Erin Moriarty: Trysten, where are we? 

Trysten Mullis: We’re at the farm that I grew up on. This is where … me and my brother and sister grew up … these big white buildings here are the hog barns.

Trysten Mullis, along with his younger siblings Taylor and Wyatt, and his parents Todd and Amy, lived on a 400-acre Iowa farm where they grew soybeans and corn and raised pigs.

Trysten Mullis (at the farm): It’s a whole family effort to … run a farm this size.  

Erin Moriarty: And what are you feeling when you like look out here and —

Trysten Mullis:  Just nostalgia. … it’s just kind of peaceful, you know? 

What happened at the farm the day Amy Mullis died?

That November morning in 2018, started off routinely. While his sister and brother stayed in the house, Trysten, then 13 years old, was with his parents preparing for a shipment of baby pigs.

Erin Moriarty: This is the office? The shop?

Trysten Mullis: This is the office. Yes.

Trysten showed me inside the hog barn where they were working.   

Trysten Mullis (inside the hog barn): Now we’re going into the main area of the hog barn. This is where your pigs would actually be in.

Trysten’s job that morning was to carry heaters from the front of the barn to each pen. Todd was working on the water supply pipes. Amy was cleaning the lights.

Trysten Mullis (inside the hog barn): What she was doing is she would get on the bucket here and stand up, and she would unscrew it like that (demonstrates). …  Drop it down, get off the bucket, clean it in a separate bucket, and then get back up here and screw them back in.

At one point, Trysten remembers noticing that his mom looked dizzy and unsteady. 

Trysten Mullis: She was getting down kind of slow and really grabbing on to the gate … You could kind of see her loopy and swaying a little bit.   

Just four days earlier Amy had had a minor medical procedure, and Trysten says he and his dad were concerned. This was her first day back on her feet.  

Trysten Mullis: We knew something was not right.  

Trysten says his mom agreed to go into the house and rest. But before she left, they asked if she could do one thing on her way: get a pet carrier out of the red shed. Trysten says they needed it later that day to protect some kittens from heavy machinery.   

Trysten Mullis: We asked her if she could get it outside of the door.

Trysten says he saw his mom leave.  

Trysten Mullis: She walked down the side there. 

Erin Moriarty: OK.

Trysten Mullis: And walked out that door … The last time I saw her was through that window, right in the wall there (points to the front end of the barn). 

Trysten says he and his dad continued working for about an hour-and-a-half before taking a break. 

Trysten Mullis: We noticed that … the pet carrier wasn’t outside. So he said, hey, can you go, uh, get the pet carrier out? … We just figured she couldn’t get it. 

Trysten went to the red shed to get the pet carrier, and that’s when he found his mom on the ground with a corn rake in her back.

Trysten Mullis: I was just praying that she was still alive.

Trysten yelled for his dad, and they got Amy into the truck —  calling 911 as they rushed to the hospital.

911 OPERATOR: Delaware County 911. What’s the address of your emergency?

TODD MULLIS (to Trysten): Is she breathing?

TODD MULLIS: I just grabbed her and threw her in the truck. My son’s holding her.

911 OPERATOR: OK, you’re headed to the hospital and she’s in your vehicle?

Erin Moriarty: How did you hear that your mom didn’t make it? 

Trysten Mullis: Dad walked in the room and he had tears in his eyes … and told us that mom had passed away.

Amy’s mother Peggy, her brother Jeff and her stepfather Randy are still coming to terms with what happened that day. 

Peggy Munson: Your heart stops.

Jeff Fuller: She was my best friend … growing up … Amy was a very vibrant person. She had a big personality.

Randy Munson: She was always concerned about other people, about her family, about her children.  

Trysten says that he and his father assumed his mother’s death had been a horrible accident; that she had just fallen on the rake. But less than a year later, Todd was on trial for her murder. 

Even though Todd and Trysten maintained that Amy’s death was an accident, the state medical examiner, Dr. Kelly Kruse, said it was a homicide. She found a large bruise on the side of Amy’s jaw and scrapes and bruises on Amy’s knuckles — possible signs of a — noted that while Amy had six puncture wounds on her back, the corn rake only had four tines.  

DR. KELLY KRUSE (testifying at trial): There were two different directions of the six puncture wounds. …

PROSECUTOR MAUREEN HUGHES: And what do those different directions indicate to you? 

DR. KELLY KRUSE: To me they indicate that she would have to be impaled with the rake at least twice. … possibly three times.

Dr. Kruse determined that Amy’s injuries had to have been caused by someone striking her with the rake. Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation special agent Jon Turbett, now retired, was called in to help local law enforcement.

Jon Turbett: I’m thinking at some point Todd and Amy end up in that red barn, and Todd attacks Amy … and … she’s hit two or three times with a corn rake. 

And he says Todd had a motive. 

Jon Turbett: We learn that the marriage … is not … maybe what it would look like on the outside … There were things boiling underneath.

Amy was having an affair, and according to her brother Jeff, she wasn’t happy and planned to leave Todd.

Jeff Fuller: Her words to me were, “Todd’s gonna flip out.”  

Erin Moriarty: And what did that mean to you? What did flip out mean to you? 

Jeff Fuller: To me, that meant that he would … not go quietly, he would not give up half of … his land … in a divorce.  

Jon Turbett: And that becomes … a big part of his motive of killing Amy. 

And according to her friend Patricia Christopherson, Amy was afraid of Todd.

PATRICIA CHRISTOPHERSON (testifying at trial): I asked her why she stayed and she said she was scared of Todd and if he found out about, um, wanting a divorce or an affair, that he would kill her.

Investigators say Google searches found on Todd’s iPad show that not only did he think about killing his wife, he planned it in advance.

Jon Turbett: You see searches on … unfaithful wives … and killing cheating wives at different points in history.  

According to prosecutors, Todd’s plan was to send Amy to the red shed that morning and then ambush and kill her, But that wasn’t all.  

PROSECUTOR MAUREEN HUGHES (at trial): He sent his 13-year-old son to go and find his mother, who he had just slaughtered.

When Todd testified, he told the jury he never did those damning Google searches, that he did not know his wife was having an affair, and that he did not kill her.  

DEFENSE ATTORNEY GERALD FEUERHELM (at trial): Todd … did you ambush your wife, Amy, in that shed that day and brutally beat her and chop — chop her up with that corn fork? 

TODD MULLIS: No, I did not. 

Since Trysten was the only other person working on the farm that day, his testimony was crucial. He initially told police that he had been with his dad all morning — essentially providing an alibi for his father. Trysten later added that he did leave his dad’s side twice to get a drink of water and that he briefly lost sight of him. Because he was a minor, Trysten wasn’t shown on camera.

PROSECUTOR (at trial): Do you know exactly how long your dad wasn’t in your sight? 

TRYSTEN MULLIS: No. 

PROSECUTOR: … Trysten, would it be accurate to say that you don’t know how much time you were away from your dad … when you were working in the hog barn? 

TRYSTEN MULLIS: Yes. 

And according to prosecutors, that gave Todd the time to kill Amy. But Trysten says he was pressured to testify the way he did — pressured by Amy’s stepfather. 

What Trysten Mullis wants a jury to know about what happened the day his mother died

Erin Moriarty: How would you describe the last eight years?

Trysten Mullis: Hell. I would say hell.

Trysten Mullis says his testimony at his father’s murder trial didn’t tell the whole story and if he could do it all over again, here’s what he would want the jury to know about how long it took to get a drink of water that day.

Trysten Mullis: … I said I don’t know how much time. I wasn’t saying it could have been 20 minutes or whatever … It was a matter of seconds.

All he had to do, he says, was walk around a corner at the front of the barn.

Trysten Mullis: Right here is the hose that I drank out of that day.

Erin Moriarty: And so where do you drink out of it, like right here?

Trysten Mullis (drinks from the hose): Right out of the nozzle right here.

Erin Moriarty: You didn’t do anything else in here?

Trysten Mullis: Nope. And then you walk right back in.

And that, he says, is just not enough time for his father to leave, kill his mother and come back. There were two ways Todd could have gone. Either through a door at the front of the barn —

Erin Moriarty:  If he went that way.

Trysten Mullis: He would walk right past me.

Erin Moriarty: You would have seen him.

Trysten Mullis: I would have seen him and I would have heard him.

Erin Moriarty: So what’s the only other way he could have gone out?

Trysten Mullis: The only other way he could have gone out is to the end of the barn, all the way down at the end there.

Erin Moriarty: Oh, I see the door —

Trysten Mullis: See the door?

Erin Moriarty:  —  right down there.

Trysten Mullis: Yep.

Erin Moriarty: Then to get to the shed, how would he have to do that?

Trysten Mullis: would have to run all the way across the barn and then run all the way down.

Then —

Trysten Mullis: He’d have to jump the gate, run through the trees, go into the barn, do whatever, and run all the way back.

The round trip would have been about the length of four football fields.

Trysten Mullis: Come through the door, get back to the spot. Not be out of breath, not be panicked, not be, you know, frightened in any way, shape or form.

Erin Moriarty: … did your dad seem to be disheveled when — any time when you saw him there or out of breath or —

Trysten Mullis: Absolutely not.

For a young boy, it was a lot to handle.

Trysten Mullis: I’ve had to grow up really fast … going from a 13-year-old kid now taking care of two … younger siblings … trying to lead them.

When his father was arrested for the murder of his mother, Trysten, his sister Taylor, then 11, and brother Wyatt, 9, went to live with Amy’s family three hours away.  

Peggy Munson (emotional): I’d always promised her that I would look after her children. … But little did I know they would be living with us.

Amy’s mom Peggy.

Peggy Munson: It was hard for us too, because we were still grieving.

It was painful all around. The kids had to adjust to a new town and a new school. But for Trysten, there was no adjusting to the fact that he was living with family that he says believed his father was a killer.

Trysten Mullis: And I — to this day I’ve tried to get them to change their mind … and they still don’t believe that he’s innocent. … it’s caused a lot of tension in that side of the family because of what they believe and what I believe.

So at 17, with the help of a lawyer, Trysten took action. He signed an affidavit accusing Amy’s stepfather Randy and an attorney hired by Amy’s family of pressuring him on how to testify at trial if asked about how long his father was out of his sight:

They said that if I did not answer the question with “I don’t know” to the question then I would get in trouble for my mom’s death and be sent to a jail for kids called juvenile detention and that I would be taken out of school and away from my friends.

Erin Moriarty: As you know, Randy … He said in his affidavit that that you had pressured him …

Randy Munson: Yeah. No, just tell the truth. …

Erin Moriarty: Was that hard to read?

Peggy Munson: Yes.

Randy Munson: Yes, it is.

Peggy Munson: Very much so. Because that’s the last thing that we did with those kids is tell them to say anything — they speak their own mind … The truth is what we want them to say. Yeah, that was hard, very hard.

Today, Trysten does not want to talk about his affidavit.

Trysten Mullis: it’s kind of a sensitive area.

But when he rewinds back through the murder trial, all he can see are mistakes and missed opportunities to prove that his mother’s death was accidental — starting with his father’s defense counsel. In a letter to his lawyer written from jail before the trial, Todd asked, “is there any ‘expert’ that could verify possibility of it being accident.” In another, Todd made a rudimentary sketch of how he thought it happened.

But when the trial began Todd’s defense attorney Gerald Feuerhelm didn’t even argue it was an accident. He told the jury that Amy was murdered.

DFENSE ATORNEY GERALD FEURHELM (at trial): Amy Mullis was viciously and deliberately murdered …

 … Just not by Todd. Todd’s sister Lynne and brother Mike watched on helplessly. 

Mike Mullis: Well, when the – when the defense comes out and says, well, we know this was a murder, and but Todd didn’t do it. Well, that was an opening statement, my God –

Lynne White: Where did this come from? It made no sense.

When “48 Hours” reached out to Feuerhelm, he declined our request to be interviewed but he has said that he never considered an accidental death for Todd’s defense.

Dina Nesheiwat: Nobody got to hear anything — any evidence of accidents.

Now Todd’s family is leaning on new lawyers who hope to overturn his murder conviction. Brother and sister Daniel and Dina Nesheiwat have taken over the case. Years earlier, the Nesheiwats were consultants for “48 Hours” when we covered Todd’s murder trial. And when they dug into the case, they too concluded that Todd didn’t have enough time to kill Amy. Daniel did the leg work himself.

Daniel Nesheiwat: I literally ran the distance that the prosecution was accusing Todd of — of doing so he could have committed this alleged murder. And being there and seeing it, it’s impossible. It’s a — quite a distance … there’s no way it could have been done just on that fact. … And — and at that point, I was 100 percent convinced.

How did the corn rake end up in Amy Mullis’ back?

Convinced that Todd Mullis had not murdered his wife, his new attorneys Dina and Daniel Nesheiwat did what Todd said he had wanted all along.

Erin Moriarty: What is this here?

Dr. Jennifer Hammers: So this is the shed. This is where Amy was actually found.

They hired experts, including Forensic Pathologist Dr. Jennifer Hammers – a former New York City and Boston medical examiner — and Dr. Valentina Ngai, a biomechanical engineer. And after going to the scene, examining the evidence and doing tests of their own, they both say Amy was not murdered that day.

Dr. Jennifer Hammers: This does not appear to be a homicide to me. …

At trial the state medical examiner testified that Amy had that bruise on her jaw and scrapes and bruises on her knuckles. But if Amy had been hit in the face by Todd, Hammers says, there also would’ve been swelling.

Dr. Jennifer Hammers: The area isn’t swollen. … if this area is impacted in, let’s say, a physical altercation, we very often see pretty quick bruising … swelling of that area

As for the scrapes and bruises on Amy’s knuckles,  Hammers suggests that those injuries could have come from cleaning those glass light fixtures that Amy was doing earlier that day. As Trysten showed me, they were very narrow. 

Erin Moriarty (in the hog barn holding glass fixture): Your mom was cleaning this out by —

Trysten Mullis: Hand.

Erin Moriarty (putting her hand inside the fixture): This is hard.

Trysten Mullis: Mm-hmm.

Erin Moriarty: I don’t have big hands.

Trysten Mullis: Mm-hmm.

But the most crucial question for these experts is how the corn rake ended up in Amy’s back.

Erin Moriarty: At trial, basically everyone said four tines, six injuries. Simple math. Murder. …

Dr. Valentina Ngai: That is not right.

Dr. Jennifer Hammers: That’s incorrect.

Using the state medical examiner’s notes, Hammers drew an approximate diagram of the wounds, labeling them A through F. And then she and Ngai examined the direction of each wound. They, like the state medical examiner, say the wounds go in two different directions. 

Dr. Valentina Ngai: If you look at A, B, C, D … these wounds travel through the body almost perpendicular …. and E and F are sharply upward.

But unlike the state medical examiner, they don’t think the wounds came from Todd striking her with the rake multiple times.

Dr. Valentina Ngai: That scenario of … swinging and re-swinging does not fit … it does not match the physical evidence.

Dr. Valentina Ngai: … if you swing it, the entry points are much more steep. … swinging with these tines causes a much steeper entry point and would not generate these wound trajectories.

So, if someone didn’t strike Amy with the corn rake, how did she end up with six puncture wounds in her back?

Erin Moriarty: Are you trying to reconstruct what must have happened to Amy?

Dr. Valentina Ngai: Yes.

They concluded that Amy accidentally fell on the rake and helped to create an animation. After initially falling on the rake, Amy, they say, struggled to free herself from it. 

Dr. Jennifer Hammers: None of those injuries are gonna immediately incapacitate her. So she would be able to move, to … try to remove it from her body.

And in trying to remove it from her body, they say, she wounded herself further.

Erin Moriarty: So, what you’re saying is that when Amy tried to get the corn rake out of her back … she inadvertently caused greater injury?

Dr. Jennifer Hammers: Yes.

Here’s their opinion of what happened. When Amy fell, three of the four tines pierced her coat and her back, creating three puncture wounds.  Hammers and Ngai say Amy then tried to get up.

Dr. Valentina Ngai: She can’t roll to her left, otherwise she rolls over top of the rake. … She can’t sit upright because the rake handle is too long and it hits the ground … The only way for her to be able to get up is to roll to her right.

As she struggled, they say, she managed to free one tine from her back, but it still stayed under her coat. They say she fell again, causing the fourth puncture wound. Then Amy once again tried to free herself from the rake.

Dr. Valentina Ngai: She gets up to her knees and grabs the rake handle.

Still trying to break free, Hammers and Ngai say that Amy inadvertently turned the rake, changing the direction of the tines. They say she fell again, causing the fifth and sixth puncture wounds while the tines were pointing upward.

Dr. Valentina Ngai: … falling back onto those last two tines explains … that upward internal trajectory.

Doctors Hammers and Ngai say the clearest proof that Amy’s death could not have been caused by someone swinging the rake is the coat that Amy was wearing that day. A photo of the inside of the coat, shown above, taken at autopsy— but never shown at trial — the four arrows indicate where the medical examiner saw holes in the coat.

Dr. Valentina Ngai: Is a extremely important piece of evidence. … because it indicates that the clothing has less holes than the number of holes in her body. …

Erin Moriarty: And why is that so significant?

Dr. Valentina Ngai: He was convicted on swinging this rake multiple times into her body. How do you swing a four-tine implement multiple times and have less holes in the outer clothes and more holes in the body? That is illogical.

And they think they know why Amy fell in the first place. Dr. Hammers discovered a potential clue in Amy’s medical records – something the medical examiner later said she didn’t look at. Not only did Amy have that medical procedure a few days earlier —

Dr. Jennifer Hammers: … she had three medications, all of which can cause some sort of dizziness … or sleepiness.

Remember, Trysten had said his mother appeared dizzy and unsteady. As part of their work, Hammers and Ngai walked through the farm. They say that the layout of the red shed likely contributed to the accident.

Dr. Jennifer Hammers: It’s very dark. It’s very narrow … there’s a lot of things in there. 

To get the pet carrier, Amy had to walk down one narrow pathway, turn right, and then walk down another. Police photos from that day show the pet carrier sticking out. And Ngai and Hammers noticed something else in those photos – on the ground there were two pieces of farm equipment, called augers, that look like giant drill bits.

Dr. Jennifer Hammers: With the pet carrier being partially pulled out … it seems most likely that she was starting to pull that out.

Dr. Valentina Ngai: The barn being dark …. the augers at your feet, a tripping hazard, falling backwards. … this is the most likely plausible scenario.

For Trysten and the Mullis family, the experts’ conclusion is what they’d been waiting for.

Lynne White: Finally, Todd’s explanation’s right here. … they proved it … science doesn’t lie.  … it was a farm accident. Simple as that.

Trysten Mullis: I felt like we had our answer.

But when Todd’s new attorneys get the chance to present this information to a judge, would it be enough?

Todd Mullis seeks new trial

Determined to prove that Amy Mullis’ death was an accident —

Dina Nesheiwat: … you can’t argue with the science. You can’t argue with the biomechanical engineers.

— they need to convince an Iowa judge in this courtroom that Todd’s defense counsel who never investigated the possibility of an accidental death was ineffective, and that if the evidence they have collected now had been presented at his original trial, there might have been a different result. If they can do that, they hope to win Todd a new trial. On that day in court, Todd saw his children for the first time in six years.

Trysten Mullis: I broke down. I — I broke down. Just to see his face like tore me apart. … I just wanted to jump over the rail and hug him, tell him I loved him.

The Nesheiwats— along with a team of lawyers from both the Iowa Wrongful Conviction Unit and the Exoneration Project —are working pro bono to challenge Todd’s murder conviction.

Tara Thompson: Nobody listened to Todd at trial … the outcome of his trial would’ve been different if the jury had heard everything that the court is gonna hear over the course of this trial.

At his murder trial, the prosecution argued that Amy’s affair was the reason Todd killed her. But the Nesheiwats say there’s no clear evidence that Todd had any idea that his marriage was at risk.

Dina Nesheiwat: … she was having an affair at that time, um, unbeknownst to Todd. … but never took any action to actually take the steps to leaving.

And in the month before she died, says Dina Nesheiwat, there were affectionate texts between them.

Dina Nesheiwat: There’s messages where they’re saying I love you back and forth. …

But what about that conversation that Amy’s friend said they had about being afraid Todd would kill her?

Dina Nesheiwat: I think they were … for lack of better words, kind of throwaway … statements … Just like if I said it, you know, “my husband’s gonna kill me if I’m home late,” you know or things of that nature. … if she believed he was going to kill her … she would have done something different, and she didn’t. She stayed. 

As for those Google searches discovered on Todd Mullis’ iPad — searches about cheating and killing unfaithful women — which Todd denied making but the prosecution said proved premeditation —

Erin Moriarty: How do you explain the Google searches? … “what happens to cheaters in history?” “Killing unfaithful women.” That looks bad.

Dina Nesheiwat: Yes. On their face, they do look bad. … In isolation, they do look bad. 

Dina Nesheiwat says that all those searches were made before Amy even began her affair — and she says that many of the searches were about history.

Dina Nesheiwat: But if you follow the search sequence it goes into different cultures.

Including one that asked: “what happened to cheating spouses in historic Aztec tribe”

Dina Nesheiwat: … The state told the jury that all of the searches from Todd Mullis’ Gmail account were done on the iPad, but that’s not the case. 

Todd’s Google account was used on more than just his iPad, including Amy’s phone and a family laptop, so Nesheiwat says anyone in the Mullis home could have done those searches.

Dina Nesheiwat: We don’t know who did the search. …

But for Todd’s attorneys, it’s not enough to raise questions about the circumstantial evidence against Todd Mullis. Success at this hearing hinges on the new defense witnesses. They testified without using the animation. It was not yet ready.

ATTORNEY TARA THOMPSON (in court): Did you reach an opinion in this case, Dr. Hammers, about how you would classify the manner of Ms. Mullis’ death?

DR. JENNIFER HAMMERS: I did.

ATTORNEY TARA THOMPSON: And what is your conclusion after consideration of all of the background evidence and the evaluation of the hypotheses that you considered in this case?

DR. JENNIFER HAMMERS: My opinion is that the manner of death is best classified as an accident.

ATTORNEY TARA THOMPSON: Good afternoon, Dr. Ngai.

DR. VALENTINA NGAI: Good afternoon.

ATTORNEY TARA THOMPSON: During your investigation, did you come across any physical evidence that did not fit with this hypothesis of Ms. Mullis falling onto the rake in the way that you’ve described?

DR. VALENTINA NGAI:  No. Every single piece of physical evidence supported this hypothesis.

ATTORNEY TARA THOMPSON: And are these opinions that you could have — you or someone else in the biomechanical field could have offered back in 2019 based on the state of the science then?

DR. VALENTINA NGAI: Yes.

Given the evidence, Hammers and Ngai said that Amy’s injuries could only be the result of an accidental fall. That contradicts Dr. Kelly Kruse, the state medical examiner, who declined to speak with “48 Hours.”

ATTORNEY TARA THOMPSON: Is it true that at the time of Ms. Mullis’ autopsy, that because you could not envision a circumstance in which Ms. Mullis sustained these injuries, other than … someone impaling her with the corn rake, that that is the reason you determined that this was a homicide?

DR. KELLY KRUSE: There is no other way. Yes.

ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL SCOTT BROWN: Any of those, um, opinions or characterizations have those changed for you at all over this course of time?

DR. KELLY KRUSE: No.

ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL SCOTT BROWN: OK. You’ve reviewed a report that has essentially criticized your findings in this case, correct?

DR. KELLY KRUSE: Yes.

ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL SCOTT BROWN: And has that review caused you to change any of the opinions that you’ve given in this case?

DR. KELLY KRUSE: No.

Lawyers for the state questioned Kruse and did not bring any new witnesses to dispute the evidence presented by Hammers and Ngai. But they argued at the end of the hearing that Todd Mullis’ murder conviction should not be overturned.

ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL THOMAS BAKKE (in court): The state submits that Mr. Mullis has not met his burden of proof on any of his claims. We ask the court to deny his application in its entirety.

Trysten did not testify at the hearing but a deposition, in which he described being pressured, was submitted. He was a fixture in court throughout – sitting right behind his father.

Erin Moriarty: …You were there every day.

Trysten Mullis: Every single day. I mean, why wouldn’t I be there every single day … I know he’s innocent. And for the judge to see that … Well, his son is the one sitting behind him the whole time, you know.

TARA THOMPSON (in court): … Mr. Mullis has established there is at least a reasonable likelihood that the outcome of this trial would’ve been different with the overwhelming evidence that the Court has seen, this is evidence of an innocent man. This is evidence of a man that deserves a new trial, and a trial where he can have his day in court.

And with closing arguments said and done, Trysten felt confident.

Trysten Mullis: I thought he was gonna walk out of the courtroom that day after the experts testified. I thought they were gonna let him walk right out of there, to be honest with you.

Now they wait.

Trysten Mullis’ Fight Continues

Trysten Mullis: I thought it was going to be a quick, yeah, this is obvious. He needs a new trial. This is completely unfair.

It wasn’t quick.

Daniel Nesheiwat: … every day seems like a month. And then when those days turn into months, turn into over a year … It’s very tolling on everyone involved.

The hearing lasted six days but it would take nearly 15 months before Judge Laura Parrish made her decision.

Dina Nesheiwat: She denied Todd relief and getting a new trial.

Everything Todd’s new lawyers argued was rejected. The judge ruled that “Todd Mullis received a fair trial represented by competent counsel.” What’s more, she placed blame on Todd himself. Dina Nesheiwat described the judge’s ruling.

Dina Nesheiwat: … the … gist of it was Todd wanted to go to trial, so the attorney didn’t have enough time to investigate … he knew he was going without … an expert. … which we disagree with.

The judge also said the jury found Dr. Kruse, the state medical examiner, “credible” and that her “testimony was consistent with the other evidence they relied on.” But as for the arguments at the heart of the Nesheiwat’s case, the work they did that shows that Amy Mullis died as a result of an accident, Judge Parrish said little.

Dina Nesheiwat: … she summarized the science, but she didn’t analyze the science …

Erin Moriarty: If the jury had heard the science, do you think that would have made a difference at trial?

Daniel Nesheiwat: Absolutely.

Dina Nesheiwat: Todd would not be in prison right now if a jury heard the evidence that we have here or saw that animation.

The decision was devastating to Trysten and the rest of the Mullis family who had been so hopeful.

Mike Mullis: We went through all the work … to prove all this.

Lynne White: To prove this.

Mike Mullis: And then –

Lynne White: Yeah, basically have it dismissed.

Mike Mullis: Disregarded basically.

Erin Moriarty: How frustrated is your family?

Mike Mullis: Very frustrated.

Lynne White: Very frustrated.

Trysten Mullis: … I was dumbfounded that a — a judge could look at that and decide that.

Dina Nesheiwat had to break the news to Todd.

Dina Nesheiwat: …he was just crushed. …sucked the air right out of him. Just couldn’t believe it. … what else do they want? What else do they need?

Dina Nesheiwat: … science doesn’t pick sides.

Still, there are plenty of people who already have, and believe that Judge Parrish and the jury at Todd’s trial got it right.

Erin Moriarty: Is there any chance in your mind that this could have been an accident? …

Jon Turbett: No. I think Todd Mullis killed Amy Mullis … the evidence was put before and tested by juries and appellate, you know, judges. And, um, I absolutely believe we got the right outcome on that.

Jeff Fuller: … if you look at the evidence, there was no way that it was an accident.

Amy’s brother Jeff said he found the defense experts conclusion far-fetched.

Jeff Fuller: … it seemed to me that they were trying to retry the case … with some alternate facts and alternate theories. … it seemed almost nonsensical, some of the things that were being said.

Amy’s brother, mother and stepfather are hoping the judge’s decision will finally shift the focus from Todd and put it back on Amy.

Peggy Munson: There’s a hole in our lives, but we know she’s up there in Heaven looking down on us.

Erin Moriarty: What’s the most important thing that you want people to know about Amy?

Jeff Fuller: Um, the number one thing is how much she loved her kids. And how great of a mom she was.

Randy Munson: … we know how we feel about losing her, but I can’t imagine how they feel.

Erin Moriarty: So what do you do now?

Dina Nesheiwat: We keep fighting. We have an appeal to go to next and we’re just going to keep fighting. … the science is still on the record just because she didn’t analyze it or agree with it or — it’s still there, still on the record. So we’re going to ask an appellate court to hear it now.

Erin Moriarty: You’re not giving up.

Lynne White: No.

Mike Mullis: Absolutely not.

Erin Moriarty: Why not?

Mike Mullis: ‘Cause we know he’s innocent.

Trysten Mullis: I lost both of my parents at 13. …

Trysten told us he’s not giving up either. He often thinks of his mom and is determined to get justice for his father.

Erin Moriarty: What keeps you going?

Trysten Mullis: Prayer, prayer and faith that one day this will all be set straight …

Erin Moriarty: If he were sitting here right now, what would you say to your dad?

Trysten Mullis: I love you and I’m — I’m fighting every day for you. I’m fighting to get you home.

Produced by Betsy Shuller, Mary Murphy and Hannah Vair. Gary Winter, Michelle Harris, Grayce Arlotta-Berner and Marcus Balsam are the editors. Cameron Rubner is the associate producer. Patti Aronofsky is the senior producer. Nancy Kramer is the executive story editor. Judy Tygard is the executive producer