The man hired by a California Highway Patrol commander to kill her soon-to-be ex-husband has been found guilty of murder. A jury took just two hours to return the verdict against Thomas O’Donnell, 63, who traveled from Napa to Kentucky to commit the crime.
In 2022, Julie Harding, 49, was working as a captain in the CHP’s Yuba-Sutter division. At the time, she was locked in bitter divorce proceedings with her husband, 53-year-old Michael Harding. As the marriage wound down, coworkers at the CHP recalled Julie Harding began acting strangely, suddenly losing a lot of weight and uncharacteristically sharing her personal life at the office, including making angry claims about Michael Harding, with whom she shared homes in Tennessee and California.
One day in September 2022, Julie Harding’s boss received a phone call. When he picked up, Julie was screaming — almost theatrically, he thought — about her husband being killed.
“When I hung up the phone, I thought she wanted me to remember this moment in time,” he later testified.
Halfway across the country, Michael Harding was dead. While living at the couple’s Celina, Tenn. home, he had been working at an HVAC company. He received a call for service at a home in Burkesville, Ky., about 20 miles from where he lived. When he arrived at the home, which was vacant and listed for sale, he was met by a gunman. Harding was found dead of multiple gunshot wounds several days later when a real estate agent came to the home for a showing.
Investigators zeroed in on a phone number that arranged the fictitious HVAC meet-up — and soon learned Harding was in the midst of an acrimonious divorce. At his home, detectives found taunting notes, such as one that read “no money here,” and a look at his joint bank account with Julie Harding showed she’d withdrawn over $100,000 in the days leading up to his death.
Cell phone records led them to Thomas O’Donnell, a Napa man who may have been in a romantic relationship with Julie Harding; according to prosecutors, Valentine’s Day and birthday cards that appeared to be from him were found on her desk at work, and her commander testified she said she was dating a man in Napa. Despite being in touch frequently beforehand, their texts and phone calls abruptly ended 11 days before Michael Harding was killed, prosecutors said. They believed the money withdrawn from the Hardings’ joint account was used to pay O’Donnell for the murder.
As the scheme unraveled, so did Julie Harding. On Dec. 8, 2018, Harding was arrested after allegedly appearing on the doorstep of her late husband’s girlfriend. The woman had already told police she was afraid of Harding, who was allegedly harassing and terrifying her in an attempt to take back a family pet that the woman adopted after Michael Harding’s death.
That same day, O’Donnell was arrested at Sacramento International Airport on suspicion of murder. Once Julie Harding was released from jail, she returned to her Tennessee home and killed herself.
It took years for O’Donnell’s trial to be heard by a jury, but the proceedings didn’t last long. On Monday, the trial began, and by Friday afternoon, closing remarks were over. The jury took a little over two hours to return with a guilty verdict.
“I think right now we’re just both in shock,” Heather Cavalieri, Michael Harding’s daughter, told KCRA, “happy but in shock.”
O’Donnell is due back in court this week for sentencing.
