Walter and Becky Shrout Murder Case: Where is Clay Shrout Today?

Walter and Becky Shrout Murders

Walter and Becky Shrout Murders: Where is Clay Shrout Now? – Clay Shrout, then 17 years old, prepared for school on May 25, 1994, in a unique way compared to every other day. He loaded .380 caliber pistol instead of finishing his schoolwork, killing his mother, father, and two sisters.

He then got into his dad’s car and got on the road. At gunpoint, he abducted a girl he knew along the road. He eventually drove to school and took his class captive there. Clay surrendered to the police after some time.

The documentary “Shattered: A Very Bad Day” on Investigation Discovery digs into the grisly case’s facts and explains how Walter and Betty ultimately perished. Why don’t we learn more about what happened that terrible morning?

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How Did Walter and Becky Shrout Die
11/5/98 KY Clay Shrout 2 – The Harvey Shrout family. Copy photo taken 5/26/94 by Joe Munson

How Did Becky and Walter Shrout Pass Away?

While attending Georgetown College, Walter and Becky Shrout met and fell in love. When their son was born, they were both in their mid-20s. In the years that followed, they had two daughters, Kristen and Lauren.

The Florence family, who attended church, resided in a two-story home on Tiburon Drive. The front had flowerbeds, and the back had a pool. They had two horses.

Lauren, 12, and Kristen, 14, both participated in gymnastics and rode the family horses in competitions. They entertained Cleo, the black Labrador, Lady, the poodle, and a gerbil, the household pets.

Walter and Becky went to a school concert on May 23 to see Lauren play the xylophone. The majority of individuals last saw them alive at that point.

Richard Brown, Shrout’s closest friend, is the only one who knows what transpired that Wednesday morning. Around six in the morning, Shrout called.

According to Brown, Shrout planned to kill his parents when he woke up.

At the time, Kristen was 14 and Lauren was 12, while Walter and Becky were 43 and 44, respectively. Furthermore, Clay, 17, was attending class when the bodies were found.

Who Killed Walter and Becky Shrout
Clay Shrout

Who Killed Becky and Walter Shrout and Why?

On the morning of May 26, 1994, Clay Shrout entered his trigonometry class at school, apparently accompanied by Danielle Butsch, whom he had recently brought to the prom. The student proceeded to pull out .380 calibre pistol and show it to the teacher and the class of twenty-two students.

Clay Shrout also told the teacher that another student was also carrying a gun. Even though it was a little gun, everyone was frightened, and then Clay started admitting that he had killed his family with the same gun about 5 a.m. that morning because he was having a horrible day.

One of the students deftly managed to communicate the message to Assistant Principal Stephen Sorrell while Clay held the dumbfounded class at gunpoint. The principal immediately called the police and ran to the classroom where Clay Shrout had held the children captive.

After arriving there, the principal started trading with Clay Shrout to release the children and other hostages. Fortunately, the teen gave Stephen his gun without difficulty, and when the police arrived at the school, he immediately surrendered. The bodies of Clay’s family were discovered in their home while he was being detained and placed under suicide watch, as he had admitted.

The authorities soon learned the teenager’s motivation for killing his parents and sisters thanks to statements from his classmates and professors. According to Clay’s classmates, he had long-term mental issues and supposedly manufactured pipe bombs at home. According to his friends, he was also concerned over the fact that his girlfriend had dumped him and started doing drugs a year earlier, which had caused him to have problems with his parents. In addition, despite not harming anyone, Clay took a stun pistol to school the previous week, which the teachers seized.

Clay’s friend, Richard Brown, admitted that the unhappy youngster was the first to call him after killing his family, and that he appeared to be very tired and was blaming the school and his parents. As a result, the school punished Clay by making him work 50 hours of community service. Also, Walter and Becky severely reprimanded their son and forbade him from driving their pickup truck.

After a heated disagreement with his father on May 24, 1994, the 17-year-old woke up the following morning determined to kill his parents. 

The next morning, Clay took out a gun from his father’s car and shot his parents. Hearing the sound of bullets, his younger sister also got up.

Clay allegedly shot Walter twice after realizing he had survived and was crawling out of the bedroom. Clay shot Kristen and Lauren in the hallway because he was worried they would contact the police. Before going to school, he called Richard, and that’s when he was eventually detained. Clay admitted to killing Lauren when he was in detention because she would have lived a wretched life without their parents. He reportedly also owned a stun gun, a sword, knives, nunchucks, and a BB pistol, but he never hurt anyone with any of them.

Shrout told the police that he entered his parents’ bedroom at 5 a.m. while armed with .380 calibre handgun. He first killed his mother, then his father. Kristen was shot as well as the disturbance drew her to the doorway of her own room.

Shout said that he shot his father a second time as he crept approached the door of his bedroom, but he did not explain how he shot and murdered his sister Lauren.

Brown recalled the man’s words to her, “I hope it was a dream; I wish I could wake up.

Where is Clay Shrout Today
Clay Shrout was sentenced to life in prison.

What Happened to Clay Shrout and Where Is He Now?

Shrout was imprisoned due to his family’s murder. In exchange for accepting a plea deal that spared Shrout from the death penalty, the charges relating to his conduct at the school were withdrawn.

No trial was conducted. He was found guilty but mentally ill, the judge ruled.

Shrout never had to give an explanation for his actions. His psychological examinations were kept secret by the courts.

He received a life sentence in prison. In his parole application from March 2019, he informed the parole board that his mother had allegedly sexually assaulted him as a child and that his father was aware of it. He also acknowledged his problems with mental health concerns from an early age and expressed regret for his actions.

Clay is presently a prisoner at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville, Kentucky. He was mandated to attend mental health and anger management counseling before his upcoming parole hearing in May 2029. Due to the nature of the offense, the use of a weapon, and Clay’s drug and alcohol misuse, the board refused to grant Clay parole.

The murder of his family is more important than anything that occurred at Ryle, according to Gale Sams Sipple, whose son attended Ryle at the same time as Shrout. She feels Shrout ought to remain incarcerated.

He lacks “all the things that parolees who successfully reintegrate into society have, most crucially a support structure,” according to Sipple. On that day in 1994, “he killed his support system.”

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