https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle...-as-a-suicide/


In a letter sent to The Seattle Times a few months before his death, convicted sex-offender killer Michael Mullen wrote that during his arrest and trial, ?facts are, I just wanted to die.?

Mullen was serving a 44-year prison term after being convicted of killing two Bellingham sex offenders in what was considered one of the nation?s worst cases of vigilantism against sex offenders.

Mullen was found unresponsive in his cell at Stafford Creek Corrections Center near Aberdeen on April 15, and declared dead at Grays Harbor Community Hospital.

The state Department of Corrections says it?s still investigating his death.

Prison spokeswoman Sheri Izatt says Mullen was alone in his cell. His death is being investigated as a possible suicide.

?I?ve been moved from prison to prison since my incarceration,? Mullen wrote in his January letter to the Times. ?I can not ajust (sic).?

Mullen was sentenced last year for the shooting deaths. He found his victims on Whatcom County?s online sex-offender list, posed as an FBI agent in August 2005 to enter the home, and killed Victor Vazquez, 68, and Hank Eisses, 49. He said he let a third resident go because he showed remorse. Mullen had a history of petty crime in Washington and California.

Eisses had served a five-year prison sentence for raping a 13-year-old boy. Vazquez was convicted in 1991 of molesting several children.

In letters Mullen wrote to The Seattle Times after the killings in 2005, he said, ?? I wanted one alive to spread the message that ?we? will not tolerate ?our? children being used and abused.?

He also said at the time that he was motivated by the case of Joseph Edward Duncan III, a sex offender charged with killing a family in Idaho and kidnapping two children as sex slaves.

A convicted sex offender and former Washington prison inmate, Duncan is accused of murdering a North Idaho woman, her son and her boyfriend, then kidnapping and molesting the woman?s 9-year-old son, Dylan Groene, and 8-year-old daughter, Shasta. Duncan is also accused of killing Dylan after molesting him.

Mullen said he would welcome the death penalty in order to beat Duncan into the afterlife and hold him accountable for the Groene family?s deaths.

?I will see to it personally that their deaths and abuse was not in vain!? he wrote to The Times.

Duncan, a Tacoma native, is awaiting a federal trial in Idaho.

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/20...n-forgiveness/

OLYMPIA ? On a summer night two years ago, Michael Anthony Mullen showed up at a Bellingham home shared by three convicted sex offenders. Claiming to be an FBI agent, he waited until one man left for work, then gunned down the other two.

For Eve Vazquez, those pistol shots snatched away her hopes of reconciling with her 68-year-old father and childhood sexual abuser, Victor Vazquez.

Today, at 29, she still grieves for him. But she?s determinedly pulling together the threads of her long-scattered family, which is about to grow by one.

Taken from her home at 12 after years of sexual abuse by her father, Vazquez was raised in foster homes, mostly in Spokane. At 27, scared and angry, she showed up on his doorstep to confront him. He cried.

Over the ensuing months, the two met and talked, eating ice cream at a beach. He told her his life and family had fallen apart and repeatedly apologized. And after years of blaming herself for the breakup of her family, Vazquez said, ?I just kind of started to feel human.?

Then along came Mullen. Reportedly a victim of childhood sex abuse himself, he found the men?s home on a sex-offender registry. After talking to the men and drinking a can of Coors Light with them, he shot both in the head at point-blank range.

In late 2005, the daughter Victor Vazquez had abused held a memorial service for him and scattered some of his ashes at the beach where they?d spent hours talking.

Vazquez still lives in Bellingham. She works as a housekeeper at a hotel and casino, a job with decent pay and good benefits, she said. And she?s taking nursing classes at a community college.

Partly as a result of the publicity of the vigilante slaying, she?s reconnected with distant sisters, a half-brother and her mother. A younger sister has moved in with her. She?s in close contact with several mother figures who helped raise her in Bellingham and Spokane.

?I?m finally figuring out what it?s like to be happy and be loved by people, by family,? she said.

She is also pregnant. The father is a friend who lives in Seattle. Although he?s supportive, she said, ?I?m ready to do this by myself.? She has her sister and has surrounded herself with a large group of friends, she said. She?s saved enough from her job to take three months off to be with the infant.

For Vazquez, it feels like a second chance after giving up two children in the late 1990s, when an early marriage dissolved.

Ultrasounds indicate the baby ? due in weeks ? will be a daughter. Vazquez has picked out the name ?Esmay.?

?It?s like I?m starting my life over and she is like a gift, a fresh start.?

She still has her father?s phone number programmed into her cell phone. She still misses him.

?It?s comforting,? she said of the phone number. ?I wish my dad was here so I could talk to him.?

As for Mullen, he was eventually caught by police, charged, convicted and sentenced to 44 years in prison. From prison, he corresponded for a couple of months with a Spokesman-Review reporter.

?I have never in my life harmed an innocent person,? he wrote, saying that the Joseph Duncan murder-sex abuse case in North Idaho was ?the straw that broke my back.? He said he was haunted by thoughts of the last days of the victims, particularly young Dylan Groene.

?I?m sorry I couldn?t save you, Dylan. You are a hero!? Mullen wrote in parentheses in an August 2006 letter. Mullen said he was sexually abused at age 5.

Mullen said he killed Victor Vazquez and roommate Hank Eisses to send a message to sex offenders: ?I want them to know that there are some of us in this World that will cross any boundry (sic) & law to stop them. This includes murder.?

Mullen sprinkled his letters with Latin phrases such as ?jacta alea est,? meaning ?the die is cast.?

?I am not the bad guy,? he wrote in September 2006. ?I care too much if anything. I?ve always hated bullies, and pedophiles are the worst kind. (Exitus acta probat!)?

The latter phrase means ?the result justifies the deed.?

?I really am sorry for the loss Eve Vazquez feels,? he wrote in another September letter. ?God knows she has suffered enough loss & pain?If hating me helps, then hate me.?

In April of this year, Mullen, 36, was found unconscious and alone in his cell at Stafford Creek prison near Aberdeen, Wash. He had apparently hoarded prescription medication and committed suicide by taking all the pills at once.

Eve Vazquez says she doesn?t hate Mullen. She views him as a psychologically wounded man who was unable to escape the emotional toll of his past abuse.

?I don?t want to be a failure,? Vazquez said. ?I don?t want to be a statistic: the girl who was abused and became the drug addict or failure in other people?s eyes.

?But with all my moms, I know I?m not a statistic, not an abused person. I?m me.?

Damn the person that calls himself a hero ends up more paranoid for killing the "Predators" than even the actual victims of abuse as seen here in these examples.