Man 'burned alive' in car crash as 'headless body' found – then chilling truth unravels

The suspicious death of a sex offender raised investigators' eyebrows, but it was his partner's new boyfriend, a $110,000 insurance policy, and an unusually intense fire that led them to the truth

When police found the blazing wreck of the car being driven by local “bad boy” Clayton Daniels, they almost immediately suspected foul play. That only increased when they discovered a horribly-burned body in the drivers’ seat. But it was the fierceness of the flames that eventually unravelled a bizarre twist in the investigation.

Clayton had met single mum Molly Daniels, and hit it off straight away. Although Molly’s family didn’t like the 23-year-old biker, he seemed to care for her four-year-old son Caleb as if he were his own. The couple married and soon had another child, a girl who motorcycle fanatic Clayton had named Harley.

But something from Clayton’s dark past had come back to haunt him, and it would drive him to committing a desperate, and macabre, crime.

Podcaster Annie Elise explains that Clayton, known to his friends as Clay, was known to have a violent streak and was particularly prone to outbursts of road rage: “Many people thought that Clay wasn't exactly a catch. He was angry, he didn't have a job, he didn't ever seem particularly interested in getting one, and he also had a criminal record.

“It was mostly for theft and other minor offences but then he also had one very big issue. Clay was convicted of assaulting his cousin in a sexual way when she was only seven years old.

“The assault had happened before Molly met him, although Clay didn't exactly volunteer the fact that he had done it. It took seven years for the victim to go to the police and to talk about what her then 16-year-old cousin had done to her.

“So in 2004, all of those years later, when Clay probably thought that it had all gone away, he learned that he was being charged with aggravated assault.”

To the utter disgust of the victim’s family, it emerged that Clayton was facing a minimal sentence for the violent sexual assault – amounting to just one month behind bars, followed by 10 years’ probation.

With so many people bearing a grudge against Clayton, police looked closely at the circumstances of the “car accident” on June 18, 2004 that had apparently claimed his life.

“The fire had burned so hot that it melted parts of the vehicle,” said Garth Davis, a former Texas Rangers investigator. “That’s very unusual.” It was the intensity of the fire that first made investigators suspect that this was no ordinary car accident.

Corporal William Talamantez of the Texas Department of Public Safety was one of the first officers on the scene, and described the sight that greeted him: “The car was burned up where I couldn’t even tell what color the vehicle used to be. The wheels were melted. The tyres were gone. And the person inside? Just 12 pounds of ashy stump remained. I didn’t see a head, and both legs were gone.”

He described it as one of the worst accident scenes that he had ever attended, but jewellery and other items found in the wreck were enough for Clayton’s family to positively the body

Annie explains: “The police thought that they were looking at a homicide situation. The running theory was that somebody killed Clay beforehand then they put his body in the car and then somehow they crashed it. That would explain the lack of any blood or other bodily fluids in the car, so this now had them asking who had killed Clay.”

That theory was underlined at Clayton's funeral, when a number of people expressed the option that the world was better off without him.

In the meantime, someone new had appeared in Molly’s life. While she was waiting to cash in the $110,000 life insurance policy her husband had taken out a couple of years before, Molly was struggling for money. But the bright spot in her life was a new man named Jake, who appeared to have moved in with Molly and the kids, despite her insistence that he was “just a friend.”

Annie says that police began to look closely at Jake. She explained: “Jake became a new suspect. The police thought that there was a good chance that Molly and Jake had started their relationship well before Clay died and that they conspired together to get rid of Clay so they could be together.”

It was only when police decided to take Molly’s new boyfriend in for questioning that the shocking truth dawned on them. Apart from darker hair, and a beard, Jake was a dead ringer for Clayton. The “murder victim” wasn’t dead at all.

It soon emerged that Molly and Clayton had hatched the macabre scheme together. Annie continued. “The two of them figured that he would get his life insurance policy cheque. Then they would be able to move the family to Mexico …the plan was that in Mexico Clay could get face-altering plastic surgery so that nobody would be able to recognise him.”

But if it wan’t Clayton’s body in the car, whose was it? Police questioned the couple, and Molly broke down and led them to to the empty grave of 81-year-old Charlotte Davis, who had died about six months before the “car crash”.

Janine Mather, former Lt. Deputy of the State Fire Marshal’s Office, explained that this was the reason behind the unusually fierce blaze that had raised investigators’ initial suspicions: “The body had been embalmed,” she said. “Embalming fluid is highly flammable.”