Wife Killed Husband In Midst Of Affair: King County Sheriff

AUBURN, WA - Tom Ianniciello was sleeping in his Auburn-area home on April 2, 2016, when someone walked into his bedroom and shot him in the head.

The case had gone cold until this week, when the King County Sheriff's Office arrested Ianniciello's wife, Julie, for the murder.

According to police, Ianniciello's wife shot her husband around 9:45 p.m. as their two children waited outside in an idling vehicle. The children told police their mother was inside alone with their father for about 10 minutes.

Julie Ianniciello then left the scene to pick up a third child. She called 911 around 11 p.m. when she returned to her South 340th Street home, telling police that her husband had been shot during a burglary. But police said that there were no items missing from the home, and shell casings left at the murder scene matched unused bullets that were already in the house.

"Detectives learned that the female suspect had been having an affair at the time her husband was murdered," Sgt. Ryan Abbott said in a press statement Tuesday. "Detectives found dozens of emails between the suspect and her new boyfriend in the weeks leading up to the murder discussing the suspect’s hatred of her husband and her plan to leave him the weekend that he was murdered."

Tom Ianniciello was the owner of Tomy's Produce, and police initially were looking into business rivals. In a 2016 interview with KOMO, Julie Ianniciello said that police had questioned her, which bothered her.

"It did hurt when they asked me that. I don't know why anybody would think I would do that to him," she told the station.

She is being held at the Kent jail on investigation of first-degree murder, and her bail has been denied.

King County Sheriff Mitzi Johanknecht noted that this is the second cold case arrest detectives have made in recent months. On Feb. 13, police arrested a 52-year-old man and a 48-year-old woman for the 1995 murder of Kenneth Ruffer in White Center.