Victim impact statements from the family that were read by the judge or read allowed in open court. - Updated. Added Amy's Fathers Statement to the Judge. 12/16/08

Video of the Sentencing.

 

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Link to original article and publication. Steven Mullins convicted of murdering his wife

 

 

Link to original article and publication. Man Convicted Of Strangling, Stuffing Wife In Refrigerator

Mullins death case goes to jury
By Jeremy Pawloski | The Olympian • Published November 6, 2008

OLYMPIA – Prosecutor David Bruneau told jurors during closing arguments Wednesday that Steven Mullins had a motive and an opportunity to kill his estranged wife, Amy, the morning after she told him she was leaving him.

Steven Mullins is on trial in Thurston County Superior Court for first-degree murder in Amy Mullins' strangulation death.

Bruneau also reminded the jury that Steven Mullins accurately described to detectives the clothing found on and near Amy Mullins' dead body when he described a dream he had that he strangled his wife.

"He told the investigators something only the killer would know, that she was wearing a red bra and she was wearing a red shirt," Bruneau said.

Amy Mullins was found dead July 21, 2007, in a refrigerator about 125 yards east of Steven Mullins' Carper Road home in Rochester.

Jurors began deliberations Wednesday in Steven Mullins' murder trial after hearing closing arguments from Bruneau and Mullins' attorney, Brett Purtzer of Tacoma.

Purtzer told the jury that detectives focused on his client without paying attention to any other possible suspects. Purtzer also said Steven and Amy Mullins' more than 20 years of marriage were coming to a close in the weeks before her death because Amy Mullins discovered that her husband was having an affair. Other witnesses testified at trial that the couple was having financial trouble.

Purtzer said his client's actions avoiding law enforcement after Amy Mullins' disappearance were reasonable given that he was concerned detectives were focusing on him as a suspect. He also pointed out that Steven Mullins' DNA was not found under Amy Mullins' fingernails after they were examined for evidence at a crime lab.

"The only just verdict in this case is that of not guilty," Purtzer said.

But detectives' targeting of Steven Mullins for investigation was justified, Bruneau told jurors.

"There's no one else, no one else to focus on," Bruneau said.

Deliberations in Steve Mullins' murder trial will continue today in Thurston County Superior Court Judge Anne Hirsch's courtroom.

Jeremy Pawloski covers public safety for The Olympian. He can be reached at 360-754-5465 or jpawloski@theolympian.com.

Link to original article and publication. Mullins death case goes to jury

 

Kailyce Detmar, 16, testifies Wednesday morning in Thurston County Superior Court about the last time she saw her mother, Amy Mullins, alive. Mullins’ husband, Steven Mullins, is on trial in Olympia for first-degree murder, in the case from July of 2007.

Steve Mullins confers with his defense attorney Brett Purtzer during his trial at the Thurston County Courthouse in Olympia Wednesday. Mullins is accused of killing his estranged wife, Amy Mullins.
Photos courtesy of Holly Pederson, hpederson@chronline.com

OLYMPIA -- A little over a year after Rochester resident Amy Mullins was found strangled and stuffed inside a refrigerator, her family and her accused husband’s family finally got to hear some of the reasons given for why he is wrongly charged in her murder.

Steven H. Mullins, 46, sat quietly in a packed courtroom on Wednesday as his defense attorney told a jury that sheriff’s detectives zeroed in on the Rochester man as a suspect right away and didn’t consider any other possibilities.

“For the past 20 years, Steven Mullins with Amy and her daughter, had been living a dream,” Tacoma attorney Brett Purtzer told the court. “Now he is living a nightmare.”

Purtzer said most of the evidence jurors would hear came primarily from the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office.

“Significant will be not just what the sheriff’s department did, but what they did not do,” Purtzer said.

Opening statements in the first-degree murder trial began Wednesday morning in Thurston County Superior Court following two days of jury selection.

Steven Mullins was arrested Monday, July 23, 2007, two days after his estranged wife went missing from her home on James Road in Rochester. The body of the 38-year-old woman was found that afternoon, about 125 yards east of his Carper Road home.

Steven Mullins pleaded not guilty and remains held on $1 million bail.

Family members of Amy and Steven Mullins -- between them, 13 brothers and sisters and numerous children, nieces and nephews -- filled the courtroom nearly to capacity before anyone else was allowed to take a seat on Wednesday morning.

Judge Anne Hirsch gently warned the spectators repeatedly she would tolerate no outbursts.

The jury, including two alternates, is nine women and five men.

Purtzer told the jurors they would hear about stains on his clothing thought to be blood, but the test results showed none.

The attorney suggested it was an acquaintance’s idea to take Steven Mullins to a sheriff’s office and turn himself in, because he had already been questioned and detectives would seek him out anyhow.

Purtzer said his client was with somebody at each and every step during those two days.

“There’s no question that Amy Mullins died, but there will also be no question that Mr. Mullins is not responsible for her death,” he said.

Several people were called to the stand, but the lengthiest testimony was given by Amy Mullins’ now 16-year-old daughter.

Kailyce Detmar, a Rochester High School student who has since moved to California to live with her maternal grandparents, testified her mother and step-father argued that Friday night and after he left, her mother locked all the doors and windows, and closed all the blinds.

She last saw her mother when her mother woke her up about 8 o’clock the next morning, she said. Kailyce and her friend who had stayed overnight got up and hour or so later and her mother was gone, she said.

It wasn’t long before Steven Mullins pulled up in his truck with two of his small grandchildren, saying they, along with Amy Mullins, were supposed to go get a family portrait taken, the jurors hear.

“How did Mr. Mullins look?” Thurston County Senior Deputy Prosecutor David Bruneau asked the teenager.

“Shaky and strung out,” she said.

He had a cut on his forehead, she added.

Not long after, Amy Mullins’ Jeep was found parked around the back of her home, with the keys in the ignition, warm coffee in a mug and her dog Fred sitting in the passenger seat.

Prosecutor Bruneau told the jury that Steven Mullins confessed to the killing, although he couched it in terms of a dream.

During those two days, he wasn’t searching for Amy because he knew where she was, Bruneau said, as Steven Mullins listened and slowly shook his head in disagreement.

“The evidence will show she was manhandled, beaten, suffered blunt force trauma and broken ribs before she was strangled,” Bruneau told the jury.

While the couple had been together 20 years, and married for about half that time, the marriage was ending, they were having financial trouble, he said.

“Ladies and gentleman, no doubt you’ve heard the refrain from lovers, ‘I can’t live without you’,” he said. “He said I can’t live without her. He profaned and perverted that meaning, if I can’t have you, I will kill you. And that’s what he thought about.”

The trial is scheduled through Monday.

Steven Mullins, if convicted, faces a sentence of at least 20 years.

Sharyn L. Decker: (360) 807-8235

Link to original article and publication. Rochester Murder Trial Begins

Trial in woman's slaying begins
By Jeremy Pawloski | The Olympian • Published October 30, 2008

OLYMPIA – Steven Mullins' murder trial stemming from the July 2007 slaying of his estranged wife, Amy, began Wednesday in Thurston County Superior Court.

Amy Mullins' body was found stuffed in an abandoned refrigerator July 23, 2007, about 125 yards east of Steven Mullins' Carper Road home in Rochester, two days after she had disappeared. Amy Mullins, a 38-year-old mother of a teenage daughter, had been strangled to death.

A witness testified Tuesday about the financial and marital problems the couple had. By May 2007, after about 20 years of marriage, Amy Mullins was talking about moving out of the home they shared, her friend Randie Purcell testified Wednesday. On the night before she disappeared, she told Steven Mullins that she was leaving him, Steve Mullins' brother testified.

James Mullins testified that on the night before Amy Mullins disappeared, his younger brother was going to her house to "get back in the graces of his wife by any way possible."

James Mullins said that when his brother returned that night, he said his wife had told him that "the relationship was ending, that it was over."

James Mullins also testified that his brother told him that he might get in trouble with authorities over some remarks he had made to his wife that night — that he was a "sniper" and that "he could not allow her to go with another man and start a relationship."

James Mullins testified that the next morning, Steven Mullins went to his wife's home but returned about 45 minutes later and said she was not there.

According to court papers, after Steven Mullins left his wife's home, she called a friend and said that he told her, "I'll have you in life or I'll have you in heaven." Court papers also state that Steven Mullins told Amy Mullins' family that he "snapped" during an argument with her.

Grays Harbor Sheriff's Deputy Jeff Niles testified Wednesday that on the day Amy Mullins' body was found, Steven Mullins walked into the sheriff's office about 3:40 p.m. and "stated that he wanted to turn himself in."

Niles said that when he asked Steven Mullins why, he responded, "My wife is dead and I may be the cause of it."

"I first asked him to repeat himself because I wanted to make sure I understood what he said," Niles testified Wednesday.

According to court papers, Mullins later told Thurston County sheriff's detectives about a dream in which he saw himself outside his body strangling his estranged wife until she turned blue after she had questioned his manhood.

Steven Mullins' attorney, Brett Purtzer of Tacoma, said his client is innocent.

Steven Mullins' trial continues today in Thurston County Superior Court Judge Anne Hirsch's court.

Jeremy Pawloski covers public safety for The Olympian. He can be reached at 360-754-5465 or jpawloski@theolympian.com.

Link to original article and publication. Trial in woman's slaying begins

 

Rochester Murder Trial to Begin Next Week

Amy Mullins: Husband Found Competent to Stand Trial

Published October 23, 2008 11:39 am. By Sharyn L. Decker

The murder trial in the death of the Rochester woman who was found strangled and stuffed inside a refrigerator is set to begin next week.

Steven H. Mullins, 46, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of his estranged wife, Amy Mae Mullins.

The 38-year-old woman had left her husband less than two weeks before she vanished one morning in the summer of 2007 from her house on James Road. Two days later, her body was found about 125 yards east of his Carper Road home.

Steven Mullins has pleaded not guilty and remains held on $1 million bail.

Thurston County Senior Deputy Prosecutor David Bruneau said on Wednesday he expects the trial in Thurston County Superior Court to last six days.

Monday and probably much of Tuesday will be taken up selecting a jury from 100 or so potential jurors, he said.

Charging papers alleged Steven Mullins told family members, “she called me half a man and I snapped.”

Court papers also say Steve Mullins spoke of the interaction as like a dream and that he was “out of his body” watching everything happen. “In his next vision, she was blue in the face,” prosecutor’s allege he said.

A defense attorney at Mullins’ initial appearance before a judge said it appeared Mullins suffered from mental health issues.

He has been evaluated by Western State Hospital and found competent to stand trial. The mental health report is in his court file, but sealed.

Mullins is represented by Tacoma attorney Brett Purtzer. He has no criminal history.

More than 30 witnesses are expected to take the stand. Judge Anne Hirsch will hear the case.

Amy Mullins has a teenage daughter and five brothers and sisters. She worked for a research board in Olympia. Her estranged husband worked at Maple Lane state detention center for boys until about a year before her death, when he got hurt, according to family members.

The couple operated, with a partner, an auto body shop in Oakville.

Steven Mullins has eight siblings, most of whom live in Lewis and Thurston counties. He also has three grown children.

Her death on July 27, 2007 came after a 20-year relationship.

First-degree murder is a class A felony with a standard range of 20 years to 26 years, eight months in prison. The maximum punishment is life in prison.

Sharyn L. Decker: (360) 807-8235

Link to original article and publication. Rochester Murder Trial to Begin Next Week