Lancaster Woman’s Autopsy Inconclusive

An autopsy Friday failed to determine the cause of death for Renee Elizabeth Mullins, the Lancaster woman whose body was found in the California Aqueduct this week, said a spokesman for the Los Angeles County coroner’s office.

The results of several lab tests, expected next week, may offer more information, said coroner’s spokesman Scott Carrier. But sheriff’s detectives investigating the death of Mullins, 34, have requested the findings sealed, Carrier said.

The body, which detectives estimated was in the water for about four or five days, was very decomposed, Carrier said, and it made finding the cause of death more difficult. But he did disclose that there didn’t appear to be any “obvious signs of trauma” on the body.

No arrests have been made and detectives will not comment on whether Mullins’ husband, Scott Mullins, is a suspect. Co-workers and friends of Renee Mullins have said that she was fearful of her husband and had recently moved out of their home, leaving behind a 4-year-old daughter.

When Mullins’ body was found Wednesday, caught in one of the aqueduct’s control gates, Det. R. David Dietrich said her husband had been interviewed by detectives.

Renee Mullins had intended to file a restraining order against her husband, according to co-workers, but no records of any protective order were found Thursday. On Friday, Scott Mullins, a construction worker, refused to discuss his wife’s death.

“There isn’t anybody that loved Renee as much as I loved Renee,” he said.

Mullins had been missing since Sunday, when her neighbors reported hearing screams and what sounded like a scuffle coming from her Lancaster apartment at 43343 16th St. W. When sheriff’s deputies arrived about 3 a.m., they found the apartment in disarray and Mullins gone.

Earlier in the evening, she and three friends had gone dancing at Schooner’s and the Buffalo Club, two Lancaster discos, according to Kimberly Hollis, 37, a co-worker at Snow Orthodontics in Palmdale and one of the women who went dancing with Mullins the night she disappeared.

Hollis said that she doesn’t remember anyone paying special attention to Mullins or anyone else in the group at either place.

“A lot of guys asked us to dance, but nobody bothered us,” said Hollis, a lab technician at Snow. “We mainly just danced by ourselves, just the four of us.”

Mullins’ face and voice were well-known from local newspaper and radio advertisements for Snow Orthodontics. Her co-workers described her as the company’s morale booster.

Roberta Kessler, Mullins’ mother, remembered her daughter as a good mother and friend. She said Mullins loved to go line-dancing and water-skiing.