Killed By Eye Drops: The Unusual Poison At The Center Of Recent Murder Cases

When Steven Clayton’s wife, Lana, said she found his body at the bottom of a staircase in the foyer of their South Carolina mansion on July 21, 2018, investigators initially believed the 64-year-old retired health care entrepreneur had died from natural causes.

His funeral was held on Aug. 4, 2018, in the backyard of the Claytons’ home, a waterfront estate modeled after President George Washington’s Mount Vernon. But weeks later, authorities made a stunning announcement: a toxicology report showed that Clayton had been fatally poisoned by tetrahydrozoline, and his death was ruled a homicide.

That was just the first of several twists and turns the case would take as it unfolded over the following months.

On Aug. 31, 2018, the York County Sheriff’s Office announced the arrest of Lana Clayton, a former Veterans Affairs nurse, on murder and food tampering charges. She later admitted she had spiked her husband’s drinks with Visine over a three-day period, from July 19 through July 21, 2018.

Lana, now 59, was Clayton’s sixth wife, and the couple had been married for nearly five years when, prosecutors alleged, she killed him to inherit his fortune, the Rock Hill Herald reported. He had no children.

After Clayton died, Lana destroyed his will, prosecutors claimed. 

“She wanted his money… If there was no will, she would get it all,” a prosecutor told the judge.

Authorities also dropped another bombshell: the poisoning might not have been the first time Lana Clayton attempted to kill her husband, they alleged.

In May 2016, she shot Stephen Clayton in the head with a crossbow while he slept.

According to a police report, Lana Clayton told authorities that she was trying to load the weapon in the couple’s bedroom when it accidentally discharged, striking her husband in the back of the head with an arrow, the Rock Hill Herald reported.

Though he was wounded and bleeding, Clayton later told investigators he was “fine” and did not believe his wife intended to hurt him, according to the report.

Investigators concluded that the shooting was an accident, and Lana Clayton was not charged with a crime.

Two years later, her husband was dead.

If Lana Clayton were convicted of murder, she could have faced the death penalty, the Herald reported, because poisoning was a factor in the killing.

But in January 2020, she pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter.

Before her sentencing, she told the court her husband had been abusive and she only meant to make him “sick and uncomfortable.”

“I did impulsively put the Visine in Steven’s drink,”  Lana Clayton said, but only with the intention to make him “sick and uncomfortable.”

“I never thought it would kill him,” she added.

York County Judge Paul Burch rejected her claims.

“How can you maintain you did this to teach him a lesson, when it is obvious from the facts that you let him suffer for three days?” Burch said. “You ignored him.”

Burch also told her that he believed prosecutors’ allegations that she had hidden Clayton’s phone so he could not call for help.

Clayton, a Florida native, was remembered in an obituary for his philanthropy, irreverent humor and “exuberance for life.”

In court, Clayton’s loved ones praised him for his generosity, encouragement and support, and exhorted the judge to impose the harshest sentence possible on Lana Clayton.

Clayton’s goddaughter said he was “kind, wonderful and funny.”

“He always gave his best to the people he loved,” she said — including his wife, who betrayed him and took the life of what her mother called an “exceptional man.”

Lana Clayton was sentenced to 25 years in prison, with a concurrent sentence of 20 years for food tampering.