The mother of a Carlsbad high school teacher killed in his home took the stand in the trial of her daughter-in-law.
Jason Harper, a math teacher at Carlsbad High School, was found dead inside his home in August 2012. Investigators found Harper's body buried in clutter in the master bedroom.
When she was tried on first-degree murder charges, Julie Harper told jurors she shot her husband because she feared he would kill or rape her.
Prosecutors argued Harper was spiteful over the marriage and had just filed for divorce in the days before the killing. They questioned why, if she were innocent, she would bury the gun and not immediately report the shooting to police.
A jury acquitted her of those charges last October but deadlocked on lesser charges of second-degree murder and manslaughter.
Now, Julie Harper is on trial on second-degree murder charges.
In court Tuesday, Jason' mother Lina said on the morning on Aug. 7, 2012, she knew something was not right.
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Lina said she remembered calling her son when she hadn’t heard from him and leaving a voice mail, saying, “Are you safe?” She just had a bad feeling, she recalled in court.
Then, she got the call from police, telling her that her son was dead.
“I screamed and said, It’s so final! She, she, she couldn’t have. She couldn’t have. It’s too final. because of retaliations in the past, and having arguments to be volatile at a time and suddenly being nice. This was something you couldn't undo” Lina said.
Defense lawyers said Julie’s behavior was the result of major health problems. She screamed about separating the family for good for those reasons, the defense said.
"Julie was out at the curb and she started screaming at me that if I came to their house she would call the police," Lina recalled. "So Jason told the children that they could stay-the two older children, and they would take Josh home. She continued to yell that if they stayed, she would call the police that we were kidnapping the children. And she also screamed at me that she was going to separate our family for good."
She said Julie had forged two checks from her husband for $4,500 each and described the tense mood following that discovery.
Lina said she remembered when Julie would not come to their home while she was there.
After a fight in 2011, Jason called her and told her it was over.
"It was that time I asked him if Julie had a gun," Lina said, talking in court about Julie's change in behavior.
Following that encounter, Lina said she stopped thinking of Julie as a daughter-in-law.
The Harpers' children were in the home watching cartoons in a separate room when their father was killed.
At 8 and 6 years old, the children told investigators they heard a thump and heard their father yell, officials said.
Harper took the children for coffee and sandwiches, tried to set up a play date with a neighbor, stopped at a children's activity center and then arranged for her sister to watch the kids during the afternoon, prosecutors said.
