By Todd Dillon
Criminal District Attorney, and
Rob Freyer
First Assistant Criminal District Attorney, in San Jacinto County
May 21, 2019, started off as a normal day here in San Jacinto County. It was a hot and muggy Tuesday morning. Rhonda Richardson, a mother, grandmother, and guard at the Department of Criminal Justice’s Polunsky Unit in Livingston, was winding up a distinguished career and starting the next phase of her life. Little did she know that May 21 would be the last day she’d be seen alive. Rhonda had the misfortune of encountering Robert Clary, who was her neighbor and an overall awful individual. At the time, Clary was a 63-year-old loner whose accomplishments were limited to prison trips in 1992, 1995, and 2007 for Felony DWI and Indecency with a Child in Montgomery and Harris Counties.
In the early afternoon of the following day, deputies from the San Jacinto County Sheriff’s Department were called because a deceased woman had been found off a trail almost half a mile deep into the forest. The 911 dispatcher learned that the caller—who turned out to be one of Clary’s nephews—reported that Clary came to their residence and told him he had found a body in the woods and he didn’t know who it was. This nephew cooperated with police and told the responding deputies that he saw Clary taking pictures of the body with his phone. Another one of Clary’s neighbors overheard him telling people that he “did not want to be the person who called 911.”
That body ended up being Rhonda Richardson. She lived on the edge of the Sam Houston National Forest off Hoot Road in Shepherd. She was also the owner of two dogs who had a penchant for leaving her house and running into the woods. Deputies noted that her body was in an advanced state of decomposition, the skin of her face and neck had been peeled back, and she had sustained numerous sharp force injuries. Rhonda’s body was transported to the Forensic Center in Beaumont, where the pathologist listed the cause of death as multiple sharp force injuries and the manner of death as a homicide.
Questioning Clary
Detective Gary Sharpen with the sheriff’s department was assigned to lead the investigation. He, along with then-Assistant DA Todd Dillon (one of the co-authors of this article) attended the autopsy and obtained multiple witness statements, including one from Clary himself. Det. Sharpen learned that the first deputy to arrive at the scene (who fortunately is no longer in law enforcement) told Clary to delete the pictures he had taken “unless he wanted to appear in front of the grand jury.” Det. Sharpen did a thorough job from the onset locking in Clary’s version of events over the two-day period, and it was apparent that his version did not make sense. He said hardly knew Rhonda and never talked to her, but he had offered to help look for her dogs because “they got out all the time.” Despite them being neighbors, he said he never called her and never spoke to her, and she never called him either.
The investigation began to build with the assistance of outside agencies. Clary agreed to complete a polygraph, and at the same time, investigators executed a search warrant at his trailer in Shepherd. During that search, a large bloodstain was found in the carpet. Coordination between the interview team and the search team got that information back to the interviewer, where Clary seemed to be very concerned about the prospect of blood evidence being found in his home. The dominoes were falling, and with seriously suspicious (though not outright inculpatory) statements he made during the polygraph interview, it seemed just a matter of time until we had a lab report showing Rhonda’s blood in Clary’s home.
Until suddenly it wasn’t. Inexplicably, a lab report showed the blood had one contributor: Clary himself. No DNA connected to Rhonda was ever found in Clary’s home or vehicles. This setback completely derailed the investigation’s momentum. Even though detectives all had a good idea that Clary had been involved in Rhonda’s death, the investigation went cold.
Another set of eyes
Fortunately for Rhonda and her family, what this case needed most was another set of eyes. That came in the form of former Harris County Assistant DA Kelly Siegler and her talented coworkers on the show “Cold Justice.” Kelly began working with “Cold Justice” a few years after her retirement in 2008. She has traveled to all 50 states and has met with (mostly) smaller law enforcement agencies to offer years of the experience, energy, attention, and extensive resources that cold cases require. This was the second case that “Cold Justice” helped with in our county in 2022. By that point, Todd was the elected Criminal District Attorney, and he had already worked with Kelly and the show to re-open another cold case in our county. Based off that experience, we had a good foundation of trust in the transparency and organization of the process, so we asked for help solving Rhonda’s murder.
When Kelly and “Cold Justice” returned to San Jacinto County, she enlisted the help of our office, Detective Sharpen, Lieutenant Charles Dougherty, and Sergeant Omar Sheik with the sheriff’s department. We interviewed the same witnesses who had been interviewed in 2019, and upon reopening of this investigation, we were reminded of the importance of getting a suspect’s story committed. We were able to go back and confront the parts of Clary’s statements that defied comprehension.
The members of “Cold Justice” brought not only years of combined law enforcement experience, but also vast resources that are often lacking in smaller jurisdictions. Kelly encouraged us to reach out to Montgomery County forensic pathologist Katherine Pinneri, who has conducted no fewer than 2,000 autopsies in her career. Pinneri re-examined photographs, lab reports, and the original autopsy report, and she determined that the injuries to Rhonda’s body were not caused by animal predation as originally suspected.
We also learned that the technology involving cell phone data records and tower information had advanced greatly in the proceeding four years. Former Harris County Assistant DA Eric Devlin (now retired and a contributor to “Cold Justice”) re-examined and “re-downloaded” both Rhonda’s and the defendant’s phones. Devlin used this cell phone data and call detail records—cold records that have no bias or motive to lie—to prove conflicts and discrepancies in Clary’s story. Clary had told Det. Sharpen back in 2019 that he had “never met Rhonda” but that he had gone out help look for her missing dogs. But phone logs showed that he had called her—he actually called her phone after he knew she was dead! And no fewer than three witnesses reported seeing Rhonda on the back of Clary’s four-wheeler on the afternoon she was last seen alive. In fact, Clary was the last person to see her alive and the first person to see her dead.
Ms. Siegler and retired Milwaukee Police Department investigator Steve Spingola accompanied Det. Sharpen back to the scene in October 2022 and found Clary in the same house where he had been living in 2019. Clary even willingly spoke to them, but once again he continually contradicted himself now that we had so much information that blew his original story out of the water. Devlin assisted us and Detective Sharpen in writing up a very detailed probable cause statement, and upon getting it signed and a warrant issued, Clary was taken into custody the same day. The defendant was indicted for the murder of Rhonda Richardson the following month, and the case was assigned to the 411th District Court, the Honorable John Wells presiding.
Case preparation
In preparing the case for trial, Todd and First Assistant Rob Freyer (co-author of this article) met extensively with Rhonda’s son and daughter, who, after four frustrating years, could finally look forward to seeing justice for the man who had brutally and inexplicably murdered their mother. After we completed discovery and the case progressed, we finally received a trial date of April 29, 2024. We were faced with the same issues that had presented themselves four years earlier, but we knew that we had a strong circumstantial case. Clary was now almost 67 years old, and our main objective was to obtain a sentence that would guarantee he would never leave prison.
On April 25, less than a week before trial, Clary entered a plea of guilty for Rhonda’s murder in exchange for a sentence of 30 years. Her daughter delivered an impassioned victim impact statement and was relieved that the defendant’s day of reckoning had finally arrived.
Lessons learned
In working on and preparing this case, we learned a lot: Never give up, don’t be afraid to reach out for help, and focus on the types of evidence that cannot be contradicted or explained away (phone records, for example). They always show up, they don’t have any bias, and they don’t have any reason to lie. We also learned how working with a team like “Cold Justice” can be a great benefit to a small county with minimal resources. Todd initially had some reservations about what it might look like to try a case where a film crew had dozens and dozens of hours of footage of the process of the investigation, but it actually wound up being a strength of the case. The defense team was privy to all of the footage, and the process resulted in the most transparent investigation our office had ever conducted. “Cold Justice” brought a ton of resources to bear on a cold case, assisted the investigators in doing the work, and compiled all notes in an easy to comprehend format. I would highly recommend considering the option, should you find yourself with a stagnating cold case in a jurisdiction with few resources.
We would like to once again thank Kelly Siegler and the “Cold Justice” team for their assistance. Rob, one of this article’s co-authors, had the privilege of working directly with Kelly for the first 12 years of his career in Harris County, and it was a real honor to work with her again. We would encourage smaller counties out there to seriously consider taking another look at any unsolved murder cases you may have, and to reach out to Kelly and her coworkers for their guidance and insight, because for Rhonda and her family, it proved to be invaluable.