The lives of many women and their families were irrevocably changed when they encountered Thomas Randolph.
“The Widower: ‘Til Death Do Us Part,” a new Netflix documentary from Library Films and NBC News Studios, details the story of a Las Vegas man who married six times and lost four wives. The film is directed by Chris Smith, who is the executive producer of the sensational series “Tiger King” of the pandemic period for Netflix, and will start airing on September 30.
In 2023, Randolph, now 71, was convicted a second time by a Las Vegas jury on charges of murdering his sixth wife, Sharon, and mechanic Mike Miller, who prosecutors said cheated after hiring Miller to kill his wife.
His first conviction in 2017 was overturned by the Nevada Supreme Court in 2020, and he was convicted again after a second trial in 2023.
The new documentary from Library Films and NBC News Studios explores the 20-year odyssey involving Randolph and one family’s efforts to bring him to justice. “Dateline” producer and veteran investigative journalist Dan Slepian, who appears in the documentary, worked with detectives and interviewed Randolph frequently over the years.
In the documentary, Randolph repeatedly denies any wrongdoing in the deaths of any of his past spouses or that he was involved in murder-for-hire schemes to collect life insurance money.
The film begins with Randolph calling 911 to inform police that his wife, Sharon, had been shot at their Las Vegas home in 2008. The moment triggers an investigation into Sharon’s death; The detectives begin to delve deeper into Randolph’s grisly past, with Slepian filming the whole thing.
Here’s what you need to know about Randolph’s six wives, what happened to each of them, and what ties their experiences with Randolph together.
“Eventually, every family came to the conclusion that he was dangerous, scary, manipulative, and destroyed their lives,” Slepian told TODAY.com.
To learn more about Thomas Randolph and his six marriages, watch Allegedly, a weekly video podcast hosted by NBC News’ Ellison Barber, on Netflix. This week’s episode features a one-on-one conversation with Slepian about his experience following the Randolph case for nearly two decades.
Kathryn Thomas
married in August 1975
Randolph’s first wife, Kathryn, is one of his two ex-wives still alive.
He currently lives in Carnation, Washington, and shares in the documentary that much of the creepy behavior that emerged in Randolph’s future relationships was evident early on.
She said she met Randolph through mutual friends when she was a senior in high school and married him when she was 18 and Randolph was 20. The former couple has two children.
“He was a very charming, witty and very intelligent person, and I believed that at first,” he says in the film. “It became really scary, not physically but psychologically. He liked to control you (and) he didn’t want you to have any friends.”
Thomas said she left him when he started seeing other women and using drugs, and recalled her face turning “red” when he told her he had enough.
He also shared two recurring themes throughout Randolph’s marriages. He had taken out a life insurance policy on her and had several guns.
“It really scared me at that point,” he says.
“You know, there was always a lot of insurance for every wife I had, and I had a lot of insurance,” Randolph says in an audio clip in the documentary.
After divorcing Randolph, she married one of her old friends, a man named Steve Thomas. In the movie, he says Randolph approached him to see if he would kill someone for money.
“Looking back, I firmly believe she was the target,” Steve Thomas says of his wife.
“This is the first time we’ve learned that Tom Randolph was trying to set someone up to commit murder,” Dean O’Kelley, the lead detective on the Las Vegas case involving Randolph’s sixth wife, says in the documentary.
Beckie Gault
married in April 1983
Randolph began a relationship with Beckie Gault while he was still with Kathy Thomas. In the documentary, Slepian says she married Gault one day after divorcing his first wife.
Beckie Gault’s aunt, Rosealie Allred, says in the film that her niece was preparing to leave Randolph and move in with Allred, and that Allred was found dead in their home in Utah in 1986. Investigators ruled it a suicide after finding a gun and a suicide note in his possession, Slepian said in the documentary.
In the documentary, Slepian says that on the night Randolph died, he was pulled over by the police for erratic driving and a bottle of vodka was found in the vehicle. The man, who spent the night in jail, said that when he returned home, he found his wife dead in her bed and called 911.
“I was in jail for about four hours before my wife killed herself,” Randolph says in an audio recording of a conversation with Slepian in the documentary. “So I didn’t do this —.”
O’Kelley, who researched Randolph’s past after the death of his sixth wife, says in the documentary that Randolph earned nearly $500,000 from the insurance policy after Gault’s death.
Two years after Randolph’s death, Eric Tarantino, a former mechanic, was arrested on first-degree murder charges after telling authorities Randolph tried to hire him to kill Beckie and he refused, O’Kelley says in the documentary, citing prosecutors in the case.
Randolph was acquitted by a jury in Utah of the murder charge depicted in the film.
In the documentary, Slepian says he pleaded guilty to tampering with a witness for trying to hire a man to kill Tarantino while Randolph was in prison, revealing the inmate was an undercover cop. He spent approximately 18 months in prison.
Leona Stapleton
married in March 1994
In the documentary, Slepian says Randolph met his third wife, Leona, in Utah, and then the two moved to Indiana together.
They divorced and he died of cancer years later.
Gayna Allmon
married in October 1995
Barely a year after his previous marriage ended, Randolph married Gayna Almon, one of Randolph’s two ex-wives still alive. In the documentary he says he met her through a personal ad in the newspaper.
“He brought flowers and I realized I was stupid enough to marry him,” she says.
In the documentary, Slepian says that after Randolph was involved in a shooting at a local bar, police in Edinburgh, Indiana, gave him information about the death of Randolph’s second wife, Beckie. The police asked him if he had taken out an insurance policy, and he said he had.
“I didn’t know about any of this,” he says in the documentary about his past. “I was completely shocked.”
O’Kelley says in the documentary that one night, while Randolph was cleaning his firearms, a bullet passed right next to where he was sitting. She says she waited until he went to work and then abandoned him completely.
Glenn Morrison, a former associate of Randolph’s, appears in the film and says Randolph offered to make “some quick money” by shooting Allmon and making it look like a robbery. Morrison said he refused.
Randolph repeatedly denies in the documentary that he ever asked anyone to commit murder for hire.
No investigation was conducted, and Randolph was never charged with any crimes involving his fourth wife.
Frances Randolph
married in August 1997
In the documentary, Slepian says Randolph met his fifth wife while he was still with his fourth wife, and then convinced Frances to leave her husband and marry him.
Frances Randolph’s sister, Carolyn Austin, says in the film that Frances has a heart condition that needs to be treated before she grows up, and Randolph encourages her to have this surgery.
According to Austin, he went to a doctor chosen by Randolph. O’Kelley says in the documentary that Frances’ condition deteriorated while she was recovering from surgery and she died.
In the film, Slepian says her death was never declared a homicide, and Randolph insists to this day that it was due to medical malpractice.
According to Slepian, Randolph collected money from life insurance policies on Frances and also received a settlement from a wrongful death lawsuit filed against the hospital.
After a chilling turn of events, Austin found a VHS video that Randolph had made for his late wife and featured in the documentary. The tape serves as a video will in which Frances explains that she wants Randolph to inherit everything from her.
“I’m making this tape so that when I die, people will know what I want,” Frances says in the video.
“One of the standout moments for me was the video testament that we saw on that VHS tape,” Slepian told TODAY.com. “You can hear him coaching.”
Sharon Causse
married in March 2007
Randolph moved to Las Vegas from Utah when he married Sharon Causse, 10 years after his previous marriage.
In the documentary, Slepian says that three months after their marriage, Causse made a will leaving almost everything to Randolph and took out three life insurance policies totaling about $350,000.
The two had been married for more than a year when Randolph called 911 in May 2008 to report that his wife had been shot by an intruder. Randolph said he shot and killed the man in self-defense, according to audio of the 911 call in the documentary.
He told the 911 operator that the alleged intruder was a man Randolph knew, named Mike Miller, who worked for him as a mechanic.
Prosecutors declined to charge Randolph with any crime at the time.
Causse’s daughter, Colleen Beyer, describes in the film that she was afraid of Randolph, who informed him that Sharon would not inherit her property after Beyer was named administrator of her mother’s will. According to footage in the documentary, when she changed the locks on her home, Randolph emerged to confront her but was stopped at the door by O’Kelley.
Eight months after his sixth wife’s death, Randolph was charged with two counts of murder with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of his wife and Miller. However, it took 8.5 years for him to go to trial, as the film shows him constantly hiring new lawyers to delay the case.
A jury initially convicted him in 2017 of two counts of murder with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to commit murder, and he was sentenced to death.
However, the Nevada Supreme Court overturned the guilty verdict in 2020. According to NBC affiliate KSNV, the court ruled that the jury should not have been allowed to hear “prior evidence of wrongdoing” about Randolph’s previous trial in 1988 on murder charges in the death of his wife, Beckie.
After winning his appeal, Randolph faced another trial in 2023 in Clark County, Nevada, and was convicted a second time by a jury on charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. His most recent appeal was rejected by the Nevada Supreme Court in September 2026.
Beyer testified at both Las Vegas hearings in hopes of obtaining justice for her mother. The ordeal lasted so long that the daughter she was pregnant with when Slepian began filming with him was 15 when Randolph was convicted a second time by the jury.