House hunter discovers deceased body in vacant home

Florida resident David Hammersley and his family were fleeing from the hurricanes that plagued Florida and decided to tour homes in Kentucky. While house hunting on Sept. 26, 2022, their realtor showed them a rural 2-acre lot with a main house, a detached garage, and a cottage in Burkesville, Kentucky — a town known as the fishing capital of Kentucky. 

“The house was immaculate. No furnishings in it. You can eat off the floor,” Hammersley told correspondent Peter Van Sant in “The Mansion Above Dale Hollow Lake,” an all-new “48 Hours” airing Saturday at 10/9c on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.

Hammersley was impressed with the property, including the sight of a Dodge truck found inside the detached garage.

“And I started to salivate over the possibility of that being part of the deal,” he said.  

As Hammersley and his family approached the cottage at the far end of the property, they were overpowered by a stench radiating from the cottage.

“It had to be something like a dead raccoon, in my opinion,” Hammersley said.

Hammersley and his father-in-law proceeded to investigate, and within moments they stumbled across a horrific scene.

“I saw a man on the floor, his arm outstretched, obviously dead, from gunshot wounds,” Hammersley told Van Sant.

They immediately contacted the authorities, who identified that man as Michael “Mike” Harding, a California transplant who resided across the Kentucky border in Tennessee. He had been missing for over a week. 

An autopsy revealed that Harding had been shot four times — twice in the head and twice in the torso. Authorities found his phone at the crime scene and lead investigator BJ Burton from the Kentucky State Police examined it to see if it could answer their questions.

“Once you start looking through the text messages and phone calls, it becomes very obvious early on that he was lured to the house,” Burton told Van Sant.

Investigators learned Harding had been contacted by a realtor named James Fraser requesting a repair service because Harding worked as an HVAC technician. However, they discovered the number used to contact Harding came from a prepaid cellphone.

“It was pretty evident early on that this is a burner phone,” Burton said.

Burton also discovered Harding was going through a contentious divorce with his wife Julie Harding, a captain with the California Highway Patrol. The two were living in separate places — he was in Tennessee and she was in California.

“I feel like he was blinded by love. He truly loved her … So, I thought he found his dream girl. But to me personally, I just, I didn’t like her,” Mike Harding’s daughter, Heather Cavalieri, told “48 Hours.”

Friends and family of Mike Harding told authorities he feared Julie Harding. They got access to her call log and learned that in the months leading up to his murder, Julie Harding had around 194 calls with a man from Houston. His name was Thomas O’Donnell and he was a former car salesman now living in Napa, California.

They also determined that the prepaid phone and O’Donnell’s phone were located together a few weeks before Mike Harding’s death.

“And the first thing you notice is … the phone is first turned on when it’s in the Houston, Texas, area,” Burton said. “I don’t think Mr. O’Donnell got out here by accident. The only connection that he had to Michael Harding was through Julie Harding.”

On Dec. 8, 2022, just two months after Mike Harding was found dead, authorities arrested O’Donnell for his murder. For Julie Harding, two days after O’Donnell’s arrest, she was found dead at the Tennessee home where Mike Harding had been living. An investigator determined she had died by suicide.

Burton believes Julie Harding may have feared she would lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in their divorce, so she conspired with O’Donnell to kill her estranged husband. O’Donnell pleaded not guilty to the murder charge and would face trial three years after his arrest. A Kentucky jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 20 years.