[UPDATE: Mullis was executed by lethal injection on 9/24/2024 and pronounced dead at 7:01 p.m]

Researching Travis Mullis put tears in my eyes and is making me nauseous.

tx dept of corrections/ getty images
tx dept of corrections/ getty images
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I watch a lot of true crime shows. I keep Forensic Files running as background noise because I find the narrator's voice soothing. I write a lot about Texas Death Row, and it is rare for anything to phase me.

It is also rare for me to have zero sympathy for for the convicted, especially if they had hard lives. Travis Mullis had a hard life, and yet, I cannot bring myself to feel anything but a visceral hate for him.

After attempting to molest an 8-year-old girl, Travis Mullis became afraid he'd be caught because she was the daughter of the people who let him stay with them instead of letting him and his family become homeless.

Read More: Texas Death Row: Brothers Executed Weeks Apart For Brutal Beating

So Travis went on the run with his three-month-old son Alijah, traveling to Galveston. After molesting his baby, the baby wouldn't stop crying, so Mullis strangled the baby and then stomped his son's skull in. He threw Alijah's lifeless body into the brush and then fled to Philidelphia.

A few days later Mullis turned himself in and to his credit, I guess, confessed immediately. Killing a child is a capital crime in Texas, and eligible for the death penalty.

His trial defense could not minimize the horrific nature of his crime, nor could they deny Mullis was guilty. Instead, they focused on Travis' difficult childhood.

Read More: Texas Inmates That Spent Less Than A Year On Death Row

Travis' father abandoned him when he was born, and his mother died when he was 10 months old. His adoptive parents, an aunt and uncle, did not give him a safe or happy childhood- his uncle molested him as early as three years old.

Mullis had a laundry list of mental health diagnoses, including bipolar, PTSD, and suicidal thoughts.

The prosecutors focused on Mullis' long history of violence and his habit of sexually assaulting young children, including a female cousin. He assaulted his grandmother, and assaulted staff members during incarceration as a juvenile and as an adult. He refused medications and was manipulative and remorseless.

After receiving his death penalty, Travis waived his right to the lengthy appeals processes that Texas death penalty cases automatically receive. Later, he would attempt some other legal remedies, but they were denied.

Despite receiving the sentence in 2011, he is already scheduled to be executed on September 24 of this year, a relatively quick turnaround for a Death Row inmate.

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