Sins & Survivors: A Las Vegas True Crime Podcast - Tom Randolph The Black Widower - Part 3 - The Murder of Beckie Gault

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

Tom Randolph’s marriage to his second wife, Beckie Gault, was filled with manipulation, addiction, and escalating danger. Beckie’s fate followed a disturbing pattern seen in Randolph’s other relationships. As detectives connected the dots, they unraveled a shocking murder-for-hire scheme, an eerily staged crime scene, and a failed attempt to silence a key witness. Was justice served, or did Randolph once again slip through the cracks? https://sinspod.co/blackwidowersourcesDomestic Violence Resourceshttp://sinspod.co/resourcesClick here to become a member of our Patreon!https://sinspod.co/patreonVisit and join our Patreon now and access our ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content & schwag!Apple Podcast Subscriptionshttps://sinspod.co/appleWe're now offering premium membership benefits on Apple Podcast Subscriptions! On your mobile deviceLet us know what you think about the episodehttps://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/2248640/open_sms Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sins-survivors-a-las-vegas-true-crime-podcast--6173686/support.

To listen ad-free, visit Zinspod.co slash subscribe. Starting at $2.99 a month, you'll also get access to our exclusive bonus content episodes when you join through Patreon or Apple subscriptions. Thanks for supporting the show! When the story around Sharon Randolph's murder seemed to be increasingly full of holes, the investigation into Tom Randolph led investigators to find out about the five previous wives that Tom Randolph had had and sent them down the rabbit hole trying to learn more about his history and to interview the two women who had lived through being married to Tom Randolph.

Tom Randolph's second marriage to Becky Galt is a much longer story than the others and is just as tragic and horrifying. It's truly hard to fathom what this man has demonstrated that he is capable of. As before, you'll recognize his patterns of abuse and manipulation that he is somehow so adept at. Hi, and welcome to Sins and Survivors, a Las Vegas true crime podcast where we focus on domestic violence, missing persons, and unsolved cases. I'm your host, Sean, and with me, as always, is the one and only John. I am the only John in the room. This week, we are bringing you part three of our four-part series on the

black widower, Thomas Randolph. If you haven't listened to parts one and two, we recommend you do that before listening to this one. We talked about Tom Randolph's wives numbers one, three, four, and five last week, and the patterns are pretty clear. His first and fourth wives survived to tell the tale and became important sources of information for the detectives to establish their understanding of his patterns. Do you want to start us off and tell us about his second wife, Becky Galt? Of course. Rebecca Becky Ray Galt was born on December 28, 1957, in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her mom's name was Martha Galt, and she had three siblings, two brothers, Tony and Stephen Galt, and a sister, Denise McGraw, and at least one cousin.

Her cousin said that Becky was a jokester, a prankster, and was always the life of the party. She was fun to be around, and she loved spending time with her family. She said she always had time to chat if you were having a bad day, and she said she was the rock of the family group. As you'd expect, Tom married Becky shortly after they met. In fact, they were married on April 18, 1982, the very day that Tom's divorce from Catherine became final. At the time, Tom was 27, and Becky was 25. The two seemed happy at first, according to Becky's family members, but of course, that would all soon change. Tom was out of work, and you can probably guess what he did to bring in money. He started selling drugs, as he always did. You can

start to see why newspaper articles on Tom simply refer to him as Drug Dealer Tom Randolph, because that's what he was. And as we've said, that's the only job he ever held consistently. When the money got tight, Tom got more and more abusive toward Becky. Catherine, his first wife, told investigators that Tom was a control freak and was a master at psychological abuse. His plan always seemed to be to break his wife down and make her feel worthless about absolutely everything, likely to make her easier to control. That's a common thing in relationships marked with domestic abuse. It obviously doesn't need

to be physical abuse. It can be psychological abuse, financial abuse, or a combination. According to Becky's family, Tom went even further, though. We know he was a lifelong drug dealer, but apparently psychologically torturing Becky wasn't enough. He also got her addicted to drugs, including cocaine. With money scarce, Tom turned to Becky's aunt Rosalie for a loan. Apparently the drug business wasn't quite enough to sustain his lifestyle. He got a loan from her aunt, but instead of paying their bills, he paid the life insurance premium on the life insurance policy that he took out on Becky right after they were married. Reporting on the size of the life insurance policy varies

with some saying it was a $250,000 policy and some saying that it was as high as $530,000. Becky grew depressed and miserable, and she was afraid of what Tom might do if she left. In her desperation, Becky reached out to Catherine, Tom's first wife, for advice. They knew each other because they'd crossed paths when dropping off Justice and Krista. Catherine told detectives that Becky had a lot of anxiety and fear about Tom, and she told Becky that she needed to get out, that she needed to make a plan, but warned her not to let Tom know what the plan was. She also said that she knew Tom would get enraged if he knew the two were talking to each other, and she expressed that she was genuinely frightened for Becky. In interviews,

Tom talked about Becky in a way that makes it clear how he thought of her. It's the type of description that might be taken as something other than the backhanded insult that it was. He said, Becky was whatever I wanted her to be. I would call up and say, Becky, I want steak tonight, and I want you to dress up as a clown to serve it to me. And she would say, do you mean a sexy clown, or do you want me to have big shoes and a honk honk nose? She didn't deserve me cheating on her. At this time, Tom was much younger, and this was only his second wife, of course. And as things were getting worse, he came up with a plan that he'd repeat at least two more times in his life. He decided to find a person he thought he could groom to

murder Becky. Tom hired Eric Tarantino in the summer of 1984 as a handyman, initially knowing that he wanted to groom him to be his flunky slash hitman in training. As with the others, he introduced the idea of killing Becky slowly. According to Eric, Tom would actually sing songs about killing Becky, like the extremely weird song by Rod Stewart called Foolish Behavior, which is about someone killing their wife and making it look like suicide and getting away with it. Tom had promised Tarantino a portion of the life insurance money for killing Becky. And eventually, they only talked about killing Becky. In fact, if Tarantino tried to talk about anything else, Tom would get enraged.

Throughout the summer, the two brainstormed a variety of horrific ways they could have Tarantino murder Becky and get away with it. They thought of things like setting fire to the couple's trailer with Becky inside, killing her in a car crash, taking a camping trip together, parking the car on a hill, and then once Becky was asleep in the tent, allowing the car to roll over her while she slept. A hunting accident, pushing Becky off a cliff into a raging river where she couldn't be recovered, switching her medications, knocking her out with chloroform and making it look as if she'd fallen in a bathtub. In the end, Tom decided that staging a burglary was the way to go. The

plan would be for Eric to kill her in the burglary and then shoot him in the leg or rear end to really sell it. In the end, Eric couldn't and wouldn't go through with it, and he told Tom that. As you'd expect, that did not go over well. He told Tom that he wouldn't do it, and Tom freaked out, severely beating him. He beat him so badly that he had an injured spleen, torn back muscles, and other serious injuries. Tom then put Tarantino in his car and drove him to his wife's workplace, continuing the beating and then just leaving him in the parking lot. Randolph then walked into his wife's workplace and dropped off the bloody gloves he was wearing as he beat Eric on the counter where she worked.

Tarantino had to be hospitalized, of course, but after his release, just a few hours later, Tom found him and beat him again and stole his pain medications. He threatened to kill Tarantino if he told anyone about the beatings. You might wonder how Tom got away with this, but remember Tom was extremely charming and grew up in the area, so he had great relationships with the police and judges throughout Clearfield. Eric Tarantino was just another victim of Tom Randolph's violence and manipulation. One officer compared Tarantino's experience to battered women's syndrome,

noting that today we'd call that phenomenon trauma response to domestic violence. Eric felt powerless in his relationship with Tom, fearing for his life. He had no one to turn to and nowhere to go. That really parallels the experience of many people in Tom's life. Given what we know about Becky, it isn't surprising that Eric grew to care about her and obviously was repulsed by the idea of murdering her for Tom for insurance money. He ended up warning her that Tom was planning to kill her and then skip town, going all the way to New Hampshire, fearing Tom's reprisal. On November 7th, 1986, Eric Tarantino got a call with news he was dreading. He was told that Becky was dead,

allegedly from suicide from a self-inflicted single gunshot wound to the head. According to Tom, Becky had threatened to kill herself the night before she died. Allegedly, Tom wouldn't allow her to go with him to Salt Lake City to buy cocaine, which they were both addicted to. He claimed that he found her in the bed with the pistol in her hand, neatly tucked in the covers. Tom said he moved the gun, no idea why, and then chose to drive to his father's house to call 911, made another call to his attorney, and the police found him at his father's house. There was a suicide note recovered, but Becky's family outright rejected the idea that she would ever commit suicide. And regarding Tom saying that she had been addicted to drugs, they responded to

that she was, but Tom got her addicted to drugs. They also pointed out that she had seen a substance abuse counselor the day before she died. Allegedly, the counselor said Tom had called and said of Becky that people will get what's coming to them. Tom collected $250,000 in insurance money just 13 days later. In testimony in 2017, Tom had this to say about Becky's alleged suicide. The last I talked to her, I gave her the ultimatum, said, I'm so sick of and tired of hearing about how you want to kill yourself. If you want to kill yourself, do it, do it and put it out, everybody out of their misery. And I had to do was just hug her and say, I love you.

Everything will be okay. I think I said there's some rope downstairs from, you know, I repelled and stuff. So I think there's some of my rope downstairs. Maybe you just hang yourself. A medical examiner ruled the death a suicide, but allowed for the possibility of a homicide. Investigators, including Detective Scott Connolly, were suspicious of a few items that weren't adding up and continued the investigation into what they called other factors. Thomas was charged with Becky's murder as first-degree criminal homicide on December 8, 1988, more than two years after her death. He was also charged with a second-degree felony charge

of filing a false insurance claim. If found guilty, he could potentially face the death penalty. You'll understand why in a minute, but the records on this trial are quite scarce. The trial was presided over by a judge named Rodney Page, and the star witness for the prosecution was, of course, Eric Tarantino, who told the whole story about how Tom had tried to recruit him to murder Becky, and how he refused, and how Tom had beaten him severely enough to land him in the hospital. The defense leaned hard into the idea that it was a suicide and said that she was depressed, and she was just seeing her life crumbling around her. One of the investigators testified that it

made no sense even physically. The angle in which Becky was found, the gun's positioning, and the bullet's entry angle were essentially an impossible angle. She would have had to shoot herself with the gun upside down in an area of her head very difficult to reach. It just made no sense. The case lasted about two weeks with six days of testimony, and on Friday, April 14th, 1989, the jury returned a straight not guilty verdict in only four hours. At the end of the murder trial, when someone is acquitted of murder, if you're familiar with true crime and know anything about court proceedings, that's the time when the defendant is usually just released.

Well, in Tom's case, as you may have come to expect, even this early in his unbelievably murderous life, there is much more to even this part of the story. Without Eric Tarantino's detailed testimony, it would have been extremely hard to come close to finding Tom guilty of murder. Tom knew that, and given what you know about him by now, you can probably guess what his solution to the Eric problem was. If you said, hire a hitman to murder Eric, you're absolutely correct. Unbelievably, while incarcerated pending the beginning of his first degree murder trial for killing his wife Becky for shooting her in the head, Tom Randolph hatched a plan to have Eric Tarantino killed. Of course, this wasn't the

first time and certainly wasn't the last time this kind of an idea came to him. This time, his plan was to locate a hitman and offer him $10,000 to kill Eric. He mentioned his idea to a fellow inmate in the jail, who promptly informed the police, who set up a sting operation. The hitman Tom got in contact with was actually an undercover police officer. The officer and he spoke on the phone, and the officer asked, are you sure you want this guy whacked? And of course, Tom said, yes, there's a recording of this conversation that was played at the trial. It seems quite clear. Tom sent the woman who was his girlfriend at the time, Wendy Moore, to bring the payment, which included the title to Tom's car, plus a promise of future

cash to the alleged hitman. It's worth noting here that she brought her young child along with her, and it was not at all clear if she knew what she was delivering or to whom. When the exchange was made, Tom was charged with conspiracy to commit murder, and Wendy was charged in connection with the crime also. Tom ended up pleading guilty to felony witness tampering in return for having a drug charge against him and the case against Wendy dropped. The judge ordered Tom to serve between zero and five years in prison and get a thousand dollar fine. According to Utah law, though, because he was found not guilty of Becky's murder, he was able to get the murder case

expunged from his record. It's unclear if Tom ever spent any significant time in prison for the witness tampering. His lawyer argued that the conversation between him and the undercover cop was ambiguous and could have had to do with a drug deal instead of a plot to murder Tarantino. Thomas wasn't done though. When he was acquitted, he promptly filed a $2.7 million suit in February of 1990, individually naming nine defendants in the Utah legal system, including the lead detective on the case, Scott Connolly. He was looking for $250,000 in punitive damages, the variety of damages meant to punish the individuals for their behavior, and $50,000 in compensatory damages. And those are

for things like economic damage, for things like loss of work time and pain and suffering, things like that. In the suit, he claimed he was wrongfully prosecuted and subject to illegal search and seizure and denied his right to due process, privacy, and so on. He also specifically named the district attorney claiming he had a conflict of interest because his wife worked in the probation office and parole office, saying that he had made slanderous comments that affected how his parole was evaluated. In November of 1991, he ended up settling for not $2.7 million, but for $7,500. A Davis County Sheriff's Deputy, Police Detective Scott Connolly, and Davis County each paid $2,750.

That brings us back to 2009 and the continuing investigation that Las Vegas Metro Police Detectives O'Kelley and Wilson were engaged in around Sharon's murder. It took them months of research chasing down information in Utah, North Carolina, Indiana, and Washington State, among other places, but they were finally able to convince Las Vegas District Attorney's Office to arrest Tom Randolph for the double homicide of Mike Miller and his wife Sharon Randolph. Based on interviews with O'Kelly, it was clear they were ready to bring Tom in. Everyone was feeling extremely frustrated. He was still free in the face of what they saw as a very clear case and fact pattern. Colleen was especially eager for Tom to be behind bars. She had been afraid for her and her family's

safety for a while since the murder. The Las Vegas detectives worked with the Clearfield, Utah police on the arrest. You can bet that the Clearfield police remember Tom well, given all he had gotten up to over the years. They arrested him on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at his parents' house in Clearfield and actually had to taser him when he wouldn't comply and show the police his hands. He was hiding one hand behind the door of his parents' house ominously, and the officers had to act out of concern for their safety, knowing they were apprehending a dangerous criminal and charging him with a double homicide. Next week, we'll uncover the never-ending

delays that Tom engaged in to delay actually going on trial for murder, the trial itself, and the aftermath. Unbelievably, Tom's story didn't really end until April of 2024, 17 years after he arranged the murder of Sharon Randolph. The delay of justice in this case is an outrage, with Tom making a mockery of the legal system at every turn. If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice. Those reviews are a quick and easy way to help ensure that the podcast gets seen and that these important stories are heard by the people who can be helped by hearing them.

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