The Murder of Corinna Mullen: A Corrupt Cop, a Cover-Up, and 20 Years Without Justice

A Body in the Trunk

In October 1987, 20-year-old Corinna Mullen was found brutally murdered in the trunk of her own car behind a city garage in Central City, Kentucky. She had been beaten, sexually assaulted, and killed in what investigators immediately recognized as one of the most violent crimes the small Muhlenberg County community had ever seen. Her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Stephanie, was waiting at her grandparents' house for a move that was never going to happen.

The Wrong Man on Trial

Suspicion quickly fell on Corinna's boyfriend, Jimmy Springer, who had been expected at her apartment the night she was killed. But the investigation was deeply flawed from the start. Evidence was never submitted for testing. Key witness interviews were never recorded. And when Jimmy was finally tried for murder in 1988, the jury acquitted him in just over an hour, finding the case against him too weak to convict. After the trial, Corinna's father, Claude Mullen, searched the returned car himself and found a pocket knife with dried blood and hair still on it wedged beneath the passenger seat.

A Family That Never Gave Up

For nearly two decades, Claude and Patricia Mullen fought to keep their daughter's case alive. They placed emotional advertisements in local newspapers, distributed flyers throughout the community, and pushed every agency they could find to take another look. A newly elected sheriff, Wayne Moore, reopened the investigation and assigned Detective Terry Arnett to the case. Terry worked it until he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and before he died in 2002, he entrusted his investigative files to his pastor and asked him to keep them safe.

The Witness Who Changed Everything

Then in 2005, everything changed. A woman named Sandy came forward and told a narcotics officer that she had witnessed Corinna's murder as a 16-year-old. She claimed she had been forced into a police cruiser that night and brought to the apartment where Corinna lived. And she claimed the man who orchestrated the attack was Lieutenant Billy Fields, the very officer who had been first on the scene in 1987 and had led the original investigation.

The Truth Comes Out

As Detective Damon Fleming began rebuilding the case, new witnesses came forward with accounts that had been suppressed for years out of fear. One witness said Corinna had reported drug activity to an officer at the police station on the very day she was killed, and that the officer had passed the information directly to Billy. Another witness placed Billy and Jeffrey Boyd near the city garage in the early morning hours of the night of the murder. The apartment manager revealed that it was Billy who had arranged for Corinna to live there in the first place, and that Corinna had told him she believed she was pregnant with Billy's child.

The Arrests, the Trial, and the Verdicts

In November 2006, Billy Fields, Jeffrey Boyd, Jimmy Cramer, and Angela Smith were arrested. Patricia Mullen had died just one month before the arrests were made. The trial finally began in 2009 and was moved to neighboring Christian County because nearly everyone in Muhlenberg County already had an opinion after two decades of rumors. Billy and Jeffrey each received life sentences for murder. Jimmy Cramer received 60 years. Angela pleaded guilty to perjury and received a diverted sentence in exchange for her testimony.

Justice, Finally

Corinna's daughter, Stephanie, who had no memories of her mother because they had been stolen from her, said she never believed this day would actually come. Claude Mullen passed away from cancer in December 2011, just two years after the verdicts. He was 65 years old.

This is the story of Corinna Mullen, the family that never stopped fighting for her, and the 20-year investigation that finally brought her killers to justice.