Travis James Mullis: Murder of Alijah, Trial, and Execution

Travis James Mullis was a Texas man convicted of capital murder for sexually assaulting and killing his three-month-old son, Alijah, on the Galveston Seawall in January 2008. He was executed by lethal injection at the Huntsville Unit on September 24, 2024, at age 38, after spending roughly 13 years on death row and repeatedly waiving, then trying to reinstate, his appeals. In his final statement he called the execution “assisted suicide” and said he did not regret his decision to speed the process along.

The Killing of Alijah Mullis

On the morning of January 29, 2008, Mullis, then 21, left the trailer he shared with his girlfriend, Caren Kohberger, and their infant son in Brazoria County, telling her he needed to “clear his head.” The night before, the couple had argued after Mullis attempted to get their roommate’s eight-year-old daughter to pull her pants down. Kohberger later told investigators she feared he would “mentally relapse and act out on his impulses again.”¹ According to an arrest warrant affidavit, she still allowed him to leave with the baby, even after he told her he was “having flashbacks from being sexually abused as a child” and warned “he might do something to one of the kids.”²

Mullis drove to a secluded stretch of the Galveston Seawall. When the baby would not stop crying, he told police, he reached a “breaking point” and believed killing the child was the only way to make him quiet.¹ He sexually assaulted the infant, strangled him, then removed him from the car, placed him on the ground, and stomped on his head multiple times, crushing his skull.³ He left the body and the car seat by the seawall and fled the state.

Four days later, on February 1, 2008, Mullis walked into Philadelphia police headquarters around 2:00 p.m. and told an officer he was wanted for “murder, kidnapping, and automobile theft.” Still in the lobby, he repeated three times: “I stomped his head. I kept stomping his head.” In a recorded video statement to investigators, he said “the only way to make him stop crying was to kill him.”⁴

The Case Against the Mother

Kohberger, 27, was separately charged with child endangerment, a second-degree felony, by the Brazoria County district attorney’s office. The warrant alleged she allowed Mullis to take the infant despite his “menacing statements toward the children.” District Attorney Jeri Yenne said the charge was delayed so that Galveston County could first secure Mullis in custody and move on the murder prosecution.²

Trial and Death Sentence

Mullis was extradited to Texas and tried for capital murder in the 122nd Judicial District Court of Galveston County before Judge John Ellisor. The charge was brought under Texas Penal Code § 19.03(a)(8), which covers the intentional killing of a child under six.⁵

The state’s case leaned on the brutality of the crime and Mullis’s history of violence. DNA analyst Tanya Dean testified that an oral swab from the infant contained a mixture of Mullis’s and Alijah’s DNA and that further testing confirmed the presence of seminal fluid. Prosecutors also introduced photographs of graffiti found in Mullis’s jail cell in November 2009: a “hit list” of 62 people, including relatives of his adoptive mother, former prosecutors, and his own defense attorneys, along with backward-drawn swastikas, a misspelled reference to Hitler, and a hangman’s noose drawing with a Ku Klux Klan reference.⁶ Asked why, Mullis reportedly told a jailer, “I was bored. I had nothing better to do.”

The defense called no witnesses during the guilt phase but urged jurors to exercise “cool reflection.”⁵ Attorneys described their client as an “emotional mental health quadriplegic” who was “unable to feel emotions,” and offered his traumatic childhood as mitigation.⁷ The jury found Mullis guilty on March 11, 2011. Ten days later, on March 21, jurors answered the special-issue questions on future dangerousness and mitigating circumstances in a way that required the court to impose a death sentence.

Childhood and Mental Health

Mullis’s early life was marked by severe hardship. He was born with necrotizing enterocolitis, a life-threatening intestinal illness, and spent the first 71 days of his life hospitalized.⁸ His mother, who suffered from morbid obesity and neglected her own health, died when he was 10 months old. His biological father abandoned the family shortly after his birth.⁹

He was adopted by his uncle, who sexually abused him from as early as age three until he was six. At age 12, school records documented Mullis saying of his adoptive father: “I’d like to kill him if I could. I will always hate him.”⁸ He spent years in and out of treatment for various psychological conditions, including suicidal ideation.¹⁰ Prosecutors countered the mitigation case by arguing that Mullis had “refused the medical and psychiatric help he had been offered.”

A Decade of Waived and Reinstated Appeals

What followed the verdict was more than a decade of Mullis switching between demanding execution and trying to preserve his appeals. The pattern raised persistent questions about whether a person with a documented history of mental illness could competently choose to die.

Shortly after conviction, Mullis moved to represent himself and waive his direct appeal. The trial court allowed the waiver after his court-appointed counsel confirmed he understood the consequences. A psychiatrist evaluated him in October 2011 and concluded he had the “present ability to knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily waive his rights to post-conviction habeas review.” Even with the waiver, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals automatically reviewed and affirmed his conviction in 2012, as required by state law.¹¹

In September 2012, Mullis wrote to the court: “I have always admitted guilt + justice is deserved for the victims families… It is in the best interests of justice for the victim + the victims families for this appeal to stop here and execution of this sentence to be carried out in a timely manner.”⁹ He missed the deadline to file a state habeas petition, and the Court of Criminal Appeals concluded he had waived those grounds for relief.

He then reversed course and asked that his appeals be reinstated. A second psychiatric evaluation in November 2012, retained by his habeas counsel, found that Mullis had been “depressed” and “suicidal” at the time of the first evaluation but was competent by that point.¹¹ He reversed himself again, reaffirming his desire to drop all appeals. Over the years, Mullis argued at various points that his initial waiver had been driven by mental illness, suicidal thoughts, and an “irrational fear” of long-term imprisonment, and that he had lied during his first competency evaluation.⁹

His attorneys attempted to file an untimely habeas petition under Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Article 11.071, Section 4A, arguing that Mullis had been incompetent when he waived his rights. The Court of Criminal Appeals denied the motion, finding he had not established “good cause” for the delay and describing his waiver efforts as “persistent.”¹¹ In 2021, a federal district court judge dismissed his habeas petition, writing that “Mullis is a disturbed individual whose mental illness has permeated his life” but concluding that “state counsel and various courts have acted with competence and zeal to assure that Mullis has enjoyed all the process he is due.” The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal in 2023.⁹

By 2018, Mullis seemed settled. He filed a handwritten motion to waive his appeals and fire his attorneys: “I support my death sentence and want it carried out ASAP” and “This motion to waive is final and will not be withdrawn under any circumstances.”⁷ In February 2024, he wrote to U.S. District Judge George Hanks in Houston saying he had no desire to challenge his case further and believed “his punishment fit the crime.”¹²

No clemency petition was filed with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. His attorney, Shawn Nolan, confirmed no late appeals were planned and described Mullis as a “redeemed man” who accepted responsibility for the crime.¹³ Nolan still maintained that Mullis suffered from “profound mental illness” and was “severely bipolar,” and that Texas courts had erred in ruling him competent to waive his appeals. The Texas Attorney General’s Office countered that Mullis understood his actions and was capable of deciding to forgo appeals regardless of any mental illness.¹⁴

Execution and Final Statement

Mullis was executed by lethal injection at the Huntsville Unit on September 24, 2024, and pronounced dead at 7:01 p.m.⁹ Texas uses a single-drug protocol of pentobarbital.¹⁵

In his final statement, Mullis thanked friends, pen pals, field ministers, correctional staff, and fellow death row inmates. He said he believed rehabilitation on death row was possible: “We have changed. We are not the same.” He expressed regret for killing his son and apologized to the boy’s mother, then stated: “I took the legal steps to expedite to include assisted suicide. I don’t regret this decision, to legally expedite this process. … It was my decision that put me here. I’m ready Warden.”¹⁶

The Guardian noted the paradox that Texas, which bans physician-assisted suicide, had effectively provided the lethal dose that facilitated his death.¹⁷ According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Mullis was one of at least 165 “execution volunteers” since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, accounting for roughly 10 percent of all U.S. executions.¹⁸

1
USA Today. Texas Executes Travis Mullis for Killing Infant Son
2
ABC13. Arrest Warrant Issued for Mother of Slain Infant
3
The Huntsville Item. Execution Tuesday for Man That Killed His Son
4
The Galveston County Daily News. Philadelphia Officer Describes Bizarre Confession
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vLex. Mullis v. Thaler
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CBS19. Prosecutors: Evidence of Sexual Assault Found on Baby Stomped to Death by Dad
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San Antonio Express-News. Baby Killer Wants Quick Death
8
TXExecutions.org. Travis Mullis
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Texas Tribune. Texas Execution of Mullis for Galveston Infant Murder
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News From the States. Texas Executes Brazoria County Man for Stomping Death of Infant Son
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FindLaw. Mullis v. Director, TDCJ-CID
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CBS News. Texas Man Executed for Killing Infant Son After Waiving Right to Appeal
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Spectrum News. Texas Man Set to Be Executed for Killing His Infant Son
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ABC13. Texas Execution of Travis Mullis
15
NBC News. Texas New Details on Execution Drug
16
TDCJ. Travis James Mullis Final Statement
17
The Guardian. America Executions and the Death Penalty
18
Death Penalty Information Center. Execution Volunteers