Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Woman uses eye drops to poison lover, steals idea from 'Wedding Crashers' movie. Is justice served?

Episode Date: February 17, 2020

Over three days, Lana Clayton laces her husband's drinks with eye drops, mimicking a scene from the movie, "Wedding Crashers."Millionaire Steven Clayton died painfully, with no way to call for help. The former nurse pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and tampering with a food or drug. What is her sentence?Joining Nancy Grace today to discuss the case: Jason Oshins: New York Defense Attorney Cloyd Steiger: 36 years with Seattle Police Department, 22-year homicide detective & author of "Seattle's Forgotten Serial Killer: Gary Gene Grant"  Joe Scott Morgan: Forensics expert, Professor of Forensics at Jacksonville State University & author of "Blood Beneath My Feet" Caryn Stark: NYC Psychologist  Kristi O'Connor: Reporter for WBTV Charlotte Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Death by eyedrops? Did a South Carolina woman murder her husband by putting eyedrops in his drinking water? That's making me look at my bottle of water that sits by the bed every night in a whole new light. Did this woman, Lana Clayton, very pretty lady, very pretty. Did she kill her husband? Not try to kill him, but murder him by eyedrop. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.

During our search of the home, we found several bottles of the eye drops. Police say Clayton admitted to poisoning her husband's water with the drops over the course of three days before his death. Neighbors say Clayton, an active member of her local church, held her husband's funeral in their very own backyard last month before investigators determined his cause of death. This morning, Clayton remains behind bars without bond, facing murder and unlawful tampering of food charges. Her husband's family speaking out, telling ABC News they are shocked and mortified at the cause of Stephen's death.

All of our family and friends knew how much he loved his wife, Lana, and how devoted he was to her. Such a shocking story. And under South Carolina law, this case qualifies for the death penalty. But prosecutors say it is far too early to decide whether to seek that against Lana. Clayton, you are hearing our friends at ABC, Good Morning America, Amy Robach. What happened to the husband of Lana Clayton, Stephen Clayton, dead at the young age of 64? At first, it was a conundrum. How did he die? Take a listen to our friends at Inside Edition.

This is Megan Alexander. The couple lived in an enclave of million-dollar homes on Lake Wiley, South Carolina. The funeral was held in the backyard before toxicology reports showed he had been poisoned. Frank Keefe and Ken Sanford were at the funeral. She seemed stoic, I guess is a word. There was no evidence that she was grieving. That's part of the mystery of all of this. He always appeared to be happy, go lucky, grateful for his success, grateful to be alive, grateful to be in the community. And that's all the more reason it's so stunning to us i think wow joining

me an all-star panel jason oceans new york defense attorney joining us cloyd steiger seattle pd homicide detective author seattle's forgotten serial killer gary gene grant you can find him at cloydsteiger.com joseph scott morgan of forensics, Jacksonville State University, author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon. Karen Stark, psychologist, joining us from Manhattan, Karen Stark dot com. But right now, straight out to WBT, Charlotte investigative reporter, Christy O'Connor. Christy, take me to the crime scene. What happened? This was about a year and a half ago or so in a very wealthy neighborhood in Lake Wiley on the lakefront. And what investigators first responded to appeared to be a natural death. They found Stephen Clayton at the bottom of the staircase in their million-dollar home.

And his wife, Lana, said that he had been sick for the last few days, suffered from vertigo. So it appeared to be a rather natural death. Take a listen to our friends at WBT Charlotte. She said Stephen suffered from vertigo and was home sick. She went to mow the lawn and when she returned, she says he was face down in the foyer near the foot of the stairs. It's not the first time Lana called 911 over her husband's well-being. In 2016, she told police a crossbow accidentally went off when she picked it up, hitting her husband in the back of the head. He was okay and she wasn't in trouble. Mr. Clayton actually said that it was an accident. That probably won't have any factor on our case. In that same report, Lana claimed her husband was

mentally abusive but never hit her. It does make you wonder if there's another side to the story. More than a month after her husband's death, another call is made to deputies, this time by a neighbor who found suicide notes from Lana. The police report says Lana was found unconscious but alive in her bed and fumes from natural gas filled the room. Wow. You know, that was our friend Christy O'Connor at WBT reporting. Did I just understand, Christy O'Connor, that before this, she shot her husband in the head with a crossbow? You don't see that every day, Christy. No, you do not.

That was two years prior to this incident. To Joseph Scott Morgan, Professor of Forensics, Jacksonville State University, Joe Scott, it's kind of hard for me to believe that you accidentally shoot somebody with a crossbow. I mean, doesn't it take a lot of pressure to pull back a crossbow? I mean, we've all seen Brave. I assume you have, Joe Scott, where she was the expert at crossbow. True, she was an animated character. But my point is is everybody on the jury has seen it 50 times just like i have because of my daughter lucy crossbows or bow and arrow in that case are very difficult not only to to do for women you have to be uh fit enough to get enough pull on it to make it work.

I know that oh too well from scout camp with my daughter. So Joe Scott, it's really hard for me to imagine that shooting somebody in the head, that's quite a coincidence for an accident, you shoot him in the back of the head. How does that work, Joe Scott? Yeah, I think that it's kind of interesting. and no, my thought didn't run to brave. I was thinking of Darryl from The Walking Dead. You know the in order to engage this weapon, it takes a tremendous amount of strength just to load the thing.

All right, you many of these things you have to put kind of the tip down the floor and then pull back with both hands in order to lock the bowstring back itself and then you have to load it with not an arrow but they call it a bolt you put the bolt in place in this little groove and then you engage the weapon the fact that someone would sit around

with a loaded crossbow in the first place is kind of odd and the fact that you would actually strike them in the back of the head well wait a minute though no wait wait wait joe scott joe scott it's not just sitting around with a loaded crossbow because first of all don't you have to load it? You have to put the arrow in there. Then you have to pull it back. You're not just sitting there holding it in your lap. So how does a crossbow, quote, go off by itself? No, it doesn't. You've got to put the bow in there.

You've got to pull it back in just the right way. And I don't know how in the world they came up with accident. But when you've got the victim agreeing it's an accident, I mean, what can you do? Jason Oceans, your defense attorney, I mean, she shoots her husband with a crossbow, and then the husband says, oh, yeah, that was an accident. How the heck can that be an accident? But with your victim agreeing with your defendant, what can you do, Jason? What's wrong with him?

He just got shot with a crossbow, and he thinks it's an accident as well? And just what Scott Morgan was talking about, the tension on that pool, they vary. They could be very, very difficult, almost like a you know a a football player to pull one of those uh based on the uh the tension weight um they can be much lighter and what they're tipped with uh you know arrows uh could be used jason did you just say did you just say the pressure could be lighter you still have to load it and pull the darn thing back. Didn't you see, Rave, how many times do I have to keep saying this? I agree.

I'm just giving a little clarity to how perhaps an accident could happen just to discuss it. But clearly, there was no accident in looking back at it. Her husband is troubled to think that it was as well. Well, I don't know about that. He may not want to accept it, just like, you know, you think your spouse is cheating, but you don't want to know. I mean, Lloyd Steiger, for Pete's sake, obviously the crossbow incident was not an accident, but I guess the husband did not want to admit his wife shot him in the head.

I guess not. This is almost like a comedy that, oh yeah, well, sorry, let's not bicker about who shot who and things like that. And they skip past it. I don't know. I think she should have probably been convicted of that one. Man, you're not kidding. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Prosecutors say motivated by greed, nurse Lana Clayton secretly poisoned her wealthy husband by putting eye drops in his water for three days, taking his computer and phone so he couldn't call

for help. He lay there helpless Thursday and Friday, waking up periodically from his misery, thirsty, drinking more water. Lana claimed her husband, Stephen Clayton, was abusive and that she poisoned him only once, hoping to punish, not kill him. I did impulsively put the visor in Stephen's brain and I did it with the intent to make him sicker than comfortable. Her attorney says she expected the result to be like this scene from the movie Wedding Crashers, where Bradley Cooper's character gets sick after drinking eye drops. Oh, no. In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Stephen's sister Rosemary says the reality was much darker. I think my brother was screaming for his life. You're hearing Diane Makedo at ABC GMA, motivated by greed, took him days to actually die. Welcome back. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime

Stories. Quickly, Joe Scott Morgan, when you do the panels of toxicology at the crime lab, I doubt that Visine is something you'd normally test for, which may be why she almost got away with it. Yeah, you're absolutely right, Nancy. This is not something we would normally go in looking for. And the half-life, what they refer to as the half-life of the drug, is very short. It only lasts about six hours in the system. So you have to look to other symptomology and then dig back in and see what is this consistent with.

So it requires quite a bit of medical detective work. Back to Christy O'Connor joining us from WBT in Charlotte. So Christy, question, they've got it all. They're living in this million-dollar mansion at Wealthy Lake Wiley right there on the waterfront. What was her motive? Well, according to investigators, they believe she was motivated by money. Stephen Clayton had a successful business in health rehabilitation. They believe his house was worth about $1.2 million, his property, and then another million worth of assets. He did not have any children. And a few weeks after his death, our news partners at the Herald report that she filed to become a beneficiary to his estate. Take a listen to our friends at GMA.

Stephen Clayton was found dead on July 2018 at the bottom of the stairs of his Lake Whaley home. Police initially thought he'd suffered a fatal fall or a heart attack, but Rosemary says Lana immediately started acting strangely. Financial records, papers, artwork, mementos, everything that you can think of that she could throw into the fire pit, she threw into the fire pit, including their bed. She threw their bed into the fire pit. She says her brother's will also seemingly vanished. So your brother told you he had a will, your nephew saw the will, and now the will is gone. That's right. And nobody knows what happened to it. After getting toxicology results, officers called to the Clayton house reported finding several suicide notes,

the house full of gas, and Lana Clayton lying on her bed, breathing but unconscious. After recovering in the hospital, she was arrested in Stephen's death. So let me understand Christy O'Connor, WBT, after his death, she pulled a fake suicide stunt? Is that what we're hearing? That's correct. That was one day before she was arrested for his murder. So I don't know if she caught on that they may be suspecting her as a suspect in this case. But yes, a day before she was arrested, she tried to kill herself in their home. So burning the bed they shared together, burning family mementos, it just seems to get worse and worse. But I still don't understand this. Karen Stark, New York psychologist, they had everything they could want. A beautiful home,

the lakefront property. They could have anything that they wanted. So why would greed be the motivation in a case like this? Nancy, I'm not sure that it was just greed. And this woman, I don't know that she had real feelings for him. Take a look. Here we've been talking. You show me and tell me about the books for your kids that you save all of these mementos. And she is burning everything. So she clearly doesn't want to think about him,

doesn't want to remember anything. She's burning their marriage bed. Something is very wrong, and I don't know that she's able to have authentic feelings. You know what's interesting to Joseph Scott Morgan, this chemical found in Visine and all other eye drops, that what it does is constrict the vessels, the blood vessels in your eyeballs, so it gets rid of red because it constricts the vessels so the blood can't pass through them anymore. That blood passes through, then no other blood can get in like when you cauterize a vein so it's tetrahydrozoline is my understanding i wonder what led them to actually test for that joe scott i think it's probably going to be the symptomology uh nancy because

there are very distinctive things that you look for, including, you know, one of the things that kind of happens is that the individual will go into respiratory failure. And, you know, I was reflecting back, you were mentioning, you were talking about, you know, how this guy died earlier and the fact that he would have just kind of slipped off in that three-day period. He was. He may or may not have had an awareness, but can you imagine being kind of, you know, kind of weighted down to your bed, you know, by this medical condition and you're screaming inside your head, you can't get relief. They're talking about that he woke up. And let me throw in this little bonus. Interestingly enough,

you're not going to find this most of the time on, say, a standard blood panel, but here's a real interesting thing. More than likely, when they went back and they did the tox, they revisited what's referred to as the vitreous fluid, and they drew this directly out of his eye, and it's something obviously you can only do in a post-mortem state. And we do this in the morgue. And though it is not numerically specific, it gives you an idea, almost like the rings in a tree trunk, when you cut across it, what was going on at a particular time. And it'll hold on to this data more so than blood or urine. And so it holds on for a longer period of time. That is what I think, this is where they probably got

this reading for tetrahedralysine. Ah, from pulling the vitreous fluid from the eye. Take a listen to our friends at GMA. Prosecutors say Laina Clayton admitted to killing her husband, Steven, by spiking his water over three days. She revealed that she used the liquid, which is normally like eye drops, put it in his food. Authorities say the 64-year-old died after ingesting toxic levels of tetrahydrozoline.

They put it in his food. Authorities say the 64-year-old died after ingesting toxi The key ingredient in som sprays. Doctors say when doses, it can cause respi and even a coma. The bizar quiet suburban neighborho like that. That's crazy.

saying they are shocked a mortified. All of our family and friends knew how much he loved his wife, Lena, and how devoted he was to her. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. During our search of the home, we found several bottles of the eye drops. Police say Clayton admitted to poisoning her husband's water with the drops over the course of three days before his death. Neighbors say Clayton, an active member of her local church, held her husband's funeral in their very own backyard last month before investigators determined his cause of death. This morning, Clayton remains behind bars without bond, facing murder and unlawful tampering of food charges. Her husband's family speaking out,

telling ABC News they are shocked and mortified at the cause of Stephen's death. All of our family and friends knew how much he loved his wife, Lana, and how devoted he was to her. Such a shocking story. And under South Carolina law, this case qualifies for the death penalty. But prosecutors say it is far too early to decide whether to seek that against Lana Clayton. Hearing our friend GMA's Amy Robach. Wow. Okay, back to you, Joe Scott Morgan. We are talking about Lana Clayton. Lana Clayton with a background in nursing. Her husband, apparently the money man with many, many branches of a health care facility.

First, she shoots him with a crossbow in the head while he's asleep in his bedroom. He didn't fall asleep in a lounge chair in the backyard or a hammock near her archery set. She was practicing the crossbow in the bedroom. And for some reason, Karen Stark, New York psychologist joining us, you can find her at karenstark.com. He convinced himself that that was an accident. How do you do that? That's called denial. That's denial, Nancy. That's somebody who really doesn't want to admit that this love that they have between them is actually dangerous and he could be dead.

He's so attached to her that he's going to go along with some kind of story that includes she accidentally killed him in the bedroom. It doesn't make any sense, but people do it all the time. Karen, Karen, Karen. I know that you are a sophisticated cosmopolitan New Yorker, but I assume that you, like everybody else in the country, listens to country music. I'm sure you've heard the song Denial. It ain't just a river in Egypt, because you may want to use that with some

of your clients, your patients. How do you get yourself in such deep denial that you can reason away getting shot in the head with a crossbow in your bedroom, in your sleep? Well, there's a disconnect, Nancy, when there's something that you believe so strongly, and then there's evidence to show you that it's not true, but your mind can't grasp that fact. And so our unconscious just says, oh no, she's right. It was an accident because you can't make the two things connect. You have to believe that she's in love with you. And that's unsure what happened to him. He could not accept the fact that she was trying to kill him. I know it sounds very strange, but happens all the time. It does sound strange. And I think it does happen

all the time. Joseph Scott Morgan, author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon, Death Investigator, Joe Scott, two things. Number one, unlike a gun where you can tell from gunshot powder residue whether it was shot within, say, three feet, 36 inches, or if they're stippling around the entry wound, you know, if it's point blank with a crossbow, you don't know if she was two inches from his head when she shot it. That's my first question and the second question is what does ODing overdosing on eye drops do to your body first off to the crossbow you're right on the money hey you're right on target Nancy there is no way it's it's what we refer to as an indeterminate distance. You can't because, as you stated, there's nothing coming out of a muzzle.

Now, to the eye drops, think about it in two terms. There's two things. There's what's referred to as a vasodilator, which means are used in the nostrils, it is a vasoconstrictor. And so what happens is it tightens down the vessels and it can lead to hypertension, severe hypertension, very, very quickly. This is a highly lethal, lethal substance, and it doesn't take very much. It just takes a very small amount and it can literally send the individual in worst case scenario into a coma. Some people out there even have attempted to use this drug in order to initiate date rape. That means it gets the person into an unconscious state. They fall into a coma and they can take advantage of the individual.

Wow. I'm also like completely intrigued with the fact that she held the funeral in the backyard. Jason Oceans, I thought that was against the law. I'm not sure what state this was in, Nancy. You'd have to refresh me on that. South Carolina. South Carolina. Yeah. Wait, Dave Mack, Dave Mack, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter. Did she hold the funeral in the backyard or did she want to hold the funeral in the backyard? Because I am totally burying David in the backyard.

What? She did bury him in the backyard. The funeral was held in the backyard in North Carolina and South Carolina. I don't know how many other states. Most of those allow for that. There are certain uh things certain accommodations have to be made but not as uncommon as you would think okay i'm just drinking that in i'm trying to absorb that that yeah because nancy just just thinking about it wanting to exhume the body for anything i mean just just thinking the restrictions to you know, my backyard or access or anything else that could, you know, alter the state of the of the body. I did not know you could just bury a body.

Nancy, I remember as a little girl, I hear you, Joe Scott, way out in the country. We would drive by a house getting back and forth to somewhere. And a guy had buried, made a cemetery in his yard because his wife died. He was completely, well, we think he was completely in love. And he had built kind of a monument to her with a wrought iron fence around her grave. And he would go out there and sit with her every day, kind of like Forrest Gump. Okay. And even as a little girl girl I would like shrink away in the back seat of the car when we drove by because something was just wrong with it uh okay so Joe Scott Morgan she shoots him with a crossbow he lives she allegedly poisons him with eye drops he dies

and then she just digs a hole and sticks him in the backyard. Can nobody see that pattern right there? Is it just me that something's very wrong? Well, you know, again, what Jason was saying, you want to maintain control, and I think that this goes to this. This might be an issue that Karen could address, but I've got to tell you, as far as burying somebody, there's family plots all over the place, and this is the reality. The only thing you need is actually a

burial permit and and this is another curious thing if if i remember correctly i'm thinking that bodies do not have to be embalmed uh you can literally place the body directly into the crypt after it's been dug the only consideration are things like we'll refer to as water tables you don't want to pollute the water table by burying a body back there. So other than that, hey, it's free and clear. Take a listen to our friend at Inside Edition, Megan Alexander. The couple lived in an enclave of million-dollar homes on Lake Wylie, South Carolina. The funeral was held in the backyard before toxicology reports showed he had been poisoned.

Frank Keefe and Ken Sanford were at the funeral. She seemed stoic, I guess is a word. There was no evidence that she was grieving. That's part of the mystery of all of this. He always appeared to be happy, go lucky, grateful for his success, grateful to be alive, grateful to be in the community. And that's all the more reason it's so stunning to us, I think. You know, Jason Oceans, New York defense attorney. You've seen a lot of killers and you've defended a lot of them. But what type of predator is Lana Clayton? It's an interesting question, Nancy. I mean, clearly the imbalance and the act, as Karen Stark described it, of burning everything. And the bed really wasn't, you know, it wasn't where, you know, the the act of poisoning occurred. So it just goes a lot deeper. It's it's a little pathological. You know, all the evidence sort of points to a happy marriage and even from the victim or her husband. But internally, she's boiling. I mean, you know, the bow and arrow and trying to take him out then. I mean, she wanted him gone and couldn't wait for it.

And yet everything around anecdotally points to happiness. You know, it's a little... Well, catch this. I've got a new fact to throw in here cloyd steiger seattle pd homicide detective author seattle's forgotten serial killer gary gene grant catch this little known fact the victim in this case stephen clayton uh was was he didn't he eschewed western medicine she knew that he would not go have his blood drawn absolutely not and he had been sick for on and off for years before his death like he'd have vertigo he'd have this he'd have that and he wouldn't get an answer. He was visiting an acupuncturist frequently. He couldn't seem to get well, but he did not want traditional Western medicine to

figure out what was wrong. Bottom line, she knew he would not get any of his blood drawn to figure it out. What about that, Cloyd Steiger? Well, you know, that tells you. I would venture to guess then that she has probably tried other methods to poison him before, which made him sick. And she just kept doing it until she found the one that worked. You're right. She has that to hide behind.

She knew he wouldn't get her blood drawn, and she was hoping that it wouldn't show up in autopsy. She didn't think through this as well as she thought she did. To Karen Stark, joining us from Manhattan, there's many ways to kill, many ways to die. But what about the mindset of someone that uses poison? Well, what it's saying is that they don't want to be detected, Nancy. It's a lot more subtle than using a crossbow if you try to poison somebody.

And what you hope is that no one's ever going to be able to tell that you were trying to kill the person. So they're not really able to be outwardly violent. They need to do it in a way that they're not making direct contact with the other person. They're not strangling them or knifing them. I just don't get the motive of greed. I'm looking at their home. It's actually modeled after the George Washington Mount Vernon estate. I mean, and neighbors thought she was a, quote, sweet lady. It's amazing how you can trick everybody around you. So someone that would poison and stand by and watch their victim suffer for days and days, a true black widow.

Although the wife, Lana Clayton, claims she did not want to kill her husband, the reality is she already shot him with a crossbow. He had been sick on and off for years with inexplicable illnesses that never got cured that would come and go. It's very difficult to believe she stood by for three days watching him suffer, then positioned his body at the bottom of a staircase and said she only meant to hurt him. Again, the reality, that is an aggravated assault. If someone dies during an aggravated assault, it's still felony murder. Back to Chrissy O'Connor, reporter W there in charlotte she was initially charged with murder what has happened in the case well she was charged with murder and could have faced the death penalty

if that went to trial but they ultimately made a plea deal and that was reduced during that plea deal to voluntary manslaughter, and then she also was facing the charge of tampering with food, so that significantly reduced the potential consequences she faced between 2 and 50 years because she admitted guilt to poisoning her husband's water with Visine. So she takes a plea on a reduced charge of manslaughter. What was the sentence? 25 years. Wow, that doesn't really seem like enough. Take a listen to WCNC NBC's Charlotte reporter, Tanya Mendez. Lana Clayton wound up sentenced to 25 years, but this was a

very long plea hearing. In fact, the longest one that the judge said that he had ever been a part of. Ultimately, he said that this was a case that he really wrestled with. The two sides were worlds apart in how they saw what happened. What a tangled web we weave. Ms. Clayton. You sure have tangled this one up in the most bizarre case, a judge says he's ever seen Lana Clayton, the Lake Wiley woman accused of poisoning her husband with eyedrops back in 2018. Did you let him suffer for three days? Pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, sentenced to 25 years.

She told the judge she didn't mean to kill her husband. She just wanted to make him sick. After finding out the Visine was a cause of death, I attempted to take my life as well. I couldn't live with the thought that he did such a terrible thing. What about it, Cloyd Steiger? Well, you know, I see this all the time when people die and they get a 25-year sentence or an 18-year sentence. You think, is that what somebody's life is worth? I mean, that person will never get out of their sentence. They don't get parole from death.

So, you know, obviously I'm biased that way. I tend to lean heavily toward the victims. Take a listen to our friends at WBT Charlotte. It's a storyline you might have only heard in a movie. Out of the many homicide cases that I've handled, this one probably takes the cake as far as being bizarre. 53-year-old Lena Clayton admitted to spiking her h water with a bottle of vi of I seen was by watching the cause of discomfort a

did more than cause a lit Stephen Clayton was found of a staircase in their p Wiley home in the summer of 2018. Stevens' family and friends say Lena had them fooled. The vision of what a land-assumed VA nurse from Oklahoma looked like is what we saw, sweet and good.

Bottom line, a 25-year sentence? She'll probably be out in about 12 years. Her husband dead. And I guess the rest of his family gets that waterfront estate. So what was it all for? Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.