Father of slain 6-year-old takes stand in mom's trial: 'He was everything to me'

The father of Eli Hart took to the witness stand Friday in Hennepin County District Court in the murder trial of his son's mother to say there was still so much he wanted to do with his child before the 6-year-old's life was brutally cut short.

"He was everything to me. He completed my life. I just loved spending time with him. All the stuff I got to show him and all the stuff I wanted to show him," Tory Hart told a full courtroom Friday in the first day of testimony during the murder trial of Julissa Thaler.

Hennepin County prosecutors asked the father to describe his son, who was just a kindergartener at the time of his slaying last May. Thaler, 28, of Spring Park, is charged with first-degree premediated murder and second-degree intentional murder, accused of shooting the boy at least nine times and stuffing his body in the trunk of her vehicle.

Attorneys began laying out their case to the jury Friday, with Thaler's attorneys saying she's innocent and "loved her son more than anything."

"A beautiful 6-year-old boy is dead. ... His grieving mother is sitting here accused of murdering her son with a shotgun," Thaler's attorney Rebecca Noothed said. "There is no light at the end of this trial, no way to bring him back."

Noothed asked the jury in her opening statement Friday to "come to the table with an open mind, assume nothing [and] withhold judgment" until deliberations.

While prosecutors did not lay out an explicit motive Friday, Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Britta Rapp told jurors they will learn that a trail of evidence proves Thaler's premeditation and intent to kill her child, from life insurance policies she took out before the shooting, obtaining a firearm permit, purchasing a gun and even searching on the internet "how much does life insurance pay for a dead child?" and "how much blood can a 6-year-old lose?"

The store clerk who sold her the gun will testify that Thaler said she wanted ammunition "that would blow the biggest hole in something," Rapp said.

A police officer testified about the grisly crime scene discovered when a caller reported suspicions about Thaler's vehicle the morning of May 20. Orono police officer Trent Wiebusch testified that the vehicle was missing a front tire and the back windshield was blown out, which is unlawful and led to the traffic stop in Mound.

Wiebusch said that Thaler appeared "disheveled or unkept" and her demeanor was "nervous, fidgety, avoiding eye contact."

"It raised my level of alertness to be beyond a routine traffic stop. Something more is going on than not having a tire," he said.

He said there appeared to be blood on her right hand that she said was from her menstrual cycle and attempted to wipe off. When he had Thaler step out of the vehicle, Wiebusch said, there appeared to be blood on her face in a droplet, spray pattern.

When he asked Thaler why her window was blown out and she was missing a tire, Thaler said that she was going to meet with her AA sponsor at Tonka Alano Society in Mound when two people came out of the woods and began throwing rocks at her vehicle and shooting at the car with a BB gun. The officer said Thaler soon changed her story to say it was a paintball gun. Officers later found no such evidence to support her claims, Wiebusch said.

As he walked around the vehicle, Wiebusch said he could smell decay, which Thaler said was from deer meat. The officer saw large splatters of blood in the back of the car, on the ceiling and passenger side door.

Despite this, officers escorted Thaler home before they continued searching her vehicle. Wiebusch said the trunk held the mutilated body of a boy wrapped in a blanket beside a shotgun.

Wiebusch said when officers returned to Thaler's Spring Park apartment to arrest her, she had already left and officers found a washing machine running with her clothes inside.

Detectives traced her route and Rapp said she discarded evidence along the way.

Eli Hart used a booster seat that was found in a dumpster covered in blood and with a "large hole blown in the center right where a child's head and neck would've been," Rapp said. The child's blue backpack with homework inside was also recovered in a dumpster, covered in blood.

Alma Vasquez, who works at the Shell gas station in Mound, said she watched Thaler for more than a hour that morning cleaning out the backseat of her car, hauling unknown contents into the dumpster. She said Thaler kept washing her hands in a puddle. Investigators later tested the water and dumpster and confirmed Eli Hart's DNA was present, Rapp said.

"After an investigation by the Orono Police Department, they discovered Eli's mother was the one who pulled the trigger," Rapp said. "She pulled the trigger no less than nine times."

Noothed said no witnesses saw Thaler shoot her son, who she was excited to be reunited with and for whom she was making all sorts of plans, such as a vacation to Disney World.

"She planned a future with him in it. She would not harm him," she said.

Eli Hart was born with a genetic disorder that required surgery, his father said. He had to have hearing aids and a couple of his toes overlapped on his flat feet. But he said, "it didn't stop him from running, playing, jumping."

The boy loved playing with cars and blowing bubbles. He gravitated toward swings at the park and every Tuesday night when they went to Carbone's restaurant, his son always placed the same order, a plate of giant meatballs, his father testified.

The 28-year-old father lives in Chetek, Wis., where he manages a bait and tackle shop, and remembers taking his son fishing for the first time.

"I got him a small kids pole, but he wanted to use my bigger one," he said. "He got it down first cast. ... He caught more fish than I did."

Tory Hart is suing Dakota County for ignoring the warning signs that he says led to his son's death. He filed a petition seeking custody about a week before the killing.

Thaler lost custody of Eli twice, first in October 2020 and then for most of 2021. The child was temporarily placed in foster care, but a judge allowed Thaler to take him home on a trial basis in December 2021. She received full custody just 10 days before the boy's death.

Rapp said the child custody case was ongoing at the time of the homicide.

The boy was last seen alive on surveillance video the evening before his death at Thaler's apartment where Rapp said she is shown loading a long object — believed to be a shotgun — wrapped in a blanket into her car.

"As she does that, Eli Hart climbs into the backseat of her car," Rapp said.

Thaler appears on the surveillance video the next morning alone after officers escorted her home.