GALVESTON — An Alvin man sought in the death of his infant son surrendered in Philadelphia on Friday afternoon.
When he returns to Galveston County, Travis Mullis, 21, will face a charge of capital murder, officials announced late Friday night.
Police Lt. Jorge Treviño said Mullins had told Philadelphia police about the death of Alijah James Mullis, the suspect’s 3-month-old son.
The infant’s body was found about 9 a.m. Tuesday, in an elevated, grassy area owned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers between Ferry Road and East Beach. An autopsy later ruled the infant’s death a homicide, caused by blunt-force trauma to the head.
“Travis Mullis stated that he intentionally killed Alijah Mullins on Jan. 29,” Treviño said.
Police Sgt. Annie Almendarez said Mullis, originally from Maryland, drove more than 1,400 miles to get there. She said he spoke with family members and “a mentor” there whom she declined to identify, before going turning himself in at a Philadelphia police station.
“He calmly walked in and said he wanted to talk about something that had happened in Texas,” she said.
Sgt. Jeremy Schwartz, who has been working on the investigation with Almendarez since Tuesday, said he had mixed emotions upon learning Mullis was in custody.
“I was surprised he was that far away, but I was excited to know that someone had their hands on him,” Schwartz said.
Capital murder carries a possible death sentence. Officials said a decision on whether to seek the death penalty against Mullis was likely weeks away. If the state does not seek to have Mullis put to death by lethal injection, a conviction would mean an automatic sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Although she said investigators had “no other suspects” Friday, Almendarez said detectives still wanted to talk to Mullis’ wife, the baby’s mother.
“The mother has retained (legal) counsel and has not talked to us,” she said.
Almendarez also said investigators had turned up past acts by Mullis she termed “weird,” but she declined to elaborate.
County Criminal District Attorney Kurt Sistrunk said the legal process of extraditing Mullis back to Galveston County would begin Monday.
Almendarez and Schwartz leave today for Philadelphia, where police also have Mullis’ vehicle in custody.
Treviño said detectives and prosecutors put together a tightly woven case to attain the capital-murder charge.
“There was a lot of good work done here,” he said. “A lot of good people put in a lot of time on this, and it’s close to coming to an end.”
Although the charge effectively means officials believe the dead infant to be Mullis’ young son, DNA tests will be necessary to positively identify the child.
An Alvin woman — who reportedly called several area hospitals asking about the boy before telling police she believed the dead child was her son — had claimed to have collected fingerprints from the boy while he was alive, police said.
However, those prints were incomplete and could not be used to confirm a match with the dead child, said John Florence, spokesman for the Galveston County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Florence also said the child appeared to have been dead for no more than a few hours when he was found about 9 a.m. Tuesday.
DNA and blood tests, performed at a Texas Department of Public Safety lab in Houston, often take as long as six weeks. However, Treviño said that investigators hoped to have the results of the child’s DNA test done by next week.
Capital murder is not the only charge Mullis faces.
Alvin police obtained an arrest warrant for Mullis Thursday in an unrelated case.
He is wanted on a charge of enticing a child, stemming from a report by an 8-year-old girl who accused Mullis of taking her from her home to a nearby school playground in Alvin, where she said her attacker tried to pull down her pants.
The girl said the man stopped and drove her back home after she started crying. The child’s account placed the attack within a few days of the discovery of the infant’s body.
