Police believe that in August, Clayton Ray Strong shot and killed 72-year-old Shirley Barrington Weatherley in front of her home in Springtown, a town of roughly 3,500 and located around 60 miles west of Dallas.
Strong was arrested on firearm charges in Ramos Arizpe, Coahuila, according to the Parker County Sheriff’s Office.
“We are working with the State Department and federal authorities as well as the Mexican government to extradite Strong back to Parker County to face the murder charge and prosecution,” Parker County Sheriff Russ Authier said.
Weatherley, who had been shot in the chest, was discovered by her family on Aug. 7. They told authorities they hadn’t heard from her for several days prior to her death.
OCTOBER 13, 2021. PRESS RELEASE Parker County Sheriff Russ Authier announced Clayton Ray Strong, 73, was...
Posted by Parker County Sheriff's Office on Wednesday, October 13, 2021
On the day Weatherley's body was discovered, security video footage caught Strong discarding a weapon in a department store parking lot in Eagle Pass, a city on the Texas-Mexico border.
The sheriff’s department said the weapon had been recovered, in addition to other evidence they believe linked Strong to the crime, according to FOX 4 News.
Mexican authorities contacted officials in Parker County after they discovered that Strong had an active murder warrant. Strong will be extradited back to Texas, where he will face the murder charge and prosecution, Authier said.
Prior to his arrest, authorities warned the public against approaching Strong, who they believed to be “armed and dangerous.”
Some believe that Strong has killed before.
The family of a Florida woman says she died under suspicious circumstances after meeting Strong, according to a memorial website called Justice for Betty.
Strong befriended the woman, Betty Sanders Brock, after they met online when her husband was dying of cancer in 2010. According to the memorial site, he targeted Brock in a “financial fraud romance scheme."
After her husband’s death, Brock married Strong, but her family says her new husband was controlling and subjected her to abuse. The two eventually moved to a remote town in Idaho, where they lived in an Airstream trailer, and he isolated her from her loved ones.
Upon Brock's death, Strong told the coroner that she'd died of Parkinson’s disease, but her family insists she didn't have Parkinson's. Still, her death was ruled to be of “natural causes” and Strong had her body cremated, according to the website.
An autopsy wasn't conducted and other family weren't notified. After Brock’s death, Strong remarried three months later.