Oct 10, 2008 6:48 pm US/Pacific
Daughter, 19, Sentenced For Murdering O.C. Mom
She Tearily Denies Ever Stabbing Her Mother
SANTA ANA
Still denying her guilt, 19-year-old Rachael Mullinex was sentenced Friday to 25 years to life for her role in the murder of her mother Barbara in 2006.
Mullinex's father also said his daughter is innocent and that he continues to stand by her "100 percent."
In a statement to Orange County Superior Court Judge David Thompson,
Mullenix insisted she did not kill her mother.
Barbara Mullenix's body was pulled from Newport Harbor, a butter knife still protruding from her eye, September 13, 2006.
"My mom was my world. She was my life," Mullenix said. "I did not do that to my mother. I made bad choices afterward, but kill my mother, I did not do."
Earlier, Rachel's father, Bruce Mullenix, said, "I'm Rachel's father. I know her better than anyone on the planet. I know in my heart she didn't do this."
"I will never ever stop supporting her for the rest of my life," he said, his eyes tearing up.
Mullenix was convicted July 17.
Her now ex-boyfriend, 23-year-old Ian Westleigh Allen, was tried separately and also convicted of first-degree murder. He will be sentenced on Nov. 14.
Mullenix, who was 17 at the time of her mother's death, insisted that Allen killed her mother and then took her out of state against her will.
While Barbara Mullenix was portrayed by the defense as a woman whose
drinking led to verbal abuse against her daughter, Senior Deputy District
Attorney Sonya Balleste outlined a chilling tale of a headstrong girl whose
mother had never said "no" to her before.
The relationship between mother and daughter had been tumultuous for a
long time, but it intensified when the teen and Allen became intensely
involved, Balleste said.
The final straw, Balleste said, came when the daughter stayed out past
curfew, prompting her mother to go to Allen's residence and "drag" her home.
Allen and Rachel Mullenix put her mother's body in a television box --
later traced back to a purchase by her father -- and dumped the blanket-wrapped body in the harbor.
The prosecutor told jurors that the butter knife in the woman's eye matched silverware found in the home, that the mother and daughter's DNA was left behind in the bloody room, and that the daughter's fingerprint was found on a roll of duct tape.
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