New Jersey woman sentenced to 95 years for shooting, strangling girlfriend, then burying her body

A judge has sentenced Jennifer Sweeney, 38, of Tinton Falls, N.J., to 95 years in prison for murdering her girlfriend, 41-year-old Tyrita Julius. Sweeney shot, strangled, and buried Julius, Acting Monmouth County Prosecutor Lori Linskey announced Saturday.

“This sentencing is a fitting outcome to the prosecution of genuinely monstrous crimes,” Linskey said.

“This defendant’s actions were callous, calculated, and vicious. It ended the life of a woman beloved by her family and friends. I sincerely thank the detectives and assistant prosecutors who worked diligently to see that justice was done in this case.”

Jennifer Sweeney murdered Tyrita Julius, says prosecutors

The story began on November 24, 2015, when someone called police to a Middlesex Street home in Linden, N.J., to report a shooting.

Responding officers found Julius, who had been shot eight times, sitting in her vehicle, 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. Doctors hospitalized Julius and her daughter, and both recovered from their injuries.

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

Authorities learned that the night before, Julius had been with Sweeney, whom Julius had met through a motorcycle club.

While Julius recovered from the shooting, Sweeney visited her in the hospital. Authorities 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. Investigators say someone strangled Julius with an electrical cord and wrapped her in two garbage bags.

House on Joline Avenue in Long Branch, N.J. (Copyright: Unheard Voices Magazine)

During the course of the investigation, detectives reportedly determined that Andre Harris, 37, of Long Branch, N.J., was the gunman who shot Julius and her daughter in 2015 and that Sweeney set up the hit on her.

Arrests

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

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

During Sweeney’s murder trial, Harris testified that the defendant was a “jealous lover” who suspected Julius of cheating on her.

Harris said Sweeney allegedly 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 kill Julius with the gun she had provided him.

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

Jennifer Sweeney sentenced

Sweeney must serve a minimum of 85 percent of both the 75-year life term for the murder and the 20-year term for the shooting, under the provisions of New Jersey’s No Early Release Act. This means she will not become eligible for parole until she is more than 100 years of age.