Netflix likely has another undeniable can’t-look-away true crime documentary in The Widower: ’Til Death Do Us Part. This is the story of Thomas Randolph, a man who has six ex-wives, and four are dead, not at all coincidentally. (Mostly coincidentally, anyway.) Three of those deaths were suspicious, so Dateline producer Dan Slepian started reporting on it, and Tiger King and Fyre director Chris Smith put together the story of that investigation. Which, of course, is pretty much as sensational as you’d think.

The Gist: An opening disclaimer tells us that The Widower follows Dan Slepian and Las Vegas police detective Dean O’Kelley’s investigation in real time. Then the Dateline journalist teases “extraordinary access” to the principals involved — and eventually follows through with it, in spades. In 2008, Randolph’s wife, Sharon Causse, was gunned down in her Vegas home. Randolph claimed that their handyman, Mike Miller, killed her, so Randolph shot and killed Miller in self-defense. The crime scene didn’t make sense to O’Kelley. Slepian, known for his journalistic advocacy for wrongfully imprisoned men, got a tip that this story wasn’t a simple open-and-shut homicide. O’Kelley aimed to gather evidence and arrest Randolph, and Slepian followed him nearly every step of the way.

What followed was a sordid saga. Causse was Randolph’s sixth wife, and the fourth to meet an untimely demise. Granted, one died of cancer. But the others? One was shot in the head, framed as suicide, and Randolph was acquitted of her murder, avoiding the death penalty. Another died suspiciously in the hospital following heart surgery. All of his wives had fat life insurance policies. And Randolph? The guy is self-absorbed, charismatic, and, in his own words, “cocky.” Slepian made good use of Randolph’s narcissism, leveraging multiple on-the-record interviews — some of them hours-long phone calls — with the guy during more than a decade of investigations and trials and retrials. Eventually, O’Kelley gathers enough incriminating evidence to nab Randolph. So he and other officers knock on the door and, after Randolph refuses to comply, tase the guy and bring him in, while Slepian’s camera captures the whole thing.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? This doc will provide a bigger platform — and some updated information — to a story that Slepian produced in 2021, five-hour series Dateline: The Widower. HBO Max also boasts limited series The Black Widower: The Six Wives of Thomas Randolph, from 2024.

Our Take: The Widower has immediate credibility thanks to Slepian, who nabbed a Pulitzer Prize nod for a podcast series about wrongly convicted inmates in Sing Sing prison. Although he occasionally skirts the edge of sensationalism in his tone — he can’t help that some of the interviewees here, former associates of Randolph, border on being showy, oddball characters — he keeps the doc from feeling like a trashy exposé. Slepian, O’Kelley, and Causse’s grieving adult daughter Colleen Beyer all have arcs in the story — and Randolph is a main character too, coming off as a sleazy manipulator, serial liar, and, in all likelihood, a serial killer. He gets plenty of face time, whether he’s talking to Slepian in the back of a car immediately after being tased, or in prison awaiting trials or responses to his unending appeals.

So yes, this is “extraordinary access.” It gives us a behind-the-scenes glimpse into real detective work (the least substantial thread in the film) and Slepian’s journalism, essentially chronicling how his 2021 Dateline story came together, and updating it with new information. In this portrait of a deadly narcissist emerges a theme that Slepian states outright: The reporter long struggled to get the justice system to listen to unjustly imprisoned people, but Randolph used his cunning to manipulate the system to avoid and postpone justice. Sometimes the salacious elements of this upsetting saga get in the way of this illumination of the weaknesses in the U.S. justice system, but that thread is nevertheless omnipresent. 

Our Call: ’Til Death Do Us Part offers an unusual angle on somewhat typically Netflixian true crime fodder – and there’s enough good work here to give it some journalistic integrity. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.