Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - She Stole Their Dog... Now She's Dead // The Julie Harding Murder Story

Episode Date: August 19, 2026

In 2022, Julie Harding, a veteran California Highway Patrol captain, orchestrated a multi-state murder-for-hire plot against her estranged husband, Michael Harding, amidst a bitter divorce. Prosecutors revealed that after uncharacteristically draining money from their shared bank accounts, she hired her romantic partner, Thomas O'Donnell, to assassinate Michael.

So one day, this woman walks up to a house and she opens the door and she steals a dog. So, why is she dead now? Now, the woman's name is Julie, and Julie is a 49-year-old Highway Patrol captain, living in Sacramento, California. And Julie's got a problem. She's technically married, but she's in the middle of a really bad divorce. She and her estranged husband are in a legal dispute over assets and property, and she really doesn't want to lose all that. money or those properties. So she comes up with an idea. She decides that she's going to take a

bunch of the money so her husband can't have it. So one day in 2022, she goes to the bank and she pulls $73,000 out of their joint bank account. Now, her husband is this guy, Michael. And I guess Michael doesn't know that that much money is missing because he doesn't say anything. Then she goes to another bank and she takes out $102,000 from a different account. The day after that, she travels to Salina, Tennessee, where Michael lives, and she hits up yet another bank, and she takes $47,000 out of a different account, which pretty much cleans out that account. And Julie, she's kind of a petty person, so while she's in Tennessee, she stops by Michael's house when he's not home. And she technically still co-owns that house, so she has access to it. So she goes and

and she leaves a bunch of notes saying no money here, just to taunt him, just to let him know that a bunch of his money is gone. Now, while all this is going on, Julie meets a guy, reportedly through a dating app or a dating website. The guy's name is Tom. And she and Tom, they like each other, and they start dating. And apparently Tom is way into her. Like a few days after meeting her, he's already calling her his girlfriend. He's sending her Valentine's. cards and birthday cards, and over the next few months, these two talk constantly, nearly 200 calls between them. They talk almost every single day. Now, at some point during their relationship, Julie decides to take advantage of Tom's infatuation with her, and she asks him to help her

kill her husband Michael. And crazy enough, Tom likes her so much that he agrees to do it. So he gets to work on this plan, and he buys a prepaid burner phone, and he travels from California all the way over to Tennessee. Apparently, his plan is to find Michael and lure him to a vacant house, and then shoot him. So Tom rents a hotel room to stay in, and he gets on his laptop, and he starts looking up vacant properties. Once he finds one that he likes, he calls up the listing agent, and he pretends to be a realtor who wants to show the house to a potential buyer. And the listing agent, and the listing agent believes him and gives him the code to get into the lockbox so that he can get the key. Then Tom goes to this vacant house. The house is actually in Kentucky because the town Selena is

near the border of Tennessee and Kentucky. And there he uses the burner phone to call up Michael and he's like, hey, your company does HVAC repair work and I've got an HVAC that needs repaired. And he says it's an emergency. And Michael, he buys this story completely. I mean, he has no reason not to. He even texts the number back saying he's 35 minutes out and Tom texts him back saying no worries. So Michael drives over to Kentucky and he meets Tom there and they walk into the house. And as soon as they go inside, suddenly Tom pulls out a gun and blam, he shoots Michael and he unfortunately kills him. Then he leaves. So about a week goes by and the listing agent that gave Tom the lockbox code, she shows up to the house to do a showing, and she opens the door, and there

she finds Michael's body. And so later, the police show up, and they start investigating. Meanwhile, Julie finds out that her plan worked, and I'm sure she's happy. But here's where things get weird. She also starts getting anxious, because while she and Michael were together, they had a dog. And that dog was still living with Michael. And now that he's no longer with us, the dog has no owner. And Julie wants it. The dog's name is Charlie, by the way. Now, while Michael was alive, he had a girlfriend in Tennessee. This woman, Natasha. And after he died, Natasha came and took custody of Charlie. And once Julie finds this out that Natasha took custody, she gets pissed off. So she goes and gets Natasha's number and she calls her up and she's like, let me have that dog. And Natasha, she's nice about it.

She's like, okay. Because, you know, Charlie did legitimately used to belong to Julie. But Natasha says that she'll only hand the dog over as long as they meet up at a local police station to do the handoff. Because Natasha is actually scared of Julie. One, because Julie's a cop. And two, because Michael was just murdered and no one knows who did it and Natasha doesn't want to take any chances. Now, Julie hates Natasha. She doesn't like that Michael moved on and started dating someone else, even though Julie was already dating someone else. Anyway, so Julie wants Charlie, but she doesn't want to meet up at the police station to do the handoff. So she travels to Tennessee and she stays in Michael's old house because she technically still owns half of it. And from there, she

starts driving to Natasha's house, which is two hours away, and she starts stalking her. And Natasha knows that she's being stalked by this highway patrol captain, and she's absolutely terrified. Then one day, Julie shows up to Natasha's house when she's not at home, and she walks up to the front door, and you can see her here in the ring camera footage. And so she opens that door, I guess Natasha forgot to lock it, and she takes Charlie and she leaves. Later, Natasha gets home and she notices Charlie is missing and she looks at her doorbell camera footage and she sees Julie and she goes and she files a police report, which is complicated because Natasha had already agreed to give the dog to Julie. Regardless, Julie got her dog and she got away with murder. So it's not clear if she's

ever going to be caught. Until. Until Julie decides that she's not going to quit. She's apparently having way too much fun stalking Natasha. So she gets Michael's Netflix password, which he was sharing with Natasha. And Julie logs in and she adds her own account and she changes Natasha's profile pick to a picture of a monkey, which is just childish. And so once again, Natasha reports Julie to the point.

police, and she tells them that she's being harassed. Meanwhile, police are still investigating Michael's murder, and they find some messages on his phone setting up the H-FAC repair job in Kentucky, and they trace that phone number back to Tom's burner phone. And from there, they find that the burner phone was used in the exact location as another phone registered to Tom, his personal cell phone, and that these two phones were constantly in the same location across several states. Now, Julie, she was in a contentious divorce with Michael. So now police also start looking into her, and they discover that she made a bunch of large withdrawals from Michael's bank accounts. Then they piece that together with the fact that she was stalking Michael's girlfriend, Natasha,

and stealing Charlie, and hacking into the Netflix account. And while, they don't have enough evidence to charge her for the murder, they can arrest her for criminal trespassing. And so, bam, they do. Here's her mugshot. Also, bam, they go and arrest Tom too. Here's his mugshot. So the same day, Julie was arrested, she gets out on bail. And two days later, she unalives herself, I assume, to avoid the inevitable murder charges coming her way. While Tom goes to trial and he's found guilty and he gets sentenced to life in prison.