A man from Sioux City, Iowa convicted by a Lincoln County jury in October of first degree murder and two other felony counts in the death of a Carney area man has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Appearing for his sentencing before District Judge John Canavan on Tuesday, Clyde Dean Clayton, 42 at the time he was charged, was sentenced to life without parole on the murder conviction. That is what the jury had recommended as punishment. An alternate count, accessory to felony, went away with that conviction.
The judge also sentenced Clayton to five years in the Department of Corrections on his conviction of unlawful removal of dead body, ordering that it run consecutively with the murder count.
On Count 4, desecration of a human corpse, the judge sentenced Clayton to seven years in the Department of Corrections and an $8,000 fine to run concurrent with Count 3 and consecutive with Count 1, the murder conviction.
Assistant District Attorney Kelly Trimble handled the case for the state at sentencing and Clayton was defended by attorney Kimberly Miller.
The jury deliberated just a little over an hour before returning guilty verdicts against Clayton. The jury found him guilty of first degree murder, unlawful removal of a dead body and desecration of a human corpse.
Judge Canavan, who presided over the trial had scheduled sentencing for 9 a.m. Dec. 3. He had ordered a pre-sentence investigation.
Assistant District Attorney Kelly Trimble, who along with Assistant DA Rachel Thompson prosecuted the case at trial, said following the verdict, “We are incredibly thankful for the hard work of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office, the OSBI, the Medical Examiner’s Office, and the jurors in this case. This verdict ensures that an incredibly violent individual will never have the chance to harm anyone ever again. Justice was truly served for Brian Corey and his family.”
Clayton was defended by attorneys Kimberly Miller and William Pierce.
Clayton was formally charged July 14, 2023, in Lincoln County District Court.
A co-defendant in the case, Janelle Bertha Brown, 39, also was formally charged July 14, 2023 in Lincoln County District Court with first degree murder, unlawful removal of a dead body and desecration of a human corpse.
She recently entered a guilty blind plea to all those and her sentencing has been scheduled for 9 a.m. Dec. 10, 2024.
Supplemental information filed in the case by Trimble shows Brown has a prior conviction on May 1, 2018, in the District Court of Dakota County, Neb., for the felony offense of theft over $5,000.
Clayton and Brown have been in jail since their arrest on July 7, 2023.
In a multi-page probable cause affidavit, investigators with the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office detail their interviews with both Clayton and Brown and others.
The investigators also requested assistance from both the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation and the State Medical Examiner’s Office.
According to the affidavit, on May 12, 2023, Deputy Kevin Roe was first dispatched to a residence on East 840 Road in Lincoln County regarding a welfare check on Brian Corey. The reporting person was Trudi Corey and she stated she hadn’t heard from Brian in over a week.
Trudi was Brian’s exwife, the affidavit states.
Roe said he went to the residence and couldn’t contact Brian, but spoke to his girl friend, Janelle Brown.
Brian’s sister, Rebecca Suhr, also called in, wanting to report him as a missing person, saying she hadn’t heard from him since June 5.
During the course of separate interviews by investigators, Brown and Clayton accused one another of shooting and killing Brian Corey.
According to the affidavit, Brown claims she was outside after she and Corey got into an argument and that he and Clayton remained inside and were doing drugs while she was mowing the lawn.
When she went back into the house, she found Corey slumped over in a recliner and he had been shot in the neck and not breathing.
She told the investigator she saw blood on the wall behind him and blood on the floor.
Brown claimed she and Clayton waited until the next day to move him and she acknowledges helping Clayton move Corey’s body outside, says Clayton burned him, scooped up the ashes, went down the road and threw the ashes into a ditch.
She said she cleaned up the blood from the wall and helped Clayton burn the recliner in a burn pit in the front yard.
She admitted having a sexual relationship with Clayton. During the interview, she led Detective Larry Stover, Sr., to the location where he found burnt bones and the bags the ashes were put in.
The Medical Examiner’s Office determined the bones were human.
OSBI Agent Derek White was requested to first interview Clayton at the Sheriff’s Office. White later suggested Stover continue the interview with Clayton in which reportedly Clayton changed his story.
Clayton said Corey and Brown were arguing, that he went outside into the woods because he didn’t want to be around them and that he heard a gunshot.
He apparently told Stover he stayed in an abandoned house that night north of the residence and when he returned the next morning didn’t see Corey. He saw blood on the living room floor and walls and that Janelle was burning brush in the yard.