Kay Raines Murder: Motive, Investigation, and Verdict

The Kay Raines murder was solved when Mobile, Alabama police tracked her son, Clarke Raines, to a shallow grave in Baldwin County where he had buried her in late January 2017. Clarke strangled and hog-tied his 68-year-old mother after learning she had spent through the inheritance left by his late father, then used her credit cards in the days that followed. A Mobile County jury convicted him of murder in March 2022, and in August of that year he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.¹

Who Kay Raines Was

Kay Atkins Raines was born on September 19, 1948. She earned a master’s degree in early childhood development from the University of Alabama and spent much of her career in social services, including as director of children’s programs at the Mobile Mental Health Center. She was an active member of Dauphin Way United Methodist Church in Mobile.²

Her husband, Lawrence Ronald “Ron” Raines, a retired UPS senior vice president, died in April 2006.³ Clarke was the couple’s only child.

The Motive: A Spent Inheritance

Ron’s death triggered a $500,000 life insurance payout to Kay, and she later received an additional $2.3 million from the sale of the couple’s beach home in Destin, Florida.⁴ Prosecutors established at trial that Kay had become a frequent visitor to Mississippi Gulf Coast casinos and eventually spent down the entire inheritance. Clarke had been financially supported by both parents well into adulthood, including insurance, living expenses, and multiple stays in drug rehabilitation.⁵

District Attorney Ashley Rich, who personally tried the case, described Clarke to the jury as an “entitled son” who killed his mother out of fury that the money was gone. “Her husband left her that inheritance, and it was hers to rightfully spend,” Rich argued. “It was not his. He did not leave it to his only son.”¹

Disappearance

Kay was last seen on January 28, 2017, at the Beau Rivage Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi, and later that day at a Home Depot in Gulfport.⁶ When she did not come home, a neighbor contacted police. Mobile officers responded to the 1000 block of Pace Parkway around 12:19 p.m. that same day to take a missing person report.⁷

Suspicion turned toward Clarke quickly. Investigators learned he had begun using his mother’s credit and debit cards and selling her belongings soon after she vanished.⁸

How the Body Was Found

Police placed a GPS tracking device on Clarke’s vehicle. About a month after the missing person report, the tracker logged what investigators called an “unusual trip” to a wooded area in Baldwin County, between Spanish Fort and Stockton.⁵

Following the GPS data, officers went to a spot off Alabama Highway 225, north of Bay Minette, and found Kay’s body in a shallow grave. She was face down, still wearing the clothes she had on the night she disappeared.⁸ Evidence showed she had been hog-tied.⁹ Prosecutors said Clarke had bought ten bags of soil and a small shovel, apparently intending to rebury her, and that without his return to the site the body might never have been found.¹⁰

An autopsy set the official cause of death as asphyxiation by strangulation.⁹

Arrest and Charges

Mobile Police arrested Clarke Raines, then 34, on March 28, 2017, and charged him with murder and 13 counts of fraudulent use of a credit card.⁷ Prosecutors said that in the days after the killing, Clarke also tried to obtain money through MoneyGram fraud and by writing bad checks in addition to running up charges on his mother’s cards.⁵

He already had a criminal history that stretched back more than a decade, including prior arrests in Walton and Okaloosa counties in Florida for burglary, domestic violence, and attempting to fraudulently obtain a controlled substance, along with an arrest in Mobile for allegedly breaking a neighbor’s windows.⁵

Five Years Between Arrest and Trial

Questions about Clarke’s mental competency held up the case. The court ordered a mental examination in January 2019, and on June 26, 2019, a judge found him competent to stand trial.¹¹ Even after that ruling, nearly three more years passed before the trial began.

Trial

The trial opened in Mobile County Circuit Court the week of March 15, 2022, before Judge Jay York.¹ Witnesses testified that Clarke was a drug addict with a nationwide arrest history and that he and his mother “did not get along.”⁸

Deputy Public Defender Richard Foreman led the defense. He argued the state could not prove Clarke killed his mother or even establish where she died, and asked jurors “not to assume someone is a bad person just because they’re a drug addict,” pointing to Clarke’s long struggle with substance abuse and mental illness.⁴

Verdict and Sentence

The jury convicted Clarke Raines of murder, with the verdict reached by March 23, 2022. On August 8, 2022, Judge York sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder conviction. The judge also imposed the statutory maximum of ten years on each of twelve counts of unauthorized use of a credit card, to run concurrently with the life sentence.¹

Rich told reporters after sentencing that Clarke never showed emotion during the case. “Not one time did he show any emotion,” she said. “We truly believe that if Clarke Raines were to ever get out, he would commit murder again.”¹ Foreman called life without parole too severe, noting that Clarke’s four prior felony convictions were all for nonviolent property crimes and arguing he could have been “successful” with his substance abuse and mental health issues under control.¹²

A statement from the Mobile County District Attorney’s Office described Kay Raines as “a beautiful, kind soul whose only family left was her son” and said the citizens of Mobile County were “safer today with Clarke Raines remaining in prison for the rest of his life.”¹³

1
FOX 10. Mobile Man Sentenced to Life Without Parole for Hog-Tying, Killing Mother
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AL.com. Kay Atkins Raines Obituary
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AL.com. Lawrence Ronald Raines Obituary
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WKRG. Trial Begins for Mobile Man Accused of Killing Own Mother
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CBS 42. Prosecutors: Alabama Man Strangled Mother After Discovering She Spent All of Her Inheritance
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AL.com. Alabama Woman Reported Missing
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Mobile Police Department. Man Arrested and Charged With Murdering His Mother Kay Raines
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FOX 10. Trial Begins in Case of Man Accused of Strangling His Mother
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NBC 15. New Details: Authorities Say Kay Raines Was Strangled to Death by Her Son
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NBC 15. Mobile Man Who Hog-Tied His Mother Found Guilty of Murder
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NBC 15. Mobile Man Found Competent to Stand Trial for Murder of Mother
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WTVY. Mobile Man Sentenced to Life Without Parole for Hog-Tying, Killing Mother
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NBC 15. DA: Mobile Man Who Hogtied Mother and Buried Her in Shallow Grave Gets Life in Prison