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Rhonda Richardson went missing on May 21, 2019, searching for her dog, only for her body to be discovered the next day in the adjacent National Park. Cold Justice's season 7 episode 3 retells the story of the 59-year-old Texas corrections officer and mother who is believed to have been murdered at the hands of Robert Dale Clary, her neighbour with a string of sexual misconduct charges.
Titled Trail of Terror, the episode will bring to light the mystery bringing the death of Rhonda Richardson. Richardson's body was found eight feet away from an ATV trail in the forest, while eyewitnesses in the investigation claim that she was last seen with Robert Dale Clary driving into the forest on his ATV in search of her dog.
The official synopsis gives a brief idea of what to expect from the episode as it reads,
"The team tackles the twisted murder case of Rhonda Richardson, who went searching for her lost dog and was later found seemingly scalped by a sadistic killer; the biggest twist is a new piece of evidence that breaks the case wide open."
Trail of Terror will be re-aired exclusively on November 11, 2023, at 5 pm EST on Oxygen.
Who killed Rhonda Richardson? Details explored
Rhonda Richardson was the corrections officer at the Polunsky Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice who resided alone in Shepherd, Texas, as a devoted mother and a grandmother. She lived alone with her dogs rather peacefully, with no problems with her neighbors. Richardson was about to retire from her job and had intimated the same to her workplace. The investigation did not reveal any enmity from the inmates as well.
Rhonda Richardson stepped out on foot on May 21, 2019, to look for her lost dog in the woods. Her body was discovered the following day as a call came into the San Jacinto County Sheriff's Office from Robert Dale Clary's nephew, Jacen Clary, notifying the officers about her dead body found in the woods of Sam Houston National Forest.
The cause of death could not be determined due to the level of decomposition the body had undergone. However, the body was found with blunt force trauma to her head and multiple slashes on her body.
Robert Dale Clary was an early suspect in the Rhonda Richardson murder case as Harris County Prosecutor and Cold Justice host Kelly Siegler joined hands with investigator Steve Spingola along with aid from local law enforcement officers from the San Jacinto Sheriff’s Office.
The officers who worked in the case were Sheriff Greg Capers, St. Gary Sharpen, and Sgt. Omar Sheikh. While Siegler believed that Richardson was either preyed upon by wild animals or suffered a heat-related heart attack, Spingola, like the local law officials, believed that the killer scalped her body as he said,
“But it looks like she was scalped by her killer.”
Not only was Richardson's cell signal last detected around the crime scene, but so was Dale Clary's, unlike his statement. The arrest warrant was based on this piece of evidence. The neighbors provided other details that pointed officers to Dale Clary.
Richardson had asked for help to look for her missing dogs from her neighbors. She was last spotted with Robert Dale Clary on his ATV. Samples from his ATV and rug were collected with a search warrant and sent to a lab in Montgomery County for analysis.
