Meet, Marry, Murder - Season 1, Episode 44 - Clayton - Full Episode | Forensic Files

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

Tom Clayton loved money, women and his bad boy reputation. Fearing his wife Kelley would take half of his wealth, he decided to cash in on her life.

Though wedded couples vow to stay together until death do they part, this new true crime series looks at what happens when a groom or bride causes their beloved's death.

Brief Summary

Tom Clayton was convicted of murdering his wife Kelly, aided by evidence from their daughter and Michael Beard's confession.

Key points

A Scene of Horror. Tom Clayton returns home to find his wife Kelly dead in a pool of blood.
The Investigation Unfolds. Detectives discover a series of twists in the case, including a key witness.
A Life Altered. After a career-ending injury, Tom Clayton's life takes a drastic turn.
Desperate Fight for Survival. Kelly Clayton fought fiercely against her attacker, trying to protect her children.
A Child's Trauma. Kelly's daughter recounts the horrifying events of the night her mother was attacked.
Kelly's Last Words. In a moment of terror, Kelly's last words were a chilling plea: 'Run!'

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It was almost like watching a made for TV movie.

Commentary on the dramatic twists in the investigation.

0:59WatchJun 8, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

More from True Crime Files

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.