How Was a Beloved Texas Teacher Killed at Home with Her Family Present?

Many teachers enter the profession in hopes of impacting the lives of students and sharing their passion for a particular subject. Educators serve as pillars of society, especially in a city as small as Olney, Texas, which boasts a population of 3,000. 

But in 2019, the town found itself shocked by the gruesome, untimely death of beloved teacher Manuela Allen. After being killed in her bedroom while her family slept, authorities initially focused on Allen’s husband, a former Green Beret with a large gun collection, as a suspect. But soon enough, investigators turned their attention to a troubled high school student who she'd tried to help. 

On July 7, 2019, a Sunday morning, Kiara Allen entered her mother’s room and noticed blood everywhere, the Daily Mail reported. Manuela was gone, Kiara told her dad. Peter Allen, who had slept in the living room the night before, saw the mess and thought his wife might’ve cut herself and drove to the hospital. When they learned she wasn’t there, he called 911.

Police questioned Peter, Kiara, the Allens’ other daughter Melanie and their son Darian. No one had a clue as to what happened or who would want to harm Manu, as Manuela was affectionately called. Darian and Kiara said they’d fallen asleep wearing headphones, preventing them from hearing anything that night.

There was blood in the bedroom, on a door, on the hallway carpet and bloody drag marks on the garage floor. It was evident to investigators that there was some kind of struggle. They wondered how such a gruesome crime could have taken place without the family noticing. 

The 49-year-old, who taught German and English, was the kind of person who helped struggling students fit in. She was well liked by students and the community. Her murder didn’t make sense. 

A memorial on Find a Grave notes: “When she wasn’t taking care of her family, she was at school helping her students. She loved all of her kids, and all of her students, even the ones no one else believed in.” 

Manu attended football games to cheer on a team with an abysmal record. Her signature mode of encouragement came in the form of a ringing cow bell. 

The search for Manu began almost immediately. “At this time, I think it’s just a missing person,” David Wilk, a lieutenant in neighboring Archer County and friend of the family, tells A&E Crime + Investigation of how he felt at the start of the search. “I have no idea what happened in that house.” 

He found Manu’s abandoned SUV by Lake Cooper, a few miles north of Olney. Her body was nearby, covered in her own blood-stained bed sheets. Now there were two crime scenes. 

Peter was notified and he delivered the news to his kids. In a Dateline report, Peter said, “I called my kids over. I gave them all a hug. I held them. We held each other and I said, ‘They just told me your mother is dead.’” Kiara collapsed on the floor.

Investigators deduced that Manu was stabbed 47 times and strangled. The perpetrator, who knew exactly where to find the family’s car keys in the kitchen, dragged Manu’s body to her SUV and drove to Lake Cooper. The attacker then shot her in the face and fled on a bicycle. Police found a bike’s tire tread imprint and a shoe print, according to the Times New Record. 

Five days after the first round of questioning, Peter was called back to the station. This time, he was pressed hard for answers for more than five hours. The ranger didn’t understand how Peter could not have heard any commotion since he was only about 20 feet away from the bedroom. He also wondered why one of Peter’s socks was soaked in blood. 

“I did not hurt my wife,” Peter claimed in the recorded interrogation. “ … I cannot explain this. I don’t know what happened.”

Then, while pursuing a lead on a separate case, the Olney Police Department’s Sergeant Dan Birbeck made a connection between a recent burglary and Manu’s murder. As he approached the apartment of Cory Taylor—a young man with a history of run-ins with law enforcement—to question him about the burglary, Birbeck noticed a bike in the building’s storage space and wondered if that might be the escape vehicle used by the murderer. Taylor said it belonged to high school student Julius Mullins. 

Birbeck went to visit Mullins. He noticed that, based on the soles of the high schooler’s sneakers, Mullins’ shoes appeared to match the one from the Allen crime scene. 

Mullins had dated Manu’s daughter Melanie. He knew the Allen family and had been inside the home numerous times. When she broke up with him, he didn’t take it well. Mullins started drinking and using drugs and his grades began to drop. Manu counseled him. 

“She’s probably, like, one of the people that’s actually helped me the most,” Mullins told a ranger when questioned at the Olney station. “…She was, like, basically, kind of my other mom because she, like, helped me out with stuff. She told me to get my shit together. She was a really nice lady.”

Police didn’t have enough evidence at the time to arrest Mullins, so they let him go, but not before collecting DNA from him. Investigators subsequently learned that the blood on the sock belonged to Mullins. Also, the bike’s tire tread and shoe imprints matched perfectly with those at the lake. One week after the murder, Mullins was arrested.

Once in custody, Mullins changed his tune. He went into a detailed account with a ranger of how he killed Manu at around 2 a.m.

Though Manu had been asleep when Mullins arrived, Mullins claimed she woke up while he rummaged through the bedroom. Mullins panicked and told the ranger he used a knife laying on the dresser to stab her. 

Mullins: “She screamed a lot.”

Ranger: “She got up? Then what happened?”

Mullins: “I slammed her to the ground.”

Mullins said he killed Manu at Peter’s behest, but investigators did not find anything to support the claim. Mullins told Dateline that his intent was to steal Peter’s guns; he never meant to harm anyone but adrenaline took over when Manu woke up. The teen said he regrets what he did.

Mullins pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 55 years, according to The Graham Leader. 

The close-knit town, where everybody knows each other, has been eerily quiet about Manu’s murder. “I haven’t heard anybody really talk about it,” Wilk says. “There’s been some tragic events that happened there; once it’s all over and done with and the dust settles, you really don’t hear a lot more about it.”

Melanie told A&E Crime + Investigation in a written message that her mom’s murder “brings back nothing but painful memory and triggers PTSD” for her and her family. She requests privacy for the Allens “when it comes to this matter.”

Wilk retired soon after Manu’s murder. When he ran into Peter afterward, the widower asked him if the tragedy contributed to him stepping down. 

“It’s one of the driving reasons,” Wilk admits. “It was hard for me to be in the same room as Kiara. Her and my daughter Keirah were good friends. As far as I know, they still talk to each other. We had to go to this scholarship thing and she was there. It was just so hard to be in there because I know at that moment that all the hope you had in the world was lost.” 

Wilk hasn’t talked to Peter much since the murder, though, he’ll occasionally drive through the Allens’ neighborhood. Passersby would never be able to imagine the horror that took place there. “Peter still lives in the same house,” Wilk says. “It still pretty much looks the same.”