True Crime Vault: What the Little Girl Saw
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What tragic event is at the center of this true crime story?
Welcome to the 2020 True Crime Vault, where heart-stopping headlines come to life.
We don't tell people we love them often enough. And if you learn anything from this, you don't know how much day you have ever, ever. 911. Help me, help me. My wife is dead. So tell me about that night, September 28th, 2015. You were on duty. Yeah, I was on duty. In route up there, I just ended up feeling something was wrong. So you weren't really prepared for what you were about to find?
No. No. Okay, where's she at? Who?
Who? Okay.
One day you wake up and a music stops and their hugs fall out. And these poor kids went to bed and woke up and they had lost everything.
I got a female, mid-30s, early 40s.
Her face is completely beaten in.
She definitely fought for her life and her children's life.
She fought to her last breath. to save their life.
Family and friends are mourning the loss of the mother of two.
My daughter said there was a robber in the house and she saw them.
And she said she saw the man kill mom.
He came in, went in my mom's room and started hitting her.
She had seen her mother killed, beaten to death. Everyone says the same thing. This couldn't happen in my town. This couldn't happen to me. Well, yes. Yes, it can.
In the southern tier of New York, we border on Pennsylvania. It's kind of a rural area.
We have the Finger Lakes here. When you look at them on a map, it looks like someone placed their hand on the topography of this area and pressed them in, and that's what was left was the lakes. Summertime, it's a very big tourist area. We get a lot of people to come through and stay at the lake, also hit our wineries.
When the weather gets cold and the days get shorter, there's a little less to do outdoors. And I think when the Jackals arrived in 2000, it really gave the community, the town, something to rally around on those winter nights. Jackals played in the United Hockey League, about two steps below the NHL.
They were superstars. Everybody was in awe over these guys.
The Agitator Award goes to Tom Clayton.
Clayton coming back at him. You could say Tom Clayton was a local celebrity.
Tom was chippy, aggressive. His job was to go out there and instigate trouble. He would slash other players. He would just try to get them agitated to the point where they would draw a penalty. Get one of their top guys off the ice for two minutes, five minutes.
It's a job done. You always want to fight someone. Just like when you're a little kid and you get so mad you just want to fight.
Clayton is most certainly one of the Jackals' biggest antagonizers on and off the ice.
You might remember a certain shaving treatment today. Was that Clayton?
Yes. Tom's personality off the rink was the exact same. He was aggressive. He was sure of himself.
He and some other Jackals were at a bar. And he got up on a bar and he stripped down to nothing and danced in front of the bar.
There was kind of a scuffle that ensued over some of those clothes that went missing. Some punches were thrown. I think definitely it was an embarrassing moment for the team.
And they would say, oh, that's just Thomas. When he would walk into a bar, what was that like? He would have a harem of girls following him. I mean, he didn't have to buy a drink anywhere he went. He wouldn't have to pay for dinner. And one of the women who caught Tom Clayton's eye was Kelly Stage. She was my old sunshine. We actually lived west Elmira.
My father was the fire chief there for many years. Kelly was definitely outgoing, spontaneous, sassy, definitely sassy. Didn't put up with anything. She loved music. We would drive around in the car. We would ride and listen to music and sing.
As a young woman, Kelly loved hanging out with her friends and she loved country music. So they would often head to Nashville to party at the Country Music Awards Festival.
She loved Luke Bryan.
It was unlike anything we had experienced, you know? We just lived it up for maybe a week.
What were her hopes and dreams as a young woman?
Well, she had... initially gone to school to become a teacher and she came home and then she's like, I'm moving to Vegas.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What tragic event is at the center of this true crime story?
0:00–14:33
2
Who were the key individuals involved in the murder of Kelley Clayton?
14:33–27:53
3
What role did Thomas Clayton's daughter play in the investigation?
27:53–41:18
4
How did the police initially respond to the 911 call?
41:18–51:36
5
What evidence led to the arrest of Thomas Clayton?
51:36–1:20:29
6
What were the circumstances surrounding Michael Beard's confession?
1:20:29–1:23:55