44 years for sex offenders' killer

Michael Anthony Mullen will spend the next four decades, and possibly his last years, in prison for murdering two Bellingham sex offenders. Whatcom County Superior Court Judge Ira Uhrig sentenced the 35-year-old to more than 44 years in prison on Friday afternoon. "The recommendation given to the court (will) probably result of the passing of Mr. Mullen within the confines of prison walls," said his attorney, Richard Fasy, during Friday's hearing.

On Wednesday, Mullen, a Whatcom County resident, pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder with a gun. Mullen shot and killed Victor Vazquez, 68, and Hank Eisses, 49, in August after impersonating an FBI agent to get into their Northwest Avenue home. Family and friends of the two victims cried silently during Friday's sentencing, some of them taking time to address the court and Mullen. "My dad is dead, he's not supposed to be dead and I'm not ready for him to be dead," said a tearful Eve Vazquez, 27, of Bellingham, about her father, Victor. [...]

"Everyone - all of us who have been abused or molested - make the choice to continue the cycle or to end it. I chose to end it," Eve Vazquez read to Mullen without looking at him. She was sexually abused by her father as a child and had made progress with him to fix their relationship just before he was killed. In statements to the police and letters to media outlets sent days after the killings, Mullen cited his own sexual abuse as a child as one of his motives. He also sent the media a hit list of other sex offenders he said he would kill.

source: Article '44 years for sex offenders' killer' by Kira Millage; news.bellinghamherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060311/NEWS09/603110343; The Bellingham Herald; 11 March 2006