain.

• 12:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. And that's one way to do it. Camdenton Police Chief Jeff Bocham said Tommy kept a variety of drugs in his home, such as meth, marijuana and cocaine. And people came over to party and use his drugs regularly. So, yeah, I mean, you're getting, you know, when you talk meth, to me, that's like, there's meth and there's marijuana. However, you think about marijuana, whether you think it should be legal or not, I know people who use marijuana.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:06Speaker 00

  I don't know anybody who uses meth, or at least has told me they use meth. But I just feel like these are on way different levels.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  They are.

• 13:15Speaker 00

  And then maybe somewhere in between is cocaine. I don't know.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:19Speaker 00

  I've told you that story. Cocaine has always scared me and I would never want to try it because I remember Lynn Bias, the basketball star that I grew up watching.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:30Speaker 00

  When I was younger, he died allegedly from trying it one time. That's what we were always told. Right after he got drafted.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:40Speaker 00

  So, but I don't know. I always think of meth and maybe that's the breaking bad in me. But meth as being like this really hardcore nasty drug.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Not good for you.

• 13:52Speaker 00

  Oh, I don't think any of them are real good for you, but.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, stay away from meth.

• 13:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, definitely. Tommy's friend Patricia Strauss told the investigators that Tommy had recently been seeing a married woman named Clara Rector. Clara's husband, Jason, knew about the relationship and didn't like.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Didn't like it? I don't like to just see somebody else.

• 14:15Speaker 00

  Shocking. Now, from what I understand, there are some guys who are into that, but I don't think many.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  They could be into it or they might be okay with it because they're like, hopefully he'll want you. You'll leave me and we're all good.

• 14:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, I just don't think a lot of guys would be okay with that.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  I don't think so either.

• 14:37Speaker 00

  It's also a little strange that it seems, they seem pretty open about it. Like it wasn't a well-kept secret, or maybe they tried to keep it a secret and the husband found out anyway. Tommy told Patricia a few days before he died that Jason had warned him to stay away from Clara or he would be sorry. So I think, you know, as an investigator, in the very beginning, you have to look at this guy.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Oh, you, for sure.

• 15:07Speaker 00

  Right. Tommy is found dead. You find out that he's having an affair with this married woman. Her husband's mad about it. Clara Rector was born in 1976 in California. Like Tommy, she had a hard childhood and was removed from her home. She was later adopted and moved with her adoptive family to the Lake of the Ozarks. Clara got married at age 19, but her first husband tragically died in a car accident. Shortly after she found out she was pregnant.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Wow, that would be some trauma.

• 15:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, you're 19 years old, starting your life, you're pregnant. All of a sudden your husband dies and you're like all alone. That would be extremely tough. And it was said that Clara used drugs to cope in the aftermath of his death. In 1999, she married Jason Rector and they had two children. Clara's father-in-law, Jerry Rector, told the Kansas City Star that Clara was the ideal daughter-in-law, saying she's a great mother, a hard worker, and she's always cleaned my windows and taken care of my garden.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  She's a great daughter-in-law because she cleans my windows.

• 16:24Speaker 00

  Well, she's also a great mother and a hard worker, but I know it does seem a little bit strange.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:30Speaker 00

  Jason and Clara used drugs regularly. Jason eventually got sober, but Clara still struggled with addiction in the early 2000s. And I always feel like that would be tough. You know, when you have two people who are addicted to something.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:48Speaker 00

  Drugs. Maybe it's cigarettes and one of them gets clean, but the other one doesn't.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Makes it tough, right?

• 16:59Speaker 00

  One is able to stay sober and the other one doesn't. That's going to make it really tough on the relationship.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  It'd be like you when you had your addiction to the paper towels.

• 17:08Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Like, and you finally got off of it, but your buddy was still eating paper towels every time you got together.

• 17:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Or like the time you were addicted to Teletubbies?

• 17:16Speaker 00

  Mm.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  And you finally got away from the Teletubbies at what, age 17 or something like that?

• 17:21Speaker 00

  Rough period in my life.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  But.

• 17:24Speaker 00

  You can't even keep on with the ruse because it's so outlandish that at 17 years old, I would be into the Teletubbies.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  I can just see it right now. You probably like the green one.

• 17:36Speaker 00

  And I don't even know what the Teletubbies are, to be honest with you. Oh my gosh, but I do think it would be hard.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it would be.

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• 19:11Speaker 00

  Clara bonded with Tommy Hope because they could relate to each other in regards to their past and they used drugs together.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Well, that's, I mean, I'm not surprised by that, right?

• 19:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  They have that, you know, I had a shitty life. You had a shitty life. This drug makes me feel good. Well, you say this makes you feel good. Let's do it together and.

• 19:32Speaker 00

  And then they were both kind of using drugs to cope with that.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:36Speaker 00

  The bad trauma from their past. Clara left Jason and moved in with Tommy before she went to rehab in 2003. And then she ultimately reconciled with Jason.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe she realized, you know, Tommy was not good for her, you know, and needed to go back to Jason or something else.

• 19:59Speaker 00

  But again, tough situation for Jason, you know?

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 20:04Speaker 00

  You know, how many guys and maybe he just loved her so much that he was willing to take her back. But you know, for a lot of guys, that would just be a pride thing, a nonstarter, right?

• 20:16Speaker 01

  I think it'd be difficult to take somebody back.

• 20:19Speaker 00

  For most people.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  For most, yeah.

• 20:21Speaker 00

  Either way, whether it was, you know, a wife taking a husband back or a husband taking a wife back. Some of those can be tough, but it does happen.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:30Speaker 00

  In early May, 2004, authorities announced they were looking for a man and woman. They wanted to question in connection with Tommy's death. They didn't name the couple at the time. The Camden County Sheriff sent a message to Missouri Highway Patrol at the request of the Camdenton Police Department with information about a woman who had an active bench warrant. She was believed to be traveling with a man wanted for questioning in the Hope case. A week later, police reported that they had located the woman sought for questioning, but they were still looking for the man. Now, the couple, you know, they weren't considered

• 21:10Speaker 00

  suspects, but they were thought to have information that could help investigators. They lived and worked in the area and appeared to have left around the time of the murder.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Which is typically something very suspicious.

• 21:24Speaker 00

  I mean, police are going to think that, right?

• 21:26Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 21:27Speaker 00

  You know, if you live in the area, you work in the area, this murder takes place and all of a sudden, right after it, you move out of town. Not, it could just be a strange coincidence, or it could be that you needed to get out of Dodge and that's this murder happened and you left.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:49Speaker 00

  Now, whether you did it or you just knew something about it and were scared of those who did carry it out. It sounds like that's maybe more what they were thinking, but they still wanted to question them, obviously. Although those 2004 articles by the Lake Sun Leader didn't name the man or the woman, a 2013 article by the Lake Sun Leader notes that Clara was interviewed in April and May 2004. However, officers couldn't establish a connection between her and the crime.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Well, you gotta make a connection to take it further.

• 22:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, you know, the investigators have such a hard job. I mean, are there some easy ones that kind of solve themselves with a little work? Yeah, I'm sure there are, but I mean, how many unsolved episodes have we done?

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 22:42Speaker 00

  And, you know, you, it takes hard work. It takes a little luck. It takes a lot of different things to solve some of these crimes. But to your point, I think you can have all the hunches you want. You can think that this person or that person was involved, but it takes real evidence.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  It does.

• 23:03Speaker 00

  Right? To charge somebody, to take somebody to trial. Clara admitted to using illegal substances with Tommy Hope behind her husband's back and being at his home prior to his death. DNA tests corroborated her statement. And, okay, probably good that you don't lie about being in his home, lie about different activities because probably not going to be that hard for DNA to disprove it. If you said, oh no, I was never in Tommy's home.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:38Speaker 00

  When your DNA is all over the place. Now, does that mean that you killed him? Not necessarily. I guess it depends on where the DNA is found.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  But we know a lot of people would say, I was never there.

• 23:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  And then they would say, well, we have DNA. Oh, that, that, that house.

• 23:55Speaker 00

  And then they have to change their story. But it's also interesting to see the way investigators kind of broach these different subjects and how they ask the questions.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:06Speaker 00

  Because in the back of their mind, they know information. And so a lot of times they're just trying to paint these individuals into a corner.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 24:17Speaker 00

  And force them to say something that they can easily refute and therefore, you know, that's when it's going to start them thinking, oh, how do I change the story to make it fit the facts? And that's when things go downhill.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  I almost think, and I hate to say, not in a disturbing way, but I do think investigators probably get a rush.

• 24:40Speaker 00

  Oh, I would think so.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Playing the game like, you know what? I like, they probably go in feeling like they know the person did it, but they have to have the proof.

• 24:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  And so, okay, how can I get that proof without, you know, get this person to kind of walk into it?

• 24:57Speaker 00

  I don't think you, I don't consider disturbing at all. I think that would be a rush.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Like it's like a chess game.

• 25:03Speaker 00

  It's like a chess game and you're trying to outsmart this person who you think is a killer.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:11Speaker 00

  And if it turns out you're right, the whole process is going to be kind of a rush.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  I think, you know, we know, we both love chess. I mean, I haven't stopped thinking about my last chess game against Alexander Swarovski from five years ago, you know? I guess I got robbed because the little clock, my side didn't work right.

• 25:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  And it sped up quicker.

• 25:38Speaker 00

  I'm sure that's what would hinder your test or your chess game, the clock.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Eh, he got lucky that day.

• 25:45Speaker 00

  Other than that, you'd be wiping the floor with everybody, all the grandmasters.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Well, he wasn't a grandmaster. He was seven years old, but that little bastard.

• 25:56Speaker 00

  He beat you that day, didn't he? That was funny. I liked that.

• 26:01Speaker 00

  According to Oxygen, police also interviewed Jason, who was honest about his dislike of Tommy. He blamed him for his wife's drug use and admitted he warned Tommy to stay away from her. So he's got a number of reasons not to like Tommy or not to have had liked Tommy at that time. Number one, his wife was cheating on him with Tommy. At one point had run away to be with Tommy and then came back.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  That'd be the number one reason right there.

• 26:32Speaker 00

  And then I think he did believe that Tommy played at least some part in her drug use.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  I think they fed each other, you know, that.

• 26:43Speaker 00

  And some people do that, for sure.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:46Speaker 00

  No doubt about it. Jason and Clara both maintained they were with each other the entire time period. Investigators believe Tommy might have been killed. And that's a kind of a tough alibi. Yes, you do have another person to vouch for you, but it's not like your boss who has no reason to dislike this person.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:11Speaker 00

  That both of these people are kind of invested in the case, right? They're involved in the case. So how good is their word about each other's alibi?

• 27:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like significant other, right? I mean.

• 27:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Is your significant other going to turn on you? Probably not.

• 27:30Speaker 00

  Are they going to lie to protect you? Quite possibly.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  Would your co-host of a podcast go that route for you?

• 27:37Speaker 00

  No.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  I know you would. You'd be wanting that reward money.

• 27:43Speaker 00

  I don't care about the reward money. I just want you locked up for the crimes you've committed.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  You're like, it'll make a good podcast, too.

• 27:52Speaker 00

  I'd turn you in for jaywalking.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I think you probably have.

• 27:56Speaker 00

  So there, there's no doubt that, you know, police were looking at Jason, they were looking at Clara. But ultimately, leads just ran dry and the case went cold. And we see that in tons of unsolved cases, right? At some point, in most cases, the leads are going to dry up. It might be hot and heavy in the beginning and hopefully those leads to solving, those leads play into solving the case. But if they don't, as time goes by, just by the way the world works, the leads are going to start to dwindle.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, the flow leads will, for sure.

• 28:35Speaker 00

  The coverage will die down a little bit. People will start to forget about it and the leads will dry up. In 2005, Tommy's sister, Jeannie Smith, spoke to the Lake Sun Leader and expressed her anger and grief over the loss of her brother. She noted that Tommy was her only living relative. Their brother was killed in a car accident in the early 90s. The siblings had always been close. And I wonder, you know, we talked about what a bad childhood that they had. I wonder if that maybe helps strengthen the bond between the siblings?

• 29:15Speaker 01

  I think it probably does.

• 29:17Speaker 00

  I think it definitely could, right?

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Could, yeah.

• 29:19Speaker 00

  Because it's like you against everybody else. You can't rely on mom and dad if they're gone for two or three days at a time, so.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  Turn to each other.

• 29:30Speaker 00

  I could see how the siblings could get very, very close in a situation like that. Jeannie said she hoped by speaking out on the anniversary of Tommy's death, it would turn up a clearer information leading to an arrest. Jeannie was diagnosed with MS. Because of her health and financial problems, she was unable to travel to Missouri and relied on Tommy's friends and the police to fill in the blanks surrounding his death. She knew Tommy struggled with drug and alcohol addiction, but still couldn't imagine what circumstances led to his death.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Well, I think, you know, any sibling, friend, uh, family member would think. I mean, I know he maybe wasn't like the perfect person, but he didn't deserve to die. Who would do something like that?

• 30:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, and then they may not know of anybody that they can think of who could be capable of it. But I do want to talk a little bit about, you know, her speaking out, especially like on the anniversary of his death. I do think it's very important, right? To keep your loved one's case in the limelight is, is very, very important. We've talked many times about getting a, an unsolved case on something like America's Most Wanted or Unsolved Mysteries and how much help that can be.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  I think you want to keep it out in the spotlight as much as you can, you know? Keep it, uh, from disappearing.

• 31:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, I just think it becomes harder and harder, right? As time goes by. Tommy's manager, Tim Kotanchik, the general manager of the bar and restaurant Tommy worked at, told the Lake Sun Leader that Tommy was a good worker, friendly and was known for his jokes.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Joker.

• 31:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, there are some of those people who they're fun to be around because they're funny.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:31Speaker 00

  They can make you laugh, they can make everybody around you laugh. Maybe he was one of those types of guys, but it's also pays to be a friendly and a good worker.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  It does.

• 31:42Speaker 00

  Especially if you're, uh, the manager and/or the owner. You're going to like those people.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yeah. It's important.

• 31:50Speaker 00

  Police also said they were frustrated. The murder remained unsolved a year later, but they were confident someone knew something that could break the case. Camdenton Police Chief Laura Webster noted that investigators had followed up on all leads and had interviewed over 87 people. And they said that Tommy's murder was the first in the town since 1995.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, that's a good thing.

• 32:15Speaker 00

  Well, it's a good thing. It just also shows you that this is not a huge town, probably.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:20Speaker 00

  They don't experience a ton of very, very violent crime.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  But also think, we've heard on, on other unsolved cases where they're like, we know this will be solved. And then.

• 32:32Speaker 00

  Forty years later, we're talking about it.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:34Speaker 00

  And it's still unsolved, so. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what good investigator would have the mindset of, oh, ain't never solving this one.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, he shouldn't be an investigator.

• 32:45Speaker 00

  Right, they're, they're always going to be optimistic that, yeah, we can solve it. Doesn't turn out to always be true, but I think it pays to at least have that kind of mindset. As the years passed, Clara Rector became deeply committed to Christianity and she even started a Christian blog. She credited her faith for giving her the strength to overcome addiction. And she spoke to local media outlets to warn people about the dangers of drug use. And that's a good story.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  It is a good story.

• 33:17Speaker 00

  Right, anytime somebody can, you know, overcome an addiction that is hurting them, that's weighing them down, um, that's a, that's a great thing. And then to even go further and try to help other people, warning them about the dangers of, of the things that you've gone through.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:36Speaker 00

  And it's going to mean more because you've experienced it.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  I mean, we've got a good listener that went through addiction with, I believe, meth, meth or crack, I think it was meth. And he has a large following and he puts that message out all the time, you know? And, um.

• 33:55Speaker 00

  I think that's a good thing.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  It is a good thing. I think when people hear that you might've went through what they're going through and you found yourself to a place where you're no longer dependent on that and what that, but what that struggle looked like and, you know, we know it's not easy.

• 34:11Speaker 00

  Well, you're going to gain a lot of credibility with that individual.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Well, that's true.

• 34:15Speaker 00

  Because you've, you've been where they are.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:17Speaker 00

  You know, I, I can't talk about it because I've never been addicted to drugs. So I can sit here and say, don't do drugs, but it's not going to mean much to anybody because I can't relate.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  You can just don't eat paper towels and don't overplay with Teletubbies.

• 34:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. Now that I can relate to.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:38Speaker 00

  She wrote, as quoted by the Kansas City Star, "I searched high and low for the answer by trying different drugs and alcohol, to the point that I became an addict and am still daily in recovery from addiction. I thought the love of men would fill the void, but promiscuity wasn't the answer. Everywhere I looked, everything I tried, I was unable to fill the God-shaped space in my heart."

• 35:07Speaker 01

  You know, I hear a lot of people say that, that they try to fill that, that void with, you know, a relationship. And if I get in a relationship, then maybe I'll be okay. But actually, it turns out, sometimes you hear that makes it worse.

• 35:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. Same can go for people or couples, right? Having a rough time, thinking, well, maybe a baby will make it better. Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Maybe it doesn't, yeah. And I know that recovery is not a, it's not a one and done.

• 35:39Speaker 00

  No, and she, she says that, right? She became an addict and she still is. Because once you are, you always are.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, once an addict, always an addict.

• 35:49Speaker 00

  So she's got this blog, and in it, she described her Catholic upbringing, and how she began using drugs after losing her first husband. She wrote in another blog post, "I believe that Jesus died on the cross for the redemption of all people, even me." She wrote that only by asking God for forgiveness could she be redeemed. So it does sound like, right, she found God, or she found Christianity, or whatever, however you want to phrase it, and that played a big role in, in, you know, becoming sober. At least that's what she was putting out there. Clara also

• 36:32Speaker 00

  published a poem on her blog, titled "To the Greatest Father." In the final verse, she wrote, "For freedom from my past and forgiveness of my sins, the only thing I had to do was open up, believe, and let Christ in." On April 21, 2013, the Camden County Sheriff's Office was called to the Camden Town Bible Baptist Church. Pastor Jerry Southly reported that he was being stalked by congregant Clara Rector. So, all right, we're taking a kind of a divergent path here. You know,

• 37:10Speaker 00

  she was addicted, right, to drugs. She was looked at in the death of Tommy Hope. And then she's, now she's got this blog where she's saying, you know, she believes in God, she believes in Christ, she's sober, but she may be stalking her pastor.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  And this could be her new addiction. Is this, you know, with the church, with Christ, with the pastor?

• 37:40Speaker 00

  Apparently, the stalking began back in July 2012, according to the Lake Sun Leader. Pastor Jerry received multiple notes and phone calls from Clara regarding inappropriate matters of a sexual nature. Okay, I hope people are seeing that on video, because your face was really strange. When you, when you said, oh, okay.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  What does that mean? What was those were?

• 38:09Speaker 00

  It is kind of, it's not funny, but it's, it's strange. You know, this is, you think you're, you're in a house of worship, right? You're in a church, you're listening to what is supposed to be, you know, some pretty deep stuff, I think, a lot of times in church, and you're passing sexual notes to the pastor.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  I'm just trying to figure out, what's, what's in, what's the inappropriate matters? Like, it had to be pretty, pretty shocking for me.

• 38:40Speaker 00

  Well, no, because I think basically anything of a sexual nature between you and your pastor would be inappropriate. For you, inappropriate is on a much different level, because there's probably not much that you don't do or wouldn't do. That's what you were trying to say. But I think anything even regarding wanting to have sex would be inappropriate, because of the relationship that is supposed to go on between pastor and congregant.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  Person of cloth.

• 39:13Speaker 00

  How about that? So Clara lashed out. After he rebuffed her advances, the messages escalated, and then some started even appearing on his windshield.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  Oh, the old, put it on the windshield message.

• 39:27Speaker 00

  Okay. It's one thing to write some naughty stuff, right, down on a, on paper and hand it to somebody. It's a whole different thing to write naughty stuff on the windshield where everybody can see it. You know, depending on how dirty this was, no matter what, it's going to be embarrassing. It could get real embarrassing, depending on how graphic the messages were. On April 19, Jerry found a notebook in the church, in which Clara described her sexual fantasies about him.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  That would be weird to read, from his standpoint.

• 40:09Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, no doubt. But I do kind of want to go back to one of the things that Clara said in her blog. And you, you kind of touched on it, but it was her kind of using men being promiscuous to try to fill something. I mean, is she now doing it again, but with her pastor? Is almost what it sounds like.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  I feel like it's, uh, doing, filling that void, and it's another level of an addiction.

• 40:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think you might be right about that. Jerry stapled the notebook in an envelope, and gave it to the church secretary, who was Clara's mother-in-law.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Well, hold, hold, hold the horses. This is getting really weird now. Hey, uh, got this notebook from your daughter-in-law. It's pretty inappropriate. I went ahead, I went ahead and sealed it up. Whatever you do, don't open it. But can you put this away somewhere?

• 41:08Speaker 00

  Well, the secretary turned around and gave it to Clara's husband, Jason, who allegedly disposed of the notebook, per the Lake Sun Leader. And we already talked about Jason knowing that Clara at one point cheated on him, right, with Tommy Hope. And now he's discovering this.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think you could be too happy about, I mean, you get this notebook, I'm assuming he opened it up and started, and was reading through it and be like.

• 41:38Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. I don't, I don't think you get a notebook delivered in that fashion, and you can just throw it away. You, you gotta open it.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  I'm thinking he's like, you know, from page 16 to page 32, we've never done anything like that. And you got it, detailed descriptions here on what you want to do with the, with the, with the preacher.

• 41:59Speaker 00

  I can't even imagine what it would be like to read something like that, written by your wife, about another man. That would really be tough to stump.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  It'd make you sick.

• 42:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, it would be, uh, it'd be really tough, no doubt about it.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  And I don't know how you move on with your relationship after reading something like that.

• 42:18Speaker 00

  Well, apparently, he was able to move on a couple of times before, right? Because she had had dalliances with, with Tommy. Yeah, I don't know. Once you find out that it's, uh, now it hasn't actually become physical, but that's only because he wouldn't let it.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, but to me, it's just as bad, physical or not, you're thinking it. So you're not thinking about me.

• 42:45Speaker 00

  Clara then allegedly texted Pastor Jerry on April 21, asking for the notebook back. Jerry told her not to contact him again. I mean, you want all the parishioners you can get, but maybe this one you can do without.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. Sometimes you just gotta cut certain people loose.

• 43:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, that's, uh, that's more headache than it's worth, obviously. That day Clara tried to enter the church and was arrested. She was charged with stalking and harassment. According to Jerry's police statement, "At one point Clara threatened him by saying, Jerry, if you tell the law what you know about me, I will destroy you. I will effing destroy you."

• 43:30Speaker 01

  There goes the sweetness out of her.

• 43:33Speaker 00

  Well, it, it, there's a, quite a bit of dichotomy, right, between her actions and what she's writing in this Christian blog, and the, the things that she's espousing in there.

• 43:48Speaker 00

  Her actions in real life don't seem to conform with that type of stuff.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  You know, she's saying you better not say anything. So I just wonder, I don't know how, what the legalities are behind it. I know like if you go see a psychologist, you can tell them things and they're not allowed by their license law to do anything, tell anybody about it.

• 44:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, unless you're threatening to kill somebody, there's there's some caitheats, right, to those things.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  I just wonder ministers have the same.

• 44:19Speaker 00

  They have something similar.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:21Speaker 00

  They have something similar. Same with attorneys and, you know, stuff like that. But I don't know, she just comes across so far as even now in, in what is supposed to be like her reformation, right? She's sober, she's found religion, but yet she is doing some very wild stuff.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:48Speaker 00

  And when Jerry is not into it, she's basically saying, don't you rat on me.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:56Speaker 00

  Cause I will destroy you. According to Oxygen, Clara was referring to a prior counseling session with Jerry, where she admitted to killing a man.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 45:08Speaker 00

  So now we're, you know, kind of on to what you were talking about.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  That could be part of the reason why he was turned off a little bit too. Besides, he was probably just a good person.

• 45:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, but that, you know, even if he wasn't, that, that, that could probably turn you off or should turn you off. Jerry was worried about his safety and his family's safety. He told detectives, she started telling me about how she had left Jason and the kids. And started doing drugs and got mixed up with a guy. She just kind of put her head down and said, I killed him. Jerry implored Clara to go to the police and confess, but she refused. And that doesn't shock me, right? She's had a number of years to this point to confess if she wanted to. I think the confession part for most people is tough because you know, the minute you do that, you're giving up your freedom.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 46:01Speaker 00

  And that's why most people don't do it.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, yeah.

• 46:03Speaker 00

  And even when they are caught, they might confess to certain things, but they lie about other things. They still try to diminish. Yeah, downplay it or diminish their roles. Detectives working the Tommy Hope murder case were brought in to question Clara after she was arrested. While she was in custody, she confessed to the murder and she seemed relieved to do so. So it, it could have been a, a situation where this murder was just weighing her down.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  I'm sure it had to.

• 46:37Speaker 00

  It was eating at her.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  At least I hope it was weighing her down.

• 46:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. Now, maybe it wasn't before, maybe it started to after she got sober and after she found religion. I, I don't know. She admitted to having an affair with Tommy and going to his house on April 24th to obtain and use drugs. She said, per her videotape statement, I snuck out of my house in the middle of the night because I really wanted to get high. And, you know, if you wanna just kind of boil it down in a nutshell to why people shouldn't do these types of drugs, to me, that is it.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:16Speaker 00

  I mean, obviously there's health reasons. You could die from certain things, but I think a, a large part of it is at a certain point, your addiction will make you do just about anything.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  As we are finding out.

• 47:31Speaker 00

  To get that next high, you gotta have it.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  Keep chasing that high.

• 47:38Speaker 00

  She arrived at Tommy's home. He wouldn't let her in, so she crawled through a window. They used up his supply of cocaine and then got into a fight. That's gonna happen when you run out of drugs.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  Well, first you got someone coming through your window that you said, I don't want you in here. And then they, and then they, they're there.

• 47:56Speaker 00

  Next thing you know, they're using cocaine together.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then you're, like, then you're out. I mean.

• 48:01Speaker 00

  But it's hard, it, it is sometimes hard to make sense, right? Of what people do when they're high. Cause they, they don't always make the best decisions and they'd all, they also don't always do things that are logical. When you try to break them down. According to the Lake Sun leader, she became upset when Tommy didn't save any drugs for her and she grabbed the knife. She jumped on Tommy's back and cut his throat.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  I mean, think about that. She was pissed because he took the last snort maybe and said.

• 48:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Screw you, buddy. And grabs a knife and cuts his throat.

• 48:40Speaker 00

  According to Clara, Tommy allegedly checked his wounds in the bathroom and as he approached Clara, she stabbed him again.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  Son of a bitch, you were supposed to go down the first time. What are you coming at me for?

• 48:51Speaker 00

  How dare you check your wounds?

• 48:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's probably like, woo, man, that almost killed me, you know?

• 48:58Speaker 00

  Wow. Clara recalled in her interview, I started like, I hate you, I hate you. And he was standing there against the wall and then he's like, you know, I think you're killing me. I think I'm dying. And then he just fell over. That's what she said.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, cause she did, she killed him.

• 49:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I also think, like, he probably trusted her to some degree. They had had a relationship.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 49:24Speaker 00

  You know, over the years and, you know, even when maybe he went to the bathroom and checked his wound, to check his wounds, he thought, well, she, she'll be okay.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:36Speaker 00

  But he comes out and she just keeps stabbing him.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  I'm thinking he's thinking, I just took the last hit or whatever, you know?

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Shirley can't be that mad at me.

• 49:48Speaker 00

  Apparently she was, and she probably also said, don't call me Shirley.

• 49:53Speaker 00

  She took the knife in Tommy's wallet and fled back out the window. Jason was waiting for her when she got home and she told him what happened. He allegedly helped her dispose of incriminating evidence.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  I'm still back at the point where she decided to just go out the window, step out the door because why go out the window when you can just open the door and leave? But that's just me thinking.

• 50:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't know. Maybe she thought

• 50:18Speaker 00

  the least amount of stuff, stuff I touched, the better. I, I don't have any clue, but, but here we, you know, we get back to Jason. And again, this is her alleging it.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 50:28Speaker 00

  But he's gone through a lot with her.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:31Speaker 00

  You know, cheating, um, later on, this stalking and harassment of the, the preacher. But now she's basically saying, he helped me dispose of evidence of the murder.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  I mean, clearly he was in love with her and that was his person and he just couldn't say no to.

• 50:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think you're right about that. On April 24th, 2013, both Clara and Jason were arrested. Clara was charged with first degree murder and armed criminal action. Jason was charged with felony tampering with physical evidence. Camden County Sheriff Dwight Franklin said, when announcing the charges, is quoted by the Kansas City Star, here was someone, a member of the community, had a family involved in church. And I think it manifested to the point she couldn't hold it in anymore. And I, I get what he's saying. Right? He's talking about her later on.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:32Speaker 00

  After getting sober, or she said she was sober, finding religion, becoming, uh, involved in the church. At that point, you're probably viewing her as this really great, my, uh, you know, member of society.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 51:50Speaker 00

  But then, you know, you find out that she is a murderer.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:55Speaker 00

  The charges against Jason were ultimately dropped as the statute of limitations had run out.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  Oh, didn't know that could happen.

• 52:03Speaker 00

  Well, I know that there is a statute of limitations on most crimes, right? There is, there's not one on murder.

• 52:13Speaker 00

  Which to me has always seemed strange.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:16Speaker 00

  Because, just because you're able to elude police for X amount of years, they just can't charge you? I don't know. It just seems like a strange thing.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  You know, some people say statue instead of statute.

• 52:28Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  Find that interesting.

• 52:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, I might've said it before like that, but that would be incorrect.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  No, you always say statute.

• 52:36Speaker 00

  Well, cause that's the word.

• 52:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:40Speaker 00

  Well, you know, I watched a lot of crime shows, right? And I hear like, police officers say it.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 52:47Speaker 00

  And they also say corroborate.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Really?

• 52:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  Collaborate?

• 52:54Speaker 00

  Instead of corroborate.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Huh.

• 52:57Speaker 00

  Corroborating Evans, or something like that. I know a lot of people say like that. I say some weird things that aren't right, too, but.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Well, you can't get one city in the state of Missouri correct.

• 53:07Speaker 00

  No, or Oklahoma.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  Or Valma, yeah.

• 53:10Speaker 00

  Clara was supposed to go to trial on July 21st, 2014, but the trial was delayed for unspecified reasons. On November 10th of that year, Clara was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to 15 years in prison. According to Oxygen, she was supposed to be eligible for parole in January of 2024.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  Wow, a couple of years ago.

• 53:36Speaker 00

  Did you have to roll your eyes, look up and around to figure that out? Mensa, as you drank out of your Mensa cup?

• 53:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just, I did it for theatrics.

• 53:47Speaker 00

  Oh, sure.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  Theatrics.

• 53:52Speaker 00

  You're just cracking yourself up.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  This is when you say, you know, you're not even on camera right now. I'm like, oh, maybe we are.

• 53:58Speaker 00

  No, you are on camera. But, so obviously this got pushed down to second degree.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:05Speaker 00

  15 years in prison.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Kind of light.

• 54:11Speaker 00

  I think it's very light.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  I mean, she went through the window. He said, don't come in here. She went through the window. Yeah, they did drugs together. So it kind of like, well, he told her not to come in, but then you were okay with it if she was in there. But then she took the knife, not only made an attempt once, but then followed up with the second time.

• 54:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, the only thing I can think of is that they couldn't maybe get first degree because they couldn't prove that she went there to kill him. But I don't know, if you cut somebody's throat or attempt to cut somebody's throat, and they go into the bathroom to check their wounds, and when they come out, you stab them again? Okay.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  That's where I think it's first degree.

• 54:53Speaker 00

  It seems like it would be, but that's, that's the only thing I can think of.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:58Speaker 00

  But yeah, to me, for what she did, 15 years in prisons is light. And to think she was eligible for parole in 10, that she could have gotten out in 10 years for what she did. The problem is, couldn't find any published reports about her parole hearings or her release date. If you look Clara up on the Missouri DOC offender search page, her assigned location is a correctional center, which suggests that she is still incarcerated. And that's always interesting, right? To look these people up who are still in jail and see what it says about them. But it doesn't surprise me that there's not been a ton written about her. We do see that often.

• 55:44Speaker 00

  You know, in the beginning, all the way up until like the trial and the end of the trial, there can be a lot of coverage.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  There can be.

• 55:52Speaker 00

  And then after that, unless there's something huge that comes up, not a lot.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  The media, the media loses interest.

• 56:01Speaker 00

  Even when people get out, sometimes it's not really covered that heavily.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  It's just not newsworthy for most media outlets.

• 56:11Speaker 00

  So, you know, as we wrap this one up, Giz, one of the reasons why I found it very interesting is it's a pretty uncommon example, right? Of a killer confessing because of what seems to be like their immense amount of guilt.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:29Speaker 00

  Now, did some of that have to do with how her life had changed over the years? Yeah, I think it could have. But were it not for Clara's spontaneous confession, after she was charged with stalking and harassing her pastor, Tommy Hope's murder might have gone unsolved.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  Might have.

• 56:50Speaker 00

  For either many more years or forever. You know, we just don't know.

• 56:57Speaker 00

  Just such a, such a strange case.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  It really is. I mean, you think about it.

• 57:04Speaker 01

  But like you mentioned, luckily she came clean.

• 57:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, because I, I think she was on the radar.

• 57:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I don't think they had what they needed to.

• 57:14Speaker 00

  No, they, they didn't, or they would have charged her. And I don't know that they would have ever gotten it. Cause years had gone by and they still hadn't.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  No, I don't think they would have. Cause at that time, you still had Clara and Jason protecting each other, too.

• 57:27Speaker 00

  That is true.

• 57:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:28Speaker 00

  And that does kind of shed some more light on them giving each other an alibi. Because now we find out that not only did she commit the murder, but he helped her dispose of evidence.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:41Speaker 00

  So, not too hard to think that they were each other's alibis as well. So that's it for our episode on Clara Rector. I, I found it extremely fascinating.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  I do, too.

• 57:55Speaker 00

  That's also it for another episode of True Crime All The Time. So for Mike.

• 57:59Speaker 01

  And Gabby.

• 57:59Speaker 00

  Stay safe and keep your own time ticking.