FBI Expert Coffindaffer Breaks Down the Failure That Let a Sheriff Kill a Judge
True Crime Today | Daily True Crime News & Interviews
Tony Brueski
4.2 • 612 Ratings
🗓️ 23 December 2025
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
An elected Kentucky sheriff spiraled publicly. He called dead relatives on his phone. Lost weight rapidly. Stopped sleeping. Displayed paranoia. His own staff pushed him to see a doctor. The diagnosis? Acute stress reaction. The response? Send him home — with his badge, his gun, and his authority untouched.
Twenty-four hours later, Judge Kevin Mullins was shot nine times in his own chambers.
In this deep-dive, retired FBI Special Agent Jennifer Coffindaffer exposes the structural failures that allowed this to happen. Kentucky has no red flag law. An elected sheriff cannot be suspended by subordinates. There was no mechanism to disarm him — even as multiple people recognized he was in crisis.
We examine the civil lawsuit accusing sheriff’s office employees of failing to warn Judge Mullins, and their defense that Kentucky law imposed no duty to act. Is that legally sound? Is it morally defensible?
This isn’t just a tragedy — it’s a systems failure. One that raises terrifying questions about authority, mental health, and what happens when the person in crisis sits at the very top of the chain of command.
#MickeyStines #JudgeMullins #JenniferCoffindaffer #TrueCrime #SystemicFailure #MentalHealthCrisis #HiddenKillers #FBIAnalysis #KentuckyCase
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Bruske, Stacey Cole and Todd Michaels. |
| 0:08.2 | Let's go over to another story. |
| 0:10.5 | A Kentucky sheriff calling dead relatives on his phone, staff watching him spiral, |
| 0:16.5 | an attorney contacting the Bar Association asking what he's legally allowed to do. |
| 0:22.7 | A police chief telling Stein's had lost his mind, a doctor diagnosing acute stress reaction |
| 0:27.6 | and sending him home with his badge in his gun. |
| 0:31.5 | 24 hours later, Judge Kevin Mullins was shot nine times in his own chambers. |
| 0:35.6 | Court filings now reveal the grim reality. |
| 0:38.1 | Everyone saw this coming. |
| 0:39.6 | Multiple people tried to intervene on the system, |
| 0:41.8 | gave them exactly zero authority to stop it. |
| 0:45.6 | Today, retired FBI special agent, Jennifer Coffend, |
| 0:48.2 | for helping us break down what went wrong |
| 0:50.2 | and why an elected sheriff in the middle of a psychotic break |
| 0:53.4 | is essentially untouchable under |
| 0:56.1 | Kentucky law. Let's start there. Jennifer, court documents show multiple people recognized |
| 1:01.3 | Mickey Steins was in a psychological free fall, making calls to dead relatives, exhibiting |
| 1:07.8 | paranoid behavior, rapid weight loss, insomniaomnia his own employees got him to a doctor |
| 1:12.5 | the day before the shooting um from a treatment assessment perspective here what were the indicators |
| 1:18.3 | that should have triggered something some sort of intervention or again as we were talking about |
| 1:23.3 | nick reiner earlier um was everyone's hands just tied here again, where it's one of those that |
| 1:30.0 | they have to want it first? |
... |
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