Las Vegas man arrested in Utah homicide

By Mary Manning (contact)

Published Thursday, Jan. 8, 2009 | 3:54 p.m.

Updated Thursday, Jan. 8, 2009 | 4:08 p.m.

Davis County Jail

Thomas Randolph

A Las Vegas man was arrested today in a town 23 miles north of Salt Lake City as a suspect in two deaths, including his wife's homicide at their residence after what he claimed was a home invasion, authorities said.

Clearfield, Utah, police along with Metro Police arrested 53-year-old Thomas William Randolph this morning at his parents' home about 8 a.m. Las Vegas time. He is charged with conspiracy to commit murder, murder with a deadly weapon and burglary.

"He answered the door," said Clearfield Assistant Police Chief Greg Krusi. "There was a little bit of a struggle."

Krusi said Randolph was Tasered.

Randolph was booked into the Davis County Jail, where he is being held without bail on a warrant from Clark County. He's expected to be extradited to Nevada.

A Clark County grand jury indicted Randolph this week. The indictment charges Randolph with killing his 57-year-old wife, Sharon Clausse Randolph, and a man the husband hired to kill her, Michael James Miller.

Randolph called police on May 8 and said he had shot a burglar after a home invasion, according to the indictment.

The indictment said that Randolph waited outside his Las Vegas home as his wife went in and encountered Miller. Miller, acting as a burglar, then shot her in the head "pursuant to the agreement and plan of the defendant and his accomplice Michael James Miller," the indictment says.

Miller was then shot and killed, police said, and Randolph staged the scene to appear he had shot and killed an intruder during a fight over the gun after his wife was killed.

Law enforcement officials believe that Randolph killed his wife for a $400,000 payment from an insurance policy.

Randolph married Sharon in 2006 in Mexico.

The couple lived in a home in the northwest Las Vegas Valley where Randolph hired Miller to repair the residence about a year before his wife's death.

In the 1980s, the Deseret News covered a similar crime in which Randolph was acquitted of in 1989. At that time, as a Salt Lake City resident, he was accused of shooting his wife at the time, Rebecca Randolph, in a plot to collect $250,000 in insurance monies.

Randolph pled guilty to a third-degree felony witness tampering for offering an undercover police officer $10,000 to kill the chief witness against him, but was acquitted on homicide charges.