Juliana Redding was found brutally murdered. I can tell you in 18 years of prosecuting cases, I’ve never had this much DNA. Juliana Maureen Redding was born on October 25th, 1986 on Picasso’s birthday. Her mother, Patricia Redding, said she knew from that very first day she had given birth to something special, a masterpiece.
She grew up in Tucson, Arizona in a close devout Catholic family. Her parents, Patricia and Greg, who worked as a pharmacist, raised Juliana alongside her younger brother Patrick in a home full of structure, warmth, and high expectations. From early on, Juliana always stood out. I mean, she’s very pretty.
People noticed her as soon as she turned up. She had that kind of presence. At daycare, boys actually squabbled over who got to play with her. Making friends was simple for her. It’s like she barely had to try. She loved her dolls, adored the other kids, and even as a young girl, you could tell she knew exactly where she was heading.
She used to collect business cards, carrying them around in her great-grandfather’s Scottie’s black leather briefcase, proudly telling anyone who would listen that she was going to be a businesswoman one day. It’s kind of sweet to picture. She already saw a future for herself. Her grandmother would sometimes take her to executive board meetings, and somehow Juliana fit right in.
She would sit quietly, completely at ease in rooms full of adults who barely noticed kids. That confidence, it was always there. At Salpointe Catholic High School in Tucson, she stayed just as active. She played golf for 4 years, and in her senior year, the team ranked first in the state.
She also ran track and field, played soccer, joined the recycling club, served on student council, and performed in the drama club. It’s a lot when you think about it. She seemed to want to experience everything. Her school advisor, Sister Helen Rau, said she simply had a love of life that naturally spread to others. In 2005, she was selected as a Tucson Symphony debutante.
It reflected who she was becoming, poised, confident, comfortable being seen. But those polished details don’t tell the whole story. According to her friend Genevieve Stewart, who knew her at Santa Monica College, Juliana moved through the world like someone who believed there was space for her in it, a kind of quiet confidence. After graduating high school in 2005, she moved to California.
She enrolled at Santa Monica College, studying communications. At the same time, she signed with a national modeling agency and began working part-time, first as a hostess, then as a waitress. Things started to pick up. She was landing modeling jobs, product shoots, music videos, earning around $3,000 per job on average.
That is definitely something for a young girl her age starting out. She had her own one-bedroom apartment on Centinela Avenue, close to the beach. She was building something for herself. By 18, she had already earned her first film credit, a small role in an independent 2005 film called Kathy T, about college students and graffiti culture.
It wasn’t huge, but it was a start, and there was a sense that more was coming. Then in early 2007, something changed. While working at a restaurant in Santa Monica, Juliana met Dr. Munir Uwaydah, a Lebanese-American physician who ran a large medical business across Southern California. He offered her a job as a medical assistant.
The pay was good, really good, enough for her to afford a Range Rover. For a time, their relationship went beyond business. She moved into his home in Beverly Hills. He gave her gifts, treated her generously, and somewhere along the way, their relationship became romantic. But not everyone was comfortable with it. When her father, Greg Redding, found out that Uwaydah was married with children, he was direct.
He told his daughter to leave. He believed the man was dangerous. It’s hard not to pause there for a second, because moments like that often matter more than they seem at the time. Juliana listened. She ended the relationship. She moved back into her apartment in Santa Monica, went back to school, and continued working.
From the outside, it looked like she was moving forward, putting it behind her. But there was one detail that couldn’t be undone. She had introduced her father to Uwaydah, and that single connection would slowly begin to unravel everything. Santa Monica, California, the evening of Saturday, March 15th, 2008.
Juliana’s bungalow on Centinela Avenue was just on a quiet residential street. It looked safe. Bars on the windows, a front door that could only be opened with a key, no obvious way in or out without one. Former prosecutor Alan Jackson described it as the last place a young woman would ever think she was being watched.
But that night, someone was already inside. Police believe the killer entered just before 10:00 p.m. What happened next wasn’t quick, and it wasn’t merciful. It was a fight. The struggle moved through the apartment. Furniture pushed out of place, objects broken, every surface quietly recording what had happened. Juliana fought back with everything she had.
Her head was slammed against the floor with enough force to leave deep injuries. Her throat was crushed. She didn’t go quietly, not at all. Later, investigators found her DNA under her own fingernails. She had been clawing at her neck, trying to pull her attacker’s hands away. It’s a desperate, instinctive reaction, something people do when they’re being strangled, when they’re still trying to survive.
It’s honestly heartbreaking to picture. She was fighting for her life in her own home. Just the night before, everything had felt normal. Juliana had spent time with friends, she worked a shift, then she went home. That evening, her boyfriend, a surfer named John Gilmore, called her. She told him she was fine. He mentioned going out for beers with friends.
She said, “Okay.” And they hung up. That was the last time anyone spoke to her. At 9:53 p.m., a neighbor reported hearing screams, loud movement, furniture being dragged or knocked over. And then, silence. When investigators later recovered Juliana’s phone, they found something chilling.
Someone had tried to call 911, but the call never went through. It was cut off before it could connect. You can’t help but wonder how close was she to getting help? Her body wasn’t found until the next day, March 16th. Her mother, Patricia, had been trying to reach her with no response. After days of silence, she contacted the Santa Monica Police Department.
Officers were sent to the bungalow on Centinela Avenue. When they arrived, something already felt wrong. The front door was unlocked, and the moment they opened it, they were hit with the strong smell of natural gas. It filled the apartment. A large decorative candle flickered on the coffee table.
The entire place had been turned into a bomb. It didn’t explode. The building was old. It has this sort of vent stuff for air flow, so gas didn’t build up the way it should have. Later, police would say that if conditions had been even slightly different, the entire structure could have been destroyed along with every piece of evidence inside.
Everything that could explain what happened to Juliana would be gone. It’s hard not to think about that, how close it came to disappearing completely. In the back bedroom, they found her. Detectives from the Santa Monica Police Department got to work right away, and almost immediately something stood out. DNA, everywhere.
It wasn’t just a trace here or there, it was all over the apartment. Later, prosecutor Alan Jackson would say that in 18 years of handling murder cases, he had never seen anything like it. There was DNA on the door lock, on a plate in the sink, on the stove knob, which made sense because someone had turned it on. On the front and back of Juliana’s T-shirt.
And then, the one that mattered most, DNA on her throat. That detail alone says so much about what she went through. As investigators worked through Juliana’s phone records, a clear timeline started to form, and it was hard to hear. At 9:53 p.m., a neighbor reported screams. Sometime during the attack, a 911 call was made from Juliana’s phone, but it was cut off almost immediately.
She tried. She really did, but someone stopped her. After she was killed, the scene was staged. The stove was turned on. A candle was lit. Gas was left to fill the apartment. Whoever did this walked away expecting everything to be destroyed by morning. Every trace, every answer. It’s unsettling to think about how deliberate that was.
At that point, police didn’t have a clear suspect, so they started where most investigations do, looking at the people closest to her. The ones who knew her routine, the ones who could access her home. Juliana’s father, Greg Redding, didn’t hesitate. He pointed detectives toward John Gilmore, Juliana’s on-and-off boyfriend of nearly two years.
Greg had never trusted him. He told police about a time Gilmore, in a drunken rage, had kicked in the door of Juliana’s car. He also said the two had argued the day before she was killed. It was enough to raise concern. Gilmore was brought in and questioned. He admitted that he had gone by Juliana’s house the morning after the attack, before anyone knew she was dead.
He said he looked through the security door and saw a candle still burning inside. He denied any involvement. His DNA was tested. Eventually, he was cleared. Detectives kept going. They tested the DNA of 40 women who had known Juliana. Nothing matched. No answers there, either. So, they followed another lead, a different connection, the one between Juliana’s father and a man named Dr.
Munir Uwaydah. And that’s where things started to shift. The prosecution’s theory of what happened that night started with a phone call. It went back to something that, at the time, probably didn’t seem dangerous at all. Juliana had introduced her father, Greg Redding, a pharmacist from Arizona, to Dr. Munir Uwaydah.
What followed was a business deal involving pharmaceutical pain creams. For a while, everything seemed normal. The deal was moving forward. But then Greg started to have doubts. Something about Uwaydah’s operation didn’t feel right. It didn’t seem legitimate. And 5 days before Juliana was killed, on March 10th, 2008, he made a decision.
He pulled out, formally, in writing. According to prosecutors, that decision didn’t sit well with Uwaydah, not at all. And that’s where another name enters the story. Kelly Sue Park. In court documents, she was described as many things. Uwaydah’s real estate broker, her personal assistant, her financial manager. But there was also something else, something more unsettling.
Uwaydah himself reportedly called her his James Bond. Prosecutors believed Park wasn’t just handling business. She was enforcing it. They argued that when people crossed Uwaydah, especially in financial disputes, Park was the one sent to deal with it, to threaten, to intimidate, sometimes even to confront them physically.
And this, they said, wasn’t new behavior. When investigators dug deeper into Uwaydah’s network, they found a pattern. Court filings described Park as someone who had carried out similar acts before, targeting other people, often women, using fear and pressure to resolve disputes in Uwaydah’s favor. It raises a difficult question. Was Juliana ever the real target? Or was she simply caught in the middle of something much bigger? According to prosecutors, on the evening of March 15th, 2008, Park was sent to Juliana’s apartment, and things escalated. Financial records added
another layer. Three weeks before Juliana’s death, Park had been paid $250,000. In the 18 months after the murder, more than $1 million was transferred to her from Uwaydah. That’s a staggering amount of money, far beyond what you’d expect for a real estate broker. It didn’t look ordinary. It looked like something else entirely.
Still, it took time. Park wasn’t arrested until March 17th, 2010, two years after Juliana’s death. Bail was set at 3 and 1/2 million dollars, and someone paid it. Prosecutors believed that someone was Uwaydah. But here’s where things get even more complicated. Dr. Munir Uwaydah was never charged.
Not long after Park’s arrest, he left the country. And by the time the trial began, he still hadn’t come back. So, the case moved forward, but without one of the key figures ever sitting in that courtroom. And you can’t help but wonder how much of the story was missing because of that. Detective Karen Thompson had been there from the very start.
She was the one who stayed with the case, who kept working it piece by piece, even when things didn’t come together right away. In the end, it was Thompson who made the connection that changed everything. The unknown DNA found all over Juliana’s apartment, it finally had a name. Kelly Sue Park. The match didn’t come easily.
It took time, careful, methodical work. Investigators tested people connected to Dr. Uwaydah, one by one, until finally, the profile fit. And when it did, the scope of it was hard to ignore. Park’s DNA was on the lock of the apartment door, on a plate in the kitchen sink, on the knob of the gas stove, the same one that had been turned on to try and destroy the scene, on Juliana’s cell phone, and then, the most disturbing place of all, on Juliana’s neck.
The very hands that had crushed her throat had left behind something they couldn’t take back, biological evidence that could be collected, tested, and matched. It’s one of those moments where you think, “How could this not be enough?” Even prosecutor Alan Jackson said it himself. I can tell you in 18 years of prosecuting cases, I’ve never had this much DNA.
To the people working the case, it felt solid, complete, like everything finally pointed in one direction. But sometimes, even when the evidence seems overwhelming, it still doesn’t mean the outcome will be. And in this case, it wasn’t airtight at all. The trial of Kelly Sue Park began in mid-May 2013. It quickly drew attention, both locally and across the country.
The case had all the elements people tend to focus on. A young, beautiful victim, a Los Angeles setting, a female defendant, and in the background, a doctor who had already left the country. And then, there was the evidence. The prosecution believed it was clear. They told the jury that Park had been sent to Juliana’s apartment that night, not to kill her, at least not at first, but to confront her, to send a message to her father, a warning tied to the broken business deal. But something went wrong.
Things escalated. Juliana fought back. And in that struggle, prosecutors argued, Park had strangled her with her bare hands. Afterward, she turned on the gas stove and lit a candle, trying to destroy the scene, to erase what had happened. The defense saw it differently. Park’s attorney, George Buehler, kept his argument focused on one thing, reasonable doubt.
Yes, the DNA was there. Yes, her fingerprints were present. But he told the jury that this alone didn’t prove murder, not beyond a reasonable doubt. He also raised a physical question. Park stood at 5’10”, around 150 lb. He argued that she wouldn’t have been able to overpower and strangle Juliana on her own.
He challenged the motive, the timeline, the way the evidence had been handled. And there was something else, something that shaped the entire trial. Prosecutors were not allowed to tell the full story they believed in. They couldn’t argue that the killing had been ordered by Dr. Uwaydah. They couldn’t present the broader picture of his alleged operations.
So, what the jury saw was a forensic case, detailed, technical, heavy with evidence, but maybe missing context. Expert witnesses walked the jury through the DNA findings. They explained how it was collected, how it matched. They spoke about the injuries, about strangulation, about what had been found on Juliana’s neck.
The prosecution also introduced financial records, payments made to Park, and described what they believed was a pattern of behavior. Still, the burden of proof remained. On June 4th, 2013, the jury, six men and six women, returned with their decision. Not guilty of first-degree murder. Not guilty of second-degree murder. Park broke down in tears, but the courtroom didn’t stay quiet.
Voices rose from the gallery. People shouted. Others said, “She knows she did it.” Some crying. The emotion in the room spilled over. For Juliana’s family, it was something else entirely. They walked out of that courtroom without a conviction, without clear answers, without the kind of justice they had been waiting for.
And honestly, it’s hard not to feel the weight of that. Even some defense experts, according to later reports, were surprised by the outcome, which leaves a question that still troubles many. If all that evidence wasn’t enough, then what would have been? No one has ever been convicted of Juliana’s murder. Dr.
Munir Uwaydah remained out of reach for years. In 2015, reports suggested he had been arrested in Germany, but even then, his exact situation wasn’t clear. Around that same time, Kelly Sue Park was arrested again. This time, on fraud charges tied to a massive medical insurance scheme allegedly connected to Uwaydah’s practice in Southern California. The numbers were staggering.
About $150 million 15 people indicted. Park’s bail was set at 18 and 1/2 million dollars. But none of that changed what had already happened in Juliana’s case. That door had closed the moment the jury said not guilty. Double jeopardy meant she could not be tried again for the same crime, no matter what came later.
That part was final. Uwaydah’s own career eventually unraveled. In 2010, the Medical Board of California placed him on probation for allowing a physician’s assistant to perform surgeries without supervision. By 2013, his medical license was canceled. Whatever he had built, it didn’t last, but it also didn’t bring Juliana back.
Her family laid her to rest on March 28th, 2008 at St. Odilia’s Church in Tucson. She was buried in the city where she grew up, back home, surrounded by the people who loved her most. And that’s where her story, in many ways, was forced to stop. Over time, her case became something more than just one investigation.
In forensic and legal circles, it’s often discussed as an example of the limits of DNA evidence, because the science worked. It identified someone. It placed them at the scene. It told a story, but it wasn’t enough to secure a conviction. And that gap, between what the evidence shows and what a jury believes beyond reasonable doubt, that’s where this case still lives.
To this day, the Santa Monica Police Department continues to ask anyone with information to come forward. The case file still exists. The evidence is still there. Somewhere, a DNA profile sits in a database tied to her name. It was enough to point to someone, but not enough to hold them accountable. And that’s the part that stays with you.
Because when everything is laid out, when all the evidence is there, you expect an ending that makes sense. In this case, it never really came.
