They All Knew Sheriff Stines Was Losing His Mind — Then He Killed Judge Mullins

Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary

True Crime Today

True Crime, News, News Commentary

3.3 • 911 Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Three days before Sheriff Mickey Stines allegedly walked into Judge Kevin Mullins' chambers and shot him nine times, an attorney contacted the Kentucky Bar Association asking what he could do to intervene. He'd already warned Mullins directly. Told him Stines was "losing it." The local police chief had seen enough to say Stines had "lost his mind." Staff inside the sheriff's office watched their boss make phone calls to relatives who had been dead for years. They got him to a doctor. The doctor sent him home with a diagnosis of "acute stress reaction." Twenty-four hours later, Kevin Mullins was dead.

This isn't a story about people who didn't care. It's a story about people who saw a crisis developing, took action within the limits of what they could actually do, and discovered those limits weren't anywhere close to enough. Kentucky has no red flag law. Involuntary commitment requires proof of imminent danger — not paranoid delusions, not rapid weight loss, not bizarre behavior. And when the person in crisis is an elected sheriff, nobody has the authority to suspend him, disarm him, or override his denials.

Court documents exposed this week reveal just how many people recognized something catastrophic was happening — and how the systems we've built gave them almost no power to stop it. The widow's civil lawsuit now asks whether three sheriff's office employees should be held liable for failing to warn Judge Mullins. Their defense: Kentucky law imposed no duty to warn or protect.

Everyone did something. It wasn't enough. And the gap between "someone should do something" and anyone having the power to actually do it is where Kevin Mullins died.

#MickeyStines #JudgeMullins #TrueCrime #KentuckySheriff #CourthouseShooting #MentalHealthCrisis #RedFlagLaws #TrueCrimeNews #SystemicFailure

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Hidden Killers with Tony Bruske.
0:02.9	Here now, Tony Bruske.
0:06.5	Here's the thing about this case that's going to stay with me long after this trial is over.
0:11.5	Long after whatever verdict comes down, long after Mickey Steins either spends the rest of his life in prison or walks on an insanity defense.
0:20.2	It's not the shooting itself. It's not the video.
0:24.2	It's not even the nine bullets, seven of them fired into a man who was already on the ground.
0:29.2	It's the week before. Because what we're learning about now, these new developments in this
0:35.1	case put everything into perspective because when you go through
0:38.8	the court documents when you read the witness statements and the police interviews and the
0:43.9	filings from both sides you realize something that should make all of us deeply uncomfortable
0:48.8	people saw this coming not one person person, not two people, multiple people, across multiple days,
0:59.0	watch Mickey Steins come apart at the seams allegedly.
1:03.0	They talked about it, they documented it, they documented it,
1:06.0	some of them even tried to do something about it.
1:10.0	But then we run into the system that doesn't do something about it.
1:15.1	But then we run into the system that doesn't do a whole lot when a mental health crisis is at hand.
1:22.1	Hands are tied.
1:24.9	And now Kevin Mullins is dead.
1:27.4	Daniel Dodson is an attorney. He was friends with both Steins and Mullins is dead. Daniel Dotson is an attorney.
1:29.2	He was friends with both Steins and Mullins.
1:32.1	And in the days before the shooting, he watched Steins deteriorate to the point where he felt compelled to act.
1:38.0	He urged Steins to get a mental health evaluation.
	...

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