Teen texted ‘I love you’ to boyfriend who she says killed her mom

Rachael Mullenix doesn’t remember seeing a butter knife plunged into her mother’s eye, or where she and her then-boyfriend Ian Allen drove to dump the body, or changing out of bloody clothes, she told jurors during cross-examination by the prosecution Thursday.

“This is something I don’t want to remember,” Mullenix said of the sight of her mother’s mutilated body. “I don’t want to remember my mother like this. I’m sure I saw it there, but there’s things you just don’t want to remember and you try hard to forget them.”

Prosecutor Sonia Balleste spent the morning questioning Mullenix over her version of the events surrounding the brutal stabbing of her mother, Barbara Mullenix in 2006. Rachael Mullenix, 19, faces murder and conspiracy charges for her mother’s death, but Mullenix said it was boyfriend Ian Allen who stabbed the woman more than 50 times.

What Mullenix said she does remember is seeing Allen straddling her mother on her bed and stabbing her over and over with a folding knife, the only knife she can recall, though the prosecution’s forensics witnesses said there were three or even four knives possibly involved.

She said she tried to push Allen off her mother as he stabbed her with his pocketknife, but Balleste asked whether she did more: try to whack him in the head with one of two desk lamps nearby, or throw a clock radio or television, or kick him. No, Mullenix replied, saying that she didn’t have time to think.

“I just kept pushing him,” she said. “When you’re in that situation you just try to do what you think might work.”

Balleste also scrutinized the aftermath of the death, asking why Mullenix didn’t call 911—either for paramedics or police— during several times she said Allen left her alone.

“Did it occur to you that this beau of yours, Ian Allen, had turned into this crazy butcher and murdered your mother, and that you might want to call 911 and get him caught?” Balleste asked.

“No,” Mullenix replied. She said she was in total shock and terrified of Allen, and started numbly following his orders after he shook her and started saying “Listen to me!” over and over.

Mullenix helped load the cardboard box holding the body into a car and cleaned up some of the blood, she said. But Allen carried out the bed — a mattress and two box springs — on his own, she said.

Mullenix didn’t call 911 or anyone else when she was alone with her cell phone as Allen was out to prepare the getaway, she said. But the next morning she sent a text message to Allen while he was away, one that Balleste confronted her over.

“Out of all the things you could have said to him, you text him the words, ‘I love you. Am I going to see you soon? Are you in trouble? Can I call you?’” Balleste said. “Those were the words you chose to text to your mother’s killer?”

Yes, Mullenix said, though she said she hated him.

Testimony was expected to wrap up this week, with closing arguments from the attorneys on Monday.