An Iowa hog farmer has been accused of murdering his wife by stabbing her in the back with a corn rake.
Todd Mullis was charged with first-degree murder on Thursday in Earlville, Iowa over the November 2018 death of his wife Amy Mullis on the farm where they lived with three children.
The couple’s 13-year-old son was the one to find Amy with a corn rake impaled in her back on November 10.

Todd, 42, told police at the time that his 39-year-old wife must have tripped and fallen on the rake, dying accidentally.
But the coroner determined that while the corn rake had four tines, Amy had at least six puncture wounds, indicating she had been stabbed repeatedly.
Her death subsequently was ruled a homicide. A detailed arrest warrant affidavit by the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office lays out the meticulous investigation that led to Todd’s arrest.

Todd and Amy married in 2004, and had two sons ages 13 and eight, and an 11-year-old daughter. The family of five lived on their large farm in eastern Iowa, raising corn and hogs.
Family photos from Facebook show what appears to be a happy family, doting over their children as they showed off hunting trophies and awards for gymnastics and 4-H club.
However, Todd revealed a darker side to the marriage in interviews with police, admitting that he had caught his wife in an affair with another man in 2013.

At first, Todd insisted that he had never had a reason to suspect his wife of another affair, and that they had patched things up and had a strong relationship at the time of her death. But investigators discovered that was not the case.
Amy had been engaged in a second affair with another man that the couple both knew since May 2018, according to investigators.
The man reportedly told police that Amy had confided that she wanted to leave Todd, but was ‘scared to death’ of what her husband might do.
‘If he catches me, he might make me disappear,’ Amy told her secret lover in the summer of 2018, according to the affidavit.

Amy Mullis had premonitions she was in imminent danger. In August of 2018, she told another friend that if she disappeared, ‘You’ll know Todd did something to me,’ investigators said.
Another friend stated that Amy said that Todd would kill her and throw her to the pigs if he ever discovered the affair.
On the week of October 22, a friend told investigators that Amy had called crying and screaming, saying that Todd had discovered her affair.
Amy said that one of her children was refusing to get on the school bus, for fear that she wouldn’t be there when the child returned.
Todd may have had his suspicions from the very start of the affair.
A police review of his internet search history revealed that in May of 2018, he had googled the terms ‘killing unfaithful women’ and ‘what happens to cheaters in history’ as well as ‘what happened to cheating spouses in historic Aztec tribes.’
Amy’s brother Jeff Fuller told investigators that she was planning on moving out imminently at the time of her death. Fuller said that he had been storing furniture for her to use when she moved into a new home.
Amy confided in a friend that she believed she’d get $2 million from a trust fund as well as half of the farm if she were to leave Todd.

Police say that Todd feared the financial repercussions if Amy were to divorce him. He even told Amy’s step-mother that he ‘wasn’t going to lose the farm over this,’ according to the affidavit.
On November 6, four days before Amy’s death, Todd searched the internet for ‘organs of the body’ and looked at several anatomical diagrams of the human body.
At 8.11am on the morning of her death, Amy texted a friend: ‘Still very tense around here. Just not sure of anything anymore.’
On November 10 at 12.05pm, Todd called 911, frantically reporting that his wife was unresponsive.
Todd claimed that he had been working in the north hog building with Amy and their 13-year-old son that morning when he noticed that Amy appeared to be having dizzy spells.
The husband said he told his wife to go lie down in the house until she felt better, but asked her to grab an animal carrier for a litter of kittens from another outbuilding before she went inside.
When the father and son left the hog barn to get a drink, the animal carrier wasn’t where Amy was supposed to leave it, Todd said.
Todd told police that he asked his son to look for Amy. The boy made a grisly discovery in a nearby shed, finding his mother lying on the ground with a corn rake impaled in her back.
Todd said he pulled the rake out and rushed Amy to the nearest hospital, calling 911 on the way.

About halfway to the hospital, which is 13 miles from the farm, emergency services met Todd on the road and transferred Amy to an ambulance, taking her the rest of the way. She was declared dead on arrival at the hospital.
An autopsy found six puncture wounds in Amy’s back. Two were at an upward angle, and four downward. The corn rake only has four tines, police said.
After Amy’s death, a friend of Todd’s told police that he had confided some disturbing statements.
‘You really have to watch what you text on your phone because it could come back to bite you,’ Todd said, according to the friend. ‘You know if you write something like ‘I wish you were dead’ or ‘It would be so easy to have you killed or have you dead.”
On January 8, two months after Amy’s death, police say that Todd searched the internet for the phrases ‘thrill of the kill’ and ‘once you hunt man you will always feel the thirst. ‘
Todd Michael Mullis was arrest on Thursday, and is being held at the Delaware County Jail in lieu of $5 million cash bond.
Mullis’ attorney could not immediately be reached for comment. His preliminary hearing is set for March 8.