Mum with a secret
Was she an abused wife – or a cold-blooded killer?
When Julie agreed to marry Jason Harper, it wasn’t exactly a fairytale romance. From the start, she had serious doubts about their relationship. In fact, so had Jason. But hoping for a future together, the pair settled down, had three kids.
Soon, things became volatile, the couple arguing over money.
Julie’s endless shopping sprees... Jason’s demands for $3,000 (around £2,300) a month for bills.
Where he thought she would get the money from was unclear.
Julie, 42, was raising their beautiful children. She had no time for a job. She suffered from poor health, too.
Still, she did what she could, using savings to help pay her way.
When the money ran out, Jason, 39, erupted into rages, swearing at his wife – sometimes in front of the kids.
Julie was no match for her 6ft 7in, 17st husband.
Scared, she secretly filmed his outbursts.
And sometimes she locked herself in the bedroom at their home in Carlsbad, California, to get away from Jason.
But he remedied that, taking the doorknobs off.
With nowhere to hide, she prepared a bag with the essentials, including the kids’ passports.
Then, faking Jason’s signature to take thousands from his account, Julie went to court and filed for divorce.
Days later, on 7 August 2012, the couple’s children, aged 8, 6, and 18 months, were watching a cartoon in the lounge...
Every now and then, the sound of their parents arguing drowned out the TV.
Sadly, the kids had grown used to the constant rows within the walls of their two-storey home in California.
The couple were arguing about the divorce in a bedroom upstairs.
The kids stayed downstairs, suddenly flinching at a terrifying bang. A gunshot. The children went to investigate and found their mum in the spare room, half-dressed.
She told them to get their coats on. Then she took them to a coffee shop for pastries.
Later, Julie handed herself in to police. She told them she’d shot Jason.
The kids were taken into care.
However, Julie was claiming she’d killed her husband in self-defence.
She explained how an enraged Jason had trashed the bedroom and pulled at her clothes. She’d feared he’d rape her. After all, she told the police, he’d done it many times already.
Terrified, she’d grabbed the gun, shot Jason, then fled with the kids in a state of shock.
Police launched a murder investigation, combing the scene of the crime for clues.
They found 52 bottles of prescription medication containing a hefty mix of mood-altering drugs. They’d been prescribed for Julie’s autoimmune disease and her rheumatoid arthritis.
The children stayed with Jason’s parents, while Julie paid her own bail.
She returned to the family home alone.
Yet, still, police couldn’t find a murder weapon.
There was speculation that Julie had thrown it into a nearby lake, or into the sea.
During her trial in September 2014, Julie Harper pleaded not guilty to firstdegree murder.
The jury heard that she had rarely been seen outside
the family home.
Witnesses claimed Jason had held down his full-time job as a teacher, but had also cared for the kids.
Addicted to her cocktail of medication, Julie had become a recluse, had slept most of the day. Leaving her kids to fend for themselves.
Prosecution lawyers claimed Julie was far from the ‘good, loving mother’ she portrayed herself to be.
She was a hoarder, too, spent a fortune on clothes.
Deputy District Attorney Keith Watanabe said Julie murdered Jason out of ‘anger, bitterness and spite’.
The bullet trajectory proved she had shot him from behind, he explained.
The jury had a tough decision to make. If Julie’s actions were deemed to be premeditated, she’d be found guilty of first-degree murder.
She would be sentenced to life imprisonment, or even face the death penalty.
But Julie’s solicitor argued that she was a long-suffering victim of domestic violence.
Her lawyer, Paul Joseph Pfingst, said Julie was a battered wife.
He claimed she had endured years of verbal abuse and sexual attacks, including being raped around 30 times.
‘The history of Julie Harper does not lead one to believe that all of a sudden she turns into an assassin,’ Pfingst insisted.
The jury also heard some heartbreaking testimonies from the couple’s two oldest children... Their son told police his dad had ‘looked like he was going to explode’, on the day of his death. Jason’s family denied there had been any violence. In the end, the jury didn’t believe Julie had planned to kill her husband, clearing her of first-degree murder. But the question remained – was she guilty of second-degree murder? During a retrial in October 2015, it was revealed to a shocked courtroom that Julie Harper was now, in fact, pregnant.
Neighbours said they’d seen a man in his underwear walking around the master bedroom six months earlier.
It was later claimed he was Julie Harper’s ‘former lover and fiance’.
The jury was shown a letter she’d written to him 17 days after shooting her husband.
She referred to him as ‘the love of my life’.
What would the judge and jury make of the case now..?
After, she took the kids for pastries...