Lawyer charged in wife's slaying
Motive in 1982 case was money, Southfield cops say
Detroit News
July 21, 2000
PONTIAC -- Thomas H. Randolph Jr. has spent his life running -- from cops as a boy in Harlem, on the track team at Western Michigan University, even for the Michigan Legislature in the 1970s.
And for the past 18 years, the attorney and former Wayne County Community College instructor ran from the truth. Police say he hired a former student to kill his wife, a laid-off Detroit Police officer.
He's running no more: Randolph, 58, and his former student, Sanirell Shannon, 49, are facing murder charges in the January 1982 shooting of his wife, Sharron Louise Randolph.
The motive was money, some $248,000 in insurance policies. The cover was a staged mugging outside the Empress Garden restaurant on 11 Mile in Southfield that at first seemed like a sad, random tragedy. The unraveling, police say, came from an unnamed informant.
"We hope this will serve as a message we never close these types of cases ... you can run but you cannot hide from Oak Force," said Southfield Police Chief Joseph Thomas. Oak Force is a multi-agency law enforcement task force that specializes in unsolved cases with presumably cold leads.
At Western, Randolph ranked second in the world as a 200-meter sprinter. In addition to his stab at politics, he worked as an aide to Detroit Councilman Ernest Browne and in 1983 was paid about $52,000 a year to teach math, history, social science, and psychology to Wayne County Community College students.
Oak Force officers caught up with Randolph outside the Detroit law firm that bears his name, said Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard.
"He was preparing to take his car in for servicing when we showed up," Bouchard said. "After 18 years (at large) I imagine it was quite a shock."
Attorney Thomas H. Randolph III represented his father before Oakland Circuit Judge Jessica Cooper, who ordered him held in the Oakland County Jail pending a July 28 preliminary exam. Shannon has waived extradition in Hattiesburg, Miss., and expected to be soon brought back here to stand trial.
Randolph's ruse fell apart last year, police say, although they had long been suspicious of his account of his wife's killing. The break came last December.
"Investigators located an informant present at an argument between Randolph and Shannon over payment for the job," Gorcyca said. "The informant, who was not involved in the scheme, also witnessed the actual payment."
At the time of her death in 1982, Sharron Randolph was 26 and had been laid off from her job as a Detroit police officer, an officer for just three years and working at a mini-station. She worked at the U.S. District Court in Detroit to help make ends meet.
But it wasn't working.
"His motive was financial," said Oakland County Prosecutor David Gorcyca. "He was deep in debt and had maxxed out his credit cards."
Sharron Randolph had filed two domestic violence complaints against him in 1981 but never followed through with the reports.
Within a few months, the couple was in the Empress Garden parking lot when they were both attacked -- Thomas Randolph was convincingly pistol-whipped. Sharron was fatally shot twice in the head and died in the back seat of their car.
A weeping Randolph then stumbled back inside the restaurant and collapsed. He later told police how he handed over a wallet containing $310, was hit over the head and awoke to find his wife dead.
Randolph later earned a law degree with the help of insurance money, investigators said. He spent lavishly on female acquaintances.
Within a year of his wife's murder, Randolph was granted custody of her two sons, both from different marriages. Michael Douglas Smith, Jr., was 12 at the time and her other son, Malcolm Virgil Banks, was 10.
Neither could be reached for comment Thursday.
In 1983, Randolph filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the owners of the Southfield strip mall where the restaurant was located, claiming the parking lot was dangerous, improperly lit and should have had more security.
In 1985, both sides agreed to a $72,500 consent judgment, which included $431 paid to a Mr. Clean Car Wash to get blood out of the victim's 1979 Cadillac and $100 so he could receive psychological counseling.
Sharron Randolph's death was not, however, the only time Thomas Randolph turned on his family.
Wayne County court records reveal Randolph tricked his mentally ill brother out of money he was due from a court settlement.
Randolph spent $440,350 that his older brother, Joseph L. Davis of New York City, won in a court settlement after he fell out of a mental institution's window.
Davis signed over control of the money to Randolph, but could not access it himself, said Pamela D. Hayes, Davis' New York lawyer. Randolph "spent up all the money. He scruffed his brother big time," she said.
In 1997, Davis sued to collect the money but signed a release on the debt for $100, records show. Wayne Circuit Judge William Lucas dismissed the case despite protests from Davis' lawyers, who said their client had been duped again.
"One day they got him drunk and he signed it. What a tragic case," Hayes said.
Attorney no killer, son says
He accuses police of using father as patsy in 1982 case
Detroit News
July 23, 2000
PONTIAC -- Oakland County police are pinning a murder rap on a well-known Detroit lawyer because they couldn't properly solve the 1982 homicide, says the son of the man blamed in the death of a former city cop.
Thomas H. Randolph Jr. "is absolutely innocent. This is a case of the Oakland County police trying to close an old case," said Thomas Randolph III on Friday. "He's dedicated his life to helping people."
Police say the elder Randolph, 58, hired a Mississippi drifter to kill Sharron Louise Randolph in what appeared to be a robbery gone awry in January 1982.
Sanirell Shannon, 49, shot Sharron Louise Randolph after pistol-whipping her husband at the Harvard Row Shopping Center, police said. Randolph arranged the slaying to collect $248,000 in insurance money on his wife, who had been laid off by Detroit police, authorities say.
Police charged Thomas H. Randolph Jr., after an informant gave information in December linking him and Shannon to the killing.
William Mitchell, Randolph's lawyer, was skeptical of the new evidence.
"If 18 years ago there was a thorough investigation that never resulted in charges, what has changed since then?" he said.
Randolph also sued the owners of the Southfield strip mall where his wife died, saying the parking lot should have been safer and better lit. The owners settled the case for $72,500, court records show.
It would not be the first time Randolph forsook a family member.
The News reported Friday that Randolph's mentally ill brother in New York, Joseph L. Davis, sued to recover $440,350 that he said Randolph took from him. The cash was part of a settlement Davis received after he fell out a window at a mental institution.
Davis signed control of the funds over to Randolph, who spent the money, Davis' lawyer said.
Randolph later duped his brother into forgiving the debt for $100, the lawyer said.
At the time of her death in 1982, Sharron Louise Randolph was 26. She had been an officer for three years before being laid off. She later worked at U.S. District Court in Detroit to help make ends meet.
Still, her husband's credit cards were charged to their limits, prosecutors said Thursday.
Sharron Louise Randolph filed two domestic violence complaints against him in 1981 but never pursued them.
Her husband was a former teacher at Wayne Community College and once made a run for the Michigan Legislature.
He was a world-class sprinter while a student at Western Michigan University.
He is scheduled Friday for a preliminary exam on the murder charge.
Couple's glamorous life explodes
They found fame, fortune. Now both are behind bars
Detroit News
August 2, 2000
DETROIT -- For two decades, Thomas H. Randolph Jr. and his fourth wife, Marie Antoinette Jackson-Randolph, lived a privileged life built on a web of lies, authorities say.
Marie Jackson-Randolph, 60, stole millions from taxpayers and treated herself to fur coats and gambling junkets. Thomas Randolph, 58, allegedly hired a hit man to kill his third wife for insurance money, deceived his mentally troubled brother and drove around in a Rolls Royce, according to police and court papers.
But now the trappings of success have vanished. Thomas Randolph faces an Aug. 17 court hearing on a murder charge in the death of Sharron Beatty Randolph on Jan. 8, 1982. Last year, a federal court jury convicted Marie Jackson-Randolph of bilking the government out of $13 million and a judge put her in prison for nine years.
It has been a rapid fall from grace for the Randolphs, whose careers and ostentatious lifestyles once made them the envy of many Detroiters. They led a successful business that won national awards. They had the confidence and resources to run for political office. They lived in a big house in the city's most exclusive neighborhood. They attended some of the city's most exclusive social events. They lavished trips on their employees.
Interviews and a trail of court records reviewed by The Detroit News outline how their lives unraveled. Randolph and Jackson-Randolph declined to comment for this article.
The recent problems do not surprise Sharron Randolph's family.
"He (Randolph) was a so-called pillar of the community," said Kenneth Beatty, Sharron's brother. "What a farce! He was devious. He was cunning. He was the devil himself."
But they shock one of Marie Jackson-Randolph's friends.
New York City businesswoman Gail Blanke featured Marie Jackson-Randolph in her 1990 book Taking Control of Your Life: The Secrets of Successful Enterprising Women.
"Good God! That's unbelievable. She was incredibly determined and seemed unstoppable," she said.
Their upbringing hardly presaged the success they later achieved.
Thomas Randolph, raised in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem and known as "Tony," was a juvenile delinquent and high school dropout. He went to prison in New York as a teen-ager, though court records don't say why.
Jackson-Randolph fondly recalled summers on a relative's Virginia farm, where water came from a well.
Randolph joined the Army, married Loretta White while stationed in Hawaii, obtained his GED and focused on competitive running. The effort paid off: Randolph was a four-time collegiate All-American and was named an alternate to the 1968 Olympics.
Jackson-Randolph survived a 1979 fire in Detroit that killed her three children, and went on to serve as a Detroit Public Schools board member and work at Wayne County Community College.
In 1970, Thomas Randolph also began teaching at Wayne County Community College, where he worked until retiring in 1993. Randolph continued his education while he taught and received four college degrees.
His second marriage, to LaSandra McKinney, ended in divorce in 1973. In 1975, he was a graduate student at Wayne State University when he met Sharron Beatty, also a student.
"We were both buying an ice cream cone at the same place, at the same time, so we struck up a conversation," he testified in a 1982 court hearing.
Beatty had two children from two failed marriages when she met Randolph. The men she divorced -- Michael Douglas Smith Sr. and Charles James Banks Jr. -- testified in court that they made low incomes the whole time she knew them. Randolph offered a stability she had never known as an adult.
In 1979, Beatty married Randolph in Las Vegas.
But three years later, on Jan. 8, 1982, Sharron Randolph died from two gunshots to the head. She was 26.
Thomas Randolph said at the time that he and his wife had finished dinner at the Empress Garden restaurant in Southfield when a man pistol-whipped him into unconsciousness. When he awoke, he saw his wife slumped in the back seat of their car. She died an hour later at Providence Hospital.
Randolph stumbled inside the restaurant pleading for help and collapsed.
Sharron Randolph's violent demise was the final chapter of her short, troubled life. She never earned more than $6,000 in a year except for the brief period when she worked as a Detroit police officer. The department laid her off in 1981.
Her brother remembers that she worked briefly for one of Marie Jackson-Randolph's day care centers.
Family suspicious
The Beatty family suspected trouble in the Randolphs' marriage before she died.
Sharron Randolph filed two domestic violence complaints against Randolph in August 1981 but never followed through with the reports.
About five months later, Sharron Randolph was dead.
The custody battle for her sons, who were 10 and 12 when their mother died, painted dismal prospects for the children if left to their biological fathers, Smith and Banks.
Randolph's only apparent blemish at the time was falling $6,600 behind in child-support payments to his second wife, LaSandra. In October 1982, a judge awarded him custody of the boys.
Throughout the custody battle, Randolph also fought the insurance companies that held $295,000 in policies on Sharron Randolph's life.
Lawyers for the insurers, who noted in court papers that they knew of the suspicions by police surrounding her death, sued to make certain they paid only once and to the proper person. Sharron Randolph had not signed all the policies taken out within a few months of her death.
In November 1983, a federal judge ordered the insurance companies to pay Randolph $228,000 for the policies. The judge ordered that $10,000 be set aside to establish a trust fund for the boys, as Sharron Randolph's will instructed. The owner of the strip mall where Sharron Randolph was killed paid Randolph $72,500 to settle a lawsuit against them for not ensuring safety in the parking lot.
But that same year, Randolph abruptly gave custody of the boys to their biological fathers.
Randolph "never explained why and I didn't question it," Smith said. "My son wasn't real happy about it. It was quite a come-down for him to leave his house in Palmer Woods, where he had bikes and all kinds of things I couldn't provide."
Married a year later
Thomas Randolph married Marie Jackson within a year of Sharron's death. They traveled in the same circles because both worked at Wayne County Community College as instructors and advisers.
Together, they rose to prominence in Detroit's political and business arenas.
Each made unsuccessful bids for political office. He ran for the state Legislature, while she ran for Detroit City Council.
With the help of her husband, Marie Jackson-Randolph turned her Sleepy Hollow day care centers -- popular with working-class families because they were open 24 hours a day, seven days a week -- into a successful business. She treated the kids to year-end luncheons in limousines. Even the federal investigators who would eventually file charges against her noted the centers were well-run and filled a need.
The couple lived comfortably in a 4,700-square-foot home in Detroit's exclusive Palmer Woods neighborhood, took exotic vacations to the Caribbean and elsewhere and basked in the accolades each received for successful careers. The Avon cosmetics company named Marie Jackson-Randolph its 1987 Woman of Enterprise. Clairol cosmetics gave her an award a year later.
Marie Jackson-Randolph, in turn, rewarded loyalty. She sent 36 employees on a three-day cruise to Nassau in the Bahamas to show her appreciation.
By the mid-1990s, the Randolphs' fortunes collapsed like a house of cards.
MAJCO, Marie Jackson-Randolph's business holdings, filed for bankruptcy in February 1994. By May 1995, it was out of business. Several of the corporation's estimated 500 workers complained about contracts in which the day care center was compensated by the federal government for feeding low-income children, triggering a state audit and, subsequently, a federal probe and seizure of records at several of her day care centers.
Marie Jackson-Randolph resigned in late 1993, and the corporate board removed her husband as a vice president the following year.
In July 1996, the city seized 9195 Greenfield, where MAJCO had operated, because of unpaid taxes on the building from 1986 through 1992. The debt totaled $6,183.
In October 1996, the Randolphs agreed to each pay the city $10,500 for taxes they failed to withhold while heading MAJCO. The company owed an additional $219,459 in back taxes for 1993 through 1995.
Other cash problems
Thomas Randolph had other cash problems, too.
In March 1996, a judge ruled he breached a settlement with Wayne County Community College that required him to pay back $15,000 he, according to the college, overcharged the school while still teaching. Randolph accused the school of amending the settlement and "cutting and pasting" his signature on a bogus deal.
The community college's attorney, James C. Zeman, noted Randolph had displayed "a level of temerity I have rarely witnessed in my 25 years of legal practice."
Randolph had a rancorous split with the community college. Its representatives said he took a 1986 sabbatical to write a research paper on student retention, which he never wrote.
In 1997, Randolph's mentally ill half-brother, James L. Davis, sued to recover $440,000 he said Randolph kept for himself. The money came from a settlement Davis reached with a mental institution, where he fell from a window.
Earlier, a court in New York had entered a judgment against Randolph for, in its view, improperly keeping the money.
But on July 17, 1997, the brother agreed to settle the debt for $100, according to court records.
"He scruffed his brother big time," said Pamela D. Hayes, Davis' New York lawyer. "One day they got him drunk, and he signed it. What a tragic case."
More problems
Marie Jackson-Randolph had her own problems handling money -- especially money that was not hers, federal investigators found.
She submitted inflated and fabricated bills from her day-care centers to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and lined her pockets with cash. She lavished gifts such as large screen televisions and trips on friends and relatives.
In September 1990 she sued the Trump Plaza Corp. of Atlantic City, N.J., claiming Trump's guards failed to stop a thief from stealing a purse, jewelry, cash and airplane tickets from her room while she played blackjack in the VIP Lounge of the Atlantic City casino.
In 1999, a jury convicted Marie Jackson-Randolph in U.S. District Court in Detroit of 63 counts of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. She received a $1.1-million fine, must pay $13 million in restitution and is serving a nine-year prison term in Pekin, Ill.
Federal seizures included 200 full-length fur coats found in storage.
Once known as "Doc" and "Mama" to her employees, today she is inmate 21989039.
Troubles ahead
Now Thomas Randolph faces trial.
Police say he hired a former student of his, Sanirell Shannon, to kill Sharron. Both face murder charges for her death and an Aug. 17 preliminary exam in Southfield District Court. He is being held without bond in the Oakland County Jail.
His attorney, William Mitchell III, described Randolph as a strong man who has always been a part of and involved in his community. Thomas Randolph III is convinced his father will be acquitted of charges and notes how he has "spent his life helping people."
Others are not as kind.
"He was a husband who had a lot of gifts," Beatty said, "and misused them all."
To Blanke, the New York writer who profiled Marie Jackson-Randolph, the fall of the Randolphs is a familiar story.
"It's such a shame, so Greek. The very things that enable us to overcome anything and propel us forward -- our courage and single-mindedness -- can also be our downfall."
Important dates in the Randolphs' lives
Thomas Randolph and Marie Jackson-Randolph enjoyed success as respected business people and professionals in Detroit during the 1980s and for much of the 1990s before Marie Jackson-Randolph was sentenced to prison for nine years for stealing millions in federal funds. Thomas Randolph now faces a murder charge.
August 1981: Sharron Randolph files two domestic-violence complaints against Thomas Randolph with the Detroit police. No charges are pursued.
Jan. 8, 1982: Sharron Randolph is shot to death in the parking lot of the Empress Garden restaurant in Southfield while her husband was seemingly knocked unconscious by a robber.
October 1982: Thomas Randolph wins legal custody of Sharron Randolph's two sons, despite the efforts of their biological fathers to have them. The same month, he marries Marie Jackson, his fourth wife.
November 1983: A federal judge orders insurance companies to pay Randolph $228,000 for policies on Sharron Randolph. The same year, he renounces custody of the boys.
1987: The Avon cosmetics company names Marie Jackson-Randolph, who owned and ran several popular 24-hour day care centers in Detroit, one of six Women of Enterprise in the nation.
1990: Thomas Randolph gets a law degree from Wayne State University.
June 1999 : Marie Jackson-Randolph is convicted by a federal jury of 63 felonies stemming from the fabrication of food bills for her day care centers. She receives a nine-year prison sentence.
July 2000: Thomas Randolph is charged with hiring Sanirrell Shannon to kill Sharron Randolph. He faces up to life in prison if convicted.
Uncle tied to 1982 slaying
Woman tells court family member bragged about killing of Detroit attorney's wife
Detroit News
August 25, 2000
SOUTHFIELD -- Sarah Norwood admitted Thursday that after 18 years, she's a bit fuzzy about some details. But she told a courtroom she clearly remembers her uncle bragging of killing Sharron Randolph for pay at the request of the victim's husband.
Attorney Thomas H. Randolph Jr. and Norwood's uncle, Sanirell Vinelli, are charged with the Jan. 8, 1982, murder of Sharron Randolph. Both appeared Thursday before Southfield District Judge Stephen Cooper, who will decide if the case should go to trial.
Under aggressive cross-examination by defense attorney William Mitchell III about some conflicting dates in her testimony and police statements, Norwood blurted out:
"I have the facts right. Mr. Randolph committed murder and my uncle, Sanirell, committed murder too."
Investigators claim Randolph hatched the death plot to collect $248,000 in life insurance and eventually paid Vinelli $45,000 for shooting Sharron during a fake robbery outside a Southfield restaurant.
Norwood testified how Randolph met with her uncle at their house on Ohio Street in Detroit on three occasions in 1982. Later, Vinelli boasted about his role in the killing and dumped cash out on her grandparents' sickbed, Norwood said.
Assistant Prosecutor Steven Vitale said Norwood's family kept quiet about the slaying.
"It was something no one talked about because they were deathly afraid of him (Vinelli) and what he might do to them," said Vitale. "Now they want to come clean about it."
Vinelli's sister, Netherlee Harkins, said after Vinelli told her of the plan in the summer of 1981, she "told him to tell Randolph if he wanted to kill his wife to kill her himself.
"But Sandy said he was going to do it, he was going to get the money," she said.
After the slaying, Harkins said her unemployed brother went on a spending binge, buying a new Volvo, chandeliers, an intercom -- even cowboy hats and boots for other relatives.
"He warned me not to say anything or 'I'm going go down and your son will go down with me,' " she said.
Harkins' son, David Hutsell, is to testify Thursday, when the exam continues. Vitale said Hutsell's testimony should ensure the case goes to trial.
"Mr. Hutsell was an eyewitness to the actual killing," said Vitale. "He drove his uncle out to the restaurant, supposedly to pick up some money he was owed, and after the shooting Sanirell jumped into the car, put a gun to Hutsell's head and told him to drive him home."
The defendant's son, Thomas H. Randolph III, said outside the courtroom that his father is being victimized by a conspiracy made up of "one family and the state."
"They're trying to impugn his reputation but he will be vindicated," the younger Randolph said.
Oakland suspect's Web site pleads case
Family, friends work to sway public opinion for attorney accused of killing his wife
Detroit News
October 1, 2000
PONTIAC -- Attorney Thomas Randolph Jr.'s trial in the 1982 murder of his wife is months away but his case has already begun in cyberspace.
A Web site was recently created by his family and friends to "set the record straight" and to solicit support for Randolph, who police say plotted the death of his wife, Sharron, for $295,000 in insurance.
Randolph, 58, is in the Oakland County Jail awaiting a Dec. 4 trial in Oakland Circuit Court. He recently invited reporters, by mail, to visit www.tomrandolph.org.
The Web site highlights Randolph's career contains a photo of him holding a baby features an "Anatomy of A Set-up" page, alleging how the prosecutor and witnesses conspired against him and asks visitors to write the Oakland County Prosecutor to show that they disagree with the prosecution.
"The Web is an excellent tool to not only to obtain information but to get it out there," said his son, Thomas Randolph III, also an attorney. "This is the creation of a group of people who believe in my father's innocence."
Investigators said the elder Randolph hired one of his former Wayne County Community College students to murder Sharron Randolph in a staged holdup outside a Southfield restaurant. Randolph told police he was pistol-whipped by a gunman and woke up to find his wife dead.
Randolph stresses the case against him hinges on two witnesses, including one who drove the killer to and from the restaurant lot and claimed to be present at a later payoff but is confused over what year it all occured.
The Internet provides everyone with a means to aggressively protest their innocence and solicit letter-writing campaigns and defense-fund money from supporters. Some other Internet defense sites include:
* The family and friends of Wen Hoe Lee, a Taiwanese-born scientist accused of downloading secrets from the Los Alamos (N.M.) Nuclear Laboratory, asking persons to call and urge President Clinton to pardon Lee. He was released in September, after nine months in solitary confinement.
* Justice for Police Officer Daniel Faulkner, which examines the case of Mumia Abu Jamal, on death row for the 1982 slaying of the Philadelphia police officer. Includes an extensive chronology and transcripts of Abu Jamal's trial.
* Justice for Mumia Abu Jamal, which includes real audio testimonials from celebrities such as author Alice Walker and actor Ed Asner.
* Supporters of two former Detroit police officers, Larry Nevers and Walter Budzyn, charged in the 1992 beating death of Malice Green. The site has had nearly 20,000 visits since Feb. 1998.
"I think its very unusual for someone to go to such lengths to profess their innocence," said James Burdick, an Oakland County defense attorney who has handled several high-profile cases over the past 32 years.
"I've only heard of one or two cases of someone doing something like this."
Hitman found mentally incompetent
Detroit News
January 19, 2001
PONTIAC -- The alleged hitman in a 1982 murder-for-hire scheme was found mentally incompetent to stand trial.Sanirell Shannon, 49, is described as the triggerman in the slaying of Sharron Randolph outside a Southfield restaurant 18 years ago. But a court-ordered psychiatric examination determined Shannon is incapable of aiding in his own defense, his attorney said Thursday.
"I'm not going into it at this time, but this exam shows my client (Shannon) has some serious problems," said attorney Terry A. Price, who has a pretrial conference Friday before Oakland Circuit Judge Debra Tyner.
The meeting and finding may also affect the pending case against the victim's husband, attorney Thomas Randolph, Jr., who reportedly paid Shannon $45,000 to shoot his wife in a faked robbery.
"I don't know how the prosecutor can go on with the trial now," said William Mitchell III, attorney for Randolph. "Between this and their witnesses, who can't get details straight, I think their case is falling apart."
Steven Vitale, an assistant Oakland County prosecutor, is confident the Randolph case will move forward, even if Shannon's is delayed.
"At worst, we might have to hold him (Shannon) in the hospital up to 15 months and test him again," Vitale said. "But this doesn't change a thing for Mr. Randolph."
The pair have been jailed since July when they were arrested by police who reopened the case after re-interviewing several witnesses.
Shannon, who also uses the nickname "Gino Vinelli," was a former student of Randolph's at Wayne County Community College.
Randolph remarried after his wife's death and ran a Detroit day care business with his new wife, Marie Jackson-Randolph, until she was imprisoned on charges of embezzling millions of dollars in federal funds.
Vitale said Randolph was motivated to kill his first wife by financial problems. He was named beneficiary of $248,000 in insurance policies in the event of Sharron Randolph's death.
But Mitchell said the chief witnesses against Randolph gave inconsistent testimony. The witnesses are Sharon Norwood and David Hutsell, a brother and sister. Shannon is their uncle.
Hutsell said he drove Shannon to the restaurant at 11 Mile and Lahser in Southfield and was forced, at gunpoint to drive him back to Detroit. Norwood claimed Shannon bragged of his role before and after the killing when he dumped cash on his parents' sickbed. She said she later witnessed and overheard arguments between Vinelli and Randolph over payment for the slaying.
"He (Hutsell) claims he saw the shooting occur outside (Randolph's) car," Mitchell said. "Bloodstains clearly indicate it took place in the back seat of the car. She (Norwood) tells of how she saw Vinelli in blood-splattered clothing. That just couldn't happen. For one thing, there wasn't that much of it and it was in the car."
Vitale said Hutsell testified he saw someone standing outside the vehicle and fire a weapon into the car.
"We think we have a good case," Vitale said. "It's not uncommon to have some inconsistencies, especially on an incident which occurred nearly 20 years ago."
Jury convicts man in wife's '82 death
Thomas Randolph's alleged accomplice is acquitted
Detroit News
November 28, 2001
PONTIAC -- An attorney and his former student both learned their fate in a killing that occurred over 18 years ago, but two juries reached different conclusions.
Thomas Randolph Jr., 58, was convicted of first-degree murder in the Jan. 8, 1982, slaying of his wife, Sharron. His alleged accomplice, Sanirell Shannon, was acquitted of charges he committed the actual slaying.
A visibly shaken Shannon, 50, wept openly after the verdict acquitting him was read Tuesday in Oakland Circuit Judge Deborah Tyner's courtroom. Ten minutes later, a stoic but tired-looking Randolph listened as a different jury foreman announced his conviction.
"I'm disappointed and thought my client deserved better," said William Mitchell, Randolph's attorney. "There were so many inconsistencies ... regardless there was clearly reasonable doubt."
Assistant Prosecutor Steven Vitale said he believes evidence supported convictions in both cases. "Justice was clearly reached in Randolph's case," Vitale said. "Unfortunately a guilty man was acquitted in Shannon's case."
Vitale said among evidence not heard by Shannon's jury was previous domestic violence incidents at the Randolph home. Randolph jurors also heard a conversation between Randolph and Detective Doug Edgar of the Oakland County Sheriff's Department, in which Randolph denied recognizing photos of Shannon, an acquaintance of 20 years who had been one of his students at Wayne County Community College.
Vitale had told jurors how Shannon killed Sharron Randolph outside a Southfield restaurant in a plot hatched by her desperate husband because of his financial trouble. Randolph had his wife killed so he could collect $248,000 in life insurance, Vitale said.
Thomas Randolph, who was struck on the head in the incident, stumbled back inside the restaurant and said his wife had been shot in a robbery.
In July 2000, 18 years later, Randolph and Shannon were charged after Sharon Norwood and her brother, David Hutsell, called police and said Randolph had paid their uncle, Shannon, $45,000 to kill Randolph's wife in a staged robbery.
The Shannon jury reached its verdict Monday, after nearly 23 hours of deliberation.
The Randolph jury reached its verdict Nov. 19, but Tyner ordered it sealed until the conclusion of Shannon's trial.
Randolph, who will be sentenced on Dec. 14, remain in to the Oakland County Jail. His family said they will appeal his conviction.
Shannon was expected to be released and his attorney, Terry Price, said his client would likely head home to Mississippi, where investigators arrested him.
"I plan on putting him (Shannon) on the first Greyhound bus home," said Price. "He's been through enough."
Jury says man hired wife's killer in 1982 case
Detroit socialite convicted, alleged gunman is acquitted
Detroit Free Press
November 28, 2001
In the nearly 20 years since his wife was murdered in a Southfield parking lot, Thomas Randolph rebuilt himself. He turned from a popular community college teacher into a lawyer; from a debt-ridden social worker into a Palmer Woods socialite.
And on Tuesday, he turned again -- from socialite into convicted murderer.
In bizarre back-to-back verdicts Tuesday, an Oakland County Circuit Court jury convicted
Randolph for the murder-for-hire slaying of his wife nearly 20 years ago, while a second jury
acquitted the man allegedly paid to shoot her.
Accused gunman Sanirell Shannon, 51, shook with sobs of relief as the first jury declared his
innocence in the January 1982 killing of Sharron Randolph outside a restaurant.
Moments later, Thomas Randolph sat emotionless and his family gasped in horror as a second
jury found him guilty of first-degree murder for his wife's death.
Randolph, who rose from instructor and counselor at Wayne County Community College to the
upper ranks of Detroit's social swirl, saw the last of the life he built after his wife's death vanish
Tuesday.
The brick home in exclusive Palmer Woods. The law practice. The lavish parties thrown with his fourth wife, Marie Jackson-Randolph, already sent to federal prison last year on unrelated fraud charges.
Randolph faces a mandatory sentence on Dec. 14 of life in prison without parole.
"He's a strong man , he's an overcomer," said Randolph's son, Thomas Randolph III, who vowed to appeal. He said Shannon's not-guilty verdict "sheds light on my father's innocence."
The men were charged in early 2000, after Shannon's niece and nephew told police that
Randolph, now 59, hired their uncle to stage a mugging outside the Empress Gardens Chinese
restaurant and kill Sharron Randolph.
Prosecutors alleged the men then cashed in on almost a quarter-million dollars in life insurance
policies that Randolph had recently bought for his wife, although their marriage was on the
rocks.
Randolph insisted a stranger attacked them.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys alike shook their heads at the conflicting verdicts. Shannon
and Randolph stood together through the seven-week trial but their cases were considered by
separate juries . Shannon, who was once diagnosed as mentally ill, was Randolph's former
student.
Randolph's jury reached its verdict last week, but it was sealed to prevent tainting the Shannon
jury 's deliberations. The Shannon jury came to its decision Monday afternoon, but it was not
opened until Tuesday when both panels reconvened in Judge Deborah Tyner's packed
courtroom.
In the first row sat Leonard Beatty Jr., the oldest of Sharron Randolph's three brothers, who
doubled over with tears of joy when the guilty verdict was read.
"I was dismayed when the first verdict was read, but the Lord has other plans, I guess," Beatty
said. "We always knew they did it."
Although the juries heard much of the same case , at times they were separated to hear
testimony that pertained to an individual defendant -- something that may have led to the split
decisions, said Assistant Prosecutor Steven Vitale.
But during the past seven weeks, both juries listened to the critical eyewitness account from
Shannon's nephew, David Hutsell, who said he unknowingly drove his uncle to the restaurant
and watched him shoot Sharron Randolph as she begged for her life.
And both juries heard Hutsell's sister, Sarah Norwood, describe how Shannon returned the night of Jan. 8, 1982 , to the house they shared on Ohio Street in Detroit spattered with blood.
Norwood also said she saw her uncle with large amounts of cash, delivered to the house by
Randolph, before and after the killing.
Members of the two juries declined to reveal whether they believed or discounted testimony.
There was conflicting trial testimony. For instance, although the killing was on a cold January
night, at one point Hutsell said it took place in late summer and another time on a warm, Indian
summer evening.
And while relatives claimed they went to police after overcoming their fear of Shannon, defense
lawyers said the accusations were grounded in old family feuds.
Still, Vitale said he believes Shannon committed the crime.
For Sharron Randolph's family, the mixed verdicts brought closure.
"It's like that cloud that I've been carrying around for a long time is gone," Beatty said. "It's not
elation, it's peace."
Cautious prosecution gets convictions in old cases
Oakland Press
October 25, 2004
Trying old cases is something Oakland County Prosecutor David Gorcyca proceeds with cautiously, usually because they are difficult ones.
When charges are filed, prosecution in most cases is successful, with defendants receiving lengthy prison sentences.
Recently, Bobby Smith was sentenced to life in prison in the City Tire murders from Pontiac. The case broke more than a year after the January 2001 slayings of Richard "Rick" Cummings and Stephen Putman.
In that case, prosecutors faced a severe lack of physical evidence or even a gun. But witnesses, some of them in jail on other charges, tied Smith to a gun and a desire for some easy cash.
Even after learning of the culprit from his wife's tip, police had to take the case to prosecutors several times before there was enough evidence to proceed.
Other cases in the last six years have been even older.
- Last year, Salome Gonzales Jr. was convicted of murder in the 1995 death of 8-year-old Mindy Ramirez in Pontiac. His nightmares led him to confess to a fellow inmate, who tape-recorded the conversations and persuaded Gonzales to draw a map of where the crime occurred.
- Lester Milton awaits trial for the 1990 double slaying in Southfield about a drug turf war. Despite a previous federal grand jury, investigative subpoenas helped crack the case as prosecutors compelled statements from prisoners in six different prisons.
- Jack Parker awaits trial for the August 2000 killing of Sandra Brady, who was beaten to death. That case was 2 years old when charges were finally levied.
- In 2001, Daniel Navarre Quince Sr. was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1979 death of his wife, who was strangled to death in front of her 5-year-old child. Already in prison for a murder, he'll spend the rest of his life behind bars. Instead of putting his family through a trial, he did the rare act of pleading no contest to first-degree murder.
- In July 2000, prosecutors charged attorney Thomas Randolph Jr. with the 1982 murder of his wife, a former Detroit police officer. Randolph had hired a man to kill her, and then he sued the restaurant's strip mall where she was shot for negligence.
- In June 2000, Brad Reece was charged with two counts of first-degree murder from a 4-year-old case. He was later acquitted in 2001 of all charges related to that killing.
- Alphonso D. Walker served two years in prison for involuntary manslaughter after his 2000 conviction on a 1995 case, related to a drug turf war in Pontiac.
- Akil Logan was sentenced to life in prison in 2000 for the 1995 murder of Jason Guzik, in which Logan only wanted a new car to take to the school dance.
- Debra Lynn Starr was convicted of murder in 1999 on the 15th anniversary of the killing of Paul Lingnau, her boyfriend, in Royal Oak. She also was imprisoned for trying to kill her stepfather when he tried to turn her in for the killing. At the time, Assistant Oakland County Prosecutor Gregory Townsend said, "Cases like this are the reason murder cases are never closed."
- In 1998, four men were charged and later convicted of a murder from 1995 that was related to a Pontiac drug war. The four men were from a well-known gang, the Low Down Dogs. Victim Lionel Adams had returned to his old neighborhood to visit his dying mother when he was shot down.
- Raymond Dilworth was convicted of murder and sentenced in 1999 to 20-to-30 years in prison for the 1971 murder of a Vietnam War veteran, Larry Kuenzer, in Pontiac. Dilworth was trying to rob Kuenzer when he shot him twice, an act that he said during his sentencing had haunted him for those 28 years.
Several of these cases came from the grand juries that were convened in the 1990s in Oakland County.
"We're not hesitant to charge difficult cases," said Gorcyca. "But it would be irresponsible to issue charges in cases we believe would be impossible to obtain a conviction."
