Alex Hagood’s Perspective on Barbara Mullenix’s Life and Death
(“Runaway Love,” Forensic Files)
Updated with information from October 2022
When a jury contemplated the young couple who ended Barbara Mullenix’s life, the term “mitigating circumstances” probably didn’t come to mind.
Barbara, a 56-year-old dreamer still hoping for an acting career, sustained dozens of stab wounds from at least two weapons, including a dining utensil left deeply embedded in one of her eyes.
The attackers placed her body in a cardboard box, which they slid into the water at the Newport Harbor Yacht Club, nine miles away from her home in Huntington Beach, California, in 2006.
Afterward, the perpetrators took a joy ride through Florida and Louisiana.
The murderers were Ian Allen, 21, and his girlfriend of three months, 17-year-old Rachael Scarlett Mullenix — Barbara’s daughter.
To most viewers of “Runaway Love,” the Forensic Files episode about the case, the homicide seemed like a betrayal of biblical proportions, a woefully entitled girl snuffing out the life of the woman who gave her life.
But as it turns out, Barbara’s son, Alex Hagood, thinks Rachael was more a victim than a predator.
Alex, who is Rachael’s half brother, would like the world to know that there’s a lot more to the story than the 22 minutes of true-crime TV that vilified Rachael for all the world to see.
In a phone interview with ForensicFilesNow.com, Alex discussed his tumultuous home life with his mother and his love for his younger half-sister:
What was your sister like? Growing up, Rachael was a good kid. She made good grades. She was on a couple of basketball teams, she did ballet, and she did gymnastics. The press tried to portray her as this horrible person, and she wasn’t.
Rachael said that your mother could be a lot of fun at times. Did you find the same? I’d have my friends come over and they’d think my mom was cool. She would buy us popsicles or root beers or whatever. And then the minute they were gone, I thought, they didn’t know her.
She could be like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. My girlfriend at the time could see it.
Was your mother trying to protect Rachael from Ian by attempting to stop them from running away together? Before my mother’s death, there were lots of drugs and alcohol around — she liked Skyy vodka and took uppers and downers, and she would party with Ian and Rachael.
My mother realized that Rachael and Ian wanted to go away. She couldn’t make it on her own without alimony and child support, so she didn’t want Rachael to leave.
You’ve said that you doubt the allegations that Rachael had already attacked your mother with a knife in a failed murder attempt in 2005. Why? I moved in with my mother in 2003 when she lived in Oklahoma. A couple of times when I was about to leave, she self-inflicted wounds and threatened to say I did it. She chased me around with a baseball bat. Rachael told me about this same kind of behavior.
Barbara wanted to be the creator and control everyone. She wanted to be the center of attention. If you have children, it’s not like, let’s make a movie – you can’t just push reset.
Emotionally and mentally, she choked Rachael.
Do you believe the contentions that Barbara would deliberately try to embarrass and humiliate Rachael? My mom would call our jobs, our bosses and start problems for no reason. She did it because she felt she was losing control of us. But you can’t do stuff like that. Bosses will fire you.
My stepfather traveled a lot for his job, so he wasn’t always around for Rachael. I tried to protect her. But I had to get out on my own and away from my mother. I moved to Oregon to let everything cool off. I thought my mother would never find me there. She found me in two weeks and she’d call my job.
I’m shocked that the murder happened, but then I’m not. You can’t go around treating people like that and think nothing will happen. At any time, anything can spin out of control.
Do you think Rachael participated in the murder? If anything, Ian was the one behind planning everything. He had a third person.
Were things ever good between Rachael and your mother? The first few years of Rachael’s life, yes, my mother was calm. She dressed Rachael in the best clothes and taught her the best manners.
How have you yourself coped with the murder? It’s taken me 10 years to work through it. I went back to college, got associate’s degrees, one in psychology. I wanted to see what I could make of myself in the aftermath.
Would you like to see Rachael released from jail? Absolutely. She’s suffered enough. I haven’t been able to hug her since 2005.♠
Rachael Mullenix was released from prison on October 14, 2022 and is with her father, Bruce, in Southern California, according to a tipster. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation no longer lists her as an inmate.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Tubi
I mean, even if Barbara wasn’t the mother Forensic Files portrayed her to be, she didn’t deserve to die…
No it doesn’t, but this article is exemplary of this site’s goal: providing more information than 22 minutes allow.
In this case, we are hearing the extenuating circumstances, the details of Rachael’s motive. We are also getting an account of the victim that isn’t biased in the way every person is treated once they’re dead. MJ was a great singer but when he died everyone seemed to forget what he did to those kids.
So basically, FF told one side, a family member is telling his side. I find it fascinating. And no, she didnt deserve to die, but this explains why Rachael felt she had no other choice to get away.
How do you know ‘Rachael felt she had no other choice to get away.’ You have no idea what she was thinking – you’re merely inferring, as her brother is, seeing as he presumably knew nothing of her appalling plan, and he, quite understandably, is minimising her status as a loving sibling.
Family cannot be expected to be objective; their judgements are irrelevant. Even facts and background from family have to be carefully filtered for bias. For all you know she may have hated her mother and murdered for that reason only. The reason largely doesn’t matter.
It’s absurd to aver as some kind of apologia for her crime that she had ‘no choice’ but to murder in order to ‘get away.’ Judge and jury had no time for such nonsense. You might also note that she tried to throw the b/friend under the bus to protect herself, when he was accepting responsibility, but her lies and denials were shown as such.
Talk about inverting victim/perp responsibility!
I never said she had no choice, I said perhaps SHE FELT she had no choice. Your statement that we don’t know what goes on in criminals’ minds is working against your own argument.
I also never said “Poor Rachel”. What she did was despicable. I’m just saying there’s two sides – and there are – to every murder. The prosecution provides what they determine are the facts, and the criminals or family may provide the background knowledge of them that helps us to understand better the driving factors in their decision-making process, why they felt the compulsion to commit a crime.
It is not healthy to be unable to consider the background of a criminal and the psychological influences upon them and merely paint them in derogatory terms like bitch, psycho, or worse. While that is true, that isn’t the extent of their being and it helps the justice and reform system to understand their lives in order to help them do the best on the inside to improve what life they have left, and come to terms with what they have done.
Many of the people on FF are monsters. However they are also people, and people are complicated creatures and I think it’s selfish and dangerous to wave away any information that God forbid causes you to rethink a motive as anything but ‘she’s a sick @&$&@*’.
Maybe I’m just more fascinated by psychology and forensic psychology than the average viewer, but I try to put myself in the shoes of the killers in the more complex cases to understand the motives better.
You’re revising your argument: the qualifier ‘perhaps’; the muted ‘she didn’t deserve to die’ to ‘appalling’. What ‘she felt’ is neither here nor there for law and morals, and is entirely uninteresting. And it’s of entirely no significance what she felt/thought she felt/didn’t feel – whatever. ‘She felt’ very wrong – period. No, you didn’t say ‘poor R’, but your reductionist psychologising (the endemic problem with psychology in court, plus the fact that prosecution and defence almost always find psychologists to disagree, rendering their perspective hopeless, effectively neutral and placing arbitration between competing claims back in the jury’s court) detracts from substantive moral judgement, reflecting ‘understanding’, even ‘sympathy’ (certainly thinking her brother expresses).
Lest you protest that that’s not what you meant, ‘extenuating’ = ‘serving to lessen the seriousness of an offence. The court found NO extenuating circumstances – and there are none for this crime. There are reasons as grounds and reasons as motives for murder. There is no ‘side’ in this case as though culpability is contested, and you aren’t privvy in any case to the perp’s ‘side’, only the facts of the murder as reported. So you approach is one of lessening – or seeking to lessen – culpability.
Yes, rehabilitation does engage with the psychosocial status of the perp – but that’s a different matter and you’ve shifted the basis of your argument there to that issue. I’m wasn’t addressing her rehabilitation, merely the proper judgement of her crime.
No, it’s not dangerous to ‘wave away’ motive/reason/ground – because for reasons already stated it’s largely irrelevant. Where, per law, there’s evidence of mental illness impairing knowledge of right and wrong, as adjudged by the (more scientific and clinical than psychology) psychiatry, so be it, otherwise the matters you consider are of peripheral, human interest of the ‘Oprah’ variety (and when rehabilitation’s in issue).
Ask yourself this: howsoever you ‘walk the walk’ of the perp, can and how should that make any difference to the jury’s evaluation? In this case, how could ‘understanding’ this wretch make any difference to the sentence? She planned and executed a horrible murder, then lied and blamed her accomplice. What’s the point of understanding the whys and wherefores? What difference does it make?
By all means speculate why she did it – but wherever you wander with such speculation properly gets you no nearer to the matter and fact of wrongfulness, adjudged according to law. Whether you intended to posit extenuation or not (and despite using the word), that is the logic of your argument…
The only formal role for psychology viz Mullenix is therapeutic in the context of rehabilitation, as she will be released. No forensic evaluation at trial was needed: there was no question of her sanity.
Why would you tell your boyfriend you will wait on him after he supposedly killed her .. Mother’s dead and people feel soo sorry for the poor little white girl who only get 25 yrs while a black man doing life for a gram of coke
… Because she was psychologically immature, naive, foolish and twisted. But I don’t think there’s the sorrow for her you suggest: the jury, media and commenters here largely seem to see her for what she is (or was): appalling. I say ‘was’ because I hope she sees what she did for what it was – profoundly wicked – rather than justifying it to herself in any degree. If that’s the case and she’s thoroughly remorseful, that’s the best that can be hoped for. She ought to be in psychological pain for the rest of her life: that’s what guilt and remorse does (and, arguably, what it’s for). She probably ought not to bear children after release…
If “a black man” is “doing life” for a gram of coke, it’s because he had 344 prior arrests and convictions, including selling coke.
So true, they always let the white girl get away with murder.
That’s a lie, they have proved white judges give black men more prison time than whites.
Allie:
Rachel’s mother may have made her mad. Barbara Mullenix sounds like she was a troubled person. But that’s sort of irrelevant to the deed. Can you imagine a murder defense in which the defendant says to the judge: “But your honor, he/she made me mad!” Not much of a defense. The fact that Barbara abused Rachel doesn’t justify her actions. The brutality of the murder, yes. But also, Rachel’s lying and trying to pin all of it on Ian Allen shows what kind of a person Rachel was/is. A murderer and psychopath.
Exactly.
You’re correct she did it and she did what she was doing and did anybody miss the fact that she was his girlfriend of three months 3 months and she planned us and carried it out which means that she was playing this for years.
No; FF isn’t ‘telling a side’ – it’s (at least attempting) to report facts objectively; something that family members cannot, and cannot be expected to, do per colour of emotion. Facts, insofar as they are, have no ‘sides’, and criminal law deals in fact – which is why the motive for the crime is largely irrelevant, particularly as there was no question of the perps’ identity, so no need to narrow the field by identifying who might have ‘reason’ to kill.
You are under an illusion that motive plays a significant part in courts’ judgement, when it plays little (when the perp’s id is clear per forensics or circumstance) or none. In this case, once it was established that both parties played a full and approximately equal part in the murders (not self-defence, negligence, nor accident) they are accordingly judged, and the court’s not interested in the whys and wherefores (as you are). They did it; it was appalling, and was adjudged so. No ‘poor Rachel’ (or, indeed, the boyfriend she tried to throw under the bus and who was very possibly roped in to doing this by her and has had HIS life ruined – though entirely his own responsibility).
Poor Rachel my ass!
You’re right on all counts and I for one of discuss it she only did 14 years for this talk about bias of the court systems.
Stabbed in the eye while alive. She deserves to rot in hell.
MJ did not do all that stuff to them kids, one little rumor spread, and a bunch of parents saw the dollar signs and wanted to cash in with a lawsuit so he was accused.
I was incarcerated with Rachel in 2008 and if she can do that to her mother there’s no telling what she would do to any of you. Dismiss me with how bad she had it at home. I know women that had it a lot worse and they didn’t stab their mom over 40 times.
Deserve to die? Did she deserve to be mean and unkind to others without consequence?
So, should the consequence for being mean and unkind to others be a knife through the eye and death?
You mean emotionally and mentally abused, pushed beyond your limits day in day out, every day of your formative years by the person who is supposed to love you unconditionally? Yeah that is apparently totally acceptable to some folks as ‘tough love.’ People are just lovely up there on their pedestals. Bet the view is great, but it must be dizzying looking down on others.
Karin: ‘You mean emotionally and mentally abused, pushed beyond your limits day in day out, every day of your formative years’. That’s your construction, not established fact. And, frankly, if a person plots the murder of their mother by multiple stabbings, dumps them in the sea, goes shopping, then tries to blame it all on their boyfriend (who hadn’t thrown her under the bus), viewing them with disdain ‘from a pedestal’ is a place that the great majority of normal, decent people would also be. And that’s exactly where the jury where — or have you forgotten that? It’s your view that’s perverse, not Mark’s. Mullenix’s (and Allen’s) actions were profoundly wicked – period. I support her eventual release because she was immature at commission, and hope she’s deeply remorseful and rehabilitated… otherwise she’s a danger to society.
I just love how the brother thinks she should be let out of prison because “she’s suffered enough”???! It’s like…maybe she should’ve just thought about that before she pummeled her mother to death with a knife!!!! I have no sympathy for her AT ALL!!!! She knew exactly what she was doing and she chose to MURDER her mother because she wouldn’t ALLOW her to go whatever she wanted!!! I remember being so pissed off at my parents MANY TIMES because they had certain rules and demands I had to follow as a teenager…and they had EVERY RIGHT TO DO SO…it’s THEIR HOME!!!! And by law if anything happened to me out there in such a dangerous world…they would be responsible for it!!! That’s called PARENTING!!!! So sorry she didn’t like being told what to do but welcome to being a teenager…everyone goes through it…but most of us just sulk or sick are teeth under our breath and FOLLOW WHAT WERE TOLD TO DO abs pray for college!!!! We don’t turn around and MURDER OUR PARENTS between don’t get our way!!!! She’s a friggin narcissistic psychopath and she deserves to be exactly where she is until they carry her ass out of prison in a pine box!!! I feel sorry for her brother but if he wants to listen to her bitch and moan and fill his head with COMPLETE AND UTTER LIES…that’s his choice…but thank God the parole board won’t be that NAIVE!!!! She made her bed…NOW SHE CAN LIE IN IT!!! And it’s the judicial systems OBLIGATION to send a message that this type of behavior WILL NOT BE TOLERATED in this country!!!! I’m so tired of the court systems allowing a psychopath to MANIPULATE their decisions and rulings!!! She needs to work on getting the Lord’s forgiveness and stop worrying about getting out…if she doesn’t repent for this heinous sin…she’ll be in HELL with all the other murderers!!!!
I was in jail with Rachel Mullinex and she has so much from once and it was all the boyfriend’s fault.
Not even remotely. Sounds like Rachael is still manipulating people in prison.
Thanks, Rebecca, for an interesting perspective on the case. One can only be sorry for Alex for the suffering he’s experienced. But while it’s understandable, even admirable, that he defends Mullenix, and assuming his observations are fair, it properly makes negligible difference to the gravity of what they did. There IS a question of who, if either, played the greater part, yet, morally and legally, that is of little significance: it’s clear that EVEN if his idea, and he did the killing, she aided and abetted. That’e enough legally, and it goes a long way morally to condemning her. However, it seems that even if she had no part in the actual killing (and regardless of the disputed earlier attempt), she was at least as much a part of the planning – the ‘idea’ – as Allen and may well have incited him to murder.
It should go without saying that plenty of ‘teens have parents who mistreat them in ways worse than Alex describes – physical and/or emotional neglect; sexual abuse – who don’t murder their parents. Indeed, what he describes suggests to me that Barbara may have been psychologically unstable: difficult for her daughter, to be sure, but an ocean away from explaining or justifying premeditated killing. Barbara seems to have cared for Mullenix, albeit expressed in ways that were unwanted and distressing (per psychological instability?). Is a careLESS parent better?
To your questions to Alex:
1 Whether M was a horrible person or not is irrelevant: she certainly did a horrible thing.
2 A Jekyll and Hyde character is good some of the time: better than being awful all of the time…
3 Money may well have been a motive for Barbara wanting her daughter there – but she had the law on side: a 17-y-o has no RIGHT to go off with a boyfriend (plus the issue of statutory rape) and had no reasonable expectation of being allowed to do so.
4 “If anything, Ian was the one behind planning everything.” Implausible and contrary to court finding. If she wasn’t part of the planning and it ‘just happened’ by his hand spontaneously, a normal person would be horrified and traumatised, certainly not helping to dispose of the body (it HAD to involve two people) and then going off on a jaunt with the perp!
5 “You can’t go around treating people like that and think nothing will happen. At any time, anything can spin out of control.” Explanation, not justification: decent people do NOT “spin out of control” to murder!
I hope when M is released she’s a changed person, repentant of the terrible crime she committed.
Following my earlier comment I’ve done some reading.
Barbara had been stabbed more than 50 times by at least two different knives, officials said. Is it more likely that Allen used two knives – or each used a different knife. The answer is clear…
“I’ll never take responsibility for it. Every day without her is a struggle. I can’t believe this is happening to me. Everyone was always against my mom; I was always there to protect her,” she told the judge. “How can you do that to your own mother? I couldn’t; there’s no way I could. She was my life. If I supposedly did this, my family would be the first to know.” This doesn’t square with Alex’s claim of a mother abuse to her daughter, does it? Of course, because Mullenix is disclaiming the crime, she has to deny a motive for it. Yet Alex – if not stating that she DID do it – IS stating that it was understandable given Barbara’s alleged abuse – that there WAS a motive. So Alex and his sister offer incompatible accounts here.
In the final analysis Alex appears to accept her guilt (while contradicting that), thinking it was (to some degree) understandable/justified. Why cite Barbara’s behaviour at all if not material? And it’s only reasonable to believe that BOTH stabbed Barbara with their own knives. Each perp blames the other, so their evidence cancels each-other’s out.
Furthermore, I find this persuasive: “Barbara had some challenging times in her life. Somewhere along the way she developed an alcohol problem … but not once were her children ever taken from her. Not even an investigation into her parenting skills, yet she has been portrayed by her ex-husband and her daughter as some out-of-control drunken abuser,” Angela Tietzer (prosecution) said. Now, if Mullenix’s father, who defended her, was accurate in claiming that Barbara was ‘the mother from hell’, why did he do nothing to prevent her abuse? Why where social services not called in (as prosecution suggests?) The answer is obvious: that Barbara’s behaviour DIDN’T amount to abuse (but could well have been ‘difficult’); that suggesting that is some kind of spurious justification for a crime that is in any case is claimed not to have been perpetrated by the Mullenix (the family gets illogical here…); and that a father’s love transcends his daughter’s guilt.
Part of the prosecution’s summation encapsulates my own reading of this sad case:
“Yet the evidence presented showed a child who had the better things in life, including big birthday parties and the larger room in the house. A teenager that dictated where she wanted to live and with who, including being allowed to go to an alternative school once a week leaving her the rest of her free time to spend with her boyfriend — a boyfriend that she secured an overnight pass for and a signed permission slip. Her only job was working as a background actress with her mother. Does this really sound like abuse? Barbara Mullenix may have been far from perfect, but there is nothing that can be said about her faults that would remotely begin to justify this horrific crime.”
Great interview! What a fascinating, multifaceted tale.
This tells us all we need to know of Mullenix’s rebuttal of guilt and claim of kidnap:
Hours after her mother was brutally stabbed to death, Mullenix sent a text message to the man accused of her killing: “I love you. Am I going to see you soon? Are you in trouble? Can I call you?”
“Out of all the people you can call … you call your mother’s killer? You don’t call dad, 911 or friends?’’ asked Deputy District Attorney Sonia Balleste during cross-examination Thursday. “Correct,’’ M said.
She claimed Allen kidnapped her, admitting that she did not try to get help although she had several chances to alert others to her alleged abduction. She said she tried to shove Allen away from her mom, but added she didn’t try to fend him off in any other way, such as wrestle the knife away or try to hit him. “Did it ever occur to you to whack him with lamp?” Balleste asked. “No,” she replied.
Afterward, she said she did not check to see whether her mother was alive or call police.
M also admitted helping Allen clean the crime scene by sponging up her mother’s blood, packing her mother’s belongings in trash bags and dumping them. She also accompanied Allen as he dumped her mother’s corpse in Newport Bay. After Allen killed her mum, she alleged she was kidnapped. Balleste pointed out that Mullenix could have alerted someone when she and Allen stayed at two motels and visited a convenience store.
Murderous liar or abused victim of injustice?
50 stab wounds. Reminiscent of “Murder on the Orient Express,” in which the killers felt justified. Fact and fiction: Where is the line?
Lot of self-appointed experts in trauma psychology and social services in these comments.
Why isn’t this simply a matter of law and morals rather than ‘trauma psychology and social services’? Morals, at least, requires no ‘expertise’.
It is not a justification of any crime to discuss motive and explain, psychologically speaking, why someone would do this or do that. It is simply another way to look at crimes and for some of us fascinated with the human psyche and love true crime, understanding the way someone’s mind works when they commit to and then commit a crime is very interesting.
Psychology is an important part of 21st century crime solving, and when people get proper treatment for illnesses, many of these crimes can be prevented.
Morals don’t always win out when someone is being abused beyond belief. Not everyone is as grand a human being as you.
I suggest you educate yourself immediately about psychological health. Forensic Psychologists exist for a reason.
Rachel was old enough to simply move out. What she did to her mother deserves punishment. No excuse for what she did. Let her suffer the consequences.
I think Rachael was too young legally to move out – she wasn’t 18 yet.
Rebecca: Correct: legally she wasn’t empowered to leave, and it seems as if her mother may well have used the law had she tried – partic the statutory rape issue. Per the case this is no matter: if, as she claims, her mother was abusing her she could’ve gone to police or social workers (she was already on SW radar per the special ed, presumably) had said she felt unable to live at home. The tacit lament by the perps in these cases (even if we believe she was being abused in some way) is there was no option but killing – which is nonsense.
Here we very likely have a brat, complicit in seeming illegal sexual activity, which her mother quite understandably was upset with, regardless of her own shortcomings, who chose the worst possible course of action when she didn’t get her way, then tried to blame the b/friend. Even were she able to walk out with no legal consequence, was she assuming her parents would fund her to live independently? How did she think she’d/they’d live?
Some additional info from the tv programme ‘It Takes a Killer’: Mullenix had an abortion (not Allen’s) at 15 (with her mother’s support). Given that an abortion is at least traumatic, her mother’s apparent antipathy to the relationship with Allen is somewhat understandable: could another unwanted child result? Mullenix was certainly ‘wayward’ – though her brother may attribute that to the mother’s dysfunction. Regardless of that, the mother’s concern about her daughter’s behaviour seems understandable.
I do wonder what the father was doing about the mother-daughter’s febrile, sometimes violent, relationship… Were professionals involved? If not, why? While hindsight is… you know… is seems clear that this was a dangerously volatile relationship that needed monitoring, with poor behaviour on both sides.
If there’s still any question that Mullenix lied through her teeth about being abducted (as well as her having nothing to do with the murder – rubbish), she’s shown on store video on the run with Allen breezily shopping with him with the mother’s stolen credit card, and professing love to him in a police car while being secretly recorded.
If anything, Allen comes out of this slightly better than she does, for he tried to take the blame while she was blaming him.
While I understand Alex is loyal to his sister, it’s most disappointing that he fails to condemn her appalling, planned murder, then causal ability to dispose of the body and run off with her boyfriend. Thankfully, very, very few teens would have the capacity for this wickedness. Alex explains and justifies – but he fails to state the one thing any decent person should expect to hear: that to plan and execute the murder of one’s mother can never be explained/justified and MUST be deemed appalling and wicked – and therefore justifying extreme punishment. Instead he avers that Mullenix has ‘suffered enough’. What suffering must the victim have experienced as the girl she raised repeatedly plunged a knife into her…?
We have no power to judge anyone (only her and God know the truth). She will have to deal with God on her judgment day.
S: Oh yes, we do — and we have to, to remove dangerous people from society at the very least. *Ultimately* for Xtians she will be judged by God… but in the meantime she has to be judged by man lest all murderers are given a pass. No church argues that earthly justice — punishment — is impermissible or immoral, even if it is very far from perfect and can be totally wrong. A repentant sinner may be forgiven by God, of course, but that is no reason for those damaged by the loss of a loved one and society in general (which is itself injured by wickedness/wrongdoing/murder) to require something like justice in the here and now.
Anyone who intentionally takes human life has, morally speaking, forfeited their own. That such is not generally required is a merciful favour to the guilty which comprehends (grievous) failure — in this case, youth and shared complicity. Mullenix is enjoying that favour and deserves no more.
Actually if you’re looking at it from a biblical stance yes we do we are commanded to judge and rebuke people who sin and if you notice although it says judge not at least you be judged it also says everybody will be judged in the end glad I could clear this up
D: For sure; Jesus consistently rebukes — judges — the wicked, as well as exhorting the rendering to Caesar — representing the secular world — what is Caesar’s. And for Jews, equally, the Torah expresses God’s judgment on the wicked. Judgement is, then, necessary and proper for those who believe in Him, albeit, crucially, it is not the final word for Xtians, which resides in forgiveness for the penitent when He judges us — a forgiveness freely given in love for us if we accept it.
I have to agree with what Marcus has posted. That she/he/they believed to murder Barbara was the only option is completely wrong on so many levels. Why did the father not do anything if the mother/daughter relationship was so bad & there was abuse ?
Hello Kylie: Thanks; I’m not of course blaming the father – but given that Alex promotes Barbara’s behaviour as so oppressive and dysfunctional as some kind of explanation for Mullenix’s behaviour, that’s the elephant in the room: why was the father *seemingly* [emphasis] passive within this tempestuous – which I’d find as the third party intolerable – relationship? What was he doing about the ‘child-abusive drunk’ he was married to?
It’s one of the reasons I suspect Alex overstates Barbara’s, and understates Mullenix’s, dysfunctional behaviour (and I don’t blame him being loyal to the living…) Fundamentally, and as you state, however bad Barbara’s behaviour, it goes nowhere near to explaining Mullenix’s appalling matricide. Even if the mother was out of control (and that hasn’t been independently evidenced), the daughter certainly was (the special schooling reflects something wrong) – then that got dialled-up to terrible effect that day…
To be sure, some children might say, and mean, they hate a parent, and the parent might merit hatred (eg, child abuse) – but, thankfully, they very largely don’t plot and execute their murder. Decent people might not be able to control their hatred, but they know they must stop well short of killing, even if the idea could enter their head.
In the first place, the father of the family should fix the issue before this horrible crime happened. So guys if you have a daughter and wife issues, fix it as long as you can.
Your holier than thou approach is very appalling, Marcus. Do you really believe you have all the answers?
‘Answers’ to what? I didn’t suggest I had answers to anything. I wish it were possible to have answers to murder, then we might be able to prevent it…
And if you demure from my robust judgement of a spoiled brat who with her lowlife boyfriend stabs her mother multiple times and dumps her body, you won’t get much sympathy from the public. The clue for that’s in the jury’s judgement! Try asking whether you’d be so ‘understanding’ if it were your mother who, for the moments before death, knew her daughter was murdering her…
Sheesh. A brat slaughters her mother and tries to pin it all on her sugar-daddy, and you’re the one who gets called “appalling.” Holier than thou? Holier than a murderous, narcissistic sociopath maybe but that’s hardly appalling or even unusual.
To put Mullenix’s sentence into some perspective, per the case of Tucker Cipriano/Mitchell Young, the former was 19 when he premeditatedly murdered his father with a bat, with the help of Young, and injured other family members.
https://murderpedia.org/male.C/c/cipriano-tucker.htm
They ultimately confessed and are serving LWOP. A little older than M’x, for a crime of similar gravity, their whole-life sentence suggests that hers is quite reasonable…
If you dig a little deeper into the Cipriano case, you’ll find that Tucker – having been born to a drug addict – had many, many well-documented psychological issues and had been on many medications and in intensive therapy since he was SIX years old. He exacerbated that by taking street drugs as he got older, including the one called “Spice,” which is essentially poison…. no one knows exactly what it’s made from, as the formula changes from batch to batch, and is in the same category as the horrible “bath salts.” His brain was never normal, and he didn’t have a chance at a normal life. The differences between Tucker Cipriano and Rachael Mullinex are: She was certainly more in control of her thoughts and actions than was Tucker, and Tucker took responsibility for his crime and accepted a sentence of life without parole at age 19, while Rachael continues to deny and blame and whine.
Many people are abused yet never murder their abusers. At the end of the day, Rachael is a murderer; a diabolical, premeditated murder. She should’ve gotten life without parole.
You’re 100% right
Rachel should be in prison for killing her mom…no doubt about that
But her mom was no saint either….she was a drunk abusive psychotic person who made her life miserable
The media and press clearly doesn’t bother about Rachel’s side of story
N: But what difference would it make? No, the mother was certainly NOT presented as a saint (please evidence), and you contradict this claim by stating she was a ‘psycho’ – which you got from said media! The point is that whatever the mother’s behaviour she was premeditatedly murdered by Mullenix and IN NO CIRCUMSTANCES can that be remotely justified or ‘understood.’ Who cares about the mother’s behaviour in this context? Forget the peripherals and focus on the essence (like the jury) – unspeakable murder.
Well that’s because her mother didn’t stab her to death and plunge a steak knife through her daughters EYE BALL!!! Plus…the mother abusing the daughter is ONLY WHEN crazy Rachel hit her first!!! I don’t believe anything Rachel says seeing that she murdered her own mother abs completely tried to pin it on Ian!!!! She’s a born LIAR!!! Rachel was avid ice towards her mother every time she laid down the law to her that she wasn’t allowed to stay out ALL NIGHT LONG!!! She didn’t like the fact that she had to follow her mothers orders!!! She was a problem child and then became physically abusive as a teenager!!! And now her abs her brother will come up with any LIE just to get out of prison early!!!! Like SO MANY PSYCHOPATHS who commit violent murders…because the victim they murdered is DEAD and can’t speak for themselves…they and they’re filthy attorneys make up BLATANT LIES (like they’ve done from the beginning) to get her an early release!!! She’s a PIG and she deserves to spend the rest of her life in prison and then she has the pits of hell to look forward to as long as she keeps LYING to get what she wants!!!! She’s better worry about her SOUL instead of getting out of prison!!!! She’s still lying and blaming EVERYONE else for her heinous crimes!!!! She’s a friggin NUT!!!
I think the half brother and the dad have a hard time seeing that Rachael is a murderer. The brother is saying that the boyfriend brought a third person in (to justify that there were 2 people). He just can’t see that Rachael participated. He justifies his mother’s drinking to her getting killed.
NOBODY DESERVES TO BE MURDERED. They killed her and disposed of her body like trash.
I think for the brother to heal it would serve him to see that his mother was not the evil one.
She had crocodile tears when they interrogated her and at her trial. Then threw her boyfriend of 3 months under the bus. I believe when he noticed her and was infatuated by her, she used him to talk him into murdering her mother. So she could get away from her. Seems like her mother wanted what was best for her daughter. And she was a smart daughter. Good grades in school, on 2 baseball teams and in gymnastics and dance. Come on she is a manipulative spoiled brat. Just sayin ♂️
I think there’s a good chance the feelings between her and her boyfriend were mutual. When you’re 17, going out with a 21-year-old can be quite a thrill ride.
The punishment for both Rachael and Ian would be that someone punches a knife thru their eyes while they are still alive.
I grew up with with her! Scarlett was my best friend. She was such an amazing person with a vibrant personality and she was the best friend. Barbara was abusive, delusional, and would subject her to terrible things, talk about sexually explicit content around all of her friends when we were just in 5 or 6 grade. Her mother had good days but she also had very, very, bad ones and this article is just the tip of the iceberg when it came to portraying that. Bruce is a great father and Scarlett did not deserve the fate she got at all. The way those shows demonized her, made her seem like a monster and that’s just not the case! Her own grandma would come and get us in school and take us to McDonald’s to eat together! She isn’t anything but a traumatized child that was abused in ways I can’t even bear to think about happening to my own kids but yet she’s the monster and Barbara is the victim yet again. Barbara was always a victim, and even in her death, Scarlett is still being oppressed by that. She will never live a normal life, have a family or kids, get married or find the love that she never knew but desperately seemed out from her dysfunctional and abusive mother……and that’s how her mother would have had it, if she was still alive.
“She will never live a normal life, have a family or kids, get married or find the love that she never knew…” How do you know? She’ll be young middle-aged on release, enabling all of that. And at least she has a life, unlike the older middle-aged mom she viciously, horribly murdered (then lied about to cast all blame on the b/friend).
No matter how poor a mother Barbara was, she wasn’t a murderer, unlike her daughter, and that makes the daughter a whole lot worse than her mother.
“Scarlett did not deserve the fate she got at all.” And Barbara did??? What fate would you suggest is fitting for a child who plots her mom’s murder with her b/friend by multiple stabbings, leaving the knife in her eye, dumping her body in water, then remorselessly driving off and cheerfully shopping (as shown on store camera)? Oh, and don’t forget the love she declared for the boyfriend she was secretly recorded as expressing in a police car – the same man she hours later blamed for killing the ‘mom I loved’.
Rachael is wicked (if she isn’t given what she did, who is?) and fully deserves what she got. Too many children and young people have awful parents. Thankfully they don’t murder them. Think on that (and correct your moral perspective).
Such an interesting perspective, Sarah – thanks for writing in!
I am a murderer…. I killed my abuser who I was with at the age of 14, married at the age of 17. By the age of 21 we had 3 children with him I was physically, verbally, and manipulated by my abuser. I served 17 years in prison… Because of that trauma it’s hard for me to trust or be around other people. When you were given low self-esteem it is hard to forget where you tend to go back when the red flag come up. Any trauma anyone suffers, it’s hard to forget.
It is just my humble opinion, that Rachael may be a narcissist. And by planing, viciously carrying out the murder of her mother, cleaning up the murder scene, dumping her mother’s remains, then fleeing with her boyfriend to live happily ever after, may imply that she is a narcissistic psychopath. We know she’s also a liar, as she lied to try to mitigate her involvement to save her skin.
All the justifications floating around here are moot. There are many out there, including myself, who grew up in extremely dysfunctional, and emotionally abusive families, as I did. And there are many out there that grew up in worse situations than I, regular physical abuse, and worse yet, incest. How many of those older teens do you hear about killing their parent(s)?
However, what makes me different than those that claim victimhood (even at 17), as I had sights on my future, and knew I would not always live at home in unloving, highly manipulative and malicious (sister), and at times crazy conditions.
I didn’t set out to plot the deaths of a horrible mother, a negligent father, or a sister who was up there with both of them.
I knew and saw firsthand narcissism, insecurity, conditional love, parental competition, lies and manipulation (sister), etc., etc., etc., so understand firsthand how it evolves and how it tears apart a home.
I also have siblings who claim “victimhood” in their adulthood when they were both out of control and a major part of the craziness and fail to own their own behaviors. I don’t consider myself a victim, I consider myself a survivor.
I don’t believe this young lady’s sentence was long enough.
Thanks for writing in with this — appreciate your point of view after all you’ve been through. I like your point about people who don’t factor in their own craziness in a dysfunctional situation. A one-sided telling doesn’t give us the full story.
Netty: Taking personal responsibility for the harm we cause others is, as you suggest, fundamental to justice: the fair apportionment of blame where it’s due and mitigation where it isn’t. FF cases are replete with perps seeking to minimise their actions by blaming others – including their parents (even when the perp’s well into adulthood), who allegedly deprived and/or abused them by commission or omission. Sometimes it’s lies; sometimes they may actually believe their deluded claim (aided and abetted by others who tell them they’re victims too!) But as you observe, there are always others – the majority, doubtless – who experienced the same or worse alleged deficits who didn’t murder, rape or whatever. This there isn’t the causal relationship between defendant and alleged causative experience that they or their defence claim; rather it’s a strategy for sympathy (not that sympathy has no place sometimes).
The world would probably be better if people ‘owned’ their moral failure and resolved to do better by others (and themselves) instead of seeking to excuse it via blame.
Mullenix did just this: her monstrous act was somehow her mother the victim’s fault, then her partner-in-crime’s whom she tried to throw under the bus. And to my other point – incredibly there are people posting here who are sympathetic to her along the ‘she was driven to it’ line. I’m glad you’re having none of that.
I would only perhaps disagree with you slightly about the sentence. As she was a youth (17) and necessarily immature I would not seek a very long sentence (25+ yrs) and certainly not LWOP. It looks like she’s served c 16 yrs, which I would regard as the minimum apt and could accept is insufficient. I would need to know what an adult would get for the identical crime, then discount it for the ‘youth’ factor by, say, 35-40%. If she’d have got 25 years with the poss of parole thereafter as an adult (and no adult should serve less than that, surely, for 1st degree murder?), 16 yrs is consistent with this quantum.
Let’s hope she repents of her terrible crime, remains remorseful, and settles to a productive life.
PS: Revisiting this case and doing some background reading, I learn that she showed no remorse because she denied the crime. Whether she kept that up or not I don’t know – but it’s not a promising start when you murder your mum but blame your boyf and a mystery third person (to explain the evidence that two were involved). That Barbara was stabbed *over 50 times* suggested the hatred for Barbara that Mullenix professed to others.
“I don’t care what the jury thought. I did not do that to my mother,” Mullenix, 19, told Orange County Superior Court Judge David Thompson. “I can’t even believe this is happening to me.” To prosecutor Sonia Balleste, the words reflected a killer who was an expert in displays of emotions designed to elicit pity. This was the same cold-hearted teenager, Balleste had argued in court, who manipulated her smitten boyfriend, Allen, into taking part in the murder.
“It’s just chilling to hear a sociopath talk like that,” Balleste said after Friday’s sentencing hearing. “If you ever get used to it, there’s a problem. I hope I never do.”
Instead of showing true remorse for the crime, she said, Mullenix remained fixated on herself. “It’s all about her and what she feels,” Balleste said. But as for her mother, “I don’t think she’s capable of feeling anything at all.”
Victim advocate: “Barbara had some challenging times in her life. Somewhere along the way she developed an alcohol problem … but not once were her children ever taken from her. Not even an investigation into her parenting skills, yet she has been portrayed by her ex-husband and her daughter as some out-of-control drunken abuser. Yet the evidence presented showed a child who had the better things in life, including big birthday parties and the larger room in the house. A teenager that dictated where she wanted to live and with who, including being allowed to go to an alternative school once a week leaving her the rest of her free time to spend with her boyfriend — a boyfriend that she secured an overnight pass for and a signed permission slip. Her only job was working as a background actress with her mother. Does this really sound like abuse? Barbara Mullenix may have been far from perfect, but there is nothing that can be said about her faults that would remotely begin to justify this horrific crime.”