Kriti MehrotraWhen Kelley Elizabeth Stage Clayton was found dead in her Caton home in Steuben County, New York, on September 29, 2015, it left the entire local community shaken to the core. That’s because the young mother of two had been heinously killed, a fact that has been chronicled in not only ABC’s ’20/20: What the Little Girl Saw’ but also NBC’s ‘Dateline: The House in the Woods.’ The ensuing investigations were complex because she didn’t seem to have any enemies or ill-wishers at first, but authorities were eventually able to positively identify her assailants.
Kelley Clayton Was Bludgeoned to Death in Her Kitchen
Born as the youngest of three on August 1, 1980, into an affectionate, supportive household helmed by Elizabeth Eckman and Howard Howard in Elmira, New York, Kelley Clayton was a force of nature. Her brother Leonard Stage and sister Kimberly Stage still remember her as the bright, bubbly individual whose charm often lay in how she never minced her words around loved ones. However, thanks to the environment she grew up in, she had also ingrained the values of care, kindness, and motivation at an early age, so she championed them in her adult years too.
Kelley had proudly graduated from Elmira Free Academy and the State University of New York before she chose to relocate to Las Vegas, Nevada, for an entirely new start on her own. She served as a cocktail waitress at the reputed Imperial Palace before returning to her hometown in 2004 upon realizing that she needed the company of her loved ones to be truly happy. It was during this period that she also came across then-hockey player Thomas “Tom” Clayton, leading them to fall head over heels in love, tie the knot, and settle down in Caton not long after.
Kelley eventually landed a job at The Woodhouse Stadium Grill and welcomed two adorable children into the world, only for everything to turn upside down on September 29, 2015. It was shortly after midnight on the fateful date when the 35-year-old’s husband had called 911 in a panic to report he had just arrived home from a friend’s place to find her dead in their kitchen. As per police records, she was covered in blood owing to deep wounds all across her head and face, with her autopsy report later confirming that her cause of death was blunt force trauma.
Kelley Clayton Was the Victim of a Murder-for-Hire Plot
While officials initially hypothesized Kelley’s death to be from a robbery gone wrong, they soon dismissed it based on evidence — there were no signs of forced entry, and nothing was missing. What the crime scene did show was a likely struggle in the upstairs master bedroom, following which the victim fell from the stairs and was fatally ambushed in the family kitchen. Her two children were also undisturbed in their bedrooms at the time of her death, so the suspicion fell on her husband, despite his having a solid alibi of being at a friend’s house for poker night.
Investigators immediately began looking into Tom after becoming concerned about his strange behavior, resulting in them uncovering that his marriage to Kelley was far from perfect. According to records, he had broken their vows by being unfaithful and did not hesitate to complain about her to acquaintances or friends, making it clear that he wanted out of their union. However, he did not think divorce was an option owing to the fact that they shared a comfortable household and two young children, so, as per reports, he did not want to lose anything to her.
Then, through questioning of Tom’s friends, detectives learned that he had called a man named Michael Beard from one of their wives’ phones just before 11 pm on the fateful evening. It turns out the latter was a laborer the hockey player had recently fired, so it was strange for them to be in contact not only at odd hours on September 28 but also in the days prior. After all, Tom had also evicted him from an apartment he had been renting mere weeks before the heinous incident. When Michael was ultimately brought into custody, he confessed that he had killed the victim with a maul handle after having been asked to do so by his former employer in exchange for $10,000 cash.
Tom Clayton is Currently Serving a Life Term in State Prison
Tom was arrested on the charge of murder in part because of Michael’s confession and in part because of his then-7-year-old daughter, Charlie Clayton’s, statements to the police. She had witnessed brief moments of her mother’s attack and had recounted the same to a detective in the early hours of the fateful day itself, incriminating her father. She had said, “A man was hurting Mommy, and Mommy was yelling ‘Run, Charlie, Run,'” before adding that the man “could have been my dad” because he was wearing a mask she knew he owned. So, officials suspected Tom was involved in the homicide in some way, which was made clear to them with Michael’s detailed confession later on.
Michael later recanted his confession, claiming Tom had actually hired him to burn down his family’s house, which he didn’t go ahead with after finding Kelley already dead when he arrived. However, his updated statements didn’t hold because he had already led police to the murder weapon, the bloody clothes he had discarded, and the house keys he had thrown in a creek. As if that’s not enough, his lookout man/getaway driver from the fateful night also came forward to reveal that he had said, “I’m going to have to kill a b***h” on their way to the Clayton home.
With all this, Michael stood trial in October 2016, and after two weeks of proceedings, on November 4, a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder as well as second-degree murder. Tom was convicted of the same two charges on February 23, 2017, at the conclusion of his seven-week trial. In the end, they were both separately sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. They appealed their verdicts, but while the latter’s was upheld, the former’s second-degree murder conviction was dismissed by a judge without any change in his sentence. So, today, at age 47, Tom is incarcerated at the maximum-security Green Haven Correctional Facility in Dutchess County, whereas 55-year-old Michael is detained at the maximum-security Upstate Correctional Facility in Franklin County.
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