Police Seek Motive for Sheriff Accused of Shooting Kentucky Judge

The Washington Post

16:14 JST, September 21, 2024

Retired Letcher County Sheriff’s Deputy Eugene Slone was heading out the door of his eastern Kentucky home Thursday when his phone buzzed.

He put the device to his ear.

“You won’t believe what happened in Whitesburg,” the caller blurted out.

County Sheriff Shawn “Mickey” Stines had allegedly shot District Judge Kevin Mullins to death in his chambers. Stines, 43, was arrested and charged with murder.

“When they told me what had happened, I thought it was a dream,” Slone, 54, told The Washington Post. “I couldn’t believe it was real.”

The killing shook Whitesburg, a town of less than 1,800 people nestled among the Appalachian Mountains, and turned its halls of justice into a crime scene. As the courthouse remained closed Friday, investigators sought to determine what may have prompted one of the county’s most prominent elected officials to kill another.

The men had worked together for years. Stines once served as Mullins’s bailiff and was responsible for the judge’s safety in his current job.

Both officials are mentioned in an ongoing federal lawsuit that accuses a former sheriff’s deputy of coercing a woman into sex when she couldn’t pay the fees related to her ankle monitor. In the 2022 suit, filed in the Eastern District of Kentucky, Sabrina Adkins alleges Stines failed “to adequately train and supervise” the deputy, Ben Fields, and “knew or should have known” that he was sexually abusing the women in his charge.

Fields allegedly used to take Adkins into Mullins’s chambers after hours to coerce her into sexual acts because he knew there were no cameras in the room, the complaint says.

Attorneys for Fields did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. In court documents filed in the case, Fields denied some of the allegations and exercised his Fifth Amendment rights on others.

Mullins is not named in the lawsuit and was not accused of wrongdoing. There was no indication Friday that his killing was connected to the case.

Fields pleaded guilty last year to criminal charges of rape, sodomy, perjury and tampering with a prisoner monitoring device. He served six months in jail and was released on probation, according to Whitesburg-based newspaper the Mountain Eagle.

Bethany Baxter, an attorney for Adkins, said she last saw Stines on Monday when he sat for a deposition in the lawsuit.

“He seemed mild-mannered enough,” Baxter said Friday. “It shocked me to learn [the news] yesterday.”

The violence broke out around 3 p.m. Thursday, when Stines shot Mullins, 54, after an argument, according to Kentucky State Police. The sheriff allegedly walked into Mullins’s outer office and told court employees that he wanted to speak with the judge alone, the Mountain Eagle reported.

Alone with Mullins in his inner office, Stines allegedly closed the door. The sound of gunshots followed, the Mountain Eagle reported.

Mullins was pronounced dead at the scene, and Stines was arrested without incident, state police said.

It was unclear Friday if Stines had an attorney. He is being held at the Leslie County Detention Center, jail records show.

Slone, the retired deputy, lost a race for sheriff to Stines in 2017 after he was laid off from the office. After the election, another former deputy sued Stines, accusing him of retaliating against her by refusing to rehire her from a layoff because she had supported Slone’s candidacy. The lawsuit was resolved in Stines’s favor.

“Some loved him, some didn’t like him,” Slone said of the sheriff. “Some say he picked and choosed who he busted.”

Mullins, meanwhile, “was a friend,” Slone said. He served at one point as a bailiff to Mullins and as a victim advocate in his courtroom. As they took smoke breaks together outside the courthouse, Slone said, people would approach the judge and ask for advice.

“Even on his break, people would come up, and he would give them advice. He was the kind of person who wanted to help people,” Slone said.

Matt Butler, the county’s lead prosecutor, said in a video message Friday that he remembered Mullins being a fierce litigator when he was a prosecutor and Butler was a public defender.

Despite their courtroom rivalry, Butler and Mullins became in-laws when they married a pair of sisters. Butler said his children and Mullins’s were like siblings.

“I always thought he was hilarious, I always thought he was very witty,” Butler said. “He was fun to be around outside of court. As a brother-in-law, I’ll never forget how kind he was to my children.”

Butler said he also had a close professional relationship with Stines. He added that one of his staff members was in the court suite at the time of the shooting and could be called as a witness in the criminal case.

Butler’s office is recused from the case by Kentucky law. Jackie Steele, a commonwealth’s attorney for the 27th judicial circuit, will serve as a special prosecutor, Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman (R) said Thursday.

Slone said he hopes the truth of whatever happened in Mullins’s chamber comes to light.

“I don’t think it’s going to justify the actions by no means, but I think everybody needs to know,” he said. “That’ll put rumors to rest.”