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Wife accused of killing husband testifies about abuse

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A woman accused of killing her husband, a Carlsbad High School teacher, while their young children were in another room described her long-deteriorating marriage to a jury Monday.

Julie Harper, 41, of Carlsbad, said husband Jason often screamed and yelled at her, berated her, ridiculed her weight, called her names and eventually cut off her access to their joint checking account — instead giving her a monthly allowance of $260 in the year before the 39-year-old math teacher was shot to death on their bedroom floor Aug 7, 2012.

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“I still loved him despite everything he had done to me and (the way he) treated me,” Julie Harper told jurors during three hours on the stand at the Vista courthouse. She is expected to resume testifying in her own defense Tuesday.

Harper is charged with murder and the use of a gun, and faces up to 50 years to life in prison if convicted.

Her testimony thus far has not gone into the details of the deadly encounter, and she has not yet been cross-examined by the prosecutor.

Harper said her husband insisted she pay him $3,000 a month to cover her half of their mortgage and household expenses, even after she stopped working as a real estate agent when the market dried up and she stayed at home with their children. She said she used her savings and inheritance money to cover her half. But she started to run out of money in 2010 and told her husband she would have to contribute less than $3,000 a month — news she said left him “livid.”

In 2008, she was diagnosed with a form of arthritis, but she said he refused to allow her to pay for her medical expenses from their joint checking account.

She eventually began keeping notes about their fights and his treatment of her, including what she said were instances in which he forced her to have sex. She also said their children had grown “terrified” of him. When he died, the older children were ages 6 and 8, and the youngest about 18 months.

In addition to hearing Harper read from the notes she’d kept, jurors also saw recordings she made of two encounters between the pair.

One of the videos — made the night before their 10th wedding anniversary — shows no faces, just voices. Jason Harper can be heard calling his wife names, saying their marriage “sucks (expletive)” and that he was only there for the kids. He also said his wife was “cruel” for paying for $400 in day care expenses from their joint checking account, telling her it was only a joint account if she contributed to it.

The second video, from May 2012, is shot at an odd angle, looking up at Jason Harper as he holds their young son. The child eventually starts to cry as Harper yells at his wife about money and a weekend getaway she had planned for the family of five.

“Don’t force me into going somewhere until I get my $3,000,” he said on the video.

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