Fingerprint from paper bag leads police to serial killer. By Jody Callahan, USA TODAY NETWORK — Tennessee. For more than 1. 3 years, a serial killer targeted women living in the margins in Memphis and one in Knoxville, yet for much of that time, no one knew he even existed. This is the fifth and final installment of a five- part series.***Until his fingerprints matched those found at Gwen Jackson's murder scene in May 2. Michael Mullins had been little more than a nuisance to police forces across the state. In Memphis, he'd been arrested at least 1.
He'd been jailed here, but never sent to prison. In Knoxville, he'd been arrested in August 2. February 2. 00. 8 after police found him with crack. Neither case went anywhere.
But now, Mullins was connected to a brutal murder, and police suspected whoever killed Jackson was tied to at least two other incidents. So, on June 7, 2.
Memphis Serial Killer George Howard Putt
PHOENIX – Six people have been shot—five fatally—within a four-mile radius in west Phoenix’s Maryvale neighborhood since April. Now police say a serial killer (or killers) may be on the loose. George Howard Putt, an infamous serial killer who terrorized Memphis during the summer of 1969 when he murdered five people in less than a month, died in a state prison hospital late last year, officials confirmed.
Robert Winston gave police Mullins' name, officers found and arrested him at Downtown's Memphis Union Mission. He'd just been kicked out of the shelter after a positive cocaine test. Soon, Mullins was in an interrogation room at the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center at 2. Poplar. Merritt, the dogged homicide investigator assigned to Jackson's case, knew he had his man. He knew Mullins raped and murdered Valerie Ector in 2. Jackson in 2. 01.
Memphis. He knew Mullins had raped and tried to kill Jessie Lee Maples in 2. Knoxville. But he had no idea Mullins killed Marie Cole in 1. Mullins was born in Memphis on June 2. He lived with his mother for a while, then moved to West Memphis to live with his father. Mullins wasn't much of a student, failing first grade and last attending Memphis schools in the ninth grade in 1. He was frequently absent, once missing an entire month of school. His grade promotions were all social, and there is strong evidence that Mullins is illiterate.
That's how 12 million TV viewers watched serial killer Oscar Ray Bolin Jr. Marriage of Les Paul and ES-335 yields powerful tones and a lightweight playing feel, courtesy of PAF-style MHS pickups, rounded Anthony Sowell, the Ohio serial killer convicted of murdering 11 women and dumping their remains around his home and backyard, was sentenced Friday to death.
Various intelligence tests put his IQ at 5. South Memphis. Family members said she died in Mullins' arms, that he had her blood all over him.
Mullins told a psychologist that . Memphis police, however, could find no record of her death. Mullins' father also died around that time. Mullins sometimes worked for his brother, William Harris' landscaping company.
Other times, he worked in concrete construction, a trade his father taught him. That job, his brother said, often took him all over the South, including Louisiana and Texas. Mullins fathered one child as a teenager, but had no contact with her. He married after his mother died and had another daughter with whom he occasionally spoke. Mullins tried to kill himself a few times and claimed to have had hallucinations. At one point, he was diagnosed as bipolar and schizophrenic.
He was prescribed several medications, but failed to regularly take them. At different times, Mullins lived with both Harris and his sister, Janice Mullins. They say they never saw him get upset or violent. Yet when Dr. James Walker, a forensic neuropsychologist, examined Mullins after his arrest, Mullins admitted . He also knew DNA found on Ector in 2. DNA found on Maples in Knoxville in 2. He knew all three women had been bludgeoned in the head, left nude from the waist down and covered with a blanket.
Memphis Serial Killer 1969
He knew the fingerprint on the bag containing the malt liquor can found at the scene matched Mullins. But he had to make certain Mullins was the killer, that his fingerprint hadn't just wound up at the crime scene accidentally. Finding an empty beer can isn't rare in Downtown Memphis. He needed DNA, and Mullins willingly supplied it. Merritt sent it to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
Meanwhile, down the hall in the cold- case unit, Sgt. Bill Ashton had been following the case. Something about it jogged his memory of working the crime scene 1. Marie Cole, whose first name was Beatrice.
And Beatrice Cole's case just came to mind. I couldn't remember her last name, but I remembered her first name, Beatrice. I submitted it to TBI also with a letter (saying) if you get a profile, check it against these other three cases. It belonged to Mullins. His brother discovered this in 1. Mullins called asking for money. When Harris declined, Mullins became enraged.
Harris later found out Mullins had pawned a pager he bought him, then used the money for drugs. I got mad at him and didn't want to talk to him for a day or two.
When he came back, I told him he had to straighten up and fly right. He said he would and he kinda tried. When he looked in the window, he saw one of the lawnmowers on display was his. Mullins had stolen and sold it, too.
Mullins claimed he knew nothing about one of the killings, but when presented with evidence, he came clean. Some of what he told the police was proved false, particularly when he claimed he killed the women in self defense. He claimed each of the women consented to sex, something police don't believe. He also claimed many of his victims drank and did drugs with him, even when their toxicology reports came back negative.
He repeatedly tried to blame his actions on his drug habit, saying he attacked Maples . I don't want anyone taking advantage of my mother, my sisters, my daughter. I apologize for everything I've done. I just ain't lined up right.
I need some serious help. We had some dope, cocaine.
We went up there and smoked dope, got our drink on, smoked some cigarettes. When he came back, Mullins said he saw Cole having sex with another man. It was a concrete block. I said, 'I tell you what, I'm gonna bust your (expletive) head.' After I got through beating her with the brick, I went on Beale Street and started drinkin'. I know my brother better than anybody in my family. I said they got the wrong somebody.
I say he didn't do that by himself. Yet until a reporter told her, she didn't know there were three other victims. When told that Maples was 7. Janice Mullins kept repeating, ? I find it hard to believe, what I know of my brother.
Like I say, he got three sisters. He's asking Sergeant Brown, 'Mike, you got anything you want to ask me? I'll be glad to answer it.' . I pushed her down in the bushes. And I put my feet in her face, stomping my feet in her face. No sir, she didn't say nothing.
She couldn't say nothing 'cause she was in a state of shock. I think he had the type of personality where he was very friendly to anyone he met.
I don't know if it was ever determined what did that. There's no evidence he knew her, but it's not an impossible they encountered each other there. Mullins lived two floors above Maples and it is likely he would have seen her coming and going from the Isabella Towers on one of her miles- long walks. There's no proof Mullins and Ector met, but they were both homeless addicts living around Downtown Memphis, so it's possible their paths intersected at some point. Mullins was well aware of Jackson, however.
His family members say Mullins talked about her often, pointing her out when they passed her in a car. Once, Harris said, Mullins asked him for $2. Jackson. But according to Ron Bezon, who manages the St. Mary's soup kitchen, Mullins and Jackson got into a spat a couple of days before she was killed. Mullins — as he often did — tried to jump line at the soup kitchen, but this time he tried to do it to Jackson. She was having none of it. Probably two or three days before (the murder) happened.
They had an altercation, which I didn't think anything of. It was just somebody being belligerent. It had to be his way, doing whatever he wanted to do.
They're narcissistic and seem disconnected from people. In a sense you have to feel for somebody like that, because you know there's trauma that happened to them.
She ran off with my dope. I tracked her down and I brought her back. I took a brick and I hit her in the head with it. Throwed it in the garbage can. Veteran Shelby County prosecutor Jennifer Nichols became involved with the case. I've never said (to a defense attorney) before, 'You need to come up to my office and listen to this.
You've got to hear this guy before you get too far into things,' . His willingness to say, 'I picked up a brick and hit her in the head' (was unusual).
While all agreed he was mentally ill and mildly retarded, some of the psychologists believed he was exaggerating the extent of his disability to curry favor. Ultimately, he was ruled competent to stand trial. Under normal circumstances, someone with a body count like Mullins would have been a candidate for the death penalty. However, federal law prohibits that punishment for anyone with an IQ under 7. Mullins' highest recorded score was 6. So Nichols and Skahan worked out a deal and on Dec. Mullins pleaded guilty to three counts of first- degree murder and three counts of aggravated rape.
He was sentenced to three life sentences without parole for the murders and three 1. Even now, Nichols and Skahan still have disagreements as to who Mullins really is.
Skahan: . He was very friendly, polite, obsessively clean. If you met Michael, you would think he was simple.
You would probably think he was mildly retarded. You would think that he was harmless.! He picks up bricks and bashes people's heads in. He's the kind of guy that psychologists could write a book about or make a movie about. Does he really enjoy killing?
Mullins even claimed to one of his psychologists that he threw the brick at her from a distance of five feet. From Mullins' confession to killing Jackson on June 6, 2. It went a little further and I picked up a brick and I hit her with it. Family members said Jessie never really recovered from the attack, but the Knoxville medical examiner's office did not rule her death a homicide. For my medical examiner not to make that connection, you can bank on it. He was sentenced to 5. Mullins is now behind bars at the Northeast Correctional Complex in Mountain City, not far from Elizabethton in East Tennessee.
He is housed in a cell with another inmate. He is enrolled in Adult Basic Education, and his security level is classified as . That means he can move around the prison on a regular basis, but is locked down in his cell from 9 p.