A Putnam County jury found Caylen Deller guilty of murdering Chad Mullen, and the court sentenced her to life in prison.

Thursday's verdicts are what the jury found after about an hour, and the life term is the sentence on the murder count. Deller testified she shot Mullen twice because he was choking her and came at her with a hammer. Prosecutors said she lured him to the stable and then hid the body. Tina Marie Lee-Ellis is charged in the aftermath and has not been tried.

Fox News, News4JAX, Action News Jax, and the Palatka Daily News reported that a Putnam County jury on Thursday, Oct. 15, 2026, found Caylen Deller guilty of first-degree murder, tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, and failing to report a death in the Sept. 9, 2024 shooting of Chad Mullen. Action News Jax reported jurors got the case just before noon and the verdict was read about 1:10 p.m. First Coast News reported the jury was unanimous and deliberated for less than an hour. Fox News and the Palatka Daily News reported Deller is 32. An Action News Jax graphic caption put her at 30. The Palatka Daily News reported Mullen was 52 and of Palatka. First Coast News reported he was 53. The Palatka Daily News identified Circuit Judge Alicia Washington as presiding over the trial.

First Coast News reported the court sentenced her to life in prison for murder, five years for tampering with evidence, and 15 years for failing to report the death, all concurrent, with credit for 707 days already served on the two lesser counts. Action News Jax listed the counts as first-degree murder, then tampering, then failure to report a death, and reported 15 years on the second count and five years on the third, also concurrent. Those two accounts swap the lesser terms. Both report a life sentence on the murder count running at the same time as the shorter terms. After sentencing, First Coast News reported, Deller pleaded no contest to a separate 2024 charge of grand theft involving animals and aquaculture, a third-degree felony, and the court entered a finding of guilt on that count.

Deller testified Wednesday that she shot Mullen and that she did it in self-defense, News4JAX, Fox News, and the Palatka Daily News reported. She said she met him at the stable after his truck broke down, that she asked him a question, and that he pinned her against the truck and grabbed her by the throat. News4JAX and Action News Jax reported she said she asked whether he had inappropriately touched her daughter, and Action News Jax reported she backtracked on that claim under cross-examination. News4JAX reported the state's opening said police interviewed the child and she never indicated she had been abused. The child is not named here. Deller testified she grabbed a gun from under the driver's seat, that he backed away and came toward her with a hammer, and that she fired. "I pulled the trigger of the gun and shot him twice," she said, according to Fox News and News4JAX. "I was extremely afraid." She said she did not intend to kill him.

The state argued the shooting was planned and the aftermath showed it. News4JAX reported Assistant State Attorney Mike Willard told jurors in opening that Deller confessed to her ex-boyfriend, Kenneth Wadell, and that after the shooting she and Tina Marie Lee-Ellis tried to sink the body with a cinder block, then moved it days later to a farm in St. Johns County. The Palatka Daily News reported prosecutors put that burial at 852 Federal Point Road in Hastings, on the night of Sept. 11, 2024, into the next morning, and spelled the stable Stormy's Stables at 465 San Mateo Road. News4JAX spelled it Stormy Stables and placed the grave about a mile from the Putnam County line. Action News Jax described a potato field in Hastings. News4JAX reported Dr. Iana Lesnikova, an associate medical examiner, testified Mullen died of two gunshot wounds to the chest and ruled the death a homicide. The paper reported the office received the body Oct. 29, 2024. The Palatka Daily News reported he was shot Sept. 9 and the body was found Oct. 28.

What she did after the shots was the state's answer to self-defense. News4JAX reported prosecutors said phone records showed 26 calls from Deller to Mullen from Sept. 2 through Sept. 9, and that on cross-examination the state put the number at 28 between those dates. Fox News reported 28 calls. She testified she did not call 911 because she thought police would not believe her, and Fox News reported she said, "I was more concerned about getting in trouble." Defense attorney Brian Smith told jurors the question was whether she reasonably believed she had to shoot, and that hiding the body was a bad decision rather than proof of a plan. "That was not consciousness of guilt," he said, according to News4JAX. "That was stupidity." The Palatka Daily News reported Assistant State Attorney Jason Lewis told the jury that burying a body, sinking it, burning a phone, and getting rid of a gun is what someone does when she knows what she did.

Mullen's daughter, Holli Mullen, spoke after the verdict. The Palatka Daily News reported she is 21. News4JAX reported she told the court, "I'm not ready to forgive you, and I don't know if I ever will be." State Attorney R.J. Larizza said in a statement the Palatka Daily News and News4JAX both published, "The defendant claimed self-defense, but the jury wasn't fooled by her lies." Sheriff Gator DeLoach said, "Caylen Deller now stands convicted by a jury on every count charged in the murder of Chad Mullen," the Palatka Daily News reported. News4JAX reported Lee-Ellis is charged with accessory after the fact to first-degree murder and is out on bond. The Palatka Daily News reported she is 58, that she surrendered Nov. 7, 2024, and that her trial is set to start Nov. 12. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Deller was presumed innocent through the trial. Thursday's verdicts and the life sentence are the judgment on her counts. Lee-Ellis has not been tried.