Arizona man pleads guilty to wife’s murder after reporting her missing
Daniel Paduchowski reported his wife, Kelly, missing in the Flagstaff area last week, but days later confessed to police and pleaded guilty to killing her, officials said on Friday. (Credit: Flagstaff Police Department)
Thomas Randolph, aka the "Black Widower," was retried and convicted last year in connection with the murders of his sixth wife and the hit man he hired to get the job done back in 2008.
But even though he sits in prison now for those two killings in Las Vegas, Nevada, questions about the deaths of three of his earlier wives are being highlighted in Investigation Discovery's new documentary series, "The Black Widower: The Six Wives of Thomas Randolph," which premieres Monday at 9/8 c.
Stephanie Pitcher, criminal defense attorney at Parker & McConkie and Pitcher Law PLLC, told Fox News Digital she thinks it's "certainly possible" that Randolph could be tied to more crimes in the future.
"I think we have seen this with other high-profile cases where, years later, due to some discovery in the case or even advancements in technology, those types of things can sometimes connect to cases in a way that can be really revealing," Pitcher said. "And I don't see why this case would be excluded from that possibility."
NEVADA 'BLACK WIDOWER' CONVICTED AGAIN OF MURDERING 6TH WIFE, HIT MAN
Don Worley, attorney at McDonald Worley, PC, similarly told Fox News Digital that "anything is possible and there is no statute of limitations on murder charges," but noted that Randolph was acquitted on murder charges in connection with the death of his second wife.
"Because he was acquitted on that one, he can’t be retried on that case again unless a federal prosecutor files the charges in federal court instead of a local prosecutor refiling the charges in state court," Worley noted. "He could be tried on any other murder charge, but I doubt that the local government will spend the resources to do this. The state already had to pay for two trials for this one conviction plus appellate work."
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Thomas Randolph and his sixth wife, Sharon. (ID)
Two of Randolph's six wives remain living while the others have died under different circumstances, ranging from murder to an apparent suicide to heart surgery complications to cancer, which is how Randolph got his nickname.
In the ID docuseries, Randolph himself sits down for an interview with ID from prison.
ALLEGED 'BLACK WIDOWER' ACCUSED OF MURDERING 6TH WIFE, APPARENT HITMAN
Thomas Randolph and his fourth wife, Francis Thomas. (ID)
The new show "presents this wild and weird story that explores whether Randolph is a calculated killer driven by greed, or, as he claims, just unlucky in love," a description for a preview of the show reads.
"I'm addicted to love. I'm a true romantic. That doesn't make me a killer."
Randolph's own children testified against him during his 2023 retrial for the murder of his last wife, Sharon, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported at the time.
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Thomas Randolph and his sixth wife, Sharon. (ID)
Randolph was initially convicted for killing Sharon and the hit man in 2017, but the Nevada Superior Court granted him a new trial upon appeal.
"[T]he Supreme Court addressed a question on the application of a specific rule of evidence relating to prior bad acts," Pitcher explained. The "bad act" in this case involving his arrest in the 1986 death of his second wife, Becky Gault. "And what was considered there was whether the evidence that had been admitted at trial, regarding the prior deaths of his prior wife, was admissible in this trial, and the district court had ruled that it was, but then… the Supreme Court stated otherwise."
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Four of Thomas Randolph's six wives are now dead. He says he's a hopeless romantic. (ID)
Because the "prior bad acts" evidence played a role in Randolph's first conviction, the entire trial was turned over and sent back to district court, Pitcher said.
"It really is a fascinating case on the application of that specific rule of evidence about when prior bad acts can come in and when they can't," she said, adding that "a court has to weigh whether those prior bad acts can go to show something like motive, intent, modus operandi."
Thomas Randolph and his sixth wife, Sharon.
Worley noted that because Randolph is now 69 years old and was sentenced to 60 years in prison after his retrial and will probably die in prison, the government isn't likely to use more "resources on this defendant when they have other defendants to put behind bars."
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"Plus Randolph will certainly appeal this decision also and that will be more time and resources for the state on this one conviction," Worley said. "However, I have been wrong before. When you have a high-profile case such as this, a local prosecutor may choose to go forward with one or more sensational murder trials for selfish ambition reasons. Especially now that they have a W in one of them."
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