After watching “Black Widow: The Six Wives of Thomas Randolph,” my first thought was: “What were these women thinking?”
But then I remembered what my mother told me years after she divorced her second husband, who had similar qualities to Thomas Randolph.
I asked her what she saw in him. “He was like an adrenaline ride,” she said.
That also appears to be why six women were deceived by the man at the center of this true-crime docuseries.
Lonely and desperate women sometimes make stupid choices.
addicted to love
“Black Widow: The Six Wives of Thomas Randolph” tells the story of Randolph, who was married six times to six different women.
He also took out multiple life insurance policies on all of them and on any young children they might have had from previous marriages.
Four of his wives died, three of them under suspicious circumstances, including murder, earning him the nickname “The Black Widow.”
“I am addicted to love. I am a true romantic. – Thomas Randolph
Much of the focus is on second and sixth wives, Becky Galt and Sharon Kos, with an additional backstory that highlights a pattern of bad behavior spanning decades.
Through a series of interviews, including with his two still-living wives and Randolph himself, we get a clear sense of what kind of person Randolph was.
We also get some insight into why these women hook up with crazy people.
But honestly, if Tom treats these women the way he does in this series of interviews, I still don’t understand what they find so attractive.
He was not good-looking, not even when he was young. (Oh, I know, different strokes for different people.)
He’s arrogant, obnoxious, and self-righteous. He had affairs in many of his marriages and was open about it.
He was a drug addict and dealer. He was married multiple times (how could his later wife not know this?)
He has a long list of other very unflattering characteristics, but that’s my opinion.
fatal attraction
His ex-wife thought he was handsome, charming, funny, and interesting. So did some of the victims’ friends and family.
But that’s how it is, at least in the beginning, before things change and get dark.
He eventually became 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 was pregnant. She was only 18 years old at the time. The marriage lasted seven years.
Betsy Galt married Randolph the same day he divorced Thomas. Their marriage lasted only three years.
One night, Galt was found shot to death in her bedroom. At first, the police ruled it a suicide.
Randolph was charged with murder after his friend and former colleague Eric Tarantino presented evidence that Randolph had been planning Becky’s murder for more than a year.
Randolph went to trial but was acquitted after a trial in which the jury believed her death was a suicide – a decision that is questionable for a number of reasons.
He married his third wife, Leona Stapleton, almost immediately after his release from prison. He was convicted of threatening Tarantino during Galt’s murder trial.
“If he did have one power, it was identifying those who were lonely and hopeless.” – Christopher Hamner, Clark County Deputy Chief Prosecutor
Leona divorced Tom after a year of marriage. She died of cancer a few years later. Her family does not appear in the docuseries.
Wife No. 4, Gayna Allmon, was newly divorced and met Randolph through a dating ad in the newspaper eight months after her divorce from Leona.
One day, while Randolph was cleaning the gun, it “accidentally” went off, nearly hitting her. The marriage lasted less than a year.
But Gaynor’s problem was that she knew Randolph’s “personal history,” even though she claimed she didn’t know about the Galt trial because “there was no Internet.”
All was well and good, but she was married to a man who had been married three times. The “red flags” should have appeared earlier than they did.
“Before I left, I took my wedding ring to a jeweler, took out all the diamonds, put in the cubes and gave them back. They told me there were some very large diamonds there. I took them They cheated and got thousands of dollars. I just thought it was fair play. – Gaynor Armon.
Randolph claimed Gaynor needed health insurance, which is why they got married. However, it’s clear they don’t really like each other, so the motives for getting married are questionable.
Despite this, he purchased a life insurance policy on her and her children! She was smart enough to leave before he could make any money.
finally, true love
Randolph may have finally found his true love in wife number five, Frances Gaskins, with whom he has a young daughter.
He met Frances shortly before his divorce from Gayna and married her a year after they met.
From his first marriage, his daughter Krista described how her father became different with Frances. He even apparently stopped cheating and taking drugs.
But Gaskins suffered from lifelong heart disease, and she died seven years into their marriage after a heart surgery that was thought to have been botched.
If you believe what her daughter Rachel said about the day Frances died, you could also add this seemingly natural death to the questionable column.
“You can’t be this unlucky.” —Rachel Gaskins
If you listened to Randolph recount his conversation with Frances on the day of the surgery, you might be more inclined to believe Rachel’s story.
Becky Galt could have stopped
If the jury had reached a different verdict in Becky Galt’s trial, there would have been no Sharon Kos story to tell. Cowes was Randolph’s sixth wife.
Sharon and Randolph met on an online dating site. After a brief whirlwind romance, the pair married on a cruise ship.
Like several others before her, she was a divorcee, lonely, and looking for love. She wants to get married again.
Even though her friends were alarmed by Randolph and tried to warn her, she was having too much fun.
Sex in the backyard in full view of the neighbors, lovely home, gifts and more. It was so hard to give up.
Unfortunately for Sharon, a year after marrying the man of her dreams, her marriage ended violently.
Shortly after she returned home from dinner in town, she was shot dead by an “intruder” during an apparent robbery.
It turns out that it was all staged by Thomas Randolph, and the entire scene is eerily similar to what authorities believed happened to Becky Galt.
High with the police
If you ever wondered whether Randolph harbored sinister intentions for all of his wives, you only have to watch him reenact the night of the murder during the police investigation.
Heck, listen to his 9-1-1 call. That was enough to convince me.
I’ve been in situations where I had to call 9-1-1 twice. The first time was when my husband died in front of me 18 years ago.
The second time was when I found my mother slumped in a chair, shortly after she died of a heart attack.
Everyone handles things differently, but tragedies and shocking events always bring a certain level of stress.
Randolph didn’t sound like someone who had just found out his wife had been shot to death by an intruder when he made the 9-1-1 call.
Even worse was his “reenactment,” which occurred a week after Sharon was killed.
Having to perform CPR on someone even though you know they are dead is not an experience I would wish on my worst enemy.
So the way he described having to perform CPR on his dead wife was one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever heard in my life.
And he’s tall too! Who gets excited before interacting with the police when they suspect you of committing a crime? He is not stupid.
I’m not a judge or jury, but CPR is no joke. Considering he had to do this just a week after the murders, it’s obvious that this guy is a vile piece of trash, full of crap, and as guilty as ever.
The women who fell for his predatory behavior should be thankful they can wake up in the morning and enjoy their day.
forgotten children
One of the things I found most interesting, and perhaps heartbreaking, was watching Krista, Randolph’s daughter from his first marriage, try 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. The father she knew was different from the father portrayed in the media, documentaries, or by people like me.
“My dad was my hero growing up, but he was always weird and weird.” —Krista Randolph
Even Rachel Gaskin has fond memories of Randolph growing up.
Although Krista’s mother went through a difficult time in her marriage to Thomas, she may not have seen the darker side of her father. Even if she did, she wouldn’t share.
However, she did realize that her father had quirks.
She saw how he treated women like water, she knew all his wives and girlfriends, she visited her father in prison after he was convicted of witness tampering, and she was present throughout the trial.
Krista also described how her classmates treated Becky Galt during her trial and the nasty things they said to her.
This all must have been very difficult for her.
In a sense, she’s almost like a victim too, but in a different way. I can only imagine the inner conflict she will have to face for the rest of her life when it comes to her father.
final verdict
Other victims of Randolph’s bad behavior also breathed a sigh of relief.
He was tried twice for the murder of Sharon Cowes.
The Nevada Supreme Court overturned the first trial because evidence about Becky Gault had been included in that trial. The court ruled that the jury should not hear this evidence.
“We come from all walks of life, but we are all here with one main goal: to draw a conclusion, whether we find him guilty or not. We looked at all the evidence again. He was arrogant, he was vulgar, he was lecherous. You can’t take that for granted. Lever said, ‘Yeah, he’s a killer’ – Chloe Mitchell, second trial juror.
When he was tried a second time with a new jury, prosecutors were limited to using evidence from Cowes’ murder and testimony from witnesses and police.
But they also have a surprise that seals his fate – the testimony of the woman Randolph had an affair with while he was married to Cowes.
This guy has no plans to stop his horrific acts. Luckily, the jury did it for him.
They found him guilty and sentenced him to 60 years to life in prison.
He’s worth every minute.
