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[boninian]

In 2001, Herbert Mullin was denied parole for the ninth consecutive time. After a two-hour hearing Santa Cruz County Assistant District Attorney Ariadne Symons said in a written release that Mullin should never be released from prison “due to the number and magnitude of his crimes, their senseless and horrific nature, and the risk he would pose to the community if he were released.” Herbert claimed insanity and testified that he killed on telepathic orders from his father to prevent a major earthquake. “He couldn’t understand why he was being prosecuted, even.” said Dr. Lunde, a psychiatrist who testified in Mullin’s defense during the original trial. To this day Herbert is imprisoned at Mule Creek State Prison.

[boninian]

re: the ted bundy movie trailer & ted bundy tapes release- i’m already really tired of seeing woke takes talking about how serial killers aren’t actually interesting because they’re misogynists or that talking about bundy is giving him what he always wanted and that showing that he was charismatic is automatically romanticizing him bc like i agree that there are many, many serial killers who’s fundamental views of and actions towards women are based in deep seated misogyny, but imo people find learning about this shit interesting for many other reasons!! there’s a reason criminology as a field exists and why true crime as an interest is really popular rn. the whole point of criminology and why ppl are interested in this shit is to study the way their minds work but if you sincerely think that learning about him is wrong bc it’s giving him what he’d want (even tho he’s dead lmao) than maybe we fundamentally disagree about the importance of it which is fine.

like also this echoes what @congenitaldisease said about the trailer but just becaue the trailer (from what we’ve seen and is a limited view) shows the fact that he was charismatic doesn’t automatically mean its romanticizing him because a lot of the impact of his case was the fact that for the first time america saw that you could be both charming and also a murderer. like, it’s an important part of studying this shit. portraying him any other way wouldn’t be accurate.

like i personally don’t find bundy super fascinating and feel however you want about it but just because you say it’s boring or wrong doesn’t mean it definitively is lmao

[boninian]

Herbert William Mullin, number 72, and James Gianera, number 71, wore consecutive numbers on their football jersies in this picture that appeared in the 1965 San Lorenzo Valley High School year book. In 1973, Mullin killed Gianera and his wife after Herbert decided it was Gianera’s fault that Mullin got into drugs. After killing the Gianeras, Mullin turned back to Francis’ home, where Gianera formerly lived and where Mullin acquired the most current Gianera address. He killed the woman who helped him to find his former friend and her two sons, 9 and 4.

[boninian]

Herbert Mullin during a 2006 parole hearing. He was denied parole for 5 years and in 2011 he was denied parole again for 10 years. Next time Mullin is eligible for parole is in February, 2021.

[boninian]

Article printed in Santa Cruz Sentinel on Saturday, June 22nd, 1991, about Herbert Mullin’s parole hearing where he asked the parole board to “<…>consider testimony from a witch or wizard to better understand his mental state”.

[boninian]

Classmates of Herbert W. Mullin remembered that Mullin - like many of his generation - tried the then-legal hallucinogenic while taking pre-engineering classes at Cabrillo. This made him fail the “acid test”. He also carries two tattoos on his stomach: “Legalize Acid” and “Legalize Marijuana”. They were needled into his skin during the late 1960s, when he became deeply involved in the Santa Cruz area’s flourishing drug counter-culture.

By 1969, four years after graduating high school, Mullin and his parents were seeking help for a youth that dropped out of college because of his drastically changed behavior. “In my opinion, Herb was one of those mind LSD had eaten up,” said the Rev. Gene Dawson, who operated the Santa Cruz Drug Abuse Prevention Center where Mullin lived in 1969. “When Herb arrived, he had a heavy religious thing along. He appeared to be on a Buddhism, Hinduism and eastern mysticism trip. He felt we were all on the wrong track and he wanted to straighten us out. He sat around in yoga positions. He never participated in our group sessions. In fact, Herb would try to disrupt them. Personally, I felt sorry for him. He was like so many mixed up kids I have met. He acted like he was flipped out on acid - which wasn’t unusual for new arrivals. We hoped he would come to himself in a few days, but he suddenly disappeared and I never saw him again.”

[boninian]

rare image of serial killer Herbert Mullin

[boninian]

We’re way too fly to partake in all this hate

[boninian]

Serial Killer’s famous quotes.

“Thanks a lot, society, for railroading my ass”  

 — Aileen Wournos

“ Yes, I do have remorse, but I’m not even sure myself whether it is as profound as it should be. I’ve always wondered myself why I don’t feel more remorse”  

 — Jeffrey Dahmer

“The more I looked at people, the more I hated them” 

— Charles Starkweather

“People say ‘Ted Bundy didn’t show any emotion, there must be something in there.’ I showed emotion. You know what people said? ‘See, he really can get violent and angry.’”

— Ted Bundy

“I am sorry for only two things. These two things are I am sorry that I have mistreated some few animals in my life-time and I am sorry that I am unable to murder the whole damed human race.”

— Carl Panzram

“You got to realize; you’re the Devil as much as you’re God”

— Charles Manson

“Killing became the same thing as having sex”

— Henry Lee Lucas

“When I see a pretty girl walking down the street, I think two things. One part wants to be real nice and sweet, and the other part wonders what her head would look like on a stick”

— Ed Kemper

“Ninety years ago I was a freak. Today I’m an amateur”

— Jack the Ripper

“I didn’t want to hurt them, I only wanted to kill them”

— David Berkowitz

“A clown can get away with murder“

— John Wayne Gacy

“If anything goes wrong, you die first”

— Richard Chase

“I was born with the devil in me…”

— H. H. Holmes

“We’ve all got the power in our hands to kill, but most people are afraid to use it. The ones who aren’t afraid, control life itself.”

— Richard Ramirez

“Going to the electric chair will be the supreme thrill of my life”

— Albert Fish

“I have written to the Home Office and the Parole Board to say I do not wish to be considered for parole in 1990, and my own belief is that I shall probably remain in prison until I die”

— Myra Hindley

The police shall never catch me, because I have been too clever for them.

— The Zodiac Killer

[boninian]

Newspaper clip from September 12th,1965 “Sentinel“ about Dean Richardson’s death where Herbert Mullin is mention as a pallbearer. It is believed that Dean’s death was a trigger to Mullin’s insanity.

[boninian]

Herbert Mullin’s Timeline - Part 3

Summer 1970, age 23: Herb and Pat Brown, a friend from the commune, went to Hawaii together. Pat abandoned Herb and it was at that time that he admitted himself to the mental health clinic in Maui. He was examined by a psychiatrist and diagnosed with schizo-affective schizophrenia.  

July 1970: He was discharged as improved and wrote home for money to fly home.  

July 30 1970: Police arrested him for being under the influence of drugs and possession. While in jail, deprived of his medication, he became hyperactive and sang loudly. He was committed as an emergency case to the county hospital psychiatric ward. The charges were dropped and the hospital had to release Herb under the California law that limits holding involuntary mental patients past seventy-two hours.

August 1970: He applied for readmission to Cabrillo College to study psychology, but failed to keep his counseling appointment. He blamed his parents for his illness and changed he life insurance policy so the UNICEF would be the beneficiary. He got a job driving a truck for Goodwill Industries, and had a homosexual affair.

1970 / 1971: He went through a series of fads. He shaved his head, went on a macrobiotic diet, and lost weight. He wore a big black sombrero and faked a Mexican accent.

March 28, 1971: He spent ten days in jail for public intoxication and resisting an officer. The drunk in public charges were dismissed.  

April, 1971, age 24: His case was closed at the mental health clinic in Santa Cruz because of his failure to keep group therapy appointments.

May 1971: He moved to San Francisco where he lived in decrepit apartments among alcoholics, drug addicts and other mental patients. There he met a new friend, Allan Hanson, who confirmed his beliefs on reincarnation, and began to believe that his voices where really telepathy, indicating that he was chosen by God to do something special. He also became fascinated with art and read many books by Leonardo Da Vinci. While in the library, Herb was researching Einstein and found that he was born on the anniversary of Albert Einstein’s death. He believed that it was no coincidence and that he was destined for some special work.

September 1971: Herb began to work out at the Newman Herman Gym and did some amateur boxing there.

March 1972: He received a permit to box in Golden Gloves. He wouldn’t stop assailing his opponent; trainers had to pull him away.  

September 1972, age 25: He moved back in with his parents. He stopped taking his medication and his anger toward his father grew. The voice commanded him to kill. In addition, a major earthquake was predicted to devastate California.

October 1972: He received a job as a busboy in a restaurant.

October 13, 1972: He passed a transient, Lawrence White, walking alone along a windy road in the Santa Cruz mountains.  He stopped his car pretending he had car trouble.  When White stopped to offer help, Herb beat him to death with a baseball bat.  He left the body at the side of the road.  

October 24, 1972: He picked up a young lady, Mary Guilfoyle, a Cabrillo College student that was running late for an interview. She hitched a ride with Herb. Herb stabbed her through the chest and the back, dissected her body and scattered her remains alongside a hillside road. Her body wasn’t found until the following February.

November 2, 1972: Mullins went to St. Mary’s Catholic Church. After confessing to Father Henry Tomei, Herb brutally stabbed him with is hunting knife, to protect him self from exposure.  

November, 1972: He was rejected by the Coast Guard for failing the psychological evaluation

December 16 1972: He bought a gun, after reading “Einstein on Peace”; he stated that he needed the gun because he was one-third Scandinavian. The book said that in Switzerland, every adult male was in the militia and kept a gun for protection.

January 15, 1973: He passed the physical and mental exams for the Marine Corp, but refused to sign a document to release his criminal record. He insisted that the charges should have been dropped. He was subsequently dismissed from the military.  

January 19, 1973: Herb moved into a shabby apartment after his father told him he had to move out. His parents were tired of the constant criticism. He told them he would try to enlist in the army and applied for a number of jobs.

January 25, 1973: He decided to kill James Gianera, the man who introduced him to marijuana. Herb went to Jim’s old residence. The new occupant, Kathy Francis, told him that Jim and his wife Joan moved to another part of town. He went to Jim’s new residence where he shot Jim and his wife Joan, then repeated stabbed both corpses. He went back to the Francis residence where he murdered Kathy Francis and her two children.  

February 6, 1973: Herb came across four teenage campers. While engaged in conversation Herb asked them to leave the premises. Herb claims he asked them telepathically if he could them and they all said yes. He then took out his gun and shot them all.

February 12, 1973: Mary Guilfoyle’s body found.

February 13, 1973: Fred Perez was working in his driveway when Herb pulled up and shot him in the chest. However, Fred’s neighbor, Joan Stagnaro, heard the shot and saw the license plate and called the police.  

February 13, 1973: He was pulled over and arrested but remained silent and did not resist.  

February 14, 1973: After searching his apartment, police found a Bible, an address book with Gianera’s address listed, newspaper articles about his recent murders and rosary pouch that belonged to Father Tomei.  

March 1, 1973: Herb was charged with ten counts of murder, however he was not charged with the murder of White, Guilfoyle and Father Tomei. He attempted to plead guilty to all ten counts of murder, however, he was not found competent to represent himself. He was however deemed legally sane on all ten counts.

July 30, 1973, age 26: Herb stands trial for the murders. During the trial, Herb stated that the heard messages that told him to commit human sacrifices to prevent massive earthquakes in California. He called these messages “die songs”.

August 19, 1973: Herb was convicted of ten counts of murder. He was found guilty of two counts of first degree murder and eight counts of second degree murder. He received a life sentence and would be eligible for parole in 2020.

[boninian]

Herbert Mullin’s Timeline - Part 2

April 1968, age 21: Arrested for possession of marijuana.  He pleaded to a lesser offense and was sentenced to probation.  He got a job at Goodwill Industries where he managed one of the organization’s many stores in San Luis Obispo.

October 1968: He was granted conscientious objector status after his father wrote a letter to the draft saying how “peaceful minded” Herb was currently.  The selective service board credited his time employed by Goodwill Industries toward his required alternative service.

February 1969: He quit his job and announced that he was going to India to study yoga.  However, he moved to Sebastopol, CA and lived in a trailer on the ranch owned by his sister and her husband, Albert Bocca.

February/March 1969: At a family dinner, he started imitating his brother-in-law’s every move, which is known as echopraxia, an indication of schizophrenia.  He voluntarily committed himself at Mendocino State Hospital where he stayed for six weeks and was diagnosed as having schizophrenia aggravated by drug abuse. He was treated with anti-psychotic medication.

May 9, 1969, age 22: He checked himself out of the hospital. He was uncooperative with the treatment program and his prognosis was labeled as poor.

Summer 1969: He went to Lake Tahoe with another just released patient and found a job as a dishwasher at a gambling resort called “Harvey’s Wagon Wheel”.

August 1969: He quit his job and moved back home.  He pulled a knife on a forest ranger who asked him to leave the park, but did not stab him. He was taken to county jail but was not booked.

September 1969: He began treatment as a resident of the community drug abuse prevention center in Santa Cruz.

Fall 1969: He began ritualistically burning his penis with a lit cigarette.

October 1969: He moved out of the drug center, and applied for welfare. He went to visit his old manager of the Goodwill store. Herb told him that he was “hearing voices and receiving messages”. In addition he made homosexual advances to his friend who called his uncle, who was a physician and recognized the signs of schizophrenia and had the sheriff commit him.

October 1969: Herb was committed to the psychiatric ward of San Luis Obispo County General Hospital because “as a result of a mental disorder he is a danger to others, a danger to himself and gravely disabled.”

November 1, 1969: He sent his parents a letter telling them that he had been forcibly committed to the psychiatric ward of San Luis Obispo County Hospital.  He asked them to write whenever they could.  He was treated for eight weeks by a psychiatrist, Joseph Middleton, who diagnosed him as a paranoid schizophrenic.

November 1969: His parents drove down to visit Herb at the psychiatric ward.  It was then that Herb told them he was homosexual.

November 23, 1969: He was discharged with his prognosis listed as “grave”. Contingent on his discharge was his attendance at the Santa Cruz Mental Health Clinic.

Early 1970: Herb visited the clinic intermittently, and rarely attended group therapy sessions. He also was careless about taking his medication. He got a job as a dishwasher in the Holiday Inn.

March 1970: He moved out of the house and moved into a cheap hotel paid for with his welfare checks.  Ed Lawrence introduced him to a commune in Santa Cruz. Herb wanted to move into the commune but his strange behavior made the residents nervous.

[boninian]

Herbert WIlliam Mullin

Born on April 18th, 1947, Herbert Mullin left 13 victims in his wake before he was captured. But as a boy and later as a young man, Herbert was normal, outgoing and made friendships quite easily. His parents moved but that didn’t stop him from making new friends, among which, Dean, became his closest one. But their friendship didn’t last long. Dean died in a car crash and since this accident Herbert’s behavior started to change. He built a shrine to his dead friend in his bedroom and would stare at it for hours. Drugs followed soon after. First marijuana, then LSD, doses of which kept increasing.

The first indication that something was seriously wrong with Mullin occurred at a family gathering for his parents’ twenty-ninth anniversary in March 1969. Over dinner, Mullin robotically imitated every word and gesture of his brother-in-law, Al. His behavior was so bizarre that he was finally convinced to check himself into a state mental hospital, where he was diagnosed as suffering from a “schizophrenic reaction.”

Since doctors had no legal way to keep him hospitalized, Mullin left the asylum and tried little bit of everything while working various jobs. But he still was in and out of mental hospitals as his condition started to deteriorate gravely. He started hearing voices. Later those voices started giving him orders and he obeyed by shaving his head or burning his genitals with a cigarette. But Herbert’s “voices” didn’t only tell him to hurt himself, they ordered him to kill.

On October 13th, 1972, Mullin grabbed a baseball bat and started his campaign which he later explained was “[…]in order to protect the ground from an earthquake“. His belief that he was recruited by Albert Einstein to stop natural disasters from happening motivated Herbert to start and continue murdering people right to the moment he was captured. His first victim was Lawrence “Whitey” White, a homeless man, which Mullin beat to death. Next victim was Mary Guilfoyle which he stabbed and then dissected her body scattering the remains. Third victim, Father Henri Tomei, was beaten and stabbed in the confessional when Mullin ‘heard’ Tomei telepathically asking Mullin to kill him.

When Marines didn’t accept Herbert’s application to enlist, the man continued his killing. January 25th, 1973, Mullin killed his high-school friend Jim Gianera and his wife, then returned to Kathy Francis’ house, where Gianera formerly lived and where Kathy gave Mullin Gianera’s new address. Herbert killed both Kathy and her two sons. In early February he pretended to be a park ranger when he encountered four boys. All of them he killed with a shotgun later that same day. Mullin’s final victim was a 72 year old man, Fred Perez, shot while working in his yard. It happened in broad daytime and neighbor saw Mullin in his car, driving away. He was captured in minutes.

In spite of overwhelming evidence of his extravagant mental derangement, the jury deemed Mullin “sane by legal standards” and found him guilty of eight counts of second-degree murder and two counts of first. On September 18th, 1973, he was sentenced to life imprisonment and remains behind bars to this day.

[boninian]

Herbert Mullin’s Timeline - Part 1

04/18/1947: Born in Salinas, California. This date is also the anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake as well as Einstein’s death.

1947, age < 1: Hospitalized for diarrhea epidemic.

1952, age 5: Moved to a small farming community in San Francisco.

1963, age 16: Moved to Santa Cruz area and lived in his Aunt and Uncle’s cabin in Boulder Creek until the Mullins found a home in Felton, a small town in Santa Cruz County. He enrolled in San Lorenzo Valley High School where he made lots of friends and was quite popular. Herbert played football, had a steady girlfriend and was voted most likely to succeed.

June 1965, age 18: Friend Dean Richardson was killed in a car accident summer after graduation. This was thought to be a trigger to Mullin’s deteriorating sanity. He built shrines to Dean in his room and became obsessed with reincarnation

Fall 1965: Herbert attended Cabrillo College studying engineering.  

Spring 1966, age 18/19: Herb ran into Dean’s friend Jim Gianera who gave him his first marijuana cigarette, which he claimed damaged his brain.  

June 1966, age 19: He finished his first year of college and got a summer job with the country road crew. He temporarily broke up with Loretta for a period of six months.

October 1966: He had his first experience with LSD.

January 1967: Herb and Loretta got back together. They soon became engaged.

Spring 1967, age 20: He began experimenting more with marijuana and LSD and became interested in Eastern religions.

Summer 1967: Graduated with a two year degree in road engineering. Enrolled at San Jose State College.  

September 1967: Became active against the war in Vietnam and vowed to register as a conscientious objector. He changed his major to philosophy and took on a hippie lifestyle.  

November 1967: He withdrew from San Jose State College.  

January 1968: He registered as a conscientious objector, and had sexual relations with a man for the first time.

March 1968: He broke the engagement with Loretta. He started to become violent and said he was bisexual.

[boninian]

“He went through a real bad mental strain when his best friend, Dean Richardson, was killed in a crash during the summer of 1965. It really freaked him out … Our relationship wasn’t very good the second time we went together. For one thing, Herb told me he was using drugs, and I didn’t like that at all. Sometimes I was afraid he was potentially violent. Sometimes my mother and I were scared of him … He never really hurt me. He’d just slap me with his open hand on the legs. He didn’t like me to make decisions, and if I ever tried he’d get mad … It was a combination of things [leading to the breakup in 1968]. Herb’s homosexual tendencies, his downward slide because of drugs, his fits and violent temper. In the end I was really scared of him, so I gave him back the ring … [In the] summer of ‘72, I was in a laundromat in Santa Cruz with my three-year-old daughter, and Herb came in. He walked up to me and I introduced my daughter, but he didn’t say anything. He just stared at me in an eerie way. I got really scared and took the baby and left right away.”

- Loretta Ricketts, ex-fianceé of Herbert Mullin

[boninian]

After serial killer Herbert Mullin’s apprehension, the papers (not notorious for reporting the most accurate of information) leaned towards inaccurately blaming his deteriorated mental state on drug use rather than mental illness.

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FROM THE FERBRUARY 22, 1973 ISSUE OF THE NEWSPAPER “CAMBRIDGE DAILY JEFFERSONIAN”

————————–

BRIGHT YOUTH ACCUSED OF 13 MURDERS: Herbert Mullin ‘Was Just One of Those Minds Eaten by LSD’

by Duston Harvey

Santa Cruz, Calif. (UPI)

When Herbert W. Mullin graduated from his rustic high school in the Santa Cruz Mountains, his classmates selected him the senior “most likely to succeed.”

He had a Key Club scholarship to Cabrillo College, the local two-year community college, and the respect of his friends’ parents as “a bright, sensitive boy who was sharp as a tack.”

That was 1965 – about the time the LSD messiahs began preaching their message of instant mind expansion through chemistry.

Classmates remember that Mullin – like many of his generation – tried the then-legal hallucinogenic while taking pre-engineering classes at Cabrillo the next year.

Herbert W. Mullin failed the “acid test.”

Today he is in jail suspected of killing 11 persons in the past three and one-half months – a priest stomped and stabbed to death in his confessional, and 10 shooting victims, a mother and her two young boys, four teen-agers living in a mountainside camp, a drug dealer and his wife, and an elderly fisherman whom he’d met on a pier.

Mullin wears his dark hair cropped short and still is in athletic trim, but he carries two tattoos on his stomach: “Legalize Acid” and “Legalize Marijuana.”

They were needled into his skin in the later 1960s, when he became deeply involved in the Santa Cruz area’s flourishing drug counter-culture.

By 1969 – four years after his high school graduation – Mullin and his parents were seeking help for the drastically changed youth, who had dropped out of college and become a conscientious objector.

“In my opinion, Herb was one of those minds LSD has just eaten up,” said the Rev. Gene Dawson, who operates the Santa Cruz Drug Abuse Prevention Center where Mullin lived briefly four years ago.

The minister, who uses Christian-orientated group therapy to aid youngsters with drug problems and has had 1,200 persons go through the center in the past five years, said Mullin’s parents talked him into visiting the center.

“When Herb arrived, he had a heavy religious thing going,” said Dawson. “He appeared to be on a Buddhism, Hinduism and eastern mysticism trip.

“He felt we were all on the wrong track and wanted to straighten us out. He sat around in yoga positions. He never participated in our group sessions. In fact, Herb would try to disrupt them.

“Personally, I felt sorry for him. He was like so many mixed up kids I have met

“He acted like he was flipped out on acid – which wasn’t unusual for new arrivals. We hoped he would come to himself in a few days, but he suddenly disappeared and I never saw him again – although his father would call me sometimes and consult with me,” the Protestant minister said.

Mullin was the youngest of two children, the son of M. W. “Bill” Mullin, a World War II combat vet who served in both the Army and Marines.

Young Mullin was raised as a Roman Catholic, attending church schools in the San Francisco Bay area until his family moved in 1961 to Felton, a small town in San Lorenzo valley about seven miles north of Santa Cruz.

They moved into a grayish-green painted wood-and-stone ranch style home built in a grove of towering reedwoods on a winding road about two miles from the town – a tranquil setting far from the crime ridden streets of the country. His father commuted more than 80 miles to his job in a San Francisco furniture store for a while, then got a local Post Office job.

The youngster attended San Lorenzo Valley High School from 1961 to 1965. Despite his small size – five-seven and 140 pounds – he played as a reserve guard on the school football team, wearing jersey number “71.” A teammate remembered Mullin as “extremely strong for his size” but he said he actually didn’t play much.

In the classroom, he finished in the top third of his class and took some special classes in his senior year of high school.

“He was sharp as a tack,” said one parent whose daughter went out with Mullin a few times. “He had a great personality.”

A high school counselor said that when Mullin graduated, “he was on his way. He had the world by the tail… and then he got involved with drugs.”

“Herb tried marijuana and LSD during his first year at Cabrillo,” said a former roommate who has kept in touch with Mullin on-and-off since their high school days.

“Everybody was trying them,” he said, including himself.

But Mullin freaked out – “taking tons of LSD" – and by the time the friend lived with him again about three years later, he was showing the effects.

“I’ll be willing to testify at his trial that he was insane,” said the friend. “Sometimes he seemed to be better, but he was crazy.”

The former high school football teammate said drugs were definitely part of Mullin’s problem, but he said the murder suspect also had problems with his parents and coping with an unjust society.

“Herb was into everything concerning religion,” he added. “He was into astral projection – where you project yourself out of your body into another sphere.”

Mullin graduated with an A.S. degree from Cabrillo after two years, then enrolled in San Jose State College about 30 miles away in the fall of 1967, signing up for classes in music, philosophy and astronomy. He dropped out of college two months later – but became a “fantastic reader on books of easten religion and mysticism.”

He traveled around northern California, living in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, at Lake Tahoe, and in Mendocino County. There was also a sojourn in Hawaii. He took odd jobs, working as a truck driver, bus boy and grocery clerk and training briefly as a prize-fighter.

He applied for conscientious objector’s status because of his religious beliefs and spent two years working for Goodwill Industries in Santa Cruz as his alternative service.

Mullin returned again and again to his home in the woods – then left after disagreements with his parents about his lifestyle.

“He was just about 10 percent of what he used to be,” said a family friend. A girl who dated him once after he started using drugs said he “wasn’t all there.”

Along the way, Mullin was arrested three times – once for trespassing and possession of narcotics paraphernalia when rangers raided a lean-to he was living in along the San Lorenzo River outside Felton. The charges were eventually dismissed.

But he was convicted of being in a place where marijuana was used and of public intoxication.

The drug charges led to rejection by military recruiters last month when he tried to enlist in both the Marines and the Army.

After his recent arrest as a suspected murderer, detectives found a bible, a biography of Albert Einstein, an address book, some newspaper clippings and knives in the rundown motel room he rented.

Police in Los Gatos, a town about 20 miles over the Santa Cruz Mountains from Santa Cruz, said they were “satisfied” that Mullin committed the first of the 11 slayings last Nov. 2 when a Roman Catholic priest was stomped and stabbed to death in a confessional.

Detectives say they found fingerprints at the scene of 64-year old Rev. Henry Tomei’s death. They planned to charge him after finishing their investigation.

The slayings occurred in the Santa Cruz area during a three-week period. All 10 victims were killed with .22-caliber bullets fired into their heads.

Kathy Prentiss Francis, 29, and her sons, David Hughes, 9, and Daemon Francis, 3, were killed Jan. 24 at their remote cabin at the end of Mystery Spot Road about four miles out of town.

James Gianera, 24, and his wife, Joan, 21, were shot to death with the same pistol the next day.

Mrs. Francis’ common-law husband, Robert, later told authorities that he and Gianera were small-time marijuana dealers, transporting the weed between here and Redding.

Gianera was a high school friend of Mullin and former football guard. He had lived in the remote cabin before the Francis family moved in.

“Mullin was acquainted with all of them,” said District Attorney Peter Chang.

Sheriff Duncan B. James said ballistics evidence indicated the same killer struck again between Feb. 10 and 13 – firing bullets into the heads of four teen-aged youths camping in a makeshift shelter on a mountainside outside Felton.

Brian Card, 19, and Robert Spector, 18, both of Van Nuys, Calif., David Oliker, 18, Sherman Oaks, Calif., and Mark Johnson, 19, Pennsylvania, were slain about a mile from the Mullin family home.

The mass murder suspect was arrested in his blue-and-white Chevrolet station wagon on the morning of Feb. 13, minutes after Fred Perez, 72, member of an old Santa Cruz fishing family who had met Mullin while fishing on the municipal pier, was shot down while gardening.

A neighbor phoned police with a description of the gunman’s car and Mullin was pulled over about a mile away. Police found a .22 rifle on the front seat and a pistol in the back of the vehicle.

Mullin was charged with the Perez, Francis and Gianera slayings after ballistics tests on the two weapons.

The charges against Mullin may have cleared up 10 of the 15 – and possibly 18 – slayings which have occurred in the Santa Cruz area since last fall. The killings have won the scenic beach and mountain resort area the unofficial title of “murder capital of the world.”

[boninian]

for whoever may be interested i happened to do some digging today and found what i assume is rare archived footage of the san francisco news that has appearances of herbert mullin in it, if you would like to view them feel free to send me a message so that i can share the links privately