Sheriff Stines Snaps: Judge Mullins Murder, Paranoia & the Grand Jury Secrets Revealed | 2025 True Crime
True Crime Today | Daily True Crime News & Interviews
Tony Brueski
4.2 • 612 Ratings
🗓️ 4 January 2026
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this gripping episode of Hidden Killers, Tony Brueski is joined by psychotherapist and author Shavaun Scott to examine the psychological unraveling behind a sheriff killing a judge on camera. Was this an act of madness? A collapse under pressure? Or something far more calculated?
Just three days before the shooting, Stines had been deposed in a civil case involving allegations of corruption and misconduct inside his own office. Investigators are now asking whether mounting legal pressure pushed him toward a breaking point, or whether he believed silencing Mullins would somehow change his fate.
Bodycam footage captured immediately afterward shows Stines muttering paranoid claims like “you’re going to kill me,” even as he surrendered without resistance. Was this genuine psychosis, trauma, or an attempt to set the stage for an insanity defense?
In the second half, Tony, Stacy Cole, Todd Michaels, and attorney Eric Faddis break down newly released grand jury transcripts revealing that key evidence — including a mental-health diagnosis the day before the shooting — was never presented to jurors. Intake records describing Stines as “actively psychotic,” footage showing visible paranoia, and behind-the-scenes prosecutorial decisions all raise a critical question: was justice compromised before the trial even began?
This is the story of a sheriff’s psychological collapse — and the cracks in a justice system now forced to confront its own failures.
#MickeyStines #JudgeMullins #HiddenKillers #TonyBrueski #CourthouseMurder #TrueCrimePodcast #MentalHealthDefense #GrandJury #EricFaddis #PsychologicalAnalysis
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Hidden Killers Year in Review. |
| 0:02.7 | A look back at the biggest stories of 2025. |
| 0:06.1 | This is Hidden Killers with Tony Bruske. |
| 0:09.2 | Here now, Tony Bruske. |
| 0:12.2 | You know, there are moments in true crime that are so bizarre, so stunning in their simplicity, |
| 0:18.3 | that they freeze frame in your brain. September 19, 2024 in |
| 0:24.0 | Whitesburg, Kentucky is one of those. What happened that day is Sheriff Sean Mickey Steins. |
| 0:31.8 | He had lunch with a man that he called his friend. Judge Kevin Mullins. |
| 0:38.4 | They walk back to chambers, just normal old day, a setting reserved for the quiet machinery of justice. |
| 0:46.4 | And within minutes, Steins pulls a gun and shoots Mullins dead. |
| 0:51.5 | You know, right after the boneless buffalo wings at the Appleby's. |
| 0:55.6 | I don't know if that's where they went. |
| 0:57.2 | I don't know if that's what they had. |
| 0:58.9 | But that unfortunately is the only made-up part of that story. |
| 1:02.6 | The gun in the chambers, someone being dead. |
| 1:05.4 | That's all real. |
| 1:07.2 | And it's on camera. |
| 1:08.8 | There is no ambiguity about what happened. |
| 1:11.7 | The question is why. |
| 1:15.0 | On the surface, prosecutors say it's cut and dry. |
| 1:19.7 | It was just one of those murders. |
| 1:24.4 | You know, the murders were you just walk in and you shoot your friend for no reason and go nuts. |
... |
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