Clara Rector

True Crime All The Time

This episode explores the cold case murder of Tommy Hope in Camdenton, Missouri, in 2004, which remained unsolved for nearly a decade until

Key takeaways

• Clara Rector confessed to murdering Tommy Hope during a separate investigation for stalking her pastor, providing the breakthrough needed to solve a nearly decade-old cold case.
• Tommy's history of abuse, addiction, and violent encounters made him vulnerable and created multiple potential motives among those in his life.

Main topics

• Cold case murder investigation
• Clara Rector's confession

Notable quotes

"If you're doing the stakeout on me, you're going to be sitting there for a long time. Yeah, going to get kind of bored."

Conclusion

Clara Rector's shocking confession during a separate legal issue brought closure to a

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hello everyone and welcome to episode 533 of the True Crime All the Time podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in true crime, Mike Gibson. Gibby, how are you? I'm doing good, man. You? I'm doing great. Speaker 1 (0:12) Yeah. 533. That's a lot of episodes. I've done 532 because you left me out on one of the episodes early on. I Speaker 2 (0:20) did. I did. I don't remember why, but we rectified it and redid it with you. We Speaker 1 (0:26) did. And Speaker 2 (0:26) it was much better, Speaker 1 (0:27) people said. Speaker 2 (0:28) Yeah. So we're talking about Clara Rector. When Clara Rector was arrested for stalking and harassing her pastor in April 2013, she shocked investigators by confessing to murder, solving a case that had been cold for nearly a decade. Speaker 1 (0:46) Wow. She must have needed to get something off her chest. Speaker 2 (0:49) Well, yeah, we're going to find out. But it's also, you know, stalking, harassing your pastor. Yeah. That seems like such a... Strange thing. You Speaker 1 (0:59) ever had anybody stalk or harass you? Speaker 2 (1:01) No. Speaker 1 (1:02) No? Not yet. I'm not memorable enough for, not that I want to be, obviously, but. Speaker 2 (1:11) You know, I'm pretty plain, Jane. Speaker 1 (1:13) It'd be hard to stalk you. Yeah, because Speaker 2 (1:15) I'm in my basement fortress. Speaker 1 (1:16) They'd be like, after four days, like, I give up. He is not coming out. Speaker 2 (1:21) Yeah, if you're doing the stakeout on me, you're going to be sitting there for a long time. Yeah, going to get kind of bored. Tommy D. Hope was born in Houston, Texas on June 28, 1955. He grew up with two siblings. Tommy had a difficult childhood. He and his siblings were abandoned by their parents. for days at a time. And then they were eventually put into foster care. According to Tommy's friend, Brenda McCabe, Tommy experienced abuse in foster care and was neglected and beat. So horrible, right? Speaker 2 (1:57) parents abandoning their children for days at a time. I Speaker 1 (2:01) don't know how parents do that. Like, how do you leave your kids alone? What do you do? Like get some food, throw it in the fridge or give them some pizza money and just be like, we'll be back in a few days. Speaker 2 (2:13) Yeah. Now, I mean, how old were these kids at that time? Cause that, that makes a difference. If you're talking about a 16 or 17 year old. Yeah. Yeah. You could go away for a little bit. probably trust them to take care of themselves. But if you're talking about four or five, six, seven year olds, that would be wrong. You know, so incredibly wrong as you said, and that's how you get your kids taken away from you. Speaker 1 (2:40) Now Speaker 2 (2:40) we've talked about foster care before. It can be a great thing, right? There are kids who need a home and Speaker 1 (2:49) there Speaker 2 (2:50) are people out there willing to help. Unfortunately, some of those people aren't always the best people in the world. Speaker 1 (2:57) They abuse the system. Yeah. Right. They can Speaker 2 (3:00) abuse the kid. Yeah. Speaker 1 (3:01) They're in it sometimes just for the money. Yeah. And other times they're in it because they are just some sick individuals. Now, Speaker 2 (3:07) hopefully, as with most things, that's a small percentage of the population. Most people are in it for the right reasons and want to do. the right thing by these kids and they want the kids in their lives, but like with it, with anything, there are going to be bad actors or bad apples in any profession, anything you talk about in life. Yep. Nobody is going to be all good. No, it just doesn't happen. Tommy joined the military as soon as he was old enough. Then he left the military in his twenties and he did odd jobs. to make ends meet. According to his obituary, Tommy worked in carpentry and loved rebuilding cars. So he liked working with his hands, it sounds like. It does. By his early 40s, Tommy was living in Camdenton, Missouri, a small town near the Lake of the Ozarks. He had a lot of friends that he had met at local bars. He worked as a maintenance man at a bar in Osage Beach. You know, One place I've never been, but I really want to go is Lake of the Ozarks. Speaker 1 (4:20) Because of the series? Because of the series, Speaker 2 (4:22) yeah. I knew Speaker 1 (4:23) it. Now, Speaker 2 (4:24) I Speaker 1 (4:25) didn't Speaker 2 (4:25) realize, I knew it was big. Oh, Speaker 1 (4:27) yeah. I Speaker 2 (4:27) didn't Speaker 1 (4:27) realize how Speaker 2 (4:28) big. It Speaker 1 (4:29) spans multiple areas. And Speaker 2 (4:32) states. I mean, multiple states. Speaker 1 (4:35) Yeah. Speaker 2 (4:35) So I don't know what the best part of it is to go. I'd have to do some research on that. Speaker 1 (4:40) Let's stay on a houseboat and float around. Speaker 2 (4:42) I know, that'd be great. That actually would be a lot of fun. We have rented a houseboat once before on Lake Cumberland. Yeah. And it was, it was fun. It Speaker 1 (4:52) was, Speaker 2 (4:52) it's a good time. I was younger. Yeah. And now my dad was too cheap to spring for the air conditioned model. So that part was not great because it was about a hundred degrees out. Speaker 1 (5:04) He's probably thinking there's a lake outside. If you get hot, jump in it. No, Speaker 2 (5:08) I know what my dad was thinking. He's thinking, I Speaker 1 (5:10) don't want to spend the money. I don't want to spend the money. That's a $50 right there I can keep in my pocket. Exactly. Speaker 2 (5:15) According to the Lake Sun leader, police had dealings with Tommy several times for alcohol-related offenses and one drug-related offense. Tommy was arrested two weeks prior to his death for possession of a controlled substance. Charges were still pending at the time of his death. Obviously, we're getting ready to talk about how he died, who was involved. But it's important to talk about him, his childhood, kind of everything that he had going on in his life leading up to it. Tommy was assaulted and suffered severe cuts to his face in March 2003. A man named Robert Lewis was convicted of assault and unlawful use of a weapon in October 2003. in connection with that incident, Lewis was sentenced to 11 years in prison. Speaker 1 (6:09) Some decent time for assaulting somebody. It Speaker 2 (6:13) is, but you know, sounds like to me warranted, but also confusing because look back at some of the cases we've done, you're talking about incredibly heinous sexual assaults, even murder. Where somebody doesn't get 11 years Speaker 1 (6:33) in prison. You wonder if it's just, it's probably a combination. Is it just because the law is bad? Is it because maybe the prosecution wasn't as good on some of those cases? Or the defense attorney was better? Speaker 1 (6:52) jury was just more relaxed. I don't know. Speaker 2 (6:55) Yeah. I think it's a bunch of different factors. Like you said, right. Some of it's just the time. Speaker 1 (7:00) Yeah. And Speaker 2 (7:01) how some of the crimes were looked at, how the laws were written for those crimes. No doubt that laws regarding sexual assault and sentences for those crimes have changed dramatically. Oh, right. Over the last 40, 50 years. On the morning of April 28th, 2004, Tommy's friends, Cindy Christensen and Brian North went to check on him because they were worried. No one had heard from Tommy in days, which was unusual, right? He was a type of guy who kept in touch. They arrived at his home around 6 30 AM. They knocked on the door and received no answer. So Cindy crawled through a window inside. She found Tommy dead on the floor. In a pool of blood. Tommy's body was lying in the doorway between the kitchen and living room. So horrible for you to go over to a friend's house because yeah, you're worried. You haven't heard from him. Right. I don't think most people jump to, Oh, well, they're probably laying dead in their house. Speaker 1 (8:08) No, I'm sure when Cindy crawled through that opening, she probably thought I won't find him here, but let me just go through and just double check. Yeah. And then come across that body. Speaker 2 (8:18) No, we did mention some drugs, right? So could it have been possible that he went on a bender, you know, overdose or, Speaker 1 (8:25) or Speaker 2 (8:26) that, but, um, to be found dead in a pool of blood, that's gotta be unbelievably shocking. Yeah. Investigators used luminol inside the house, which revealed bloody footprints leading to the window as well as prints on the window frame. That stuff's not cheap. Luminol? Mm Speaker 1 (8:47) -mm. Speaker 2 (8:47) Yeah. I know you use a lot of it. I don't know why. I carry it with me. But you do have a Speaker 1 (8:52) really large supply of it. You need to know that things are cleaned up. Okay. For, you know, for whatever reasons. And Speaker 2 (9:00) that's the only reason that you can really tell, right? Speaker 1 (9:02) I mean, I want to know when my kitchen looks good again. You know, like there's nothing I need to worry about, you know? Speaker 2 (9:06) Did I ever tell you that my wife wanted one of those black lights? Oh, did she? Yeah, because she wanted to know if the puppy was weeing on the carpet. Yeah. And very quickly found out that you should never use a black light in your house because as clean as you think it is, Speaker 1 (9:26) it's not. She didn't come down here and use it, did she? No. That's good. But you know how my Speaker 2 (9:32) wife is about cleanliness. Oh, yeah. And she thinks, like, this place is... spotless, which it is very Speaker 1 (9:40) clean. It is clean. I mean, from the stairs up. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 2 (9:43) That's what I'm talking about. Yeah. Speaker 1 (9:45) But Speaker 2 (9:45) you shine that black light. There's stuff everywhere. Oh yeah. I mean, don't even know what it is. Yeah. So the autopsy found that Tommy died from eight stab wounds to the torso and left arm. And he had a laceration on his neck. The medical examiner determined he died three or four days earlier. On the night of April 24th or the morning of April 25th. So that does, you know, kind of go along with the timeline, right? Friends hadn't heard from him in a few days. That's when they started getting worried. And it sounds like at least, you know, from the medical examiner that he had been Speaker 1 (10:27) dead Speaker 2 (10:27) for three Speaker 1 (10:28) or four Speaker 2 (10:29) days. And Speaker 1 (10:30) that would be even worse to come in to that home where that body's been sitting there for like. Three days? Just festering? Yeah, yeah. Speaker 2 (10:38) I mean, it's never going to be good, but right. Obviously, the longer the body is there, the worse it's going to be. Tommy's friends told investigators he used drugs as a means to cope with the trauma he suffered in his childhood and while in the military. Speaker 1 (10:55) Not surprising. Speaker 2 (10:56) No, I think a lot of people use drugs and or alcohol to cope with trauma. Speaker 2 (11:04) you know, rightly or wrongly, you can look at it a bunch of different ways, but I do think a lot of people use that as a way to cope. I Speaker 1 (11:13) mean, people want to feel numb. They don't want to feel the pain, the pain. Yeah. Speaker 2 (11:17) And that's one way to, to do it. Camdenton police chief, Jeff Beauchamp said, Tommy kept a variety of drugs in his home, such as meth, marijuana, and cocaine. And people came over to party and use his drugs regularly. So, yeah, I mean, you're getting, you know, when you talk meth, to me, that's like there's meth and there's marijuana. However you think about marijuana, whether you think it should be legal or not. I know people who use marijuana. Yeah. Speaker 1 (11:51) I Speaker 2 (11:51) don't know anybody who uses meth or at least has told me they use meth, but I just feel like these are on way different levels. They are. And then maybe somewhere in between is cocaine. I don't know. Yeah. I've told you that story. Cocaine has always scared me and I would never want to try it because I remember Lynn bias, the basketball star that I grew up watching when I was younger. He died allegedly from trying it one time. That's what we were always told right after he got drafted. Speaker 2 (12:26) So, but I don't know. I always think of meth and maybe that's the breaking bad in me, but meth is being like this really hardcore, nasty drug. Speaker 1 (12:37) Not good for you. Oh, I don't think any of them are real good for you, but stay away from meth. Speaker 2 (12:42) Yeah, definitely. Tommy's friend, Patricia Strauss told the investigators that Tommy had recently been seeing a married woman named Clara Rector. Clara's husband, Jason. knew about the relationship and didn't like it. Speaker 1 (12:57) Didn't like it? I don't like to just see somebody else. Speaker 2 (13:00) Shocking. Speaker 1 (13:01) Now, Speaker 2 (13:02) from what I understand, there are some guys who are into that, but I don't think many. Speaker 1 (13:08) They could be into it or they might be okay with it because they're like, hopefully he'll want you, you'll leave me, Speaker 2 (13:14) and we're all good. Yeah, I just don't think a lot of guys would be okay with that. I don't think so either. It's