New Orleans woman was booked with murder Tuesday after police found her husband's body buried under a pile of clothes in a bedroom closet with a bullet wound to the back of his head, according to investigators.
A day earlier, Tonica Mutin, 45, had reported her husband missing.
Mutin's attorney later told detectives that her client did, in fact, kill her husband, but acted in self-defense because Darnell Mutin was beating her at the time, according to police records filed in criminal court.
Tonica Mutin, Tonica WilliamsTonica Mutin, also known as Tonica Williams (via OPSO)▲
Officers, however, did not observe any injuries on Tonica Mutin, and she couldn’t tell them where to find the gun she allegedly used to shoot her husband, the records said.
So police arrested her for murder and obstruction of justice. She was being held at the Orleans Justice Center late Wednesday on $500,000 bond.
Tonica Mutin first drew attention from authorities when she purportedly met with police Monday and reported her 47-year-old husband missing, saying that she last saw him walking away from their home in the 2600 block of Touro Street that day at 3 a.m.
Officers went to the Mutins’ street about 1:30 p.m. Tuesday and spoke with a neighbor who shared an alarming account. On the morning that Tonica Mutin said she last saw her husband, police wrote in the records, the neighbor heard beating on the Mutins’ door and then a loud pop as the husband asked, “So you’re going to shoot me now?”
Police went into the couple's home and found Darnell Mutin buried under at least three feet of clothes. He had been shot once in the back of the head, investigators noted in the court filings.
Tonica Mutin — who also goes by Tonica Williams — was not home at the time, but she showed up at police headquarters within half an hour with her attorney, the court records said. Allegedly, she declined to give a statement. Her attorney, however, asserted that Tonica Mutin killed her husband after he hit her and attempted to strangle her, police said.
This is not the first time that Tonica Mutin has accused her husband of physically abusing her. In 2017, she requested and was granted a stay-away order, after she alleged that Darnell Mutin had choked, slapped and punched her during an argument over $50 that her mother had given her.
The order was in effect for a month but was dismissed after she failed to show up to a court hearing to consider an extension, civil court records show.
Mutin faces mandatory life imprisonment if she is convicted of murder, and up to 40 years on the obstruction of justice charge.
Darnell Mutin is one of at least 21 people who have been killed in New Orleans so far this year. That is an increase of more than 90% when compared to the same date in 2021, when there were 11 homicides, according to statistics compiled by the City Council.
