Herbert Mullin
Encyclopedia
Herbert Williams Mullin (born April 18, 1947) is a serial killer
who committed 13 murder
s in California
in the early 1970s.
but was raised in Santa Cruz
. His father, a World War II
veteran, was strict but not abusive
. He frequently discussed his heroic war activities and showed his son how to use a gun at an early age. Mullin had numerous friends at school and was voted "Most Likely to Succeed" by his classmates. However, shortly after graduating from high school, one of his best friends was killed in a car accident, and Mullin was devastated. He built a shrine to his deceased friend in his bedroom. Later he expressed fears that he was homosexual, even though he had a longtime girlfriend at the time.
In 1969, at the age of 21, Mullin allowed his family to commit him to a mental hospital
. Over the next few years, he would enter various institutions, but would discharge himself after only a short stay. He extinguished cigarettes on his own skin, attempted to enter the priesthood, and got evicted from an apartment after he repeatedly pounded on the floor, shouting at people who were not there.
Many years later, famed FBI profiler Robert K. Ressler would assert that Mullin had paranoid
schizophrenia
, manifesting as early as his senior year of high school, and could have been accelerated by the use of cannabis
, LSD
, or amphetamines.Ressler, Robert K. and Tom Schachtman. Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Hunting Serial Killers for the FBI. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992, pp. 127-132. ISBN 0312078838
, which he thought was very significant.
Mullin believed that the war in Vietnam had produced enough American deaths to forestall earthquakes as a sort of blood sacrifice to nature, but that with the war winding down so much by late 1972, he would need to start killing people in order to have enough deaths to keep the earthquake away.
On October 13, 1972, Mullin beat a homeless man to death with a baseball bat. The man, 55, had been hitchhiking and Mullin struck him down after tricking him into looking at the car engine. Mullin was to claim later that the victim was Jonah
from the Bible
, and that he had sent Mullin a telepathic
message saying, "Pick me up and throw me over the boat. Kill me so that others will be saved." The man's body was found the next day.
The next victim was Mary Guilfoyle, 24, who Mullin also picked up hitchhiking. He stabbed her to death while he was driving. Later, he dumped her corpse in woods at the side of the road and sliced open her stomach. He then strung her intestines among tree branches to examine them for "pollution." When Guilfoyle's body was found, she was mistakenly thought to be a victim of Edmund Kemper
, another serial killer operating in the area at the time. Due to her skeletal remains not being found for several months, police did not link the murders, even though she was killed only two weeks after the male hitchhiker.
Only four days later, on a Thursday in November, Mullin claimed his third victim when he went to confess his sins. In a delusional state, he believed the priest, Father Henri Tomei, wanted to volunteer to be his next sacrifice to keep away the earthquakes. He beat, kicked, and stabbed the priest to death. Father Tomei bled to death in the confessional while a parishioner watched Mullin run away. The witness description did not help the police.
After that, Mullin decided to join the U.S. Marines
, and passed the physical and psychiatric tests. However, he was refused entry when it was found out that he had a number of minor arrests for his bizarre and disruptive behavior in the past. This rejection fueled Mullin's paranoid delusions of conspiracies, behind which he believed was a powerful group of hippies.
By January 1973, Mullin had stopped using drugs, and blamed them for his problems. Mullin had purchased several guns and decided to kill Jim Gianera, a high school friend who had sold him marijuana. However, when Mullin went to Gianera's house on January 25, 1973, he found that his old friend had moved away. The house was now occupied by Kathy Francis, and she gave him Gianera's new address. There, Mullin killed both Gianera and his wife with shots to the head, then stabbed their bodies repeatedly. Mullin then went back to Francis' house, where he shot and killed her and her two sons, aged 9 and 4. Because Francis' husband—who was away at the time—was a drug dealer, the five murders were thought to be motivated by drug trafficking. It would later be argued by prosecutors that the murder of Kathy Francis eliminated Mullin's claims of not guilty by reason of insanity because he killed her to remove a witness who could link him to the Gianera murders. In one published account of these murders, however, an FBI profiler states that Mullin killed the Francis family first and then executed the Gianera couple.
About a month later, in early February 1973, Mullin was wandering around Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park
where he saw four teenaged boys out camping. He walked over to them, engaged in a brief conversation and claimed to be a park ranger. He ordered them to leave because they were "polluting" the forest, but they refused. He told them he would return the next day. The boys, who were armed with a .22 rifle, did not take this seriously. Mullin did return, shot them to death, and abandoned their bodies, which were not found until the next week.
The final murder took place three days later, on February 13. Mullin was driving alone when he drove past an elderly Hispanic man who was weeding his lawn. For no apparent reason, Mullin made a U-turn, stopped his station wagon, and laid his rifle across the hood to aim, killing the man instantly. Then he got back into his car and "calmly" drove off. It was broad daylight and there were a number of witnesses, one of whom gave police the license plate number. A "docile" Mullin was captured a few minutes later.
The Santa Cruz County District Attorney's office charged Mullin with 10 murders (the first three took place in other counties), and his trial opened on July 30, 1973. Mullin had admitted to all the crimes and therefore the trial focused on whether he was sane
and culpable
for his actions. The fact that he had covered his tracks and shown premeditation in some of his crimes was highlighted by prosecutor Christopher Cottle
, while the defense argued that the defendant had a history of mental illness
, and many believed that he suffered from paranoid
schizophrenia
. On August 19, 1973, the verdict was delivered. Mullin was declared guilty of first-degree murder in the cases of Jim Gianera and Kathy Francis—because they were premeditated—while for the other eight murders Mullin was found guilty of second-degree murder because they were more impulsive.
The Santa Clara County District Attorney's office charged Mullin for the murder of Henri Tomei, but on the day his trial was to begin, December 11, 1973, Mullin plead guilty to second-degree murder for Tomei's killing after originally pleading not guilty by reason of insanity to first-degree murder for Tomei's slaying.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment
in the Santa Cruz County trial and will be eligible for parole in 2025, when he will be 78. He is incarcerated at Mule Creek State Prison
, in Ione, California
.
Serial killer
A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
who committed 13 murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
s in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
in the early 1970s.
Childhood and youth
Mullin was born in Salinas, CaliforniaSalinas, California
Salinas is the county seat and the largest municipality of Monterey County, California. Salinas is located east-southeast of the mouth of the Salinas River, at an elevation of about 52 feet above sea level. The population was 150,441 at the 2010 census...
but was raised in Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, California
Santa Cruz is the county seat and largest city of Santa Cruz County, California in the US. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, Santa Cruz had a total population of 59,946...
. His father, a World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
veteran, was strict but not abusive
Child abuse
Child abuse is the physical, sexual, emotional mistreatment, or neglect of a child. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Children And Families define child maltreatment as any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or...
. He frequently discussed his heroic war activities and showed his son how to use a gun at an early age. Mullin had numerous friends at school and was voted "Most Likely to Succeed" by his classmates. However, shortly after graduating from high school, one of his best friends was killed in a car accident, and Mullin was devastated. He built a shrine to his deceased friend in his bedroom. Later he expressed fears that he was homosexual, even though he had a longtime girlfriend at the time.
In 1969, at the age of 21, Mullin allowed his family to commit him to a mental hospital
Mental Hospital
Mental hospital may refer to:*Psychiatric hospital*hospital in Nepal named Mental Hospital...
. Over the next few years, he would enter various institutions, but would discharge himself after only a short stay. He extinguished cigarettes on his own skin, attempted to enter the priesthood, and got evicted from an apartment after he repeatedly pounded on the floor, shouting at people who were not there.
Many years later, famed FBI profiler Robert K. Ressler would assert that Mullin had paranoid
Paranoia
Paranoia [] is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself...
schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
, manifesting as early as his senior year of high school, and could have been accelerated by the use of cannabis
Cannabis
Cannabis is a genus of flowering plants that includes three putative species, Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica, and Cannabis ruderalis. These three taxa are indigenous to Central Asia, and South Asia. Cannabis has long been used for fibre , for seed and seed oils, for medicinal purposes, and as a...
, LSD
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...
, or amphetamines.Ressler, Robert K. and Tom Schachtman. Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Hunting Serial Killers for the FBI. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992, pp. 127-132. ISBN 0312078838
Murder spree
By 1972, Mullin was 25 and had moved back in with his parents in Santa Cruz. By now he was hearing voices in his head that told him an earthquake was imminent, and that only through murder could he save California. Mullin's birthday, April 18, was the anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake1906 San Francisco earthquake
The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was a major earthquake that struck San Francisco, California, and the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. The most widely accepted estimate for the magnitude of the earthquake is a moment magnitude of 7.9; however, other...
, which he thought was very significant.
Mullin believed that the war in Vietnam had produced enough American deaths to forestall earthquakes as a sort of blood sacrifice to nature, but that with the war winding down so much by late 1972, he would need to start killing people in order to have enough deaths to keep the earthquake away.
On October 13, 1972, Mullin beat a homeless man to death with a baseball bat. The man, 55, had been hitchhiking and Mullin struck him down after tricking him into looking at the car engine. Mullin was to claim later that the victim was Jonah
Jonah
Jonah is the name given in the Hebrew Bible to a prophet of the northern kingdom of Israel in about the 8th century BC, the eponymous central character in the Book of Jonah, famous for being swallowed by a fish or a whale, depending on translation...
from the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
, and that he had sent Mullin a telepathic
Telepathy
Telepathy , is the induction of mental states from one mind to another. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and has remained more popular than the more-correct expression thought-transference...
message saying, "Pick me up and throw me over the boat. Kill me so that others will be saved." The man's body was found the next day.
The next victim was Mary Guilfoyle, 24, who Mullin also picked up hitchhiking. He stabbed her to death while he was driving. Later, he dumped her corpse in woods at the side of the road and sliced open her stomach. He then strung her intestines among tree branches to examine them for "pollution." When Guilfoyle's body was found, she was mistakenly thought to be a victim of Edmund Kemper
Edmund Kemper
Edmund Emil "Big Ed" Kemper III , also known as "The Co-ed Killer", is an American serial killer who was active in California in the early 1970s. He started his criminal life by shooting both his grandparents when he was 15 years old. Kemper later killed and dismembered six female hitchhikers in...
, another serial killer operating in the area at the time. Due to her skeletal remains not being found for several months, police did not link the murders, even though she was killed only two weeks after the male hitchhiker.
Only four days later, on a Thursday in November, Mullin claimed his third victim when he went to confess his sins. In a delusional state, he believed the priest, Father Henri Tomei, wanted to volunteer to be his next sacrifice to keep away the earthquakes. He beat, kicked, and stabbed the priest to death. Father Tomei bled to death in the confessional while a parishioner watched Mullin run away. The witness description did not help the police.
After that, Mullin decided to join the U.S. Marines
United States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...
, and passed the physical and psychiatric tests. However, he was refused entry when it was found out that he had a number of minor arrests for his bizarre and disruptive behavior in the past. This rejection fueled Mullin's paranoid delusions of conspiracies, behind which he believed was a powerful group of hippies.
By January 1973, Mullin had stopped using drugs, and blamed them for his problems. Mullin had purchased several guns and decided to kill Jim Gianera, a high school friend who had sold him marijuana. However, when Mullin went to Gianera's house on January 25, 1973, he found that his old friend had moved away. The house was now occupied by Kathy Francis, and she gave him Gianera's new address. There, Mullin killed both Gianera and his wife with shots to the head, then stabbed their bodies repeatedly. Mullin then went back to Francis' house, where he shot and killed her and her two sons, aged 9 and 4. Because Francis' husband—who was away at the time—was a drug dealer, the five murders were thought to be motivated by drug trafficking. It would later be argued by prosecutors that the murder of Kathy Francis eliminated Mullin's claims of not guilty by reason of insanity because he killed her to remove a witness who could link him to the Gianera murders. In one published account of these murders, however, an FBI profiler states that Mullin killed the Francis family first and then executed the Gianera couple.
About a month later, in early February 1973, Mullin was wandering around Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park
Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park
Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park is a California State Park located in Santa Cruz County, primarily in the area in-between the cities of Santa Cruz, Felton, and Scotts Valley, and the University of California at Santa Cruz, and it includes an extension in the Fall Creek area.-Geography:The main...
where he saw four teenaged boys out camping. He walked over to them, engaged in a brief conversation and claimed to be a park ranger. He ordered them to leave because they were "polluting" the forest, but they refused. He told them he would return the next day. The boys, who were armed with a .22 rifle, did not take this seriously. Mullin did return, shot them to death, and abandoned their bodies, which were not found until the next week.
The final murder took place three days later, on February 13. Mullin was driving alone when he drove past an elderly Hispanic man who was weeding his lawn. For no apparent reason, Mullin made a U-turn, stopped his station wagon, and laid his rifle across the hood to aim, killing the man instantly. Then he got back into his car and "calmly" drove off. It was broad daylight and there were a number of witnesses, one of whom gave police the license plate number. A "docile" Mullin was captured a few minutes later.
Victims
- Lawrence White, 55. October 13, 1972.
- Mary Guilfoyle, 24. October 24, 1972.
- Fr Henri Tomei, 65. November 2, 1972.
- Jim Ralph Gianera, 25. January 25, 1973.
- Joan Gianera, 21. January 25, 1973.
- Kathy Francis, 29. January 25, 1973.
- Daemon Francis, 4. January 25, 1973.
- David Hughes, 9. January 25, 1973.
- David Allan Oliker, 18. February 6, 1973.
- Robert Michael Spector, 18. February 6, 1973.
- Brian Scott Card, 19. February 6, 1973.
- Mark John Dreibelbis, 15. February 6, 1973.
- Fred Perez, 72. February 13, 1973.
Trial and imprisonment
In custody, Mullin confessed to his crimes, and said that he had been told by voices in his head to kill people in order to prevent an earthquake. He claimed that the reason there had not been an earthquake recently was, in fact, due to his handiwork.The Santa Cruz County District Attorney's office charged Mullin with 10 murders (the first three took place in other counties), and his trial opened on July 30, 1973. Mullin had admitted to all the crimes and therefore the trial focused on whether he was sane
Sanity
Sanity refers to the soundness, rationality and healthiness of the human mind, as opposed to insanity. A person is sane if they are rational...
and culpable
Culpability
Culpability descends from the Latin concept of fault . The concept of culpability is intimately tied up with notions of agency, freedom and free will...
for his actions. The fact that he had covered his tracks and shown premeditation in some of his crimes was highlighted by prosecutor Christopher Cottle
Christopher Cottle
Christopher Clarke Cottle is an American lawyer and jurist, who served as the Presiding Justice of the California Sixth District Court of Appeal from 1993 to 2001, Associate Justice of that court from 1988 to 1993, and District Attorney of Santa Cruz County from 1975 to 1977...
, while the defense argued that the defendant had a history of mental illness
Mental illness
A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. Such a disorder may consist of a combination of affective, behavioural,...
, and many believed that he suffered from paranoid
Paranoia
Paranoia [] is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself...
schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
. On August 19, 1973, the verdict was delivered. Mullin was declared guilty of first-degree murder in the cases of Jim Gianera and Kathy Francis—because they were premeditated—while for the other eight murders Mullin was found guilty of second-degree murder because they were more impulsive.
The Santa Clara County District Attorney's office charged Mullin for the murder of Henri Tomei, but on the day his trial was to begin, December 11, 1973, Mullin plead guilty to second-degree murder for Tomei's killing after originally pleading not guilty by reason of insanity to first-degree murder for Tomei's slaying.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment
Life imprisonment
Life imprisonment is a sentence of imprisonment for a serious crime under which the convicted person is to remain in jail for the rest of his or her life...
in the Santa Cruz County trial and will be eligible for parole in 2025, when he will be 78. He is incarcerated at Mule Creek State Prison
Mule Creek State Prison
Mule Creek State Prison is a California State Prison. It was opened in June 1987 and covers located in Ione, California. The current population is 3,769 although it was designed for a capacity of 1,700. The prison has a staff of 1,242 and an annual operating budget of $157 million...
, in Ione, California
Ione, California
Ione is a city in Amador County, California, United States. The population was 7,918 at the 2010 census, up from 7,129 at the 2000 census. Once known as "Bed-Bug" and "Freeze Out," Ione was an important supply center on the main road to the Mother Lode and Southern Mines during the California Gold...
.