North Texas murder suspect had former wife cremated after suspicious death, family says
A 73-year-old Parker County murder suspect accused of killing a woman this month had his former wife’s body cremated in 2016 after her family said she died under suspicious circumstances.
A murder warrant was issued last week for Clayton Strong, who authorities said remained on the run Monday, in connection with the shooting death of a woman earlier this month at their Parker County home. Authorities have not publicly identified the woman Strong is accused of killing on Aug. 7, but a website started by his previous wife’s family says the victim was his current wife.
Family and friends of Strong’s previous wife, Betty Strong, have waged a campaign for years for an investigation into her 2016 death, saying he had targeted her in a financial fraud romance scheme and used abuse and isolation to control her before she died in Idaho.
“Betty had unknowingly opened her door to a predator,” according to a statement from Betty Strong’s family on their website seeking justice for her. “By December 2016, she was dead under suspicious circumstances, 2,500 miles from home, leaving her large and loving family in grief and trauma.”
Family and friends of Betty Strong say they even contacted the family of the woman Clayton Strong married in March 2017, just three months after Betty Strong’s death.
Betty Strong’s family told his new wife and her family that they thought Clayton Strong was enacting the same pattern of isolation and abuse against her, even showing her the website that Betty Strong’s family had created seeking justice in her death.
“If Betty had an Achilles heel, it her generosity of spirit,” the family said on the website. “She could not bear to see anyone or anything suffer. Sometimes that cost her some peace of mind. But she had no idea it could also cost her the safety she had come to take for granted in her small, rural town.”
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The story of Betty Sanders Brock of East Milton, Florida, and Clayton Strong began in 2010.
The website created by the family of Betty Sanders Brock Strong provided these details:
Clayton Strong befriended her online when her husband of 35 years, Jim Brock, was terminally ill with cancer. Betty Brock was a mother of five sons, one stepson and two daughters.
Her family’s home in East Milton was a frequent site of cookouts, holiday gatherings and sleepovers for the grandkids. Family members who didn’t live in town spoke with her regularly on the telephone.
Betty Brock shared her impending widowhood online, and Strong befriended her, saying he was alone, unhappy and jobless in Fort Meyers, Florida, her family said.
“The red flags were flying right from the start, but my mother had endless compassion for people in need, and wouldn’t see them,” said Amy J. Belanger of Castro Valley, California, in a Monday email to the Star-Telegram. Belanger is Betty Strong’s oldest daughter.
Strong was eager to move to her region of Florida and offered to help out around the couple’s property in exchange for short-term lodging, the family said. Betty Brock and her husband declined, but Strong showed up, saying he’d sleep in his beat-up station wagon, they said. The Brocks allowed Strong to sleep on a floor in an outbuilding.
The Brock family said Strong then attached himself to Betty Brock, driving wedges between her and her family. He asked questions about her finances and prevented her from being alone with her family, they said.
At some point, the Brock family said, they found out that Strong had lied about his life and Betty Brock asked him to leave, but he manipulated her compassionate nature and she allowed him to stay.
“We found out he had a wife in another city who didn’t know where he was, and that he wanted to leave her, but was financially dependent on her,” Belanger said. “We were alarmed. Whenever she (mother) would start to distance from him, he would tell her stories about awful things that had happened to him, and, because of who she was, that trapped her into a moral obligation to help him.”
On Aug. 28, 2010, Jim Brock died while in hospice care. Immediately Strong began pressuring Betty Brock into marriage, her family said.
The Brock family said Strong then love-bombed her, doting on her every need. Her family begged her to give herself time to grieve and spend some time alone.
Betty Brock told her family that Strong wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Betty Brock married Strong just five months after her husband’s death, traveling and posting their adventures on Facebook.
Everything then shifted, according to her family, as visits were restricted, monitored and kept short by Clayton Strong. There was a guard dog and padlocks were added to the main doors.
Her family called police to conduct wellness checks and reported abuse, but Betty Strong protected her husband and said nothing was wrong.
After more wellness checks, Clayton Strong threatened to make Betty “disappear” if anyone intervened any further, her family says. In the summer of 2015, Clayton Strong and his wife left Florida and settled in Idaho, living in an Airstream trailer at an RV park.
On Dec. 14, 2016, Clayton Strong delivered Betty’s body in their SUV to the Syringa Hospital parking lot in Idaho, telling the staff she had died of Parkinson’s disease, her family says. He never called his friends at the RV park, police or paramedics, and told the hospital staff he waited hours to take any action because he had to dig his truck out of the snow, according to the Brock family.
Witnesses at the RV park told the Brock family the roads were clear that day, and Betty Strong never had Parkinson’s disease, according to her medical records in Florida.
Initially, her death was ruled natural causes based on what Clayton Strong told authorities. Clayton Strong told the coroner his wife had no other family besides him and she had been sick with Parkinson’s for years.
But an Idaho official said Monday that authorities were working to change the ruling on her cause of death to “could not be determined.”
Betty Strong’s body was cremated.
The Brock family said in spite of suspicious circumstances in her death, there has been no law enforcement investigation in Idaho County.
“My family was horrified by how cavalier the sheriff’s deputy and coroner were in simply accepting the story of a man with his wife’s body in his truck,” Belanger said. “They released my mother’s body for cremation without any attempt to check out the scene of her death, talk to neighbors, see if he had a police record, contact her family, or verify his claims about how she died.”
An official with the Idaho County Sheriff’s Office in Grangeville, Idaho, referred questions to coroner Cody Funke at the Idaho County Coroner’s Office.
“As far as a death investigation, there was a cremation of the deceased,” Funke said Monday. “There is no body.”
In the August murder case, the Parker County sheriff said in a news release that concerned family members had requested a welfare check of a woman on the afternoon of Aug. 7 in the 6000 block of Midway Road near Springtown and Sanctuary.
The body of a woman was found in a front yard. An autopsy revealed she died from a gunshot wound to her chest.
Before Aug. 7, deputies had responded to domestic calls at the residence involving Clayton Strong, according to the news release.
The Parker County sheriff requested the assistance of the Texas Rangers, who will be leading the investigation.
The death investigation led investigators to south Texas, where they obtained surveillance video of Clayton Strong disposing of a weapon in a department store parking lot on the same day the woman’s body was found.
Investigators flew to Eagle Pass to recover the weapon and ammunition, which was abandoned by the suspect along with additional evidence, the release said. The sheriff did not provide any other details on the evidence.
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Strong is described as roughly 5-feet-6, weighing approximately 200 pounds and having silver/white hair and a mustache. He is known to wear glasses.
He is believed to be driving a primer gray extended cab 1996 Chevrolet pickup with a paper Texas buyer’s tag.
Anyone with information should contact the Parker County Sheriff’s Office at 817-594-8845, or Parker County Crime Stoppers at 817-599-5555, or tip411 by logging onto www.parkercountyheriff.net.
Crime Stoppers will pay up to a $1,000 reward for information leading to Strong’s location and arrest.
This story was originally published August 16, 2021 at 5:06 PM.
