Sharon Randolph: Murder, Retrial, and Sentencing

Sharon Randolph is the name of two unrelated women who appear in public records for very different reasons. The better-known is Sharon Causse Randolph, a 57-year-old retired Las Vegas cosmetologist shot to death inside her home on May 8, 2008, in a murder-for-hire scheme arranged by her husband, Thomas Randolph, who was convicted, had that conviction overturned, was convicted again in 2023, and sentenced in 2024 to 60 years to life in prison. The other is a California mother of three who died of breast cancer in 2000 and whose daughters founded a nonprofit in her name.

Who Sharon Causse Randolph Was

Sharon Causse was born on November 6, 1950, in New York and lived in Nevada for more than three decades, working as a cosmetologist before retiring. She had a daughter, Colleen Beyer, and grandchildren. In the summer of 2005 she met Thomas Randolph through Match.com. They married in Mexico in 2006 and renewed their vows in Las Vegas the following year.¹

The marriage was unstable. Thomas left her between five and ten times over three years, and Sharon was reportedly discussing divorce on the day she was killed.¹

What Happened on May 8, 2008

Sharon and Thomas returned home from dinner at the Charcoal Room steakhouse at Santa Fe Station around 8:30 p.m. and went inside their house near Anne Road and Jones Boulevard in northwest Las Vegas. Sharon was shot once in the head.²

Thomas called 911. He told police a masked intruder had shot his wife, and that he had then shot the intruder in self-defense. The dead man was Michael James Miller, a 38-year-old handyman Thomas had befriended months earlier.³

Why Investigators Suspected a Hit

Prosecutors would later allege that Thomas had hired Miller to stage a robbery and kill Sharon so Thomas could collect on life insurance. He was the beneficiary of four policies on her life totaling more than $400,000.¹

Phone records showed Thomas and Miller had spoken an average of 2.7 times a day between December 2007 and the night of the killings, a relationship prosecutors called “extensive” and “secretive.” Miller himself had been shot five times, including twice in the head, which prosecutors argued was inconsistent with a spontaneous act of self-defense.³²

Thomas was arrested in January 2009 and charged with two counts of murder with the use of a deadly weapon and one count of conspiracy to commit murder.⁴

Thomas Randolph’s Earlier Wives

The Las Vegas case drew national attention because of the pattern it fit. Thomas had been married six times, and four of those wives died while married to him. Tabloids called him “The Black Widower.”⁵

His first wife was also named Sharon Randolph. She was shot to death outside a restaurant in Southfield, Michigan, on January 8, 1982. The case stayed cold until 1999, when two witnesses came forward. One testified he had watched Thomas pay a man named Sanirell Shannon roughly $40,000 for the killing. An Oakland County jury convicted Thomas of first-degree premeditated murder in 2001, and he was sentenced to life without parole.⁶

His second wife, Becky Gault, died in Utah in 1986 from a single gunshot wound to the head, initially ruled a suicide. Thomas collected roughly $250,000 to $500,000 in insurance after her death. Utah charged him with her murder, but a jury acquitted him in 1989. During those proceedings he solicited an undercover officer to kill a witness against him and pleaded guilty to felony witness tampering.⁷²

His fourth wife, Frances Randolph, died in April 2004 after heart surgery. Thomas was the last person to see her alive, her body was cremated within 24 hours, and no autopsy was performed. A handyman named Glen Morrison later testified that Thomas had tried to hire him to stage a burglary and kill Frances, but that he refused because he feared Thomas would kill him afterward.⁸

Two other wives, Gayna Allmon and Leona Stapleton, do not fit the same pattern. Allmon survived and later testified Thomas once fired a gun in the kitchen near her in what she believed was an attempt on her life. Stapleton, Thomas said, died of cancer.⁵

The 2017 Death Sentence and Its Reversal

The Sharon Causse case took more than eight years to reach trial. On June 28, 2017, a Clark County jury found Thomas guilty of two counts of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon and one count of conspiracy to commit murder. He was sentenced to death.⁴

Prosecutors had leaned heavily on the 1986 Utah death of Becky Gault to argue a pattern of hiring hitmen to kill wives for insurance. That evidence undid the conviction. In a unanimous decision issued December 10, 2020, the Nevada Supreme Court reversed and ordered a new trial. Justice Abbi Silver wrote that the trial court had allowed a “deluge” of prior-bad-act evidence and that the jury had been “inundated” with testimony about Thomas beating a witness, stealing medication, and endangering a former girlfriend and her child. The court found the evidence served mainly to portray Thomas as a “deceitful and violent man,” which Nevada law prohibits.⁹²

The 2023 Retrial and 2024 Sentence

The retrial began in August 2023 in Clark County. Prosecutors were barred from presenting any evidence about Becky Gault’s death, and Glen Morrison did not testify. Prosecutors also stopped seeking the death penalty, citing Thomas’s age.¹⁰¹¹

Without the Utah evidence, the case rested on the phone records, the insurance policies, Thomas’s demeanor on the 911 call, an alleged six-to-twelve-minute delay before he called 911, and the absence of physical evidence in the hallway where Thomas said the confrontation with Miller began. A salon manager and friend of Sharon’s, Deidra Marley-Johnson, testified she had warned Sharon that Thomas was trying to kill her.¹²

The jury deliberated about five hours before convicting Thomas on all three counts on August 23, 2023.³

On April 4, 2024, Clark County District Court Judge Tierra Jones sentenced him to 60 years to life, with all three counts running consecutively. The conspiracy count carried four to ten years. Each murder count carried twenty years to life plus a consecutive 96 to 240 months for the deadly weapon enhancement. Randolph maintained his innocence at the hearing, called Sharon “wonderful,” and said he intended to appeal.¹³¹⁴

The Sharon Randolph Foundation Is a Different Person

Searches for the name also turn up the Sharon Randolph Foundation, an Oakland, California nonprofit with no connection to the Nevada case. It was established in 2004 by sisters Sherron Hogg-Harris and Stacy Hogg-Stewart in memory of their mother, Sharon “Ms. Kittie” Randolph, a single mother of three and a musician who died of breast cancer on June 16, 2000, after a two-year battle with the disease. The foundation operates as a project of United Charitable Programs and runs programs for mammogram screenings, non-surgical hair replacement for chemotherapy patients, and financial hardship assistance for families dealing with cancer treatment costs.¹⁵

1
Las Vegas Review-Journal. Grand Jury Testimony Reveals New Details in Woman’s Slaying
2
FindLaw. Randolph v. State
3
Court TV. NV v. Thomas Randolph: The Widower Murder Trial
4
Las Vegas Review-Journal. Las Vegas Jury Convicts Man of Planning Wife’s Murder, Killing Hit Man
5
Oxygen. The Widower: Who Were Thomas Randolph’s 6 Wives
6
GovInfo. Randolph v. Berghuis, Civil No. 04-CV-73475
7
Las Vegas Review-Journal. Double Murderer With 6 Wives Not a Sociopath, Doctor Says
8
Law & Crime. Black Widower Thomas Randolph Faces Retrial for 6th Wife’s Murder
9
Las Vegas Review-Journal. Nevada High Court Reverses Conviction of Man Accused of Killing Wife
10
Las Vegas Review-Journal. Jury Deliberating in 2nd Trial of Man Accused of Killing Wife, Alleged Hit Man
11
Court TV. Witness Who Says Randolph Hired Him to Kill Won’t Testify
12
Court TV. Thomas Randolph Trial Coverage
13
News 3 Las Vegas. Thomas Randolph Gets 60 Years to Life for Double Murder Conviction
14
Las Vegas Review-Journal. Man Convicted of Killing Wife and Hit Man Sent to Prison
15
Sharon Randolph Foundation. About Us