Did Mickey Stines’ Own Deputies Watch Him Fall Apart Before the Shooting and Say Nothing?

**Tony Brueski** (0:00)
This is Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski. Here now, Tony Brueski.

**Tony Brueski** (0:07)
Okay, so here's what I need you to understand about the Mickey Stines case before we really go super deep into it. Minutes before he walked into Judge Kevin Mullins' chamber and pulled that trigger, he facetimed his aunt and asked to speak to Mommy Bones. Is Mommy Bones there? Hey, is Mommy Bones around? That's an interesting, I mean, okay. So, I mean, it's a nickname that they had. That was what they called his grandmother, Mommy Bones. Her name was Mommy Bones to him. And the problem with this whole thing is she'd been dead for two and a half years and Stines was in the room when they disconnected her ventilator. He helped make that decision. He watched it happen. And on the morning of September 19th, 2024, he called his aunt and asked for her like she was sitting in the next room.
That detail came out in open court on June 5th, 2026 during a bail hearing in Lesley County, Kentucky. It was one of several details about what was happening inside Mickey Stines head in the days before he killed a judge in his own courthouse. What came out of that courtroom is harder to dismiss than you think.
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This is the case of Mickey Stines, and the question at the center of it is the one that nobody's been able to answer since September 24 Was the man who pulled the trigger actually in there when it happened?
Was he mentally present? Or is this an example of one of those rare cases where there is something mentally, medically happening that can't really be explained? Mental breakdown of some way, shape or form going on here. Let me reground this for anyone who's coming in cold. Sean Mickey Stines was the elected sheriff of Lector County, Kentucky. It's a small Appalachian community. He'd worked in and around that courthouse for more than 20 years. Kevin Mullins was the district judge for the 47th Judicial District. He'd been on the bench since 2009 These two men, they knew each other. They were part of the same small town ecosystem where the sheriff and the judge see each other constantly. They were friends, social gatherings. On the day of the shooting, September 19th of 2024, they had lunch together. Hours later, Stines walked into Mullins' chambers, closed the door and shot him nine times. Seven of those shots were reportedly fired while Mullins was on the ground. Surveillance video captured the entire thing. Stines surrendered right there at the scene. He was charged with first-degree murder and murder of a public official. He's pled not guilty. This has never been a question of who did it. The video exists. The defense has acknowledged the body is his. The question is, what was happening in the mind before the body or the mind behind the body? And understand that question. You have to understand what was building in the days and the weeks before. The backdrop is a federal civil lawsuit that had been hovering over the Lecter County Courthouse for years. That lawsuit alleged that one of Stines' deputies, a man named Ben Fields, had committed repeated felony crimes against a woman inside Judge Mullins' chambers. And according to the lawsuit, Fields used those chambers specifically because there was no cameras. Fields pled guilty to multiple felony charges. In January 24, Judge Mullins was never charged with any crime connected to those allegations, but rumors circulated anyway. And the lawsuit named Stines as a defendant, alleging he failed to adequately train and supervise his deputy. Three days before the shooting on September 16th, Stines sat for nearly four-hour deposition in that lawsuit. He was questioned about what he knew, what his deputy did and what happened inside that courthouse. And by all accounts, he fell apart during it. Attorneys.
Present reportedly said he took 10 breaks. He told people in the room he was having an episode. This wasn't family watching him pace of two in the morning. This was a room full of attorneys with professional judgment watching a sitting sheriff deteriorate in real time during the official legal proceeding and the deposition. It kept going. Attorney Daniel Dotson later told Kentucky State Police that in that period, Stines was losing it. He described what he observed as paranoid schizophrenia. A sheriff's office staffer told KSP separately, I think his anxiety was completely off the charts. I do feel like he was in a psychosis. And per defense filing, Stines had reportedly lost 40 pounds in two weeks. He wasn't sleeping. He told the staffer that someone demanded he end his own life, or they would harm his wife and his daughter. This is what he's believing in his mind, allegedly. He'd made someone help put a bulletproof vest on his wife. Three days after that deposition, the judge named in the lawsuit was dead. We're going to come back to who saw what and who did nothing about it, because the wrongful death lawsuit followed by Mullins' widow names three of Stines' own deputies and says they watched her boss spiral and never warned the man he was about to kill. But first, the night before, the testimony that landed hardest at the June 5th hearing came from Sherry Stines, Mickey's aunt. She'd known him since birth. His grandparents raised him. She called him Bubbly, or Bubby.