Episode Details

In the early 1970s, Santa Cruz, California, was already living through an extraordinary period of violence. Then Herbert William Mullin began killing people for a reason almost impossible to comprehend.

Mullin believed his murders were human sacrifices necessary to prevent a catastrophic earthquake from destroying California. Between October 1972 and February 1973, he killed 13 people, ranging in age from four to 72. His victims included a priest, a college student, a former high school friend, children, and people he encountered seemingly at random.

His first known victim was Lawrence “Whitey” White, a 55-year-old man Mullin beat to death with a baseball bat after White stopped to offer him help. Days later, Mullin murdered 24-year-old Mary Margaret Guilfoyle, a Cabrillo College student who accepted a ride from him. Then he entered a Catholic church and killed Father Henri Tomei inside the confessional.

The violence escalated.

Mullin murdered former friend Jim Gianera, Gianera’s wife Joan, and four members of the neighboring Francis family, including two young boys. He later shot four teenage campers and finally killed 72-year-old Fred Perez in broad daylight while the man worked in his yard. A witness recorded Mullin’s license plate, and police arrested him minutes later.

After his arrest, Mullin confessed.

The central question at his trial was not whether he had committed the killings, but whether his severe mental illness made him legally responsible for them. A jury ultimately convicted him of two counts of first-degree murder and nine counts of second-degree murder, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Adding another bizarre chapter to Santa Cruz crime history, Mullin’s killing spree overlapped with that of Edmund Kemper, the Co-Ed Killer. The two men were operating in the same general area during the same period, complicating investigators’ efforts to understand the seemingly unrelated murders occurring around Santa Cruz.

Herbert Mullin remained incarcerated for the rest of his life. He died of natural causes at the California Health Care Facility in Stockton on August 18, 2022, at age 75.

This is the true crime story of Herbert Mullin—a serial killer who believed murder could prevent earthquakes, 13 victims chosen through a horrifying delusional logic, and one of the strangest killing sprees in California history.

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