Viswa Vanapalli
In the small town of Olney, Texas, high school football made up a big part of the residents’ lives. But ID’s ‘Murder Under the Friday Night Lights: Killer on the Field’ as well as NBC’s ‘Dateline: The Footprint at the Lake’ chronicles how a high school football star was responsible for the gruesome murder of a beloved teacher. Manuela “Manu” Sabine Allen’s dead body was found in July 2019, and all physical evidence seemed to point to only one person — a student at the school.
How Did Manuela Allen Die?
Manuela was born in April 1970 in Germany. After finishing her schooling there, she moved to the United States to attend college and learn English. The 49-year-old had tied the knot with Army veteran Peter Allen in 1996, and they’d moved to Olney in 2008. Over there, the mother of four worked at the local high school, teaching the German and English languages. According to reports, Manuela was a kind teacher who always went out of her way to help the kids. However, everything changed on the night of July 6, 2019, even though it had seemed like a typical one in the Allen household. Manuela and Peter watched TV before she went to bed while he fell asleep on the couch.
The following morning, the family realized that Manuela wasn’t at home and her bedroom floor was blood-soaked, there was a knife strewn in the hallway, and blood marks were everywhere. They thus drove to a local hospital under the assumption she’d accidentally cut herself and gone to the medical center alone, especially because her SUV was missing too, but to no avail.
That’s when Peter reported his wife missing. Later the same day, on July 7, 2019, an official found Manuela’s car near Lake Cooper with her body wrapped in some clothing nearby. As per the shows, she was stabbed around 47 times, with most of her wounds to her skull. She had also been strangled, made to suffer a broken neck, and shot once in the face post-mortem.
Who Killed Manuela Allen?
Inside Manuela and Peter’s bedroom, the authorities examined the pool of blood on the carpet. They even noted there were bloody footprints that went through the kitchen, and her SUV at Lake Cooper had dried blood on the side plus bloody fingerprints inside too. Then, a witness claimed she’d seen a male riding a bicycle from the area towards Olney in the early hours of July 7. As detectives, they then worked the case and came across Julius Mullins, an 18-year-old high school student and football player.
Julius had dated Manuela’s elder daughter Melanie for a while, but they had broken up roughly six to seven months before the incident. According to the show, DNA evidence from the crime scenes matched his to a tee. Then there’s the fact tire tracks from the lake matched his bicycle, which he’d had for more than two months. The foot impression found in the kitchen was similar to Julius’s too. Furthermore, footprints in the area where the body was found were consistent with his shoes.
It was stated on the ID episode that Julius soon admitted to walking into Manuela’s bedroom while she was sleeping and then attacking her, though he never gave a clear motive why. However, because he later indicated he was still utterly in love with Melanie, officials theorized he killed her mother to make her endure the kind of heartbreak he did months prior during their split. He also confessed to the authorities that he’d previously sat in the driver’s seat of her car and had left his fingerprints on the vehicle about a month prior. Hence, Julius was arrested a little over a week after Manuela’s murder after witness reports and extensive physical evidence implicated him.
Julius Mullins is Behind Bars Today
In May 2020, Julius Orion Xavier Mullins pleaded guilty to one count each of murder, changing or tampering with physical evidence with intent to impair a human corpse, and burglary of a habitation. He was subsequently sentenced to 55 years for the murder, 20 years for the burglary, and 20 years for tampering, all to be run concurrently. Therefore, today, at the age of 22, he remains incarcerated at the James V. Allred Unit in Iowa Park, Wichita Falls, Texas, where he’ll remain until at least he becomes eligible for parole in January 2047. According to state records, his projected release date at the moment is July 14, 2047, whereas his official sentence end date is July 14, 2074.
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