The Captain Who Hired a Hitman The Harding Story

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On a quiet September afternoon in 2022, a Sacramento HVAC contractor drove to an empty house in

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rural Kentucky for an emergency service call. He never made it back home.

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When investigators uncovered, cracked open a case involving a California highway patrol

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captain, an amateur hitman, a napah valley, and a marriage that turned into something no

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one saw coming.

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[Music]

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To start this story off, let me tell you a little bit about Michael Harding. He was 53 years

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old. He owned a small HVAC business he had built from nothing in Sacramento, and according

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to every neighbor who ever lived near him, he was the Mr. Fixit, the guy on the block

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who fixed everything.

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"Saturday morning, your AC quits, you call Michael. It's nine at night, your heater is

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making a weird clicking noise, you pick up the phone and you call Michael."

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He didn't turn down jobs. He was a veteran, army, and navy both, and the word people kept

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using about him in interviews after he died was reliable. He was steadfast, the guy who

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always showed up when someone needed help. That same instinct to say yes is what eventually

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led him to a vacant house in Burketsville, Kentucky on a quiet Monday in September of 2022.

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His wife Julie was a different story altogether. Julie Vernman Harding, 49 years old, captain

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in the California Highway Patrol. She joined CHP in 1999, and she spent 22 years climbing

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through the ranks of an agency that didn't even allow women into its academy until 1974.

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By 2018, she was running the Ubus Sutter Division up in the rural northern stretch of California.

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Every inch of her authority earned across two decades in uniform. The Harding's married

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in January of 2019, and they bought a lakefront home in Selena, Tennessee that fall. The whole

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plan was a retirement spot. With the slower pace, they both said they wanted. Michael went

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first. He moved his HVAC business out east, made friends on the lake, started building

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a life there. Julie stayed in Sacramento, where her career was anchored and her division

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still needed her. If you've ever been in a long distance marriage or relationship, you

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can probably guess where this story is heading. By the spring of 2022, the relationship

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had quietly curdled into something dangerous. Julie filed for divorce in May of 2022.

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At very same month, she made three big cash withdrawals from joint accounts that she held

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with Michael. Accounts in both California and Tennessee. One was $102,000. Another was $73,000.

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A third was $47,700. Roughly $220,000 disappearing in a matter of weeks. And Michael had no idea

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any of this was happening. Around the same window, Julie was on the phone

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constantly with a man named Thomas O'Donnell. Thomas lived in Napa Valley of all places,

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the wine country. It was 60 years old. He had a 2006 felony stalking charge out of Texas,

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and somewhere along the line he and Julie had developed a serious romantic connection.

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From July through September 8th of 2022, the two of them logged 194 phone contacts with

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each other, sometimes more than once a day. His own sister would later testify that her brother

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had real feelings for Julie. Investigators searching Julie's office after all of this went down,

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found Valentine's and birthday cards, all addressed to her, all signed Rob. A name Thomas

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was known to use. Whatever was happening between the two of those ran a lot deeper than money

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or logistics. Thomas was in love with her, or so he believed. And that feeling gets people

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to do things they would otherwise probably never do. Meanwhile, Michael had moved on. Don't

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feel bad for Michael. He was living in Tennessee, had a new girlfriend named Natasha, and he told

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friends something in the weeks before his death that you don't forget when you have heard

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it. He said he was afraid of his wife. He specifically told people that she worked for

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the highway patrol, and that fact frightened him in a way that he couldn't really articulate.

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He just said he was scared of her. He knew what she was capable of. A friend later told

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the TV station that he knew something we didn't know. On September 17th, 2022, cell phone records

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placed Thomas near Julie's Sacramento home. On September 18th, he flies to Tennessee. On

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September 19th, someone using a burner phone contacts Michael about an emergency HVAC issue

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at a vacant property on Glasgow Road in Berksville, Kentucky, about 20 miles from his Tennessee

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home. The house was listed for sale, whoever called, had the lock box code. Michael, doing

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what Michael always did, agreed to come. He even texted from the road, 35 minutes out,

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the text said. When Michael arrived at the vacant house, he was shot four times, twice in

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the head and twice in the body. Then Thomas O'Donnell got back in his car and drove away.

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Eleven days before any of this happened, by the way, all phone contact between Julie and

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Thomas had abruptly stopped. After three solid months of daily calls, the line between them

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went completely dead. That silence, in retrospect, looks an awful lot like operational security.

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Michael's family obviously did not hear from him that night or the next day. He was reported

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missing on September 20th. For almost a week, nobody knew where he was. On September 26th,

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just after one in the afternoon, a real estate agent showed up to prepare the property

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on Glasgow Road for showing. She walked in, found him on the floor and called 911.

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Kentucky State Police took the lead on the case, partnering with the FBI's Louisville

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office with agencies in Tennessee and California. They had no murder weapon, no eyewitness, and

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no documented payment changing hands. What they did have was a digital trail, so dense, the

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prosecution could basically walk a jury through Thomas O'Donnell's every step. Sell tower

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data placed him near Julie Sacramento home, then in Tennessee, then in Kentucky, on September

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19th. Google searches showed he had looked up the Glasgow Road address before he ever left

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California. Hotel records, flight records, and the burner phone all peeing along the same route.

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His commercial travel was booked under his own name, a mistake no actual professional killer would

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ever make. Then there was Julie. On the same day Michael's body was discovered, somebody factory

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reset one of her two cell phones, wiping it completely. At same afternoon, Julie picked up the phone

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and called her new supervisor at CHP, an assistant chief named Doug Lyons, a man she had never met

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in person. She spent 35 minutes on the line with him. Lyons testified later that the call was

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rambling and strange. When the prosecutor asked whether the call made him think Julie might be

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a suspect, his answer was, "Absolutely." She was a 22-year veteran of California law enforcement,

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and knew exactly how investigations worked. She tried to create a witness for herself and accidentally

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handed investigators a giant red flag instead. Over the next two and a half months, things got kind

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of strange. Natasha, Michael's girlfriend, filed two police reports in Tennessee. In one, Julie

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had walked up to Natasha's home, appeared on the ring camera, opened the front door, and called the

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dog over, and physically picked up Charlie. He was Michael's dog and walked out with him. In the second

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report, Julie hacked into Natasha's Netflix account, deleted her profiles, and created a new one

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with her own first name on it. Again, this is a 22-year California highway patrol commander

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logging into her dead husband's girlfriend's streaming account to leave her name behind. Super bonkers.

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That's the kind of behavior of someone coming apart at the seams. On December 8, 2022, Thomas

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was arrested at a Sacramento International Airport. The tip that led to his arrest came from his

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own sister, who called CHP because she knew about his connection to Julie. At same day in Tennessee,

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Julie was arrested on a criminal trespassing warrant and released later that afternoon. Two days later,

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on December 10, a male carrier in Selena, Tennessee, walked up to the link front home that Michael

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and Julie had once dreamed about retiring in together and found Julie dead in the yard from a single

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gunshot wound to the head. She was 49 years old and her death was ruled a suicide. After that, Thomas

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O'Donnell sat in custody for three and a half years. In April of 2026, weeks before trial, he tried

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to plead guilty to a lesser conspiracy charge in exchange for 22 years. The judge rejected the deal

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because he wanted somebody held fully accountable. A few weeks later, in a Kentucky courtroom,

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the jury heard every text, every cell tower peeing, every Valentine's Day card, every Google search.

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They came back with a guilty verdict in two hours. The sentencing judge, who had been practicing law

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for 45 years, called it one of the most cold-blooded acts he had ever seen. Thomas, now 64 years old,

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will almost certainly die in prison. Julie Harding never sat in a courtroom and never answered a

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single question under oath. And Michael Harding's daughter Heather watched that verdict come down in a

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small town Kentucky courthouse, telling reporters afterward that she and her family were both in shock and

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relief. Thanks for listening to 10 Minute Murder,

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binge-abulled true crime stories. I'm Joe. I'm the host. Hi. Here's an email, subject, mission accomplished.

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Hi Joe. I finally convinced my dad to give your podcast a shot. He's the type who still burns

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CDs for road trips, so I was not optimistic. Yesterday, he asked if you release on the same day every week.

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I'd say you've got another fan. Jake and Terry Hote Indiana. Jake, my man, appreciate it.

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And thank you to your dad as well. Tell your dad, yes. Tuesdays and Thursdays every week.

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And sometimes, if I've got time, I'll throw in an extra episode. That one kind of floats.

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Sometimes it's on a Monday or a Saturday. There's no rhyme or reason to that extra third episode. I

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figure if I'm reliable on the Tuesdays and the Thursdays, that extra is like gravy. You can just be

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surprised if it's there when you open the app. Hey, if you're a new listener like Jake's dad is,

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Those two are like my main two podcast listening apps. And I subscribe to the same show on both

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ones just because you never know which app I'm going to be in. So I might listen to the same podcast

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on two different apps. So if that's you, also, if you're weird like I am, subscribe on both of those.

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If you want to contact me or get more information about the show, you can go to 10minutemerter.com.

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And also there at 10minutemerter.com, you'll get listen links other places you can listen. And also

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links to where you can find the podcast on social media. All right, that's going to do it. That's

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your episode for today. Thank you again for listening to 10minutemerter. See you next time.