Kelley Stage Clayton // 439
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What is going on, true crime fans? I'm your host, Heath. And I'm your host, Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. Hello, everybody. Hope you're doing well today. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Going West. And big thank you to Anna for recommending today's case. This

This is a devastating and very frustrating story, by the way, that took place in New York just a few years ago. There's so many frustrating elements to this story that are really going to bother you guys, I think. Yeah, absolutely. Probably going to be dropping a few POS bombs today in this episode because you guys are probably going to be pissed off. And I'm actually really surprised that I've never heard of this case before. I know, me either. Because it is honestly such a sad and...

devastating story, as you said. Yeah, completely agree. So big thank you again to Anna for recommending it. For anybody out there who has a case recommendation for us, you are more than welcome to send it in. We have so many on our list, but we are always accepting new cases. So if you would like to email us at goingwestpodcast at gmail.com.

Well, without further ado, guys, this is episode 400, I almost said 300, 439 of Going West, so let's get into it. ♪♪♪

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In September of 2015, a 35-year-old woman was beaten to death by a masked man inside her secluded home in the woods of upstate New York.

Her young children were the only witnesses, and her daughter was able to reveal a surprising detail about the intruder, leading to a suspect that would devastate her tight-knit family. This is the story of Kelly Stage Clayton.

Kelly Elizabeth Stage was born on August 1st, 1980 in Elmira, New York, which is a quaint outpost in the Finger Lakes region of New York State, just north of the border of Pennsylvania. Kelly was born to parents Elizabeth and Howard and grew up alongside siblings Kim and Leonard in a very loving family.

She's remembered fondly as a bright, sassy, and bubbly presence, with her lifelong best friend Andrea remembering that Kelly, quote, always made things fun.

Now, because her father was the West Elmira fire chief, her family was very well known and loved in the area. And Kelly really lived up to her family's reputation. She was an amazing student. She was also a very well-liked cheerleader at her local high school during her teen years. And Kelly would graduate from the Elmira Free Academy, now known as the Ernie Davis Academy, and then continued on to the State University of New York at Oneonta.

She went to college intending to become a teacher, but she actually later became much more interested with the idea of modeling. So she decided to move out west to try out this new career venture, starting over in a brand new city. So she moved to Las Vegas and began working as a cocktail waitress first at the Imperial Palace Hotel right there on the Strip.

Now, a little more about Kelly personally. She loved country music, especially Luke Bryan, and made a point of visiting Nashville every summer with her girlfriends for the Country Music Association Festival, which we are going to bring up again in a little bit.

She loved taking these trips with her girlfriends. And she also made frequent trips to the Jersey Shore for vacations with her family and spent many summers there in her happy place, which was Ocean City. So even though she moved to Vegas, she spent a ton of time with her family on the East Coast.

Yeah, and this was especially true during the holidays. And during one holiday season in 2003, when Kelly was 23 years old and visiting her family for Christmas, Kelly, her sister Kim, and her mom attended the game of their hometown minor league hockey team, which were the Elmira Jackals.

This feels like such a, like the beginning of a movie moment. Yeah, it seems like a rom-com, but as we're going to discuss, very, very far from a rom-com. Indeed.

Well, then a few days later after they, you know, saw him slam against that wall, Kelly and her best friend Andrea were out at this Elmira bar and saw Tom across the room. So Andrea strode over confidently asking him if he had a girlfriend, and when he said that he didn't, she directed him towards Kelly, who was single and very interested at the time.

The chemistry between them was immediate, so they started dating and two years later they got married. With Kelly finally moving back to New York to be with him. Now, Tom's reputation kind of proceeded in, because by some he was known as this like local sports hero, but by others, he was regarded as basically just a nuisance.

a native of Binghamton, New York. We're finally getting justice for that word. Binghamton. You said it wrong a few episodes ago. We absolutely did. So in Binghamton, Tom attended Niagara University and he was hired by the Elmira Jackals immediately after graduating, spending four seasons on the team.

By his teammates, he was known as the agitator and instigator and was aggressive both on and off the ice. And if you know anything about hockey, there's always kind of like an agitator. There's always kind of a guy that likes to go out and pick fights with the other team. Which I guess makes sense for that sport. Yeah. But to know that he was also like that off the ice, it was almost like they were utilizing that trait of his to work for the team. Yeah, they're like, this guy's a dickhead. He's going to do well as the agitator. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, for example, he was frequently sent after the opposing team to intimidate and distract the other team's players, and even his own friends remember him as arrogant, borderline cocky, and at times, inappropriate. In one interview for the Jackals, Tom joked about his kinda on-ice persona, saying that it was akin to, quote,

No, I don't know, Tom. Andrea herself lovingly referred to him as obnoxious, but she also gushed about how amazing he apparently was.

In one run-in with the law, he and some teammates got into trouble with the local law enforcement when Tom climbed on top of a bar and stripped naked, performing a dance that led to a bar fight and resulted in arrests. So that's basically just kind of the guy that Tom is. Kelly's family and friends had admittedly mixed feelings about this, you know, provocative, larger-than-life man that she brought home with her, but they ultimately trusted her judgment and just kind of welcomed him into the family.

So, like I said, shortly after they met, Kelly moved home to be closer to him, and in 2006, they got married. Then, a year later in 2007, they welcomed a daughter named Charlie. And four years after that, a son named Colin. Now, although his personal life was flourishing, Tom's hockey career came to a screeching halt when he suffered an injury that would take him off the ice indefinitely.

But he seemed to make peace with it and instead focused on his business ventures, joining the franchise of a home restoration company in nearby Horseheads, New York. So despite this minor setback, Tom was doing well for himself. He was working as a project manager for a branch of ServPro, which could be hired in the event of a disaster inside someone's home like a flood or a fire.

The family moved to Caton, which is a smaller and more rural town west of Elmira, hosting just about 2,000 people. Although the home was remote and surrounded by woods, the family loved the privacy that it offered.

It's definitely a beautiful place with a lot of fields and trees, just a lot of lush greenery. But some began to notice a change in Tom after this move. Like he seemed to be bored and kind of stagnant.

feeling trapped in this provider role, which he obviously agreed to take on as a husband and father of two children. So it almost had this kind of vibe that like his wings were clipped and he was no longer this star athlete that he once was and wasn't this kind of ladies man that he saw himself as. Yeah, so essentially Tom peaked in high school and then

was just like upset that his life didn't go the way that he thought it was going to go. Like he thought he was going to be this very famous hockey player and, you know, ladies man, but that really didn't end up being the situation. He just ended up becoming a father and a husband. Which there's nothing wrong with that, but it felt like when he was in that role, it was almost like he wasn't happy with it. He decided that's not...

he really wanted. But it also seemed like he was kind of taking this out on Kelly because Kelly worked one or two days a week at a local restaurant. But mostly though, she was home watching the kids and taking care of the kids and

But Tom didn't like this. He didn't like that she spent so much time at home with the kids, even though at the time of this case, they were both very young. They're under the age of 10. They need constant care. And he would kind of run his mouth about her. He would call her a bitch. He would call her lazy. And then on top of this, would occasionally, like very rarely, go on a vacation with her girlfriends.

i mentioned before to nashville which is something that she had been doing for years and she's allowed to take a trip but this kind of just added to him feeling like she was lazy for some reason so he was growing very resentful on the evening of september 28 2015 tom headed out for a poker game leaving kelly and the kids home alone

Now, 35-year-old Kelly and her best friend Andrea spoke on the phone before she went to bed. And Andrea remembers that she seemed distant and distracted and that she had ended the phone call pretty abruptly. Like something just seemed kind of off with her. Well, a few hours later, just after 1230 a.m., Tom arrived home to a quiet house.

When he entered, he came upon his wife collapsed on the kitchen floor, beaten and bloodied. The children were home alone, and Charlie, their seven-year-old daughter, rushed to him to tell him that there had been a burglar in their house. In a frantic 911 call, Tom was asked by the operator if Kelly was beyond CPR and

And he replied hurriedly, quote, That's very, he's very quick to make that determination that, oh yeah, there's no point in trying to save her. She is gone. Yeah, I'm here with my kids. You'll see what I mean when you get here. Come have a look for yourself kind of thing. But here is a clip from that 911 call.

Now, Tom had woken up a neighbor during this time who greeted the police, and Charlie and Colin went next door with the neighbor's wife. When officers arrived, Tom was hunched on the floor, kneeling in sobs.

As police assessed the scene, they were shocked at how gruesome it was. Especially because this was such a rarity in their small, rural, and normally safe community. Yeah, super rural, there's only 2,000 people in this town, definitely not the type of place where something like this would happen. Yeah, exactly. Well, blood splatters traced Kelly's movements throughout the house, which started in her bed. And that's where she is believed to have been attacked first.

Detectives surveying the home believed that she had been attacked while she was asleep in bed, and that she had been chased down the hall, down the stairs, and into the kitchen, where she was knocked onto the ground and killed.

The blood spots began in Kelly and Tom's bed and led down the hallway, dotting the carpet. There was also a smear on the latch of their daughter Charlie's door, leading investigators to believe that Kelly had attempted to barricade herself in Charlie's room to keep them safe, but that the intruder had probably continued to chase her.

The blood smears proceeded down the hall and down the staircase, where on a landing, there was a large dent in the drywall, which detectives believed that she was thrown into or possibly fell into on her way down the stairs. And the blood continued into the kitchen, and at some point appeared as if she had been dragged. But ultimately, Kelly was killed when her attacker overpowered her on the floor of the kitchen.

The officer who called for backup reported, quote, "Her face is completely beaten in," and, quote, "She's beat to hell." When asked where Tom was at the time of the murder, he told the police that he had been at a poker game with his friends and that his daughter had greeted him upon his arrival at home, telling him that she had seen a man in the house attacking her mom.

So, this investigation basically began as a home invasion gone wrong, but detectives kind of questioned this version of events immediately, because there was nothing missing, and there was also no sign of forced entry. Detectives attempted to glean evidence from the brutal crime scene, including taking note of the foreign tire tracks in the gravel driveway. But, there was one witness who could help lead police to their perpetrator.

the couple's seven-year-old daughter, Charlie, the only surviving eyewitness who had watched her mother's murder with her very own eyes.

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Though her line of questioning obviously needed to be handled very delicately, detectives knew that they needed to speak with seven-year-old Charlie, and ultimately, her testimony would be key to the conviction of her mother's killer.

In a room with a forensic child psychologist and Sheriff Jim Allard, Charlie played games as she spoke matter-of-factly about the ordeal. She told them that a robber came into the house and described him as a man wearing jeans, a dark-colored shirt, and a mask.

In a revelation that shocked the investigators, when asked what the man looked like, she said that he looked like her dad. But here's the thing. It feels like it was probably most likely that what she meant is that the mask looked similar to one that her dad Tom had because she also added that the balaclava worn by the intruder resembled the one that her dad wore to go hunting. So it's not necessarily that the guy...

looked like her dad because he was wearing a mask. She couldn't see his face. It was just that the balaclava looked similar to something she has seen her dad wear. Right. And obviously, remember, she's a seven-year-old girl, so...

She's not, it's probably harder to kind of determine what she meant by that. But as we go on, you guys will find out. And she probably doesn't know that many adults. So it's not super shocking that she would say something like this, but obviously investigators are taking note of it. And this really just confirmed what investigators actually already suspected, that 37-year-old Tom Clayton was involved.

Charlie described, quote, in the middle of the night, this guy came in and started hitting my mom with like this pipe thingy. She remembered her mom screaming to her, run, Charlie, run, while she and her attacker struggled away from the kids rooms and down the stairs. But Charlie, both terrified and curious to see what was going on, opened her door and followed the commotion downstairs.

She claimed that she saw her mom lying on the kitchen floor, describing that she looked like she was suffering. So Charlie, unsure of what to do, said that she tapped her mom with a hockey stick to see if she was still alive and then hugged her leg. God, that's so devastating to think about. I know. And because of this, actually, there was blood found on Charlie's shirt.

Charlie remembered that the robber fled through the garage, and that her dad arrived home just about 20 minutes later. Well, strangely, the 911 operator noticed that after telling them frantically that he was going to the neighbor's house to get his kids to safety, Tom's tone changed, and that he was calmly asking Charlie if there had been a robbery in the house, and if she had seen what happened.

When Charlie's questioning finished, she asked where her mom was. Because obviously, you know, she was too young to understand what all of this meant for her mom's life. Now, despite Tom's alibi of the poker game, he was arrested the day after the murder on Tuesday, September 29th, 2015. Which just completely shocked the family and their small community.

Now, Tom's arrest was largely based on Charlie's first-hand account and the description that she gave of the intruder alleging that, you know, he resembled her father. And also based on Tom's behavior that night. Kelly's sister said sadly, quote, "I loved him. She loved him. He was a part of our family." As those who knew and loved Tom reeled from the news, and Tom continued to proclaim his innocence, Kelly's family revealed that they had another potential perpetrator in mind.

A man named Michael Beard used to work for Tom at Servpro and would also pick up odd jobs as a handyman at his properties. He and his family even lived in one of these properties as well. It was actually Kelly's niece who tipped off the police and gave them Michael's contact information, wondering if he was behind this instead of Tom. And she had actually worked at Servpro over the summer and was warned by her uncle Tom to stay away from Michael.

Michael was a pretty unassuming character. One fellow employee at Servpro described him as quote, "a gentle giant", calling him soft-spoken and harmless.

Now, Michael was a struggling father who had had a few children of his own, both in New York with his partner Holly, and back in South Carolina. And for these kids he owed child support, which he was struggling to provide, and because of this, money was kind of a constant issue for him. And the Claytons knew about this and seemed to be generous with him by kind of just offering him extra odd jobs around the house.

Kelly's family remembers her being especially kind and gracious to him, even giving him her children's hand-me-down clothes and toys. But privately, they said that she confided in them that he made her feel uncomfortable and that she didn't want to be alone in the house with Michael.

Well, Michael refutes this, saying that he and Kelly had a trusting and normal relationship. He described Kelly as a cool person and said that he would even watch the kids for her sometimes when he was, you know, like working in the house on an odd job and she needed to go run an errand. He also said that he had a good relationship with Charlie and Cullen, you know, Kelly and Tom's two kids, and that he watched them grow up and that they were sweet and respectful kids.

When asked about Tom, he said that he had no ill will toward him and that the two were still friendly despite his recent termination.

So on September 17th, 2015, which was less than two weeks before Kelly's murder, Michael was fired from Servpro because he was accused of drinking on the job. And with this, Michael was facing eviction from the property that Tom was renting to him, which would obviously put him and his family out on the street. So a lot of people were wondering if this gave him motive to, you know, unjustly retaliate against the Claytons.

When Michael was asked to come in for questioning, he did so without hesitation, and he told the police that her murder was a tragedy and that he would certainly mourn her loss, but that he had been home relaxing and having some drinks that night, and he had nothing to do with her death. He explained that the only time he left the house on the evening of September 28th was for a quick trip to a nearby liquor store to pick up some more beer.

Now, police also questioned his live-in partner, Holly, who actually disputed this claim, telling police that they had gotten into a fight over their finances that night and that he had left the house around 11.30 p.m. and returned home about an hour later. And by the way, Kelly was killed again around midnight, which means that he was out without an alibi for the time that she was killed.

And actually, Holly is also the one who brought forward the first iteration of the claim that Tom was in fact involved, but not in the way that Charlie had explained. So what happened is Holly revealed that she believed Michael had been offered money to burn the Clayton family's house down in this apparent arson insurance fraud scheme.

Investigators brought this figure back to Michael and asked him if he had killed Kelly for the money, which led to them asking Michael if he would consent to a polygraph examination, which he did agree to, and he failed miserably.

Well, Michael was starting to grow increasingly anxious and uncomfortable during his interrogation, and finally broke down and admitted that he had done it. He had killed Kelly, and that he had done it for $10,000 that had been offered to him by none other than Tom Clayton.

Michael remembered that he initially told Tom no, then eventually warmed up to the idea, saying that he would think about it, and then ultimately agreed to do it when he concluded that he was desperate for money. It's just so frustrating because that's not a reason to murder somebody. You said yourself that Kelly was cool. You loved her kids. You thought they were great. Kelly and Tom both did great.

so much for you and your family, and this is what you do? You kill her for $10,000 as if, oh, well, first I said no, and then I kind of warmed up to it because I really needed the cash. Like, no, what you should have done is say, hey, Kelly, Tom just asked me to kill you for 10K. Let's go to the police and make this right. There's only one thing to do here. Yeah, I mean, go to the police first, absolutely. You can find another way to get money. Right, but, you know, money makes people do crazy things, and in this case...

You know, Michael was so hard up for money that $10,000 was enough for him to commit a heinous crime. It's just sad, too, because technically,

10 grand is not that much money. It's not like it was a million dollars or something life-changing. I understand that for him, $10,000 in that moment would have changed a lot for him, but that's not going to change your entire life. Maybe it's going to help you get on your feet for a while and figure something else out. So changing your life in that way, but like no amount of money is worth killing somebody anyway, but it's just so frustrating that he took this route instead of saying, I'm going to do what's right, not kill this awesome woman and

and take her kid's mother away from them. And instead, you know, since he drank on the job, he got himself fired. That's what I was going to say. Absolutely. Michael is this fuck up. So even if he did get that 10 grand, he probably would have blew through it. And then where do you go from there? You murdered somebody. You gave up your entire life.

For the chance of being on your feet for, what, a month maybe? Yeah, it's so sad. Well, I guess a little longer than a month, but you know what I mean. Either way, either way. Like, you should have just figured out how to get a job and support your own family instead of taking somebody else's family member away from them. Well, what's actually crazy here is that Michael claimed that Tom initially asked him about it four months before the murder actually took place. Yeah, so this was a plan for a while.

He claimed that Tom laid out the plan that he would be gone, his kids would be at Kelly's sister's house, and that he would leave gasoline in the garage as an accelerant for the fire. Michael was to murder Kelly and then set the house on fire to rid the house of evidence and so that Tom could collect homeowners insurance as

as well as Kelly's life insurance policy. No surprise there. Well, this is why that 10K feels so measly as well, because tell him what her policy was worth. Yeah, get this. Tom had actually doubled their life insurance policies the year before Kelly's murder, totaling Kelly's life insurance policy to over a million dollars. Yeah, so he's going to get over a million dollars for her murder and whatever the settlement is for the house after the fire is.

And he's going to give Michael $10,000 and then keep the rest.

and live out his little dream life. And knowing that he doubled her life insurance the year before, I think really tells us that he was thinking about this for a minute. Yeah, and it just gets scummier and scummier with Tom. As we're going to talk about, there are just some details that, oh my God. There's one part that really pisses you off. Just let all the POSs fly in this episode.

But first, after a break and a cigarette, Michael relinquished his story and the evidence therein, and agreed to bring police to the murder weapon as well as the keys that he used to access the home.

and the clothes that he was wearing when he murdered Kelly. So yeah, he's like, I did it, it was me, but Tom told me to do it, and here, I'll give you all the evidence. Yeah, exactly. Well, he also revealed that Tom instructed him to burn down the house whether or not the kids were home. You piece of shit, Tom. Yeah, that was the part I was just talking about. Oh my god. That really pissed you off. I mean, it pissed me off too. It should piss everybody off.

If he really said that, I mean, what the hell? I bet you he did. I bet you he did. But Michael is apparently the one who refused to do so with Charlie and Colin inside, which is why the house wasn't set on fire because the kids were home that night.

The murder weapon, which was the handle of a mall or a type of sledgehammer, was found discarded in some weeds on the side of the road, and matching pieces that had broken off were removed from the crime scene. The sledgehammer was found with Kelly's blood still on it, and some reports allege that Michael's DNA was even found on the weapon, but others claim that he didn't leave any behind because he was believed to have been wearing rubber gloves.

He also led them to where he had dumped the clothes and shoes that he had been wearing, still encrusted with Kelly's blood as well, and also directed them to a small creek where they pulled the house keys that Tom had given him to access the home while Kelly and the kids were sleeping.

When police questioned Tom immediately after the murder, you know, while he was at the scene, they claimed that he mentioned several times that he wouldn't have been able to commit the murder because he had been at a friend's house, which was true. But obviously, that didn't exonerate him from orchestrating the murder. And of course, you know, as soon as the police show up, he's going to say, oh, I wasn't here. I was at the poker game. But isn't that so sad?

Sorry. Isn't that so suspicious, though? Yeah. No, it is. Why are you even saying that at all? If you didn't do it, then you shouldn't even bring it up. If I was an investigator and the husband of a murdered woman, the first thing they say is, oh, yeah, I was somewhere else. I'd be like, hmm.

I'd give him the eyes. I'd be like, were you though? Why are you already trying to push blame off of yourself? They're not even asking you if you did it yet. Right. Why would you be that concerned about that and not the fact that your wife is dead? Well, although Tom claimed that he and Michael hadn't had much contact since he left the company, the phone records of the men said otherwise.

The two actually spoke quite frequently in the days leading up to Kelly's murder, especially on the day of the murder, which feels too convenient to not be calls regarding this horrific plan of theirs. Like, you just happen to have the most calls ever on the day that Kelly is killed? Yeah, suspicious.

A forensic analysis of Michael's phone revealed over 150 calls and a slew of text messages, all of which he had deleted after the murder. When police spoke to the attendees of the party, one of the hosts, who was a woman named Linda Miller, remembered that she loaned Tom her phone on the evening of the killing, but that he had deleted the call, which she thought was really strange. Like, why would you do that?

Linda also noticed that he later pulled out his phone at the poker table, even though he said that he had left his in his car, which was his justification for why he needed to use hers. And like, he's not even covering his tracks very well. You know, he's saying, oh, I left my phone in my car. Can I borrow yours to make a call? But I'm so glad that she noticed this, that she noticed that something was kind of weird there. Because if he didn't get up to leave the poker table at any point, he would have been

She's like, well, your phone is with you. What are you talking about? And that he deleted the call as if police couldn't figure out who he called anyway, just because he deleted the record on her phone as if it's going to delete the call from existence altogether. Yeah. Because police did find it. They obtained phone records from the cell phone carrier and learned that the call placed on Linda's phone by Tom was placed there.

to Michael and investigators believe that this was the call that prompted the break-in into the Clayton home. Investigators determined that the murder had taken place before Tom left Linda's house so that they would believe or at least initially believe that he was not involved because all these people are saying, oh, at that exact time, he was with us.

While Tom was still being held on murder charges, police were attempting to decipher his role and Michael's role in Kelly's brutal death and who had actually carried out the killing. So after admitting to the crime but implicating Tom as the one who ordered its execution, Michael changed his tune.

He scaled back his accusation that Tom wanted his wife murdered and told investigators that this was a simple insurance scheme and that Tom had asked him to break in only to burn down the house for the payout. Michael also added that he was not aware that anyone would be there, let alone the children. Then he recanted his confession completely, blaming Tom alone and taking full blame off of himself.

He said that he arrived to carry out the crime of insurance fraud, but that he got cold feet and couldn't go through with it.

Later, he added that he had come across another perpetrator inside the home when he arrived. Oh, yeah. I'm sure you did. And pointed the finger at Tom for this. So he's basically saying, I went in to commit this crime of burning down the house. And, oh, there just happened to be another perpetrator inside the house. How crazy is that? It just doesn't connect. It doesn't connect at all.

Well, Michael explained that he came into the kitchen, saw Kelly's body on the kitchen floor, and then fled the house in fear. No, you didn't. He described being framed by Tom for this entire ordeal. Even though he was the one to, he was the one who confessed, Tom didn't say, it was Michael. Like, Michael was questioned and you brought the story forth yourself. Well, also on top of this, the evidence, which he himself led investigators to,

spoke for itself. And investigators were sure that they had their culprit. Yeah, he said, here are the clothes that I wore, here are the keys, here's the murder weapon. If you didn't do all of that and there was another perpetrator in the house, you wouldn't know where any of that was. It's...

Well, 44-year-old Michael Beard was arrested for the murder of 35-year-old Kelly Stage Clayton on October 2nd, 2015, just days after her death took place. Which really is amazing that police were working so fast on this. Absolutely, but the more difficult task would be proving that Tom had ordered this to be done, promising the agreed-upon fee of $10,000.

but police were confident that this is exactly what happened. Meanwhile, Tom was out free on a $250,000 bond, and after he made bail, he rid the house of any evidence that a crime had been committed at all, and continued to live there. But instead of mourning his wife, on top of all of this, and trying to prove his innocence and get justice for Kelly...

He spent his days partying and picking up women, and I don't put any of this past Tom the piece of shit. Tom's defense team later alleged that Michael was set up by Tom, but Michael's lawyers countered that Michael had no reason to go there that night, and no justification for carrying out the murder, except to fulfill a request at the hands of Tom.

But that's not all. A third man was also implicated in this crime because Michael had hired a getaway driver. Mark Blandford was a friend of Michael's and Michael had asked him to drive him away from the scene of the crime, offering him just $500. This is so strange because Tom is...

Tom is set to get a million dollars. He's offering Michael $10,000. And Michael is offering Mark $500. Everyone's just ripping everybody off. Ripping the next guy off. So... Also, by the way, Michael didn't have a car. So...

he would definitely need somebody to drive him away from the scene because he could not drive himself away. So Mark was interviewed by the police, but he claimed that he didn't know what he was signing up for. Like he did say, yes, I drove him away from the scene, but he's saying, I don't know what it had to do with. I thought maybe it had to do with drugs and certainly not murder. However, he does recall Michael saying along the way, quote, I'm going to have to kill a bitch.

Mark says that he assumed this was a joke or an exaggeration, you know, maybe referring to somebody who had unpaid debts or something like that, but not that he actually had to go kill someone, or at least so Mark says. So after slinking into the house, Michael returned to the car quickly, allegedly not saying anything about what he had just done.

The two took off in the car and Mark says that he assumed the matter was taken care of, though he was accused by the police of helping Michael dispose of evidence. Michael's murder trial was up first and was a relatively easy conviction, you know, given the evidence that he had led police to himself and the fact that he had confessed.

So on November 4th, 2016, over a year after Kelly's murder, Michael Beard was found guilty of both first and second degree murder.

On behalf of her family and Kelly's kids, her sister Kim addressed Michael in the victim impact statement that she gave to the courtroom. And she said, quote, September 29th, 2015 was the most painful day in our entire family's lives, especially the lives of Kelly's beautiful children. You, Michael Beard, are a coward. Only a coward would attack a woman in her bed.

Later in an interview with ABC, Michael reaffirmed his claim that there was someone else in the house that night and that the two had been so close that Michael knocked him down getting past him when he was frightened and fled the scene. So he's saying...

I even touched the guy. Like I even nudged the guy on my way out. This is how real this guy allegedly is. But we know that that's complete bullshit. He also claims that his confession was coerced and that none of it was true. But as Heath said, and as I already said, the keys, the clothes, and the murder weapon were all found based on his guidance and he couldn't explain that away. So there was no reason to believe that anyone else had been involved

Aside from, of course, Tom. Now, Tom's trial began two months later in January of 2017 and revealed explosive new details about his involvement in his wife's murder. Though the prosecution relied heavily on Michael's confession and the phone records of the two men, the witnesses did not do him any favors.

Yeah, multiple people took to the stand to describe Tom's complaints about having to stay with Kelly because he was unwilling to pay her child support and alimony if they were to divorce. This guy's such a loser. Yeah, he's such a tool bag.

I mean, even this guy's own friends admit that he had told them that he didn't want to give her any of his money and that that was his reasoning for not wanting a divorce. So instead of paying alimony and child support for his kids, for a woman to a woman that he agreed to marry years earlier...

He wants to take her life and then get money from her. So he doesn't want her to get money from him. He wants to get money from her. Exactly. Well, even his niece, Kim's daughter, whom he had hired for the summer at Servpro, as we mentioned earlier, upheld these accounts, saying that Tom confided in her that he wasn't in love with Kelly anymore and that he had been pursuing and even sleeping with other women.

Now, some of these women actually testified against him. And one of them was a 15 year old girl. Disgusting. Remember, Tom was 37 years old at this time.

There was also a woman who was a friend of Kelly's and the agent who sold Tom his life insurance policy who claimed that she had a threesome with Tom and another insurance agent, which just feels like a conflict of interest. Like you're literally having sex with the guy that you're selling a life insurance policy on his wife to. Like what is going on here? It's so skeezy. Yeah. And in addition to the phone records and the witnesses,

Detectives were also able to pull security camera footage of Tom leaving work in a Servpro branded truck and Michael trailing behind him in a borrowed vehicle that clearly did not belong to him because as we mentioned, Michael did not have a car. On February 22nd, 2017, Tom, just like Michael, was found guilty of first and second degree murder.

Amid the wait for Tom's sentence, Mark Blanford was sentenced for his role as an accomplice. And in April of 2017, Mark was sentenced to three to six years, and he pleaded guilty to a second-degree manslaughter charge, which was actually a reduced charge in exchange for his testimony against Tom Clayton. Mark was released on probation in 2020, though he was forced to return to prison after violating the terms of his parole.

And the same month as Mark's sentencing, again, which was April of 2017, Tom was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. According to those in attendance that day, he yelled at the courtroom, cursing those who had convicted him. Of course he did, because he's a man-child. His family actually stood beside him, though. They released a statement after his conviction saying,

And this is what it said. My eyes are about to roll so hard. It says, quote, Our support for Thomas is unwavering. Our love for Kelly, Charlie, and Cullen and Thomas is unending.

To know Thomas would be to know that he would never kill another human being, nor would he send another person into his house to kill another human being, most of all his wife, the mother of his children. To know Thomas would be to know that he would never put his children in the horrific situation they were put in that night and the days since.

Ugh, puke. It's just, I hate, I really do hate...

When families just can't accept it, they can't accept that their son or daughter is a murderer and they just are like, oh yeah, the justice system got it wrong. No, they didn't. Just realize that your kid is a monster and that's it. Yeah, it's just really disappointing. But Kelly's family luckily had the final word that day. Her daughter Charlie actually wrote her own statement and Kim delivered it to the courtroom for her.

She said that she loved both of her parents, but that she believed her father was cowardly for what he had done to her mother. So most people believe that Tom was absolutely involved, hence his conviction and sentencing.

Michael appealed his conviction in 2020 and the charge of second degree murder was actually dropped, but his conviction of first degree murder was upheld. So nothing, nothing really changing there for him. And Tom also, of course, attempted to appeal his own conviction in 2019, but it was upheld as well. So both Tom and Michael appealed.

have exhausted their appeals by this point, so it is most likely that they will both die in prison for what they did to Kelly Stage, while Kelly's children have been in the care of her amazing sister Kim, always remembering their incredible mother. ♪♪

Thank you so much, everybody, for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode of yet another husband murdering their wife, which is just so sad and devastating. And I can't believe that it happens as often as it does. But I also want to thank Anna for recommending this case because I meant, as I mentioned earlier, I had never heard of it.

And this was truly wild. Yeah, surprisingly, I hadn't either. So big thanks to you. Thank you, everybody, for listening to this one. We have photos on our socials if you want to see any of those. You can head over to our Instagram at Going West Podcast. And then we're also on Facebook. We have a private discussion group that Heath and I like to jump into and comment with you guys on Instagram.

And then we also have a regular open public Facebook page. Yeah, so go over there, give us a follow so you can stay up to date with all of the latest Going West true crime news. Yes, we also do post. Actually, I'm going to do a post today because a case we covered a couple of years ago on Shane Donahue just had an arrest. So we do whenever we see updates on cases that we have covered, if they're not,

big enough updates to warrant a full episode. We do like to post them on our socials so that we can all be up to date with what's going on with the hundreds of cases that we have covered. So check it out. All right, Going West fam, we will see you guys on Tuesday. So for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger.

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