The Crazy Story Of The Las Vegas Widower
We all love a juicy true crime story. They combine all the twists and shocking turns of a great novel with the compelling fact that it all actually happened. Following a great true crime story from beginning to end makes you feel like you're part of the investigation.
Of course, true crime has exploded and there's no shortage of podcasts, streaming shows, and books offering your next fix. After a while, all the shifty alleged murderers can start to blur together a little, so we get a little pickier about what we listen to, watch, and read. A crime has to be truly sensational and the cast of suspects have to be truly unique to get us to put in the time.
The story of Thomas Randolph, known as the "The Black Widower" fits the bill. It's got mystery, murder, and a fascinating suspect at the center of it all you can't look away from. It's messy, twisty, and filled with the sort of eye-popping details that make true crime so much fun. It's also proof that no matter what people say, what happens in Vegas does not always stay in Vegas. Here's the crazy story of the Las Vegas Widower, Thomas Randolph.
The Las Vegas Widower has been married six times
Charisma and charm can be mysterious forces. At first glance, you might not think that Thomas Randolph looks like the sort of man who would have women lining up to marry him. But as reported by Yahoo, Randolph, now 66 years old, has been married no fewer than six times.
According to Oxygen, Randolph married Kathryn Thomas in 1975 when he was 20 and she was just 18 years old. She described him as "charming and witty" when they first met but said their relationship went on a downward spiral very quickly. Randolph began cheating and abusing drugs, leading to a divorce in 1983.
According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Randolph married his second wife, Becky Gault, the same day he divorced Thomas. Heavy.com reports that Randolph met his third wife, Gayna Allmon, via a newspaper ad. She claimed that Randolph once shot at her with a gun he was cleaning, which she believed was an attempt to kill her, and that she believed Randolph made attempts to hire a hitman to kill her. His fourth wife, Francis, and his fifth wife, Leona, officially passed away due to natural causes. According to a different article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, in 2006 Randolph married for a sixth—and so far final—time when he met Sharon Causse, who died just two years later in an apparent home invasion gone wrong.
He was charged with murdering his second wife
Thomas Randolph didn't treat his first wife, Kathryn Thomas, very well. She accused him of infidelity and substance abuse and divorced him after eight years. But his second wife didn't get off so easy. The Las Vegas Review-Journal notes that Randolph married his second wife, Becky Gault, on the same day his divorce from Thomas became final in 1983. Three years later, Gault died of a gunshot wound to the head, which was initially ruled a suicide based on Randolph's testimony. But when a man named Eric Tarantino came forward and claimed that Randolph had tried to convince him to murder his wife, everything changed.
According to Tarantino, Randolph talked to him about killing Gault incessantly and even sang songs about it. Randolph insisted that Tarantino rehearse the murder over and over again, and would become violent if he refused to go along. After Tarantino came forward to the police, Yahoo reports that Randolph approached an undercover police officer to have Tarantino killed for $2,000.
Randolph was charged with murder and brought to trial, but all he was convicted of was witness tampering for his attempt to have Tarantino killed—he was acquitted of the murder charge in 1989.
Two of the Las Vegas Widower's wives died under suspicious circumstances
As noted by Oxygen, four of the women Thomas Randolph married have died. His first and sixth wives, Kathryn Thomas and Sharon Causse, died under circumstances suspicious enough to charge him with murder. But some believe he may have been involved in the deaths of two of his other wives as well.
According to Heavy.com, Randolph's fourth wife, Francis, died shortly after heart surgery. But her daughter says the circumstances were suspicious: Randolph was the last person alone with Francis before her death, and he had Francis cremated immediately after she died. He then barred Francis' daughter, Rachel, from attending the funeral services. And the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that Randolph not only received an insurance payout, he also sued the hospital and got a settlement. Most damning of all, Randolph recruited a man named Glen Morrison to stage a burglary and kill Francis prior to her illness. Morrison testified that he refused to go through with it out of fear that Randolph would kill him in turn.
Strangely, as noted by Oxygen there is almost zero information about Randolph's fifth wife, Leona Stapleton. All anyone knows about her is Randolph's insistence that she died of some form of cancer. Considering that Randolph has a habit of trying to hire hitmen to kill his wives, this seems less than convincing.
Two of his wives testified against him
To paraphrase Leo Tolstoy, every unhappy marriage is unhappy in its own way. But a good rule of them is that if your ex-spouse is willing to testify against you in your murder trial, things did not go well in your marriage. So the fact that, as reported by Bustle, both of Thomas Randolph's surviving wives did just that is pretty significant.
Both women testified at Randolph's 2017 trial for the murder of his sixth wife, Sharon Causse. The testimony was devastating. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, his first wife, Kathryn Thomas, testified that Randolph was "controlling, manipulative and psychologically abusive." She and her current husband also stated that they moved to Washington in order to get away from Randolph. Oxygen reports that his third wife, Gayna Allmon, testified that she believed Randolph had tried to kill her. Once while cleaning his gun it discharged in her direction, which she believes was no accident. Worse, as reported by Heavy.com, Allmon testified that she believed Randolph tried to find a hitman to murder her.
The testimony of the two women was compelling—Randolph was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. As reported by Fox40, the conviction was thrown out on appeal, necessitating a whole new trial.
He was charged with having his sixth wife killed
When Thomas Randolph met Sharon Causse, he'd already been married five times in a span of 30 years. Not only do a disproportionate number of Randolph's wives die, he doesn't wait long after their deaths to marry again. He even married his second wife on the day his divorce was granted and was accused of chronic infidelity by ex-wives as well.
According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Thomas Randolph married Sharon Causse in 2006 while traveling in Mexico. While the date of his fifth wife's death isn't known, his fourth wife, Francis, died in 2004—meaning Randolph was married twice in the span of just three years. In 2007, he and Causse renewed their vows in Las Vegas, but according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Randolph's mother described his union with Causse as "not the best marriage." She blamed their marital woes on their independent nature.
In 2008, The New York Post reports Randolph called 911 to report that he'd shot and killed a man who had invaded his house and killed his wife. Police immediately had their doubts, in part because of Randolph's marital history, in which three of his previous five wives had died. After an eight-month investigation, Randolph was charged with murdering both his wife and a man named Michael Miller he'd accused of invading their home.
The Las Vegas Widower is accused of killing hitmen
There are eerie similarities in the deaths of three of Thomas Randolph's wives. First there are the insurance policies. According to Yahoo, when his second wife, Becky Gault, died from a gunshot wound to the head in 1986, it was discovered that Randolph had taken out a life insurance policy on her. Randolph scored an insurance payout of about $250,000—though that may have been as much as $500,000, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. When Randolph's sixth wife, Sharon Causse, died after being shot to death in what Randolph described as a home invasion, it turned out he'd taken a policy out on her as well. This time he received an insurance payout of $360,000.
Then there are the hitmen Randolph hires—and then tries to eliminate. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that the man Randolph recruited to kill Gault, Eric Tarantino, had second thoughts. He claims he warned Gault and fled. Heavy.com notes that Randolph's third wife, Gayna Allmon, believed he tried to hire a hitman to kill her before their eventual divorce. And according to Yahoo, Randolph then tried to hire another hitman to kill Tarantino—but accidentally spoke to an undercover police officer. In 2008, Fox40 reports that according to prosecutors Randolph hired Miller to kill his wife, then killed Miller in turn, staging the scene to make it look like a self-defense killing.
He resisted arrest in his underwear
After Sharon Causse died in 2008, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that police became suspicious of her husband Thomas Randolph because of how he behaved. They noted that there was a 10-minute delay before he called to report the shootings, which they suspected he used to stage the scene properly. Those observations combined with the suspicious death of his second wife—he was charged but acquitted of her murder in 1989—made him the prime suspect in their investigation.
According to Lohud, police took eight months to build their case against Randolph. When they finally got their indictment, there was one small problem: Randolph was no longer in Nevada. Police eventually tracked him down in Utah, where he was living with his elderly parents. His mother claimed he wasn't there to hide from police, but rather because he was unemployed and on disability with a back injury. Deseret News reports that Randolph himself answered the door when police knocked, but then attempted to resist arrest, causing a scuffle. According to The New York Post, police eventually dragged Randolph—wearing only his underwear—into the snow and tasered him in order to effect the arrest.
The Las Vegas Widower's conviction was overturned
Thomas Randolph has earned the nickname "The Las Vegas Widower" because four of his six wives have died under suspicious circumstances. He has even been tried twice for murder—and convicted once.
The first time Randolph was tried for murder was in 1989. His second wife, Becky Gault, died of a gunshot to the head. Originally ruled a suicide, Randolph was charged with her murder after a man named Eric Tarantino came forward to claim that Randolph had tried to recruit him to murder Gault, and talked nonstop about doing so. But Randolph's defense managed to convince the jury her death was, in fact, a suicide, and he was acquitted of murder.
Nearly two decades later, Fox40 reports that Randolph was indicted for the murders of his sixth wife, Sharon Causse, and the man Randolph claimed had invaded their home, Michael Miller. He was convicted this time, and given two death sentences. According to People, all death sentences in Nevada are subject to automatic appeals, and Yahoo reports that in 2020 the conviction was overturned by the Nevada Supreme Court. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the court's decision was based on the fact that the prosecution in Causse's case used the similarities between Gault and Causse's deaths to paint Randolph as a killer—but because he was acquitted of Gault's death, that evidence should not have been introduced.
A psychiatrist attested that the Las Vegas Widower is not a sociopath
One of the reasons Thomas Randolph is so fascinating is the methodical way he approaches relationships, especially since he's been accused twice (and convicted once) of trying to kill his spouse, and the deaths of two of his other wives are considered somewhat suspicious. Despite this grim track record, Randolph is a serial monogamist who married six times in 30 years. Before his arrest in 2008 he was rarely single for long and even married his second wife on the same day of his divorce from his first.
That kind of methodical romance might make you think of Randolph as a classic sociopath, a cold-blooded killer and manipulator who targets women, charms them, and then kills them—or at least tries to. But according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, that's not the case.
A psychiatrist interviewed Randolph as part of his trial for murdering his sixth wife, Sharon Causse, and the man he allegedly hired to assassinate her, Michael Miller. Dr. Norton Roitman concluded that Randolph exhibited a "narcissistic personality" but did not fit the criteria of a sociopath. Roitman testified that as a narcissist, Randolph seeks adulation and attention. If he feels he is not getting that attention from a spouse, he will seek it outside the marriage. But Roitman also testified that Randolph appeared to be grieving for Causse, complicating Randolph's image even further. Not being a sociopath wasn't enough to clear Randolph—the jury convicted him of murder.
His sixth wife changed her will
Randolph's main motive for at least attempting to have his wives killed—and succeeding at least once—seems to be money. In the case of both his second wife, Becky Gault (where Randolph was charged with murder but acquitted) and his sixth wife, Sharon Causse (where Randolph was convicted of murder but got the conviction overturned on appeal) there were significant insurance payouts involved. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that his second wife's policy paid out to the tune of $500,000, and his sixth wife's policy paid $360,000.
But Sharon Causse may have outsmarted Randolph. According to E! Online, she made out a second, secret will shortly before her murder. Causse's daughter, Colleen Beyer, was given the will by her mother's friend Alice Wolfe. Beyer believes the revised will proves that her mother had become suspicious of Randolph's intentions. The new will left property and other assets to Beyer instead of Randolph.
According to MEAWW, Randolph assumed he would be in control of Causse's assets and talked confidently about selling the house. When he learned that the new will was accepted by the court, he became aggressive and abusive in phone messages. Beyer became so frightened she stopped taking his calls, saying, "He doesn't like it when a woman takes control away."
His kids support him
Thomas Randolph's first wife, Kathryn Thomas, testified against him at his trial for the murder of his sixth wife, Sharon Causse, describing him as "controlling, manipulative and psychologically abusive" according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. So you would be forgiven for assuming that the two children Randolph fathered with Thomas probably also want nothing to do with their father. But you would be very, very wrong.
Although both Krista Brook Randolph and Justus Randolph have declined to make many public statements about their father, they have both indicated their support. According to The Cinemaholic, Krista appeared on a true-crime podcast and expressed joy when her father's murder conviction was overturned, saying, "This made my day, my life."
And the Score reports that Justus attended his father's sentencing hearing after his conviction wearing a Dallas Cowboys tie that matched the Dallas Cowboys jersey Thomas was wearing. When asked, Justus confirmed he wore the tie as an "act of solidarity" with his father, and reporter David Ferrara noted he testified that "This impression you have of my dad is so different than my reality." While one wonders what the dinner table conversation is like between Kathryn Thomas and her children, it's clear they at least don't believe their father is a serial wife killer.
The Las Vegas Widower set a record for time spent in jail
There are many aspects of the "Las Vegas Widower" case that are kind of amazing. Six wives, four deaths, two murder trials, one overturned conviction—the stats are pretty incredible.
The story of Thomas Randolph, aka The Black Widower, goes back more than 40 years. He first got married in 1975 when he was 20 years old. But when his sixth wife died in 2008, time really became a factor for Randolph. It took police eight months to build their case and finally get an indictment against him. After his arrest, he set a county record for most time spent in jail before trial—eight years, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
His trial took another two years, with his guilty verdict coming in 2017. He was sentenced to death, which triggered an automatic appeal process that took an additional three years, and resulted in his conviction being overturned in late 2020. Which meant a whole new trial had to be organized. According to Oxygen, Randolph's trial is currently scheduled for May 2022. He's currently still being held in jail, and likely will be until then, meaning he'll probably have spent close to 15 years in jail before his guilt or innocence is definitively determined.