🧠 Motive Monday: Herbert Mullin — Murder as Earthquake Prevention?
Herbert Mullin believed he was saving California from a devastating earthquake. Between October 1972 and February 1973, he killed 13 people in a brutal spree fueled by untreated paranoid schizophrenia, apocalyptic delusions, and the eerie conviction that human sacrifices were needed to satisfy Mother Earth.
Mullin’s victims ranged from hitchhikers and a priest to a mother and her children. The variety in victims and methods made his crimes hard to track—especially since another killer, Edmund Kemper, was simultaneously active in the same region. Mullin confessed that he was following telepathic commands, often hearing the voice of his father instructing him to kill.
Though diagnosed as mentally ill and previously committed to psychiatric facilities, Mullin was ultimately found legally sane at trial. He died in prison in 2022, denied parole eight times.
🕵️♀️ What do you think—does Mullin’s delusional belief system change the way we interpret his crimes? Should his mental illness have impacted sentencing more than it did? And how do we reconcile calculated violence with chaotic psychosis? Let’s talk motive—and madness.
