Jury decides: liar or victim?

Depending on whether you listened to the prosecution or defense, Rachael Mullenix is either a manipulative killer and a liar who used her boyfriend to help her knock off her mom, or she is the abused victim of her violent beau and only helped him cover up a murder because she didn’t know how else to cope with a shocking act. That’s what jurors now have to decide, as they have gone into deliberation this week in search of a verdict.

Jurors began deliberating a verdict late Monday afternoon. As of mid-Wednesday, they had not yet come to a decision.

A few days earlier, as the trial of Mullenix, 19, neared an end, the prosecution and defense made closing arguments in a last attempt to get their cases across.

Whether or not Rachael Mullenix actually held the knives that killed her mother, she’s guilty of first-degree murder because she made sure it happened, the prosecution said in closing arguments.

“You don’t have to ever even discuss, if you don’t want to, what happened in that room,” prosecutor Sonia Balleste said. “If you believe there’s a plan to kill and you believe she committed any act in furtherance of that act, knowing she was intending to kill, you’re done.”

In return, defense attorney David R. Cohn said many of the most damning pieces of testimony — like diary entries saying Mullenix hated her mother — had been taken out of context. The plan wasn’t to kill her mother, Barbara Mullenix, but to run away from her, he said.

“What we have is a plan to run away,” he said. “It makes sense into the facts of this case if you put it into context and don’t piecemeal things. What the D.A.’s or prosecutor’s case says just doesn’t make sense.”

Mullenix is charged with conspiracy and murder in the killing of Barbara Mullenix, found with more than 50 stab wounds near the Newport Harbor Yacht Club in Newport Beach on Sept. 13, 2006. Prosecutors say she manipulated her then-boyfriend Ian Allen into helping her kill her mom and dispose of the body.

More than 50 stab wounds caused by multiple knives show that Barbara Mullenix’s killer wasn’t just caught up in some fit of passion, Balleste said.

“Whoever killed Barbara Mullenix intended to kill her — overkilled her — and left no doubt in our minds what their intent was,” she said.

Though Mullenix has testified she tried to stop Allen as he held Barbara Mullenix on a bed and stabbed her to death, Balleste told jurors it was close to absurd to believe he did it all alone.

But forensic evidence allowed for a longer killing, Cohn said. And perhaps Mullenix might have made it take longer by trying to stop her boyfriend from committing a violent act, he said.