'I want to
know why'
Springfield teenagers Kiersten and Phillip Mullenix are seeking answers and justice in their father's unsolved murder.
When Kiersten Mullenix receives her diploma from Springfield High School this spring, she’ll have a slew of family members cheering her on — except for her father.
She hopes by the time she walks across that stage, police will have new information about who shot Chad Mullenix to death 13 years ago.
“I want answers. I want to know why. Did they not think about me and my brother?”
The 17-year-old girl, her 16-year-old brother Phillip Mullenix and their mom Heather Moore are speaking out about the cold case homicide in hopes that someone has information that could lead to an arrest.
“It’s devastating to know that someone could do this and then get away with it. Even more so for my kids than anyone,” Moore said. “I don’t think that they can truly, fully live a life not knowing what happened to their dad.”
Heather Moore talks about the lasting effect Chad Mullenix's murder has had on their children. Video by Byron Stirsman
‘We were too young’
Moore and Chad Mullenix married and began their family when they were just teenagers.
She was attracted to his sense of humor.
“Everything about him was just funny,” she said. “He would give you the shirt off his back. I know everybody says that and it’s kind of a cliche, but it’s the truth. He was just a wonderful person.”
They were young and in love, but the stress of being parents soon became too much.
“He was 19 or 20 and I was 16 and we had our own apartment and a kid and I was pregnant with another one,” she said.
They split, but Moore said he was still very much in his children’s lives. Moore remarried several years ago and her husband Jeff has helped raise her children.
Kiersten was 4 when Chad Mullenix was killed. She remembers little things about her father, like his dog, and him coming to take her brother to the park. Phillip was only 3 when his father was killed and doesn’t remember him, but according to everyone in the family, both kids are the spitting image of their father.
The night he was killed, Moore got a call from her ex asking if he could have the kids over. She doesn’t remember why, but she said no. And for 13 years she’s wondered if things might have turned out differently that night if he’d been watching his children instead of home alone.
Someone he knew
Chad Mullenix was found dead on Jan. 23, 2003.
He was last heard from two days earlier and investigators believe he was likely killed the night of Jan. 21.
A neighbor at the Ashton Meadows apartments in Moorefield Twp. had been trying to reach him during those two days and became concerned. He went over and knocked but got no response. He could hear the TV was on, so he went to the back entrance of the apartment.
When he found the door slightly ajar he went in and found the 23-year-old lying on the kitchen floor with a single gunshot wound to the head.
Investigators found no signs of forced entry and it appeared someone left through the back door, leaving it unlocked.
“I believe it was somebody that he knew,” Chad Mullenix’s aunt Tammy Flora said. “It was premeditated, I think.”
The case wasn’t cold from the beginning, according to Clark County Sheriff Gene Kelly.
“We believe that we’ve had a viable suspect,” he said.
A woman initially looked at by police had gun shot residue on her hand. But with no other physical evidence in the case, and the suspect not talking, there wasn’t enough to charge her.
All investigators need is a little piece of information, Kelly said, and someone in the community knows what happened.
“There’s always two sides to every story. Tell us what happened,” Kelly said. “I believe that we owe it to the children to solve this case.”
