“The folks who conspired to make that happen are now in jail.”īut recently, Thomas Clayton’s attorney filed an 149-page appeal with the Fourth Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, calling for a reversal of Clayton’s conviction and claiming that the entire case against him was built on “circumstantial evidence” and faulty cellphone science.
“It was a heinous murder,” Steuben County Sheriff Jim Allard told the Elmira Star-Gazette at the time.
The town was still dotted with purple ribbons and “Justice for Kelley” lawn signs, but the case, for the most part, seemed closed. When Thomas was sentenced in April 2017, Caton residents finally caught a breather.
The community was consumed by reporters and investigators, as special prosecutor Weedon Wetmore summoned some 75 witnesses-many of them locals-to testify in a seven-week trial that would send Kelley’s husband, Thomas Clayton, and an accomplice, Michael Beard, to prison without parole. Kelley Clayton’s murder placed the town of Caton in the center of a media storm. But for the most part, the hamlet has gone without terror, confusion, and roving teams of TV cameras-at least, until the fall of 2015, when a 35-year-old woman named Kelley Stage Clayton was found bludgeoned to death in her modern four-bedroom home. There have been a few conflicts over the years: disputes over name changes (from Painted Post to Wormley, then to Caton), some flash floods (first in 1916, then in 1920, and later in 1936), and a gruesome fire at Town Hall in 1972.
The community’s timeline unfolds like an archetype of the rural Northeast: The land was stolen in 1788, organized into an area called “Township #1,” and settled by some 796 colonists-a population that, in the time since, has grown to just over 2,100. In some three centuries of recorded history, the town of Caton, New York, has not racked up many scandals.