Retrial begins for man charged in deaths of wife, alleged hit man

For the second time in 15 years, prosecutors are trying to convince a jury that Thomas Randolph is responsible for the death of his sixth wife and the handyman he allegedly hired to kill her.

Randolph’s defense attorneys, meanwhile, opened his retrial on Friday by painting the killings as a burglary gone wrong, orchestrated only by handyman Michael Miller, who killed Sharon Causse Randolph. Defense attorneys said Thomas Randolph shot and killed Miller out of fear, rather than in what prosecutors said was an attempt to eliminate the witness to his scheming.

“Here’s the deal, ladies and gentleman,” defense attorney Joshua Tomsheck told the jurors Friday during opening statements. “This case really is about perspective.

Unlike in Randolph’s original 2017 trial, when jurors sentenced Randolph to death, prosecutors are barred from telling the jury about the similarities between the deaths of his second and sixth wives.

The 1986 death of Randolph’s second wife, Becky Randolph, was initially considered a suicide, but authorities in Utah charged Randolph with murder based on information from one of his former friends.

Randolph tried to have the friend killed, and he pleaded guilty to felony witness tampering in Utah. A jury acquitted him of murder in 1989 in the death of his second wife.

In 2020, the Nevada Supreme Court overturned Randolph’s prior murder conviction, ruling that the evidence presented in 2017 about Becky Randolph’s death was “problematic” because of the acquittal.

Prosecutors are no longer seeking the death penalty for Randolph, now 68, because of his age, according to court records.

Sharon Randolph was killed on May 8, 2008, as she and Randolph came home from dinner. Randolph told police that he walked inside the home a few minutes after his wife, and he found her dead of a gunshot wound to her head. He said he saw a man in a black ski mask near the entrance of their home, and he brushed up against the man before shooting him five times.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Christopher Hamner used his opening statement on Friday to point out what he said were inconsistencies in Randolph’s story.

Hamner argued that Randolph’s recollection of where he shot Miller didn’t match where the majority of the bullet cases were found. He also argued that a ski mask that Randolph said Miller was wearing had no bullet holes or blood on it. Randolph told police that he called 911 immediately after he shot Miller, but prosecutors said a neighbor told investigators that he heard gunshots about 20 minutes before officers pulled up.

“When the defendant recounts what happens, he is the hero of his own story …” Hamner said. “However, the evidence in this case will show that the defendant’s story does not add up.”

Prosecutors said Randolph had a rocky relationship with his wife, whom he married in Las Vegas in 2007 after meeting her online, even as he maintained a yearslong relationship with a woman in another state. Hamner argued that Sharon Randolph’s friends and family were concerned about the relationship, and one friend “warned her the defendant might kill her.”

Defense attorneys argued that Randolph had told Miller he would be out of the house for several hours the night of the shooting. Tomsheck alleged that Miller knew there were guns, jewelry and cash inside the house because he frequently visited Randolph and did odd jobs at the home. Miller’s body was found with a woman’s ring in his pocket and two bags of jewelry near him.

Randolph stood to gain more than $360,000 in insurance money from his wife’s death, prosecutors have said. Hamner argued Friday that Randolph hired Miller to kill his wife with the promise of splitting the insurance money, but he decided to kill Miller instead.

Sharon Randolph’s daughter, Colleen Beyer, took the witness stand on Friday to testify about the period surrounding her mother’s death. She said that hours before the shooting, her mother told her that Randolph was talking about getting a divorce.

Prosecutors also played recordings of voicemails Randolph left for Beyer in the aftermath of her mother’s death, in which Randolph grew increasingly agitated over the ownership of his wife’s home.

Beyer testified that when she learned of her mother’s death, she called Randolph and asked him, “What did you do to my mother?”

“He said, ‘Michael shot and killed your mother,’” Beyer testified. “And then he just hung up on me.”

Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240.