Randolph sang of killing

Prosecutors tell story as man’s double murder trial opens

In the late 1980s, Thomas Randolph would walk around singing the lyrics to “Foolish Behaviour” by Rod Stewart, a former friend testified Friday during the Las Vegas man’s double murder trial.

“Or should I act quite cold and deliberate,” the lyrics go. “Or maybe blow out her brains with a bullet?/ They’ll think suicide, they won’t know who done it/i’m gonna kill my wife, I’m really gonna take her life.”

Prosecutors launched the evidence portion of Randolph’s trial on charges that he hired a hitman to kill his wife in 2008 before fatally shooting the Jacqueline Bluth pointed to similarities in Gault’s death and the killings of Randolph’s sixth wife, Sharon Clausse, and Michael James Miller, a man authorities said Randolph groomed to kill Clausse. Randolph is facing the death penalty.

Gault’s body was found tucked in her waterbed inside the couple’s Clearfield, Utah, home with a bullet to the right side of her head, and a coroner ruled that she died by suicide. But prosecutors thought the positioning of the gun in her right hand was unusual for a self-inflicted gunshot, and Randolph stood to gain more than $530,000 from the death,

RANDOLPH

hitman by telling jurors about the 1986 death of Randolph’s second wife, Becky Gault. Chief Deputy District Attorney

▶ reviewjournal.com/randolph

mentary in North Las Vegas, where 200 ballots were sent home this spring. The total vote was 15-6.

Certainly there are still active parents in the district, as well as engaged parent groups such as Hope for Nevada.

Diane Adams, who sat quietly in the auditorium on Thursday, listening to the roundtable discussion, is one such parent.

“I never miss a meeting,” said Adams, a member of Chaparral’s school organizational team.

She said she wasn’t really surprised at the low parent turnout. If just a few parents show up to school team or Parent Advisory Committee meetings, she said, that is a good showing.

One reason for the district’s low involvement could be the high percentage of low-income families in Clark County. About 64 percent of students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch as of May 31, according to the district.

Research suggests that a family’s socioeconomic status affects their level of engagement in their child’s education.

“Generally, the evidence demonstrates that the level of parental involvement is linked to the class position of the parents and to the social and cultural resources that social class yields in American society,” sociologist Annette Lareau wrote in a 1987 study. “By definition, the educational status and material resources of parents increase with social class.”

Lareau compared parental involvement in two schools in a working-class and upper-middle class neighborhood. She found more upper-middle class parents attended formal school events than parents from the working-class school.

That might be contribute to CCSD’S low parent engagement, but it’s not the whole story. Nor can it be attributed to a lack of effort by district officials, Wright said.

“I think that we try really hard,” she said. “I think that as a district, we do honest-to-goodness as much as we could possibly do. … Parents have just got a lot going on.”

Contact Amelia Pak-harvey at apak-harvey@reviewjournal. com or 702-383-4630. Follow @ Ameliapakharvey on Twitter. On Education appears every other Saturday.