Inset: Michael Harding (Clay County Sheriff). Left: Thomas O’Donnell (Cumberland County Sheriff). Right: Julie Harding (California Highway Patrol).
A California man is facing a lifetime behind bars after conspiring with his girlfriend, a police officer, to murder her husband in a complex scheme that spanned multiple states.
Thomas O’Donnell, aged 64, received a life sentence on Monday for the murder of 53-year-old Michael Harding, a veteran of both the Army and Navy, in Cumberland County, Kentucky. This decision followed a conviction by a Kentucky jury, who found O’Donnell guilty of murder.
During the time of the murder, O’Donnell was involved in an extramarital affair with Julie Vernnan Harding, who was then serving as a California State Patrol Trooper. Prosecutors revealed that in the months leading up to the crime, Julie Harding had siphoned over $220,000 from her estranged husband’s bank accounts.
The illicit pair devised a plan in which O’Donnell would pose as an HVAC contractor to get close enough to execute Michael Harding. The veteran, last seen alive on September 20, 2022, was tragically discovered later, having been shot multiple times.
However, the twisted lovers’ plot unraveled in a grim fashion. As previously reported, Julie Harding was discovered dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound months later. Her body was found in front of her former residence in Tennessee, about 25 miles from the crime scene, accompanied by a brief, enigmatic note expressing regret.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Julie Harding was found dead months later from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in front of her one-time home, some 25 miles away in Tennessee, with a terse, cryptic, and rueful letter left by her corpse.
At the time of Michael Harding’s disappearance, Clay County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Rick Lisi said in an interview with AM radio station WUCT that no foul play was suspected.
A timestamped image of his black pickup truck placed him in the Bowling Green area of Kentucky on the day he vanished. Friends immediately reported his absence.
Six days later, however, Harding was found dead with multiple gunshot wounds inside a Cumberland County, Kentucky, residence.
The house was not his, and it was otherwise empty.
An apparent break in the case came on Dec. 8, 2022, when O’Donnell was arrested and charged with Harding’s murder. O’Donnell, who hails from Napa, was apprehended at the Sacramento International Airport just as he was about to board a flight to Tennessee.
That same day, Julie Harding, 49, was also arrested, but not in connection with her husband’s death. Police in Tennessee had charged her with stalking and burglary. In early October 2022, she was seen on a Ring camera from a home in Murfreesboro whispering to her deceased husband’s dog, Charlie, before putting a leash around his neck and walking away with him.
Local NBC affiliate KCRA later reported that Netflix accounts had been hacked into at the house where the dog was stolen, profile pictures were changed, and various other accounts on the device were deleted.
The dog had been staying with the woman who had been dating Michael Harding at the time of his death. According to KCRA, there had been a dispute about when and where she would surrender the dog.
Two days after her arrest, Julie Harding apparently died by suicide. Her body was found in the front yard, near the driveway, of the Celina, Tennessee, home she and her husband purchased two years prior. According to comments from Clay County Sheriff Brian Boone and reported by Sacramento-based CBS affiliate KPIX, a letter carrier and “another man” were the first to find her. She died from a single gunshot wound, the sheriff said.
Like O’Donnell, Julie Harding has a California connection: She was the Yuba-Sutter commander and captain of the California Highway Patrol, where she worked since 1999, at the time of her death. She assumed her leadership role in 2018. The agency has told various media outlets that she was on leave when she died.
At the time of his disappearance, Michael Harding was going to be a groomsman in his friend Preston Cleary’s upcoming wedding. On the day he went missing, he was on his way to pick up his tuxedo, but stopped to make a service call for the heating and air-conditioning business he owned. He never made it to the tuxedo shop.
“Mike was a good man,” Cleary told KCRA at the time. “He didn’t deserve what happened to him. He was [an] ‘integrity-through-the-roof’ guy. He couldn’t tell a lie. He would always do everyone right.”
He told the TV station that he was shocked to learn his friend was the victim of a crime like this, but that he also had a bad feeling as soon as he learned Michael Harding had gone missing.
“Deep down, I knew we weren’t going to find Mike alive,” Cleary said.
The deaths of the couple, less than four months apart, sent shockwaves across three states that have resulted in investigations by numerous local, county, and federal law enforcement agencies. O’Donnell was arrested with the FBI’s help.
Cleary always believed Julie Harding had hired a hit man to kill her husband.
“I believe it was months of planning,” Cleary recently told WBKO. “He was in fear for you know his life as well, because his doors was chained up, they were propped up. So like you were trying to keep someone out. And I think he knew what she was capable of.”
Cleary said the Hardings were experiencing a variety of marriage troubles and that Michael had asked Julie Harding for a divorce.
According to Cleary, Julie Harding had left behind a note that read: “Mike, I guess you win.”
