Bibb judge sets bond for Ed Judie, charged in wife’s murder, as new details emerge
A Bibb County judge on Tuesday set bond for Edward Judie Jr., who has been in jail for two months since being charged with murder in the 2019 death of his wife.
Particulars of the $200,000 bond were being finalized, but the order stipulates that Judie, 66, have no contact with certain people who were either related or close to his wife, and that he be confined to his home while he awaits the conclusion of the case against him.
Prosecutors have said that Judie’s wife, Joyce Fox Judie, 60, suffered from dementia. She died Nov. 29, 2019, of “cocaine toxicity,” having had five times the lethal amount of cocaine in her system, investigators say.
Ed Judie, 66, a former deputy superintendent of Bibb County public schools, was arrested and jailed July 1.
According to testimony at Tuesday morning’s bond hearing, prosecutors say witnesses have told investigators that Ed Judie asked for the cocaine the night of his wife’s death and that he paid someone to deliver it his Greenwood Terrace home.
Investigators also say medical records show that Joyce Judie was unable to care for herself, that she needed help to eat and with other personal-care needs.
A flight risk?
For the most part, all that was at issue at Tuesday’s hearing was whether Ed Judie was a viable candidate for bond, whether he is a risk to the community or himself, and whether he is a flight risk.
Prosecutors have contended that he is a risk to flee.
A week after his arrest in early July, Ed Judie was denied bond after a prosecutor said Judie had placed calls from the county jail trying to secure his passport and “hide” some $500,000 of his dead wife’s insurance proceeds and also about arranging an appraisal on the couple’s home in northwest Macon’s Barrington Hall golfing community.
After listening to recordings of the calls, Bibb County Superior Court Judge Howard Z. Simms said Tuesday in court that “there was, in fact, some discussion of an appraisal on his house.”
A pending civil lawsuit filed by relatives of Joyce Judie to stop Ed Judie, who is retired, from selling the house prevents him, for now at least, from receiving any proceeds.
“He can’t sell it,” the judge said. “And the conversation about the passport is that he was talking about some stuff that was in a box or a safe or something that he had upstairs (in the house), and the passport. ... He said, ‘Something is in my box and so is my passport, so just get all that stuff.’”
Added Simms: “I didn’t take it as, ‘Get me my passport, let’s get the money out of this house so I can get out of town.’ That wasn’t what it sounded like.”
The judge, however, in setting bond said that “before Mr. Judie goes anywhere, he’s gonna surrender his passport to the sheriff. Somebody’s gonna go get it ... and they’re gonna bring it to the sheriff.”
This story was originally published August 31, 2021 at 1:31 PM.