Murder Mixtape 189: Kelley Clayton

Kelley & Thomas Clayton

Kelley Clayton was born Kelley Stage.  She was the youngest of three children to Elizabeth and Howard Stage.  They lived in Elmira, New York, where Kelley lived for most of her life.  According to the 2020 census, Elmira has a population of around 27 thousand people.  It’s one of those places  in Upstate New York where people go in the fall to watch leaves change and get away for a while.  

When Kelley was in high school, she was involved in many activities.  She played softball, did gymnastics, was a cheerleader, and an honor roll student.  She graduated from Elmira Free Academy in 1998.  After high school, Kelley attended and graduated from the State University of New York in Oneonta.  Later in life, Kelley would attend the Country Music Festival in Nashville with a group of friends every year.  It was a trip she looked forward to every year and truly enjoyed.  She and her family would vacation in Ocean City, New Jersey, which she called her “happy place.” 

Her family said that anyone who came in contact with her knew exactly where they stood with her.  She rarely, if ever, minced words and didn’t hold back her thoughts.  Kelley was the first one to offer kind and encouraging words when she felt like someone needed a pick me up.  

Kelley didn’t have wanderlust or constantly dream about getting out of Elmira, so it was a bit of a surprise when she told her family that she was going to move to Las Vegas.  While there, she worked at the Imperial Palace as a cocktail waitress.  After being in Vegas for a little while though, “home” began to sound better and better, and Kelley returned to Elmira.  

At the time, Elmira was home to the Elmira Jackals, a semi-pro hockey team that called Elmira home from the year 2000 to 2017, before folding and ceasing operations.  Elmira loved the Jackals and the team often sold out the arena for home games.  It was at one home game that Kelley and her sisters spotted one of the Jackals players, Thomas Clayton.  Immediately, Kelley was drawn to his good looks and rugged personality.  

Thomas Clayton was born in Binghamton, NY.  Growing up, he played hockey and after high school, he attended Niagara University.  After college, Clayton had the opportunity to join the Elmira Jackals as a forward.  In Hockey, you have a few different positions.  The goalie status in front of the net and defends against shots from the opposing team.  There are defensemen who play in the half of the rink near their own goal to help defend players as they try to score.  Then there are forwards.  They are the ones on the team who play on the other side of the rink and try to score against the opposing team’s goalie.  That’s a basic breakdown of the positions, but there’s also another position on a hockey team.  It’s more of an unspoken role amongst teams.  It’s the Goon.  

A Goon is also called an enforcer, tough guy, or cutting straight to the point “the fighter.”  The goon’s job is to deter or respond to a dirty or violent play against his teammates.   When such play occurs, the enforcer is expected to respond aggressively, by fighting or checking the offender. Enforcers are expected to react particularly harshly to violence against star players or goalies.  So if a player on Team A pulls a dirty hit on a player on Team B, Team B’s goon will then go after the best player on Team A to get him out of the game for a period of time.  They do this mainly by fighting.  In hockey, if you get into a fight, it’s generally disciplined by 5 minutes in the penalty box, leaving your team to play with just 4 players on the ice.  It’s an effective strategy to get a team’s best player off the ice.  Thomas Clayton was a Goon on the Elmira Jackals.  

He was aggressive and hit hard… on and off the ice.  In one off the ice incident, Clayton and another former player were out at a local bar.  Clayton was dancing on the bar, and other patrons were annoyed by it.  When they confronted him, it turned into a fist fight that spilled out into the street.  What Clayton and the other player didn’t know was that they were fighting four Elmira police cadets.  Clayton was charged with public lewdness (it’s said that he was close to naked) and harassment for dancing on the bar.  His friend was charged with felony assault initially.  Months after the incident, both pleaded guilty to reduced charges of disorderly conduct.  

Kelley met Thomas one night when they were both out at a local bar.  It was a bar that the players were known to hang out at.  Kelley had a friend who was also a bartender there.  Immediately after they met, people said that Tom and Kelley were a fitting couple.  They worked well together and complimented one another very well.  They each had what one article called “Lands End Catalog” good looks and had an easy, chatty demeanor.  After they met and started dating, they couple quickly married.  While they were married, Kelley was at all the hockey games and always supportive of Tom’s dream of making it to the National Hockey League.  In 2006 though, after facing several rejections from the NHL, Tom decided to retire from hockey.   

The same year, Tom and Kelley moved to North Carolina where they bought several multi-unit rental properties and started a taxi business for people to call when they were too drunk to drive.  After being in North Carolina for 5 years, the couple decided to move back to Upstate NY, and bought a brown paneled house, kinda in the middle of nowhere in Caton, NY.  It was in a wooded area, and was pretty secluded.  Once back in NY, Kelley waited tables at a local restaurant and Tom opened a franchise of Paul Davis Emergency Services, a home restoration company that helps after fire or water damage occurs in homes.  Later, Tom partnered with a former teammate and opened a ServPro franchise, which does the same thing, just a different company.  While they were both working, they also invested into local rental homes and made extra money that way.  As the years went by, their family grew.  By the year 2015, Kelley and Tom had welcomed two children to the world, a daughter Charlie and a son Cullen.  

The Night Of The Murder

The night that Kelley was murdered, Tom was at a friends house playing poker.  Over the years, Tom had developed a taste for gambling, and it wasn’t a secret that he usually carried large amounts of cash… cause you never know when an opportunity to throw down some cash is going to present itself I guess.  They had two safes in their home, each containing cash.  Tom would often carry LARGE amounts of cash to casinos and play at the high stakes poker tables, and one time he loaned his car out to a friend’s sister… with $22 thousand dollars in cash in the trunk.  The game that night though wasn’t a high stakes game.  It was a weekly game hosted by their neighbors, Linda and Greg Miller.  Every Monday, friends and neighbors would go to Linda and Greg’s to play.  

The poker game that night had been just a regular normal night like they had every week, except for the fact that they decided to call it a night around midnight, instead of later like they usually played.  Greg and Linda later said that they stopped playing at midnight and by 10 minutes after, everyone was gone.  Tom arrived home sometime around 12:30 and walked into the house.  Immediately, there were signs that something was wrong.  There was blood on the floors and walls.  On one wall along the staircase, there was a hole.  Then as he went through the kitchen, Tom found Kelley laying on the floor, naked below the waist.  She had a head wound and what was described as a halo of blood around her head on the floor.  

The struggle had woken their daughter Charlie who told Tom that their house had been broken into.  Tom quickly grabbed Charlie and Cullen and ushered them to a neighbor and called 911.  “My wife… She’s dead.”  Officers quickly arrived on the scene and they were met in front of the house by a neighbor who told them that Tom and Kelley were inside.  

When they approached Tom, they asked him where Kelley was and he told them.  They told them to come outside with them and sat him in a patrol car and told him to calm down and breathe as they secured the house to make sure the intruder wasn’t still there.  

As they went through the house, they noted all the damage and blood that was scattered about.  The officer’s body cam captured everything as he spoke out loud as sort of a running dialog to accompany the footage.  You can hear his voice tremble as he walked through the house.  He said that as he looked through the house, that it looked like Kelley had been attacked in the master bedroom, then struggled and fought as she was beaten and drug all the way down the stairs and into the kitchen / living room area.  

As the first responding officer left the house, another officer approached and asked what happened, the first officer said “It looks like a domestic.”  There were no signs of forced entry or a break in.  There were no broken windows or anything to explain how someone broke in.  

By this time, word began to spread and Kelley’s friends and family arrived at the scene.  On the officer’s body cam footage, you can hear her sister screaming asking where her sister is and why she can’t see her.  She thought that Kelley was going to be in the ambulance, but by this point, it was clear that Kelley was beyond help and had passed away.  

The police questioned Tom and within a day, he was arrested and charged with second degree murder.  How did we get there though, if he had a solid alibi??

The Investigation

Immediately, the police were suspicious about Thomas Clayton.  They started the investigation by digging into his alibi.  They talked with Greg, Linda, and all the people who were at the poker game that night.  They all confirmed that Thomas was there and what time he left.   While some were investigating that, another officer was questioning the Clayton’s young daughter, who apparently had witnessed some of the attack.  

When he talked with her, he asked if she could describe the man. What he was wearing, how tall he was, etc.  For every answer though, she gave a variation of “He looked like my dad.”  She even said that the intruder wore a mask that looked like the one her dad used when he went hunting.  

While the police were investigating every lead they could, Linda began to think back to the poker game.  She recalled that at one point, she was in the kitchen and Tom came up and asked if he could use her phone, saying that he had left his charging in his car.  She said of course and gave him her phone.  He went into another room and had a brief conversation and returned her phone.  Later though, other people remembered that Tom had his phone at the poker table.  That was one thing about Tom, wherever he was, his phone was with him.  

With that in mind, Linda grabbed her phone to see what number Tom called, but it was blank, like a call had never been placed.  She gave Greg her phone to see if there was something wrong with it, and he said no, that it looked like the call log had been erased.  So the couple logged into their account online to retrieve their call history.  Once they started looking, they found the number that Tom called.  They called the investigator that had visited them earlier that day and gave him the number.  He then quickly plugged the number into Facebook.  It popped up belonging to Michael Beard. 

Thomas Clayton had met Michael Beard a few years before when Beard started to rent one of the homes that they Claytons owned, though he was on the verge of being evicted for unpaid rent.  Beard had worked for Thomas at both of his companies, but had recently been fired, for the second time.  Beard had also worked odd jobs for the Claytons around their house when they needed help with projects.  

The police brought Beard in for questioning.  By this time, they were already holding Thomas for 2nd degree murder, and within a few hours of being questioned, Beard confessed to murdering Kelley.  

He said that Thomas paid him $10,000 to kill Kelley.  He told police where the murder weapon was, which he’d thrown out the window along a highway.  It was a fiberglass handle to a maul hammer. He also led them to a swampy area where they recovered a bag with the clothes he wore that night.  Next, he helped them find the house keys that Thomas had given him to get into the house.  They were at the bottom of a local creek.  

Beard repeated the confession in front of the grand jury, and both men were indicted on murder-for-hire charges.  

Trials

When it came time for the trials, Beard went first in November of 2016.  At this time, he changed his confession.  He said that Thomas hadn’t paid him to murder Kelley, but instead he paid him to help in an insurance scam.  He claimed that Thomas wanted him to burn down his house for the insurance money, and that Thomas had told him the house would be empty.  Beard said that when he arrived at the house he discovered that the robbery had taken place and Kelley was dead, so he left.  

In court, speaking to Kelley’s family, Beard said, “I did not kill that person.  I’m sorry for your loss. I know you mourn, but I, Michael Beard, did not kill Kelley Clayton. May God rest her soul.”

During the trial, the prosecution presented DNA evidence that linked Beard to the murder, and he was found guilty on all charges.  He was given life in prison without parole.  

Two months later, Thomas Clayton’s trial started.  The district attorney knew that he needed to make sure the jury saw Thomas’ motive for having Kelley killed.  Several witnesses were called, including women that Thomas was having affairs with.  One of these was a life insurance agent who testified that she and Clayton had a threesome with another agent.  After that, Thomas was more open with her, often dropping by and talking about his marriage, calling Kelley “lazy” and “a bitch.”  She testified that Thomas would say that he couldn’t consider a divorce because Kelley would “take everything.”

The agent also offered up another nugget.  About a year before Kelley was murdered, Thomas had taken out a life insurance policy on Kelley, and he had been considering upping the payout to over a million dollars.  

Clayton’s lawyers tried to say that he was arrested because the first responders tainted everything when they said it looked like a domestic violence attack.  They also tried to say it was all on Beard.  They claimed that outside of their professional relationship, Clayton didn’t know Beard.  They told the jury that Beard had a record of breaking into people’s homes, and that Clayton was a great target because it was a known fact that he carried large amounts of cash.  

Clayton’s claim that he didn’t know Beard played greatly into his conviction.  The prosecution brought in an expert in cell phone data who testified that there were several occasions in which Beard and Clayton were in close proximity in late September 2015, too many times to be just a coincidence.  The expert also testified that Beard had been in contact with Clayton via 2 different phone numbers that didn’t belong to Clayton.  One was that of Linda, his poker friend, and the other was the land line of a mechanic shop near his business.  

At the end of the trial, Thomas Clayton, like Michael Beard was found guilty of first and second degree murder.  He was also sentenced to live in prison without the possibility of parole. 

Both men have appealed their convictions, which were both denied.  

Charlie and Cullen are living with one of Kelley’s sisters, Kim.  Kim said that if she could say one thing to Thomas, it would be:

“You took her life, not her light. And her light will shine forever through Charlie, through Cullen, through me, forever.  And we will be okay.”