New Jersey woman convicted of strangling girlfriend to death with electrical cord then burying her body

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Jennifer Sweeney has been convicted of murder for strangling her girlfriend with an electrical cord and burying her body in a shallow grave.  

Prosecutors revealed that months before the killing, Sweeney had orchestrated a failed shooting attempt driven by jealousy, marking a chilling escalation in her campaign of violence

Jennifer Sweeney found guilty

A Monmouth County jury convicted 38-year-old Sweeney, from Tinton Falls, N.J. on charges of first-degree murder, first-degree conspiracy to commit murder, three related weapons offenses, second-degree desecration of human remains, and fourth-degree tampering with physical evidence in connection with the brutal killing of 41-year-old Tyrita Julius.

This true crime story began on November 24, 2015, when Linden police officers responded to a shooting at a home in the 900 block of Middlesex Street.

Responding officers found Julius, who had been shot eight times, sitting in her car, which had crashed into a utility pole not far from her home, reported ABC 7 NY.

A gunshot also wounded the woman’s 15-year-old daughter, who sat in the car’s front passenger seat.

Julius and her daughter were hospitalized and eventually recovered from their injuries.

The investigation into the shooting was still in progress when on March 9, 2016, Julius’ mother reported her missing.

Authorities learned that the night before, Julius had been with a woman, described as a friend from Tinton Falls, but failed to return home.

Authorities later identified that friend as Jennifer Sweeney, whom Julius met through a motorcycle club. While Julius recovered from the shooting, Sweeney visited her in the hospital.

Investigators discovered Julius’s body six months after her disappearance, buried in a shallow grave at a home on Joline Avenue in Long Branch, N.J. Authorities say someone strangled her with an electrical cord and wrapped her in two garbage bags.

During the course of a multi-agency investigation, detectives determined that Andre Harris, 37, was the gunman who shot Julius and her daughter in 2015 and that Sweeney set up the hit on her.

Jennifer Sweeney and Andre Harris Charged

Police arrested Sweeney and Harris in August 2016. Prosecutors charged them in connection with Julius’s murder and the earlier attempted killing.

Harris later reached a plea deal with prosecutors in exchange for a 16-year sentence in state prison. He also agreed to give testimony against Sweeney.

During Sweeney’s murder trial, Harris testified that the defendant was a ‘jealous lover’ who suspected Julius of cheating on her. He also called Sweeney ‘psychotic.’

Harris said Sweeney told him; ‘If I can’t have her, no one can.’

Harris accused Sweeney, whom he knew from high school, of threatening his life and the lives of his children if he did not shoot Julius with the gun she had given him.

Six months after the failed murder attempt, Harris said Sweeney drove to his house in Long Branch with Julius dead in her Jeep Cherokee, and forced him at gunpoint to help her dispose of the woman’s body.

Sentence

Jennifer Sweeney faces up to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The court scheduled her sentencing for November 19.