In May 2016, Lana Clayton walked into the York County Sheriff's Office and told deputies she'd accidentally shot her husband in the head with a crossbow while he slept. Steven Clayton backed up her story. Accident. No charges were filed. They moved on.

Two years later, Steve was dead — found at the bottom of the staircase in the South Carolina mansion he'd built as an exact replica of George Washington's Mount Vernon. The first theory was a fall, maybe a heart attack. It took his family's insistence on an autopsy, and a coroner who'd never even heard of the chemical she was looking at, to uncover what had actually happened.

This week, we're digging into the marriage behind the headlines — the six-time-married millionaire and the quiet VA nurse, a crossbow story that changed three separate times over the years, a judge who called it "the strangest case" of his career, and a family that waited a full year to bury their own brother so they could do it without the woman accused of killing him in the room.

And we're not done with this method yet. Because Lana Clayton's case didn't stay contained to South Carolina — and next week, we're following the thread to a second case that investigators believe was directly inspired by this one.

To see more about this case, as well as the sources used to create this episode, visit our Blog Here.

Find Crime Clueless socials, website, and more here

Thank you for listening - we are grateful for you!

Support Crime Clueless - Buy Me A Coffee

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.