A Hampton Circuit judge on Monday sentenced Julia Leanna Tomlin to 55 years in prison, the maximum allowed, for the 2019 murder of her young son.
Tomlin, 37, pleaded guilty in December to second-degree murder, concealing a dead body and felony child abuse. When Michael Gaten, the chief judge for the Hampton Circuit Court, asked Tomlin if she wanted to say anything at the sentencing hearing, she declined to speak.
Tomlin reported her 2-year-old son, Noah, missing June 24, 2019, from her trailer in the Bayside Village Mobile Home Park in the Buckroe Beach area. Police said she told them the boy must have been abducted sometime between when she put him to bed and then checked on him about 10 hours later.
Law enforcement and community members searched for 10 days before Noah’s remains were found in a cardboard box at a city-owned trash incinerator. A team of local, state and federal law enforcement officers and fire fighters searched by hand through more than 2 million tons of trash before the discovery was made.
After the boy’s body was found, investigators said Tomlin changed her story. They said she claimed she’d been using heroin the day Noah died and that he drowned after she left him unattended in the bathtub. Unable to revive him with CPR, she told investigators she later placed his body in a Huggies diaper box, wrapped it in garbage bags, and asked a friend to dispose of it. She said the friend didn’t know what was inside.
A medical examiner, however, found several long-term injuries on the toddler and ruled he died from blunt-force head trauma and battered child syndrome. Police found what was later confirmed to be Noah’s blood on a bedroom wall, a bed sheet, and a toddler-sized shirt in Tomlin’s trailer.
Court records show Tomlin — mother to nine other children — was convicted in a prior felony child neglect incident in Newport News in 2010. In that case, she was charged with placing her 1-year-old daughter on a hot stove, causing burns to the girl’s back and shoulders. Tomlin reportedly contended it was an accident.
