March 17, 2022 • 36 mins
Todd Mullis calls 911 as he drives his wife to an Iowa hospital. Amy Mullis was found by the couple's 13-year-old son, impaled on a corn rake and does not survive her injuries. An autopsy is completed and the forensic pathologist finds not four puncture wounds in Mullis' back, but six. The corn rake Todd Mullis says his wife fell on, only has four tines. Also, while Mullis told police he had a good relationship with his wife, investigators learn that Amy was apparently unhappy in the marriage and had at least two affairs. She reportedly told a friend that if Mullis caught her he would “throw her to the pigs.” Court documents showed Amy Mullis called a friend petrified and screaming that Todd Mullis had found out about her affair. Todd Mullis is arrested and convicted of killing his wife.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. Farming is a difficult
way of life and no other type of farming is
as hard as hog farming. Sun up to sundown and
(00:29):
sometimes in the middle of the night you have to
tend to the hogs that you're going to bring to market.
That was life that the Mollis family lived in Iowa.
It was the life that they lived and it resulted
in the death of Amy Mollis. Today we're going to
talk about her homicide. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
(00:55):
is Body Downs with me. A in today is my
good friend Jackie Howard, executive producer of Crime Stories with
Nancy Grace. Jackie, what can you tell us about this
case out of Iowa. Amy Mullis was a thirty nine
year old farmer's wife and she was found impaled on
(01:16):
a corn rake in the shed on her family farm.
Her thirteen year old son, Tristan, had been sent into
the shed by his father and the husband, Todd Mullis,
and the thirteen year old found Amy Mullis impaled on
a corn rake. Again in the shed, Tristan's graamed for
his father and when Todd arrived, he removed the rake
(01:38):
from her back, put her his wife, Amy Mollis, into
the truck, and started racing for the hospital and called.
Once she was at the hospital, Amy Mullis could not
be revived. The question then, as the autopsy was done,
was this an accident or murder? So we're gonna unfold
(01:59):
this case, but let's talk about a couple of things
right off the bat First, what is being impaled? It's
not something that you commonly come across in everyday conversation, though,
is that you know, we we think about when people
die as a result of what we refer to in
forensics as sharp force injuries. That generally involves something like stabbing,
(02:22):
which means an instrument that is an edged weapon, you know,
like a knife single edge, or maybe you have a
knife that is a double edged knife. Commonly, that's what
we think of, but this is something completely different. Impalement
many times, and not every time, but many times, it
has almost an accidental connotation to it um and it
(02:46):
generally means that someone falls back on a penetrating object
or falls onto a penetrating object. And we heard this
term coming up over and over again, particularly early on
with UH with this particular case over the years and
the months that this thing kind of ground through the
(03:06):
the court system. But this is what's kind of interesting
about impalement. Impalement, you know, as I said, generally implies
many times an accidental event. You know, I've worked cases
where I've had car accidents where people have been impaled
on pieces of metal, for instance, inside of vehicles. I've
had people that have taken great falls off of buildings
(03:28):
and this sort of thing and have been impaled on
an object. But impalement actually goes back in our history
for hundreds and hundreds of years. It's actually a form
of torture, and it was actually a form of execution.
People would be impaled and generally on a stake of
some kind or a metal rod. But in this particular
case that the implement that we're talking about is is
(03:51):
kind of interesting, Jackie. It's it's called a corn raak,
which you know, many people might not be familiar with.
It is an un usual instrument. But if you think
about a pitchfork, most people are or have an image
in their mind of what a pitchfork is, if nothing
else from the famous painting of the man and woman
(04:12):
standing holding a pitchfork in front of their house. So,
a pitchfork is a metal utensil on a usually a
wooden handle that's lengthy that's used to help make it
easier to move product or produce of some kind. So
what kind of an injury are we going to see
(04:35):
with a corn rake? It is a four tined instruments,
which means it has four prongs. Pick it up from there, Joe, Yeah,
you know, Jackie, it's a unique instrument. You know, you
you were talking about pitchforks and pitchforks. If if our
listeners will just kind of think about the same action
that goes into say, shoveling something, you can kind of
(04:57):
marry that up with an image of somebody using a pitchfork,
But a corn rake is something that is completely different.
And keep in mind the Mollus family, they were hog farmers.
A matter of fact, this property they have is vasty
and they've got these two gigantic UH sheds that are
on the property. Calm shed implies that it's some kind
(05:19):
of tiny little dwell and it's not. It's there's the
size of what you would think of commercial chicken houses,
I think, uh and there's two of them. And within
these sheds they raised, uh, they raised hogs, and of
course they would start out with piglets and you know,
raise them up from a young age. And of course
what is it that hogs famously eat? Well, some people
(05:39):
might say everything. But in this particular case, you know,
you you feed them corn, and many times the corn
it's still whole corn. This corn is still on the cob.
And so when you're using a corn rake, uh, you
contain the corn cobs, say, for instance, in a crib.
You've heard people have heard this term a corn cre
(06:00):
of uh. And in order to get the corn out
of the crib, you have to rake it out, just
like you use a rake to rake leaves. Only these
four times are bent on this corn rake at about
a ninety degree angle, and they're kind of sharp, very
pointed on the end, and they're ghastly. You know, these
things are ghastly when you look at them, because they're
(06:22):
roughly about it looks to be about five six maybe
seven inches in length, and then the times the distance
between each one is about two to three inches, so
it looks like a gigantic claw, if you'll just imagine
it like that. And certainly the penetrative ability of one
of these times could send it deep deep within the body.
(06:46):
And you know when I viewed this this corn rate
on several occasions. It was admitted into evidence in in
the subsequent trial, and it is I've I've used the
term I think ghastly before, but you have to when
you take a look at it and see this thing,
and it's it's old, it's been used for a long
long time. It does have a wooden handle, and it's
(07:07):
it's weathered in appearance, and even even the times of
this implement are rusty, and in a couple of the
crime scene images you can still see where blood has
tracked down a couple of these times and still remain
there even when the cops got there to take photos
at the scene. Just to clarify one point for our listeners, Joe,
(07:27):
when you say corn crib, you are actually talking about
a barn. This is not like a little manger there
was something that that hogs eat out of. You're actually
talking about a barn. Yeah, yeah, and generally in a
large storage area where if you can, and you know,
you have to think about this. This is this is
a full on industrial operation that you've had that you
(07:48):
have here. It's like I said in my opening, this
is a twenty four seven job. And so when you're
gonna feed this many hogs, and keep in mind they
eat constantly, they would deliver corn, say for instance, or
feed in the back of a large truck and essentially
dump it into the storage area where where it would
(08:10):
be kept. And then you would take this corn rake literally.
Remember I talked about how it acts like a claw,
grab the feed and draw it out like that. So, uh,
this is an implement that had been used for a
long time. I suspect that there was probably in an
operation this size. There was probably more than one there
on that property, Joe, And looking at the injuries that
(08:30):
would have resulted, let's just say you fall on a
corn rake or a pitchfork, those injuries are going to
be a little bit different because of the slant of
the times. Now, we again do know that the times
are metal, and they can be anywhere from four to
six or seven inches long. So, given the shape of
(08:51):
this instrument and and what it is used for and
the length of those times, what kind of injuries or
punctures could we expect. It's not long enough to go
all the way through the body. But what can we
expect in that type of an injury. Well, there's a
couple of things that we're gonna look for. And the
more you know at autopsy, you know, when you're examining
(09:11):
these kind of wounds, much like much like a bullet wound,
you know, we we think about the angle of travel
or the you know, the essentially the trajectory of the
round as it passes through the body. It's no different here, Jackie.
We do many times the same thing. For instance, with
stab wounds. We examine and trace actually the direction of
(09:34):
travel of an object as it passes through the body.
So when when we're looking at a body that has
been impaled, like Amy Modist's body would would be um,
it's not uncommon for us, say, for instance, to take
a dowel rod, a very thin wooden rod for instance,
and place it into the defect and just imagine this,
(09:58):
and sometimes they'll be multicolored, and you run this rod,
this doll rod into the wound itself, and you can,
if you take the photo just right, you can get
an idea of the angle of injury, and you you
document those those doll rods as they're coming out. We
take a picture of these rods in place, so that
(10:20):
when we go to court with a case like this,
we can demonstrate this photographically. And it's it's quite striking
when you see it now. For us when we're trying
to figure out what happened at the scene, it gives
us an idea of the relationship between the victim, the
object that's used, and of course in this case, it's
(10:41):
it's this corner, right, and then of course the potential
perpetrator in particular case, you know, how were they oriented
to the individual when when this particular event took place?
Um and right you are when you're talking about how deep, uh,
these times can penetrate into a body. And just to
(11:01):
give you an idea, when the forensic pathologists did the
examination on Amy Mulis's body, um, she opined at that
particular time that these times entered through what's referred to
as an intercostal space. And I'd like everybody that's listening
right now to find just touch your ribs on the
(11:22):
side and the kind of meaty portion that's in between
each one of your ribs. That's an intercostal space. So
it's it's it's muscle that it passes through, it passes
through the muscle, the rib, the muscle, Okay, then it
goes through along, then it goes through a liver, and
then it goes through the diaphragm. And just think about that,
(11:44):
all of that involvement, and not only when that implement
is tracking through all of those major bodies of the deceased,
it's also tracking through all of those little vessels. And
there's tons and tons of these my grol vessels that
are existent within our body. Joe, how long would the
(12:06):
times have to be to immediately hit a vital organ
in the body. Not not too desperately long. And let's
keep in mind these injuries that that amy mollis sustained.
And I do say that these are injuries, not injury,
singular injuries plural um. It can potentially be a shallow,
(12:32):
a shallow track that it's going through, but it doesn't
take too much depth to essentially pierce the back of
the lung and then drive through the dome the diaphragm dome.
Uh that's just beneath the long and into the top
of the liver. Those things are actually located very very
close to one another. So it's not that it goes
(12:55):
as much deep as you're headed towards the front of
the body. But even a shallow strike like that, as
it's tracking downward, and that's the important part here, as
it's tracking downward, can clip all of those organs, and
of course you clip all of the vessels that are
associated with it. So if Amy Molliss's lung was clipped,
her lungs would have immediately began filling with blood, making
(13:17):
it difficult for her to breathe. Yeah. Yeah, What what
you're gonna have is, first off, if you think about
your chest, your chest is obviously because without saying but
I'll say it anyway, it's a sealed area. So people
develop what's referred to as a pneumothorax. So when you
penetrate that kind of sealed area, you're allowing the air
(13:38):
to come out and come in, and it compromises anyway,
the ability of the lungs to uh to uh take
up oxygen and release oxygen. And then on top of that,
you're insulting the lung by puncturing it. So you've got
this kind of twofold event that's going on. You've really
got a problem here when whenever you injure the chest.
(14:02):
Like this, you're not just opening up this space around
the lung, which is actually called the plural space, but
you're going into the lung itself, which contains a lot
of vessels. Those vessels are clipped, so right you are
when you talk about this kind of in dwelling hemorrhage
that's going on within the long tissue what's called the
(14:22):
interstitial tissue. But on top of that, on top of that,
all of those little micro vessels that you've clipped passing
through that intercostal space on the back of this individual,
that blood is now diving into that open area around
the lung where it should just be air in that space,
(14:43):
now it's filling up with fluid as well. So you've
got a lot to deal with. Uh. If you're say,
for instance, a person that's a trauma surgeon or a
trauma e R. Nurse and this sort of thing where
you're trying to save this person's life, you're having to
put out multiple fires at the same time. You know
(15:23):
the Molashawk farm, it it's uh, there's a vast property
and had all these these newer buildings on it, but
there was one little building that was there it's been
termed the Red Shed that's out there on this property.
And I can't even begin to imagine the horror of
thirteen year old Tristan when he walked through the door
and he found his mother laying there on the floor
(15:44):
under sponsor Jackie. It would have been terrifying, I'm sure,
especially for a teenager. And again he screamed for his father.
Todd came in, found his wife and Joe. He pulled
the rake out of her back. She was again impact
yield with this rake still sticking in her back, and
he pulled it out to take her to the hospital.
(16:07):
If I'm understanding my Red Cross training, any time that
you are impaled with something, you're supposed to leave it
in Why Yeah. Absolutely, If Amy Mollis was to have
any shot at life after this event, it vanished when
that rake was removed. Of course, at that point in time,
(16:28):
we don't really know what the status was um of
her breathing and heart rate and all that sort of
thing when Todd Mullis came upon her body. But I
do know that if if if you want to survivable
event with an impalement with an indwelling object, that you
have to leave it in. The reason is is that
all those micro vessels that I mentioned just a moment
(16:49):
ago are essentially, at least for the moment sealed, they're
sealed off. They're not going to begin to really leak
out at that point in time. But the moment you
put your hand to that object and you withdraw it
from the body, you open the floodgates. Literally, it's it's
you have this huge dump of blood that goes into
(17:09):
that plural space around the lung and any other organs
that may have been penetrated. And what we do know
is that you know, the lung and the diaphragm, which
has its own blood supply it's a muscle, and the
liver we're all uh impacted by this injury, you know,
and that you can't forget about the liver here. The
liver is very, very vascular. A matter of fact, probably
(17:32):
next to next to the brain, it's probably the most
vascular organ in the body. That means that it requires
a tremendous amount of blood flow. So you've got all
kinds of little vessels that are in dwelling in there.
And once that that corn rake was removed, suddenly at
that moment time you had this flood of blood that
was just filling her up inside. UM. I find it
(17:56):
kind of interesting that Todd Mullis described himself in one
way as a quote unquote doer. You know, I'm I'm implied,
I'm a man of action. You know, I'm gonna try
to do everything that I can't save my my wife's life.
And at that moment, tom um he uh, he robbed
her of any opportunity to live beyond that point. Would
(18:17):
it have been that Amy Mollis bled to death or
that she drowned as we were talking about, with her
lungs and body filling up with blood or is there
a distinction there? It's more of a combination. Um. You know,
when you begin to look at you know the totality
of these injuries, because they are extensive. Um, Let's just
(18:41):
take the lung for instance. It can no longer inflate,
all right, it can't take on air, it can't expire,
it can't push air out at that point in time.
And going to that point, you've got a a die fragm.
It's a big this big muscle which helps us with
inhalation and exhalation as well. Well. It's compromised now too,
(19:03):
isn't it. So it's not gonna be able to perform.
And then the liver, I think in this case it's
probably secondary, uh to to the diaphragm and the lungs um. Yeah,
the liver is critical and you're bleeding out from that area,
But in the immediate, in the acute sense, uh, the
fact that this lung has been damaged so desperately, the
(19:24):
diaphragm has essentially been pinned down so that it can't
rise and fall. Remember, it's got a metal object that's
been driven through it. It's not gonna be able to
operate effectively. And so that coupled with this flood of
blood internally, it's it's just a hellish combination here. And
of course it's a recipe for death. As we mentioned before,
(19:46):
Dr Kelly Cruz, who performed the autopsy on Amy's body,
said the cause of death was sharp force injuries of
the Torso so explained to me, actually what that means.
I know you've gone over it a little bit before.
But if I was a corner and I saw this
listed cause of death, sharp force injuries of the torso,
(20:08):
what does that actually tell me? Well, in this particular case,
what what she's drawing attention to specifically is. You know,
I think most most people are gonna say sharp force injuries.
You're talking about a knife or a machete, or even
a sword in some cases a hatchet where somebody has
been hacked to death. But she's saying short, sharp force injuries.
(20:29):
And this goes to an actual description of this corn rak,
And at an elemental level, it goes to the individual
times Jackie, these times I encourage anybody here don't believe
what I'm saying, go look it up. You can see.
You can see images of this corn rak all over
the web. Uh. They've got very very uh sharp points.
(20:49):
They're they're in a delta shape. It comes to a
point just like an arrow, essentially, And there's four of
these things. And so when she's saying saying sharp force injury,
the are being driven through her. And I guess the
closest thing I could really compare it to like a spike,
only four of them at the same time, with of
course a smaller diameter, but like a spike nonetheless, And
(21:11):
so these penetrative injuries that are driving forth or clipping
all of these vessels and then doing great damage to
all of these organs at the same time, we know
that Amy Mullis had had a medical procedure a few
days before. The family members said that she had been
dizzy a few days before. How did this play into
(21:34):
her death or did it? You know? When when I
heard UH that they had put this idea for UH,
that she had had a medical procedure just a few
days prior to you, you begin to try to factor
all of this in relative to well, how does this
impact UH impact these wounds that she may have had
(21:55):
on her body? And I think one of the one
of the narratives that was put forward by both Todd
Mullis and of course Tristan had mentioned this too, is
that Amy had complained of feeling dizzy and it was
at that point in time that Mullus Todd Mullis had
told had had told her, you need to go into
the house and and and rest. And this was as
(22:18):
a result of this procedure she had undergone. However, I
gotta say, Jackie, with how extensive these injuries were that
she sustained, UM, I don't care what your medical procedure
was that you had had just a few days prior
to this. These are without a team of cardiothoracic surgeons
right there, and uh, and the fact that this instrument
(22:42):
had been removed from her, this injury would not have
been survivable by the most healthy emments. Now you know,
(23:07):
we talked about this corneraking relative to the kind of
injuries that can generate, and h that's not the only
interesting issue relative to this implement, because I gotta tell you,
as the forensic pathologists began to test file in the stand,
we found out some pretty interesting information about the tracks
of these wounds and also the number of them we did, Joe,
(23:31):
and that was part of what led to Todd mullins
arrest for the murder of his wife. Joe, the forensic
pathologist who performed the autopsy on Amy's body, pointed out
that there were six let me say that one more time,
at least six punctured wounds in Amy's upper body. Yeah,
(23:53):
isn't that something? And how many times do we have?
Let me see mass hard but I think it was four.
We had four times on this corn rate that they
have admitted into evidence. And I'm sorry, a four time
corn rate cannot make or generate six injuries in one blow.
So it takes us down this this trail here relative
(24:16):
to the physical evidence that we have and what we're
observing in the morgue um, you know, after the wounds
have been cleaned up, after everything has been removed that
might impede our ability to truly observe this, uh, these
injuries as they should be observed and document them. After
all that's been cleared away, we can actually appreciate that
(24:38):
there are six different what we refer to as punk
Tate injuries. That's a term that's used by forensic pathologists,
punk Tate injuries that essentially means puncture wounds that go
through the body, are into the body. And when Dr
Cruz really really did a great job on the stand
(24:59):
when she's described and these because the one thing she
really brought out Jackie in this case was the fact
that she could appreciate the fact that not only was
ms Mulla struck once with this corn right, but apparently
the corn rate based upon remember how we talked about
(25:19):
trajectory earlier in the path of these times it had
been removed the individual that wilded this instrument readjusted their
body in relation to Amy's body and struck again. Because
you had two separate angles that these times are traveling
through the body at now. You cannot you cannot physically
(25:41):
sustain these kinds of injuries by simply falling on this
corn rak one time. And I am not buying it
that she suddenly got up, removed the corn rake and
then laid it on the ground and then fell on
it a second time. That's empirically impossible. You can't do that, uh, certainly,
(26:04):
judging by the nature of these injuries that she had sustained. Uh.
And you know, I gotta say kudos to the investigators
on this case because they did something that many times
you people fail to do, or it happens by accident
when when Amy Moss's body or when she arrived at
(26:25):
the emergency room. One of the things that takes place
in the emergency room, particularly in trauma cases, is um
the emergency room staff is not there to preserve forensic evidence.
Everybody needs to understand that they're there to do what
they're there to save lives, and God bless them for
doing that. So the one thing that they do is
they whip out the scissors, right, and they start cutting
(26:46):
clothes away. Unfortunately, in this case, they cut up the
front of Amy Molliss's UH shirts that she had onto well,
she had a one shirt like a T shirt, and
then she had a sweatshirt on on top of that.
But they saved them, and that's important. It's very important
because the corner for that county actually collected those items
(27:09):
at the emergency room and brought those to the morgue
so that when doctor Cruz did her initial examination at autopsy,
she was able to lay each one of these items
of clothing out and closely examine them and make note
of the little defects which are the punk tight holes
that passed through the fabric and try to match those
(27:32):
up actually with the injuries to the flesh itself. And
not only does she have one example of this, she's
got too because we've got we have layered clothing at
this point in time. So now just imagine you've got
multiple punk tight injuries not just to the flesh, but
you've got it to a T shirt and you've got
(27:52):
it to an overlying sweatshirt as well. And she was
able to take images of these with scale, which means
that take a ruler and you place it adjacent to
these openings in the clothing and over the wounds themselves
and it gives you an idea of the depth. That
gives you an idea of the breadth of of these injuries.
And so the people that are on the stand when
they're looking at these things, they understand, okay, the relationship
(28:16):
between the corn rake and the distance between those times,
and the relationship between that and the injuries on the body.
They can see that it kind of marries up. It
doesn't take a rocket scientist to do this. It's it's
very it's very logical as it's laid out, and Dr
Cruz did a fine job of this. The clothing wasn't
(28:36):
all that was saved for forensic examination, No, it wasn't.
And we have to bear this in mind. Remember Amy
Mollis's body was transported to the hospital by Todd Mollis.
She's gone through all of these life saving measures where
they've attempted to bring her back. Um when know when
(29:00):
they got their hands on her at the emergency room.
Her clothing has been cut away at this point. And oh,
by the way, the infamous corn rate it was pulled
out of every body and it was left there at
the scene. So as the police began to process the scene,
out there, and what they would have done is taken
overall photographs of that corn rak in that little red
shed in there. They would have taken it overall photos
(29:23):
so that you could see the position of of the
rake itself in relation to all of the walls around there,
any kind of blood droplets that are on the ground,
the initial position in which they observed the rate. Remember
you're not supposed to touch it out there, you just
leave it in place and take photos. But after they
did that, Jackie, they collected this thing up and they
brought it to the medical Examiner's office so that the
(29:45):
forensic pathologists could actually examine the instrumentality that was used. Now,
you know, having worked in medical examiner's offices and corners
offices my entire career, this is one of the uh
the greatest bits of assistance that we can receive from
a crime scene, because you know, we're we're not always
(30:07):
fortunate enough as medical legal personnel to go out to
a scene, particularly if there's not a body there. So
it's very abstract. Remember, the forensic pathologists was not out
at the scene. She's taking in all of this information
that's coming into her from the police and the emergency
room staff and all that sort of thing. So the
(30:27):
fact that they would bring this evidence into Dr cruz
Is autopsy suite and allow her to examine not just
the clothing and not just the body, but actually the
implement that was used is priceless, absolutely priceless. Okay, but
what does that actually do for the forensic pathologist, Joe?
I mean, you've got obviously they've got to match things up.
(30:49):
How do they do that? What does having this rake
offer them that they normally wouldn't have? You know, in
forensic science, we talk about things that are within uh
the scientific realm of possibility. Okay, you know what's what's
real and what's not. Is this even a possibility? And
so you know, first off, the physician, I can only
(31:12):
imagine she probably would have taken that corn rake and
held it up on edge. Remember this thing is at
a ninety degree angle, is kind of odd in its shape,
and she would have considered that by holding it over
the injuries themselves to see is it possible that this
implement could have generated these wounds? And it would have
(31:33):
taken some time for her to have done this in
the autopsy suite, it uh probably a couple of hours
there would have been a lot of measurements that would
have been taken place, and she would have considered this
based upon the physical injuries that she's observing on Amy
Mollis's back and then comparing that to the dimensions of
(31:55):
the corn rake. Remember you're thinking about these times being
maybe two to three inches in width. That means the
distance that they are apart, and then the overall length
of this thing, and and holding it in her hands,
she can get an idea. It's very tactile. She gets
an idea of the weight of this thing and what
would it have taken, you know, And I you know,
(32:15):
when I consider this and I think about what happened
to Amy Mollis, this is an event, at least in
my to my way of thinking, that she was probably
not driven down onto this thing as much as it
was driven into her. Maybe if she was laying on
her front or on the anterior aspect of her body
and it was driven down into her back. Um, some
(32:38):
of this can be evidence. And I think it was
one of the things that doctor Cruz, the Friends of
Pathologists brought out, is that on the left aspect of
Amy Mollis's face along her left jawline, there was a
severely a braided area. Um almost consistent, almost consistent would
(32:59):
say her the left side of her head being driven
into the ground, pressure being applied, almost as if she
is being held in place as this is going on.
Todd Moullis was a big man. He was a powerful man. Um.
There was also evidence and I think this is kind
of interesting as well as uh abrasions and contusions on
(33:20):
on the backs of Amy Mollis's hands and arms, So
that gives you an idea that she had an awareness
that she was maybe making an attempt to fight back
in these ghastly sets of circumstances. What we found out
during Todd Mollis's trial is that Amy Mullis was having
an affair. And one of the things that Todd answered
(33:42):
questions about when he took the stand was his Google
searches on his iPad, which included phrases such as killing
unfaithful women, what happened to cheating spouses in historic Aztec tribes?
And did ancient cultures kill of all tourers? Now, I
know you're not a computer forensics person, Joe, but how
(34:05):
did all of this information gathered together to come into
Todd's conviction for murder. It's it's a perfect combination of
physical evidence and circumstantial evidence. I mean, and it's for
for those in the forensic world, those of us that
got and gather evidence, whether it be digital evidence like
(34:26):
on a phone or a computer or some other type
of device, or if it is actually examining a body
that's been just uh just traumatized beyond anything that someone
can possibly imagine. It's the totality of all of that
data coming together. So what and it's all dependent. None
(34:48):
of that stuff works. And I want to say this plainly,
none of that stuff works unless you have a good prosecutor.
Because it's not the forensic pathologists, you know job, it's
not the digital for forensics person's job two develop a
narrative and tell the tale of what actually happened. That
that's the responsibility of the prosecutor. They have to be
(35:10):
sharp enough to take all of this data that we
put together in our world, this big umbrella that we follow,
you know, fall beneath in forensics, take all of that data,
be sharp enough to take it and tell the tale
of what actually happened. Uh, you know, remember there was
in the end you know Todd Mullis wound up in jail.
But in the end there there were two witnesses to
(35:32):
this actual event, and you know, Todd Mollis was one
of them, and the other witnesses dead now. Todd Mullis
was convicted for the murder of his wife and sentenced
to life in prison. However, he still claims that he
did not murder his wife. You sit back and you
think about this farm that had you know, that had
(35:55):
existed for years and years and years. And though I'm
sure a little smelly because it was a dog farm,
it's a bucolic area, beautiful area of our country, and
I don't think that anybody in that community will soon
forget how brutal and horrible Amy Molliss's death. I'm Joseph
(36:18):
Scott Morgan, and this, this body backs
Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. Farming is a difficult
way of life and no other type of farming is
as hard as hog farming. Sun up to sundown and
(00:29):
sometimes in the middle of the night you have to
tend to the hogs that you're going to bring to market.
That was life that the Mollis family lived in Iowa.
It was the life that they lived and it resulted
in the death of Amy Mollis. Today we're going to
talk about her homicide. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
(00:55):
is Body Downs with me. A in today is my
good friend Jackie Howard, executive producer of Crime Stories with
Nancy Grace. Jackie, what can you tell us about this
case out of Iowa. Amy Mullis was a thirty nine
year old farmer's wife and she was found impaled on
(01:16):
a corn rake in the shed on her family farm.
Her thirteen year old son, Tristan, had been sent into
the shed by his father and the husband, Todd Mullis,
and the thirteen year old found Amy Mullis impaled on
a corn rake. Again in the shed, Tristan's graamed for
his father and when Todd arrived, he removed the rake
(01:38):
from her back, put her his wife, Amy Mollis, into
the truck, and started racing for the hospital and called.
Once she was at the hospital, Amy Mullis could not
be revived. The question then, as the autopsy was done,
was this an accident or murder? So we're gonna unfold
(01:59):
this case, but let's talk about a couple of things
right off the bat First, what is being impaled? It's
not something that you commonly come across in everyday conversation, though,
is that you know, we we think about when people
die as a result of what we refer to in
forensics as sharp force injuries. That generally involves something like stabbing,
(02:22):
which means an instrument that is an edged weapon, you know,
like a knife single edge, or maybe you have a
knife that is a double edged knife. Commonly, that's what
we think of, but this is something completely different. Impalement
many times, and not every time, but many times, it
has almost an accidental connotation to it um and it
(02:46):
generally means that someone falls back on a penetrating object
or falls onto a penetrating object. And we heard this
term coming up over and over again, particularly early on
with UH with this particular case over the years and
the months that this thing kind of ground through the
(03:06):
the court system. But this is what's kind of interesting
about impalement. Impalement, you know, as I said, generally implies
many times an accidental event. You know, I've worked cases
where I've had car accidents where people have been impaled
on pieces of metal, for instance, inside of vehicles. I've
had people that have taken great falls off of buildings
(03:28):
and this sort of thing and have been impaled on
an object. But impalement actually goes back in our history
for hundreds and hundreds of years. It's actually a form
of torture, and it was actually a form of execution.
People would be impaled and generally on a stake of
some kind or a metal rod. But in this particular
case that the implement that we're talking about is is
(03:51):
kind of interesting, Jackie. It's it's called a corn raak,
which you know, many people might not be familiar with.
It is an un usual instrument. But if you think
about a pitchfork, most people are or have an image
in their mind of what a pitchfork is, if nothing
else from the famous painting of the man and woman
(04:12):
standing holding a pitchfork in front of their house. So,
a pitchfork is a metal utensil on a usually a
wooden handle that's lengthy that's used to help make it
easier to move product or produce of some kind. So
what kind of an injury are we going to see
(04:35):
with a corn rake? It is a four tined instruments,
which means it has four prongs. Pick it up from there, Joe, Yeah,
you know, Jackie, it's a unique instrument. You know, you
you were talking about pitchforks and pitchforks. If if our
listeners will just kind of think about the same action
that goes into say, shoveling something, you can kind of
(04:57):
marry that up with an image of somebody using a pitchfork,
But a corn rake is something that is completely different.
And keep in mind the Mollus family, they were hog farmers.
A matter of fact, this property they have is vasty
and they've got these two gigantic UH sheds that are
on the property. Calm shed implies that it's some kind
(05:19):
of tiny little dwell and it's not. It's there's the
size of what you would think of commercial chicken houses,
I think, uh and there's two of them. And within
these sheds they raised, uh, they raised hogs, and of
course they would start out with piglets and you know,
raise them up from a young age. And of course
what is it that hogs famously eat? Well, some people
(05:39):
might say everything. But in this particular case, you know,
you you feed them corn, and many times the corn
it's still whole corn. This corn is still on the cob.
And so when you're using a corn rake, uh, you
contain the corn cobs, say, for instance, in a crib.
You've heard people have heard this term a corn cre
(06:00):
of uh. And in order to get the corn out
of the crib, you have to rake it out, just
like you use a rake to rake leaves. Only these
four times are bent on this corn rake at about
a ninety degree angle, and they're kind of sharp, very
pointed on the end, and they're ghastly. You know, these
things are ghastly when you look at them, because they're
(06:22):
roughly about it looks to be about five six maybe
seven inches in length, and then the times the distance
between each one is about two to three inches, so
it looks like a gigantic claw, if you'll just imagine
it like that. And certainly the penetrative ability of one
of these times could send it deep deep within the body.
(06:46):
And you know when I viewed this this corn rate
on several occasions. It was admitted into evidence in in
the subsequent trial, and it is I've I've used the
term I think ghastly before, but you have to when
you take a look at it and see this thing,
and it's it's old, it's been used for a long
long time. It does have a wooden handle, and it's
(07:07):
it's weathered in appearance, and even even the times of
this implement are rusty, and in a couple of the
crime scene images you can still see where blood has
tracked down a couple of these times and still remain
there even when the cops got there to take photos
at the scene. Just to clarify one point for our listeners, Joe,
(07:27):
when you say corn crib, you are actually talking about
a barn. This is not like a little manger there
was something that that hogs eat out of. You're actually
talking about a barn. Yeah, yeah, and generally in a
large storage area where if you can, and you know,
you have to think about this. This is this is
a full on industrial operation that you've had that you
(07:48):
have here. It's like I said in my opening, this
is a twenty four seven job. And so when you're
gonna feed this many hogs, and keep in mind they
eat constantly, they would deliver corn, say for instance, or
feed in the back of a large truck and essentially
dump it into the storage area where where it would
(08:10):
be kept. And then you would take this corn rake literally.
Remember I talked about how it acts like a claw,
grab the feed and draw it out like that. So, uh,
this is an implement that had been used for a
long time. I suspect that there was probably in an
operation this size. There was probably more than one there
on that property, Joe, And looking at the injuries that
(08:30):
would have resulted, let's just say you fall on a
corn rake or a pitchfork, those injuries are going to
be a little bit different because of the slant of
the times. Now, we again do know that the times
are metal, and they can be anywhere from four to
six or seven inches long. So, given the shape of
(08:51):
this instrument and and what it is used for and
the length of those times, what kind of injuries or
punctures could we expect. It's not long enough to go
all the way through the body. But what can we
expect in that type of an injury. Well, there's a
couple of things that we're gonna look for. And the
more you know at autopsy, you know, when you're examining
(09:11):
these kind of wounds, much like much like a bullet wound,
you know, we we think about the angle of travel
or the you know, the essentially the trajectory of the
round as it passes through the body. It's no different here, Jackie.
We do many times the same thing. For instance, with
stab wounds. We examine and trace actually the direction of
(09:34):
travel of an object as it passes through the body.
So when when we're looking at a body that has
been impaled, like Amy Modist's body would would be um,
it's not uncommon for us, say, for instance, to take
a dowel rod, a very thin wooden rod for instance,
and place it into the defect and just imagine this,
(09:58):
and sometimes they'll be multicolored, and you run this rod,
this doll rod into the wound itself, and you can,
if you take the photo just right, you can get
an idea of the angle of injury, and you you
document those those doll rods as they're coming out. We
take a picture of these rods in place, so that
(10:20):
when we go to court with a case like this,
we can demonstrate this photographically. And it's it's quite striking
when you see it now. For us when we're trying
to figure out what happened at the scene, it gives
us an idea of the relationship between the victim, the
object that's used, and of course in this case, it's
(10:41):
it's this corner, right, and then of course the potential
perpetrator in particular case, you know, how were they oriented
to the individual when when this particular event took place?
Um and right you are when you're talking about how deep, uh,
these times can penetrate into a body. And just to
(11:01):
give you an idea, when the forensic pathologists did the
examination on Amy Mulis's body, um, she opined at that
particular time that these times entered through what's referred to
as an intercostal space. And I'd like everybody that's listening
right now to find just touch your ribs on the
(11:22):
side and the kind of meaty portion that's in between
each one of your ribs. That's an intercostal space. So
it's it's it's muscle that it passes through, it passes
through the muscle, the rib, the muscle, Okay, then it
goes through along, then it goes through a liver, and
then it goes through the diaphragm. And just think about that,
(11:44):
all of that involvement, and not only when that implement
is tracking through all of those major bodies of the deceased,
it's also tracking through all of those little vessels. And
there's tons and tons of these my grol vessels that
are existent within our body. Joe, how long would the
(12:06):
times have to be to immediately hit a vital organ
in the body. Not not too desperately long. And let's
keep in mind these injuries that that amy mollis sustained.
And I do say that these are injuries, not injury,
singular injuries plural um. It can potentially be a shallow,
(12:32):
a shallow track that it's going through, but it doesn't
take too much depth to essentially pierce the back of
the lung and then drive through the dome the diaphragm dome.
Uh that's just beneath the long and into the top
of the liver. Those things are actually located very very
close to one another. So it's not that it goes
(12:55):
as much deep as you're headed towards the front of
the body. But even a shallow strike like that, as
it's tracking downward, and that's the important part here, as
it's tracking downward, can clip all of those organs, and
of course you clip all of the vessels that are
associated with it. So if Amy Molliss's lung was clipped,
her lungs would have immediately began filling with blood, making
(13:17):
it difficult for her to breathe. Yeah. Yeah, What what
you're gonna have is, first off, if you think about
your chest, your chest is obviously because without saying but
I'll say it anyway, it's a sealed area. So people
develop what's referred to as a pneumothorax. So when you
penetrate that kind of sealed area, you're allowing the air
(13:38):
to come out and come in, and it compromises anyway,
the ability of the lungs to uh to uh take
up oxygen and release oxygen. And then on top of that,
you're insulting the lung by puncturing it. So you've got
this kind of twofold event that's going on. You've really
got a problem here when whenever you injure the chest.
(14:02):
Like this, you're not just opening up this space around
the lung, which is actually called the plural space, but
you're going into the lung itself, which contains a lot
of vessels. Those vessels are clipped, so right you are
when you talk about this kind of in dwelling hemorrhage
that's going on within the long tissue what's called the
(14:22):
interstitial tissue. But on top of that, on top of that,
all of those little micro vessels that you've clipped passing
through that intercostal space on the back of this individual,
that blood is now diving into that open area around
the lung where it should just be air in that space,
(14:43):
now it's filling up with fluid as well. So you've
got a lot to deal with. Uh. If you're say,
for instance, a person that's a trauma surgeon or a
trauma e R. Nurse and this sort of thing where
you're trying to save this person's life, you're having to
put out multiple fires at the same time. You know
(15:23):
the Molashawk farm, it it's uh, there's a vast property
and had all these these newer buildings on it, but
there was one little building that was there it's been
termed the Red Shed that's out there on this property.
And I can't even begin to imagine the horror of
thirteen year old Tristan when he walked through the door
and he found his mother laying there on the floor
(15:44):
under sponsor Jackie. It would have been terrifying, I'm sure,
especially for a teenager. And again he screamed for his father.
Todd came in, found his wife and Joe. He pulled
the rake out of her back. She was again impact
yield with this rake still sticking in her back, and
he pulled it out to take her to the hospital.
(16:07):
If I'm understanding my Red Cross training, any time that
you are impaled with something, you're supposed to leave it
in Why Yeah. Absolutely, If Amy Mollis was to have
any shot at life after this event, it vanished when
that rake was removed. Of course, at that point in time,
(16:28):
we don't really know what the status was um of
her breathing and heart rate and all that sort of
thing when Todd Mullis came upon her body. But I
do know that if if if you want to survivable
event with an impalement with an indwelling object, that you
have to leave it in. The reason is is that
all those micro vessels that I mentioned just a moment
(16:49):
ago are essentially, at least for the moment sealed, they're
sealed off. They're not going to begin to really leak
out at that point in time. But the moment you
put your hand to that object and you withdraw it
from the body, you open the floodgates. Literally, it's it's
you have this huge dump of blood that goes into
(17:09):
that plural space around the lung and any other organs
that may have been penetrated. And what we do know
is that you know, the lung and the diaphragm, which
has its own blood supply it's a muscle, and the
liver we're all uh impacted by this injury, you know,
and that you can't forget about the liver here. The
liver is very, very vascular. A matter of fact, probably
(17:32):
next to next to the brain, it's probably the most
vascular organ in the body. That means that it requires
a tremendous amount of blood flow. So you've got all
kinds of little vessels that are in dwelling in there.
And once that that corn rake was removed, suddenly at
that moment time you had this flood of blood that
was just filling her up inside. UM. I find it
(17:56):
kind of interesting that Todd Mullis described himself in one
way as a quote unquote doer. You know, I'm I'm implied,
I'm a man of action. You know, I'm gonna try
to do everything that I can't save my my wife's life.
And at that moment, tom um he uh, he robbed
her of any opportunity to live beyond that point. Would
(18:17):
it have been that Amy Mollis bled to death or
that she drowned as we were talking about, with her
lungs and body filling up with blood or is there
a distinction there? It's more of a combination. Um. You know,
when you begin to look at you know the totality
of these injuries, because they are extensive. Um, Let's just
(18:41):
take the lung for instance. It can no longer inflate,
all right, it can't take on air, it can't expire,
it can't push air out at that point in time.
And going to that point, you've got a a die fragm.
It's a big this big muscle which helps us with
inhalation and exhalation as well. Well. It's compromised now too,
(19:03):
isn't it. So it's not gonna be able to perform.
And then the liver, I think in this case it's
probably secondary, uh to to the diaphragm and the lungs um. Yeah,
the liver is critical and you're bleeding out from that area,
But in the immediate, in the acute sense, uh, the
fact that this lung has been damaged so desperately, the
(19:24):
diaphragm has essentially been pinned down so that it can't
rise and fall. Remember, it's got a metal object that's
been driven through it. It's not gonna be able to
operate effectively. And so that coupled with this flood of
blood internally, it's it's just a hellish combination here. And
of course it's a recipe for death. As we mentioned before,
(19:46):
Dr Kelly Cruz, who performed the autopsy on Amy's body,
said the cause of death was sharp force injuries of
the Torso so explained to me, actually what that means.
I know you've gone over it a little bit before.
But if I was a corner and I saw this
listed cause of death, sharp force injuries of the torso,
(20:08):
what does that actually tell me? Well, in this particular case,
what what she's drawing attention to specifically is. You know,
I think most most people are gonna say sharp force injuries.
You're talking about a knife or a machete, or even
a sword in some cases a hatchet where somebody has
been hacked to death. But she's saying short, sharp force injuries.
(20:29):
And this goes to an actual description of this corn rak,
And at an elemental level, it goes to the individual
times Jackie, these times I encourage anybody here don't believe
what I'm saying, go look it up. You can see.
You can see images of this corn rak all over
the web. Uh. They've got very very uh sharp points.
(20:49):
They're they're in a delta shape. It comes to a
point just like an arrow, essentially, And there's four of
these things. And so when she's saying saying sharp force injury,
the are being driven through her. And I guess the
closest thing I could really compare it to like a spike,
only four of them at the same time, with of
course a smaller diameter, but like a spike nonetheless, And
(21:11):
so these penetrative injuries that are driving forth or clipping
all of these vessels and then doing great damage to
all of these organs at the same time, we know
that Amy Mullis had had a medical procedure a few
days before. The family members said that she had been
dizzy a few days before. How did this play into
(21:34):
her death or did it? You know? When when I
heard UH that they had put this idea for UH,
that she had had a medical procedure just a few
days prior to you, you begin to try to factor
all of this in relative to well, how does this
impact UH impact these wounds that she may have had
(21:55):
on her body? And I think one of the one
of the narratives that was put forward by both Todd
Mullis and of course Tristan had mentioned this too, is
that Amy had complained of feeling dizzy and it was
at that point in time that Mullus Todd Mullis had
told had had told her, you need to go into
the house and and and rest. And this was as
(22:18):
a result of this procedure she had undergone. However, I
gotta say, Jackie, with how extensive these injuries were that
she sustained, UM, I don't care what your medical procedure
was that you had had just a few days prior
to this. These are without a team of cardiothoracic surgeons
right there, and uh, and the fact that this instrument
(22:42):
had been removed from her, this injury would not have
been survivable by the most healthy emments. Now you know,
(23:07):
we talked about this corneraking relative to the kind of
injuries that can generate, and h that's not the only
interesting issue relative to this implement, because I gotta tell you,
as the forensic pathologists began to test file in the stand,
we found out some pretty interesting information about the tracks
of these wounds and also the number of them we did, Joe,
(23:31):
and that was part of what led to Todd mullins
arrest for the murder of his wife. Joe, the forensic
pathologist who performed the autopsy on Amy's body, pointed out
that there were six let me say that one more time,
at least six punctured wounds in Amy's upper body. Yeah,
(23:53):
isn't that something? And how many times do we have?
Let me see mass hard but I think it was four.
We had four times on this corn rate that they
have admitted into evidence. And I'm sorry, a four time
corn rate cannot make or generate six injuries in one blow.
So it takes us down this this trail here relative
(24:16):
to the physical evidence that we have and what we're
observing in the morgue um, you know, after the wounds
have been cleaned up, after everything has been removed that
might impede our ability to truly observe this, uh, these
injuries as they should be observed and document them. After
all that's been cleared away, we can actually appreciate that
(24:38):
there are six different what we refer to as punk
Tate injuries. That's a term that's used by forensic pathologists,
punk Tate injuries that essentially means puncture wounds that go
through the body, are into the body. And when Dr
Cruz really really did a great job on the stand
(24:59):
when she's described and these because the one thing she
really brought out Jackie in this case was the fact
that she could appreciate the fact that not only was
ms Mulla struck once with this corn right, but apparently
the corn rate based upon remember how we talked about
(25:19):
trajectory earlier in the path of these times it had
been removed the individual that wilded this instrument readjusted their
body in relation to Amy's body and struck again. Because
you had two separate angles that these times are traveling
through the body at now. You cannot you cannot physically
(25:41):
sustain these kinds of injuries by simply falling on this
corn rak one time. And I am not buying it
that she suddenly got up, removed the corn rake and
then laid it on the ground and then fell on
it a second time. That's empirically impossible. You can't do that, uh, certainly,
(26:04):
judging by the nature of these injuries that she had sustained. Uh.
And you know, I gotta say kudos to the investigators
on this case because they did something that many times
you people fail to do, or it happens by accident
when when Amy Moss's body or when she arrived at
(26:25):
the emergency room. One of the things that takes place
in the emergency room, particularly in trauma cases, is um
the emergency room staff is not there to preserve forensic evidence.
Everybody needs to understand that they're there to do what
they're there to save lives, and God bless them for
doing that. So the one thing that they do is
they whip out the scissors, right, and they start cutting
(26:46):
clothes away. Unfortunately, in this case, they cut up the
front of Amy Molliss's UH shirts that she had onto well,
she had a one shirt like a T shirt, and
then she had a sweatshirt on on top of that.
But they saved them, and that's important. It's very important
because the corner for that county actually collected those items
(27:09):
at the emergency room and brought those to the morgue
so that when doctor Cruz did her initial examination at autopsy,
she was able to lay each one of these items
of clothing out and closely examine them and make note
of the little defects which are the punk tight holes
that passed through the fabric and try to match those
(27:32):
up actually with the injuries to the flesh itself. And
not only does she have one example of this, she's
got too because we've got we have layered clothing at
this point in time. So now just imagine you've got
multiple punk tight injuries not just to the flesh, but
you've got it to a T shirt and you've got
(27:52):
it to an overlying sweatshirt as well. And she was
able to take images of these with scale, which means
that take a ruler and you place it adjacent to
these openings in the clothing and over the wounds themselves
and it gives you an idea of the depth. That
gives you an idea of the breadth of of these injuries.
And so the people that are on the stand when
they're looking at these things, they understand, okay, the relationship
(28:16):
between the corn rake and the distance between those times,
and the relationship between that and the injuries on the body.
They can see that it kind of marries up. It
doesn't take a rocket scientist to do this. It's it's
very it's very logical as it's laid out, and Dr
Cruz did a fine job of this. The clothing wasn't
(28:36):
all that was saved for forensic examination, No, it wasn't.
And we have to bear this in mind. Remember Amy
Mollis's body was transported to the hospital by Todd Mollis.
She's gone through all of these life saving measures where
they've attempted to bring her back. Um when know when
(29:00):
they got their hands on her at the emergency room.
Her clothing has been cut away at this point. And oh,
by the way, the infamous corn rate it was pulled
out of every body and it was left there at
the scene. So as the police began to process the scene,
out there, and what they would have done is taken
overall photographs of that corn rak in that little red
shed in there. They would have taken it overall photos
(29:23):
so that you could see the position of of the
rake itself in relation to all of the walls around there,
any kind of blood droplets that are on the ground,
the initial position in which they observed the rate. Remember
you're not supposed to touch it out there, you just
leave it in place and take photos. But after they
did that, Jackie, they collected this thing up and they
brought it to the medical Examiner's office so that the
(29:45):
forensic pathologists could actually examine the instrumentality that was used. Now,
you know, having worked in medical examiner's offices and corners
offices my entire career, this is one of the uh
the greatest bits of assistance that we can receive from
a crime scene, because you know, we're we're not always
(30:07):
fortunate enough as medical legal personnel to go out to
a scene, particularly if there's not a body there. So
it's very abstract. Remember, the forensic pathologists was not out
at the scene. She's taking in all of this information
that's coming into her from the police and the emergency
room staff and all that sort of thing. So the
(30:27):
fact that they would bring this evidence into Dr cruz
Is autopsy suite and allow her to examine not just
the clothing and not just the body, but actually the
implement that was used is priceless, absolutely priceless. Okay, but
what does that actually do for the forensic pathologist, Joe?
I mean, you've got obviously they've got to match things up.
(30:49):
How do they do that? What does having this rake
offer them that they normally wouldn't have? You know, in
forensic science, we talk about things that are within uh
the scientific realm of possibility. Okay, you know what's what's
real and what's not. Is this even a possibility? And
so you know, first off, the physician, I can only
(31:12):
imagine she probably would have taken that corn rake and
held it up on edge. Remember this thing is at
a ninety degree angle, is kind of odd in its shape,
and she would have considered that by holding it over
the injuries themselves to see is it possible that this
implement could have generated these wounds? And it would have
(31:33):
taken some time for her to have done this in
the autopsy suite, it uh probably a couple of hours
there would have been a lot of measurements that would
have been taken place, and she would have considered this
based upon the physical injuries that she's observing on Amy
Mollis's back and then comparing that to the dimensions of
(31:55):
the corn rake. Remember you're thinking about these times being
maybe two to three inches in width. That means the
distance that they are apart, and then the overall length
of this thing, and and holding it in her hands,
she can get an idea. It's very tactile. She gets
an idea of the weight of this thing and what
would it have taken, you know, And I you know,
(32:15):
when I consider this and I think about what happened
to Amy Mollis, this is an event, at least in
my to my way of thinking, that she was probably
not driven down onto this thing as much as it
was driven into her. Maybe if she was laying on
her front or on the anterior aspect of her body
and it was driven down into her back. Um, some
(32:38):
of this can be evidence. And I think it was
one of the things that doctor Cruz, the Friends of
Pathologists brought out, is that on the left aspect of
Amy Mollis's face along her left jawline, there was a
severely a braided area. Um almost consistent, almost consistent would
(32:59):
say her the left side of her head being driven
into the ground, pressure being applied, almost as if she
is being held in place as this is going on.
Todd Moullis was a big man. He was a powerful man. Um.
There was also evidence and I think this is kind
of interesting as well as uh abrasions and contusions on
(33:20):
on the backs of Amy Mollis's hands and arms, So
that gives you an idea that she had an awareness
that she was maybe making an attempt to fight back
in these ghastly sets of circumstances. What we found out
during Todd Mollis's trial is that Amy Mullis was having
an affair. And one of the things that Todd answered
(33:42):
questions about when he took the stand was his Google
searches on his iPad, which included phrases such as killing
unfaithful women, what happened to cheating spouses in historic Aztec tribes?
And did ancient cultures kill of all tourers? Now, I
know you're not a computer forensics person, Joe, but how
(34:05):
did all of this information gathered together to come into
Todd's conviction for murder. It's it's a perfect combination of
physical evidence and circumstantial evidence. I mean, and it's for
for those in the forensic world, those of us that
got and gather evidence, whether it be digital evidence like
(34:26):
on a phone or a computer or some other type
of device, or if it is actually examining a body
that's been just uh just traumatized beyond anything that someone
can possibly imagine. It's the totality of all of that
data coming together. So what and it's all dependent. None
(34:48):
of that stuff works. And I want to say this plainly,
none of that stuff works unless you have a good prosecutor.
Because it's not the forensic pathologists, you know job, it's
not the digital for forensics person's job two develop a
narrative and tell the tale of what actually happened. That
that's the responsibility of the prosecutor. They have to be
(35:10):
sharp enough to take all of this data that we
put together in our world, this big umbrella that we follow,
you know, fall beneath in forensics, take all of that data,
be sharp enough to take it and tell the tale
of what actually happened. Uh, you know, remember there was
in the end you know Todd Mullis wound up in jail.
But in the end there there were two witnesses to
(35:32):
this actual event, and you know, Todd Mollis was one
of them, and the other witnesses dead now. Todd Mullis
was convicted for the murder of his wife and sentenced
to life in prison. However, he still claims that he
did not murder his wife. You sit back and you
think about this farm that had you know, that had
(35:55):
existed for years and years and years. And though I'm
sure a little smelly because it was a dog farm,
it's a bucolic area, beautiful area of our country, and
I don't think that anybody in that community will soon
forget how brutal and horrible Amy Molliss's death. I'm Joseph
(36:18):
Scott Morgan, and this, this body backs
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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