What's Going On in Cedar County?
It would appear that Agape Boarding School is not the only interesting thing in the county.
Y’all, this stuff is fascinating when you dig. Like John Fitzgerald Mullins.
I noticed the case today because the Western District of Missouri had a Twitter post that he had “1,000s of images & videos” of child sex abuse material, and that he’s from El Dorado Springs.
This really peaked my interest after last week, when a cybersecurity professional from El Dorado Springs (pop. 3,584) was arrested for attempted extortion of his employer for $1.5 million.
ElDo is in Cedar County, Missouri. I have been critical of their local prosecutor before, and I think he should have been more aggressive about Agape Boarding School.
The Federal Case
Mr. Mullings was convicted at trial today after 27 minutes of jury deliberations.
That’s awfully quick, I thought, and why did he take a case to trial when the prosecutors had 1,000s of pieces of evidence? They would only have to prove one …
I like to dig, if you haven’t already figured that out. It’s more fun than sitting and reading a novel. There are far more twists and turns here than an editor would ever allow in a published piece of fiction.
According to the press release, the Feds visited Mr. Mullings on March 2, 2021, and seized his cell phone with 678 images and 96 videos of child sex abuse material. He was indicted on August 16, 2022.
Less than 2 weeks before that, on August 3, 2022, there was a search warrant executed at Mr. Mullings’ residence. They seized a whole bunch of stuff, and found 14,249 images and 2,054 videos of child sex abuse material among Mulling’s devices.
So the Western District of Missouri filed a superseding indictment on June 27, 2023, with an additional count based on the new evidence.
The prosecutor took the two counts to trial, and it took the jury less than 30 minutes to find him guilty.
What’s Going On??????
First of all, I wondered why both parties would take it to trial. The prosecutor had such substantial evidence — over 15,000 individual crimes! that it would be nearly impossible for the Defendant to walk away from two charges at trial.
But also — why did the prosecutor leave it at two counts? 15,000 individual crimes here, and only bringing two. It’s not like they couldn’t prove more if they wanted to.
The Search Warrant
Looking at the exhibit list, I realized that the search warrant that retrieved 24 separate devices was from the local prosecutor in Cedar County case 22CD-MC00062.
That’s weird, I thought, Why would the local prosecutor be executing a search warrant here? The search warrant is independent of a criminal case. Even though the affidavit (warning: graphic!) for the search warrant, and the warrant itself, shows it is looking for evidence of an alleged rape.
It seems weird that, while there was a pending (or nearly-pending) federal case for child sex abuse material, the local prosecutor - the same guy who refused to prosecute child abuse at one of Missouri’s many unlicensed boarding schools - would execute a search warrant that found so many times more crime than the feds had found.
And this was based on the alleged rape of a 16 year old at his business.
The Business
Mullings owns a towing company. Google says this is the same company, and I can’t prove otherwise. (The one Google shows is not registered with the SoS.)
The 16 year old says she was raped at the towing company where she was employed, and that this was caught on security camera.
The Local Prosecutor
I’ve never met Ty Gaither, but if you’ve seen my Twitter Posts from late 2022 you’d know I’m not a fan. He protected Agape Boarding School and the culture of abuse inside it. Full stop. So I have a hard time believing that he was trying to stop this guy who was facing federal charges when he seized his 24 devices.