I thought she wanted me to remember this moment in time
In a Kentucky courtroom, the final unraveling of a decorated law enforcement officer is being reconstructed through the memories of those who watched it happen. Prosecutors allege that California Highway Patrol Captain Julie Harding, a twenty-three-year veteran, orchestrated the killing of her estranged husband Michael before taking her own life after a suspect was arrested. The trial of Thomas O'Donnell — the man accused of carrying out the act — has become, in many ways, a posthumous reckoning with how quietly a life can fracture beneath the surface of professional achievement.
- Colleagues watched Captain Julie Harding grow visibly thinner and erratic in the months before her estranged husband was shot dead in rural Kentucky in September 2022.
- Phone records reveal daily — sometimes multiple — calls between Harding and accused hitman Thomas O'Donnell, forming the spine of a circumstantial but damning prosecution.
- Michael Harding, 53, was lured to a vacant house under the pretense of an emergency HVAC job and found shot dead, a setup prosecutors say was engineered from California.
- O'Donnell pleads not guilty, and the absence of direct payment or forensic weapon evidence means the case hinges entirely on behavioral testimony and communication patterns.
- Julie Harding never stood trial — she died by suicide after O'Donnell's arrest, leaving the courtroom to reconstruct her alleged motive through the witnesses she left behind.
The trial now underway in Kentucky is less a straightforward murder case than an archaeology of collapse — an attempt to understand how a rising California Highway Patrol captain came apart in the months before her estranged husband was killed.
Retired Sergeant Brian Wittmer testified about watching Captain Julie Harding change over their years working together: the weight loss, the erratic behavior, the sudden willingness to share personal details with colleagues. When she called him in September 2022 to say her husband was dead, something in her delivery unsettled him. "When I hung up the phone, I thought she wanted me to remember this moment in time," he told the court. A supervisor who barely knew Harding received a similar thirty-five-minute call full of rambling personal disclosures — and told prosecutors he believed, based on that conversation alone, that she was involved in her husband's death.
Prosecutors allege Harding hired Napa resident Thomas O'Donnell to kill Michael Harding, a 53-year-old HVAC business owner who had moved to their Tennessee home after the couple separated. On September 22, 2022, Michael drove to a vacant house in Burkesville, Kentucky, believing he'd been called for an emergency service job. He was found shot dead. Phone records showed O'Donnell and Harding were in near-daily contact in the period surrounding the killing.
O'Donnell has pleaded not guilty to capital murder. An FBI agent acknowledged there is no direct evidence of payment between the two and no forensic link to a weapon — leaving the prosecution to build its case from patterns of communication and the testimony of people who watched Harding deteriorate. Julie Harding, who joined the CHP in 1999 and had commanded the Yuba Sutter area office since 2018, died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound after O'Donnell's arrest, and will never answer for what prosecutors say she set in motion.
The trial unfolding in Kentucky is piecing together the final months of a California Highway Patrol captain's life—a period when those who worked alongside her watched her transform into someone they barely recognized. Retired Sergeant Brian Wittmer took the stand Wednesday to describe what he saw in Captain Julie Harding during their three and a half years working together: a woman who grew thinner, whose behavior became erratic, who began volunteering details about her personal struggles to colleagues in ways she never had before. By late 2022, something had shifted fundamentally.
In September of that year, Wittmer received a phone call from Harding. She was calling to tell him that her husband was dead. The way she delivered the news struck him as odd—theatrical, almost. "When I hung up the phone, I thought she wanted me to remember this moment in time," he testified, according to court records. It was the kind of observation that, in hindsight, would take on a different weight entirely.
Another supervisor, then-Assistant Chief Doug Lyons, received a similar call around the same time. Lyons had recently become Harding's supervisor, though he barely knew her. The conversation lasted thirty-five minutes and consisted largely of rambling—Harding sharing details about her life, her situation, her husband. "I never met her," Lyons said from the stand. "So that was the strange part." When prosecutors asked whether he thought Harding might be involved in her husband's death based on that conversation alone, Lyons answered without hesitation: "Absolutely."
The case against Harding centers on an alleged murder-for-hire plot. Prosecutors say she hired Thomas O'Donnell, a Napa resident, to kill her estranged husband, Michael Harding, a fifty-three-year-old HVAC business owner. The couple had separated, with Julie remaining in California while Michael moved to their home in Celina, Tennessee. On September 22, 2022, Michael traveled from Tennessee to Burkesville, Kentucky, believing he had been called to handle an emergency service job. Prosecutors allege the call was a setup. He was found shot dead at a vacant house.
O'Donnell, who has pleaded not guilty to capital murder, was arrested at Sacramento International Airport after investigators traced phone records showing repeated daily contact between him and Harding—sometimes multiple calls in a single day. An FBI agent testified that despite the circumstantial evidence, he found no direct payment between the two and no forensic evidence linking O'Donnell to a murder weapon. The case rests largely on the pattern of communication and the testimony of those who witnessed Harding's deterioration.
Julie Harding never faced trial. After O'Donnell's arrest, she died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound. She had worked for the California Highway Patrol since 1999 and had served as commander of the Yuba Sutter area office since 2018—a rising career that colleagues say showed no sign of the crisis unfolding beneath the surface. Michael Harding's death in that Kentucky house remains the focal point of the trial now underway, with witnesses testifying not about what they saw that day, but about the woman they watched come apart in the months before it happened.
Notable Quotes
When I hung up the phone, I thought she wanted me to remember this moment in time— Retired Sergeant Brian Wittmer, describing Harding's call about her husband's death
It was 35 minutes of rambling, and I didn't even know Julie. So that was the strange part. I never met her.— Then-Assistant Chief Doug Lyons, on receiving a call from Harding
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
What made colleagues think something was wrong with her before the murder even happened?
The physical changes were obvious—she was losing weight, acting in ways that didn't match her usual professional demeanor. But it was also the way she was reaching out, suddenly talking about her personal life to people she'd worked with for years without doing that. It was like she needed witnesses.
The phone calls to supervisors—what was she actually saying in those thirty-five minutes?
The records don't give us the exact words, but Lyons described it as rambling. She was telling him about her situation, her marriage, her life falling apart. He barely knew her, which made it even stranger. She was performing her crisis for someone who had no context for it.
How did investigators actually connect her to the hitman?
Phone records. Hundreds of calls between them, sometimes multiple times a day. That pattern of contact is what led them to O'Donnell. There was no money trail, no recorded agreement—just this constant communication that suggested coordination.
And O'Donnell maintains he had nothing to do with it?
He's pleaded not guilty to capital murder. The FBI agent testified there's no forensic evidence tying him to a weapon, no direct payment. The case is circumstantial, built on the phone records and the testimony of people who watched her unravel.
What does her suicide after his arrest tell us?
It's the thing that can't be explained in a courtroom. Whether it was guilt, despair, or something else entirely—she took that answer with her. All we have left is what the people around her observed and what the phone records show.