…
He was noticeably deceased.
He did not have a pulse.
>> >> We were able to based on his height, his weight, and what he looked like, >> >> determine it was Mr. Harper.
He was laying face down.
There was what appeared to be a bullet hole in Jason Harper’s back on the side and that blood had been coming out onto his shirt.
Officers secure the crime scene and homicide detectives arrive.
There was no weapons found near the body, but they went in the closet and they did find a loaded shotgun.
But it was clear based on the entry wound that this was not a shotgun blast.
Obviously, the fact that it was in a state of disarray and it looked like a hoarder’s den made it particularly difficult for law enforcement to sort and go through the entirety of evidence.
As we looked through the bedroom, we found multiple bottles of prescription drugs.
Many of them were empty and in bags.
Most of them were prescribed to Julie Harper.
Based on the name, investigators assume Julie Harper is Jason’s wife.
The police officers looked at the family pictures all over the house and they were able to see the identity of the family that was living there.
We learned that they had three children.
The officers wondered where the other members of the family were.
Where are the children and where is the wife? Not knowing what happened or transpired, our biggest concern were the safety of the children and Julie.
And we were trying to find out ways to figure out where they were.
The best way for us to do that is to interview family members and friends that knew Jason to get an understanding of who the person was to help us tell the story of what occurred.
Jason Harper was born October 30th, 1972 and grew up in the greater Los Angeles area.
Jason was soft-spoken, just an easy person to be around.
I called Jason the gentle giant, is what my nickname was for him back then.
You couldn’t miss him um just because of his stature and his height.
His demeanor was so calm.
He could be very intimidating cuz he was tall, but just a sweet sweet sweet person.
>> >> Jason went to the University of California, Los Angeles, UCLA.
>> >> He was a proud Bruin.
It’s my understanding that he was actually a two-time national champion volleyball player.
Jason remained single throughout college and for many years after, but in his late 20s, he met a striking young woman at a party named Julie Sciac.
Jason Harper was a new teacher living in LA when he met Julie.
They very different backgrounds and different neighborhoods.
I know she came from money.
Her father is a successful businessman.
Julie, I believe studied at Harvard at some point.
I think she also went to the University of Southern California, USC.
They were immediately smitten with each other and Jason proposed around 6 months after they met.
Julie and Jason got married.
They moved to Carlsbad and they ended up having three children together in this neighborhood.
Julie really thrived in being a stay-at-home mom.
It made her happy.
My fondest memory of Julie is just hanging out and doing wines with the moms at someone’s house in the neighborhood.
Just having the camaraderie of women really and just laughing and cracking jokes and enjoying some vino and doing our thing.
Also, Jason was a really good neighbor.
>> >> There was an instance when our family was out of town and we got a text that our sprinkler had blown and Jason he immediately just took care of that.
No second thoughts about that.
He was a well-liked teacher at Carlsbad High.
>> >> He was a high school volleyball coach and he was a math teacher there as well.
He never yelled.
He never put them down.
He was just soft-spoken.
He was even-keeled.
Jason was just an easy person to be around.
Julie and Jason seemed like a really nice couple.
They had these lovely kids.
They had the supportive families.
It is the American dream.
I know that’s cliche, but they had what most people want.
They fit right in.
They belonged where they were.
Now, the Harpers’ idyllic home life has been shattered by a horrifying discovery.
Jason has been found murdered, and his wife and children appear to be missing.
The police need to figure out what happened.
Where’s Julie? Where are the children? And why is Jason Harper dead? There are a number of possibilities.
This could have been a burglary.
However, there was no sign of forced entry, and the unusual manner in which the body had been buried under all this clothing didn’t seem like your typical burglary.
The first thing I thought was there was some form of domestic violence that occurred, or potentially a kidnapping.
But, not having the evidence to know which one it was, we were really focused on trying to find the kids and Julie.
Investigators begin their search by speaking with the attorney who requested the welfare check.
He said that he was representing Ms.
Julie Harper.
Mr. Finks was very cryptic as to the details and didn’t want to give away too much information.
He just informed us that she would be turning herself in.
So, you’re obtaining a >> >> well-known defense attorney and negotiating when you are going to go in to turn yourself in to the police.
It was something that made us definitely on high alert.
This wasn’t a whodunit.
It was a question of why she did it and whether or not it was justified.
Coming up, >> >> Julie’s attorney goes public.
The defense attorney was already out uh painting a picture of a woman who is abused.
But in search of the truth, detectives turn to their only witnesses.
Who got shot? Does anybody ever get hurt? One time.
The kids hear yelling from the master bedroom.
And then they hear a loud thud.
Hours after the August 2012 welfare check on Jason Harper that led police to discover him shot to death, his wife Julie is preparing to surrender herself to investigators.
Her lawyer, Mr. Fink, informed the police that Julie and the kids were safe and that they were at her father’s house in Scripps Ranch.
The day after the shooting, at approximately 3:00, she turned herself in to law enforcement at her father’s house in Scripps Ranch.
Julie came out of the home and voluntarily went with them.
Julie didn’t make any statements to police.
She invoked her rights under Miranda to remain silent.
After that, the police execute a search warrant of her father’s house.
They didn’t notice anything of importance or evidentiary value.
Neither Julie nor her attorney offer any details to explain the shooting.
Instead, Julie’s attorney speaks with the soon after Julie’s arrest.
She wants to be with her children.
The defense attorney was already out painting a picture of a woman who is abused and was the victim of domestic violence.
And he was able to begin controlling the narrative in the news.
Based on the timing and circumstances, detectives aren’t ready to accept Julie’s version of what happened.
There was a big question in my mind of why did she not call 911? Why did she not try to provide life-saving efforts if this was self-defense? When someone says, “I have been a victim of abuse in any way, shape, or form.
” We should believe them.
But, in this case, we’re talking about a murder.
It needs to be proven.
To verify Julie’s claims, authorities search for any record of prior domestic abuse.
We did find one call for service >> >> at the home about a dispute between the two.
That call was made 9 months before the shooting on November 4th, 2011.
The caller was the Harper’s eldest son.
The police arrived and they determined that this was just a verbal confrontation and nothing physical had happened and so they left.
Despite the lack of a history of violence, investigators know it’s still possible it had been occurring.
In domestic violence cases, it’s very common that abuse occurred for a long period of time before something’s ever said.
They turn their attention to the only other potential witnesses, the Harper’s children.
The children are 8 years old and 6 years old.
And there was also a baby in the house.
And the first step was to have the 8-year-old and the 6-year-old interviewed.
The police took the children to do a forensic interview? And a forensic interview is basically an opportunity for an experienced professional to interview the children by asking non-suggestive, non-leading questions.
The children were asked about any violence between the father, Jason, and the mother, Julie.
How do you feel when they’re yelling loud and I feel sad.
You feel sad? Yeah.
Does anybody ever get hurt? One time >> Mhm.
that Thanksgiving like Daddy grabbed on Mhm.
But that’s the only time she did it was at Thanksgiving.
At Thanksgiving that happened? Daddy grabbed right here? That was a long time ago.
Right there? After establishing a rapport with the children, the forensic investigator asks them to describe what happened earlier that day.
Yesterday morning? Yeah.
Tell me about the last time you saw your dad.
Well, he was looking for his computer.
Julie and Jason were arguing over a computer.
Jason was going to leave the residence and get another computer when Julie told him that she had hidden it in the bedroom upstairs.
When your dad was looking for his computer, did he how did he seem to be? Did he seem He was pretty pissed.
Mom and dad go upstairs, and then the kids hear the yelling from the master bedroom.
And then all of a sudden they hear a loud thud.
Both kids ran upstairs to the master bedroom to see what that sound was.
They tried to open the door.
The door appeared to be blocked by something.
Julie answered the door and she basically said, “Your father just fell off a chair.
He’s fine.
Go downstairs.
” Eventually, their mom came out and said that daddy was sleeping and that they needed to go.
The kids described going to a coffee shop.
The son said that they ended up at their grandfather’s house.
Although the children didn’t witness the shooting, their story provides detectives with a timeline of events.
They were watching a specific cartoon that they were able to describe.
We were able to determine what time that cartoon was airing uh in our region and we determined that between uh 8:00 and 9:00 am is when Jason was killed.
The children said that they went to a coffee shop and they ended up finding a receipt in Julie’s car for La Costa Coffee for 9:41.
If he passed away in the morning and we didn’t get a call till 11:00 at night that night, what was going on during all of those hours? We took all of this information as well as the coffee shop receipt and we were able to go and retrace her day.
The barista said that Julie was acting relatively normal and didn’t seem frazzled or concerned or worried about anything.
It almost seems psychopathic that she was able to go about her day in such a nonchalant manner while planning her next steps.
The real question I had is what took place during the actual shooting.
What precipitated the shooting? Was there a conversation or was this a planned first-degree murder? And we needed to do some real forensic work to get more information so we could figure out what to do next and figure out exactly how this happened.
California authorities have arrested Julie Harper for the shooting death of her husband, Jason Harper.
And investigators are skeptical of Julie’s claims of self-defense.
When they first processed Julie, I remember looking through all those photographs and there isn’t a single speck of a bruise or a scratch or any sort of mark to indicate that Julie had just recently been in some sort of a physical confrontation at all.
Detectives hope an autopsy will provide more definitive answers.
There’s a .
38 caliber bullet that was recovered from Jason’s body.
What we wanted to determine was the bullet entrance and its trajectory to help us determine what Jason’s movement was at the time of the incident.
Was he going towards her? Was he going away from her? Generally, you would see evidence of stippling or soot if he was within 3 ft and there was no evidence of that.
Jason was shot in the left rib cage, kind of more towards the back of the rib cage and the bullet traveled at a upward trajectory from the left rib cage and rested right here in the right pectoral and it ended up piercing his heart.
To me, what that entry wound indicated was that Jason was actually probably turning his body away from Julie at the moment that she pulled the trigger.
The day after the shooting, investigators still aren’t convinced by Julie’s version of events, so they turn to the Harpers’ closest friends and family.
I wanted to know whether there was anything to corroborate her claim, whether witnesses had seen her being abused.
After a thorough investigation, we weren’t able to find a single friend or family member who is able to give any indication of past abuse.
Neighbors say it was Julie’s behavior, not Jason’s, that concerned them.
There was a lot of speculation because her demeanor, her persona, her personality has started to change in different ways.
After the second child was born, there was a shift in Julie’s warm, attentive nature as a mother.
>> >> According to the neighbors, Julie’s decline worsened after the arrival of the Harpers’ third child.
Police are talking to a lot of people that know Julie Harper personally.
And what many of them said collectively is, “I don’t know who this person is anymore.
She used to be present, and now we don’t see her.
” There was concern about her well-being.
There was some suspicion that she was going through postpartum depression, and that certainly increased the deterioration that she was going through.
Your house can’t be 100% clean all the time, especially with little kids, but Julie’s house was normally uh more well-appointed, and it was kind of just kind of a disaster over there.
When they offered Julie support, she explained she’d been suffering from various medical issues.
>> >> Julie was suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, which is very debilitating and painful.
She was prescribed by a legitimate physician >> >> medicine to manage that pain.
She was seeking doctors that would prescribe her opioids and narcotics to help remedy that problem.
It appeared that she had been abusing these medications because she was taking a whole lot of pills.
Police were stunned by the amount of prescription drugs that were in that home.
52 bottles is a lot.
And when you look and see when these prescriptions were written within a year, there were thousands upon thousands of pills that were taken.
Between September 2011 and August 2012, Julie’s drug dependence deepened and began to take a toll on her marriage.
Some of the themes that we were getting from the friends and family is that it was clear that this relationship was kind of at the end of its rope.
And my theory is that I think he said I want to get a divorce.
We should get a divorce.
I think that really upset her because she was trying to save the marriage.
When investigators checked court records, they learned the Harpers were in the process of getting a divorce.
But Jason wasn’t the one who initiated it.
We learned that Julie had filed for divorce from Jason 5 days prior to the shooting.
She listed that there had been verbal abuse.
We think she wanted to be the first to kind of set this set the tone about what was going on in the relationship.
I do think she wanted to have custody of the kids and so that’s why she initiated the divorce herself.
She’s a clever, savvy person and she’s always thinking about the next step.
Coming up, a second search warrant uncovers a damning piece of evidence.
This appeared to me to be a getaway bag.
And Julie finally breaks her silence.
He was coming towards me with his arms raised and he said, “I’m going to kill you.
” Investigators have spent just over a week examining Julie and Jason Harper’s personal lives.
And while evidence of domestic violence is thin, they have found a motive for murder.
The divorce filing, it really just set the stage for her state of mind on the morning of the shooting.
She files for divorce and cites abuse.
And she cites, “I don’t feel safe.
He’s abusing me.
I’m afraid.
” Those are things she wanted to make sure were on record before she did this.
And when detectives speak with Jason’s mother, they discover Julie’s escape plan didn’t end with the divorce.
Jason’s mother, Lina, saw Jason the night before and they conversed about Jason seeing what he believed was fraud on his credit cards.
Julie wrote two $4,500 checks against Jason’s credit cards and cashed those.
Bank records confirm Julie cashed the checks 1 week before the shooting.
Julie was able to withdraw the cash by forging Jason’s signature.
We were able to get bank video of her going to the bank and the signature didn’t match Jason’s signature.
This was a possible sign that she had been planning the killing.
We believed it was related to her premeditation and deliberation.
We also wondered whether he had confronted her about the divorce filing and the money that was stolen on the morning of the shooting.
As a theory of murder takes shape, investigators want more evidence to ensure a conviction.
We felt like we missed something in her dad’s home.
And we wanted to have an opportunity to search it again to gather more evidence.
Police did a search warrant on August 16th, about 9 days after the shooting.
I would say a dozen detectives and myself went out to really thoroughly search the residence.
We went to the garage area that has been searched before.
And we went into an attic space.
While I was photographing the attic, I noticed that there was a Right as you get to the top, there was a blue JanSport backpack.
I went back down the stairs and I was like, “Hey detectives, make sure that you look at that backpack up there because it seems out of place.
” It appeared that it’d been hidden there and it was hidden for a reason.
So, the police opened it up.
Inside that backpack was Jason’s cell phone, Julie’s cell phone, jewelry, Jason’s last will and testament, some passports, and interestingly enough, a naked photo of Jason.
He was laying on what appeared to be like a hotel bed in the nude.
That in itself is bizarre.
And disturbing.
I don’t know why she would need that.
There was also a .
32 caliber pistol, >> >> and that belonged to Julie.
That was registered in her name.
The caliber is not a match for the weapon that killed Jason.
But to detectives, the contents of the backpack are telling.
This appeared to me to be a getaway bag.
It’s something that a killer would use in order to flee the jurisdiction.
I think the purpose of having the passports is for her and the oldest two kids to get out of the country.
I think the jewelry is pricey, so she needed to sell it.
But the last will and testament kind of stumps me because if you’re found guilty, the money you’re going to get is not going to be from his last will and testament.
The backpack was important.
I think it kind of telltale sign this was pre-planned.
She knew.
And then she did a really good job of retaining her attorney and making it difficult for us.
I would say the level of planning that she was able to go through after the fact and the steps that she took to cover it up showed me that she wasn’t really abused.
And as long as a person thought about their actions and planned to take the actions before the killing, that constitutes first-degree murder.
We were ready to prove to a jury that this woman intentionally killed her husband.
In September 2014, 2 years after Jason Harper was shot to death, his wife Julie Harper stands trial for premeditated murder.
As expected, Julie claims self-defense.
But her attorney surprises everyone by putting Julie on the stand.
Most defendants choose not to take the witness stand.
But this was not your typical defendant.
She was extremely smart and she was ready to tell her story.
Julie claimed that Jason was loud, he was verbally abusive, and that she was scared of him.
She said she was trying to protect herself and her children from this madman.
As evidence, Julie provides video recordings of Jason’s behavior.
You, [ __ ] Car pool, [ __ ] Figure it out.
Get out of it if you’re too dumb to do it.
Too lazy.
Seems like the b i t c h is the only word that you can use.
That is darn right.
That’s what you are.
He was 6’7″ and 230 lb and very athletic and very strong.
His body was a weapon.
It can paint the picture that he could be this kind of guy that could become unhinged.
What you get? Bull, I’m not paying for anything.
I paid for the vacation.
>> That’s bull, I am.
That isn’t true.
When we saw these videos in court, I knew that they didn’t make Jason look good because he was being angry and he was yelling at Julie.
But just because someone’s angry and yelling at their spouse, there’s a huge step from that to physically abusing them.
And Julie swears under oath that Jason didn’t stop with verbal abuse.
She claimed that she was repeatedly raped by him every single day.
I said, “Stop.
Stop.
” What are you doing? Stop.
The defense enters Julie’s personal journal as further evidence.
The journal apparently was the evidence that would, according to Julie, corroborate her testimony that she was being raped by Jason.
In her journal, she would write sex next to the date that this happened, and she said that the word sex was code for rape.
But aside from Julie’s private journal, the defense cannot present any evidence to corroborate her claims.
It’s hard to refute if he’s not here, but no one that knows Jason believes her claims.
No one.
Nobody had any indication that she was going to claim this until we went to trial.
There was no physical evidence or videos or audio that would tend to show that Jason Harper had raped his wife.
Instead, the defense relies on Julie’s emotional recounting of the events that unfolded on August 7th, 2012.
What Julie said was they were arguing with one another.
He got this crazy look in his eye.
She said he ran up to her screaming and began taking off her clothes.
She believed she was going to be raped again.
He was coming towards me with his arms raised.
And he said, “I’m going to kill you.
” That was the first time we had ever heard Julie Harper say anything about Jason Harper threatening to kill her.
Knowing what I know of Jason and the gentle giant that he was.
I don’t believe he was ever like that.
I grabbed my gun from under my pillow.
I turned around.
I told him, “Stop.
” But he stopped? No, I said, “Stay back.
” Felt my hand jerk and heard the loud noise.
And he was still like coming forward at me.
And then all of a sudden he froze completely.
And then he fell with a thud on the ground.
She claims she could tell within seconds that he was gone.
The biggest surprise during her testimony was what she had done with the gun.
She claims that she buried it in somebody’s yard or something like that to preserve it for evidence, but it’s our belief that she disposed of it because it showed her guilt.
To prosecutors, the story is an obvious fabrication.
As good as she was at testifying, I knew that her story was simply contradicted by the physical forensic evidence from the autopsy.
What she basically said was that he was approaching her and he did not turn away and that at the moment that she pulled the trigger, he was standing directly in front of her.
>> >> And so the physical evidence directly disputed what she said actually happened.
The medical examiner determined there was a single gunshot wound to Jason Harper’s back on the side near his rib cage.
The bullet entered from behind and traveled to the front.
After closing arguments, the jury retires to deliberate.
The jury, after hearing the evidence, determined that we did not prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt as it relates to first-degree murder and elected to acquit Julie.
The jury was hung 9 to 3 for not guilty on second-degree murder, and so the court declared a mistrial.
I was shocked and disappointed at the outcome and the prospect of having to do this trial all over again was a daunting one.
A trial date is set for the following year and Julie is released on bond.
After the first trial, she just wanted to come back in, like life is normal.
So, she was going to concerts, uh when she was out living in the house that she murdered her husband in, having a good time.
The kids were I believe under the care and custody of Jason’s parents.
As we approached that second trial date, Julie informed the judge that she needed to delay the trial again.
We learned that Julie had intentionally become pregnant through an artificial insemination.
I absolutely think it was a tactic to try to be found to not guilty by either being pregnant during trial and or having a baby right before going to trial.
A year after her first trial for the suspected murder of her husband, Jason Harper ended with a hung jury.
Julie Harper’s second trial begins in September 2015 following an unexpected pregnancy delay.
Whether the recent birth of her fourth child will result in sympathy from the jury remains to be seen.
Once again, Julie took the witness stand and she stuck to her story.
It was a story about being a battered woman who was physically, verbally, and sexually abused.
Now that they are familiar with her defense strategy, prosecutors have a new approach.
What we were going to do is we were going to ask about all the times that she’s lied about this case.
And there was literally hundreds of questions.
They carefully dissect each piece of evidence pointing out inconsistencies.
They begin with the videos the defense used to establish Jason’s abuse.
You, [ __ ] It was clear that obviously Jason was frustrated, but what was also clear to me is that Jason wasn’t doing anything physically violent.
This was strictly a verbal argument.
And then when you looked at her journal, things just didn’t add up.
She says that this man had raped her over and over and over again.
Spousal rape 30 plus times is what she’s accusing this man of.
But she also was writing in her journal at the same time that she says she’s being raped that she wants more sex with him.
She was actually frustrated with his sexual prowess and wanted it to last longer.
That doesn’t compute with someone who is violating you in one of the worst ways possible, continuously.
Jason’s search history from the morning he was shot also contradicts Julie’s claims.
Julie had said that basically that from around 8:30 to approximately 9:00 pm Jason was trying to rape her, essentially.
And what we found was that he was actually on his own computer looking up resources to help him with his soon-to-be pending divorce.
He could not have been simultaneously browsing and searching the internet at 8:36 in the morning and raping Julie Harper.
If she’s lying about that, what else is she lying about? >> >> The prosecution argues that Julie’s desperation didn’t stem from any alleged abuse, but her own dissatisfaction with her life.
Her relationship was crumbling mostly because of her own actions.
She just snapped.
Completely just snapped.
This time, the jury is less sympathetic to Julie’s claims.
Julie was ultimately convicted of second-degree murder and using a firearm in the commission of that murder.
She is sentenced to 40 years to life.
15 was for the murder and 25 was for the gun charge.
I mean, normal people don’t go out and kill their husbands and their spouses and go have coffee or whatever.
I do believe that Julie got out exactly what she deserved.
That’s a long time.
That’s a long time.
I think one of the worst parts about this, other than Jason losing his life, is that Julie took real stories from real people that sometimes don’t make it out alive.
And she took these stories, she concocted this plan for her own benefit and didn’t think about how anybody else would feel about it other than herself.
Julie Harper ruined Jason’s life.
She shot and killed him and then she tried to destroy his legacy by dragging his name through the mud.
It was all very shocking and sad.
>> >> I think Jason’s death could have been easily prevented.
I think something with the combination of whatever medications she was taking or misusing and whatever was going on in her head caused her to snap.
The biggest tragedy is the children.
It’s hard enough for a child to lose any parent much less two.
I respect Jason >> >> and I remember Jason.
She killed a great, great man.
Jason was such a good person.
He was such a a value, such an asset and just his loss was immense and it was felt and it’s still felt.
