Mother Acquitted in Retrial For Murdering Son

A mother who served two years in prison for stabbing her 10-year-old son to death was acquitted at her retrial last week after the defense argued the murder was committed by a masked intruder, possibly a death row inmate who confessed to the crime.

Julie Rea-Harper, 37, was acquitted of two counts of first-degree murder in her son, Joel Kirkpatrick’s death in 1997. She was convicted in 2002 and given a 65 years sentence.

The trial never included the confession made by Texas death-row inmate Tommy Lynn Sells because prosecutors questioned its credibility. However, an appeals court, two years later, dismissed Rea-Harper’s murder conviction on the basis of a technicality and ordered a retrial.

While police said that Rea-Harper, who had just lost custody of her child, stabbed him to death in his bed, she claimed she fought with a masked intruder to protect her son from his attack.

Furthermore, her attorney Ron Safer argued that the evidence presented in the case demanded an acquittal. Her son’s blood was not found anywhere on her arms, hands, legs, or clothes at the murder scene, where forensic experts testified the killer would have been saturated with blood.

“We are tremendously gratified by the verdict,” Safer said. “This has been a nightmare nobody should have to live through.”

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