A Wellston woman who entered a guilty blind plea death to first degree murder in the death of a Carney has been sentenced.
Janelle Bertha Brown, 39, was formally charged July 14, 2023 in Lincoln County District Court with first degree murder, accessory to murder, unlawful removal of a dead body and desecration of a human corpse.
District Judge Sarah Bridge on Tuesday sentenced Brown to life with the possibility of parole on the first degree murder count, 10 years on the unlawful removal of a dead body charge and 10 years on on desecration of a human corpse, all counts to run consecutively.
Clyde Dean Clayton, 42, of Sioux City, Iowa was also charged in Lincoln County Court at the same time with the same counts.
Each is being held in the Lincoln County Jail in Chandler without bond.
Appearing recently at a dispositional hearing before District Judge Sarah Bridge, Brown withdrew her previous plea of not guilty and entered a guilty blind plea on Counts 1, 3 and 4. The state moved to dismiss the accessory to murder count.
Brown entered the guilty blind plea to first degree murder–deliberate intent, unlawful removal of a dead body and desecration of a human corpse. Judge Bridge had advised Brown of the 85 percent crime.
The judge received the pleas and ordered a pre- sentence investigation and scheduled sentencing at 9 a.m. on Dec. 10, 2024.
Assistant District Attorney Rachel Thompson prosecuted the case for the state and Brown’s defense attorney was Shelley Levisay.
Supplemental information filed in the case by Assistant District Attorney Kelly 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.
Clayton’s jury trial was underway this week.
At the conclusion of their preliminary hearings in December of 2023, each was bound over on charges of first degree murder, accessory to murder, unlawful removal of a dead body and desecration of a human corpse.
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 they talked with during their probe.
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 (meth) 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.
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.