According to Kansas City investigators, on Jan. 17, 1998 Timothy Stephenson was having a drink at the Dixie Belle gay bar on Main Street when he met 26-year-old Randal “Randy” Oliphant. When police interviewed Stephenson at the time, he allegedly told them he’d taken an “unknown male” back to his residence, and then dropped the man off at another bar afterward. Stephenson claimed he never saw the man again.
Oliphant was reported missing by his mother. In March 1998, two fishermen found Oliphant’s badly decomposed body in rural Warsaw, Mo.; an autopsy ruled he had been killed with a shotgun. A card for the Dixie Belle in Oliphant’s pants led investigators to speak with the bartender, who identified Stephenson as the last person to be seen with the victim.
Although police honed in on Stephenson, over 20 years passed before they had enough evidence for an arrest warrant. In that time, Stephenson, who was married to a Kansas City woman, separated and moved to the Bay Area. There, he married a doctor, and the couple had twin girls.
According to the Missouri Highway Patrol’s probable cause warrant, in 2014, Stephenson confessed to his husband that he murdered a man in Missouri. According to court documents, Stephenson explained how “he shot Oliphant, how Oliphant pleaded for his life, how Stephenson shot him again and killed him, and how Stephenson disposed of Oliphant’s body in Benton County, Missouri.” Investigators say as part of the cover-up, Stephenson then sold his Jeep; police found the new owner and claim parts of the vehicle’s carpet were missing.
In 2020, Stephenson’s husband filed for divorce in Contra Costa County and petitioned for a restraining order on allegations of domestic violence. Court documents do not say if the husband tipped police, but the investigation picked up again, and in 2021 the Missouri State Highway Patrol laboratory took a fresh look at the DNA available in the case.
In April 2021, investigators say the husband, mic’d up by police, met up with Stephenson. According to that recorded meeting, Stephenson allegedly said he only claimed to kill Oliphant to “scare” his husband, but then blamed an ex-lover for killing the man.
In December, prosecutors filed second-degree murder charges against Stephenson, now 48, who was taken into custody in California. He was recently released on a $250,000 bond to a relative’s home in Benton County. The preliminary hearing is scheduled for August 12; he faces 10 to 30 years in prison if convicted.
Stephenson’s attorney Stacy Shaw defended her client to the Kansas City Star, calling him “all Starburst and sprinkles,” and “the most delightful person I’ve met in a long time.”