Execution Report: Travis Mullis

Travis James Mullis, 38, was executed by lethal injection on 24 September 2024 in Huntsville, Texas for the murder of his 3-month-old son.

On Monday, 28 January 2008, Mullis, then 21, took his infant son, Ahijah, and his friend's 8-year-old daughter to her school's playground. He attempted to sexually molest the girl, but she cried, and he was unable to remove her clothing. He then took the girl home and went to his own home in a Brazoria County trailer park. There, he fought with his girlfriend, who was his son's mother.

In the early hours of the next morning, Mullis put Ahijah in the back seat of his girlfriend's car and drove to Galveston. He parked his car near the east end of Seawall Boulevard and sexually assaulted Ahijah, who then began crying uncontrollably. Mullis strangled him, then took him out of the car, laid him on the road, and stomped on his head several times, crushing his skull. He then threw the body into the brush and fled the state. He surrendered to police in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on 1 February.

At Mullis's trial, the facts of the crime were not disputed. At his sentencing hearing, the defense presented evidence showing that Mullis's mother was morbidly obese and took terrible care of her body, and that he spent the first 71 days of his life in the hospital because of a congenital illness. His mother died when he was 10 months old. His uncle adopted him and sexually abused him until he was 6.

When Mullis was 12, according to school records, he said about his adoptive father, "I'd like to kill him if I could. I will always hate him."

Prosecutors claimed that Mullis refused the medical and psychiatric help he had been offered.

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