Teen:

FOR THE RECORD:

****In the July 10 story, “Teen: I saw him kill her,” Rachael Mullenix’s attorney should have been identified as David R. Cohn.****

Rachael Mullenix watched her boyfriend kill her mother, then helped him clean up the crime scene because she was in shock and afraid of what he might do to her, she testified during her murder trial Wednesday morning.

It was the third day the jury heard witnesses called by the defense, as Mullenix’s lawyer Roy Cohn attempted to convince jurors his client didn’t conspire to kill her mother, and the blame lay instead with her then-boyfriend Ian Allen. Prosecutors say she manipulated Allen into helping her stab mother Barbara Mullenix to death with multiple knives in the Huntington Beach condo where they lived.

Mullenix, 19, testified that Allen, also charged in the killing and soon to face a separate trial, arrived at her house that September 2006 night to go through with their plan to run away to Florida.

Instead of waiting outside in his truck for her, he showed up in the hallway of the house, outside her bedroom door, only feet away from Mullenix’s mother’s room, she testified.

“It scared me at first because I wasn’t expecting to see him inside my house,” she testified.

When Mullenix’s mother opened the bedroom door and confronted them, a heated argument between Allen and her ensued, Mullenix testified. When Mullenix’s mother went back in her room, Allen followed her in, Mullenix testified. Mullenix told jurors she heard her mother cry for help and when she went inside, she saw Allen stabbing her. When she tried to stop him, he pushed her away and continued the attack, until the mother was dead, she testified.

“I was shocked. There’s nothing else to describe what I just saw. This was somebody I loved and he just did that. It just ... was like I was paralyzed mentally. It was unreal. It was completely unreal,” she testified.

Mullenix told jurors she was numb and not fully conscious when she helped Allen clean up the blood and remove the body. The two of them took it to the Back Bay, where Allen dragged it in a box to the water, Mullenix testified. She said that while she had countless opportunities to call for help, she was afraid of Allen and the reality of the situation had yet to sink in.

Mullenix told jurors the day before that the plan had been to run, not kill her mother.

In the days following a time she broke curfew and was told not to see Allen, her divorced parents drank and fought more and more, she said. Barbara Mullenix became so unpredictable, from threats the couple could never see each other again to promises that the two could get married, that the only choice was to run, Rachael Mullenix said.

Allen had his dark side all along, she said. She described him as obsessed with her, constantly saying she was “his,” and pushing her to have sex.

“There were times Ian hit me, shoved me, threw me on the bed, threw me into walls,” Mullenix said. Asked why she didn’t complain to police, she replied, “After talking to Veronica [Thomas, the defense psychologist] I realize now that the reason I didn’t was because I’m used to it — I guess you could say being abused.”

Also this week, Sarah Brewer, Mullenix’s best friend from ages 7 to 15 said she remembered a day Rachael Mullenix came to her house with bite marks on her back from her mother. Brewer said the elder Mullenix came looking for her in an apparent drunken rage.

Prosecutors were expected to cross-examine Mullenix Wednesday afternoon.

MICHAEL ALEXANDER may be reached at (714) 966-4618 or at [email protected].