The Lana Clayton eye drop poisoning case ended on January 16, 2020, when a former Veterans Affairs nurse from Clover, South Carolina, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for killing her husband by lacing his drinking water with tetrahydrozoline, the active ingredient in Visine and similar over-the-counter eye drops.1 Lana Sue Clayton pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and tampering with food or drugs in the death of Stephen Delvalle Clayton, a 64-year-old retired millionaire businessman who died on July 21, 2018, after being dosed over three days.
How Stephen Clayton Died
Arrest warrants later established that Lana added tetrahydrozoline to Stephen’s water between July 19 and July 21, 2018. During that stretch he was bedridden with vertigo. He never got up again.
On the morning of July 21, Lana flagged down a passing motorcyclist near the couple’s lakefront home on Island Forks Road and said she had found her husband unresponsive at the bottom of a staircase. She told the man she had been doing yard work and discovered the body when she came back inside. The York County deputy coroner who responded saw no obvious signs of foul play. The initial read was natural causes, probably a heart attack.
How the Case Was Uncovered
Stephen’s nephew, Nick French, a police officer in a nearby town, arrived shortly after the death and found several things off. Lana had not attempted CPR. She had not called 911 herself. Stephen’s cellphone, which French called his uncle’s “lifeline,” was missing. Within hours, Lana was already pressing family members to take the body to a nearby funeral home for immediate cremation.
Upstairs, French found the bed soaked with urine, suggesting Stephen had been incapacitated for a long stretch. He and another relative, Kris Phagan, went around Lana and contacted the coroner’s office directly to demand an autopsy and a toxicology test.
Prosecutors would later allege that Lana burned Stephen’s will in a fire pit after his death and threw his phone into the lake so he could not call for help during the days he lay dying.
What the Toxicology Showed
The autopsy found no physical trauma. The toxicology report did the work. Testing revealed 68 nanograms per milliliter of tetrahydrozoline in Stephen Clayton’s blood.
Tetrahydrozoline is the decongestant in eye drops such as Visine. It is colorless, odorless, and tasteless in liquid. Swallowed in quantity, it acts on the central nervous system and produces dangerous drops in blood pressure, slowed heart rate, and respiratory depression. Forensic toxicologist Demi Garvin, who analyzed the results, called the chemical a “modern-day Mickey Finn” and said the concentration in Stephen’s blood was consistent with a lethal dose capable of causing respiratory failure. In sufficient quantities, she said, it can induce a coma within 15 to 30 minutes of ingestion.
The Confession
In an interview with coroner Sabrina Gast, unaware investigators were listening through hidden microphones, Lana said Stephen had used Visine in his coffee “for years” because someone once told him it would help him go to the bathroom. When detectives confronted her, she initially denied responsibility and suggested her husband had killed himself, calling him a “hardcore drug abuser” with a mood disorder.
She then confessed. She said she had emptied an entire bottle of eye drops into his water while he was sleeping. “I think I put the whole thing in,” she told investigators. “I just wanted him to suffer.” She was arrested on August 31, 2018, and charged with murder and unlawful malicious tampering of food.
The 2016 Crossbow Incident
The poisoning was not the first time Stephen had been seriously injured at home. On May 30, 2016, Lana reported that she had accidentally shot him in the back of the head with a crossbow while he slept. She told police she had struggled to load the weapon downstairs, carried it upstairs, and the bolt discharged when she entered the bedroom. Stephen survived. He told officers he was “fine,” that the shooting was accidental, and that he did not believe his wife was trying to kill him. He mentioned that Lana suffered from sleepwalking.
In May 2017, detectives closed the investigation as an accident, concluding “no intent to commit a crime was found.” After the 2018 arrest, Solicitor Kevin Brackett said the crossbow incident would be reviewed. Asked by CBS News whether he believed the shooting was attempted murder, Nick French answered, “Absolutely.”
Motive: Money Versus Abuse
Sixteenth Circuit Solicitor Kevin Brackett argued Lana killed Stephen for his estate. Stephen had built a chain of physical therapy clinics targeting sports injuries in the 1980s and retired at 40. He owned a home modeled after George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, valued at roughly $820,000, along with adjacent lakefront property worth $385,000. With no will and no prenuptial agreement, Brackett told the court, Lana stood to inherit everything under South Carolina intestacy law.
Defense attorneys Harry Dest of Rock Hill and B.J. Barrowclough, the 16th Circuit Public Defender, portrayed Lana as an abuse victim who acted impulsively. They said Stephen had “hit her, kicked her and choked her” during their five-year marriage. They pointed to a history of trauma, alleging Lana had been sexually abused as a child and raped by three servicemen during her U.S. Air Force service. “We believe it was one time, with no premeditation,” Barrowclough said.
Prosecutors rejected the abuse account. Brackett said there was no evidence Stephen had abused his wife. Stephen’s sister, a former girlfriend, and his nephew testified that the depiction was “completely made up.” Brackett called the defense narrative a “sham” and “preposterous,” noting that Lana had let her husband suffer for three days without seeking help.
The Plea and the Sentence
On January 16, 2020, Lana Clayton pleaded guilty in the 16th Circuit Court in York County to voluntary manslaughter and tampering with a food or drug. Judge Paul Burch sentenced her to 25 years in prison. She is not eligible for parole.
At sentencing, Lana told the court she had acted impulsively. “I did impulsively put the Visine in Steven’s drink, but I just did it to make him uncomfortable,” she said. “I never thought it would kill him.” She said that after learning the Visine had killed him, she attempted to take her own life. Stephen’s sister called her a “monster.” His goddaughter, Lourdes Alvarez, asked the judge for the maximum: “Lana has fooled a lot of people. Please don’t let her fool you.”
Judge Burch rejected the impulse framing. “What a tangled web we weave,” he said. “Ms. Clayton, you sure have tangled this one up.” He pressed her on the timeline: “How can you maintain you did this to teach him a lesson, when it is obvious from the facts that you let him suffer for three days?”
Brackett later addressed the choice to accept a plea to lesser charges rather than try the case. “We felt like a significant sentence was in order given the magnitude of what she did and the fact that we did not buy into her story about why she did it,” he said.
A Similar Case in North Carolina
About two months after Stephen Clayton’s death, and roughly 12 miles from the Clayton home, a 32-year-old mother of two named Stacy Hunsucker died in what was initially ruled a natural cardiac event. No autopsy was performed. Her mother grew suspicious after her son-in-law, Joshua Hunsucker, a paramedic, moved to collect $250,000 in life insurance within 48 hours of the death. A vial of blood drawn for organ donation was eventually tested and came back positive for tetrahydrozoline. Joshua Hunsucker was charged with murder on December 19, 2019, and has pleaded not guilty. His case has not gone to trial.