In fear of her life, Julie left this letter and photographs of this list and other questionable day planner and computer search events with her neighbors along with instructions to hand them over to police if she should suddenly die. This is not an exact copy of Julie’s letter, but a word-for-word transcription of it. The neighbors testify that eight days later she again talked with them, telling them Mark is trying to poison her and leaving poison websites up on his computer for her to see. She was shaking and crying and even afraid to eat or sleep. She hardly ate anything the whole weekend. She also said he kept offering her drinks, which he normally wouldn’t do. Four days later she was dead.

When the police prompted, Julie gave them the photographs she had taken containing the above list but left the letter to remain with her neighbors. The police could not make anything out of it. Earlier in the trial, defense attorney Craig Albee claims the list is nothing more than a grocery list. However, when the defenses own Illinois pathology expert Dr. Denton reads the list, he is quite alarmed and agrees it seems murderous. He seems to know exactly what it means, although the police and Julie weren’t sure if it meant anything. Jambois illustrates that most things on the list besides syringe, in isolation, could not mean much. However, when all these things are listed together, it is very alarming and serious, especially when the list is paired with the first poisoning website that Mark looked up on the computer. Julie’s suspicions were right on target. After hearing many facts on the stand for the first time that were unethically not given to him by the defense, Dr. Denton changed his official support for the defense and stated the situation seemed more likely homicide than suicide.

After the pictures that Julie took got separated from the letter that she left with the neighbors, they were never examined closely side-by-side by anyone even though the letter referred to the one photograph containing the above deadly shopping list. However, the dedicated jury in the trial finally put them together again like originally intended. It was very evident to see that Julie’s letter was written not only from her own intuitive suspicions, but also simply as a response to the items she saw on the list. Bravo to the jury for using common sense and finally seeing the letter the way Julie intended, leaving a roadmap to her murderer.

(To answer some bloggers, the documents were verified by FBI handwriting and documents expert Lane Lewis who took the stand on 1/8/08 verifying the letter and list to have been written by Julie and Mark respectively, besides other witnesses who also verified the handwriting.)