# @downinnadesert on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DbUk2mWm4EH
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/68548271-downinnadesert-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/901f2c6790.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-07-28T03:29:10.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Down In The Desert🌵 (@downinnadesert) — https://gondola.cc/downinnadesert

## Caption

He answered the door in his pajamas because someone said they needed help. That decision cost Paul Clifford his life.

Late on Dec. 23, 2024, a knock startled the Clifford family at their secluded home in Redington, east of Tucson. Paul, 53, got up, answered, and heard a stranger say his truck had broken down and he needed a jump start. Paul grabbed the keys to his daughter’s Ford Ranger and drove off into the dark with him. His family never saw him alive again.

By Christmas Eve morning he was found shot and burned on a remote Pima County road, next to a stolen truck that had also been set on fire. Prosecutors say Jack Upchurch, 42, had been driving that stolen truck with 16 year old Wendy Scott and 19 year old Elmer Smith, that the three siphoned diesel out of ADOT equipment, and that the truck stalled and would not restart. Scott testified Upchurch smoked meth and walked off looking for a way out of it. She told jurors she heard Paul say “Why are you doing this” right before a single gunshot. Prosecutors say the three went back to Tucson and spent six days smoking meth and hiding evidence before deputies caught up with them on Dec. 30.

On Friday, July 24, after less than a day of deliberations, a Pima County jury found Upchurch guilty on all 11 counts, including first degree murder, armed robbery, aggravated robbery, kidnapping, theft of means of transportation, third degree burglary, arson and tampering with physical evidence. He will be sentenced September 28.

Scott and Smith were facing the same murder charge until they agreed to testify against him and pleaded to lesser charges. They are sentenced August 10. Paul’s daughter Sabrina Vining says the deals were wrong, that prosecutors did not need that testimony to win, and that all three should be facing the same consequences. She says the family got one down and has two to go.

Do you think the other two should have been allowed to plead out for testimony, or should all three have gone to trial?

Via: 12News, KGUN 9 and the Pima County Attorney’s Office

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#Tucson #PimaCounty #Arizona #ArizonaNews #TrueCrimeAZ

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## Tags

truecrimeaz, arizonanews, tucson, arizona, pimacounty

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