Herbert Mullin - Murder Spree

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 earthquake, which he thought was very significant.

Mullin believed that the war in Vietnam had produced enough American deaths, (a total of 3,000) 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, a Cabrillo College student that was running late for an interview. She was picked up by Mullin while hitchhiking. Herbert stabbed her through the chest and the back. He then dissected her body and scattered her remains alongside a hillside road.

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.