Michael Mullins

Michael Mullins (born June 28, 1961) is an American serial killer who murdered three women in Memphis, Tennessee between 1999 and 2012, and unsuccessfully tried to kill a fourth woman in Knoxville, Tennessee. On December 5, 2014, Mullins was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison.

Early life Mullins was born in Memphis on June 28, 1961, one of seven children. For the first few years of his life, he lived with his mother Ida, before he moved to West Memphis to live with his father. According to some, there is evidence that Mullins was illiterate. Mullins had failed first grade, and throughout his school years he was frequently absent. On IQ tests, he scored an average of between 59 and 69. After the brutal murder Mullins laid out Cole's body between the building and a staircase and covered her with a yellow blanket, attempting to make the body look like a sleeping homeless person. The body laid there for about five hours, until maintenance workers and a janitor found it, but thinking it was a sleeping vagrant they attempted to wake her up. Eventually, when they removed the blanket, they saw that she was murdered. Her family held a small funeral for her on June 5 and buried her body in Marion Memorial Cemetery.

Over eight years later, Mullins attacked his second victim. On April 18, 2008, he beat up 79-year-old Jessie Lee Maples in Morningside Park. She was found later that same day and was taken to the hospital. Maples spent the next 21 days in intensive care before being moved to a private nursing home. The attack was so brutal that over the next three years Maples was taken care of in a private living facility until her death in November 2012. He then dragged her body more than 100 feet across a parking lot, leaving a trail of blood. He hid her body next to a fence and, like with Cole, laid a blanket over her to disguise it as a sleeping homeless person.

Arrest, convictions and imprisonment The day after Jackson's murder, Mullins was arrested based upon his fingerprints being found on a paper bag near the scene. After his arrest, a swab of his DNA was taken and matched to the two other murders. In addition, he became a suspect in the attempted murder of Maples, but at the time, he was only a suspect. The sentences were to run concurrently.

The following month, he was charged with one count of attempted first degree murder and one count of aggravated rape, charges related to the 2008 attack on Maples. On May 1, 2015, Mullins was sentenced to 50 years in prison for the attack.