After watching The Black Widower: The Six Wives of Thomas Randolph, the first thing that came to mind was: “What were these women thinking?”
But then I remembered what my mother told me years after she divorced her second husband, a guy with similar traits to Thomas Randolph.
I asked her what she saw in him. She said, “He was like a thrill ride.”
That appears to be the same reason why six women were duped by the man at the center of this Investigation Discovery true crime docuseries.
Lonely and desperate women sometimes make dumb choices.
Addicted To Love
The Black Widower: The Six Wives of Thomas Randolph tells the tale of Randolph, who was married six times to six different women.
He also took out multiple life insurance policies on all of them, as well as any young children they may have had from previous marriages.
Four of his wives died, three under suspicious circumstances, including murder, which earned him the moniker “The Black Widower.”
“I’m addicted to love. I’m a true romantic.” – Thomas Randolph
Most of the focus is on Beckie Gault and Sharon Causse, wives number two and six, with an added backstory highlighting his decades-long pattern of bad behavior.
Through a series of interviews, which included two of his still-living wives and Randolph himself, we get a clear picture of the type of guy Randolph is.
We also get some insight into why these women hook up with a maniac.
But in all honesty, if Tom acted the way he did with these women the way he did during the interviews for this series, I still don’t get what they found so damn attractive.
He’s not good-looking, not even in his younger days. (Oh, I know, different strokes for different folks.)
He’s brash, obnoxious, and full of himself. He cheated and was open about it during many of his marriages.
He was a drug addict and a drug dealer. He was married multiple times (how could his later wives not have known this?)
He also has a laundry list of other highly unlikeable traits, but that’s just how I see it.
Fatal Attraction
His ex-wives thought he was good-looking, charming, funny, and a lot of fun. So did some of his victims’ friends and family.
But that’s how things were, at least in the beginning, before things changed and turned dark.
He ended up being abusive, demeaning, possessive, manipulative, and controlling, all classic traits of a narcissist.
His first wife, Kathryn Thomas, with whom he had two children, only married Randolph because she got pregnant. She was also only 18 at the time. That marriage lasted seven years.
Beckie Gault married Randolph the day his divorce from Thomas was finalized. Their marriage lasted only three years.
Gault was found dead by gunshot in her bedroom one evening. At first, police ruled it a suicide.
After Randolph’s friend and former co-worker, Eric Tarantino, came forward with evidence that Randolph had been planning Beckie’s murder for over a year, he was charged with murder.
Randolph went to trial but was acquitted after taking the stand in his defense, which convinced the jury that her cause of death was suicide — a questionable decision for numerous reasons.
He married Leona Stapleton, wife number three, almost immediately after he got out of jail. He had been convicted for threatening Tarantino during the Gault murder trial.
“If he does have a strength, it’s identifying people who are lonely and desperate.” – Christopher Hamner, Clark County Chief Deputy D.A.
Leona divorced Tom within a year after tying the knot. She died of cancer several years later. None of her family appear in the docuseries.
Gayna Allmon, wife number four, was a recent divorcee who met Randolph through a newspaper dating ad eight months after his divorce from Leona.
One day, while Randolph was cleaning his gun, it “accidentally” went off, narrowly missing her. That marriage lasted less than a year.
But the thing about Gayna was that she knew Randolph’s “personal history,” even though she claimed she didn’t know about the Gault trial because there was “no Internet.”
That’s all well and good, but she married a guy who had three previous marriages. The “red flags” should have popped up much sooner than they did.
“Before I left, I took the wedding rings to a jeweler and had all the diamonds taken out and had cubics put in, and gave them back. They told me there was some good-sized diamonds in there. I pawned them and got a couple thousand dollars for it. I just thought it was fair play.” – Gayna Allmon
Randolph claims Gayna needed health insurance, and that’s why they got married. However, it’s clear they didn’t really like each other, so the motives for marriage are questionable.
Still, he did take out a life insurance policy on her — and her kids! And she was smart enough to get out before he could cash in.
Finally, True Love
Randolph might have finally found his true love in wife number five, Frances Gaskins, who had a young daughter.
He met Frances shortly before his divorce from Gayna was finalized and married her within a year of meeting her.
From his first marriage, his daughter Krista described how his dad became a different person with Frances. He even apparently stopped cheating and doing drugs.
But Gaskins had a life-long heart condition, and after a supposed botched heart surgery, she also died seven years after they wed.
If you believe what her daughter, Rachel, had to say about the day Frances died, you can add this seemingly natural death to the suspicious column as well.
“There ain’t no way you got that much damn bad luck.” – Rachel Gaskins
And if you listen to Randolph’s account of his conversation with Frances on the day of the surgery, you might be more inclined to believe Rachel’s account.
It Could Have Stopped With Beckie Gault
Had the jury returned a different verdict in Beckie Gault’s trial, there wouldn’t be a Sharon Causse story to tell. Causse was Randolph’s sixth wife.
Sharon and Randolph met on an online dating site. After a short, whirlwind romance, the two married on a cruise ship.
Like several others before her, she was a divorcee, lonely, and looking for love. She wanted to get married again.
Even though her friends got the heebie-jeebies about Randolph and tried to warn her, she was having too much fun.
Sex in the backyard in full view of the neighbors, a lovely home, gifts, and so on and so on. It was too much to give up.
Unfortunately for Sharon, it ended violently for her within a year after marrying the man of her dreams.
She was shot to death by an “intruder” in an apparent robbery only moments after returning home from a dinner out on the town.
As it turned out, Thomas Randolph had set it all up, and the entire scenario was eerily similar to what authorities believed happened to Beckie Gault.
Riding High With the Cops
If you have any doubts about whether or not Randolph had sinister intentions with all of his wives, all you need to do is watch his re-enactment of the night of the murder during the police investigation.
Heck, just listen to his 9-1-1 call. That was enough to convince me.
I’ve experienced two instances where I had to call 9-1-1. The first was when my husband dropped dead in front of me 18 years ago.
The second was when I found my mother slumped in her chair, only moments after she died from a heart attack.
Everyone handles things differently, but there’s always a level of stress involved with tragic and shocking events.
The way Randolph sounded during his 9-1-1 call doesn’t sound like someone who just found his wife shot to death by an intruder.
Even worse is his “re-enactment,” which took place only a week after Sharon was killed.
Having to perform CPR on someone, even if you know they’re dead, is not an experience I’d wish on my worst enemy.
So, the way he described having to perform CPR on his dead wife is one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever heard in my life.
And he was high, too! Who gets high before dealing with the police when they suspect you of a crime? He’s not stupid.
I’m no judge or jury, but CPR is no joke. And considering it was only a week after the murder that he had to do this, it’s clear as day this guy is a scumbag piece of garbage, full of crap, and as guilty as the day is long.
And the women who fell for his predatory behavior should be thankful they can wake up in the morning to enjoy another day.
The Forgotten Children
One of the things I found most interesting and perhaps heartbreaking was watching Krista, Randolph’s daughter from his first marriage, trying to digest the reality that her hero might be a monster.
Throughout the series, she speaks highly of her father, and you can’t blame her. She knows a father different from what the media, docuseries, or people like me portray him to be.
“My dad was my hero growing up but he’s always been eccentric, odd.” – Krista Randolph
Even Rachel Gaskin had good memories of Randolph while growing up.
Although Krista’s mother had a rough time during her marriage to Thomas, she might not have seen the dark side of her father. If she did, she didn’t share it.
She did, however, recognize that her father had quirks.
She saw how he went through women like water, she knew all of his wives and girlfriends, she visited her father in jail after he was convicted for tampering with a witness, and she was there during the entirety of the trial.
Krista also describes how schoolmates treated her during Beckie Gault’s trial and the nasty things they said to her.
All of it had to be very difficult for her.
In a sense, she’s almost like a victim, too, but in a different kind of way. I can only imagine the internal conflicts she’ll have to deal with for the rest of her life when it comes to her father.
The Final Verdict
There was some relief for the other victims of Randolph’s bad behavior.
He went to trial twice for the murder of Sharon Causse.
A Nevada Supreme Court overturned the first trial because evidence about Beckie Gault had been brought into that trial. The Court ruled that the jury should not have heard that evidence.
“We all come from different walks of life, but we’re all here for one main goal: to come to a conclusion whether or not we found him guilty or not guilty. We went through all the evidence again. Him being cocky, him being vulgar, him being a womanizer. you can’t use that as a leverage and say, ‘Yes, he’s a killer.” – Chloe Mitchell, second trial juror
When he went on trial the second time with a new jury, the prosecution could only use evidence from Causse’s murder as well as testimony from witnesses and cops.
But they also had a surprise up their sleeve that sealed his fate — testimony from the woman Randolph was having an affair with while he was still married to Causse.
The guy had no plans to stop his train of terror. Luckily, the jury did it for him.
They found him guilty, and he was sentenced to 60 years to life in prison.
He deserves every minute of it.
