CASTRO VALLEY, CALIF. (1080 KRLD) - After a Parker County man was arrested on suspicion of shooting his wife to death, the family of the man's previous wife had hoped that authorities would now investigate her death from five years ago.
However, those authorities tell KRLD such an investigation is not forthcoming.
Clayton Strong, 73, is in custody in Mexico and is awaiting extradition back to Parker County to face a murder charge in the shooting death of his wife, Shirley Barrington Weatherley, 72.
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Strong had previously been married to Betty Sanders Brock, who died at an RV park in rural Idaho in December of 2016.
Brock's daughter, Amy Belanger, says Strong had met her mother as her stepfather was dying of cancer, and she saw red flags immediately.
"She had met him online, and he had told her that he was desperate, looking for work and unemployed, and asked, could he come and stay on their property while he looked for work in the area?," Belanger told KRLD from her home in Castro Valley, California, located in the San Francisco Bay Area. "She had declined, and he had shown up anyway."
Belanger says Strong had abused her mother for years, dating back to the time they lived in Milton, Florida, just outside Pensacola in the state's Panhandle.
"He tried to alienate her from her family and isolate her from he friends, in her church, in her community and neighbors," says Belanger.
Belanger says deputies in Santa Rosa County, Florida, had repeatedly been to their home and did nothing to protect her mother.
"They asked her, 'Is he listening to you?' And she verbally said no and shook her head yes," says Barrington. "And they asked her, 'Do you feel safe?' And she verbally said yes and shook her head no. And they still did nothing to remove her from that situation."
In 2015, Strong and Brock traveled from Florida to live at Harpster RV Park in rural Idaho County, Idaho -- about halfway up the state connecting Montana and Oregon.
In December of 2016, Brock died.
Belanger says at the time of her mother's death, deputies in Idaho County did not investigate.
"The police and the coroner showed up, (but) they didn't bother to question him," Belanger says. "He claimed that she had died of natural causes and that she had Parkinson's disease, which she did not have."
Belanger says the Idaho County coroner permitted her mother's body to be immediately cremated, thus destroying any potential evidence of foul play.
Belanger says she has every reason to believe that Strong killed her mother.
"We submitted the police reports that showed that my mother had been abused by Clay, and that my family had called multiple times for wellness and police checks," Belanger says. "We submitted the medical records that showed that she did not have Parkinson's disease. We spoke to people who lived at Harpster RV Park, where she was living at the time, and who told us that she had been locked inside an Airstream trailer and not allowed to come out, that she appeared to have been drugged and that she was controlled by him, that he was heavily armed, and that he would not allow people to talk to her."
Now that Strong is charged with murder in the death of his latest wife, Belanger hopes that authorities in Idaho will now investigate her mother's death.
"We weren't asking them to convict him based on our evidence; we were simply asking them to investigate," says Belanger. "And to this day, they never even questioned him."
Idaho County Coroner Cody Funke tells KRLD that since Brock's body had been cremated, there will not be an investigation.
Belanger says had Strong been arrested immediately after her mother's death, perhaps he would never have had the opportunity to even meet Weatherley, let alone kill her.
Strong is currently awaiting extradition back to Parker County to face charges of murdering his latest wife.
"When someone is captured who has harmed your family in this way, you don't get to just feel relief," says Belanger. "You know it's mixed, because no amount of justice is going to bring your loved one back."
