A Las Vegas man who married six times, buried four wives, and later collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in life insurance payouts after their deaths is now serving 60 years to life in prison for orchestrating the 2008 murder of his sixth wife and the handyman he hired to kill her. Thomas Randolph's case, long chronicled by NBC News producer Dan Slepian, is back in the spotlight this week with the release of a new Netflix documentary examining the decades it took to bring him to justice.
The documentary, titled The Widower: 'Til Death Do Us Part, arrived Wednesday on Netflix, following an earlier three-part NBC Dateline series called The Widower that aired in February 2021, according to reporting cited by TIME. Slepian spent nearly 16 years tracking Randolph, recording real-time interviews with the man himself, detectives, and witnesses, footage that forms the backbone of both projects, per the same report. As the Las Vegas Review-Journal detailed in a rundown published this week, Randolph was convicted of orchestrating the killing of his sixth wife, Sharon Causse, and the handyman he hired to carry it out, Michael James Miller.
A Staged Break-In That Didn't Add Up
Causse and Miller were killed at the couple's Las Vegas home on May 8, 2008, according to the Review-Journal's account. Randolph initially told police that an intruder had killed his wife and that he then shot the intruder himself, claiming he had delayed entering the house after a dinner date while listening to his radio, only to later hear a gunshot before going inside, a version he gave investigators in 2017 according to the Review-Journal's report.
That story began to unravel under scrutiny. Cliff Mogg testified that Randolph told him a different account, that he had not actually heard a gunshot at all because he was hard of hearing and his SUV radio was turned up loud, per the 2017 testimony cited in the Review-Journal's rundown. Phone records examined by investigators ultimately revealed hundreds of prior contacts between Randolph and Miller, undercutting the claim that Miller was simply a stranger who broke in, a detail reported by the Review-Journal in earlier coverage of grand jury testimony. Prosecutors said Randolph killed Miller specifically to eliminate him as a witness, while also asserting that Randolph had hired Miller to kill Causse for her life insurance money, according to the Review-Journal.
A Pattern Stretching Back Decades
Causse was not the only wife tied to insurance payouts and violence in Randolph's past. In 1986, Randolph collected a $500,000 life insurance payout following the death of his second wife, Becky Gault, who died in Utah from a gunshot wound to the head, according to Law & Crime. A Utah jury acquitted Randolph of murder in Gault's death in 1989, per the Review-Journal's account, though Eric Tarantino later told authorities that Randolph had previously asked him to kill Gault, and Randolph was separately accused of trying to have Tarantino killed as well.
Randolph went on to secure over $300,000 in life insurance policies on Causse before her 2008 murder, according to Law & Crime's reporting. His fourth wife, Francis Randolph, died in April 2004 following heart surgery; Randolph had her body cremated within 24 hours, preventing an autopsy, then collected her life insurance payout and a $400,000 wrongful death settlement, according to Cosmopolitan. His first wife, Kathryn Thomas, whom he married in 1975, testified that he took out a life insurance policy on her and exerted severe psychological control during their eight-year marriage, per Cosmopolitan's account. His third wife, Gayna Allmon, testified that Randolph discharged a handgun inside their home while purportedly cleaning it, leaving a bullet hole in their kitchen wall, before she fled and filed for divorce; she later testified she believed he had tried to kill her, according to the Review-Journal's rundown.
A Death Sentence Overturned, Then a Retrial
Randolph pleaded guilty to felony witness tampering and was convicted in his first Las Vegas trial, where he was sentenced to death in 2017, per the Review-Journal. During the penalty phase that June, Randolph requested permission to wear a Dallas Cowboys jersey in court and ultimately wore a Tony Romo jersey, with his attorney saying he simply wanted to represent his favorite team, according to the Review-Journal's account.
That conviction did not stand. The Nevada Supreme Court reversed Randolph's conviction and punishment in 2020, finding that jurors should not have heard evidence about Becky Gault's death in Utah, since admitting that 1986 trial evidence violated Nevada Revised Statute 48.045(2), which bars prior-bad-act evidence offered to show criminal propensity, according to Justia Law's record of the ruling. The decision forced a complete retrial rather than allowing the original conviction to stand.
Retrial, Sentencing and Final Appeal
Randolph was retried in 2023, and on August 24 of that year, a jury found him guilty of killing Causse and Miller, according to the Review-Journal. Defense attorneys argued that Miller alone had planned the burglary and that Randolph shot him only out of fear, but the jury rejected that account. The retrial concluded with Randolph receiving a prison sentence.
District Judge Tierra Jones sentenced Randolph on April 4, 2024, to 60 years to life in prison, according to Court TV's account of the sentencing. Randolph was arrested back in January 2009, meaning the case stretched for nearly 16 years between the killings and final sentencing. The Nevada Supreme Court had earlier reversed Randolph's conviction and remanded the case for a new trial.
