Kelley Clayton was killed on September 29, 2015, by Michael Beard, a former employee her husband Thomas Clayton paid to beat her to death inside their Caton, New York, home. The Kelley Clayton murder-for-hire plot was Thomas’s way out of a marriage he wanted to end without losing the money he thought a divorce would cost him, and it unraveled through phone records, GPS data, Beard’s confession, and the eyewitness account of the couple’s seven-year-old daughter. Both men were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
The Killing in Caton, New York
Kelley Clayton was 35, a mother of two, living with Thomas on Ginnan Road in the Town of Caton. On the evening of September 28, 2015, Thomas left for a weekly poker game at a friend’s house. Kelley stayed home with the children.
Sometime that night, an intruder let himself in with a key and attacked Kelley with a fiberglass maul handle. The violence moved through multiple rooms. She fought back. The injuries were fatal.
Thomas returned home shortly after midnight and called 911 at 12:38 a.m. His first words to the Steuben County dispatcher were, “Help me, my wife’s dead.” When the dispatcher asked whether he had checked her vital signs or attempted CPR, Thomas said no and added, “You’ll see when you get here.” He can be heard on the call asking his children if there had been a robber before telling the dispatcher he was taking them next door.
Investigators arriving at the scene found no signs of forced entry and nothing stolen. For a burglary-gone-wrong, that made no sense. Someone with a key had come in, killed Kelley, and left.
Why Thomas Clayton Wanted His Wife Dead
Thomas Clayton was a former professional hockey player who had played center for the Elmira Jackals in the United Hockey League before moving into restoration work. By 2015 he co-owned a ServPro franchise that had grossed more than a million dollars that year. On paper he was doing well. Privately he wanted out of his marriage and had convinced himself he could not afford a divorce.
At least two women testified at trial that they had been involved in extramarital affairs with Thomas around the time of Kelley’s death. One mistress said Thomas told her he “wished someone would come and take her away.” A ServPro employee testified that Thomas said he wanted a divorce but that Kelley would “take everything.” A family member recalled Thomas saying at a gathering that it would be the last time they were all together.
The financial preparations matched the words. In late 2014 and early 2015, Thomas inquired about increasing Kelley’s life insurance policy to one million dollars. He also kept a bag of cash the size of a lunch bag, along with his passport, stashed in his truck. The day after Kelley’s death, his business partner Brian Lang retrieved that bag from the truck after Thomas told him the money for a building purchase was inside, and Lang handed it and the passport over to Thomas’s father.
The Arrangement With Michael Beard
Thomas approached Michael Beard about the job in April 2015, roughly five months before the killing. Beard was a former employee who had done maintenance work at the Clayton home and knew the property well. According to Beard’s grand jury testimony, Thomas at first said only that the job could mean jail time without specifying what it involved. Eventually Thomas laid it out: kill Kelley and burn down the house for the insurance money.
The price was $10,000, plus five months of rent-free living in an apartment Thomas owned. Five days before the murder, Beard sent Thomas a text asking for “a little bit,” which prosecutors argued at trial was a reference to a down payment.
How the Alibi Became Evidence
Thomas built his alibi around the poker game and made one boastful mistake that helped investigators map his whole scheme. Before a patrol car had even left his driveway, he volunteered, “Well, you’ll know where I am because my vehicle has GPS on it.” Investigators took him up on it. The GPS data confirmed he was at the poker game when Kelley was killed, which is exactly what he wanted it to show. It also gave investigators a precise record of his movements in the days leading up to the killing.
The bigger problem for Thomas was the phone. During the poker game, he asked a woman there if he could borrow her cell phone to call “a worker,” saying he had left his own phone in his truck. He took her phone into a hallway, called Beard around 10:50 p.m., spoke in a hushed voice, and deleted the call from the phone before returning it. That call went out roughly 90 minutes before Thomas got home and dialed 911. Records also showed frequent contact between Thomas and Beard in the weeks leading up to the murder.
When police brought Beard in, he confessed. He said Thomas had offered him $10,000 and the free apartment to kill Kelley. Investigators recovered a bag of bloody clothing from a swamp in Elmira containing DNA that matched Beard. The maul handle used in the killing was found some distance from the scene.
What the Claytons’ Seven-Year-Old Daughter Saw
The couple’s seven-year-old daughter, Charlie, had been awake during the attack. She told investigators, “A man was hurting Mommy, and Mommy was yelling ‘Run, Charlie, Run.'” Asked to describe the attacker, she said he had “eyes like her dad” and pointed to “his mask and jeans.” Asked whether she had seen anyone wear the mask before, she said, “My dad.”
Charlie worked through what she had seen out loud. “It could have been my dad, but he looked real — he looked like my dad,” she said, before adding, “But it couldn’t have been Daddy, because then who would take care of us?” Investigators concluded she was describing the attacker’s clothing rather than positively identifying her father. Her account fit Beard’s build and dress.
The Trials and Convictions
Michael Beard went to trial first. He recanted his confession and told the jury a different story: Thomas had hired him to commit arson, not murder, and when he went to the Clayton home that night he got scared, backed out, and found a mysterious figure already there who handed him the murder weapon. On November 4, 2016, the jury convicted him of first-degree murder. Steuben County Judge Peter Bradstreet sentenced him to life in prison without parole.
Thomas Clayton’s case relied on circumstantial evidence, but the pile was heavy: the borrowed phone and deleted call to Beard, the pattern of contact between the two men, the insurance inquiry, the affairs, the cash and passport in the truck, and Thomas’s own statements about wanting out. Prosecutor Weeden Wetmore told the jury, “What was the motive? He wanted out. Thomas Clayton is incapable of love.” The jury convicted him of first-degree murder on April 24, 2017, and Judge Bradstreet sentenced him to life without parole. On August 22, 2019, the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court upheld the first-degree murder conviction and rejected Thomas’s arguments that the GPS evidence and cell phone tracking data should have been excluded, finding both were based on generally accepted scientific methods.1Justia Law. People v Clayton 2019 New York Appellate Division Fourth Department
Where Things Stand
Thomas Clayton is serving his life sentence at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York. Michael Beard is serving his at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora. Both men exhausted their appeals, and neither first-degree murder conviction was overturned.
Kelley’s sister, Kim Bourgeois, and her husband Corey took custody of Charlie and her younger brother and raised them. At Thomas’s sentencing, Kim read a letter Charlie had written herself. In it, the girl said she loved her mom and loved her dad, but that her dad was a coward because he made Michael Beard kill her mother.