Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out on Patreon. This episode of Forensic Tales is sponsored by Podcorn. When I first started looking for sponsors to feature on the show, it was important to me that the brands I worked with were not only a good fit for me, but also for my listeners. That's why I choose Podcorn to find sponsorships for Forensic Tales.
Within just a couple short days of signing up, I found my first sponsorship. Podcorn is a marketplace connecting podcasters to amazing podcast sponsorship opportunities like host read ads, interview segments, and topical discussions, and many more.
Because this show is a one-woman production, I need to be able to quickly and efficiently share with you trusted products and services. I just don't have the time to search the dark corners of the internet for trusted sponsors. And with Podcorn, there is no middleman, which I love.
Podcasters of all sizes can browse and choose opportunities right there on the platform. They can set their own rates and collaborate with brands directly. So to learn more about what Podcorn can do for you and your podcast, click the link in my show notes to sign up to Podcorn and start browsing sponsorship opportunities.
Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. In 2006, a body was discovered floating near the Newport Harbor Yacht Club in the upscale city of Newport Beach, California. The victim had been stabbed 52 times across her chest, back, torso, and stomach.
There was even a knife found still plunged into one of her eyes. Unable to identify the victim through fingerprints, police looked at the serial number found on her breast implants to make the identification. Police quickly zeroed in on their prime suspect. But as the investigation progressed, the forensic evidence seemed to point detectives in a completely different direction.
This is Forensic Tales, episode number 56. The murder of Barbara Mullenix. ♪
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell.
Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast that covers real, bone-chilling true crime stories with a forensic science twist. Some of the cases have been solved by a little help of forensic science. Others have turned cold. The stories we cover each week send a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
If you're interested in supporting the show and getting early access to weekly episodes, bonus material, ad-free episodes, merchandise, and more, consider visiting our Patreon page, patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. Another great way you can help support Forensic Tales is by leaving us a positive rating with a review. Now, let's jump right into this week's story.
Hey Forensic Tales listeners, before we get into this week's case, I just want to say from the bottom of my heart, thank you so so much again for all of you who reached out for the show's first birthday last week. I feel so incredibly grateful for you guys, so grateful for this community, and I can't wait for another year of telling true crime and forensic science stories with you.
And also a big congratulations to the winners of our giveaway that we held on the show's Instagram and Facebook pages. We're going to be doing more and more contests and giveaways here in the near future. So if that's something you want to jump in on, make sure you're following us at Forensic Tales. We're on both Facebook and Instagram.
And last but not least, we have another bonus episode up on our Patreon page right now. You can sign up and you'll get instant access to the Lisa Montgomery episode. As you've probably seen on the news in the last week or two, Lisa Montgomery had been the only female inmate on federal death row here in the United States.
And just a few days ago, she was executed by lethal injection in the state of Indiana. So if you'd like to hear the full episode and hear about Lisa Montgomery's case, check it out right now. Sign up at patreon.com slash forensic tales. So the case we're covering this week is one I wanted to cover because of how close it happened to where I'm from.
It comes right out of Orange County, California, from one of the safest cities in the state. And it's one that takes a lot of twists and turns that is really hard to unravel. And if it weren't for forensic science, an innocent person would likely be behind bars for one of the most brutal murders the city of Newport Beach, California has ever seen.
Newport Beach, California is one of the wealthiest and nicest parts of Orange County. Many people would say that it's one of the best places to live in the entire Golden State. The average household income in Newport Beach is somewhere around $130,000. Many homes there cost well into the millions, multi-million dollar range. And Newport Beach offers people that perfect mix of urban and suburban living.
And of course, being right there on the Pacific Ocean doesn't hurt either, when practically every day here in Southern California is a nice sunny 75 degrees. Newport Beach also has a historically low crime rate, especially when it comes to violent crimes. The most common types of crimes we see are property crimes.
The murder homicide rate is relatively low. You really just don't see too many homicides occur in this part of the county, which is why what happened in September 2006 in Newport Beach, that's what makes it so shocking to all of its residents. On September 13th, 2006, the Newport Beach Police Department received a call from a member of the Newport Harbor Yacht Club.
Initially, officers are thinking, okay, someone's boat's probably been vandalized. Some young person probably had a little too much champagne or White Claw while out on their duffy that day. Nobody was thinking this was going to be a homicide call. Newport Beach PD arrived at the yacht club after the call came in about a dead body floating in the water.
A dead body right next to the $100,000 yachts and the multi-million dollar homes. Officers pulled the body out of the water, which had been wrapped with sheets, up onto the dock. The victim was female and had clearly been brutally attacked. The woman had been stabbed 52 times. She had stab wounds to her neck, her torso, on her back. She even had stab wounds across her face.
This right away told investigators one thing. This was a rage killing. Whoever is responsible for this woman's death was angry. They killed this person out of pure rage. Rage killings are personal. Most of the time, there's a strong relationship or connection between the victim and their killer.
It's rare that in stranger killings the victim is stabbed this many times. In this case, 52 separate stab wounds. Stabbing, of course, is extremely personal. The victim and the killer would have to be in very close physical proximity to each other. And just the number of stab wounds, again, 52, tells us this is personal. This is not a stranger killing. This is rage.
The female victim had two notable stab wounds to the right side of her neck. One had sliced through her jugular vein, and the other had gone through her carotid artery. Either one of these stab wounds to her neck would have instantly caused her to bleed out and die within minutes. These were both extremely fatal wounds. Nobody could survive if they didn't have immediate medical care.
And what was even more chilling than the number of stab wounds on this victim's body was that a knife, a knife was found still lodged inside of one of her eyes. Whoever killed her had left what appeared to be a rather large butter knife right there inside of her eyeball and protruding out of her head.
Police also found a second weapon. A second knife was located inside of the sheet that was used to wrap her body up in. Lucky for investigators was that the knife appeared to have some blood on it. It had some skin tissue still on it, which at first glance could possibly be some valuable forensic evidence. The first thing Newport Beach police needed to do was to identify this woman.
We already know she's been brutally murdered, stabbed over 50 times. A knife is still lodged inside of her head. Before we can look at who could have done this, we need to first find out who this Jane Doe is, which is hard. Her body had clearly been submerged in the water for some time. She had no ID on her, no wallet, nothing like that to scream out her name to police. And even worse,
Because she had been in the ocean and salt water for so long, police couldn't even pull a proper fingerprint from her. While police waited for a way to find out to identify the body, investigators immediately started searching the area for any type of evidence or clues. And right away, investigators spotted something about 100 yards away from where the body was discovered in the water.
investigators saw a large cardboard box just floating at the top of the bay. So they pulled the box out of the water and saw that it was a television box. The outside was printed with the make and model of a 27-inch TV. So police thought that, well, maybe this box had something to do with this victim's murder.
Maybe, just maybe, it was used to hold or to transport the victim. Even though no one really knew for sure if the box had anything to do with the murder or not, police just knew that they needed to hang on to it. The body was transported from the harbor to the Orange County Coroner's Office in Santa Ana. Everyone knew and could see all the stab wounds across her body.
But police still needed help in identifying her and finding out more about what happened to her and ultimately what caused her to end up dead in the harbor. What was strange was that nobody seemed to have reported this woman missing. One of the things that the Orange County medical examiner noted during the autopsy was that the victim had breast implants.
I know, probably some of you are wondering, Courtney, what's the big deal about breast implants? This is South Orange County after all. But here's the thing. Breast implants, just like any other medical device or really anything that is surgically put into our bodies, have serial numbers. They also have lot numbers that can be used to track back to the time and place of manufacture.
So just like your laptop or your cell phone you're probably holding right now, breast implants have serial numbers and provide unique tracking information. Typically, this only really comes into play when there's been a recall on a certain batch of implants. It's a way for patients to be notified if they're one of those who are affected by the recall.
Sometimes serial numbers are useful for insurance purposes. Believe it or not, many women who have implants, they decide to buy insurance on them. So if there is a problem with them somewhere down the road, these serial numbers are included on the insurance policy.
In fact, it's not like it's a luxury that we put serial numbers on all breast implants here in the U.S. It's actually required by law. And the FDA requires that U.S. manufacturers of implants put serial numbers on all of their products. So after the breast implants are removed from Jane Doe's body, police studied the implant's serial number.
They learned pretty quickly that the implants had been manufactured in France, and they also learned that the surgery had been performed in Oklahoma City. And after a little more digging, police also learned that the patient now lives right here in Southern California. Within hours, Jane Doe had been positively identified through her breast implants and
as 56-year-old Huntington Beach resident Barbara Mullenix. 56-year-old Barbara Mullenix lived in Huntington Beach for about a year before her murder. Prior to living in Orange County, she moved out to Southern California from Oklahoma. A quick search into Barbara's life revealed that, well, she kind of had an unusual living arrangement.
Barbara lived with her ex-husband, Bruce Mullenix, and their 17-year-old daughter, Rachel Mullenix. Police thought this was a little odd. It's not too common for divorced couples to continue to live together. And it becomes even more odd when one of them ends up murdered. So Barbara's living arrangement at the time of her death was temporary.
Her and her ex-husband Bruce had agreed that they would continue to share the condo until their 17-year-old daughter graduated from high school. Then when Rachel graduates from high school, that's it. Barbara was going to move out. Before her death, Barbara was a woman who was described as being starstruck.
She loved living in Orange County. She loved living near Hollywood. And even in her 50s, she still had dreams of making it as a Hollywood star. She wanted to be an actress. She found part-time work as an extra in TV and movies. And probably the highlight of her career was when she landed a small role in an episode of CSI.
But right away, Newport Beach police officers saw some red flags here. They were waving right in their faces. They've officially identified the woman found floating in the harbor with 52 stab wounds. They've learned that she lives with her ex-husband and now she's dead. Naturally, the first suspect is the ex-husband. In the U.S.,
More than two out of every female murder victims are killed by their intimate partner. Women in this country are way more likely to be killed by their intimate partner, boyfriend, husband, ex-boyfriend, ex-husband, than by anybody else. And what stands out to police even more in Barbara's case is that she'd been stabbed 52 times. A rage killing.
At this point, Newport Beach police officers can't get their hands on Bruce Mullenix fast enough. When police tried to track down Bruce so they could speak with him, investigators took a closer look at that TV box that was found about 100 yards away from Barbara's body in the harbor.
The first thing they do was pretty simple, actually. They just looked at the box itself. They looked at the SKU number printed on the outside of the box. They studied the address packing label. And within minutes of looking and studying this box, police confirmed that the TV had been sold by an electronic store right there in Huntington Beach, California. And guess who purchased that 27-inch television?
Bruce Mullenix. Newport Beach police finally arrived at the condo in Huntington Beach, California that both Bruce and Barbara shared with their daughter. And when police showed up, they practically already had their handcuffs out and ready to make the arrest. This seemed like an open and shut type case. The ex-husband always kills the ex-wife. The victim had been stabbed over 50 times. Stabbing is very personal, very intimate. But the victim was also stabbed over 50 times.
This was a rage killing. This was personal. Story over, right? I guess that's not so right. If so, the episode would be over right here and now. So when police showed up at Bruce and Barbara's apartment ready to make an arrest, to their surprise, Bruce was nowhere to be found. He wasn't inside of the condo.
Investigators felt like they didn't need to wait for Bruce to come home. They already knew a murder took place, and they were pretty confident that it took place inside of that condo. So instead of waiting for Bruce to finally show up, they decide to go out to the judge and sign off on a search warrant. And once it was signed off on, they went inside. And when investigators entered the condo,
Their stomachs were immediately sent into knots. Inside of that Huntington Beach condo, police found no signs of any forced entry or anything like that. But as soon as they stepped foot into the master bedroom, they knew. They knew they were in the middle of a crime scene and a brutal crime scene at that.
Right away, it stood out to investigators that the mattress as well as the box spring were gone. They were completely missing from the master bedroom. That's odd, right? This is a pretty big clue that the mattress is likely where Barbara had been murdered and that whoever was responsible disposed of it. But the missing mattress and box spring, well, that's just the beginning.
Police called in technicians from the OC Crime Lab who right away sprayed luminol throughout the master bedroom. When someone tries to clean up blood or tries to clean up a crime scene, sometimes they do a pretty good job. From the naked eye, you might not initially see any blood or you might not be able to see any evidence that a crime even took place. But when investigators use luminol,
What looks like a scene from where there was never blood can quickly turn into a bloodbath. When luminol is sprayed across a surface or across a room, trace amounts of an activating oxidant makes the luminol emit this bluish purplish glow that can be seen by investigators when the room is dark.
This is what makes blood that is missed by the naked eye stand out and turn this almost fluorescent color. So when technicians from the OC Crime Lab sprayed luminol around the master bedroom, the room lit up like a Christmas tree on Christmas morning. They found blood splatter across the walls. Blood was found on the floor. Blood was everywhere inside of that bedroom.
What was even more obvious to police, besides the results of the luminol test, was that they found a yellow sponge right there on one of the nightstands, right next to where the mattress would have been. This was an obvious clue that Barbara's killer, likely Bruce, attempted to clean things up. The killer attempted to destroy all the physical and forensic evidence. The only problem was...
The yellow sponge also had a tiny blood stain on it. Maybe the blood stain belonged to the killer. Inside of the kitchen in the condo, investigators found even more incriminating evidence against Bruce. The kitchen was stocked with the very same type of knife set that was found still lodged inside of Barbara's eye.
They also found latex gloves, more evidence that suggested there had been a massive cleanup. Just as investigators were busy collecting a mountain of evidence against Bruce and his ex-wife's murder, there comes Bruce himself strolling up to the front door. And right away, he's shocked. He's taken back that the police are at his house.
So he walked up to a detective who was standing right there at the front of his condo and he asks him, he asks him why his home is all of a sudden a crime scene. This episode of Forensic Tales is sponsored by Turbo Debt. It's been a difficult year for most Americans. The coronavirus has devastated many of us financially.
That's why now, more than ever, is the right time to get your debt and finances under control. We all know banks make their money by keeping us in debt. It's like banks are working against us, not with us. It's time to break the debt cycle and stop them from controlling our future.
TurboDebt can help by giving you options for resolving your debt problem once and for all, and finally put you on a path towards the financial freedom you've dreamed about. If you have over $10,000 in credit cards, personal loans, medical or payday loans, they can help you. Go to TurboDebt.com slash tails.
That's TurboDebt.com slash T-A-L-E-S, all caps, for a free consultation and start achieving financial freedom. Detectives knew that this was a great time to tell Bruce that one, his ex-wife was dead, that she'd been found floating in the harbor with 50 plus stab wounds. They knew he was the prime suspect in all of this.
and that this would be the first good indicator of how he's going to react. Would his reaction either prove their suspicions in the case, or would his reaction force police to keep digging? Bruce's initial reaction to his ex-wife's murder was odd. Detectives reported that he seemed oddly stone-faced, that he didn't seem to have much of a reaction at all.
It wasn't until police told him that his 17-year-old daughter, Rachel, was also missing that they seemed to get any reaction out of him at all. Bruce explained to investigators that him and Barbara had been married since November 1987 and had just gotten divorced a few years ago. He said that, at first, he was immediately taken by Barbara.
She was a woman who was opinionated, a woman who wasn't afraid to tell someone what she thought, what was on her mind. And he absolutely loved that about her. At the time of their marriage in 1987, Bruce was 28 years old and Barbara was almost 10 years older than him. She was close to 40 years old by then. And for Bruce, this was his first marriage.
But for Barbara, her marriage to Bruce would become her third marriage. After they got married, they lived together in Oklahoma, and a couple years later, they had their first daughter, Rachel. He was very open to police about the fact that his marriage with Barbara fell apart, mostly because of her heavy drinking. According to Bruce, when she drank too much, which was often true,
She changed. She was different. Her personality changed. She wasn't the same Barbara that he fell in love with. And after several years of dealing with that change, dealing with the anger, the aggression that she would display, the just change in behavior, he was done. So they ended up getting a divorce back in 2002.
After the divorce, Bruce up and left Oklahoma, moved out to Southern California, thinking that he would just get away from Barbara after the divorce. But once the alimony and the child support he was sending Barbara each month wasn't enough, Barbara and their daughter Rachel decided to move out to California and to share that same condo in Huntington Beach together.
And that living arrangement was how it was up until 2006, up until her murder. Newport Beach police brought Bruce down to the police station for questioning. While Bruce is being questioned by homicide detectives, crime scene technicians are busy at the condo. They've already been removing entire sections of the walls in order for them to examine and conduct further tests on them.
Back at the police station, police also executed a search warrant on Bruce's car, which turned out to be a dead end. They didn't find anything there. They also learned that Bruce, well, after all of the red flags that had been waving and the cloud of suspicion around him, well, Bruce might not be their guy. He might not be the person who killed Barbara. That's because...
Bruce offered up to detectives an airtight alibi. He was on a business trip up in Fresno, California, several hundred miles away from Newport Beach at the time of Barbara's murder. The medical examiner who performed the autopsy wasn't quite able to determine the exact time of death, but he was able to at least determine that she was killed sometime between late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning.
during a time frame where Bruce was several hundred miles away. But if Bruce didn't kill Barbara Mullenix, then who did? After detectives officially cleared Bruce Mullenix as a possible suspect, the next thing they needed to do was find their 17-year-old daughter, Rachel. Rachel was so young. She wasn't even 18 years old. She's a teenager.
And she hadn't been seen or heard from since the day before her mother's brutal murder. And the biggest concern on everyone's mind was, was Rachel another victim? Had Rachel, like her mother, also been killed? Had her body also been dumped into the harbor and maybe it was carried out to sea?
Maybe police were wrong this entire time, that this isn't some rage killing. Maybe there was a serial killer out there on the loose killing mothers and their daughters. Nobody knew. The only thing that police knew for sure was that they needed to find Rachel Mullenix and they needed to find her now.
At the same time police searched for Rachel, technicians were busy examining sections of drywall that had been removed from the condo and sent over to the crime lab. Based on the evidence that they had already collected, they felt pretty confident that Barbara had been murdered inside of the condo and then later on her body had been transported and dumped into the water.
Detectives in this case were incredibly smart to examine these sections of wall. We know that when people are in high stress situations, they sweat a lot. I think we can all kind of relate to that. When we're anxious or we're nervous, we sweat. Or if we're in a really stressful situation, our palms get sweaty, our forehead gets sweaty. It's a completely normal human reaction to stress.
And when it comes to crime and murder and assaults, the offender tends to sweat a lot. Murder and crime are highly stressful events. We'd expect the offender to be sweating more than normal when executing a homicide. And when we sweat more, we produce more and leave behind more fingerprint residue.
Sweat also helps to produce clearer fingerprints on almost every type of surface, which is exactly what we need in a case like this. So after looking over sections of the drywall, investigators not only find a good fingerprint, they hit the jackpot with this one. They ended up finding a complete palm print. So the next question is...
Who does the palm print belong to? Even though they felt pretty confident, they knew Bruce had an airtight alibi. He was hundreds of miles away. Even though he's the ex-husband, he really doesn't have any motive in the case. So they felt pretty confident that Bruce Mullenix wasn't their suspect. But they still compared the palm print to him just to double check.
And they got the result that they were expecting. The palm print on the wall wasn't a match. It wasn't Bruce's palm print. This was pretty much the nail in the coffin to police that Bruce wasn't the killer. During police's conversation with Bruce, they learned that Rachel, their 17-year-old daughter, had a boyfriend, a 21-year-old guy by the name of Ian Allen.
It was pretty clear that Bruce and Barbara, well, they didn't really approve of Rachel and Ian's relationship. And actually, Barbara hated their relationship. Ian was 21 years old. Rachel was only 17. Barbara thought that he was much too old for her daughter. He wasn't a good influence on Rachel.
And Barbara thought Rachel should be dating and spending time with boys her own age. Things got even worse when Barbara found out that Rachel and Ian were having sex. She threatened to call the police on Ian. She said that if they didn't stop, that she would report him on statutory rape charges. Because in California, he's 21 and she's 17 years old. Technically, that's statutory rape. But...
Her parents' approval of her relationship didn't seem to stop her. Because after only a couple months of dating, Rachel and Ian announced that they're engaged. That there wasn't anything Barbara could do about it. Rachel's relationship with Ian wasn't the only problem between Rachel and her parents. And Barbara wasn't the only one with a drinking problem.
Bruce was just as bad. Rachel became the girl at school with alcoholic parents. She turned into the teenager that started drinking herself. She started taking razor blades to her skin. She told a lot of friends about how abusive and how angry her mom Barbara got, especially when she drank, that it was an almost everyday thing for her to get into fights with her parents, especially her mom.
Police learned about one of these fights in particular, and it was just one week before Barbara's murder. Rachel had an explosive fight with her mom, Barbara. Rachel had missed her 1 a.m. curfew, and Barbara was pissed. She was pissed because not only was it late, but she knew in her gut that her daughter was with Ian.
So Barbara decided to get in her car and drive over to Ian's house herself, even if that meant she had to drag her daughter outside. And when she got there, Barbara, like some other moms might do, made a huge scene. She was furious. She was screaming. She was yelling at Rachel to get in the car right now that they were going home. The night was over.
And like a teenager, this was mortifying for Rachel. She was so embarrassed that her mom showed up to her boyfriend's place and caused this huge scene right there in front of him as well as his parents. But when you're only 17 years old, you don't really have a choice. So Rachel got inside of her mom's car. Her mom took her home and she was grounded.
Police knew that Rachel was last seen with her boyfriend, Ian Allen, the day before her mother's murder. And given the background and just the kind of volatile nature of Rachel's relationship with her mother, police started to suspect that Rachel probably wasn't a victim, but that Rachel may know something about the murder and that's why she disappeared.
Police ran a background check on both Barbara and Rachel, and the report came back with some pretty disturbing details. They learn about an incident in Tampa, Florida. In Tampa, Florida, police investigated a physical fight that was called in between them. This was just two years before the murder, almost to the day.
And during the fight, police reported that Rachel had attacked her mother Barbara with a knife, a similar knife to what was used in Barbara's murder two years later. The police also spoke with Ian's parents, who said that they haven't seen or heard from their son in over two days. They also told police another chilling detail, that their .38 caliber gun was missing.
Ian's parents also allow Newport Beach detectives to conduct a forensic search on all of the computers in the home. If Ian and Rachel are together somewhere, they probably searched places online. And the forensic search of the Allens computer revealed that what police could have hoped for. The biggest clue was that Ian had made searches and printed out directions to Tampa, Florida.
So detectives in Orange County immediately alerted police in Florida. By this point, police had already issued an all-points bulletin for both Rachel and Ian. They needed to find them, and they needed to find them soon. Not only was Barbara's murder shocking to even the most veteran homicide detectives, the idea that her daughter and her boyfriend may have had something to do with it
was almost too much to swallow. Police received another break when they get information that Ian's credit card had been used at a gas station in Louisiana, almost 1,700 miles away from Southern California. Surveillance cameras set up around the gas station captured Ian inside of his truck, pulling up to fill up his tank.
Newport Beach police called officers in the neighboring town of Lafayette Parish, where officers there set up a roadblock on the I-10 freeway. They were sure that they were headed in the direction of Florida, and this was the only highway they could take. And within minutes, Louisiana patrol officers spotted Ian's truck. Officers flipped on their sirens and pulled him over.
Rachel and Ian are both pulled from the truck, faces to the ground, and handcuffs are placed behind their backs. They are both immediately brought in for questioning regarding Barbara Mullenix's murder. When police sat down with Rachel, she denied everything. She denied having any involvement in her mother's murder. And not only did she deny having any involvement, what Rachel said actually happened is
is something straight out of an episode of CSI. Rachel told police that she'd been kidnapped by none other than her boyfriend, Ian Allen. She even said she knew who killed her mother. It was Ian Allen. Rachel claimed that on the night of Barbara's murder, she was asleep. She said she went to bed somewhere around 8 o'clock p.m.,
She said sometime during the middle of the night, she heard her mom scream. And when she got up to see what was wrong, she saw Ian stabbing her mom. She said she tried to push him off, but that's when Ian pushed her and knocked her down so hard that she got knocked out. She then said that she didn't remember what happened next. All she remembers is waking up in a motel room, being bound and gagged by Ian. But she
Something about Rachel's story just didn't sit well with investigators. They weren't necessarily believing this whole kidnapping story. They already had all of their background on her relationship with her mom, and they also had surveillance footage. They had in their possession a surveillance camera of Rachel inside that gas station where they were arrested, and
And the police watch on camera that Rachel doesn't appear to be acting like someone who's been kidnapped. She's seen on tape just freely walking around the gas station store. And even worse, she's seen on camera hugging and kissing on Ian, not acting like she's been kidnapped.
So detectives turn to Ian to get his side of the story. There's always two sides to every story, sometimes three. And I think to every detective surprise watching the interrogation, Ian confesses. Ian confesses to Barbara's murder. He tells police that he did it himself, that he went to the condo that night just to scare her.
But things escalated. They got into a physical struggle. He held a knife up to her throat. She started screaming and then he snapped. He decided he needed to kill her. He was very clear, though, on one thing that he killed Barbara alone. He was adamant. He told police over and over again.
that he did this alone, and that Rachel, his girlfriend, Barbara's daughter, had absolutely nothing to do with it. Even with Ian's confession, they don't buy into one of their stories. They don't buy into either one of their stories. That's because detectives were about to drop a bombshell that would flip this case completely upside down.
Ian Allen and Rachel Mullenix are both arrested for the murder of Barbara Mullenix. The arrests come after the police drop a bombshell. Orange County police announced that they had forensic evidence that linked both Ian and Rachel to Barbara's murder.
The forensic evidence could prove that they were both lying, that there really are three sides to every story. There was Ian's story, Rachel's story, and then the truth. Police found Rachel's DNA on that yellow sponge they found right on the nightstand in Barbara's bedroom. That same sponge that was used to try and clean up the scene.
That's a problem, right? Well, there's more. Remember that TV cardboard box that was found floating in the harbor just 100 yards away from Barbara's body? The box police linked back to Bruce's condo? Well, police tested the duct tape that was used to seal the box up.
They tested it for DNA and fingerprints to try and figure out who put the duct tape on because they believed that the box had been used to carry and dump Barbara into the ocean. The duct tape was found to be the exact same brand as the duct tape found inside of Ian's truck. And even more damning, the super glue on the actual tape itself was tested and
And forensic experts came back with Rachel's fingerprints on it. Rachel was the one who put the duct tape on the box. On the duct tape, they found Rachel's full print of her left middle finger. Without a doubt, without a question, Rachel had handled the duct tape used to seal the cardboard box containing her own mother's dead body.
Next was the .38 caliber handgun, also recovered from Ian's truck. On the gun's trigger, there was a mixture of both Ian and Rachel's DNA, with Rachel being the majority contributor. If Rachel had been kidnapped by Ian, why hadn't she used the gun on him? Finally, the palm print was
The palm print that was lifted from one of the kitchen's walls in cleaned up blood, the print was then tested against Bruce at first. Well, that palm print was identified as Ian's. All of the forensic evidence pointed to what the medical examiner suspected in the very beginning, that he believed it was two people responsible for Barbara's murder, that this was a lot for one person to accomplish on their own.
If there was any doubt to the forensic evidence, I think that doubt was squashed when police got their hands on both Ian and Rachel's cell phones. Text messages showed that they were communicating and texting up until 1 to 2 o'clock in the morning on Wednesday. When Rachel said she fell asleep around 8 p.m. and was awoken by her mom screaming. The text messages completely contradict that story.
The two of them had been communicating using secret messages and codes, basically signaling they're ready. It's go time. It's time to kill Barbara. Ian and Rachel were both charged with first degree murder.
Even up until the trial, Rachel proclaimed her innocence. She stuck to her original story that Ian did this alone, that he kidnapped her, and he basically forced her to clean things up. Police and prosecution felt like they had a solid case here, largely based on the forensic evidence that placed Rachel throughout the entire murder, that she was just as guilty, if not more guilty, than Ian was.
You can't really offer up any solid explanation as to why your fingerprints are on the sponge that was used to clean up the bedroom or offer an explanation as to why your DNA was found on the duct tape used to seal and carry the body.
Prosecutors told the jury that they believed Ian and Rachel plotted to kill her mom and waited until Bruce went out of town on that business trip up to Fresno. They waited until Barbara fell asleep that night. They grabbed a knife from the kitchen. They both went into the bedroom and stabbed her 52 times. They then took her body out of the condo, placed it inside of that TV cardboard box,
drove out to the harbor in Newport Beach, and dumped her body. Ian and Rachel then came back to the condo and tried to clean things up. A couple weeks after the discovery of Barbara's body, police found remains of a burnt mattress and box spring along some railroad tracks right next to Ian's work.
They believed that this was Barbara's, that they took it out there. They burned it in an attempt to destroy further evidence. Even though Rachel and Ian were both charged with first degree murder, they were tried separately. Rachel took the stand at her trial and once again maintained her innocence. She admitted that she made a lot of mistakes in her life.
She made mistakes in the days before her mother's murder and the days after. But she said that killing her mother wasn't one of them. She didn't do it. And by the end of the trial, Rachel was now 19 years old, still pretty much a kid, and knows that she's on trial for her life. I don't know if her taking the stand in her own defense was helpful or not. Of course, that's always a gamble. But
On the stand, Rachel claimed that Ian, her now ex-boyfriend, was abusive and that he was the worst thing that has ever happened to her. She also had her dad, Bruce, by her side. Even with the mountain of forensic evidence, Bruce stood by her side and believed in her innocence. The only problem was the jury didn't believe in her innocence.
After four days of deliberation, the jury came back with a verdict, a guilty verdict. Rachel was found guilty of first-degree murder for her own mother's death and was sentenced to the maximum, 25 years to life. The jury didn't believe Rachel's story. Instead, they believed the forensic evidence. They didn't believe that Rachel's story matched what the forensic evidence was telling them.
Ian Allen was also found guilty at his trial. He was convicted of first-degree murder and also received the same sentence, 25 years to life behind bars. In her mother's murder, Rachel Mullenix won't be eligible for parole until 2030, while she'll be at least 41 years old. To this day, Bruce's opinion hasn't changed about his daughter. He believes that the jury got it wrong.
When asked about his daughter, Bruce says, quote, he loves his daughter, that he's very proud of her. Since the double first degree murder convictions, both Ian and Rachel have filed appeals. Back in 2010, Rachel's first appeal was denied. And since then, she has filed a second appeal. Rachel Mullenix is now a convicted murderer.
Convicted of killing her very own mother for a motive that many believe was so that she could continue dating her 21-year-old boyfriend, Ian Allen. If it wasn't for the solid forensic evidence in the case, police may have been led to believe that Bruce Mullenix, Barbara's ex-husband, was responsible. To check out photos from the case, head over to our website, ForensicTales.com.
If you want to learn more about how you can support the show or buy official show merchandise, you can also head to our website. If you'd like to share your thoughts on this week's episode, make sure you're following the show on Instagram and Facebook at Forensic Tales. Thank you so much for joining me this week. We'll be back next week for a brand new case, a brand new story. Until then.
Remember, not all stories have happy endings. Forensic Tales is a Rockefeller Audio Production.
The show is written and produced by me, Courtney Fretwell. For a small monthly contribution, you can gain access to bonus content and be one of the first to listen to new episodes. Or, if you simply want to support my show, head over to our Patreon page, patreon.com slash forensic tales.
You can also help support the show by leaving us a positive review and telling friends and family about us. Forensic Tales is a podcast made possible by our Patreon producers, Tony A, Nicole L, William R, David B, Katrina G, Sammy, and Paula.
If you'd like to become a producer of this show, head to our Patreon page or send me an email at Courtney at ForensicTales.com to find out how you can become involved. For a complete list of sources used in this episode, please visit ForensicTales.com. Please join me next week. We release a new episode every Monday.
Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.