Patrick Mullins
53:10 Share

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. What are some of your self-care non-negotiables? Maybe you never skip leg day or therapy day. When your schedule is packed with kids' activities, big work projects, or podcasting like me, it's easy to let your priorities slip. Even when we know it makes us feel good, it's hard to make time for it.

But when you feel like you have no time for yourself, non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever. Therapy can help with things like how to set healthy boundaries or find ways to be the best version of yourself. So if you're thinking about starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule.

Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist or switch therapist anytime for no additional charge. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash tails to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash tails.

To enjoy this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out on Patreon. Patreon.com/ForensicTales 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. A man's empty boat is found miles away from his home. And when his body surfaces over a week later, the authorities and his family are left with more questions than answers.

Did Patrick Mullins, a beloved librarian and high school teacher, take his own life in 2013? Or does the forensic evidence point to something far more sinister? This is Forensic Tales, episode number 225, The Mysterious Death of Patrick Mullins. ♪

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.

Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings. As a one-woman show, your support helps me find new compelling cases and

In January 2013, 52-year-old Patrick Lee Mullins worked as a librarian and media specialist at Palmetto High School in Palmetto, Florida.

a waterfront community off Florida's Gulf Coast with Tampa to the north and Sarasota to the south. Patrick lived there with his wife, Jill Mullins, and their children, Mason and Miles. Mason was in the Army and stationed in Afghanistan, and his brother Miles was a civil engineering student. Patrick and Jill had been married since 1983, which meant they were celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary that June.

Patrick, who usually went by Pat, grew up in a big family on Anna Maria Island. He had two brothers, Bert and Gary, and two sisters, Nancy and Linda. After serving as a sergeant in the National Guard throughout much of the 1990s, Pat taught fourth grade for over 20 years with the Manatee County School District. After that, he and his wife, Jill, both got their master's degrees at the University of South Florida.

Every single kid at Palmetto High School where Pat worked for all those years all loved him. He was the type of teacher who would sometimes stay at the school well past dinner time, six or seven o'clock at night, so that the students could finish up their homework before going home. He was also that kind of teacher that students looked up to. If they were going through something or they just needed someone to talk to, then Pat Mullins was the person they went to.

He was known to work with the kids who needed a little bit of extra help. If they were falling behind in a class, then Pat would usually stick around the library and help them catch up. He even paid for the ACT and SAT fees for some of the students whose families couldn't afford them. Now if Pat wasn't at the high school, he was at home at 5631 43rd Avenue in Braden, Florida.

He and Jill moved there shortly after they got married, and it was the perfect place to raise two boys. When the boys were younger, they spent a lot of time on the water with their dad, fishing or just hanging out. Pat's friends all described him as a kind, sensitive, and just all-around great guy.

Not only was he the poster child when it came to being this family man, but he was what many people described as a real friend, someone that you could always count on and kept his word. He also did things by the book and wasn't afraid to show a little sense of humor every once in a while. By 2013, Pat had his eyes set on retirement. The plan was to retire the following year in 2014.

And because of all of his years of service and education, he was looking at getting a pretty nice retirement package. But that didn't mean that all he wanted to do was just quit working and play golf all day. As a skilled mechanic, one of Pat's favorite hobbies was collecting and restoring old motorboats. Growing up on Florida's Anna Maria Island, Pat had always been an avid fisherman, boater, and swimmer.

He and his siblings grew up on the water with boats all around them. So this gave someone like Pat, who always felt compelled to work on things, the opportunity to tinker with different boat parts and put them back together. The water also meant that he was a strong swimmer. So he was always good at anything that involved two things, the water and boats. Even as Pat grew up and became an adult, his love for the water didn't stop.

In 2013, he owned a 16-foot stump knocker that he liked to take out on the Braden River any chance that he got. The boat was docked about 300 yards away from the house along the Braden River. He loved boating and the water so much that he planned to use some of his upcoming retirement money to purchase and run a boat motor repair shop with his brother Bert.

So just because he was thinking of retirement in 2013, that didn't mean he was slowing down. By all accounts, he still had a lot of things he wanted to accomplish in life. Which is why what happened to Patrick Mullins in January 2013, such a mystery. On Sunday, January 27, 2013, Jill planned to go to her sister's house in Sarasota for the day.

She wasn't sure what her husband Pat was up to that day, but after spending some time with her sister, she would see him for dinner. It wasn't uncommon for them to spend a day or two on the weekend basically doing their own thing, and then they would always come together to have dinner, especially on a Sunday night before work. Now, before she headed out the door, she said goodbye to Pat and gave him a kiss.

Pat told her that she would help her gather up some furniture that she planned to give to a co-worker when she got back home. And that was it. Jill walked out the door, not knowing that this would be the last time she saw her husband alive. Sometime between 6.30 and 7 that night, Jill returned home from her sister's house. Pat's truck was parked in the driveway, but he wasn't home.

At first, she thought maybe he was over at a neighbor's house. It wouldn't be the first time that he's done that. So Jill decided to call Pat's cell phone and see what he planned or what time he planned on coming home. But he didn't pick up. Now Jill wasn't too concerned at this point. She knew her husband didn't always carry his cell phone around with him. So it's possible he went to the neighbor's house and just didn't pick up his phone.

She didn't start to really worry about anything until it was a little after 7.30 and Pat still wasn't home. And he wasn't at any of the neighbor's houses either. This was a Sunday night that we're talking about. And usually by 7 or 7.30, they were both winding down from the weekend and they were both getting ready for work the next day. So she felt like it was a little strange that he wouldn't be home by then on what they both called a school night.

So as it got a little bit later, Jill grew more and more concerned about Pat and decided to walk down to where he kept his boat a couple yards away from the house. Maybe he had taken it out earlier that day and it was just taking longer than usual to get back home. But Pat's boat wasn't docked where it usually was, which meant that most likely wherever the boat was, that's where Pat was.

although it really wasn't like him at the time to be out boating after the sun went down. After realizing that the boat was gone, Jill walked back up to the house and started calling friends and relatives, but none of them had seen or heard from him that day. So that's when she decided to call their son Miles, who was away at college at the time, to let him know what was happening and that the boat was missing. But again, Miles wasn't too concerned either.

He told his mom, don't worry too much about it because his dad had mentioned that he planned to take his boat out earlier that day to test a motor he was working on and he wanted to run some gas through the boat. So it was probably just taking a little bit longer than expected. Everyone also knew that Pat didn't carry his cell phone everywhere with him. So he probably didn't have a way of calling and letting Jill know that he was running a little bit late.

So Miles at this point, their son, assured his mom that he would probably be home any minute now. But that didn't happen. Later on that night, when Jill called again and told Miles that Pat still wasn't back, Miles started to think that maybe something is actually wrong. There's no way that he would have stayed out on the water that long and it was well past dark at that point.

So that's when he immediately left Tampa and drove down to his parents' house in Bradentown to help look for him. By 11 o'clock p.m., Jill called one of Pat's brothers, Bert, and told him that he still wasn't back. So Bert offered to come over with his boat and see if they could find him somewhere out on the water. After he got to the house, he met up with Miles and the two of them went out and started searching.

At first, the two of them focused their search on the Braden River, a 21-mile-long waterway in Bradentown where Pat docked his boat. Part of the river runs just 300 yards away from Pat and Jill's house, so it was easy for him to get to. The reason why they focused their search on the Braden River was because of the kind of boat that Pat owned. It was this 16-foot stump knocker.

Now, this particular boat is really only designed for shallow water, just like the Braden River is. It wasn't the type of boat meant for deeper water, maybe like the Manatee River, which the Braden River flows from. So Bert and Miles knew that the only place he would have taken the boat out was somewhere in the Braden River. There's no way he could have gone further than that because the boat wouldn't have made it.

So Bert and Miles begin their search along the river's main routes, looking for any sign of Pat or his boat. But they didn't find anything. So that's when they tried doing something different. They started to go down into all the nooks and crannies and streams of the river. But again, no Pat, no boat. Now sometime after 11 o'clock p.m., Pat was reported missing to the Manatee County Sheriff's Office.

But because of the time and how dark it was out on the water, the official search for him didn't begin until the following morning. That's when other law enforcement agencies in the area joined the sheriff's office. They included the Coast Guard, the Manatee County Marine Patrol, and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. So when the official search got underway, the authorities had a lot of questions for Jill.

Anytime an adult goes missing, you have to wonder if they did so voluntarily. You can't just assume that foul play is involved. So they needed to know, how was their marriage? Did Pat leave a note somewhere back at the house? Has he ever gone somewhere and not told anyone where he was before? Was he known to go out on the water for a few days? What kind of mood was he in? Did he have a history of depression or substance abuse?

Were they having any money or financial problems? These were all things that the authorities needed to know. But most of the answers to these questions were no. According to Jill, their marriage was fine. And in fact, it was probably better than fine. They were both excited to celebrate their upcoming 30-year wedding anniversary just in that coming June. They were both looking forward to retirement in the next 12 months.

There was no note found anywhere in Pat's belongings suggesting that he planned on going somewhere, or even more sinister than that, that he was planning on doing something bad. He also never went anywhere overnight without telling someone first. In reality, he never took his boat out after dark, so the fact that he didn't return the following morning was even more troubling.

He didn't have a history of depression or substance abuse, according to Jill and their sons. And he seemed completely fine in the days leading up to his disappearance. There was no indication that anything was off or that anything was bothering him. So without any other clues, the first theory was, was that something happened to Pat's boat. Maybe the boat stalled out somewhere on the river and he was stranded and couldn't make his way back to the dock.

The search parties should have had no problem finding him if that was the case. Maybe Bert and Miles couldn't find him the night before because it was too dark out there. But surely by the morning time, at least one of the search parties should have found him or the boat. But they didn't. Now, besides the Braden River, the authorities also focused their search on a few boat bars in the area. Although Jill denied that Pat ever went to any of them.

After that, the sheriff's office started a new search operation with their Marine unit, and they found out that Pat had been seen by some of his neighbors mowing his lawn between 1.30 and 3 the day before. The neighbors also said they saw him leaving in his boat around 3 o'clock p.m. and was alone. There was no indication of anyone else with him. The police and Pat's family both knew that time wasn't going to be on their side.

The longer that Pat was missing, the higher the chances would be of not having a good outcome. Plus, a stalled boat was just one of the theories about what could have happened. Pat should have been able to have fixed anything if something had happened to it on the boat. He was a very experienced boater, so he should have been able to fix whatever could have happened mechanically.

But the authorities had no idea what they were looking for. Are they looking for an upright boat, a capsized boat, or even just a person in the water? It was possible that he crashed and was somewhere in the water. He also could have been injured. According to Pat's brother Gary, he was dealing with some back problems at the time. So maybe he further injured his back and he couldn't move.

So the authorities knew at this point that whatever had happened, they were basically up against the clock here. So over the next 24 hours, the search for Pat included helicopters, search and rescue boats, 18 surface units, and a C-130 aircraft equipped with some very high technology. And together, the units covered more than 2,000 square miles.

It was an exhaustive search that left no stone unturned. And by 1 o'clock a.m. on January 28th, the day after Pat went missing, they finally found his boat. But it wasn't the outcome that everyone hoped for.

At around 11 a.m. on January 28th, the day after Pat went missing, they found his boat in the Egmont Channel, about seven miles northwest of Egmont Key in the Gulf of Florida. Now, this was not at all where you would expect to find it because this was a part of the water that usually only large container ships used. It wouldn't be common to see a small, shallow water boat like Pat's.

Plus, it would have taken him about two or three hours just to reach that particular location. So there was no real reason for him to be out that far. He had never done that before. He had never gone that far. So if he was out there testing the boat's motor like he told his son that he was going to do that day, there was basically no reason for him to travel out that far.

He could have just as easily done that in the Braden River. He didn't need to go out into the Manatee River, Tampa Bay, or even the Gulf of Mexico. And then there was another problem. They found his boat, but Pat wasn't in it. All of his belongings were there, and the engine was set to idle with the ignition on, and inside the boat were a life jacket, sunglasses, a straw hat, and a gas can.

Noticeably missing was the boat's anchor. Now, according to the lead lieutenant from the sheriff's office, they found no evidence of foul play on the boat. There wasn't any blood on the boat and nothing seemed out of place. So that's when another theory emerged. Something must have happened to Pat closer to home in the Braden or Manatee rivers. And then the water's currents took the boat to where it was ultimately found.

Most likely, it was some type of medical emergency and Pat simply fell overboard. They also thought the boat could have stopped working somewhere and then Pat had gotten off of it. At the same time search and rescue teams continued to look for him, the Manatee Sheriff's Office dug deeper into his personal life. Once again, they looked to see if he had any financial trouble. They looked into his phone records to see who he was communicating with before disappearing.

But again, they didn't find anything out of the ordinary. Nothing about Pat's life seemed to suggest that he would just voluntarily go missing, or even worse, hurt himself. Pat's boat was eventually returned to Pat's family, and they noticed something strange about it as soon as they got it back. According to the family, there were red paint marks on it that weren't there before.

It was almost like the boat had crashed into something with red paint, but they didn't know what to make of it at the time. They just knew the red paint marks weren't there before Pat went missing. They used the reverse drift method, surface currents, and wind data to find Pat and determine where the boat could have come from.

If they could figure out how the boat got to where it was found, then they could work backward to figure out where Pat still might be. So based on the weather data, the wind was out of the east the night he went missing. With the tide also pushing offshore, they estimated that the boat probably drifted from somewhere in the lower Tampa Bay. So they decided to focus their search there.

After nine full days of searching, they finally found Pat Mullins, and the outcome wasn't good. Around 12 o'clock noon on February 5th, nine days after Pat went missing, a fishing boat captain was on his way in from a charter fishing trip. As they got closer to Emerson Point in the southern part of Tampa Bay, near the mouth of the Manatee River, one of the people on board the boat called out that they thought they saw something in the water.

Once they got closer to it, it was obvious what it was. A man's body floating face down. And right away, the fishing boat captain knew that it had to be Pat Mullins. The story had been all over the news, and as soon as he saw it, he knew it had to be him. Pat was lying face down in the water, wearing a shirt, blue jeans, a belt, and only one of his shoes. His watch was still wrapped around his wrist, and his wallet was in his pocket.

Now, at first glance, it looked like he might have accidentally drowned. But oddly enough, there was a rope wrapped around his entire body, tied to an anchor. But that's not all. He had also been shot in the head with a shotgun. Pat's body was pulled from the water by the sheriff's office boat and taken to the medical examiner's office where Dr. Russell Vega, the Manatee County medical examiner, could perform the autopsy.

Now here's what the autopsy report says. When Pat's body arrived at the Manatee County Medical Examiner's office, he was fully clothed except for missing one of his shoes. Around his body was a three-quarter inch rope and a 25-pound anchor was tied around it. The rope was wrapped across his left shoulder twice.

then went down in between his legs, around his waist about seven times, and then was tied off across his chest. He was in a moderate stage of decomposition, which he believed was consistent with being in the water for about eight or nine days, roughly the same amount of time that he was missing. But there was no way for Dr. Vega to be able to narrow down a specific time of death.

Now, despite being in the water for, again, somewhere between eight to nine days, Pat's body was in shockingly pretty good shape. In other words, almost none of his body had been bothered or scavenged by sea life.

This is a little strange considering the waters of Tampa Bay are known to be one of the most shark-dense bodies of water on the earth, with over a dozen native species of sharks calling it home. But Pat's body had been entirely untouched by sharks or any other sea animal that entire time that it was in the water, even despite having a gaping head wound from a shotgun blast.

We know that sharks can smell blood over a half mile away. So, had Pat's body really been in the water for eight or nine days? Or was he held somewhere else, possibly on land, for several days before being placed in the water? Pat's body was also examined by a forensic anthropologist at the University of Florida.

They were mostly called in to help Dr. Vega reconstruct Pat's skull to figure out how he got the gunshot wound to the head. Once the skull reconstruction was done, Dr. Vega determined that there were six exit perforations on the left side of the skull and what looked like one larger perforation on the right side. Based on these marks, he concluded that a gunshot with a buckshot had been used.

The gunshot wound itself came from the right side and was a little bit upward and backward. It went right to left and exited on the left side of Pat's head. But Dr. Vega wasn't able to determine if he had been shot more than once. When it came to the cause of death, Dr. Vega documented that the gunshot wound to the head was what killed him. But the manner of death was a little bit trickier. He didn't know if it was suicide or homicide.

So in his official report, he listed Pat's death as undetermined. To be clear, this didn't necessarily mean the medical examiner didn't suspect suicide. In fact, it was probably the opposite. According to Dr. Vega, Pat's death absolutely could have been a suicide. That's because despite the intricate knots and the rope tied around his body, neither one of his hands was tied.

So this meant both of his hands were always free to tie the rope around himself. Second, the knots were in front of him. They weren't behind his back. And third, there weren't any other injuries that indicated a struggle. Besides the gunshot wound to the head, Pat's body was completely injury-free. So suicide was definitely a possibility, at least according to Dr. Vega.

It took almost a year and a half for Pat's family to learn about the autopsy results and the medical examiner's findings of undetermined. And when they learned that both the medical examiner and the manatee sheriff's office suspected suicide, they were angry. There was no way the Patrick Mullins that they knew would commit suicide. And not only that, but to do it in such a strange way.

They wondered why he would have gone through all the trouble of tying the rope around himself so many times. Why not just use the boat and go out there and shoot yourself? Why go through the extra steps of using the rope and the anchor? Surely, Pat would have known that a shotgun wound to the head would be enough to cause death. He didn't need the rope and the anchor to help make that happen. There was also the issue of the knots themselves.

Dr. Russell Vega described the anchor rope as, quote, an unusual mechanism, but also said that it was entirely possible that someone could have, quote, applied the anchor to oneself in a reasonable fashion, end quote. But the family doesn't believe that the types of knots used to tie Pat to the anchor were the sort of knots an experienced boater would use.

They believed that if he killed himself, he would have used a single knot to secure himself to the anchor, rather than the quote, amateurish multi-knot arrangement that was reportedly used. Now let's talk about the details of a typical suicide. Not everyone leaves a suicide note, but some do. In this case, Pat didn't leave a suicide note. He didn't even own a shotgun, according to his family.

No blood, brain matter, bits of skull, or bodily fluids were found in the stump knocker. And Pat didn't have a history of depression, financial troubles, or substance abuse issues. He was about to celebrate his 30th wedding anniversary and less than a year away from retirement. Two events that his family said he was really looking forward to. He had already picked out a hotel in Fort Myers to celebrate his anniversary.

And for his retirement, he would expect to get well over $150,000. He was even excited about becoming a grandparent someday. But when it comes to suicide, there isn't always a warning or a clue. So the sheriff's office wasn't too hung up on the fact that he didn't leave a note or seem depressed. Plenty of people commit suicide without their loved ones even knowing that they're struggling.

According to the investigators, Pat lived what they described as, quote, a relatively safe and sedate lifestyle. So it was very unlikely he would suddenly become a murder victim. And that's a whole other conversation. If Pat was murdered, the police had no idea who would have wanted him dead. He was the well-liked high school librarian. There was also the money and jewelry still on Pat's body when he was found.

This was something else the sheriff's office pointed towards suicide. They thought that if someone had killed Pat, they would have taken his wallet, watch, ring, and money, but they didn't take a single thing. The only connection to suicide they found was that his school district's life insurance policy had a no-suicide clause that would have prevented him from any type of payment if he committed suicide.

The Manatee Sheriff's Office had a different take on how things might have happened that suggested suicide. They theorized Pat may have wrapped himself in the rope attached to the anchor, perched on the edge of the boat, and shot himself in the jaw with a shotgun angled upwards. But they didn't have an answer for everything.

They weren't exactly sure how he would have been able to angle the gun to reach the trigger or why there wasn't any forensic evidence like blood in the boat. Another thing the sheriff's office wasn't able to explain was how close the shotgun had to have been to Pat's face. According to the autopsy report, there was no stippling near the entrance wound, which should have been an indication of a contact wound.

It seemed possible that whoever fired the gun hadn't pressed the gun directly to the skin. In 2021, Pat's family brought in Dr. Lori Baker, a professor of anthropology and forensic science, to consider this suicide theory. One of the questions she wanted to answer was how Pat could have shot himself without having the shotgun placed directly against his skin.

Let's not forget, we're talking about a long barrel shotgun here. We're not talking about just a small handgun. So the family wanted to know how he could have been able to hold the long shotgun, reach the trigger while having the ropes all tied around his body, and not have any stippling near the entrance wound or getting any blood inside the boat itself.

So Dr. Lori Baker tried to reconstruct Pat's death as if it were a suicide. But when she tried, she ran into a lot of problems trying to do so. She had a male assistant try to tie himself up on the edge of the boat with an anchor weighing him down. She then had him try to hold the gun in the same way that Pat would have had to hold it.

She tried to figure out how Pat could have sat on the edge of the boat to ensure that he went directly into the water with the shotgun and the anchor. One of the first things that she thought was odd during this experiment was how Pat would have had to hold the shotgun to make all of this possible. It just wasn't your typical type of way to do a suicide.

That's because the shot was fired below the right earlobe at the rear of Pat's cheek at a slightly upward angle. Even Dr. Vega, the county medical examiner who did the autopsy, said that he had never seen a self-inflicted gunshot wound with such a trajectory in that location of the head before.

According to Dr. Baker, if Pat had used the shotgun with an 18-inch barrel, it would have had to have been really hard to hold because it was really heavy and long. She believes he would have had it pressed up to the area as he was firing it. But when you look at Pat's skull, there's no black marks on it. Again, it wasn't a contact wound. Next up was the issue of blood spatter.

Dr. Baker believes that if Pat shot himself in the boat, the wind and the amount of force and blood spray from the shotgun blast would have made it almost impossible for him not to get any blood, tissue, or any other type of bone matter in the boat. Even when a luminol test was done inside of the boat, they didn't find anything.

So not a single drop of blood got inside the boat, which is a little strange if you can picture Pat sitting on the edge of it when he shot himself. This is actually the only thing the sheriff's office and Pat's family seem to agree on, that it seemed highly unlikely Pat died in the stump knocker. Since there was absolutely no blood or other forensic evidence found in the boat, he had to have been shot somewhere else just outside of it.

Based on all of this, Dr. Baker doesn't believe any of the forensic evidence supports a suicide. Instead, in her opinion, the evidence points to the fact that Pat was murdered. The next issue was where the boat was found. Remember, the search and rescue unit theorized it would have taken Pat at least two or three hours of boating to get there, and that's not even the location of where his body was found.

Pat's boat was found in the Gulf of Mexico and his body was found in Tampa Bay. Neither one of these locations is where Pat was known to take his boat to. So how did the boat get to where it ended up if no one was driving it? And why didn't anyone notice an unmanned boat traveling all that distance? The Manatee Sheriff's Office believes that the wind and water currents are what caused the boat to travel so far.

But the family suspects someone else may have towed his boat out into the ocean, cut the rope, and left it there. For the boat to reach Tampa Bay, it would have most likely passed the CSX Railroad Bridge on the Manatee River. On any other day, cameras mounted on the bridge record all boats that pass through it.

However, when investigators obtained the video from the bridge, unfortunately, the CSX personnel downloaded the video incorrectly, which caused the video file to become corrupt. Even when investigators went back a second time, the video was still corrupt, so it's unclear whether the cameras caught Pat's boat passing through it or not. By the third time they tried, the original video had been re-recorded.

The sheriff's office also tried getting their hands on surveillance video from the Manatee Memorial Hospital in Bradentown and the Regatta Marina in Palmetto. But unfortunately, Pat's boat wasn't seen on either of the surveillance videos facing the water. Jill has always said that Pat never owned any firearms, let alone the type of shotgun used. According to her, he didn't even have an interest in guns.

And when the sheriff's office did a forensic audit of his bank accounts, they found no evidence he withdrew any money to buy a shotgun. He had never owned one and didn't have any shotgun shelves. The sheriff's office checked with all of the local gun dealers in the area, and no one had sold Pat a shotgun. None of his friends or family members had loaned him one either.

The only thing they found related to guns was a YouTube link on Pat's computer about determining the age of a Marlin shotgun. Also, a gun show took place in nearby Palmetto on the weekend he disappeared. So where exactly could have Pat gotten it from? And where's the shotgun now? Well, it's never been found. Despite an exhaustive search of the water where Pat's body was found, the shotgun has never been found.

something that the authorities don't say is too surprising. They believe the gun could have been washed away by the strong currents in the water. If Pat was murdered, there have to be suspects out there. Pat's family wonders if he might have encountered something on the Braden River that day that he shouldn't have. One theory is that Pat, acting as a good Samaritan that he was...

went to go help another boat. That's just the kind of person he was. If he had been out on the water and had seen that another boater needed something, he would have been the first to respond and go help. When Pat's boat was found, the engine was in neutral and the gas had run out. So here's how that theory goes. If Pat saw someone who needed help, he would have put his boat in neutral and would have stopped what he was doing.

He would leave the engine running since he was just making a quick stop. Maybe he was pulling up to a dock or wanted to stop and look at something. But that's when Pat might have seen or heard something that he shouldn't have. And he found himself in trouble. Maybe drug dealers or something else. The Braden River is generally considered a safe place, but not always. Bad people can do bad things just about anywhere, including the Braden River.

According to Pat's family, there have been motorboat thefts, people harvesting fish illegally, and drugs being moved up and down the river before. So it's not too far of a stretch to speculate about whether Pat might have run into something that he shouldn't have. The Manatee Sheriff's Office did their best to look into some of these possibilities, but they didn't find anything. According to them, there was no evidence of any drug smuggling activity on the river that day.

They also looked into the possibility that he was killed after he came across fishermen using illegal gill nets. But there was no evidence of that either. Now, what about specific suspects? Throughout the investigation, the sheriff's department talked to as many people as possible, one of whom was Damon Crestwood. Damon Crestwood was a chef and former restaurant owner who was a friend of Pat's brother.

According to Pat's son Miles, his dad and Damon were never close, but knew each other and spent time together over the years. Pat's brother and Damon met around 1990 and became fast friends. But according to several people, Damon's behavior drastically changed and became what they described as increasingly erratic following Pat's death.

Even though the two weren't close at all, Damon reportedly began to suffer from annual mental breakdowns around the same time as Pat's death anniversary. He would go down to the river where he would just cry and cry for hours. He also started using hardcore drugs like crystal meth. Then another thing seemed to connect Damon Crestwood to Pat Mullins, a boat.

When Pat's boat was returned to the family, they all noticed some strange red paint marks on it that they said weren't there before. Well, Damon also had a boat at the time, a boat with big red stripes across it. Damon also parked his boat in the Manatee River, close to where the river opens up to Tampa Bay, the same area where Pat's body was found.

Investigators contacted Damon to see if they could collect a few of the red paint chippings from his boat to compare against the ones found on Pat's boat. But he refused and said he had nothing to do with what happened to Pat. In one particular incident on Memorial Day 2013, a lot of Pat's family and friends got together, including Damon.

And according to Pat's son, Miles, he saw Damon tie a rope to his dog and then tie the rope around himself. He thought the rope was tied in almost the same exact way as the one found on Pat's body. Damon Crestwood eventually died in 2017 after a fatal overdose of meth and was never officially considered a suspect in Pat's death.

but some people have reservations about that and suspect that he might have known a lot more about the case than what he was saying. After Damon's suspicious death at just 48 years old, his daughter allowed the police to take a paint chip from his boat to test against the red paint found on Pat's boat.

According to Pat's family, the investigators said the paint was a match. However, they said it was, quote, not important to the investigation. That's because the paint found on Pat's boat is a super common type of paint. A lot of boats had the same brand and color of paint. It could have come from anywhere. And it didn't necessarily have anything to do with his death or Damon's boat.

So Damon Crestwood has become just one name thrown around as a possible suspect in Pat's death. Other than strange behavior, nothing definitively links him to anything criminal. And besides Damon Crestwood, no other suspects have been identified. More than 10 years have passed since Patrick Mullen's sudden and mysterious death, and there still seem to be far more questions than answers.

Pat's widow, Jill, still hasn't given up hope that someday these answers will surface. And she hasn't wavered from the belief that Pat was murdered and didn't commit suicide out on his boat that day. In 2017, she put up her house for sale and remarried.

As recently as 2020, she was seen still putting up signs and posters on the fairgrounds at the annual Manatee County Fair in hopes that someone would come forward with new information about Pat's death. Also in 2020, Jill and her attorney finally succeeded in getting the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to classify the case as a homicide after being labeled as undetermined for so many years.

Unfortunately, that seems to be the latest update on the case, and it's unclear how often the Manatee Sheriff's Department or the Florida Department of Law Enforcement actively work the case as an open homicide. To date, no one's been arrested. Not a single suspect besides Damon Crestwood have ever been named, and the exact circumstances surrounding Pat Mullen's mysterious death remain a mystery.

Is this a case of suicide? The well-liked high school librarian killed himself despite never showing any signs of depression or trouble? Or does the forensic evidence suggest Pat, a man just months away from retirement, was murdered that day on his boat in 2013? Let me know what you think. To share your thoughts on the story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook.

To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales. After each episode, I release a bonus episode where I share my personal thoughts and opinions about the case. Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode. We release a new episode every Monday. If you love the show, consider leaving us a positive review or tell friends and family about us.

Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please join me next week. We'll have a brand new case and a brand new story to talk about. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings. Forensic Tales is a Rockefeller Audio Production.

This show is written and produced by me, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola. For a small monthly contribution, you can help create new compelling cases for the show, help fund research, and assist with production and editing costs.

For supporting the show, you'll become one of the first to listen to new ad-free episodes and snag exclusive show merchandise not available anywhere else. To learn about how you can support this show, head over to our Patreon page, patreon.com slash forensic tales, or simply click the support link in the show notes.

You can also support the show by leaving a positive review or telling friends and family about us. Forensic Tales is a podcast made possible by our Patreon producers. Tony A, Christine B, Sherry A, Michael D, Nicola, Jerry M, Brian W, Megan G, Yorelli,

If you'd like to become a producer of this show, head over to our Patreon page or email me 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.

Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.