Judge slams man who is jailed for life for fatally lacing wife's cereal with heroine
'The jury has exposed you for the selfish, murdering, lying monster you are': Judge's withering put down to Michigan man, 47, who is jailed for life for fatally lacing wife's CEREAL with heroin
- Jason Harris, 47, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the 2014 murder of his wife, Christina Thompson-Harris in their Michigan home
- Harris had been found guilty of spiking Christina's cereal with heroine, causing her to overdose and allowing him to collect $120,000 through life insurance
- Co-workers testified that Harris had been asking for drugs to give to his wife and attempted to hire one of them as a hitman to kill Christina
- The jury 'exposed you for the selfish, murdering lying monster you are,' Judge David Newblatt said as he delivered the sentence
'I agree completely with their verdict,' Newblatt said referring to the jury.
'You are guilty. You did this. You are a murderer. You are a liar. I want to make that very clear.
'The jury didn't believe your lies, and now they've finally exposed you for the selfish, murdering lying monster you are.'
A medical examiner had originally classified Christina´s death as an accidental overdose, but investigators subsequently alleged that it was a murder scheme hatched by Harris when a co-worker refused his offer of $10,000 to kill his wife.
Harris had received $120,000 in life insurance benefits, and two weeks after Christina´s death, another woman moved into the home.
The jury convicted Harris in November of first-degree murder, solicitation of murder and delivery of a controlled substance causing death.
Christina's mother, Kathy Mays, said she could barely breath during the sentencing over the tension of the emotional case.
She added that she has not been able to visit her daughter's grave since her death because she felt Christina could not rest in peace until justice was dealt.
Family members insisted that the 36-year-old mother-of-two didn’t use drugs. She had given birth four months before the murder and a sample of her frozen breast milk showed no evidence of any controlled substances.
It was later revealed that Jason had made a failed attempt to hire a hitman to kill Christina and asked a co-worker for drugs so his wife 'would go to sleep and quit nagging.'
On September 29, 2014, a neighbor discovered Thompson-Harris dead inside the family's home after getting a call from Jason asking to check on her because she was not answering his calls and texts.
In the course of the investigation, detectives uncovered nearly 5,900 text messages to a woman from Providence, Rhode Island, on Jason's phone, as well as emails and photos sent to multiple other women
Just nine days after Christina died, he bought a plane ticket to go visit the woman in Providence.
Neighbors told police that shortly after his trip to Rhode Island, a woman and her daughter moved into the Davison home - about 60 miles north of Detroit - where his wife had died.
The medical examiner changed Christina's cause of death from accidental drug overdose to homicide in August 2019, leading to her husband's arrest.
Harris was charged in 2019, five years after his wife´s death.
Police said Harris's version of events concerning the circumstances of his wife's death did not add up.
He told at least three co-workers and a neighbor that Christina was feeling sick, weak and hungry so he poured her a bowl of cereal and milk.
Harris said that she tried to eat it but dropped the bowl to the floor, fell out of her chair and passed out.
When one co-worker asked Jason why he didn’t call an ambulance, he refused to respond.
Another co-worker told investigators that Jason had asked for Xanax pills, got five of them and told his colleague that he put them in Christina's water.
But when she refused to drink it because it tasted off, Jason went to another colleague to ask for pills that are odorless and tasteless.
After that, Jason allegedly asked co-worker Zacariah Shustock if he could hire him to kill Christina for $10,000, saying his other hitman had been arrested before carrying out the murder plot.
Shustock said during a preliminary hearing in 2019 that he refused but never reported his conversation with Harris to the authorities.
Jason's brother, Jeffrey Harris, said in court he knew the dad-of-two had been cheating on Christina, and after her death he went to the police accusing his own brother of murdering her, because he said 'it was the right thing to do.'
One colleague at the plastics factory where Jason worked until he was fired for drug use previously told investigators that she asked him why not divorce his wife if he wanted her gone as badly as he claimed.
Harris told her he 'just needed to get rid of Christina,' but he didn't want to lose his kids or deal with child support or alimony, Leyton said.