48 Hours: The Mansion Above Dale Hollow Lake- Inside the chilling murder of Mike Harding discovered by house hunters Archi Biswas Sun, October 25, 2026 at 10:26 AM UTC
48 Hours: The Mansion Above Dale Hollow is available to stream on Paramount+ ©YouTube/@48hours
48 Hours' latest episode, titled The Mansion Above Dale Hollow, aired on Saturday, October 24, 2026, on CBS at 10 PM ET. The episode is also available to stream on Paramount+. This episode delves into the shocking murder of Michael 'Mike' Harding, who was shot four times, twice in the head and twice in the torso region. However, his body was found around a week later by house hunters.
David Hammersley and his family were searching for homes in Kentucky. The family, originally from Florida, went for house hunting on September 26, 2022. Their realtor showed them a 2-acre rural plot with a main house, a garage, and a cottage in Burkesville, Kentucky. Hammersley was impressed with the property.
However, as Hammersley and his family went near the cottage situated at the far end of the property, they smelled something rotten. When Hammersley and his father-in-law approached to investigate, they found a man on the floor with gunshot wounds. They immediately contacted the cops.
48 Hours: The investigation of Mike Harding's murder
Michael 'Mike' Harding went missing before he was killed (Image Via YouTube/@48Hours)
The cops identified the man as Michael 'Mike' Harding, who went missing for over a week. The forensic report proved that Michael 'Mike' Harding was shot four times.
The investigators found his phone at the crime scene. The investigators found out that he had been lured into the house. According toCBS News, Mike was contacted by a realtor named James Fraser. Fraser apparently requested a repair service. Mike worked as an HVAC technician. The investigators also found out that the number from which he contacted Harding was a prepaid cellphone, which meant it could be a burner phone.
The investigators also found out that Mike was going through a difficult divorce with his wife, Julie Harding. Julie was a former California Highway Patrol commander. The two were living separately. Julie lived in California, and Mike stayed in Tennessee before he was killed.
Mike Harding and Julie Harding were living separately, as shown in the 48 Hours episode (Image Via YouTube/@48Hours)
Friends and family told the authorities that Mike was afraid of Julie. When authorities looked into Julie's call records, they found out that she had contacted a man from Houston called Thomas O'Donnell, a former car salesman from Napa, California. According to CBS News, Julie had apparently called Thomas 194 times in the past few months. The cops found out that the prepaid phone and Thomas' phone were located together just a few weeks before Mike's death.
48 Hours: Thomas O'Donnell found guilty of Mike Harding's murder
Julie Harding was a former California Highway Patrol commander (Image Via YouTube/@48Hours)
On December 8, 2022, just two months after Mike Harding's death, Thomas was arrested. Two days after Thomas' arrest, Julie was found dead at Mike's Tennessee home. According to ABC 10, Julie was arrested on unrelated trespassing charges just two days before her death. The authorities determined that Julie killed herself.
According to the investigators, Julie Harding believed that she might lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in the divorce, so she planned with Thomas to kill Mike. Thomas pleaded not guilty to murder charges. According to an ABC10 report released in May 2026, the Cumberland County court in Kentucky found Thomas O'Donnell guilty of Mike Harding's murder. He was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 20 years.
Also Read: 48 Hours-What the Cameras Saw: Inside the murder of Savannah Tolbert and the security footage that changed everything
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Source: Crime
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