Mullis was executed 16 years after he told police he reached his ‘breaking point’ and killed his baby boy in Galveston when he wouldn’t stop crying. He’s the fourth man executed by Texas this year.
This story includes graphic descriptions of crimes committed against an infant.
Texas executed Travis James Mullis on Tuesday for killing his infant son in 2008, making him the fourth inmate executed this year in the nation’s busiest death penalty state and the 16th in the nation.
Mullis was executed by lethal injection and pronounced dead at 7:01 p.m., according to Amanda Hernandez, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Mullis was convicted of murdering his 3-month-old son Alijah, who was molested, stomped to death and abandoned at Galveston’s Seawall, a popular tourist destination just south of Houston.
Mullis, who was 21 at the time, said he had reached a “breaking point” the day he killed Alijah after the baby wouldn’t stop crying.
Mullis was executed less than an hour after Missouri executed Marcellus Williams despite strong questions surrounding his guilt. Mullis and Williams are among five inmates scheduled for execution in the U.S. in a six-day period between Sept. 20 and 26. Freddie Owens was the first to be killed on Friday in South Carolina.
Peter Walker, one of Mullis’ defense attorneys, told the Houston Chronicle in May that he thinks the decision to move forward with Mullis’ execution without a review of the constitutionality of his sentence was a “systemic failure.”
Here’s what to know about the execution, the case and the victim.
What was Travis James Mullis convicted of?
Mullis had hit his “breaking point” when he killed his son, telling Philadelphia police four days after the murder that he couldn’t get him to stop crying and thought that the only way to get him to quiet down was to kill him, according to court records.
He had spent the night before the murder bickering with then-girlfriend and mother of his child, Caren Kohberger, after he had tried to get his roommate’s 8-year-old daughter to pull her pants down, court records say.
The couple was afraid that they would be thrown out of the house and that Mullis would mentally relapse and act out on his impulses again. The young family had also run out of money at that point, hoping that Mullis could get a job before they had to start paying rent, court records say.
That morning, Mullis said he had to get away to clear his head. He took Alijah with him and drove south toward Galveston, where he pulled over in a secluded area of the seawall. But then, his son started to cry, and he couldn’t get him to stop, he told police.
Mullis molested and choked the infant before he pulled Alijah out of the car, put him on the ground and stomped on his head, court records say. He flung the car seat and his son’s body toward the other side of the seawall then fled the state, USA TODAY reported.
He turned himself in a couple days later, offering a detailed confession to authorities in Philadelphia. Mullis was extradited back to Texas, convicted of murder and sentenced to death in March 2011.
‘Extraordinarily beautiful’ baby gone too soon
Carolyn Entriken, Alijah’s grandmother, died two years before Mullis was executed and 14 years after her grandson.
To her, Alijah, was the most “extraordinarily beautiful” baby, Entriken told a court, according to a March 2011 transcript obtained by USA TODAY.
“He had steel blue eyes, cute little reddish hair,” Entriken said. “I know all babies are beautiful … He just was very precious.”
Entriken got the chance to visit her grandson a couple months after he was born and one month before he was killed, making her way to Texas from northern New Jersey. Mullis seemed “very loving and caring” during the first visit, telling the court that they “looked like a young family out on an outing.”
Entriken planned to visit again soon because she “wanted to come back and see Alijah.”
“I didn’t want too much time to go by where he was growing up without my seeing him,” she said.
This story has been updated to add new information.
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Publish date : 2024-09-24 13:33:00
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