There was no suspense about the prison sentence of Iowa man Todd Mullis. As a matter of law, he was going to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in the first-degree murder of his wife, Amy Mullis. That is what happened on Friday.
At sentencing, Mullis disowned the strategy of his trial attorney, who said that Amy Mullis was indeed murdered, just not by the defendant. Mullis asserted on Friday that he never agreed that his spouse was killed by anyone. Instead, he maintained that her death was a fatal accident.
Prosecutors said that the defendant ambushed his wife on their pig farm on November 10, 2018. The victim was recovering from a recent surgery. He stabbed her to death with a corn rake, then tried to make it look like an accident, prosecutors said.
Jurors faced evidence not just about the immediate crime scene, but about the couple’s rocky marriage. In part, they were asked to decide whether their union was on the mend after Amy Mullis allegedly engaged in an affair, or whether Todd Mullis long contemplated killing her.
According to authorities, Todd Mullis’s hostility manifested itself in disturbing web searches and controlling behavior. Investigators said that Amy Mullis wanted to leave him amid another affair, and she voiced concern about what he might do to her, according to a Delaware County Sheriff’s Office affidavit obtained by Law&Crime.
“If he catches me,” she said, “he might make me disappear.”
[Screengrab via Law&Crime Network]