Childhood and Youth
Mullin was born in Salinas, California 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.
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