actually took for me to move away and go to college before i came back and appreciated how pretty it is. andrea spurlock is kelley s best friend. they grew up near elmira, new york. she said it was as if the land bred a little sweetness into kelley, maybe tartness as all. how did you see kelley. she was goofy, happy, always trying to have fun. she loved to laugh. she was sarcastic. witty. she always made things fun. funny and beautiful. they couldn t cope a girl like that in a small town for he ever. after college kelley broke some news to her big sister kim. she was very enticed by bright lights out west. absolutely. she s like, i m moving to vegas. what did you think when you heard that? i was sad. i was sad but i was like, oh, my god, go, you re so brave, do it
when they locked eyes, it was game over. she met him that weekend. she met the bad boy. yes, she did. was it instant for them? yes, it was. they were with married about two years later, and a few after that came the kids. hi! a girl and a boy. tom traded in his hockey skates for work boots to run a home restoration business. now andrea had her best friend back home plus tom. what did you love about him? he was very generous. he would shower her with things. we had a mutual friend who he and his wife passed away in a car accident, and tom immediately called me and was like, we ve got to do this, let s do this fundraiser. we did. and he was like a brother. almost ten years into the marriage, kelley still gushed about her tom. she was just talking about he s the greatest guy, i mean i hit the jackpot with him. did that make you happy hearing that? yeah, it really did. it was like, there s really
the 28th, 29th, so it wasn t long at all. was it possible that beard was angry about losing his job and that kelley s murder was some kind of revenge? molly went through her cellphone and her facebook contacts and gave investigators beard s address. i gave that to them and they were just like, okay, thank you. the steuben county sheriff s office needed all hands on deck and called in the new york state police for the assistance. i was contacted by investigators the day of the homicide. investigator matt lambert was assigned to run down the michael beard lead. what did you know about michael beard s background? he actually was a pretty well-respected employee until september 17th when tom had fired him. why did tom fire him? stealing from jobs and drinking, i think, on the job, and he fired him on the 17th because there were maybe some complaints from other employees at servpro. so there were issues there? right. but beard was polite and cooperative when the inve
it was tom s wife, kelley. right away the deputy knew she had been murdered. what did you see? the victim. there was blood, blood spatter on walls, ceiling, the victim had blood pooling around her head. tom, where were you when this all went down? playing poker with my buddies. tom said he had just come home from a poker game to find kelley dead on the floor and his seven-year-old daughter charlie saying something about a break-in. i came home and my daughter said there was a robber in the house and she saw them. okay. come on out here, man. come on out here. i want you to have a seat. you don t need to see that, all right. his kids were home? kids were home when this occurred. where were they? when i got on scene he had taken them to the neighbor so i never saw the kids. what did you think of the person capable of doing this to her mother with the children home. there s no way to describe a person like that. they re not a person. the officer led tom to hi
that s not the end of the story though? that is not the end of the story. not the end of the story because there was something investigators just couldn t get around, the daughter s story, her description of the killer. it was powerful evidence they couldn t ignore, and so just hours after the murder the defendant was remanded to steuben county jail without bail. they arrested kelley s husband tom clayton and charged him with murder. how can you arrest him? what are you arresting him based on? there s a lot of suspicion. basically we have to have probable cause to make an arrest. what was the probable cause? the biggest thing, the oldest child made comments that it looked like daddy, had daddy s eyes. as of the end of the day reporter: tanner covered the story for nbc affiliate webn tv. i don t know how they charged him honestly. i don t know how they charged him so quickly. he said the arrest had everyone in the newsroom scratching their heads.