Editing Herbert Mullin (section)

== History ==
Mullin was born in April 18, 1947 in Salinas, California. His family moved to a farming area near San Francisco shortly before Mullin turned five. His father gave him a strict upbringing, and Martin William "Bill" Mullin taught his young son Herbert how to properly use guns and told him about his time serving in World War II, Bill working in furniture sales at the time. When the family moved to Felton in Santa Cruz County, Mullin attended San Lorenzo Valley High School. In those years of his life, Mullin suffered from his earliest signs of paranoid schizophrenia. But he had a celebrated experience in high school, with plenty friends, a girlfriend, a history in varsity football, and a successful vote of "Most Likely to Succeed" in his graduating class.


Mullin's life took a nosedive shortly after he graduated, when a car crash killed his best friend Dean Richardson in June 1975. The unbearable grief Mullin never got over led him to built shrines for Dean he'd spend much of his daily time with. He became fixated with a paranoid delusion that Dean's death had a grander, cosmic explanation to cope. But Mullin took it further and followed research on reincarnation, turning his major from Engineering toward Philosophy and studying Eastern Religions independently.


Assuming he was gay, Mullin broke off his relationship with his girlfriend in 1968. Mullin consented to a mental hospital commitment by his family, moving in and out of five hospitals for years and each discharge being deemed harmless. Mullin drifted through California between numerous small jobs, even once fighting as a boxer, but was once pulled out of the ring the moment he refused to stop beating his opponent during one match. Mullin had conflicting sociopolitical beliefs, being significantly conservative and attempting to become a priest, but also practicing yoga, meditation, macrobiotic diets, and use of LSD, marijuana, and amphetamine, the first two he supported legalization of. He alleged himself "bi-everything" by describing himself as bisexual, (inaccurately) biracial, bipolitical, bicultural, and bispiritual.


Mullin lost his apartment due to screaming and slamming the floor when he was alone but acted like he was with other people. He tried applying for the U.S. Marine Corps and Coast Guard. He passed physical and psychiatric exams for the marines, but he was rejected because of his arrest and behavioral records. The Coast Guard rejected him at the psychiatric exam, and Mullin's paranoia, which had amplified at that point from both his mental illness and drug use, made him blame the rejections as an alleged "conspiracy" that "provoked" him toward his crimes. Mullin's mentality shifted to the belief that human sacrifice prevented mass casualties from disasters, which was only amplified by his perspective on the Vietnam War and his birthday being the anniversary of the San Francisco earthquake in 1906.