Woman faces charges stemming from Ashley Mullis disappearance
MUNCIE, Ind. — Delaware County sheriff's deputies on Wednesday arrested a woman on charges stemming from the 2013 disappearance of Ashley Morris Mullis.
Former Delaware County resident Sheila L. York, 66, was arrested in Asheville, North Carolina, where she now resides, on counts of kidnapping and obstruction of justice.
Mullis, a Muncie resident and the mother of three children, hasn't been seen by friends and family members since September 2013, when she was 27.
The youngest of her children was a daughter reportedly fathered by Daniel York Sr., Sheila York's husband. Since Mullis disappeared, that child — still a baby at that time — has apparently lived with members of the York family.
The charges filed against Sheila York stem from the role she has allegedly played in retaining custody of Mullis' daughter for nearly a decade.
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Sheila York will be held under a $10,000 cash bond in Buncombe County, North Carolina, pending a return to Delaware County, Chief Deputy Jeff Stanley said Wednesday.
According to a probable cause affidavit filed by Prosecutor Eric Hoffman's office, Daniel York was listed as the father on the child's 2013 birth certificate, but the child's paternity at that point had not been officially established.
With the child in their care following Daniel York's 2015 death, the affidavit said, family members hired local attorney Jill Gonzalez to represent them in court proceedings stemming from the efforts of Mullis' parents to be able to visit their granddaughter.
The affidavit alleges Gonzalez — who later died, in 2021 — made representations Daniel York was actively involved in the litigation after he had died. The visitation efforts were eventually thwarted when the grandparents were told the child had been adopted by Sheila York in Florida.
According to the document, Sheila York repeatedly lied in proceedings concerning the adoption, at one point contending she was unaware whether the child had any living relatives, and providing false background information about Ashley Morris Mullis.
She also is accused of falsely telling Florida authorities she had notified the child's maternal grandparents about her plans to adopt the girl.,
Mullis' father, Don Morris, since 2013 has tried to keep the missing person's case alive in the eyes of the public. On Wednesday, Stanley and Sheriff Tony Skinner met with Morris to let him know about the arrest in North Carolina.
Nearly a decade after his disappearance, the sheriff's department is continuing efforts to find Ashley Morris Mullis.
In November 2020, a search was conducted of a property — along Delaware County Road 725-W in the Yorktown area — that had been owned by the York family.
Human remains were not recovered during the 2020 search, but unspecified items found at the property were submitted to an Indiana State Police lab for evaluation.
According to Stanley, the sheriff's department has been assisted in the Sheila York investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Office of Inspector General of Social Security, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, the North Carolina Department of Social Services, Indiana Department of Child Services, the Indiana attorney general's office and the Delaware County prosecutor's office.
Douglas Walker is a news reporter at The Star Press. Contact him at 765-213-5851 or at dwalker@muncie.gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Muncie Star Press: Arrest made in North Carolina in case tied to Mullis disappearance.
