The Captain Who Hired a Hitman The Harding Story

The Captain Who Hired a Hitman: The Harding Story

On September 26, 2022, the body of 53-year-old Sacramento HVAC contractor Michael Harding was discovered inside a vacant home for sale on Glasgow Road in Burkesville, Kentucky, shot four times. The investigation that followed led Kentucky State Police, FBI agents, and detectives across three states to California Highway Patrol Captain Julie Harding and her secret partner Thomas O'Donnell, a 60-year-old amateur hitman from Napa Valley, in one of the most disturbing murder-for-hire cases of the decade.

This is a story about a 22-year law enforcement career that ended in a conspiracy, a $220,000 cash withdrawal nobody could trace, and 194 phone calls between two people who thought they had everything figured out. We follow Michael Harding from a quiet Sacramento neighborhood to an empty room in rural Kentucky where someone he had never met was waiting for him. We look at how a wiped phone, a Ring camera, a Netflix login, and one rambling call to a brand-new supervisor told investigators everything they needed to know. There is a verdict in this case. There is also a question no verdict could ever answer.

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