Serial Killer of the Month – Herbert Mullin 

Herbert Mullin was born on April 18, 1947 in Salinas, California – the forty-first anniversary of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. This fact loomed steadily in Mullin’s mind much of his deranged life. By the time he was 20, Mullin had become a moody dabbler in eastern reli­gion and drug culture and was prone to violent out­bursts. In late 1969, he terri­fied his parents when he began to imitate every movement of his brother-in-law, behavior known as echopraxia, a strong symptom of schiz­ophrenia. A day after he began his compulsive mimic­ry, Mullin checked into a mental hospital, where he was, in fact, diag­nosed as a schizo­phrenic. A voluntary patient – he checked out six weeks later.

Mullin shaved his head, and once declared mysteriously that “Murder is an act of love.” By October his behavior had become so alarming that he entered another mental hospital. Later that same year, he was once more discharged but his doc­tors considered his possible recovery very unlikely.

In 1972, he moved to Santa Cruz to be with his parents and soon a voice, which he said was his father’s, was sending him telepathic mes­sages. “Herb,” it would  say, “I want you to kill me somebody.” That October 13th “Herb” did just that. On a road in the Santa Cruz moun­tains, he beat an old man to death with a club. Two weeks later, he gave a young female hitchhiker a ride in his ’58 Chevy sta­tion wagon. He stabbed her to death and hid her body in the hills. He stabbed a Catholic priest to death on November 2, All Souls’ Day.

By this time, Mullin believed that Albert Einstein had chosen him to lead his generation to safety. In partic­ular he was to save California from an earthquake by offering up human sacrifices. Soon the voices became those of his victims, giving him permission to kill them.

In January 1973 Mullin killed five more, using his .22 revolver. He killed a drug dealer he had once known, along with the drug dealer’s wife. He murdered a mother and her two kids when he accidentally went to the wrong house. Early in February he found four camping teenagers in Santa Cruz State Park. He shot them all and left them where they lay. 

On Feb 13, Mullin was gathering wood for a fire at his mother’s when a voice came to him, “Don’t deliver one stick of wood until you have killed someone.” Driving home through Santa Cruz, he saw an old man in his yard, pruning the bushes. Mullin leaned from his car window and shot him in passing. Neighbors witnessed the shooting, and police found Mullin within minutes.

During his trial he rambled on about earth­quakes and had a chilling rationale for his crimes: a rock doesn’t make a deci­sion while it’s falling – It just falls. Mullin was indifferent to the jury’s finding that he was sane, and that he serve life in prison.

Read more Serial Killer of the Month:
Serial Killer of the Month: Richard Chase
Serial Killer of the Month: Kenneth Bianchi

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