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The True Story Behind Netflix's 'The Widower: Til Death Do Us Part' · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, so I want you to imagine something for a second.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Just picture yourself sitting on a jury.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: Right, a very heavy responsibility.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And the defendant is sitting, you know, maybe 20
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: feet away from you in the courtroom.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Just right there in the room.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And your intuition, like your basic human survival instinct,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: is just screaming at you that this person is dangerous.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: That they're a predator. Right.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: But the judge looks at you and gives you very
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: strict instructions. You absolutely cannot convict this guy on a feeling.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: You can't convict on rumors either.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Right. You can't use rumors from 30 years ago. You
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: can only look at the blood spatter and the bullet
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: casings from one specific night.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: It is a profound test of the justice system. How
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: do you separate that gut feeling about someone's character from
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: the strict physical evidence of a crime?
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: It's incredibly difficult. And, well, welcome to today's deep dive.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: We are unpacking a genuinely mind-bending story today.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: We really are. We're looking at a sprawling four-decade saga.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's wild. We are basing this off a really detailed,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: comprehensive article that explores the true story behind the Netflix
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: documentary that just came out in September 2026, directed by
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Chris Smith.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: It's called The Widower Till Death Do Us Part.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: That's the one. Okay, let's unpack this, because the best
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: way I can describe this story is like a Russian
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: nesting doll.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's a great way to put it.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Right. Because every time you think you've reached the core crime,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: you know, the center of it all, you open it
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: up and find another marriage.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Another state, another tragedy waiting inside.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Six marriages, four dead wives in this dizzying legal maze.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Our mission today is to explore that really perilous boundary
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: between a highly suspicious life and a legally proven murder.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: And we have to maintain a calm analytical tone here
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: because the media, you know, they love to throw around
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: catchy nicknames.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely. Right.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: The Black Widower. It sells papers. But the legal system
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: demands cold, hard facts. It doesn't care about spooky nicknames.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Which is what makes this so fascinating. We've got a
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: guy with this incredibly dark cloud of circumstantial history surrounding him.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: But he was ultimately cornered by the silent physical evidence
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: of just one single night.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the physical geometry of a crime scene. So to
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: understand the end of the line for this guy, Thomas Randolph,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: we really have to start at the scene of the
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: crime that finally locked him away.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: We have to look at the night of May 8th, 2008.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Bring us into that house. It's a Thursday, right?
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Yes, Thursday, May 8th, 2008. It's Mother's Day weekend in
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Las Vegas, Nevada. Okay. Thomas Randolph is 53 years old
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: at the time. His sixth wife, Sharon Koss, is 57.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: His sixth wife. Yes. Wow. Yes.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: And when the patrol officers arrive at the house that night,
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: Randolph gives them this very classic home invasion narrative.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: What's his exact story? Like via the 911 call and
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: the walkthroughs he did with the cops?
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: So he claims that he and Sharon had just returned
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: home from a dinner out. They pull the car into
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: the garage.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Okay. Pretty standard. Right.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: But then Randolph says he decides to stay out in
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: the car for a few moments. Why? Well, he says
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: he left the radio blaring. Sharon gets out and goes
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: inside the house alone. He says a few minutes pass
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: out there in the car.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: With the radio blasting.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He tells detectives that he either heard a sudden
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: gunshot or, and he offers a variation here, he didn't
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: hear anything at all.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Wait, how do you not know if you heard a gunshot?
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: He blames his hearing loss and, of course, the loud
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: car radio. Oh, wow.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: That is a very convenient built-in excuse for any timeline discrepancies.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: Very much so. It gives him wiggle room. So eventually
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: he walks into the house. He steps into the hallway
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: and claims he finds Sharon lying on the floor.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Oh, God. Yeah.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: She's bleeding heavily from a fatal gunshot wound to the head.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: And at that exact moment, according to him, he looks
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: up and sees a man wearing a ski mask.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Just standing there.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: Standing there, clutching a bag of Sharon's jewelry.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, so what does he do?
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Randolph says he immediately retreats to another room. grabs a handgun,
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: steps back into the hallway, and confronts the intruder.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: A frantic shootout. Right.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: He says he fires, hitting the masked man in the head.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: He then checks the rest of the house, attempts CPR
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: on his wife, and finally dials 911.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, I have to stop right there. Because I'm just
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: trying to look at this from the perspective of a burglar.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: It doesn't make a lot of sense, does it? No.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you're a burglar, and you're trying to
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: quietly rob a house, and you hear a car pull
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: into the garage, the automatic door opens, the engine is running,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Why on earth do you stay inside the house? You'd run. Exactly.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: The element of surprise is completely gone. Your escape route
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: is compromised. The homeowners are literally in the garage. Any
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: rational thief is going to drop the jewelry and sprint
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: out the back door.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: They certainly aren't going to linger in a narrow hallway
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: waiting for a confrontation.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: And that behavioral anomaly is exactly what seasoned detectives look for.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: It defies the standard psychology of a property crime.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Because... Burglars want property. They don't want bodies.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Precisely. But things get infinitely more complicated when the crime
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: scene technicians arrive and actually pull that ski mask off
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: the dead intruder.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Because it wasn't a stranger.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: Far from it. The intruder was a 38-year-old man named
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: Michael James Miller.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: And who was he?
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: He was a local handyman, but he wasn't just some
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: guy from the Yellow Pages. Investigators pulled the phone records. Uh-huh.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Thomas Randolph and Michael Miller had exchanged nearly 300 phone
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: calls in the months preceding that night.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Wait, really? 300 calls?
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: Nearly 300, yes.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: You don't call your handyman 300 times unless you're, like,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: building the Taj Mahal together. That is an insane amount
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: of communication.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: It really is. It showed an incredibly close private relationship.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: So you have Vegas homicide detectives walking into a house
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: where a husband claims he shot a random burglar. only
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: to find out the burglar is essentially on his speed dial.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: That immediately smells like a setup.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: Enter Detective Dean O'Kelly. He's the crime scene analyst. And
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: he looks at this layout, and instead of just listening
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: to Randolph's story, he lets the house speak.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: I love that. The scene as an argument against the story.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: So let's break down what O'Kelly found.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: O'Kelly approaches it like a forensic Architect. Let's start with
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: that ski mask. When a human being is shot in
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: the head, the physics of the impact are Well, they're
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: devastating and messy.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: A bullet entering the skull creates rapid expansion, massive tissue damage,
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: and what we call back spatter.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Which is that fine mist of blood that blows backward
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: toward the shooter?
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: Correct. Now, Randolph claimed he shot a masked man in
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: the head. The mask was found lying on the garage
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: floor near Miller's body.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, so it should be covered in evidence.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: But when forensics examined that mask, it was pristine. Pristine.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Pristine.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: It had no bullet holes in the fabric. It contained
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: zero biological material, no bone fragments, no tissue, no high-velocity
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: blood spatter whatsoever.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: That's physically impossible.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: I mean, you cannot shoot a man wearing a mask
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: without damaging or staining the mask.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: It heavily implies the mask was placed there after the fact.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: It was a prop.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. So the scene was staged.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: And the contradictions didn't stop at the fabric. Let's look
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: at the ballistics.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: Let's do it.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: Randolph described this process frantic, dynamic exchange of gunfire in
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: a narrow hallway. But the mechanics of a semi-automatic weapon
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: dictate that when a round is fired, a brass casing
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: is violently ejected from the side of the gun.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: And in a narrow hallway, those casings are going to
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: bounce off the walls and land right there on the floor.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: They don't just disappear. They don't.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: Yet investigators scoured that hallway. There were no bullet casings
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: matching Randolph's weapon in the area where he claimed to
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: have fired the fatal shots.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: No casings?
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: None. Furthermore, there was no blood pooling or spatter in
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: the locations where a chaotic shootout would have inevitably left
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: a trail.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: It's like comparing his timeline to a badly edited movie scene.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: You know, where in one shot the actor's holding a
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: glass and the next it's gone?
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: The narrative just doesn't match the physical reality. And speaking
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: of timelines, how long did he claim this whole sequence took?
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: He told detectives that the entire thing, from the moment
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: Sharon walked through the door... The gunfire, the sweep of
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: the house, the CPR, and the 911 call took maybe
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: two or three minutes.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: A complete blur.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: A rapid, terrifying blur. But digital clocks don't lie.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: They sure don't. And neither do the neighbors. Right.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: A neighbor, Mark Bartlett, happened to be on a phone
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: call that evening. Cellular records provide an unimpeachable timestamp. Bartlett
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: heard the distinct sound of gunshots at exactly 8.33 p.m.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, 8.33 p.m. But Randolph's frantic 911 call didn't log
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: into dispatch until 844 or 845 p.m.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: That is an 11 to 12 minute gap.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: 11 minutes is an absolute eternity in a crisis.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, what are you doing for 12 minutes while
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: your wife is on the floor? That is more than
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: enough time to stage a scene. You can move a mask.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: You can collect the brass casings. You can literally stand
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: in the mirror and rehearse your 911 script.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: Which is fascinating because this leads the prosecution and defense
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: to construct two wildly different theories.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's hear them. We've got to be impartial here.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: What's the prosecution's theory?
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: The prosecution looks at the 300 phone calls, the spotless mask,
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: the missing casings, and the 11-minute void. They argue that
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: Michael Miller was never a burglar.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: He was a hitman? Exactly.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: They argue that Randolph hired Miller to kill Sharon in
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: a staged home invasion for insurance money and then double-crossed him.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: He killed Miller to silence the Ainley witness.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: Wow. And the defense?
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: The defense argues that Miller was a rogue burglar. They
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: claim he acted alone, desperate for money, and that Randolph
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: fired in genuine fear for his life when he saw
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: a masked man who had just shot his wife.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: So no conspiracy?
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: Right. They emphasize that there is no living witness to
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: prove a solicitation occurred.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Man, the physical scene tells such a vivid story of
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: a staged home invasion. But to understand why investigators immediately
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: smelled a rat, We have to look at who else
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: was standing in the room taking notes. Yes. Yeah.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: A television producer.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: Introduce us to Dan Slepian.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Because this is where the media aspect of this case
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: gets wild. Dan Slepian was a producer for Dateline NBC.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: And the very next day after the shooting, he was
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: tipped off by a colleague of Detective O'Kelly.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: What did the colleague say?
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: He basically said, you might want to pay attention to
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: this one.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: And why was a TV producer even getting that call?
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: Dan Slepian had highly unusual access. He was actually embedded
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: with the Las Vegas Homicide Unit at the time.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Embedded? Like, riding along with them?
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He was filming investigations from the inside. He even
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: filmed Randolph's eventual 2009 arrest in the snow in Utah.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. So he's there with the cops. He was.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: And he conducted years of jailhouse interviews. But what's really
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: striking is Randolph's relationship with the camera.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Most people accused of murder hide from the camera.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: Not Randolph.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: He embraced it.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: Embraced it. He actually told Slepian right to his face,
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: we're going to become infamous together.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: We're going to become infamous together. The hubris is just
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: off the charts. It's like he thought he could outsmart
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: the audience, the producer, and the police all at once.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: It created a huge ethical and journalistic tension for Slepian.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: You know, Slepian built his career advocating for the wrongly convicted.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Right, guys who the system failed.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: But here, he realized he was dealing with a man
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: who was actively manipulating the system. He was using the
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: camera as a stage.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: It's essentially camouflage. He's using his folksy charm to delay proceedings,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: fire his lawyers at the last minute, and just generally
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: run out the clock.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: And that's exactly what the psychological profile of this defendant reveals.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: He viewed a murder investigation as a performance opportunity.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: But the delays weren't just a legal strategy, right?
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: No. Slepian made a chilling observation. He believed Randolph was
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: intentionally dragging out the process because he was, quote, waiting
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: for witnesses to die.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Because memory fades, people move, people pass away. Time is
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: the enemy of the prosecution.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And this brings up an interesting point about the
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: documentary landscape itself. You had Dateline in 2021, Investigation Discovery
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: in 2024, and then Netflix in 2026.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. True crime is a massive industry.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: And the New York Times review of the Netflix series
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: actually called it true crime sensationalism.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: But Slepian completely disagreed with that, right?
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: He did.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: He argued that the archive itself, all those hours of footage,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: became a crucial witness to Randolph's behavior and manipulation.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: Right, because there were indeed many witnesses from Randolph's past
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: who had really alarming stories to tell. And to grasp
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: the full scope of what prosecutors were looking at, we
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: need to do the grim math of his six marriages.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: We have to be very methodical here. The media loves
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: the black widower myth, but we need to look at
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: the objective factual record. Yeah, the shorthand for dead wives
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: is incredibly dangerous. It really biases you as a listener.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: So let's break them down. Let's start with wife number one.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: Wife number one was Kathy Thomas.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: They were married from 1975 to 1983. Okay, so they
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: got divorced. Yes, she is alive. She's alive. But she
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: described a history of extreme control, and she noted he
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: took out a life insurance policy on her.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Which is a recurring motif. It is.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: But the crucial detail came from her new husband. He
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: later told investigators that Randolph actually tried to recruit him
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: to kill Kathy.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Wait, Randolph tried to recruit his ex-wife's new husband to
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: murder her?
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: According to the new husband, yes.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: That is insane. Okay, so that's wife one. What about
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: wife three?
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: Leona Stapleton, married 1994 to 1995. They divorced, and she
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: sadly died of cancer in 2006.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, so clearly not a crime.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: Absolutely not a crime.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: But she gets lumped into the four dead wives headline anyway.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: Exactly, which is why we have to be careful. Now,
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: wife four, Gayna Allman, married 1995 to 1997. She is
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: divorced and alive.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Right, but she experienced something pretty terrifying, didn't she?
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: She did. She described a gun cleaning incident where a
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: firearm went off, and she believed it was a deliberate
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: attempt on her life disguised as an accident.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: And there was another solicitation allegation here, too.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: Yes. A man named Glenn Morrison alleged that Randolph solicited
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: him for a staged burglary hit on Gayna.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: A staged burglary hit. Sound familiar?
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: The blueprints were always there. Now, wife five is Frances Randolph,
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: married 1997 to 2004.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: And She died after a heart surgery, right?
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: She did. But before her surgery, Randolph actually recorded her
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: will on videotape.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: He filmed her reading her will? Yes.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: And after she died, he collected the life insurance, and
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: he also successfully sued the hospital for wrongful death and
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: won a settlement.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Wow. So what does this all mean? We've got early
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: life insurance policies, handymen approached with dark offers, staged accidents,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: and quick payouts.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: It highlights the extreme complexity of the case. With Francis,
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: for instance, is this a murder or is this just
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: a highly litigious individual who is quick to monetize grief
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: and take advantage of medical malpractice?
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: That's the prosecutor's nightmare. How do you prove these past
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: events are an actual blueprint for murder and not just
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: a string of terrible coincidences or just a guy being
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: a bad person?
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: You have to ask the jury to actively separate moral
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: revulsion from legal guilt.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Right. And You probably noticed we skipped wife number two
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: in that timeline.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: We did.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: And that's because wife number two, Becky Galt, is the
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: ghost that haunts every single legal proceeding that followed.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: Her case is foundational. Let's look at 1986. Becky Galt
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: died of a gunshot wound to the head on the
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: exact day Randolph's divorce from Kathy was finalized.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: The exact same day.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: Yes. Initially, it was ruled a suicide. Randolph collected up
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: to $ 500, 000 in life insurance.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Half a million dollars.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: Right. But the twist came in 1988. A handyman named
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: Eric Tarantino went to the police.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: A handyman?
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: Tarantino claimed that Randolph had spent months trying to hire
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: him to kill Becky for a cut of that insurance money.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. So they arrest him.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: They do. In 1989, Thomas Randolph goes on trial in
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: Utah for Becky's murder.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: And what happens?
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: He is acquitted by a jury.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: He beats the charge.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: He was found not guilty. But, and this is a
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: massive but, while he was awaiting that trial, he pleaded
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: guilty to witness tampering.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: Wait, what did he do?
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: He offered an undercover officer money to kill Eric D'Arentino.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: He tried to put a hit on the star witness.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He served 18 months for it, and the conviction
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: was later expunged.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: That is just, I mean, it's like a criminal beta test.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: A beta test.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He runs the program in 1986, right? But he
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: finds a massive bug in the system. The hitman survives.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: So he patches the bug in the 2008 version with
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Michael Miller.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: By making sure the hitman doesn't walk out of the
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: house alive. That is exactly Dan Slepian in the prosecution's theory.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: Randolph learned a massive operational lesson from the Utah acquittal.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: But how does a man try to hire a hitman
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: to kill a witness, serve time, and then just go
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: right back to buying life insurance on future wives?
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: This raises an important question about the legal weight of
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: an acquittal. In the eyes of the law, Randolph was
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: entirely innocent of Becky's murder.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Because he was acquitted.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: Right. But the methodology that Tarantino described matches the 2008
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: Vegas incident perfectly.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: So fast forward to 2017 in Las Vegas. The prosecutors
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: look at the 2008 crime scene and they look at
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: the 1986 Utah case and they say this is the
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: exact same crime.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: But legally telling a new jury about an old, acquitted
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: case is a massive, highly precarious gamble.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: So what happened to the 2017 trial? Does the judge
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: let them talk about it?
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: After nine years of delays, yes. The judge allows the
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: Utah story in. Eric Tarantino testifies. Kathy testifies. Gayna and
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: Morrison testify.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: The floodgates open.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: They completely open. And the result? The jury convicts Randolph
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: of conspiracy and two counts of first-degree murder.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: And he's sentenced to death. Yes.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: And we have to note a surreal moment here. During
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: the penalty phase, when they are deciding on life or death,
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: Randolph actually asks his lawyers if he can wear a
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: Tony Romo Dallas Cowboys jersey.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: A football jersey to a death penalty hearing. Yes. See,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: that right there reveals exactly how he views this. It's
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: a sporting event to him. It's theatrical performance.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: It truly is. But here is the major pivot. In 2020,
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: the Nevada Supreme Court unanimously overturns the conviction and the
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: death sentence.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: Wait, really? Why?
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Because of the American legal philosophy regarding prior bad act evidence.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, break that down for me. If I'm a juror
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: and I hear this guy has done this exact insurance
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: hitman routine before, I want to know that. It seems
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: crazy to hide it.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: I understand the frustration. But if we connect this to
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: the bigger picture, the law says prior bad acts can
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: only be used to show motive, intent, or a specific plan.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: They cannot be used to prove a defendant is just
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: the kind of person who commits crimes. That's called propensity.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: So the Supreme Court thought the prosecution crossed the line.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: Yes. They ruled the state essentially lured the jury into
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: a verdict based on myriad other bad acts that heavily
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: prejudiced them against Randolph.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: So they convicted him on his character, not the facts
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: of 2008. Precisely.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: American trial law fiercely distrusts patterns in this way. An
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: acquittal is not a conviction in waiting. If we convict
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: people based on past atmosphere, the presumption of innocence dies.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: It's a frustrating but completely essential safeguard of justice.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: OK, I get it. So the state loses its death
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: sentence and they lose their star witnesses from the past.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: For the retrial, they are forced into a corner.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: A very tight corner.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: They have to prove a double homicide using nothing but
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: the events of May 8, 2008.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: Which brings us to the August 2023 retrial. No Utah evidence.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: No Tarantino.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: How does the defense play at this time?
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: They lean heavily on the idea that Miller acted alone
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: as a burglar and Randolph shot him in fear. They
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: build their case on the fact that there is no
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: living witness to a solicitation.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: But the prosecution still has Detective Dino Kelly.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: Exactly. O'Kelley essentially walks the jury through the physical evidence.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: The house testifies.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: The spotless mask.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: The spotless mask, the missing casings in the hallway, the
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: neighbor's clock proving the 11-minute gap.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: And the 300 phone calls. Don't forget the phone calls
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: and the $ 300, 000 to $ 400, 000 in life insurance policies.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: He lays it all out meticulously. And the result? After
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: just four hours of deliberation, the jury finds him guilty again.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. Four hours.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: In April 2024, he is sentenced to 60 years to life.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: He still maintains his innocence, of course.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Of course. And what about his appeals?
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: In August 2026, his appeal was rejected. He claimed speedy
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: trial violations and coercion during his walkthrough, but it failed.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: You know, there is this poetic justice to the second trial.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: How so?
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: Well, the Nevada Supreme Court inadvertently gave the state its
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: strongest validation by stripping away the camouflage of his past.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: The second jury proved that the 2008 physical evidence was
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: robust enough to secure a conviction completely on its own merits.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: That's a profound point. Dan Slepian's conclusion was that O'Callie's
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: meticulous crime scene analysis is the only reason Randolph isn't
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: walking free today.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: It's amazing when you think about the passage of time.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: Fifteen years from the crime to the final conviction.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: Fifteen years.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Witnesses aged. Memories softened. Randolph actually escaped death row. The
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: system was battered. But it held.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: It held because of the physical evidence. It proves the
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: value of forensics over character assassination. The house, the blood spatter,
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: the ballistics, the physical geometry became the ultimate unimpeachable witness.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: So let's summarize the monumental journey from 1986 to 2026.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: What's the current status as of October 2026?
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: Thomas Randolph is 71 years old. He is serving his
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: 60 years to life at Lovelock Correctional Center.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: And Dan Slepian?
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: Slepian still talks to him on the phone. And Randolph
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: still claims innocence.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: Unbelievable. You know, the documentary The Widower asks you to
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: sit with a man who invited the camera in because
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: he honestly thought he could win the room.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: And he won a few rooms.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: He did. But he lost the ones that actually mattered.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: And before we go, I want to leave you, the listener,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: with a brand new angle to ponder based entirely on
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: the text we've been analyzing.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: Oh, this is a great point to bring up.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: Think back to the Utah witness tampering charge. Randolph pleaded
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: guilty to offering money to kill Eric Tarantino. Right. He
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: served his 18 months.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: And then after a settlement, he had the conviction expunged.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: Completely wiped from his record.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Now, consider how expungement is designed to give people a
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: second chance at life. It's supposed to be this redeeming
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: legal tool.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: A fresh start.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But in this case, the legal wiping of that specific,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: highly relevant crime essentially gave a man who had literally
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: tried to hire a hitman a clean slate. It allowed
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: him to go on buying life insurance on future wives
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: without triggering systemic alarms.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: It asks a really dark question, doesn't it?
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: It really does. When does the legal system's desire for
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: rehabilitation inadvertently aid in the creation of a predator's camouflage?
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: It's a haunting paradox to think about.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Mump. Thank you so much for joining us on this
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: deep dive. Stay curious, keep questioning the narratives around you,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: and we'll catch you next time.