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On November 10th, 2018, Amy Mullis was found in the red shed at her farm and she had been impaled by a corn rake. Her husband called 911 and said he believed she fell on the corn rake, but her injuries didn't make sense. Amy had 6 puncture wounds, but there were only 4 tines on the rake. Todd Mullis was found guilty of murdering his wife and he was sentenced to life in prison.
Website: https://www.drinkingthecoolaid.com/
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On November 10th of 2018, Amy Mullis was severely injured on her family farm in Earlville, Iowa. This is a very small community, farm town, where everybody knows everybody. She was found by her 13-year-old son, Trysten, in a red shed on the family’s hog farm. She was face down with a corn rake sticking out of her back. For those of you that aren’t familiar with a corn, it’s similar to a pitchfork. The corn rake has four sharp, metal prongs or tines that curl away from the handle and it’s used to scoop the corn without having to twist or turn the handle. In this case, the question is, murder or accident? The only people that we know were at the farm that day were her husband Todd and their children, and Todd had an alibi, their 13-year-old-son.
Todd Mullis was a hard worker who was always passionate about farming. He purchased his first farm in 1999 and in 2003, he met Amy at the Delaware County Fair, and they got married the following year, in 2004 and Amy moved to Todd’s farm, and they had 3 children. Todd was a straightshooter, hard worker, tough man type. Amy was bubbly and outgoing. She seemed to love the farm life, but she also wanted to do things outside of the farm and she often complained tht Todd worked too much. She wanted to go out and do things and he didn’t seem interested.
Around 2013, Amy had an affair with another man and once Todd found out, the two of them decided to work on things. They wanted to save their marriage if possible, so they went to marriage counseling and Amy quit her job at Regional Medical Center to work on the farm. Todd said she wanted to spend more time with the family, but Amy had a different story. She told her friends that she had no choice in the matter. She made a deal with Todd that she would quit her job and work on the farm, but she said it made her feel like a prisoner. Todd gave her an approved friend list of people she could hang out with, and her outings were timed. This idea came from their marriage counselor, who told them that Amy needed to be accountable for her infedelity and always tell Todd where she was going. Amy was confiding in her friends and told them that she wasn’t happy in her marriage, and she hadn’t been happy for years. According to Amy’s step-mother, when they decided to work on their marriage, Todd told her, “I’m not going to lose my farm and what I’ve worked for.”
In 2016, Todd and Amy acquired more land and they were going to build a cabin on it. Todd said that Amy was happy and he encouraged her to start hanging out with her friends again and he wanted her to take the kids on trips to visit the family. After they started counseling and up until the summer of 2018, Todd said he wasn’t concerned about their marriage any longer and he thought they were good. In July of 2018, five years after the affair, Todd noticed that Amy’s behavior was different. It reminded him of when she had an affair, so he was suspicious right away. He went through her phone records and discovered that she had been talking to another man, Jerry Frasher, and he was a field manager for the Mullis farm. It wouldn’t be abnormal for the two of them to communicate, but there were 128 texts in one day between the two of them. Todd did confront Jerry about this, and Jerry said there was absolutely nothing going on. The texts were about work and the kids’ activities. Jerry was married and he was a father of two.
Todd couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off though, so he called Jerry’s wife and she said the two of them were happy and they didn’t have any marital problems. She assured him that Jerry wasn’t having an affair with Amy. Jerry’s wife felt that Todd was a little crazy and he did end up calling her back a few days later and apologizing for thinking Jerry was sleeping with his wife. Todd did end up sharing his suspicions with Amy’s stepmother and Amy’s friend Terry as well. Terry had been hearing Amy’s side of things for a long time and knew their marriage was in trouble, so she suggested that the two of them may be better off if they weren’t together and Todd told her, “I have worked for this farm since I was eleven and I will not give it up.”
Earlville is a very small town and rumors were spreading. By late summer of 2018, Amy got worried about being the talk of the town. Her friend Terry heard rumors of the affair at a work event, and she told Amy about them.
The rumors were true, Amy and Jerry were having an affair. It began in late May of 2018 and Jerry said they would meet up for sex about once a week, maybe more if they had time. They met in secret spots on the farm, backroads, and occasionally motel rooms. Amy had strong feelings for him, and she felt that they had a future together. She wanted to marry him, but Jerry wasn’t thinking that way. He was more interested in the sex. He got nervous when Todd confronted him, and he told Amy that they should slow things down. He didn’t want Todd to find out about them, but they didn’t slow down. Amy told her friend that she planned on telling Todd that there was a rumor going around town that she was having an affair, but it was just a rumor, nothing to worry about. Jerry didn’t want this getting out either, he had a wife and children, and he did not intend on leaving his family.
When the rumors were swirling, Amy contacted another former coworker to see if she heard about them and asked that she stop them right away if she heard anything. She mentioned several times that Todd would kill her if he found out and she said her oldest child told her, “If dad finds out you’re going to have an affair, he’ll kill you.” By July, Amy told her friend Terry that she was getting to the point where she felt strong enough to leave on her own and she was quietly looking for jobs and a place to live. That same month, she told another friend that Todd didn’t want a divorce because, “he would lose half of everything, and it is socially unacceptable.” On another occasion, she said that she was scared of Todd and if he found out about wanting a divorce or having an affair, he would kill her.
In August, Amy’s grandma got sick and passed away. She had the stress of everything going on at home, the rumors swirling around town, and now she had lost her grandma. Amy’s brother said that he knew Amy was planning to divorce Todd around this time and expected that he would “flip out.” Amy was also worried that her oldest son would be angry with her for leaving Todd. She asked her brother to store some of their grandmother’s furniture so that she would have some when she left Todd. In October, Amy’s uncle suffered a brain bleed and she had to help take care of him.
On November 6th of 2018, Amy had an outpatient procedure done. She was getting an ablation to help with the bleeding during her menstrual cycle and she was told not to lift anything heavy during her recovery. When Todd picked her up from the hospital, the doctors said she couldn’t life anything over 10 pounds until she had healed. Amy was 39 years old in 2018 and her 3 children were 13-year-old Trysten, 11-year-old Taylor and 9-year-old Wyatt. Their oldest son, Trysten, had become very close with his father after Amy had an affair. The two of them began hunting, fishing, 4-wheel riding, and working on the farm together.
On November 10th, the two younger kids stayed inside the house. Trysten and Todd got up early to do chores, they were checking on some hogs offsite, and Amy had breakfast waiting for them and she was working on a puzzle. A friend texted her that morning to see how she was doing, and she said, “Thanks. Okay. Things still very tense around here. Just not sure of anything anymore.” The ground was frozen, so Todd said they were going to work in the hog barn that day and Amy was eager to help. She hadn’t done much over the last few days after her surgery and I’m sure she was getting antsy. Todd said they could work together in the hog barn to get ready for the piglets. The hog barn is about the size of a football field and they each had their designated jobs. Trysten was setting up portable heaters and Todd was setting up equipment that provides water to the pens and Amy was standing on a 5-gallon bucket, cleaning the lights.
Amy had been experiencing some dizzy spells after her surgery and they were hitting her hard on this day. Her son, Trysten, said that Amy kept holding herself on the bucket and saying she was dizzy and when she got down, she was shaky. Trysten and Todd asked her if she needed help, but she said no. According to Trysten, Amy got dizzy again and they were concerned for her. This was her first day out of the house since her surgery and it seemed like she wasn’t ready for this kind of work yet. When she got dizzy again, Todd told her it wasn’t wise to stay out there, he wanted her to go inside and rest, but asked her to go to the red shed to grab a pet carrier first. He would need this later to round up a litter of kittens, to protect them from some heavy machinery he would be using.
The pet carrier was in the red shed, which was about 30 yards from the front of the hog barn. The carrier weighed about 15 pounds and it was up against the wall. The doctor had warned her not to lift more than 10 pounds until she was healed. Todd told her that it would be helpful if she could bring the carrier to the shop, but if she wasn’t up to it, just leave it and he would grab it later. Amy headed out and Trysten said that he and his dad continued working together in the hog barn for about an hour and a half, then they headed to an office at the front. That’s when Todd looked out the window and realized the pet carrier was not in the place that he asked Amy to put it, so he asked Trysten to go to the red shed to check on her. That’s when he found his mom, face down, on her hands and knees and he saw the corn rake in her back.
Trysten checked for a pulse, put his fingers under her nose to see if she was breathing, and he started screaming for his dad. Todd was standing outside the hog building, in the farm yard and he was a short distance away. When Todd came running over, he instructed Trysten to go grab the truck. He saw Amy, lying in a crouched position just inside the doorway with a corn rake impaled in her back. The door to the red barn was frozen and couldn’t open any wider. Todd tried to carry Amy through the door, but the rake was hitting the fertilizer crates, so she wouldn’t fit through the narrow opening. Todd had to remove the corn rake to get her out of there. He picked her up and carried her to the truck. Trysten had pulled the truck up and got in the passenger seat and Todd placed Amy on Trysten’s lap and he proceeded to get in the driver’s seat.
He called 911 on the way to Manchester hospital and that was at 12:01 PM. The operator asked him to pull over to administer CPR, which he did. Deputy Luke Thomsen arrived on the scene and took over CPR and began asking Todd what happened. He said he wasn’t sure, but he believed Amy got dizzy when she tried to grab the pet carrier and fell on the corn rake. She was rushed to Regional Medical Center, which is the same hospital that she had previously worked at before she had the affair and quit her job. When she arrived, she was pronounced dead. The staff was told that it was just a freak accident and Amy fell on the rake. A medical examiner completed an initial examination of her remains and discovered six puncture wounds on her back. The ME also observed injuries to Amy’s chin, cheek bone, knees, and knuckles of each hand. The injury to her chin had both crush and scraping components, but no debris was found in the wound from hitting a surface.
The ME asked to see the corn rake, so this was brought in, and that’s when this whole case changed. Amy had 6 puncture wounds, but the corn rake only had 4 tines. The ME contacted the state forensic pathologist and requested that she perform an autopsy of Amy’s remains. The forensic pathologist determined that the damage to Amy’s left hand could be defensive wounds consistent with a struggle and that she could have blunt force trauma to her chin, cheek and ear. The pathologist found that the corn rake penetrated through Amy’s back deep enough to rupture her breast implant and exit her front side, as well as puncture her lung and liver. Her manner of death was classified as a homicide. The Delaware County Sheriff’s Office doesn’t investigate many homicides, in fact, Amy’s was only the fourth in the last 10 years, so they did ask for help from Iowa’s Division of Criminal Investigation.
Todd was interviewed on the day of Amy’s death and he said he didn’t know how she got injured. They had been working in the north hog building that day. They have several other buildings on the land, including: a second hog building, the Mullis’ home, a red shed, and a large outbuilding that they called the shop. Investigators asked about the positioning of the four-tine corn rake in her back, and he said he didn’t think all of the tines were in her back when he removed the rake. His son, Trysten, was interviewed, and he told the police that he had been with his father working in the hog barn when Amy was injured. His father never left his side. Todd said that he and Amy were very open with each other, and he was loving, kind and comforting towards her. When something came up in their marriage, they were able to talk to each other about it right away.
On November 12th, they did Amy’s autopsy. The State Medical Examiner’s Office stated that the injuries were not consistent with falling on the corn rake. The rake only had 4 tines, but Amy had six puncture wounds and four of the six were at a downward angle. If Todd was correct that she fell on the rake, you would also need to believe that she fell, got up, removed the rake from her body, and fell on the rake again, in a different direction.
On Nov 16th, Todd was interviewed again, and he said that around 2013, Amy had an affair with another man. His son learned about the affair and that’s when Todd and his son got closer. They bonded over her infidelity. Todd said he was devastated by the affair, and it shattered his trust. Investigators asked if he ever confronted Amy about another affair and he said no, but investigators already knew about the second affair. They talked to Jerry, and he admitted to it. Jerry said that on the day of her death, he was at home in Anamosa (anna-mo-sah) which is 45 minutes from the farm and his son was his alibi. He got up early that morning and did some work at his own place with him, then the two of them watched college football. Jerry’s cellphone activity was all in Anamosa, so they turned their attention back to Todd, especially because they knew that Amy wanted a divorce.
Agent Turbett specifically asked Todd who Jerry Frasher was, and he said they knew each other through work, and he did not mention his suspicions of an affair. He was also asked how Amy and Jerry knew each other and he said, same thing, they had a business relationship. Agent Turbett stepped out of the room briefly to grab some water and when he went back in, Todd said, actually, I did have some concerns about Amy and Jerry. He said that in July of 2018, he saw a large number of texts between Amy and Jerry on their phone bill, but they both denied being in a relationship when he confronted them.
Investigators asked Todd to describe his marriage and he said it was a tight relationship and the communication between them was great, they were always together. He said at the time of her death, their relationship was good, and they didn’t argue or fight. This isn’t the exact picture that everyone else was painting though.
On the Monday prior to her death, which was November 5th, Jerry said that Amy confided in him and said she wanted to leave Todd, but she was scared and said, “If he catches me, he might make me disappear.” After the two of them had been confronted by Todd in July, Amy told him several days later that Todd was now reviewing her cell phone usage and it was no longer safe for them to communicate via text messages. Jerry said that he feared for his safety at this point.
The investigators learned that Todd hadn’t slept in the same bed as Amy for the 5 months prior to her death and they were not getting along. Amy sent a text to a friend several months prior where she commented that things were tense at the house. She sent another message to the same friend at 8:11 AM on the morning of her death saying, “Still very tense around here. Just not sure of anything anymore.” After interviewing friends and family members, investigators learned that Amy and Todd had been having marital problems for several years. Amy made statements to her close friends through text, calls, and in person, that she felt Todd would kill her if he found out about the affair or her wanting a divorce. They also learned that Todd contacted a few friends and relatives to speak about his relationship with Amy and his frustrations with her.
One of Amy’s friends that she was close with for over 12 years said that when she went to the local Wal-Mart, Todd required her to document and notify him when she went and when she returned. If Amy and her friend had lunch together, Todd would send messages to Amy asking what time she left and what time she would come back. Terry said that in the months leading up to her death, Amy discussed leaving Todd and she said she felt trapped like a prisoner.
Near the end of August of 2018, Terry and Amy spoke on the phone and Amy said she feared Todd would kill her and she said if she went missing, Terry should instruct people to look for her body in a wooded area that they recently purchased. She also said if she was found dead, “You’ll know Todd did something to me.”
Investigators spoke to another friend who stated that prior to her death, Amy told them that Todd would kill her and throw her to the pigs if he found out about the affair. The friend also stated that Amy was given a nickname and they called her “POT Wife” meaning, Prisoner of Todd.
Another friend of Amy’s said that Amy told her she was very unhappy in her marriage to Todd, and she talked about leaving him. This friend had concerns and asked Amy if she felt safe and offered to help her leave Todd and get to a safe place.
Another close friend said that she and Amy would text and call each other on a consistent basis. The friend said that Amy had a very serious talk with her and said she was scared that Todd was going to kill her if she left him and if he found out about the affair. The friend said that the conversation was very emotional for both of them.
Investigators spoke to a friend of both Todd and Amy. They stated they were friends with Amy for 3 to 4 years and they had become close in the year leading up to her death. The friend had known Todd their whole life. The friend said that one morning, they contacted Amy and she was screaming and crying and told them that Todd found out about the affair and her child was crying and didn’t want to get on the bus because he didn’t know if Amy would still be there when he got home. The friend said that this conversation happened on October 22nd, 2018 and Amy was very upset and yelling when they spoke.
Another mutual friend of both Amy and Todd was interviewed and stated that after Amy’s murder, Todd went to their home and during a conversation, he said, “You really have to watch what you text on your phone because it could come back to bite you.” He also said, “You have to be careful of what you put on your cellphone.” The friend asked Todd what he meant by this and he said, “Oh well. You know if you write something like, I wish you were dead or, it would be so easy to have you killed or have you dead.” Todd told the friend that a person should be careful about telling someone how easy it would be to push them off a cliff while walking together and he told this friend that law enforcement had seized his phone.
Deputy Travis Hemesath looked at the red shed and found a couple drops of blood on the floor and he was not able to find blood markings on any other equipment or any indication that she had fallen where her body had been discovered. Blood drops should have been on the equipment that was surrounding her. The Mullis’ son, Trysten, later admitted that at some point, he did actually lose sight of his dad while they were working on the farm that day. Maybe they weren’t working side by side in the hog barn the entire time. He said that he went to get water from the office at the front of the barn, so he wouldn’t have had eyes on his dad at that time. In his interview, he estimated that he was gone less than a minute each time he went to get the water, but during the trial, he said he didn’t know how long he was away from his dad, but he never saw blood on him, and his demeanor never changed while they worked together.
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