Ed Post Murder Case: Convictions, 1995 Plea, and Parole

The Ed Post murder case ended in a 1995 guilty plea to second-degree murder after nearly a decade of litigation, two jury convictions, and two reversals on appeal. Post, a New Orleans real estate executive, drowned his wife Julie in a St. Louis hotel bathtub on June 3, 1986, received a 30-year sentence, and was paroled in 2014 after roughly 25 years behind bars.¹²

What Happened at the Omni Hotel

Ed and Julie Post were in St. Louis on a business trip and staying at the Omni Hotel at Union Station. On June 3, 1986, Julie was found dead in the bathtub. Ed Post said he had returned from a jog and found her unresponsive in the water. A broken towel ring lay in the tub, and Post and his brother Dan, a lawyer, claimed Julie had grabbed the ring for support, tearing it from the wall, hitting her head, and drowning. Dan Post photographed the broken ring, ostensibly to support a possible negligence claim against the hotel.²

The death was not treated as a homicide at first. That changed as investigators looked harder at the physical evidence.

Why Investigators Suspected Ed Post

Forensic testing on an intact, identical towel ring in the same hotel found that pulling the mount from the wall required roughly 480 pounds of force, the equivalent of a 120-pound person falling from 64 feet. A lab concluded the ring had been “violently and deliberately wrenched” from the wall by someone standing outside the tub with a foot braced against its side. That was inconsistent with a woman slipping and grabbing for support.²

Julie Post’s body was later exhumed. A coroner identified marks indicating that someone had held her head underwater. Drowning remained the official cause of death.²

Post’s behavior that night also drew scrutiny. Before leaving on his claimed jog, he introduced himself by full name to both the concierge and the doorman and volunteered his route past Busch Stadium, the Gateway Arch, and city hall. Prosecutor Dee Joyce-Hayes of the Missouri Attorney General’s Office argued those unsolicited details were an effort to manufacture an alibi.³

The Motive Prosecutors Argued

Prosecutors pointed to money. Ed Post had taken out a substantial life insurance policy on Julie shortly before the trip. The Los Angeles Times reported the “bulk of a $700,000 life insurance policy” obtained not long before her death;¹ a separate account put the figure at $300,000.² Investigators also found that Post was carrying rising debts at the time of the killing.⁴

The marriage itself became part of the state’s case. Court records described heavy drinking by both spouses and frequent arguments. The state alleged that Ed Post had physically abused Julie, which he disputed. Their daughter Stephanie testified about domestic violence, including an occasion when her father allegedly pointed a gun at her mother’s chest. Dan Post said he had been summoned by Julie to help calm Edward during one altercation and saw a bookshelf with embedded glass that Julie said came from Edward throwing a cocktail glass at her.⁵

Two Convictions, Two Reversals

In 1989, a jury convicted Post of first-degree murder and sentenced him to life without parole.² The conviction was overturned after it emerged that a court deputy had allegedly engaged in sexual relations with a juror during the trial.¹

A second trial followed in 1992. Prosecution witnesses this time included Post’s brother, his daughter Stephanie, and his best friend.² Post was convicted again and sentenced to life. The Missouri Court of Appeals reversed that conviction as well, ruling that hearsay had been improperly admitted, specifically testimony from friends and family about statements Julie had allegedly made regarding abuse and her wish to divorce Post.⁵

The 1995 Guilty Plea

With a third trial ahead in December 1995, Post took a deal. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder before Circuit Judge Timothy J. Wilson and was sentenced to 30 years.⁶¹ By that point he had spent six and a half years in prison without bond. Under the agreement, he had to serve at least another three and a half years before becoming eligible for parole.

Post admitted to drowning his wife but cited the influence of diet pills as a factor in his behavior. The specific medication was not identified in available records. Post had rejected earlier offers to plead to second-degree murder and had preferred to fight the charges. After years of incarceration, according to one account of the case, he “just wanted a deal.”³

Parole and Release

The Missouri parole board granted Post’s release in 2014. He walked out of the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center at age 69, having spent roughly 25 years incarcerated in total.²

Book and Television Coverage

Before the murder, Post was described as a “model family man and affable realtor” in New Orleans. He cooperated with St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan on the 1993 book Evidence of Murder, a 352-page account published by Onyx Books that reconstructed the investigation and noted the Posts’ routine practice of upgrading their insurance policies.⁴ The case was also featured in the Forensic Files episode “Slippery Motives,” which walked through the towel-ring testing, the exhumation findings, and the prosecution’s theory of the crime.²

1
Los Angeles Times. Executive Pleads Guilty in Wife’s 1986 Drowning
2
Forensic Files Now. Julie Post Murder
3
Forensic Files Now. Ed Post
4
Publishers Weekly. Evidence of Murder
5
Justia. State v. Post
6
Orlando Sentinel. Executive Pleads Guilty in Wife’s 1986 Drowning