A woman is facing five criminal charges, including four felonies, in relation to the death of a man whose body was found in a crawlspace.
Charges were filed Monday in Sheboygan County for Andrea Mullens. The felony charges include maintaining a drug trafficking place, hiding a corpse, theft from a corpse and bail jumping. Mullens was also charged with a misdemeanor for intent to contribute to the delinquency of a child.
Back in mid-November, Sheboygan Police responded to a call at a home on Michigan Avenue. According to a criminal complaint, Mullens' family members told the responding officer they were worried someone had overdosed in the apartment upstairs where Mullens lived. The officer did a search and didn't find anything.
A few days later, a Sheboygan detective got eight phone calls from a man whose cousin claimed that Mullens had "shot [someone] up" with drugs and the guy died. The man said the guy was still in Mullens' apartment, wrapped in a blanket and hidden in a closet.
The criminal complaint says another police officer searched the apartment again and found the body of a man, later identified as Matthew Mercure. Mecure's body was found in a crawlspace, wrapped in fabric.
According to witness testimony in the complaint, several people were at Mullens' apartment the day Mercure died. The complaint says Mercure used heroin and then dozed off. The complaint says Mullens discovered Mercure wasn't breathing, so she first used Narcan on him. When that didn't work, the complaint says Mullens performed CPR. A witness says he thought Mercure had been brought back, but then he says he saw Mullens grab some of her own drugs and inject it into Mercure's arm.
The witness said Mullens wrapped Mercure in a blanket and, with the help of the reporting witness, moved Mercure's body into the crawlspace. In the criminal complaint, the witness said he didn't want to help, but he implied that he was afraid Mullens might stick him with a syringe loaded with heroin.
The witness also told police that Mullens "tried to kill everybody slowly", saying that she would get people hooked on drugs and that she always had drugs at her place.
The criminal complaint says numerous people interview throughout the investigation confirmed this, including one woman who said, "that house was my downfall." The woman says she went to the house on a daily basis for drugs, but stopped going after she found out she was pregnant.
The criminal complaint also notes that, on the same day of Mercure's death, Mullens was out on bond for another case in Sheboygan County, in which she was charged with recklessly endangering safety and felony bail jumping.
Mullens' bond has been set at $100,000. A preliminary hearing is set for December 12th.
