00:00:06
Hey weirdos, I'm Ash. And I'm Elena. And this right here that you're listening to
00:00:14
in your car at this moment house. What did you say? At this moment. At this moment is Morbid.
00:00:32
I thought you said at a sporting event. At a sporting event. Why is somebody listening to Morbid at a sporting event?
00:00:38
You don't know. Speaking of sporting events, Elena took me to my first Celtics game.
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Yeah. I had so much fun. It is. I love the Celtics. I had a real go sports moment.
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Yeah, you did. You were jumping up and yelling about fouls by You were [ __ ] [ __ ] I was so
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excited for you. I was like, look at her. She's she's into it. Yeah, it was fun. I liked it. I used to
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like going weirdly. I never went to the basketball games in high school cuz I like didn't give a [ __ ] but in middle
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school I loved it. That's amazing. In middle school I loved it. So hard in basketball. Hell yeah.
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Yeah, it's fun. The Celtics are awesome um and I won't hear anything to the contrary about that. Never. I mean just
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based off stats alone. Yeah. Listen to me. Look at that. Number two. Look at those stats.
00:01:22
Oklahoma, go [ __ ] yourselves. Go go [ __ ] yourself. Look at me talking trash. Talking trash
00:01:27
about sports. It's fun. Yeah. It's fun. Yeah. When you get to hear how gnarly Bostonians are.
00:01:34
Oh my god. The crowd at a Celtics game. The crowd at this one in particular, honey. It went it went off.
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It went hard. It did go hard. It went hard in the paint, kid. Yeah, it's it's a lot of fun.
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I know, I love it. got to do a um a little thing separately during a couple of games.
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Um they got we like entered them into a thing where they got to high five the players.
00:01:54
Oh my god, that's so cute. [ __ ] loved it. It's the cutest thing in the entire world.
00:01:57
into that? Yes, you can high five the players. I want to high five the players. Is it for children only? Or is
00:02:03
it for new sports fans? For children. I could I could just crouch. Just crouch down. Like, good luck, guys.
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Yay! They're like, what the [ __ ] is that woman doing? go sports. What a visual that paints. Lucky, I am
00:02:18
visualizing it right now. I just got banned from every Celtics event for the rest of the season. You just got put on
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a list. They're like, no. No, we can't have that. No, I don't want to do that. But I do
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want to go back. Uh, and I love it my kids call uh Jason Tatum Jay Jay Tatum. It was so hard to not yell that out
00:02:37
during the game. every time I see him I want to be like, Jay Jay Tatum. But I'm like, your name
00:02:41
is Jason. I'm sorry. Uh, but yeah, go Celtics and Um, and yeah, I don't think Is there any
00:02:49
other Bid nasty. Really, um I don't know. Uh, Ghost posted our episode yesterday unexpectedly. Like,
00:02:57
the actual Ghost account and I died a thousand deaths. So, Here I am. Hell yeah. A thousand deaths less than I
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was yesterday. You only have How many more lives do you have? no idea how where I started.
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than a cat. I am. It's so funny the different places that we were about to go with that. You were like, what else
00:03:15
do we have? And you went into Ghost and I was about to say, oh, Easter is coming
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up. So, there's that. We are different people. Equally as important. It is. So, there you go.
00:03:27
Go paint some eggs. Yeah. Put some rabbits out. Yeah. Fake ones, though. Fake ones. Don't just
00:03:33
put your rabbits out. guys. People just walk outside and put their rabbits out. I don't know. You don't
00:03:40
know. I don't know your [ __ ] life. We really don't. And you know You know whose life I really don't know and
00:03:46
confirm whose. Herbert Mullens. Okay, so I don't is Here's the thing, I genuinely don't know
00:03:52
his life. I can recognize the name. don't. I genuinely don't know his life. I know the name and I know that I've
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heard probably this case before, but I cannot remember the details. I cannot. It's a It's a wild one. Yeah.
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So, it makes sense that you genuinely don't know his life, but that you've heard the name. Yeah. Because he's
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definitely up there. He's very brutal. He's very prolific in his numbers and he was committing crimes at the same
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time as Edmund Kemper. Oh. They got a little conflated. It's one of those things where it's like
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everyone really knows Edmund Kemper's name for his crimes, but I think this one got a little pushed to the side,
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which is When you hear this story, you're going to be like, "I'm sorry, what?" I almost
00:04:40
wonder, too, if you mentioned him when we did Ed Kemper. I think I did mention him
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because I think there was some like confusion with with victims and like what was going on. They were committing
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their crimes at the same time period in the same area. So, there was a lot of confusion over what the [ __ ] was going
00:04:56
He's like one of our earliest episodes. I think he's like number three. Yeah, he's very early and um
00:05:00
Herbert Mullin, though, is called the killer hippie, which is quite a moniker. That's such a bummer. Yeah, and he was
00:05:07
like You're not a hippie if you're a murderer. And he's a He's a gnarly guy. Oh, no.
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but he's also um very, very mentally ill. Oh. Uh there's a lot happening in this. Okay. Um very scary stuff. And it
00:05:21
was exacerbated, as we'll see, by like psychedelic drugs and stuff. So, that's when you're already mentally ill, taking
00:05:29
psychedelic drugs can potentially be harmful. Yeah, just watch Yellowjackets. There you go.
00:05:34
You should cuz it's really good. I'm in season two. For once, I've turned Elena on to a show
00:05:39
and Mikey as well and I hold the power because I'm caught up and they're not. but we're we're coming up. We're coming
00:05:45
up to being caught up. Almost. We're getting there. So, in the minds of many, the 1960s was definitely a decade that
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like you you know, you love a hippie. I do. The 60s was a time that was dominated by hippie culture.
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Free love, baby. think Yeah, exactly. Free love. And there was a lot of like, you know,
00:06:07
advance trying attempts to advance progressive ideas and like, you know, this new generation of young people was
00:06:13
trying to make [ __ ] happen. And there's like a lot when you go back into the 60s, a lot of [ __ ] was happening. There
00:06:17
was a lot of cultural changes happening, you know. It's Move things. interesting decade for sure. But while
00:06:25
it is true that the heyday of the baby boomers was one of considerable social and cultural change, it's also an era
00:06:33
where some of the darkest parts of humanity became impossible for a lot of Americans to ignore.
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Yep. Like it really was the time. Beginning in the mid-60s, violent crime and homicide rates were spiking in the
00:06:46
US and they were honestly reaching like kind of shocking heights at this point cuz remember, this is when suddenly it
00:06:52
became like, oh, maybe we shouldn't hitchhike as much as we are kind of thing. And it really reached shocking heights
00:06:58
in the 80s before starting like a little bit of a downward trend in the 90s. I miss the 90s.
00:07:04
Oh, I long for the 90s. The number of violent crimes and murders committed varied by city and state, but
00:07:12
few were struggling with the problem of violence more than Sorry, California. Yeah, it just happens. It was rough out
00:07:19
there. Beginning in the 60s, California and the Bay Area more specifically became a real
00:07:25
mecca for hippies and other young people that were drawn to the culture that rejected conservative standards and
00:07:31
morals in favor of more permissive behaviors. Unfortunately, it wasn't long before the
00:07:37
state who was, you know, which was once synonymous with free love became known for producing some of the nation's most
00:07:44
notorious serial killers. Yeah. Beginning in the mid-60s, a man who would eventually call himself the
00:07:49
Zodiac, um started out on a series of murders that would keep the region locked in a grip of terror for nearly a
00:07:56
decade. Mhm. And then they just simply vanished. As we know, to this day, we are the year
00:08:02
of our Lord 2025, and we still have no [ __ ] clue who the Zodiac killer is. Yep. A few years later, in 1968,
00:08:09
you might know this name, too, Charles Manson and his disciples committed a series of crimes that culminated in a
00:08:15
horrific mass murder, effectively ending the era of free love and bringing in, kind of ushering in an
00:08:22
era of fear, paranoia, and suspicion. Mhm. To the south, in the LA area, Juan Corona went on a 4-month killing
00:08:31
spree that claimed the lives of 25 men. Oh, wow. The same time that that was happening,
00:08:36
another serial killer who we just recently covered, Rodney Alcala, the Dating Game Killer,
00:08:42
Yep. committed the first of what would be many, many brutal murders. Mhm. And the so-called Southern
00:08:47
California Strangler, Randy Kraft, who we have not covered, set out on a rampage that claimed the lives of at
00:08:53
least 16 people. Wow. And this was all in like a very short period of time. It was just
00:08:59
mayhem. Over the course of the '70s, the list of LA area serial killers would grow to
00:09:05
include some of the most notorious in the nation's history. But maybe the most shocking and perplexing murders of the
00:09:12
era were taking place between the state's two iconic cities, in a largely suburban area, Santa Cruz County.
00:09:19
Mhm. Um Santa Cruz is also, I think it's supposed to be the, um influence of Santa Carla in
00:09:28
Oh, in um Yeah, definitely. murder capital of the world. Um that's Santa Cruz. Yeah.
00:09:34
So, located about 60 mi outside of San Francisco, Santa Cruz has long served as a more suburban commuter city for those
00:09:42
working in but not wanting to live in San Francisco. Mhm. In 1970, it was home to a wide range of
00:09:50
people from unemployed college students to the highest paid surgeons, essentially. Like and everything in
00:09:57
between. And within a few years, unlike nearby San Francisco, Santa Cruz was becoming very quiet, very peaceful. It
00:10:05
was But then, within a few more years, it feel it feels like it kind of just happened in like a slow burn at the
00:10:12
other end of the spectrum. It became known to many in California and the United States as the murder capital of
00:10:19
the world. Yep. Uh or Santa Carla. Now, for the most part, residents of Santa Cruz thought of crime as something
00:10:27
that happened, you know, elsewhere, in places like San Francisco. This is before it became known what it was known
00:10:33
as. Um you know, they were thinking San Francisco's where that happened, you know, where the
00:10:37
zodiac was killing young couples and terrorizing residents with, you know, threatening letters to the press and
00:10:43
cryptics and all that. But on the night of October 19, 1970, murder came right to Santa Cruz when Dr.
00:10:52
Victor Ohta, his wife, and their two young sons, and the doctor's secretary were found murdered in the family
00:10:59
swimming pool and their house was set ablaze. Oh my god. On the windshield of Ohta's
00:11:04
car was a typewritten letter threatening violence again, quote, against, quote, persons who misuse the natural
00:11:10
environment. And it was signed with several hand-drawn tarot symbols. What? Tarot symbols? Yep. Okay.
00:11:19
That is not at all where I thought we were going. No. And about a week after that, Santa
00:11:23
Cruz police arrested 24-year-old John Linley Frazier, a local man known for his very erratic behavior and a passion
00:11:31
for environmental causes and his obsession with the Bible. Ooh. And it would turn out that the murder of the
00:11:36
Ohta family was just the beginning. In the three years that followed, a number of young women from the Santa Cruz area
00:11:43
went missing and their bodies just were discovered months or years later showing
00:11:47
signs of extreme violence. The murder of these young women would eventually be attributed to Edmund Kemper. Mhm. Uh
00:11:55
this we know Edmund Kemper if you listen to the episode, but he was a local man who was, you know,
00:12:01
one of the things that was very interesting about him is that he was very friendly with the local police.
00:12:05
Yeah. Hung out with them at the bars, wanted to be a police officer, but he was literally too big to be a police
00:12:11
officer. stature is insane. Um but he also had a history of violent antisocial behavior
00:12:17
that eventually culminated in a horrific series of murders. Now in the cases of, you know, Fraser
00:12:22
and Kemper, each had a particular victim type that upon consideration made sense
00:12:27
given their pathology, when you could attribute it to that. This hardly made residents of Santa Cruz
00:12:33
feel safer, but it did kind of suggest that some people were safer than others. Yeah, that makes sense.
00:12:38
Which often happens with these things and it gave the illusion that as long as residents avoided certain behaviors or
00:12:44
activities, they could maybe avoid danger. It reminds you of um the uh Son of Sam case where girls were
00:12:51
going out and dying their hair. Yeah. If you see any kind of pattern happening, you want to try to get away
00:12:57
from it. Yeah. Now unfortunately, while Fraser was killing those he believed to be
00:13:02
polluters and harming the environment and Kemper was killing young women, there was another killer or, you know,
00:13:08
perhaps killers at work in the Santa Cruz area. And unlike the victims of Fraser and Kemper, these victims seemed
00:13:15
to be completely random. Okay. Like cho- chosen completely just like luck of the
00:13:20
draw. Although it would take time for investigators to realize they were dealing with more than one killer
00:13:26
because there were several going on at once. By early 1973, at least 13 basically unrelated murders committed in
00:13:34
Santa Cruz in the preceding year would be now attributed to 26-year-old Herbert Mullin.
00:13:39
26 years old. Yeah, 26 years old. so young. Right? Yes. Isn't that crazy? And that's
00:13:45
at least 13 were attributed to him that they thought were totally unrelated cuz it was there was no pattern here. It was
00:13:52
just mayhem. So, let's talk about Herbert Mullin a little bit. Born in Salinas, California on April
00:14:00
14th, 1947, he his early life was, by most accounts, fairly ordinary and unremarkable. Um the
00:14:08
most remarkable thing about his birth was that it occurred exactly 41 years to the day after the San Francisco
00:14:15
earthquake of 1906. Oh. Seems kind of like random to mention that and you're like, what?
00:14:21
Cool. Yeah. But it comes into play in a big, very big way in his behavior later.
00:14:26
Uh so, hold on to that little nugget. Okay. At home, the Mullin family seemed to be the picture-perfect conservative
00:14:33
American family. Uh the dad, Martin, was a veteran of World War II. He was stern, he was
00:14:39
strict, um definitely met the definition of, you know, mid-century American masculinity.
00:14:46
Oh, good. Yeah. Awesome. According to author Ryan Green, quote, "Martin did show his son affection where he could.
00:14:54
Okay. He shared stories with him about his experiences in the war, taught him how
00:14:58
to fire a gun, and even engaged in playful boxing matches with the young boy in the kitchen while their dinner
00:15:03
was being cooked." So, he sounded like he was like a pretty all right dad. Yeah.
00:15:08
Uh Oh. So, Martin Mullin was definitely the head of the household because that's
00:15:14
the way it was back then. Uh but Herbert's mother, Jean, was responsible for much of the children's
00:15:21
education and uh their spirituality. Okay. Jean Mullen was a devout Catholic and she took her faith very seriously
00:15:29
and she literally like she was one of those that I don't want to hear you questioning anything about my beliefs.
00:15:36
Yikes. Like don't question it, believe it, take what I say as the word and that's it whether you have questions or
00:15:43
not I want to hear it. That's just not the way to teach anybody anything. Yeah, that's not great. You have to let
00:15:47
you have to because if people have questions about something You should be able to answer them. Yeah. Now according
00:15:52
to Green she portrayed the outside world as a dangerous and unhappy place where anything could happen and she was
00:15:58
insistent upon bringing the children to church every Sunday. Okay. Which that you're like you know what She's you know
00:16:05
She's being she's being for real. Yeah and she's and she believes in in Catholicism so she's bringing the kids
00:16:11
to church every Sunday like okay. But you don't need to teach like your little tiny kids how unsafe and unhappy the
00:16:15
world is. That's the thing you got to get let them have a little bit of Imagination.
00:16:19
rose colored glasses on for a little while. Right. Um so young Herbert followed his
00:16:23
parents rules but he was also pretty smart. Like he was a very smart child. to happen.
00:16:30
Yeah and he also asked a lot of challenging questions because as a smart kid you ask a lot of questions about the
00:16:37
world around you because you want to understand more and he was really questioning when it
00:16:41
came to religion. Um the results of this challenging personality was almost always punishment
00:16:48
from his mother who deemed her son to be blasphemous for asking questions. I don't understand what's blasphemous
00:16:54
about that especially if he's trying to understand. It's not that he's questioning it like to be a dick. He's
00:16:59
just like I'm trying to get this. just trying to understand it better like you should have the answers for him and
00:17:04
help him understand. Mhm. According to Green this is where Mullen's kind of like
00:17:11
disordered and paranoid and conspiratorial thinking came from. I mean here is is her because he basically
00:17:17
says he had discovered the truth about the world and he was being punished for it.
00:17:22
Mhm. Like so him questioning things that he's seeing, he's being punished for that. So of course he's going to sit
00:17:27
there and be like, "What are you all hiding?" And of course that yeah, that's going to create paranoia.
00:17:30
Of course. Now, in truth, it's pretty unclear when he started showing signs of mental illness or paranoia. Like nobody
00:17:37
knows exactly when it started, but it does appear as though his personality definitely started
00:17:42
changing when he entered adolescence, which is pretty common. Yeah. Things really come out at that time.
00:17:47
Mhm. Um but particularly when it came to his relationship with his parents. So Herb started to believe his parents were
00:17:55
sabotaging his attempts at making friends. Uh he even believed so far that his parents were going door to door in
00:18:01
the neighborhood asking people to ignore him. Oh, that's really sad. Yeah. But and this is wild.
00:18:09
Things were very different at school. Because he was very well-liked by his peers and he was regarded as a generally
00:18:16
good student Huh. as by his uh teachers. So he was super successful at school. He
00:18:23
was even successful in after-school sports. And like so he was good at academics and sports.
00:18:28
Yeah. And he became one of the school's top athletes. Wow. So he's killing it at
00:18:33
school and doing really well in sports. His peers like him. And then he goes home
00:18:37
and he's being treated like an [ __ ] for asking questions. And he doesn't think anybody likes him even though he's
00:18:44
like having positive experiences. And I don't know if it's like he didn't think anybody liked him in the
00:18:48
neighborhood or like people like you know what I mean? Like but then he goes to school and gets like a little more
00:18:53
cuz I'm not really sure. That's interesting. But as he entered his teen years, his conservative world view that
00:18:59
he'd kind of been had been forced upon him by his parents started to fade a little bit and it was giving way to more
00:19:06
liberal and progressive perspectives of his friends. Like you know, he was becoming a hippie
00:19:12
in the '60s, you know? That was one of those. Um Um, and he attended San Lorenzo Valley High School in San
00:19:18
Francisco. Um, he had definitely always been a little suspicious of his parents'
00:19:24
ideologies, like as evidenced by him constantly challenging them and questioning them. And this new ideology
00:19:31
that he was starting to adopt was only leading to more fights at home. And in turn, this further fueled his belief
00:19:38
that even his parents disliked him. But his success at school did, you know, make these stressors at home a little
00:19:44
easier to cope with cuz he was starting to see like, I am getting positive stuff
00:19:48
at school. So like, I can't be all bad. And he can kind of escape at school. Yeah. And in fact, by the time he was 16
00:19:55
years old, he was voted most likely to succeed in school. Yeah. That's chilling. Isn't that wild?
00:20:01
Yes. Now, any pride that he had in his academic and social performance at school was cut short in 1965.
00:20:09
Um, and this is when his best friend, Dean Richardson, died unexpectedly. Oh, that's awful. He was only a
00:20:14
teenager. Yeah. During the last couple of years in high school, they had become nearly
00:20:18
inseparable. And they'd even been accepted to the same college. Then in early September, Dean, his best
00:20:24
friend there, was riding his motorcycle with his sister on the back when he was cut off by a driver who crashed into a
00:20:31
tree. The driver of the car and his girlfriend were killed instantly. And Dean was transported to the hospital,
00:20:37
but ended up dying of his injuries on a September 9th. That's really sad. Dean's sister, Mardine, would be the
00:20:43
only one that survived that whole crash. Which is lucky for her being on the back
00:20:47
of that bike. Yeah, that's not something that you would expect. No. Now, until Dean's death, Herbert had
00:20:54
only demonstrated, you know, some quirky tendencies and, you know, occasionally a
00:21:00
challenge what was seen as a challenging personality. Nothing that would really indicate any kind of a mental health
00:21:06
issue or anything like that. But after Dean died, his grief and inability to manage his emotions became very
00:21:13
apparent. According to Green, almost overnight his bedroom was converted into a vast shrine for his dead friend.
00:21:20
So, to me it sounds like he was just not given the tools to process this and was
00:21:26
not given like an open line of communication to process it. Well, it's probably hard, too, because
00:21:30
he's questioning his religious beliefs. like his spirituality. and he's probably just wondering like,
00:21:36
"Where is my friend?" Where do I Yeah, where do I put this grief? Where are they somewhere else?
00:21:41
Are they just gone?" That's hard. Yeah. Especially at that any age, but especially at such a young age.
00:21:48
Yeah, and well, in his inability to manage his grief and process it and just like move forward with his life was
00:21:54
taking a toll on his relationships with friends and even his girlfriend at the time. He had a girlfriend at the time,
00:22:00
who and she apparently, quote, complained about his obsessive behavior over some dead boy. That's like his best
00:22:06
friend. So, um so, rather than confront his ongoing difficulty in accepting Dean's death,
00:22:13
um Herbert explained to his girlfriend that he was, quote, becoming homosexual, Okay. It doesn't work like that.
00:22:19
in his mind, was the only possible explanation for his intense emotional reaction.
00:22:27
Cuz he just wasn't sad. taught differently. And you also wonder if that was like
00:22:31
projected at home. Well, that's I wonder if that was part of some of the uh things he would
00:22:36
challenge or question and wasn't getting answers for and was kind of being taught
00:22:41
that and And because he made his bedroom like a shrine, who knows how his parents
00:22:44
felt about that. Yeah, I think there was a lot of probably confusing things being
00:22:48
taught to him, so he was just like, "Oh, well, that's what's happening." Like, which is Because you can love somebody
00:22:54
but not be in love with them. But like, he was clearly confused about his feelings for Dean.
00:22:58
Exactly. And he wasn't getting somebody to sit him down and say like, "It's okay. Like, you loved him and that
00:23:03
doesn't mean you were in love with him unless, you know. And if you are, great. Feel your feelings, you know.
00:23:08
But in reality, he was a teenage boy who was forced to confront the existential crisis of death in a particularly cruel
00:23:16
and unexpected way. Like this came out of nowhere. And he was lacking the emotional tools or support that he
00:23:22
needed to manage this. So it's like of course he's going to come to some like random conclusions because of it. And so
00:23:28
his emotions just got away from him, basically. And within a few weeks after the funeral, he started seeking a
00:23:34
religious or spiritual path to understand death. So that really was part of the issue was like I just don't
00:23:39
understand this. That makes sense. Unfortunately, and much to his mother's disappointment, he
00:23:44
didn't turn to Catholicism. Instead, he turned to Eastern religions and New Age spiritual practices that were growing in
00:23:51
popularity with young people at the time. Right. Not surprisingly, the idea of reincarnation was particularly appealing
00:23:57
to him. Okay. Uh because of, you know, the recent loss. Yeah. In the mid-1960s, and honestly
00:24:03
like pretty much today too, Western audiences had minimal insight into non-Western religions and tended to
00:24:10
understand them through the lens of Christianity. The result was essentially a spiritual
00:24:15
practice that looked decidedly foreign and mystical, but was otherwise fairly Christian in practice. Um also the lack
00:24:23
of insight or any kind of like real information into these practices typically meant that white practitioners
00:24:29
of these took it upon themselves to just kind of like fill in the gaps with their
00:24:32
own ideas and beliefs. Which like, you know. Yeah. So for Herb, the lack of available
00:24:39
information simply meant that he needed to go to Asia to learn more about the practices that he had become so taken
00:24:45
with. Wow, okay. Yeah. Which like at this point you're like, okay, go to Asia. Yeah.
00:24:50
Learn about that. Like whatever makes you feel good. But his parents were not thrilled about
00:24:54
his interest in Eastern religions and refused to help him travel there or learn any more about it.
00:25:00
That's dumb. Instead, his father encouraged him to join the military. That will not help.
00:25:05
Cuz he was arguing, well, you could travel and learn more about the real world. But to Herbert, a hippie with an
00:25:11
interest in progressive ideologies, the idea of joining the military during the ramp-up of an immoral foreign war was
00:25:18
pretty incomprehensible. especially somebody already struggling with their emotional stability.
00:25:23
Yeah. That's not a great time to join the military. Definitely not. Um instead, he turned to drugs and started
00:25:30
experimenting heavily with LSD and other hallucinogens just to try to expand his mind, man.
00:25:37
Also not a great time to do psychedelic drugs. Yeah, I don't think that was the answer
00:25:41
that we were looking for here. No. Now, under the best of circumstances, hallucinogenic drugs are unpredictable
00:25:50
and can have lasting, very bad consequences. Mhm. For Herbert Mullin, a person who'd
00:25:56
been showing signs of an early-onset psychotic disorder, they almost certainly hastened his
00:26:01
downward spiral into complete instability. Mhm. Uh in the years that followed Dean's death, his behavior became
00:26:08
increasingly bizarre and inappropriate, all while his friends and former classmates put more and more distance
00:26:15
between themselves and Herbert. In one instance, following his breakup with his high school girlfriend, he
00:26:21
approached his older sister to ask for sex. Woah. Yeah. That So, there's a That happened so fast. Okay.
00:26:32
really it it just really off right there. So, What? Herbert's sister told their mother about
00:26:39
what had just been asked of her. And Jean Mullin refused to believe that such a thing could be true, and decided
00:26:46
her daughter was being spiteful and trying to get Herbert in trouble. That's not the stance you should take on
00:26:53
that matter. That's [ __ ] up in a way I can't even describe. Jean Mullen up that that happened to her
00:27:00
and that her her own mom was like, "You just want to get Herbert in trouble." It's like, "Damn, you really assume the
00:27:06
worst in people, girl." Well, and what's worse is in the months after that the scene repeated itself several times.
00:27:13
Oh, no. Herb would brazenly proposition his older sister for sex. And she would inform
00:27:21
her parents each time. And Jean and Martin refused to believe their daughter. "Why would she keep
00:27:26
saying this?" Right. "Why would she ever say that? Never mind continue to." And after so
00:27:31
long of this, she was like, "I can't handle this anymore. I can't be in this house anymore." So, she convinced her
00:27:37
boyfriend to marry her so she can move out with him and not piss off her parents, you know, the religious thing
00:27:43
of like, "You can't move out unless you're getting married." Oh my god, that's horrible. I got to get
00:27:46
out of here. her boyfriend, "Please marry me so I can get out of here." I got to get out of
00:27:49
here. That is so awful. Now, between his inappropriate sexual behavior, the increasingly bizarre thought patterns,
00:27:57
and his growing obsession with reincarnation, one would assume it would have occurred
00:28:01
to either one of his parents that like something was wrong here. Like, he's not entirely mentally sound right now. But
00:28:08
at no point did either parent up till this point attempt to get help for their son or even speak to him about the his
00:28:14
mental health. What the [ __ ] Despite him obviously like devolving and losing his mind and
00:28:22
sexually assaulting his sister. And in fact, it took until 1969 after 4 years of his obvious decline that anyone would
00:28:30
do anything to intervene. Wow. ignored him before that. One afternoon, in anticipation of
00:28:37
Herbert's older sister and her new husband coming back for dinner to the house Jean
00:28:43
Mullen asked him to help clean up the house before anyone arrived. And he mind this. Like he always liked doing that
00:28:49
stuff. Um he said he found it calming, like cleaning. Um I love a good tidy. and a not a lot of not a lot of things
00:28:56
were calming him at this point. Um so he was fine. He did his job. He was happy to do it. And when his sister and her
00:29:02
husband arrived a few hours later, at first he was totally fine, like very docile, very, you know, totally normal.
00:29:09
But then his demeanor totally switched. Because again, he was very polite in greeting everyone as they entered the
00:29:16
house. And then all of a sudden Martin noticed that while Herbert was acting normally with everyone else, it appeared
00:29:23
that he was perfectly mirroring his brother-in-law's behavior when they interacted.
00:29:28
Oh, that's so [ __ ] creepy. Isn't that like beyond chilling? yes. Oh, what the [ __ ] Later.
00:29:35
sister, first of all, his sister was probably losing her mind. And then the brother-in-law there is probably
00:29:40
He's probably like, "What the fuck?" "What is going on?" Yeah. And it's later Martin Mullen would
00:29:44
describe his behavior not as malicious or mocking, but as compulsive. And he said, quote, "Almost supernatural to
00:29:52
observe." Wow. Now, Herbert mimicked his brother-in-law's every move and mannerism, no matter how
00:29:58
small, with almost no delay. Like he could anticipate them before it happened. What? And over the course of
00:30:04
the dinner, everyone at the table was picking up on this. But it was his mother's reaction that seemed to snap
00:30:10
him out of it. Cuz unlike everyone else at the dinner table who reacted to the display like just kind of like nervously
00:30:17
Like they said like literally with like uneasy like chuckling kind of like, "Okay, like what What you doing?"
00:30:23
Uh yeah, if they if they even acknowledged it at all, cuz some of them were just not going to even bring it up.
00:30:28
Yeah. Jean Mullen went into a near hysterical panic and said her son was possessed. Girl.
00:30:36
Babe, he's mentally ill and he needs help. Sounds like she's also mentally ill. Yeah. Now the next day, Jean contacted
00:30:43
the family doctor and explained the symptoms that she had seen the night before. She said, "I think he's
00:30:48
possessed by the devil." Yeah, and what kills me is like she calls the next day and talks about the what had happened at
00:30:54
the dinner table the night before. And then she starts talking about like, "Yeah, actually you know, this has been
00:30:59
happening since his final year of high school." And like after his best friend died, it
00:31:03
really got bad. And it's like, "Why are you just telling the doctor So, you have
00:31:07
noticed?" Yeah. Like it's like, "So, you're not in this blind blur haze of like not seeing
00:31:12
it. You've seen it. You just didn't want to acknowledge it." love to ignore things.
00:31:17
did. The generation of ignoring. Uh the doctor agreed that this was this behavior was definitely strange.
00:31:22
Mhm. And he was like, "You know what? There's definitely a diagnosis here, but he said he couldn't be certain until
00:31:28
Herbert was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for observation and evaluation." Okay. Now, to Jean, the doctor's
00:31:35
suggestion was actually, which I was surprised by, it was a comfort to her. Because she was like, "You know what? A
00:31:40
solution to the problem. He's going to agree to the evaluation, we'll get him diagnosed and get him
00:31:45
medicated." Okay. And like every which I was like, "Okay." Yeah. Yeah. Okay, Jean.
00:31:49
have done this a little a little before this, but okay. Martin Mullen, on the other hand, was a much harder sell on
00:31:54
the idea of having his son brought to a hospital for somebody who is mentally ill. Mhm. How he saw it. Yeah. Um
00:32:03
in a relatively more conservative era, such treatments were heavily stigmatized. And those who are diagnosed
00:32:10
with a mental illness treated as completely dysfunctional by society. Yep. Um and you know, we still see that.
00:32:16
Yeah. For that matter, Martin wasn't even convinced that his son was mentally ill.
00:32:21
He definitely is. Which is like, "Babe, if he's copying your every [ __ ] move of your
00:32:26
son-in-law at the dinner table, something's up." Well, and you can see it in his response
00:32:29
later when he says that um the mirroring almost looks supernatural. Yeah, it was
00:32:34
not. religious way of looking at it where it's I think he was possessed and not he
00:32:38
is suffering from a mental illness and needs a lot of help. Right. Um and the thing is if Martin didn't believe
00:32:46
that Herbert was mentally ill, They were kind of getting at believe he was either. Cuz if his father
00:32:51
is saying he's not, he's not. Mhm. And his mom's just hysterical. Exactly. And and and in fact, as far as
00:32:56
Herbert could tell, he was the one person in the house with the greatest clarity.
00:33:00
While everyone else seemed to be the ones with the psychiatric issues. Oh, that's so scary.
00:33:04
Yeah. In the few years following his graduation from high school, his paranoia seemed to have kind of faded
00:33:11
for a little while, especially when he was doing well and had other stuff to focus on. He needed something to focus
00:33:17
on. Uh the talk of hospitalization, which was invariably, you know, heated and intense, brought the suspicion and
00:33:25
paranoia back with full force. It's this was not Whenever this got brought up, it
00:33:29
just made him more and more questioning everything around him. Yeah, that makes sense.
00:33:32
Um he quickly surmised that his parents weren't interested in his mental health and well-being, and instead they were
00:33:38
conspiring with his doctor to have him committed and removed from their home. That's that's how he viewed it.
00:33:44
Now, despite his suspicions, he did eventually consent to seeing a psychiatrist. Um basically, he was doing
00:33:50
it just to prove to his mother that he wasn't mentally ill, so she would leave him alone.
00:33:54
Um after all, he believed he was the more enlightened one and everyone else around him was just bonkers.
00:34:00
And as soon as the doctor saw that, you know, she was going to put Jean's mind at ease and we're going to put this all
00:34:05
behind us and everybody will be fine. But of course, things did not work out that way. Almost immediately, the staff
00:34:11
at um Mendocino State Hospital recognized that his behavior and disordered thinking were symptoms of
00:34:18
schizophrenia. I was wondering. And he was committed for observation. What followed was several years of very
00:34:24
frustrating treatment. Uh doctors were never certain whether Herb uh Herbert was trustworthy, like when he was
00:34:30
reporting things, or whether his paranoid personality was causing him to provide inaccurate information.
00:34:36
Okay. It was very difficult, especially at that time, it was difficult for them to like weed
00:34:42
through what he was reporting. Do you know what I mean? Like it they do become these
00:34:48
kind of patients can become an unreliable um narrator of what's going on, especially back then when it was
00:34:55
very like There's a limited understanding. Yeah, like it was unknown like the ins and outs and deep things
00:35:00
about this particular illness. Yes, that makes sense. Now, the extent of Herb's treatment
00:35:05
during this period is not super clear, but between 1969 and 1972, he was committed to five different hospitals.
00:35:13
Each time he would be discharged once doctors determined he was no danger to himself or others. Damn, that's a lot of
00:35:21
Yeah, hospitalizations. And you know, while we may not know exactly what transpired during all of these
00:35:28
periods of hospitalization, what is known is that while he was hospitalized at Mendocino State Hospital, he first
00:35:35
reported his concerns and paranoia around earthquakes. Huh. That's when it first came out. During
00:35:41
the first hospitalization, he casually mentioned his certainty that there would be another earthquake in California in
00:35:48
the near future. Mhm. At the time, hospital staff were like, "Okay, whatever." And like, you know,
00:35:54
"We're not going to pay attention to this." But years later, many would wish that they had.
00:35:59
Now, during and we'll get back to that, don't worry. During his period of repeated hospitalizations, um Herbert
00:36:05
Mullin was mostly compliant, um and he was pretty honest during most of those. Um but he also loathed being confined
00:36:13
and being accountable in any way, shape, or form to authority. And the longer he was hospitalized, the
00:36:19
more defiant he became. He started compliant, became defiant. Uh and the more experience he gained in
00:36:25
the hospital system, the more he learned about what he needed to say in order to
00:36:29
convince the psychiatrist that he was no longer a danger to anyone. Yep. This meant that while he continued
00:36:34
to describe symptoms of schizophrenia, he left out descriptions of command hallucinations, Oh. particularly any
00:36:42
that might result in a long hospital stay. That's really scary. Now, after being discharged in the later spring of
00:36:48
1972, he went to San Francisco and tried to join an art collective there, Mhm. but
00:36:54
his behavior made the others uncomfortable and he was asked to leave. Oh. Uh so, he went back home to his
00:37:00
parents' house in Felton, and everyone, you know, behaved as though nothing had ever happened to disrupt the family.
00:37:05
That's such a good way of like coping with things. Just pretend they never happened.
00:37:08
Just sweep that under the rug. Yeah. It always works. need to talk through it. It's cool.
00:37:12
Yeah. Um quietly, however, Herbert once again became fixated on mysticism and the concepts of reincarnation and
00:37:20
sacrifice. I hate that. Yeah. Reincarnation, great. Sacrifice is not great. So, what he believed was
00:37:28
the war in Vietnam had resulted in so much death and destruction that he believed the gods had been appeased by
00:37:35
that sacrifice. Oh, no. Thereby, that's how they had avoided any major natural disasters. Oh, wow.
00:37:43
kind of dis- like violence and destruction was stopping the natural disasters from happening again. That is
00:37:49
some disordered thinking right there. But by late 1972, the war was showing signs of slowing as the American public,
00:37:58
you know, grew weary of a losing battle. To Herbert, the end of the war meant the
00:38:03
end of voluntary sacrifice, and he became certain that unless more sacrifices were made, an earthquake
00:38:10
would wipe California off the map completely. Oh my god. So, you can see how he got there. Oh my
00:38:16
god. Now, it wasn't just fears that led Herbert to believe California was in danger of mass destruction, the voices
00:38:23
in his head had for some time been telling him that. Yeah. Uh from a very early age, Herbert was struck by the
00:38:30
fact that he had been born exactly 41 years after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, which was a natural disaster
00:38:37
that destroyed nearly all of San Francisco and killed thousands of people. It was a horrible, horrible
00:38:42
disaster. Over time, that fascination of him being born at that like, you know, 41 years after
00:38:50
to the day, it became warped and worked into Herbert's delusion, so that he came to
00:38:56
believe that it was his responsibility to prevent earthquakes. Like it all fell on him cuz of when he
00:39:02
was born. I was like, dude, what significance would 41 have? That's and he and he believed in order
00:39:08
to do this, he had to make sacrifices. Oh, I hate this. Yeah. I've never Yeah, I've never heard
00:39:15
this case before. I like I know I've heard the name, but now I know I have never heard this case.
00:39:19
his killing spree was largely driven by, you know, delusions. Yeah. Mental illness. But that didn't
00:39:26
mean he didn't want at least some recognition for the quote-unquote project he was planning to undertake.
00:39:33
Not a project. Yeah. Uh however, Herb knew if he told his parents or doctors about his thoughts
00:39:39
and hallucinations, they would send him back to the hospital and he wouldn't be able to fulfill his mission.
00:39:44
Mhm. Which to me, like I have to wonder if that's shows some sense of he knows what he's doing is wrong and
00:39:50
that will he will be sent back to the hospital for it. I feel like it's so hard with like a case like that because
00:39:56
I think it's like he knows what he's doing is wrong by society's standards, but he doesn't hold himself to those
00:40:02
standards because he's here for a higher purpose. There you go. So that that's the thing.
00:40:06
That's why this is an interesting one. Yeah. So he didn't want to tell anybody about it and instead he started sending
00:40:12
rambling letters to anonymous recipients around California making vague allusions
00:40:17
to what he planned to do, and then would sign each letter, {quote} a human sacrifice, Herbert Mullin.
00:40:24
Huh. And like that that signature is definitely unsettling. Like a human sacrifice.
00:40:31
But apparently the contents of the letter must not have been too alarming because no one reported them to the
00:40:35
authorities. Anybody signs off a letter human sacrifice, you're getting reported.
00:40:39
Yeah, you're getting reported, buddy. Now, on the afternoon of October 13th, Herbert got in his car and went out for
00:40:45
a drive. And he wasn't headed anywhere in particular. But by then, he had spent months
00:40:50
thinking about his plan to save California, and it was finally time to put the plan into action. I hate this.
00:40:56
So he decided to just let the road take him wherever he was meant to go. Oh, Christ.
00:41:01
And he left Santa Cruz in the direction of the mountains, believing that his first sacrifice would definitely be
00:41:05
found there. And as he drove casually down Highway 9, the voices in his head grew stronger.
00:41:12
And by the time he entered Rin- Rincon, I believe it is, um they were practically shouting at him. Uh cuz
00:41:19
that's when he saw what he appeared to be in, you know, what he thought to be a homeless man walking down the side of
00:41:25
the road. To Herbert, who had let the voices and the, you know, fates guide him thus far,
00:41:31
there was no question that this man on the side of the road was his first sacrifice.
00:41:34
Oh, no. So he drove past the man on the side of the road, then rounded a bend in
00:41:38
the road, and pulled off to the side of the highway, got out, opened to the hood
00:41:42
of his car, and gave the impression of car trouble. Oh, man. Now, this man who was walking down the road
00:41:49
was Lawrence White. He was 55 years old, and that year had not been great for him. Yeah. Uh he had struggled to get
00:41:56
himself, you know, back on his feet, try to find somewhere to live, trying to find work. And he often found himself on
00:42:02
the wrong end of the law for one trivial reason or another. Uh just a few weeks earlier in mid-September, he had been in
00:42:08
custody at the Santa Cruz County Jail when a riot broke out among the inmates and you know, [ __ ] was destroyed,
00:42:15
mattresses were burned, it was a crazy riot and several of the guards and inmates were assaulted. Um, later uh
00:42:23
the County Jail representative George Foster told reporters, you get a young guy who shoots off his mouth and the
00:42:29
other inmates nail him. They take out their frustrations in the only way they know how, with violence.
00:42:33
Mhm. Now during that riot, Lawrence was struck in the head and lost consciousness. So he had spent the last
00:42:40
couple of weeks once he got out of the jail cuz he was in there for like trivial reasons. Yeah, not like a long
00:42:45
sentence, right. Um So he had spent the last couple weeks at a rehab center near
00:42:51
La Selva Beach before being discharged just back onto the street. Um, despite all his recent troubles
00:42:57
though, he wasn't one to turn away someone in need. Aw. So when he saw, you know, Herbert's old Chevy station wagon
00:43:04
pulled off to the side of the road, he approached and said, can I help? Like what's going on?
00:43:09
As it turned out, he actually knew a thing or two about cars and especially Chevys in particular, so it was helpful.
00:43:14
So he introduced himself and he's like, let me take a look under the hood. And you know, and so Herbert was like, you
00:43:19
know what? In exchange for your help, I'll drive you wherever you need to go. Oh, no. Now at first, Lawrence checked,
00:43:25
you know, all the usual spots, making sure the engine had enough oil, all that stuff. And while he was continuing to
00:43:31
look under the hood, Herbert crept around to the back of the car and got a baseball bat he'd stashed in the trunk.
00:43:38
His plan was to knock Lawrence unconscious then stab him in the heart. And the reason he was going to do this
00:43:43
was cuz that's how he saw sacrifices happen in movies or books. Stab him in the heart. Okay. That was
00:43:50
always his like, I need to stab them in the heart. Apparently, he wouldn't need to go
00:43:54
through all that trouble because when Herbert returned to the front of the vehicle, Lawrence had just about
00:43:59
finished under the hood and was, you know, about to tell him like, I didn't find anything wrong with it. And Herbert
00:44:04
struck him with the bat in the back of the head as hard as he could, knocking him to the ground.
00:44:09
Herbert struck him in the head three more times while he was on the ground. And uh the blows from the bat didn't
00:44:15
just incapacitate Lawrence White, they shattered the back of his skull. Oh my god.
00:44:20
and it actually pushed shards of bone into his brain and he was killed instantly. Oh my god. Now, with Lawrence
00:44:28
dead, Herbert had prevented apparently another catastrophic earthquake and in his mind saved millions of people. No.
00:44:36
So, he felt confident that he had done the right thing. Wow, this is insane. So, he threw the bat back in the trunk,
00:44:42
closed the hood, and then he dragged Lawrence White's body into nearby brush, and got back in the car and just headed
00:44:48
home. Jesus Christ. Now, a few days later, Lawrence White's battered body would be discovered in the
00:44:54
woods along the side of Highway 9. He was discovered by a passing driver who reported it to the police.
00:45:00
The death was labeled a homicide, the results of several blows to the head by {quote} a narrow blunt instrument, but
00:45:07
it would be several months before they learned any of the details of Lawrence's death. Um with no next of kin or state
00:45:13
to contact, Lawrence's remains were interred at Oakwood Memorial Park at the expense of the state.
00:45:18
That's so sad. so sad. Now, after Lawrence's murder, Mullen expected to feel some sense of relief.
00:45:26
You know, he had lived up to what the voices in his head were telling him to do. He had fulfilled his end of the
00:45:31
bargain to say, you know, to stave off the impending earthquake. But, he said he still felt a sense of unease and
00:45:37
dread that he couldn't shake. And then he realized why. He was like, "Oh, well, the Vietnam War
00:45:44
had cost hundreds of thousands of lives. So, it really doesn't seem reasonable that
00:45:50
one sacrifice is going to be enough to do this." Oh, man. And there was another new concern, too, because since killing
00:45:57
Lawrence White, his delusional thinking had become had come to include the frightening belief that the earth was
00:46:03
being rapidly polluted and then now he had to go after people for that. Okay. And he was believing that like people,
00:46:10
their bodies were polluting the earth. Dear God. Yeah. Which This next one is horrific. Okay. They
00:46:18
all are, but this one is particularly gruesome. On October 24th, just 10 days Yeah,
00:46:24
damn. after the murder of Lauren White, Herbert was out for a drive along May Avenue in Santa Cruz and he spotted
00:46:31
24-year-old Mary Gilfoyle hurrying down the sidewalk. Apparently, Mary had an appointment at the Cabrillo I think it's
00:46:39
the Cabrillo College Department of Human Resources and she was running late. So,
00:46:44
she was so relieved when Herbert pulled up beside her in his station wagon and offered her a ride.
00:46:50
It was becoming risky to hitchhike at that point, like known to be risky to hitchhike. But, he looked pretty
00:46:56
ordinary. He just looked like a hippie. Like he didn't look like particularly frightening.
00:47:00
Yeah. Um and you know, she she had taken rides before from like older men who had
00:47:06
stopped and those were much scarier. Yeah. So, she decided to take a chance. The two drove apparently in silence for
00:47:13
a short time and then she started to talk nervously. And you know, Herbert just kind of
00:47:19
continued to drive kind of appearing to like he said he was kind of like ignoring her and then he was fumbling
00:47:24
with something down by his side. Okay. And Mary had just opened her mouth to speak when his right hand shot up from
00:47:31
his hip towards her and he plunged a hunting knife into her chest and hit her heart immediately. Oh my.
00:47:38
Killed her instantly. Jesus. He continued driving as, you know, she's bleeding profusely in the cuz she
00:47:47
he had her heart. Yeah. Bleeding profusely in the front seat. And he pulled the knife out of her
00:47:52
chest and she slumped forward and he stabbed her twice in the back as well. Jeez. Uh and she fell to the floor.
00:47:59
Now, with Mary now dead, Herbert drove out to the mountains and found a turnoff where there appeared to be no cars and
00:48:06
no evidence that cars had been there for some time. After parking the car, he dragged Mary's
00:48:11
body out about 125 yd into a wooded area, laid her on the ground beneath a bunch of trees, and then decided that
00:48:18
sacrificing her would slow the rabbit rapid pollution of the world. So, he decided he needed to go a step further
00:48:27
to make sure that occurred because she was going to be the sacrifice that would stop the pollution of the world.
00:48:32
Mhm. So, to make sure that the sacrifice was correct, he sliced open her body expecting to find evidence of pollution
00:48:41
inside of her. What the [ __ ] When he didn't see any immediate traces of pollution, he began digging with his
00:48:49
hands. First into her intestines, then in her chest cavity. Oh my god. And eventually, he accepted
00:48:59
that there was no pollution. So, he stood up, wiped the blade of the knife clean, and returned to the car,
00:49:06
and thought, "Well, this'll keep us safe for a little while." Oh my god. Holy [ __ ]
00:49:14
Gruesome. Like so brutal. And didn't find any {quote} evidence of pollution, but still
00:49:20
felt like it was fine. Yeah. Now, for months, Herbert Mullen had been certain the voices in his head were
00:49:29
guiding him on a mission to save mankind from disaster, and no one could convince
00:49:33
him otherwise. But after the murder of Mary Gilfoil, he wasn't as certain in his divine guides as he'd once been cuz
00:49:41
again, he didn't find what he was thinking he would find. Right. Because if Mary had been the one
00:49:45
responsible for all the pollution in the world, should he have not seen evidence of that
00:49:50
in her body? Now, the tension between what he believed to be true and what he saw
00:49:55
around him was causing him to grow very anxious and frustrated and irritable. He
00:50:00
had killed two people, sacrifices to prevent the end of mankind. And though he was now less convinced that he
00:50:07
had done it correctly or done the right thing. Okay. So, those tensions and frustrations led to more arguments with
00:50:14
his parents cuz remember he's still living at at home. Right. Which in turn led to further drug
00:50:20
use which in turn led to worsening mental health. Yeah. When he asked his mother what she
00:50:25
thought he should do to calm his unrest, she gave the same answer she always gave
00:50:29
him, turn to the Lord. I don't think that will always help. This ended up being a statement that is so
00:50:37
chilling when you find out what happens. Oh, no. said turn to the Lord. And in the past,
00:50:43
whenever she would, you know, that sit she would give that answer, he would dismiss the church and Western religion
00:50:48
as another tool to control the masses. But, this time he decided yes, I will turn to the Lord.
00:50:55
Oh, god. Now, on the afternoon of November 2nd, just 1 week after the murder of Mary
00:50:59
Guilfoyle, Herbert went to Saint Mary's Catholic Church in Los Gatos. He later claimed he had gone to the
00:51:06
church simply to confess his sins. Uh-huh. But, he also went there with a hunting knife tucked inside his jacket
00:51:13
pocket. So, you take what you will from that. Probably not just confessing sins.
00:51:18
When he walked inside, he went through the Catholic routine he'd learned as a child, you know, dipping his hand in the
00:51:24
thing, crossing himself with the holy water, and then kneeling to pay tribute to the altar. Okay. After finishing this
00:51:31
whole routine, he noticed that there was a little light glowing above the confessional booth, and so he went
00:51:37
towards it. But, he was hesitant to go inside and, you know, take a seat opposite a priest. He was a little
00:51:42
nervous. Now, inside the confessional, Saint Mary's assistant pastor, Father Henry
00:51:47
Tomei, could hear like a little bit of what was going on. He's like somebody's out there. So, he was wondering what was
00:51:52
happening. Mhm. Father Tomei slipped the lock on his side of the confessional and
00:51:56
swung the door open to find a very disheveled Herbert Mullin standing before him.
00:52:02
Now, before Father Tomei could even open his mouth, Herbert pulled the hunting knife from his jacket and thrust it
00:52:08
upward into the priest's chest. god. of it sent both of them tumbling backwards into the open confessional
00:52:15
with Father Tomei desperately struggled to get out from underneath Herbert Mullin.
00:52:20
Now, Herbert didn't understand what was happening because he had stabbed this man in the chest.
00:52:25
Just like he had stabbed Mary Gilfoyle a week before and assumed he'd stabbed him
00:52:29
in the heart. But he didn't just die. Like, why is he struggling? So, he pulled the knife from the
00:52:35
priest's chest and Herbert lost his grip on the knife and it fell onto the floor.
00:52:40
And as he leaned down to pick it up, he felt something in his head. Because Father Tomei kicked him in the side of
00:52:47
the head as hard as he could just above his ear. But unfortunately, Herbert Mullin was too quick and as Father Tomei
00:52:53
tried to get up and flee, Herbert rushed at him again bringing the knife down for
00:52:58
a second time and then a third and then a fourth and finally, the priest was dead. Oh my god. Father Tomei lay half
00:53:07
in and half out of a confessional booth. Oh, that's so disturbing. So, Herbert tried to push the man's leg
00:53:13
into the booth to cover up his crime. And as he was struggling to get Father Tomei's body inside of the confessional
00:53:20
booth, he thought he heard a person scream. So, he turned around and no one was there. But he was like I he was certain
00:53:28
that he heard footsteps running out of the church. So, he decided he shouldn't waste any more time and he wiped the
00:53:33
blood from his knife, put it back where he had gotten it and he quickly ran out of the church and got to his car and
00:53:39
drove the 20 minutes back to Santa Cruz. Now, at the time Herb had wondered whether the scream
00:53:45
he'd heard followed by the footsteps had been in his head. Yeah. Cuz he knows that something is a
00:53:50
rye. Right. But what he had heard was a real scream of terror from Margaret Reed
00:53:56
who'd walked into the church and caught a glimpse of Herbert trying to force the
00:54:00
priest dead body back into the confessional. Oh my. Can you imagine seeing that?
00:54:05
Cannot, will not. The footsteps were because Reed ran the [ __ ] out of the church to the rectory where she pounded
00:54:11
on the door of the senior priest Father Richard Holly and Reed explained what she just seen and Holly instructed
00:54:18
his secretary to call an ambulance. While that was going on, Reed and Holly returned to the church and Father Holly
00:54:25
administered extreme unction which is last rites to Father Tomey. Um, who was his friend. You know, like which is
00:54:33
really sad. The ambulance arrived a few minutes later but it was too late. Father Tomey was pronounced dead a few
00:54:39
minutes after 4:00 p.m. He's just out here doing his job. Well, it's even worse because what we find out is that um I
00:54:48
don't even think he was supposed to be there that day. Oh my god. I hate when things like when
00:54:53
you hear something like that. awful. Now, in Southern California the unsolved murder of you know, this this man
00:55:00
Lawrence White who didn't have any next of kin had been dealing with like kind of like a tough time was in and out of
00:55:07
you know, incidents very trivial incidents with the law. Mhm. It didn't get a lot of attention with the press
00:55:12
unfortunately. And honestly, weirdly neither did the disappearance of a young coed college student. She had Mary
00:55:19
Gofoil has not been found. Right. Um, because a lot of people thought she had just run away.
00:55:24
Voluntarily. the time. Yeah. But the brutal murder of a priest in the day in a church
00:55:30
confessional I mean, that's got a lot of elements that's going to I get that. get
00:55:36
that. Um, it was it definitely caught everyone's attention. I mean, that's so that's one you're going to go, "What?"
00:55:41
Very sad that the other two things didn't, but you can very much understand why this uh Why this would. I'm not
00:55:46
saying the other two shouldn't, but like this one definitely makes sense. Right. The next day, the Associated
00:55:52
Press reported on the death of the 68-year-old French priest. According to Margaret Reed, she'd entered the church
00:55:59
just in time to see, quote, "A young assailant kicking and striking the priest."
00:56:03
Woah. Now, as expected, Father death prompted a large investigation as investigators combed the city looking
00:56:10
for anything that pointed to a suspect. According to Father Tomei's housekeeper,
00:56:15
like I said, he hadn't planned on being at the church that afternoon. He had only stopped in to see if anyone was
00:56:21
there waiting to give confession. Wow. So, this is both it's two things. It's very sad, and two, it made it clear that
00:56:30
the killer hadn't expected him to be there. So, this wasn't planned. Um, Detective Sergeant Jim Shay told
00:56:36
reporters, "So far, there does not appear to be any motive at all for this killing." And they also hadn't found a
00:56:42
murder weapon or identified even a potential suspect. And a few days later, detectives in attendance at Tomei's
00:56:49
funeral started scanning the faces and body language of more than 700 attendees at his funeral.
00:56:56
So, he was obviously well loved. Yeah. Um, and they were hoping that the man's killer might be among them cuz
00:57:00
that does happen. But they didn't find anyone suspicious. Like the murders of Lauren White and
00:57:05
Mary Gilfoyle, the murder of Father Henry Tomei appeared completely motiveless and baffled investigators who
00:57:12
simply couldn't fathom who would kill a priest in the daytime in a church and stuff him in a confessional.
00:57:19
But while they may not have understood the killer's motive, they did understand the dangers of having a killer on the
00:57:25
loose, and a vigorous investigation was then launched. At the same time, Mary Gilfoyle's parents had hired a private
00:57:31
detective to track their daughter down who was still missing. That's so sad cuz the police thought she
00:57:36
was a runaway. Yeah. Now investigator Bill Tubbs said it appears that she probably was picked
00:57:40
up as a as a hitchhiker. There's just no logical place she could have gone except
00:57:44
for her stated destination, but she just never arrived there. Now between the intensification of the
00:57:50
investigations and Herbert Mullin's growing discomfort with what he'd done now cuz he's still not feeling like he's
00:57:56
doing what he's supposed to he decided to slow down and develop a strategy. He knew he still needed to
00:58:02
offer sacrifices to hold off the impending disaster and gain the approval of the voices that guided him which had
00:58:08
come to include his father's voice. He said What? But he thought there had to be a more morally righteous way.
00:58:18
Other than murder? And we will get to that in part two. Alaina! Alaina! He is a scary mother [ __ ]
00:58:29
Yeah, this is scary. And it's also just really sad that this all could have been avoided had he been
00:58:34
properly medicated. He needed to be hospitalized, medicated. He needed intensive help. Yeah. For
00:58:40
sure. Yeah. Because also this entire time he's sitting here saying I don't know if I'm doing the right thing, but
00:58:45
he's still doing it cuz he has this like intense belief that there's voices telling him
00:58:51
this. It's It's such a It's a very interesting case because of how layered it is.
00:58:58
Right. It's so sad though. It is really sad. were just Lawrence White was just walking down the street and stopped to
00:59:05
help someone. Mhm. When he was down on his luck. That's the thing like he was down on his luck was
00:59:10
still going to help someone. And he still took time out of his while walking down the street not even
00:59:14
to a home to stop and help somebody. Yeah. And it's like Mary Gilfoil was just running late to an appointment her
00:59:21
whole life in front of her. And that's It's like we were saying it's so sad like when somebody's not supposed to be
00:59:25
there. It's like if she She was just running late. Like she shouldn't have been running there, you know?
00:59:30
And then Father Tomei, not even supposed to be at the church, but he stopped in case people needed confession. Wow. Ugh.
00:59:37
Like it's really sad. Awful. Yeah. It's awful. Well, we we'll hear more of the awful in part two.
00:59:43
Yeah. And we hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. You know not to keep it this weird.
00:59:52
Bye. Bye.