Sheriff Mickey Stines: Court Docs Reveal Psychosis Before Shooting Judge
True Crime Today | Daily True Crime News & Interviews
Tony Brueski
4.2 • 612 Ratings
🗓️ 18 February 2026
⏱️ 17 minutes
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Summary
Court documents reveal disturbing details about former Letcher County Sheriff Mickey Stines' mental state before he shot Judge Kevin Mullins in September 2024.
According to defense filings containing testimony from sheriff's office staff and local attorneys, Stines exhibited alarming behavior in the week leading up to the shooting. Witnesses say he lost forty pounds in two weeks. He wasn't sleeping. He told a staffer that someone demanded he kill himself or "they" would murder his wife and daughter. He made her help put a bulletproof vest on his wife. He was calling family members who had been dead for years.
Three days before the shooting, Stines gave a deposition in a civil lawsuit alleging his former deputy sexually exploited women inside Judge Mullins' chambers. Attorneys said Stines seemed agitated, took ten breaks, and said he was "having an episode." His attorney disclosed he had a neurological condition causing "issues" under stress.
The day before the shooting, friends brought him to a doctor. He was diagnosed with acute stress and sent home. The next day, surveillance footage captured Stines shooting Mullins nine times in his chambers.
The defense admits Stines pulled the trigger but claims he was "exhibiting paranoid and psychotic conduct" and "lacked the capacity to intend" what he did. A social worker evaluated him four days later and found him still in "an active state of psychosis." The insanity defense moves forward as the court weighs what everyone saw — and what nobody stopped.
#MickeyStines #KevinMullins #LetcherCounty #CourthouseShooting #KentuckyCrime #TrueCrimeToday #SheriffShooting #MentalHealthDefense #Psychosis #TrueCrimeNews
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Hidden Killers with Tony Bruske. |
| 0:02.8 | Here now, Tony Bruske. |
| 0:06.4 | In the days before Mickey Steins walked into Judge Kevin Mullen's chambers and shot him nine times, |
| 0:12.1 | the sheriff was making phone calls to family members who had been dead for years. |
| 0:21.4 | That detail comes from court documents filed in this case. |
| 0:25.8 | Witnesses told Kentucky State Police that Steins, the elected sheriff of Lector County, |
| 0:32.5 | a man who'd worked in that courthouse for over two decades, was calling deceased |
| 0:36.8 | relatives to check in on them, |
| 0:38.5 | like you do, when things are totally fine, right? He was also calling living ones, too, |
| 0:46.2 | constantly obsessively. On September 19th, 24, inside the judge's private office, |
| 0:51.0 | Steins tried to reach his teenage daughter on his phone. |
| 0:54.8 | There was no answer. |
| 0:55.8 | Then asked Mullins for his phone and tried again and still no answer. |
| 0:59.1 | Moments later, according to surveillance footage that captured the entire thing, |
| 1:02.9 | Stein stood up, drew his weapon, and then opened fire. |
| 1:07.1 | If we're going to examine this case through a mental health lens, not as an excuse for murder, |
| 1:14.1 | but as an attempt to understand what was happening inside one man's head, we have to start with |
| 1:19.6 | what the evidence actually shows. |
| 1:23.3 | And what it shows is a man who was visibly documentably unraveling in the week before he ended |
| 1:31.2 | it for someone. The question isn't just why he did it. The question is what he was experiencing. |
| 1:39.8 | What he believed was true and why nobody stopped him. |
| 1:49.2 | Three days before the shooting, Stein sat for a deposition in a federal civil rights lawsuit. The case wasn't about him directly. It was about one of his former deputies, Ben Fields, |
... |
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