Lana Clayton Uses Eye Drops to Poison Her Husband? The Visine Killer
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I don't know.

Whether he was your mentor, friend, or a member of your family, it seemed like those who had Steven in their lives felt very lucky.

It works by constricting the blood vessels in the eyes, but when it's consumed orally in large doses, it shuts down the respiratory system and ultimately leads to death. I was upset about the abuse and just wanted him to leave me alone. Clearly, this is a bizarre case, to say the least. This is a great example of if you see something, say something, when something feels wrong, it just might be. ♪♪

Hello everyone and welcome back. I'm so happy to have you here with me to discuss yet another case. And if you're new, then welcome. Be sure to click subscribe. So today we are going to be talking about a very common household item that I had no idea could actually be really dangerous. And I feel like as a parent, I am now super aware of

common household items that can actually really do a lot of damage to our bodies. And I mean, I could really get into it. But one of these new items on my list is eye drops. And we're going to be talking specifically about Visine today and how it was used as a murder weapon.

However, I have eyedrops on me all the time. I have them in random drawers, random cabinets. And now that I have a child, I'm going to be a lot more careful about where I keep my eyedrops and make sure they are not accessible to my child because they're

Like I said, I just had no idea how dangerous they could be. So let's just jump into things here. So you know what I am talking about when I say that eye drops can be dangerous. So we're going to start by talking about Stephen Clayton. Now, everyone knows someone who is a bit of a hopeless romantic, and that was definitely Stephen Clayton. Although a lot of the details about Stephen Clayton's early life aren't really available in

I can tell you one thing about him, and that is that he loved love. And Stephen was also just a really good person all around, very kind. He was very successful himself, but one thing that I thought was really cool about him is he was interested in helping others, helping the next in line, helping other people to become successful like him. He loved helping other young entrepreneurs to achieve success.

their dreams stephen was born and raised in south florida around 1954 and was an extremely driven young man by the age of 30 he had trained as an accountant and also had set up his very own physical therapy business that targeted sports injuries and for a long time stephen really lived the dream

to say he was successful would be an understatement by age 42 he was able to retire and just enjoy his life he had sold his multi-million dollar business and was getting to spend a lot of his free time doing things he loved but even after retirement stephen wasn't fully ready to give up helping others so for many years he began training and sharing his knowledge with other young entrepreneurs to help them get their businesses up and off the ground

He impacted a lot of people while he was alive, whether he was your mentor, friend, or a member of your family. It seemed like those who had Steven in their lives felt very lucky. Tons of people that were close with Steven describe him as having a larger-than-life personality. He was fun, he was well-liked, life of the party, talented.

type of guy. And he also loved children, although he didn't have any of his own, but he loved being an uncle. Now, like I said, he loved love and Stephen gave love many tries. In fact, he was married six or seven times.

That's a lot. Obviously, that's a lot to juggle. And his last marriage was to Lana Clayton. Even though things had previously not worked out in his other relationships, he never gave up on finding the one. In 2010, he moved to North Carolina, and that's where he met Lana online. And the two of them quickly fell in love.

The two of them got married in November of 2013, and that made her his either seventh or eighth wife. I couldn't exactly figure out how many times he was married. There's some conflicting information out there. But after two years of marriage, they moved from North Carolina to a waterfront mansion in Lake Wylie, South Carolina, which was designed after George Washington's Mount Vernon estate. So fancy pants stuff here.

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very scenic, very idyllic, and was surrounded by nature. And Stephen had plenty of money to keep up with this lifestyle, even after being retired for many years at this point. However, Lana, on the other hand, was still working. She also seemed like a great person. She was a nurse.

And not just a nurse, she was a nurse at several veteran affairs hospitals where she looked after veterans in need of care. And I'm guessing it was her caring qualities that Stephen first fell in love with. Obviously, not every nurse out there is a wonderful human. However, most of the nurses I've come in contact with are incredible angels on earth, in my opinion.

And for the most part, it does take a very special, driven, and thoughtful person to become a nurse, or at least a good nurse. And that's exactly the type of person that Stephen wanted. For several years, his entire family got very close with Lana. To them, it appeared as though they made each other very happy. And on the outside, there were no signs of anything that could be wrong between the two of them.

which would heavily contradict what Lana ended up saying about their marriage later on. And Lana is the only one that will truly understand what caused this shift. There's a lot that we don't know about what happened in the later part of their marriage. But by July 21st, 2018, there would no longer be a Mr. and Mrs. Clayton. That day, around 1 p.m., Lana comes birthed

bursting out of her house and runs into the street and flags down a motorcyclist named James Blackledge. And she is hysterical. She told him that her husband needed help and that she needed him to call 911. So of course, James wants to help. He calls 911 and then he watches her run to another neighbor's house to try to get additional help. And again, she is frantic and

And as he's standing there on the phone with dispatch trying to get emergency services out to the location, he notices that when Lana gets this neighbor, only the neighbor enters the house to check on Steven and Lana stays outside. Now, of course, I can totally see why if there's a traumatic situation in a house that you may not want to go back in. But in this scenario, I truly believe that every action Lana took was deliberate and calculated.

Eventually EMS gets there. And when they do, they enter the house and the body cam footage, you can see that they're walking around. And eventually they realized that Steven is at the bottom of the main staircase and

under a white sheet. And unfortunately, it was too late, and Stephen was pronounced dead on arrival. And at first, everything that Lana mentioned about Stephen's health, paired with how he appeared to have died, made it seem as if his death was truly accidental and natural. And according to Lana, Stephen had been recently experiencing vertigo, which...

is awful. It's kind of like a sudden unexplained spinning sensation. You feel super dizzy. Normally you have to lay down. Sometimes people will faint. And she went on to explain that he had been extremely ill the past couple of days and hadn't really been able to get out of bed. And again, at this point, she is obviously very distraught as anyone would be. So here's how the day kind of played out according to Lana.

That morning, it was a typical morning. Stephen hadn't been feeling well, but she checked on him around 11 a.m. and he was fine. He was laying in their bed. I mean, he wasn't doing great by any means, but he was okay. He was alive. And then she decides to go out and mow the lawn. And it must have taken her a long time to mow the lawn. It was a big lawn.

But it took her two hours. And when she came back inside, that's where she saw Stephen lying at the bottom of the staircase. So obviously, when you first hear this story, you would think, well, he wasn't doing great. He was experiencing vertigo. He was alone in the house. Maybe he was trying to walk down the stairs or something else happened to him. He becomes suddenly dizzy and falls down the stairs to his death.

And Stephen wasn't the healthiest guy and he was, you know, a little older. So it didn't seem that out of the question that this could have been how he died. Several years prior to all this, Stephen had gone to the Bahamas and he went diving and ignored several basic rules of safety when it comes to diving. And he ended up getting very sick as a result of the actions he took.

Basically, while he was diving, he went from very low pressure to very high pressure without giving his body time to adapt. And that is crucial. I don't know a lot about diving. I have an ear problem, so I can't dive, although I would love to. But I do know that that is a big no. There needs to be a period where you move slowly so that your body can adjust to the different pressure in the water, depending on how deep or shallow you are. And

Stephen didn't do this, and so he ended up suffering from long-term effects of decompression sickness, also known as the bends, which causes bubbles in tissues of the body and can be extremely dangerous.

After this happened, Stephen had to go through months of rehab and he never fully recovered. Even after all the rehab, he would still experience problems related to that incident. So right off the bat, the responding officers and coroner felt pretty confident that this was just a terrible accident. And like I mentioned earlier, Stephen wasn't the healthiest person. So they thought...

Given his age and condition, it could have also been a heart attack. But not everyone at the scene felt this way. Nick French, one of Stephen's nephews, was actually a police officer in a neighboring county, and he rushed to his uncle's house as soon as he found out what happened. And right away, he picked up on several red flags that no one else seemed to notice. For starters, Lana had two phones in the house, and she was a nurse.

Why didn't she call 911 herself? Why would she rush out into the street, flag down some stranger to call 911, and then go to a neighbor's house? Now, of course, sometimes logic just goes out the window when you're under stress, when you're traumatized. It does happen. Even people with a lot of training can forget the necessary steps to take in a situation when they are experiencing that stress.

But I'm sure most of you would agree with me that it is pretty suspicious that she didn't just call 911 with one of the two phones that were closest to her instead of running outside and trying to find someone that seems suspicious.

Pretty logical. I mean, it's going to take a lot more time. Also, he notices that there's a staircase runner on the stairs that is not like nailed down or anything. It's just laying on the stairs and it was completely undisturbed. Obviously, if someone, especially someone Stephen's size, had fallen down those stairs, it would have moved even a little bit. But it was...

completely in place. And that brings us to the next red flag. Stephen didn't have any injuries consistent with falling down a flight of stairs. Now, of course, it is possible that he didn't fall down the entire staircase. They're thinking maybe he had a vertigo spell right at the bottom of the stairs and he only fell down the last couple steps or maybe even just the last step. But

But either way, none of this looked right to Nick. And when it came to Lana's behavior, there were many things that struck him as bizarre. And right off the bat, Lana made no mention of trying to revive her husband. As a literal nurse, you would think she would try to do something, maybe make an attempt at CPR or mention that she tried to do anything, but nope.

Lana did absolutely nothing. And if that wasn't weird enough, she starts immediately talking about how she wants to have him cremated and fast. She wants to get Stephen's body to the morgue immediately and have him cremated as soon as possible. The deputy coroner said that they would take his body and run some tests so they could see exactly what caused his death and

you know, to give his wife some peace of mind. But Lana wasn't interested in understanding what happened to her husband. She wanted to get him to the morgue as fast as possible, start that cremation, and move on. So, big red flags here. If anyone even mentioned trying to figure out what happened to Steven, trying to find his underlying cause of death...

Lana seemed to get extremely uncomfortable. And eventually, she starts talking about how Stephen was secretly a big drug user and that she didn't want an autopsy because if that came out, it would ruin his reputation. But spoiler alert, he was not a big drug user by any means. He smoked a little weed here and there. He liked to have Long Island iced teas. That was his drink of choice. So none of this is making sense.

making any sense. And Lana is looking more and more suspicious. And that wasn't the only thing she threw a fit about. When Nick talked about calling Stephen's other nephew, Chris, Lana was not having it. Lana explains that she doesn't want Stephen's nephew, Chris, to see him in that state because she doesn't think he should have to go through that. But the reality is Chris was an adult and should at least be made aware of what happened before he finds out in some other way.

Nick tried to convince her that they needed to tell Chris three times and every time she was like hell no but Nick decided that Chris needed to know and so he called him anyway. So while Lana is sitting on the couch talking to officers very upset he walks upstairs to make that call and good thing he did because what he found confirmed that there was a lot more going on beneath the surface. For

For starters, Nick couldn't find Stephen's cell phone anywhere. And this was unusual because Stephen was someone who always had his phone on him. He figured it would be, you know, lying next to his bed, on the dresser, in the bed, somewhere in the room. But the phone was nowhere to be found and it still hasn't been found to this day. And the next thing that he found that was very disturbing when he went upstairs was that their room was in terrible condition.

I mean, sure, Lana had said that Stephen had been sick in bed for days, and we've all experienced that when we're really sick in bed and your room kind of falls apart. Tissues, random cups, medicine sitting out. It's messy. It smells like sickness. But this was next level. First of all, the bed had been completely soaked. I mean, soaked in urine. This made Nick believe that Stephen had been completely abandoned while in such bad condition.

condition, which was shocking because he was married to a nurse who was used to taking care of veterans. And if Lana had been sleeping in the same room as him or even remotely taking care of him, she would have at least changed the

the sheets. And as for that phone that was never found, investigators believe that Lana intentionally got rid of it while Stephen was incapacitated in bed so that he couldn't call for help. And investigators also think it's possible that she took his phone away from him days before he actually died because his sister, Rosie, hadn't been able to reach him for days, which was very uncharacteristic. So

So in the days following, the weirdness only continues. So Chris, Stephen's nephew that Lana didn't want to notify, was notified, of course, and he wanted to come over and check on Lana, see how she was doing, talk to her himself. And he, of course, brings up the will. Given that he was the executor of his uncle's estate, he wanted to know where all the documents were so he could start going through all of Stephen's affairs. But Lana is telling him that...

Stephen didn't have a will. It did not exist. And he knows that's bullshit because, like I said, he has seen it before. But also, why wouldn't Stephen have a will, especially with how wealthy he was? He was smart. He would not have just not gotten a will made. And

Surprise, surprise, the Clayton family later found out that Lana had burned it. Turns out she had made herself a nice little fire and burned a bunch of legal documents. And of course, she did this because that would guarantee that she, as Stephen's wife, would

would be rewarded all of his assets according to South Carolina law. And not only did she burn his will, but two weeks after his death, when their family was hosting a memorial for Stephen, his friends and family noticed how she had already packed up

all of his belongings. And literally at his memorial, she seems more concerned about getting rid of all his stuff. She's trying to pawn everything off to his friends and family and tells them that anything they don't take, she's going to take to the dump. Now that does not sound like a grieving widow, if you ask me or ask anybody. But Nick and Chris were not going to just sit around and let their suspicions about Lana fall to the waste.

side, and they were doing several things behind the scenes during all of this.

So they actually contacted the morgue in York County and said that on behalf of the family, they would like to request that an autopsy and toxicology be done. And this isn't shocking, but they did this behind Lana's back. And good thing they did. Because if they didn't, Lana may have gotten away with cold-blooded murder. Forensic toxicologist Demi Garvin and coroner Sabrina Gast performed the tests that ultimately proved Stephen's true cause of death.

Without a doubt, it turns out that Stephen Clayton had been poisoned. The toxicology revealed extremely high levels of a chemical called tetrahydrozoline, which is the active ingredient in visine. Now, this ingredient isn't in all eye drops, mainly in eye drops to treat redness. It works by constricting the blood vessels inside.

in the eyes. But when it's consumed orally in large doses, it shuts down the respiratory system and ultimately leads to death. And because Visine is colorless, odorless, and tasteless, it can be consumed by someone without them ever knowing, which makes it very scary. If it's consumed in smaller doses, it leads to things that are not so fun, like vomiting and diarrhea.

But if you take it in larger doses, like for example, if you down a whole bottle of Visine, you're looking at a situation that's much closer to death. And with this new information, investigators needed to find out if Stephen consumed the Visine intentionally or not. So Lana was brought in for questioning on August 29th, 2018 under the pretenses that she was not in trouble. She thought she got away with it at this point.

They basically just wanted to feed her the information that they learned and see how she reacted. And oh boy, her reaction was phenomenal.

Very telling. By this point, she did know that an autopsy was performed behind her back. But what she didn't know is that FBI agents and agents from York County Sheriff's Office were sitting in the room next door listening to what she had to say. And for a while in the interview, she's really playing the grieving widow who has no idea what could have possibly happened to her husband. But as soon as tetrahydrozoline was brought up, she knew what it was and her demeanor changed completely.

completely. And of course, she is a nurse. She might be familiar with that chemical, but it's pretty obscure for her to know exactly what that is right away. I mean, she literally brings up visine when that chemical is brought up, which led them to believe that she knew way more than she was letting on. And she definitely picks up on their suspicion of her. So she starts to tell a pretty elaborate story about Steven.

She says that a while back, her husband had learned that putting a few drops of Visine in his morning coffee would make him more regular, like he was using it to a laxative to some degree, which obviously if you're having trouble with regularity, there are so many other products on the market that can help with that, like

teas and Metamucil and supplements. I mean, there are just so many other options that someone would go to before using Visine. And she claimed that Steven had been doing this for a while, and that's why it was found in his system. And

And if she claimed to know what tetrahydrozoline is, you would think she'd be aware of how poisonous it is and how it can kill you. And she pretty quickly catches on that they are not buying her story that he put Visine in his coffee every morning. So she changes her story from grieving widow to battered woman.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, she starts explaining that Stephen had verbally abused her for years. She starts really trying to sell the story that he was this horrible, abusive man and a drug user. And detectives right away know that that's not true because they've seen his toxicology report. And if he was a heavy drug user the way that she's explaining, it would have shown up. They also dug into the claim that he was abusive and they found nothing to back this up.

So eventually she starts realizing she's in trouble and the interview ends with Lana being quite upset and she drives home. But what she doesn't know is investigators are following her back and she must have had a lot of thoughts racing through her mind as she was driving home because when she does get back, she sits down with investigators at her house and pretty much tells them everything. Lana Clayton says that after years of abuse from Steven, she finally snapped.

She admitted to dumping the entire bottle of Visine into his water, but said that she didn't want to kill him. She just wanted to make him suffer. She said she was hoping just to make him sick for a day or two so he wouldn't be able to bother her and she could get away from his constant demands. Then Lana admitted to something else, and this is wild. Two years prior to Stephen's death,

Lana admitted that she called 911 to report that she had accidentally shot her husband in the head, in the back of the head, with a crossbow. She said that she was just looting it for protection that night for whatever reason and shot her husband in the head while he was sleeping. How? What?

I have so many questions. And this is only kind of surprising, actually. But police believed her. Believed that she accidentally shot her husband in the back of the head with a crossbow while he was sleeping. And I mean, my guess for why they believed such an outlandish story is because Stephen probably backed it up. He probably figured it was an accident because why would his wife purposely shoot him in the head with a crossbow?

He probably figured there's no way in hell she would ever do that to him. But on August 29th, 2018, she admitted that this was no accident, that she purposely tried to kill him to stop him from abusing her. In fact, she said that it was an attempt to stop him from, quote,

coming after her. Now, even though she's admitting at this point that she impulsively poisoned her husband, investigators still think there's more to the story. And the scene of his bedroom told them everything they wanted to know. It was clear that Lana had been slowly poisoning him for days just to see how much it took to fully kill him. Those three days that he was sick in bed with vertigo, she was actually trying to get the dose right to poison him. And on day three,

She nailed it. And remember how I mentioned his cell phone earlier and how it's never been found to this day? Well, detectives believe that she threw it into Lake Wylie. And again, they believe that Lana did this so that he couldn't call for help when he was unable to move in bed, which is just so sad to think about. York County deputies didn't arrest her right away because it did take a few days to come to all these conclusions based on her admission. And so in those days, Lana attempted to harm herself.

And warning, this next part could be triggering to some, but she took a handful of pills and also turned on the gasoline in her home. And luckily, a neighbor went over to check on her and found her. She was then rushed to the hospital and she did survive. And then she was officially arrested on August 31st and charged with murder.

And once it became clear that she definitely killed him, Stephen's family started thinking back on the last few years and wondered if she had had this plan in her mind for a while.

For example, they wondered if the move to South Carolina was deliberate because the law there states that if someone dies without a will, their spouse gets everything. They also thought about how Stephen had been experiencing these random bouts of sickness on and off for months, and even the best doctors couldn't tell him what was happening.

Now, before I get into Lana's sentencing, I want to go over another case that happened very close by where Visine was used to intentionally kill someone. And it happened only three weeks after Stephen's death. And it was only 12 miles north of Lake Wylie. A woman named Stacey Hunsucker was killed by her husband. And investigators believe that this was a copycat situation.

And because of what happened to Stephen, they were able to very quickly determine what happened to Stacey. Her husband killed her to get access to her life insurance policy. And he had her cremated right away. But because she was an organ donor, they were able to run some tests. And that's how they were able to determine that she had been poisoned the same way as Stephen. And because of both of these cases, there have been some major changes made in the way that toxicologies are performed.

Now, in many states, when toxicology tests are run, they specifically look for tetrahydroxylene, which is something that the Clayton family really pushed for. Now, as for Lana, she ended up pleading guilty to manslaughter and tampering with food and drugs. However, she still insists to this day that she didn't mean to kill her husband.

THANK YOU STEVE. NOW TO A CASE GETTING NATIONAL ATTENTION. LANA CLAYTON PLEADED GUILTY TO MANSLAUGHTER CHARGES FOR POISONING HER HUSBAND. ON EYEWITNESS NEWS AT 5 WE TOLD YOU SHE WAS SENTENCED TO 25 YEARS IN PRISON. OUR DENIVIE CURTIS TALKED TO THE PROSECUTOR WHO SAYS THIS IS ONE OF THE WORST CASES YORK COUNTY HAS EVER SEEN. PROSECUTORS SAY LANA POISONED STEVEN WITH EYE DROPS OVER SEVERAL DAYS AT THEIR LAKE WILLEY HOME, THEN IGNORED HIM AS HE WAS DYING, AND EVEN

threw his phone into the lake so he couldn't call for help. They say her motivation was money, even burning his will afterwards. And in an attempt to get a smaller sentence, her defense attorney tried to argue that she was the victim of sexual abuse her entire life and suffered from PTSD that was triggered during her marriage to Stephen. During her sentencing hearing, several people spoke out, including a close friend of Stephen and his sister. Lana killed Steve.

He said, "And at that moment my world changed forever." This was Lana Sue, VA nurse from Oklahoma. As I stated, I had never seen her be angry or greedy or unhappy in any way. And now by her own confession, Lana had stated that she was a murderer who had planned and succeeded in taking the life of our dearest friend, our brother Steve. Lana didn't kill Steve in a fit of passion.

This was a deliberate, successfully executed plan on Lana's part. The comprehension of Lana's actions unleashed a flood of new pain. How long did Steve suffer? Were the odd bouts of illness that Steve had been experiencing that year actually from Lana's poisoning? Was he trapped in his own house while he suffered and died? Was he trying to seek help when he went downstairs? Did he know he was dying?

While we'll never know the answers to these questions, my heart and soul weeps for what this may have been like for Steve. Now, along with the incredible grief over the loss of our dearest friend, we are faced with the heinous deceit of this heinous evil murderer, who we thought was not only a good person, but whom we had also considered to be our friend. We had been completely fooled by Lana, and never have I been so fooled by anyone. She fooled one of the most brilliant men I've ever known in my life.

My brother died a horrific death. I think my brother was screaming for his life.

Ultimately, on January 16, 2020, Lana Clayton was sentenced to 25 years in prison in the Leith Correctional Institution. A Moore County woman is pled guilty to poisoning her husband with eye drops. Lana Sue Clayton accepted a plea deal to a voluntary manslaughter charge. She's been sentenced to 25 years behind bars. Her husband died in August of 2018. Toxicology tests showed poisonous levels of

Clearly, this is a bizarre case, to say the least. But I am so happy that Stephen's family pushed for the truth when they felt like something was off, when they felt...

Like Lana was suspicious. This is a great example of if you see something, say something. When something feels wrong, it just might be. But as always, I want to hear your thoughts on this case. So let me know. And also, if you have any eye drops around the house,

Check and see if they have this chemical and make sure that they are stored properly if you have children or pets too. It's just something that you wouldn't really think about if you didn't know how toxic and deadly it can be.

That is going to be it for me today, guys. Thank you for joining me for another episode and make sure you follow the show on Spotify and Apple podcasts. It really does help me out. If you want to watch the video version of this show, you can find it on my YouTube channel, which will be linked, or you can just search Kendall Ray. I will be back with another episode soon, but until then stay safe out there.