Julie Love raped and murdered just a week after getting engaged – A Perfect Murder

Julie Love went missing only a week after getting engaged to fiance Mark Kaplan. The Perfect Murder on Investigation Discovery spotlights her rape and murder, and how her killer was caught.

She was on her way home from a business meeting on July 11, 1988, in Atlanta, Georgia, when it was thought she ran out of gas and decided to walk, to either the nearest gas station or Kaplan’s home.

However, she was never seen alive again and police could not find any witnesses who reported seeing her on the road. Her car was about halfway between the closest gas station and her boyfriend’s place, so she could have gone either way.

Over a year later on July 28, 1989, stripper Janice Weldon reported to police that 26-year-old Emmanuel Fitzgerald Hammond — who was in prison after trying to strangle her — had confessed to killing Love.

Weldon came forward because Hammond was reportedly plotting to have her killed and had tried to hire a fellow inmate to help him get rid of her.

Her story was that she was with Hammond and his cousin, 20-year-old Maurice Porter, out driving at around 9.30pm when they spotted Love and offered her a lift.

She began walking up a nearby driveway and told them she lived there and did not need a lift. But they watched her in the mirror and went back when she came back down the drive.

At this point they asked her again and when she said no Hammond jumped out and hit her with a shotgun, before bundling her into the car. They tried to force her to withdraw cash from her ATM but when it would not work Hammond got very angry as he wanted to buy drugs.

Things then took an even darker turn when his cousin Porter raped Love and Hammond started to beat her. Weldon says she demanded to be taken home when things turned ugly, before Hammond shot Love in the face with the sawn-off shotgun.

Weldon eventually directed police to an unofficial dump where Love’s body was found. She was given immunity, while Maurice Porter pled guilty to murder, rape and armed robbery and was given two consecutive life sentences.

Hammond was given the death penalty and was executed by lethal injection on January 25, 2011.

The Perfect Murder: Love and Death airs at 1:00 PM on Investigation Discovery.