Today’s case takes us to a pig farm in Delaware County, Iowa. It’s there that in November 2018, 13-year-old Tristan Mullis found his mom, 39-year-old Amy Mullis, unresponsive, face down on a corn rake in one of their sheds.
She had been impaled through the torso with this corn rag, and the prongs had actually exited through her back.
So, these wounds were extremely deep, and it was a traumatizing scene for anybody, let alone her 13-year-old son.
It appeared that Amy had accidentally fallen on this corn rake while she was doing some work around the shed.
But, as I’m sure you probably could have guessed, it was not an accident. And as investigators started looking into the death, they realized this was much more sinister than a simple farm accident.
Amy Mullis was born Amy Fuller on the 23rd of January in 1979 in Ames, Iowa.
She and her brother were raised in Eldora by their parents Robert and Peggy. And Amy was described as a good person, very bubbly, very outgoing and hardworking, very adventurous.
She loved camping, farming, hunting, fishing, all things that she had been doing since she was young with her childhood friends and her family.
And this is probably what drew Todd Mullis to her. They met in the summer of 2003 at the Delaware County Fair.
Todd was a farmer. He was quiet. He was hardworking. And they just had a lot in common.
They both loved hunting, fishing, and camping. So, they started dating over the next year.
Amy was living and working in St. Luke’s. And Todd was living on his farm in Earville, which is about an hour away from each other.
So, when they got married on the 11th of September in 2004, just over a year after they first met, Amy moved on to Todd’s hog farm and they were really happy there together for a while.
Amy was working as a nurse at Manchester, Iowa Hospital, and Todd was working on the farm and they also decided to start a family together.
They went on to have three children, Tristan, Taylor, and Wyatt, who they adored. Tristan was the eldest and he had a particularly close bond with his dad.
They would go hunting, fishing for Willing. They farmed together, but the whole family was close.
They worked together. The kids would help out with the farm chores. And Todd was eventually able to grow his operation to three farms, which included two hog barns on the main farm where they all lived.
Eventually, in 2013, Amy quit her job as a nurse to work on the farm with Todd.
And so, their whole lives basically became revolved around their farm and their family. Tragically, in 2018, when Amy was just 39 years old, she would be pronounced dead at the same hospital she used to work at.
On the 10th of November 2018, Amy was recovering from a surgery that she had had a few days prior.
She got up, she made breakfast for Todd and their children, and then she went out to clean light fixtures in one of their sheds, one of their barns that they had on the property.
It was in one of their hog barns. Todd and their elder son Tristan were also in the hog barn that day preparing the barn for a new litter of hogs that they were going to be getting.
Because Amy was still due to be resting after her surgery that she’d had. She wasn’t able to lift over 10 lbs.
You know, she was ordered to kind of rest in bed. As she was cleaning these light fixtures, she was standing on a bucket to do it.
And she was getting really dizzy. She was kind of swaying back and forth, just having a bit of trouble.
And Todd said to her, “You know, I really don’t want you to hurt yourself doing this.
You should go inside and you should get some rest.” He did ask her if on the way back into the house, she could grab a pet carrier from the red barn.
And the red barn was only about less than 30 m from the hog barn that they had been working in.
So, he just asked her to leave it out the front and then, you know, go inside and get some rest.
He was going to be using heavy machinery that day to prepare the barn. And they had a barn cat that had just had a litter of kittens.
So, he needed the carrier because he wanted to put all of the kittens in there to make sure that they didn’t get injured when he was using the machinery.
So, Todd and Tristan continue working on for about another hour and a half before they stopped to have a bit of a water break.
And when they are having this water break, they go to this front office of the barn that they were in.
And there was a window there and Todd could see that Amy hadn’t put the pet carrier outside.
So, he asked Tristan to go and get the pet carrier and to also just check on his mom and make sure she’s okay.
When 13-year-old Tristan enters the red barn, that is when he makes the horrific discovery.
He found his mom lying face down on top of a corn rake, which was still protruding from her body, appearing as if she had fallen onto the rake.
The prongs had gone through her torso and exited through her back. So, these were very, very, very deep wounds.
Tristan immediately runs up to his mom. He checks her pulse on her neck and her wrist and he starts screaming for his dad.
When Todd rushes over, he sees the scene and he tells Tristan to go and pull the family truck around.
Tristan pulls up outside of the barn with the truck and Todd carries Amy out to the car so that he can rush her to the hospital to try and get her some treatment.
And of course, in order to do this, he had to remove her body from the corn rake.
So, she was bleeding profusely and he gets in the car. Tristan runs over to the passenger seat and he puts Amy on Tristan’s lap and starts rushing to the hospital.
I mean, quickly can I say how traumatizing for Tristan? He’s 13 years old. He’s just discovered his mom in this horrific way.
Now he’s in the car with his unconscious mother on his lap, obviously bleeding profusely, getting blood all over him while his dad speeds to the hospital and is frantically calling 911.
It is actually unfathomable. But like I said, Todd did call 911 as he rushed his wife to the hospital.
Delaware County 911. What’s the address of your emergency? Hello. I’m on the road.
I’m out of breath. Okay. What’s going on? My wife’s not responsive. I don’t know if she spoke.
I don’t know if she was halfway out the door. I sent my phone over to check on her.
He’s yelling at me and she looks gone. Okay. Um, we’ll get an ambulance going in just a second.
Um, I’m I’m headed there. I just grabbed her and I turned THE TRUCK WITH MY SON told me.
Okay. You’re headed to the hospital and she’s in your vehicle. Yes. And there’s no there’s no Can you pull over?
She’s just I can hear nothing. Okay. What What is your name, sir?
Todd, you feel anything? Amy. Amy. Amy. Okay. So, what what happened that she was not conscious or breathing?
She fell in a fork. I took THE DAMN FORK OUT OF HER. It was an old fork getting in somewhere and then she was halfway out of the barn like she call him get out and then yelled and I ran over there and she’s laying there.
She did not respond me. Sir, do you feel comfortable uh doing CPR? I could try.
I’ll try anything. She is she flat on the Are you able to get her flat across maybe the seat?
I want to keep going. Come on. She’s cold. Come on. Come on.
Come on. First responders were dispatched at around midday and Deputy Luke Thompson was one of the first responders on the scene.
He arrived at the scene and was flagged down by Tristan covered in blood on the side of the road.
As he rushed to help Amy, he found that she was still completely unresponsive. There was no pulse.
She wasn’t breathing. She was covered in blood. But he laid her down on the ground and immediately started doing chest compressions.
When paramedics then arrived, they transported her to the nearby hospital, which was about 20 minutes away.
But unfortunately, it was too late and Amy couldn’t be saved. Tristan and Todd, of course, were incredibly shaken by everything.
And as doctors and police tried to make sense of what had happened, the family was left alone to grieve, and Todd had the unimaginable job of telling his other two children that their mother wouldn’t be coming home.
Her death shocked their small community, and everybody that knew the Mullis family were completely blindsided and shattered by her death.
Of course, an investigation gets underway immediately. And although, you know, farm tragic farm accidents are not completely unheard of, authorities definitely didn’t want to just rule out the fact that this could have been something more sinister.
This could have been a homicide. But the Delaware County Sheriff’s Department was not prepared for a crime like this.
In the previous 10 years, they had only had three homicides to deal with. So, they contacted the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation to help them out and help figure out what had happened here.
Pretty soon after Amy arrived at the hospital, doctors were already doubting that her injuries were the cause of an accident.
Todd obviously hadn’t seen what had happened, so he just kind of told them what he assumed, which is what she which is that she fell on the rake because that’s how she was found.
He had to pull her off the rake in order to transport her. But her wounds really weren’t consistent with her having just fallen on this rake.
Her autopsy revealed that she had six puncture wounds. And the problem with this is that the corn rake that she fell on fell on only had four prongs on it.
So it was an accident. She would have had to have fallen on this rake at least twice and fallen on it hard enough both times that the prongs went all the way through and exited through her back.
And it was also noted during her autopsy that she had injuries to her face, her hands, and her knees.
Now, police probably could have believed that she had fallen on the rake once, right?
But for her to have fallen on this rake twice with enough enough force for the prongs to go all the way from front to back and exit through her back just seemed really really unlikely.
So it became clear pretty quickly that this wasn’t a tragic farm accident and that her death was a homicide.
As it often goes in these cases, of course, investigators very quickly turned their attention to her husband, Todd.
They always have to look at the person, you know, closest to the victim. He and his son Tristan had been at home at the time this happened and they were only 30 feet away from where it happened as well.
But Tristan told investigators that he had been with his dad all morning and there wasn’t a single moment when he hadn’t been with his dad.
So investigators had to start looking, you know, if it wasn’t Todd, he’s got this airtight alibi with his son, then who could be responsible?
As far as anyone knew, the only people that had been on the farm were Todd and his and Amy’s children.
So, if they’re the only people that could have been on the property, they’re the only people that could have been responsible for the murder.
Obviously, they considered that somebody could have snuck on the farm and killed her that way, somebody that wanted her dead.
But when investigators first arrived to the property, there was a thin covering of snow on the property, and there were no footsteps that any of the officers could recall seeing.
So, there was nothing to suggest that there had been an intruder or anything like that.
And also, as far as I knew, there was nobody that would want Amy dead or would want to harm her in such a gruesome way.
The Mullers family did have surveillance cameras, but conveniently for the killer, they weren’t working at the time of the murder, and they hadn’t been working for a couple of weeks.
They only started working after the murder took place. It wasn’t until after the murder that anyone even realized that the cameras hadn’t been working for weeks.
At this point, the scene was processed on the day of Amy’s murder, and besides a couple of drops of blood, there really wasn’t any forensic evidence to point to any person that could have done this.
Obviously, Todd’s DNA was going to be everywhere because he and his family lived and worked there and he picked her body up in order to transport her and try and get her to the hospital.
The corn rake was obviously treated as a key piece of evidence, but other than that, there was really no forensic evidence.
There really wasn’t a lot to go off. 2 days after Amy’s murder, investigators returned to the scene of the crime.
And this time, they had warrants to rece to seize all of the electronics on the farm.
So, the computers, the phones, all of the electronic devices, and then also to collect or try to collect more forensic evidence and have more of a look because the first time they came, it was already dark by the time they finished processing the scene.
So, as they look through all of these devices is when they find out about Amy’s affairs.
Todd first found out that Amy was having an affair in 2013 with somebody that she had met through work.
And obviously, he was devastated, but they were both determined to work through it. According to Amy’s stepmom, Todd reached out to her when all of this had happened, when he found out about Amy’s affair, and allegedly he said to her, “You know, I’m not going to lose the farm and everything that I’ve worked for.”
So I think there was multiple reasons that he wanted to work through this marriage and just felt like divorce was not going to be an option.
So they went to marriage counseling. They really tried to repair the marriage and Amy even quit her job as a nurse so that she could come and work on on the farm.
And that was actually kind of part of the deal that they made in in trying to make things work because obviously she had met this guy through work.
And they also agreed that she had to be accountable to Todd tell Todd or let Todd know every time she was gonna go out basically.
So she was just kind of starting to go a little stir crazy. She often complained, you know, she was at home all the time now.
I mean, they were all kind of home all the time, but she’s at home all the time.
She’s complaining that Todd works too much. She’s complaining that he likes to stay in while she likes to go out.
So, she’s getting bored. She’s also complaining that he has become way too overbearing since the affair.
People that knew Amy described her as a vivaceious woman who felt trapped in her marriage.
She was feeling increasingly isolated. She was feeling increasingly disconnected from Todd. As the years went on, more and more distance grew between them and she felt like a slave and she felt trapped in her own life basically.
So eventually in late May of 2018, Amy started another affair, this time with a guy named Jerry Fresher.
He was also married, a married father of two, and he was the field manager for the Mullis’ hog farm.
So, he worked with Amy and Todd. Amy was also the bookkeeper for the farm.
So, it was pretty normal for her and Jerry to be in contact, which then eventually morphed into a sexual relationship.
And once again, Todd finds out about this affair. He actually found out about it through phone records.
So, one time he gets this phone bill and he sees all of these calls and texts between Amy and Jerry.
They were texting a lot, like 15 to 40 times a day they would text and they were meeting up with each other once a week, sometimes more.
They were calling each other as well. Some people claimed that for Jerry it was more of just a sexual thing.
But for Amy, it was more of a companionship thing because she was not getting what she wanted from Todd and she was just feeling very isolated, very disconnected, very alone on the farm and in her marriage and in her life.
Todd ends up confronting Jerry about his suspicions and Jerry says, “No way.” Like he denies everything.
He says, “We’re just in contact about business. We’re just in contact about kids activities.”
So Todd then goes and contacts Jerry’s wife and she completely brushes the whole thing off.
She’s like, “There is no way.” She did not believe that Jerry was cheating on her.
And in fact, she thought that Todd was nuts for coming up with this crazy conspiracy theory and thinking there was anything going on between Jerry and Amy.
She basically reassured him that everything was fine. There was no affair going on. There was nothing going on between the two of them.
And it really eased Todd’s mind. It made him feel actually a little bit crazy.
It made him feel like he had maybe overreacted. He did still tell Jerry and Amy to stop texting, but he also called Jerry and his wife back and apologized.
After Todd catches on, Jerry has a conversation with Amy and he says, “Maybe we should lay low for a while.
Maybe we should stop seeing each other for a little while because it’s not going to be good if he finds out.”
Instead, they decided to keep seeing each other. I mean, I guess I don’t know if it was one of those things.
They’re just like, “We can’t. We just have to keep seeing each other. Like, we can’t stop.”
But they did agree to be more discreet about it or they were trying to be a little bit more discreet about it.
Don’t think it was working because then rumors were going around about the affair starting to spread around town.
People are hearing about Amy and Jerry. Obviously, Todd already had his suspicions. So, Amy and Jerry decided to try and get in front of the rumors.
Obviously, they were both really worried that Todd was going to find out. I mean, he had kind of already found out, right?
But Amy decided and she told Jerry before her death that she was going to tell Todd about the rumors of the affair that were going on around town so that she might be able to convince him that that’s all they were.
They were just rumors. So when investigators find out about all of this going on between Amy and Jerry and his wife and Todd, obviously investigators are starting to think, you know, there could be other suspects.
It could be Jerry. Could be his wife. Jerry had a family. He had children.
He had a wife. Maybe he killed her to keep it a secret because all these rumors were starting.
Todd knew about it. Todd had called his wife. Or maybe the wife didn’t think that it was as crazy as she made it seem on the phone to Todd and she did believe Todd and maybe she already knew about it and she decided to go and confront Amy in a fit of rage.
And while there were now two suspects, obviously the fact that it’s affair, it’s still it gives a huge motive to Todd as well.
So they have three potential suspects. As the investigation continues on, investigators also learned that Todd had contacted Amy’s stepmom about the affair.
And he had also contacted a mutual friend of his and Amy’s, one of Amy’s former colleagues named Terry.
And he had contacted them to kind of scope out was what was going on, see if they had heard anything, what their thoughts and feelings were.
Terry did say to him that Amy’s behavior was she was acting like she did during her first affair.
She also suggested to Todd that maybe they just weren’t good together. Maybe they just weren’t the right fit.
To which Todd responded, “I have worked for this farm since I was 11 years old and I’m not willing to give it up.”
And he shared a similar sentiment with Amy’s stepmother as well, saying, “I’m not going to lose everything that I’ve worked for.”
Now, Terry before this phone call with Todd had actually already heard about the rumors between Amy and Jerry at a work event.
She called Amy. She told Amy about the rumors and Amy told her where to look if she ever went missing, where to look for her body.
Terry told her, “You’re putting yourself in a really dangerous situation. Todd is going to kill you because Todd is just not the person you mess with.”
After this conversation with Terry, Amy contacted another colleague as well to ask about the rumors and said that if they hear any rumors, could they please try and say something to put a stop to them because if they ever got back to Todd, he would kill her.
What investigators found out is the reason Terry spoke like this to her and said, you know, be careful.
Todd is not the person you want to mess with. Amy was saying, “Don’t let these rumors get back to Todd.”
Is because Todd was actually known to be a little bit scary and he was known to have a cruel streak.
There was one source that actually claimed that he had done something something cruel to some of the animals on the farm in front of his children.
On top of the affair talk, Amy had also confided in some of her friends that she actually did want to divorce Todd and she planned to divorce Todd, but she was really afraid of what he would do if she actually told him and brought up the divorce with him because every time, you know, she kind of mentioned that she might want to leave or something kind of came up, he would beg her to stay.
He would offer to do whatever it took, go to therapy, do whatever to make her stay.
Investigators actually discovered that during their relationship, he was very much keeping track of Amy, like borderline stalking, keeping track of Amy.
And obviously, she’s had an affair, so he’s concerned. He wants to make sure she’s not having another affair.
He’s keeping an eye on her. But it’s like kind of creepy. You know, if you’re that worried, don’t be with her.
You don’t have to go borderline stalker. And obviously, she had had an affair, so he wanted to keep tabs on her, but it was to an extreme, right?
Because if you’re this worried that she’s going to have an affair, leave. Let her leave.
Instead, he is making her quit her job and just stay at the farm all the time.
He’s basically stalking her. And she felt like he was incredibly overbearing. In June of 2018, Amy text her friend Patricia and basically said she wanted to divorce Todd.
She hadn’t been happy in the marriage for many, many, many years. She wanted to divorce and she wanted actually to get married to Jerry.
Patricia’s response to this was, “What does Todd think? Does Todd want a divorce?” And Amy responded and said, “No, because he doesn’t want to lose half of the farm.
He doesn’t want to lose half of everything, and he also thinks it’s socially unacceptable.”
Amy estimated that her share of the family trust, you know, with all of the farm and everything was $2 million.
So, from Todd’s perspective, he was set to lose $2 million if they did get a divorce.
Investigators also found out that after Todd called Jerry’s wife, Amy texted Patricia and said is hitting the fan.
She also said that if Todd ever found out about the affair or that she wanted a divorce that he would kill her.
Then by July, she spoke to a mutual friend who she told that she finally felt ready that she was actually able to leave.
She had worked up to a point that she wanted to leave, not even for Jerry.
She just wanted to leave for herself and she had been quietly looking for jobs and looking for other places to stay.
In August, Amy’s grandmother passed away and she told her brother at this time that she was planning to divorce Todd, but she was really worried about what her eldest son Tristan would think and that he would be really angry with her for it.
But she asked her brother if he could store some of her grandma’s stuff, some of her furniture, so that she would have some furniture when she did leave Todd.
There were countless stories like this. Countless stories of Amy talking to friends and kind of with a similar sentiment about wanting to divorce and wanting to leave Todd and scared of what Todd how Todd would react.
So, I won’t go over all of those conversations because they’re all quite similar. But, there was one that I wanted to talk about because it kind of struck a nerve and that was a phone call that Amy made to her friend Angie in the fall of 2018.
On this call, she allegedly told her friend that her son Tristan didn’t want to get on the school bus that morning because he told her that he was worried that when he got home that night, she wouldn’t be there anymore.
So, it wasn’t just Amy, it wasn’t just her friends that was scared of what would happen to her.
It was also her son Tristan. Her 13-year-old son Tristan. He found out about the affair and he allegedly said to his mom, “If he finds out that you’re going to have an affair, he will kill you.”
I can’t even imagine that, right? Like I cannot imagine this 13-year-old boy having to worry about something like this, having to worry that his dad might kill his mom or his mom might not be there when he gets home.
The dynamic is just so sad and insane and heartbreaking. So on the morning of the 10th of November, 2018, which is the morning of the murder, one of Amy’s friends text her.
She asked Amy how she was doing, and Amy responded and said, “Thanks. Okay, things are still very tense around here.
Just not sure of anything anymore.” Later that day, Amy emailed Jerry at 10:12 a.m.
And she said, “Do you know what I’m doing today? Cleaning light fixtures in the barn.”
WTF? Because remember, she was meant to be on bed rest. She had had surgery just a few days earlier.
She was not meant to be doing things around the farm. She wasn’t meant to be, you know, getting up, standing on buckets, doing all of this housework.
She was meant to be in bed recovering. Investigators also found that Todd had a growing resentment for his wife, if they didn’t already know that through the affairs and him contacting everyone and what everyone else was saying.
In a search of his phone records, they showed that he had sent a message to a friend which said Amy hasn’t done any farm chores, that she maybe does half the housework.
And he complained about things like this to multiple different people that Amy wasn’t pulling her weight, that Amy wasn’t helping, and just his his growing resentment and anger towards Amy.
So, by this point, investigators, they have a very clear picture of what’s going on.
They have a wife who is terrified to leave her husband who has told multiple people that she is scared that he will kill her if she tries to leave and a husband who seems to be coming close to a breaking point over infidelity and perceived laziness.
As with any investigation, of course, they have to rule out other options. They have to rule out the fact that Jerry killed her so that his wife and kids didn’t find out cuz there’s all these rumors.
They have to rule out Jerry’s wife that she found out and maybe killed Amy in a fit of rage or confronted her and things went badly.
Obviously, they were pretty sure that they had nothing to do with it. If you remember, there was a thin layer of snow on the property when investigators first arrived to the scene and there was no footprints that they could recall that indicated there was any kind of intruder.
No footprints leading to where Amy was. But of course, they had to go and speak to Jerry anyway.
And when they spoke to Jerry for the first time, he told them that he was also fearful of Todd and what Todd might do if he found out about the affair.
He also told them that he was at his house in Anamosa at the time of the matter, which is about a 45minute drive away from the Mullis farm and he was at home watching college football with his son.
His son provided an alibi for him, confirmed everything that he had said, and his phone had also pinged at his house at or in the area of his house at 10:45, 11:45, 12:45 and basically confirmed that he was at home at the time the murder took place.
I couldn’t really find out what they found out about the wife, but whatever it was, they pretty much ruled Jerry and his wife out as suspects pretty quickly in the investigation.
And that of course left Todd as the prime and only suspect. Todd had spoken with the police on the day of Amy’s murder, of course, but his first formal interview was 6 days after her death.
This interview lasted about 2 and 1/2 hours. And by the time the interview took place, police pretty much already had all of the information that I’ve already gone over.
So when he starts describing the marriage as good, says communication was great. Describe the marriage as pretty tight.
How would you describe your marriage to me? Pretty tight actually. Yeah. Communication was great.
We we were together all the time, you know, and we it was good.
Yeah. Between us it was good. Police were like, “Sure, buddy.” You know, we already know what’s going on.
He did acknowledge that they had their fair share of problems, but that was in the past and things had been better lately.
And police were like, “Sure, okay, sure.” They already knew about everything. They knew about the affairs.
They knew that things weren’t good. They’d already spoken about to Jerry. They knew about Jerry.
And so they basically just laid that all out for him. They were like, “Look, we know you’re lying.
We know that it’s not good. We know about X, Y, and Z. At this point, and the case clearly shows and was punishable for for death at this point.”
But Todd was not budging. He not did not at all sway from his story, sway for from his opinion.
He believed fully or was telling police that he believed fully that Amy had fallen on that rake.
The agent tried a different tactic. He tried sympathizing with Todd about the infidelity. He tried, you know, getting on a level with him.
I know about that person. I know how hard that hits you and the family.
I know what that did to your trust. You’re going to have this again in 2018, man.
Not again. Not again, Jerry. Again. And you have suspicions. You were right to have suspicions.
You’re going to have that form taken away from you by that wasn’t going to happen.
You weren’t going to have your children taken away from you by any. You weren’t going to be around for round number two.
After you weather the storm five years ago. He went to the counseling, but he did the right thing.
And here we are. We’re way back at commitment to pay and try and rebuild trust.
And here we are in summer 2008. And here we are right now. They even lied to him.
They even tried to tell him that his son Tristan had changed his story and there was time in which he could have left and and Tristan wouldn’t have seen him and he could have gone and killed his wife.
But no matter what they said, Todd never wavered from his story and from his version of events.
So by the time this 2 and 1 half hour interview was over, they were really no better off.
They had nothing. They had no actual physical evidence against Todd. And so he was free to go.
He was pretty much the only suspect in this case. He was the only person that police thought could have done this that the evidence pointed to.
And even Todd admitted he couldn’t think of another person that would want to harm Amy.
And investigators were pretty sure that he was involved. I mean, the whole thing was sketchy.
The 911 call was sketchy. The way that he lifted her body off the rake, they just thought that was sketchy.
The affair, you know, everything. There’s no way she fell on a rake twice hard enough for it to pierce all the way through her body.
The only thing that held them back was his alibi. His son Tristan saying that he had been with him the entire morning.
There was no time in which his dad could have snuck away to kill Amy.
If you remember, Tristan and Todd were said to be very, very close. They did everything together.
They went hiking, camping, fishing. They worked together. They were super close. And investigators were really worried about the fact that all of the kids were still living with Todd while this investigation was going on.
So, they were concerned that, you know, he could he could have coached them. He could have told them what to say.
He even could have gaslit them into believing their own stories or believing things that might not be true.
But eventually there was a breakthrough in the case which came in the form of internet search history.
It’s always the way. You know they they seized all of the devices from the family home and they were still going through them.
Eventually they get to the iPad and this iPad belongs to Todd. On the iPad there was search history of things like what ancient cultures did to infidelity.
Did ancient cultures kill adulterers? What happens to cheaters in history? What happens to cheating spouses in historic Aztec tribe killing unfaithful women and a New York Times article titled punishment is 18 months for killing cheating wife.
I don’t know what is up with the ancient thing. I don’t know what is up with the like what did what did they do in ancient times to women that cheat?
What does that have to do with us in 2018? You know what I mean?
What did the Aztecs have to do with your wife cheating on you in 2018?
I’m so confused what what any of the ancient stuff had to do with it.
Why he’s relating it specifically to ancient times. Anyway, with this search history, they did have enough to finally go out and arrest Todd for the murder of his wife, Amy Mullis.
He was arrested on the 28th of February, 2019 and subsequently charged with firstdegree murder.
They held him for almost 7 months while he waited for his trial. And in this time, not once did he admit to killing Amy.
He always maintained his innocence. He always stuck to his story. He never wavered on his story.
His trial began on the 17th of September in 2019 and he of course plead not guilty.
The prosecution led by assistant AG Marine Hughes told the court that Amy’s death was a homicide, not a tragic farm accident.
So they argued that Todd killed Amy after finding out about the affair with Jerry and he impaled her with this corn rake multiple times to basically avoid a messy divorce and avoid losing a bunch of money and half of his farm in the divorce.
They also alleged that he planned this. He pre-planned this. He premeditated this and that is why he committed the murders right after she had surgery because you know there’s that whole story that she was dizzy.
She was falling over when she was cleaning these light fixtures. So conveniently, it makes sense that she could have just fallen over and fell on a rake twice with enough force for it to pierce all the way through her body.
The defense argued that Todd was the victim in all of this. You know, he’d lost his wife.
His wife was having all these affairs. Shockingly, they did agree that Amy had been murdered because I mean, how could you not, right?
But they claimed that it wasn’t Todd who committed the murder. Amy Mullis was viciously and deliberately murdered.
The issue really not who did it, but whether Mr. Mullis did. Obviously, what they’re saying now has gone against what Todd has been claiming this whole time, his one story that he has stuck to this whole time that Amy fell.
But I guess it finally clicked for him that there was just no way. The autopsy was almost undeniable that this was a murder.
Like, there is just no way you could have six holes from a fourpronged rake if you just fell on it.
His defense claimed that his initial claims that she had fallen on the rake were basically him just trying to explain away her death.
That he was in shock. He couldn’t understand it. He couldn’t fathom it. And he was just trying to explain it cuz he couldn’t see another explanation for it.
The medical examiner, Dr. Kelly Cruz, also testified at the trial. She testified to the six holes that Amy had in her body despite the four prongs on the corn rag.
And she also testified about the other injuries that she had on her face, her knees, and her hands.
And from this, she concluded, she’s the one that conducted the autopsy report, and she concluded that this death was a homicide.
The prosecution also brought Amy’s friends and family to testify at the trial about all of the things we spoke about earlier.
Her saying that she was scared of Todd. Her saying, “If I go missing, look for me.”
Her trying to get the rumors to stop because if Todd found out, he would kill her.
Amy was all upset and she was crying that if her husband Todd would find out that he would kill her.
Jerry Fresher also took the stand and he testified that although he wasn’t at the crime scene the morning Amy was killed.
He had spoken with her that day. In his testimony, he told the court that Amy had said to him that if Todd ever found out about their affair, she would disappear.
One time she did say that if he ever found out, she would disappear.
So, you’ve got all of these witnesses that are coming and testifying that both they and Amy were scared of Todd in some capacity and that, you know, clearly he was a controlling husband.
And the prosecution did a really good job of painting him as this scary, unforgiving husband that couldn’t deal with the idea of his wife leaving him, especially for another man.
And this is really the angle that they were going for because they had to prove to this jury not only that Amy was murdered, but they had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Todd was the one who wielded the rake.
Now, again, the main hurdle they had was his son Tristan’s alibi. He testified remotely at the trial and he was arguably one of the most important witnesses in this whole case because he was there.
He was questioned shortly before the trial and he ended up saying that there were a couple of times that he was separated from his dad.
For example, I mean they were not by much though. For example, he said at one point he went to the front office and he was getting a drink and he was separated from his dad for maybe a minute, a minute and a half.
This happened a couple of times and each time he said that they were less than a minute.
Obviously, this went against what he had originally told prosecutors. And they kind of honed in on this and tried to say, you know, maybe maybe he’s lost track of time.
Maybe he doesn’t actually know how long it was that he was separated from his dad.
He and his dad were very close. But when it came to testify, this is what he said.
Do you know exactly how long your dad wasn’t in your sight? No.
Tristan, would it be accurate to say that you don’t know how much time you were away from your dad when you were in when you were working in the hog barn?
Yes. So, with a blurry timeline, they gave a big question to the jury, which is, did Todd have enough time, or was it feasible for Todd to slip away, murder his wife, and get back without Tristan noticing?
They also brought up the fact of what he actually told Tristan that morning when Tristan discovered his mom because Tristan said that his dad told him to go to the red barn to look for his mom, and it’s like an hour and a half after she had allegedly gone inside to rest.
So, why would he tell Tristan to go look for her in the red barn an hour and a half later?
And why wouldn’t he give a broader instruction of, you know, just go find your mom?
Go look for where your mom is. So, an instruction would be wider than just the red shed.
Absolutely. Go find mom. Search the farm. So, why would Todd pick red shed of all the possibilities?
The prosecution would want you to believe that he wants Tristan to find mom. He needs Amy to be located by somebody other than him.
Todd testified on the third day of the trial and he argued that he and Tristan were only ever separated for a matter of seconds.
He denied any involvement in Amy’s murder, in Amy’s death, and he also argued that he wasn’t given a fair chance to explain himself.
Mind you, you know, he spoke to investigators on the day of the murder briefly.
Yes. But then 6 days later in his formal interview, he had 2 and 1/2 hours.
I watched a lot of the investigation and let me tell you, there was ample time for him to fully explain himself or fully explain what happened.
He also could have called the police at any time in the 18 days that it took to arrest him.
I also don’t even really understand what he would have even been trying to explain because in the trial, he pretty much was just saying that he didn’t know what happened.
It wasn’t like there was some piece of evidence to exonerate him or some revelation he had come to.
During his cross- examination, he was grilled by the prosecution about his internet search history.
It was a search for characteristics of cheating women. Did you do that search?
No. Do you know who did that search? No. You have no idea?
No. What did ancient cultures do to infidelity? Did you do that search?
No. In a surprise to no one, he denied making any of these searches.
He said anybody could have made them. Anyone in the family, they all use the iPad, specifically Amy, which why would Amy be googling like what what did ancient people do to people that cheat?
And what did the Aztecs do to people that cheat? Todd’s son Tristan did admit to using this iPad from time to time, but he denied making any of these searches.
I mean, maybe it makes sense for a kid to search them because again, I I just cannot see why anyone would search.
Like what did ancient people do? I just am not understanding the ancient thing. Okay, I’m really not understanding the ancient or the Aztec thing.
I mean either way they are very very incriminating searches because you’re googling about, you know, the New York Times article about a man who only got 18 months in jail for murdering his wife.
They also questioned him about the surveillance cameras conveniently not working. And he said, you know, he didn’t even know the antennas probably could have just been bumped by his cats or something.
The colder it gets, cats go to heat and there’s a heater right below the window.
Sun comes up in the morning, they sit in the window. I also don’t think police actually found out that there was CCTV on the day of Amy’s murder.
So, technically, there was a possibility that the cameras may have been working and the footage was just deleted.
I think that the reasonable explanation is that he deleted the footage. They also asked him why he didn’t call 911 straight away and opted to remove the rake from her, put her in the car, and try and drive her to the hospital instead.
I I just wanted to help her. I just wanted Let’s Let’s go to the hospital.
Is there something wrong? I’m a doer, I guess. I just I wanted to help.
I was in reaction mode. I I wanted to get her to the hospital. The thing about this trial is that there was a severe lack of physical evidence.
There was no CCTV. There was no physical evidence. There was no forensic evidence. There was no single piece of physical evidence that proved that Todd killed Amy.
It was the day after I think after talking to family members and stuff, they go, “Do you have anything on the camera?”
So, I went out. I seen everything was knocked off hanging down by the floor.
I picked it all back up. I did not know how long it had been off or whatever.
What the prosecution did have was basically a mountain of circumstantial evidence. They had witness testimony from medical examiners, from friends, from family, from the iPad search histories.
They were really just missing that smoking gun. And then on the final day of the trial, they had a big breakthrough.
I guess it wasn’t a smoking gun, but it was a very damning piece of evidence, and it was in relation to the 911 call.
Investigators didn’t initially pick up on this, but the trial was being televised, and so a bunch of people were calling in with all of this information.
One person had taken the time to or a member of the public had taken the time to analyze the 911 call and they said that they could hear something or Todd saying something under his breath while he was giving Amy CPR.
And this caller believed that he was muttering cheating and go to hell cheating The prosecution was made aware of this claim right before the final day of the trial.
So they go back, they listen to the 911 call into the recordings, and they completely agree with this caller with this claim, and they decide to present it in court on the final day of the trial.
They asked Todd about what he was saying, and he denied that he could even hear any words being spoken in the call.
I think even if he didn’t say it, it’s actually not that big of a stretch to hear those words in the call.
But you guys tell me what you think. I’ll play the call. Let me know what you think.
Just try to listen really closely. I just want to know if you remember what you said right there.
Do you say go to hell cheating No. So you don’t hear that?
No. You didn’t hear at 653 cheating horn. You didn’t hear that? I didn’t hear that word.
And at right at that after you hear a ping, you don’t hear go to hell cheating horn.
No. This was a really pivotal moment for the trial and although it is kind of hard to make out what he’s saying, it definitely seems like it swung the jury in the direction of the prosecution.
The defense later argued that he was saying so cold, she’s so cold. And they also spoke about like just how dumb it would be for him to be on a 911 call saying Like you’re a cheating Go to hell.
While literally on a 911 call. During closing statements, the prosecution went over pretty much everything we’ve already spoken about.
They emphasized the six puncture wounds and the four-pronged rag. They really honed in on that 911 call and they emphasized his motive, the fact that Amy was cheating on him and he stood to lose a lot in the divorce.
The defense really relied upon Todd’s character, which is not, I think, in this situation the best thing to rely upon, but also on reasonable doubt.
In closing statements, they asked the jury to consider if Todd was capable of something like this, and in particular, if he was capable of sending his 13-year-old son, who he was said to be very close with, to find his mother’s dead body.
So, after 5 days of trial proceedings, the jury deliberated over 2 days for about 7 and 1/2 hours in total before finally returning with a verdict of guilty on the 23rd of September, 2019.
Todd was crushed by the verdict and I honestly think he thought that he was going to get away with murdering Amy.
His whole plan, his whole attempt to frame it as an accident, he’s honestly delusional.
I think to even go along with that, knowing that there was six puncture wounds on a four-prong rake, I think that in itself is so damning and really shows that this was such a halfbaked plan.
But he really cooked himself with the search history. His sentencing was delayed for about a year because of the pandemic.
And during this delay, he hired a new lawyer who was pushing for a retrial on the basis of misconduct for how they presented the mutterings on the 911 call.
But the judge refused to throw out the guilty verdict. Todd also denied his involvement in the crime all the way up until his sentencing in 2020, where the judge sentenced the now 44 yearear-old to life in prison without parole.
I did not do this. Uh this is supposed to be America where you shouldn’t have to prove your innocence.
I thought it was guilty until or uh innocent until proven guilty. I feel this was the other way around.
And I was a faithful and loving husband. Shortly after this, he did appeal again, but in 2022, the Iowa Court of Appeals denied it and upheld his conviction.
He has since applied again for postconviction relief and a hearing for this was held in early 2025, but as of yet there hasn’t really been an announcement of what came out of that hearing.
I think the results are still yet to be finalized. And this is also one of his last chances to try and have his conviction overturned.
So, he’s already gone through the appeal process. So, now what he needs to do is try and show that there was some sort of error in his trial.
I believe he’s going to argue that his defense made some errors while defending him.
One of his complaints in the postconviction relief request is that his defense kind of misguided him into testifying.
So, he’s clearly regretting whatever he said in his testimony and, you know, testifying for himself in his trial.
He’s also hoping to get a new trial. So, even if his request is granted, there’s no guarantee that there would even be a different outcome in a second trial.
Another issue that’s being raised is that his son Tristan testified remotely and the Iowa Supreme Court recently ruled that you can’t do that.
His new defense team is also taking a different approach and they are now once again saying that this wasn’t even a homicide and they’re trying to suggest once again that Amy’s death was a tragic accident.
Despite his conviction, there is very there’s a lot of online support for him and there’s even a change.org petition with over 3,000 signatures.
And look, people are entitled to their own opinion. And maybe I’m missing something. I don’t know the guy.
But who else do you think did it? When you break the whole thing down, there’s no way that this was an accident.
And there’s no evidence that anybody else could have done this. There was six wounds, six puncture wounds, and four prongs on the rake.
She didn’t fall on it twice. Well, I don’t think I I think it’s very unlikely she fell on it twice.
Hard enough for those prongs to go all the way through twice. She would have had to fallen with enough force to impale herself twice.
It’s just impossible. And that’s not just my opinion either. That is the opinion of many, many experts that testified in the trial.
They also thought it was impossible. And the jurors convicted him. Jurors have since come out though and said that the deliberations took so long because about half of them believe that Todd did it and half of them weren’t quite sure.
They did obviously eventually find him guilty, but I mean I don’t find it hard to believe that some of them were undecided because in a trial you ha it has to be beyond a reasonable doubt.
And again, there really wasn’t any physical evidence against him. The most damning thing was really the fact that it wasn’t an accident.
Who else could it have been? And the search history, like the search history is pretty bad, but there was no physical evidence against him or against anyone for that matter, though.
Anyway, that’s everything for this case. That’s all from me today, guys. What do you think?
Please tell me, do you think that he is guilty? Do you think there’s a possibility that somebody else could be involved in this?
Do you think it’s an accident? I mean, personally, I feel like it is near impossible that this was an accident, especially when you consider all the stuff in the leadup, you know, all her saying that she was scared of Todd, that Todd was going to kill her, all of these people scared for her and her safety because of this affair, the fact that she’s scared to leave him, the search history.
I mean, I really don’t see there being another conclusion, but let me know what you guys think.
Let me know your thoughts. I will be in the comments, as always, to chat to you and discuss every thought that you might have on this case, please.
But that is everything. That’s all for me today, guys. I hope you have a great rest of your day.
I hope you had a great rest of your week, and hopefully I will see you in my next video.
Bye guys.
