Man who had six wives avoided death penalty for killing hitman he hired to murder his sixth wife

A man managed to avoid the death penalty after a hitman he hired murdered his sixth wife, the fourth wife of his to die and second to die in mysterious circumstances.

Thomas Randolph, who is now 71, killed the hitman he hired shortly after they murdered his wife Sharon Causse. Despite initially being sentenced to death for his crimes, he was able to escape the death penalty on a subsequent retrial.

The shocking true crime case is the latest outing from Netflix as a documentary, titled The Widower: ‘Til Death Do Us Part.

Randolph first married someone in 1975 when he was just 20 years old, wedding Kathryn Thomas who was 18 at the time. Kathryn is one of just two women who survived their marriages to the man nicknamed the ‘Black Widower’ in the press after his arrest.

Thomas Randolph had his wife killed by his handyman, who he proceeded to shoot to try and cover up the murder

Causse was murdered by a man hired by Randolph, who he then also killed (Netflix)

Randolph and Causse married in 2007, with Randolph taking out $350,000 in life insurance policies just three months after their wedding.

In May 2008 the at the time 53-year-old called 911 to report that his wife had been shot in a home invasion, claiming that he had shot the intruder in self-defence.

The man in question, Mike Miller, worked as a handyman for Randolph, and he accused him of breaking into his home and killing his wife.

Eight months later however the man was arrested on two counts of murder with a deadly weapon and one count of conspiracy to commit murder.

After years of investigation into the case he was eventually found guilty after it was discovered that he had paid Miller to murder his wife in order to benefit from the life insurance policy and will, which she changed to benefit him. She changed this in secret to benefit her only daughter however, after fearing she was in danger.

Randolph received the death penalty, only for this to be quashed at a retrial where he was sentenced to 60 years in prison

The American was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to death on two separate occasions. Randolph was sentenced to 60 years in jail after being convicted for the final time in August of 2023.

The killer was able to have his conviction overturned after arguing that prosecutors should not have pointed out similarities between Causse’s death and the death of his second wife Becky Gault. Gault’s death was ruled a suicide, though he was arrested and accused of killing her. He was found not-guilty but spent a year in jail for witness tampering after asking an undercover officer to kill a witness.

The Widower: ‘Til Death Do Us Part heavily features Dan Slepian, an NBC Dateline producer who heavily investigated the case. Speaking to TIME about the documentary, Slepian said: “This investigation did the exact opposite.

“Every answer widened the frame. Another marriage, another state, another death, another witness. And that's when I realized that what we were covering wasn’t just a single murder case, but a pattern that had been unfolding over decades.”

The Widower: ‘Til Death Do Us is available to stream on Netflix now.