The stunning homicide of a Kentucky decide allegedly by his sheriff pal is being investigated as a potential intercourse scandal, cops mentioned Sunday.
Letcher County Sheriff Shawn “Micky” Stines was decades-long pals with Choose Kevin Mullins and even had lunch with him on Sept. 19 — hours earlier than he’s accused of strolling into the decide’s courtroom and capturing him eight occasions.
Surveillance video from contained in the chambers confirmed the lads switching cellphones and one thing on them — earlier than the sheriff walked over and shot lifeless the sheriff, sources instructed the Mountain Eagle.
“Our investigators seized the 2 cell telephones they usually’re being analyzed,” Kentucky State Police Trooper Matt Gayheart instructed the Each day Mail on Sunday.
Requested if the investigation was additionally contemplating a potential intercourse scandal as a motive, the trooper confirmed: “Completely. We aren’t ruling out something as a potential motive.”
Gayheart didn’t elaborate on the intercourse scandal in query. Nevertheless, the sheriff had days been deposed in a lawsuit filed by two girls, one in all whom alleged {that a} deputy pressured her to have intercourse inside Mullins’ chambers for six months in trade for staying out of jail.
The lawsuit accuses the sheriff of “deliberate indifference in failing to adequately prepare and supervise” the deputy, Ben Fields, who pleaded responsible to raping the feminine prisoner whereas she was on house incarceration.
Fields was sentenced this 12 months to 6 months in jail after which six and a half years on probation for rape, sodomy, perjury and tampering with a prisoner monitoring system, The Mountain Eagle reported. Three prices associated to a second lady have been dismissed as a result of she is now lifeless.
Stines fired Fields, who succeeded him as Mullins’ bailiff, for “conduct unbecoming” after the lawsuit was filed in 2022, The Courier Journal reported on the time.
Stines and Mullins had been pals for 20 years earlier than the homicide. Stines had served as Mullins’ bailiff earlier than changing into sheriff in 2018.
“I by no means knew of there being any type of friction between them until it got here to this. All of us acquired alongside good, teased one another,” Letcher Circuit Clerk Mike Watts instructed the native newspaper, The Mountain Eagle.
Mullins and Stines even labored collectively on drug dependancy and restoration initiatives that supplied sources and training in a area wracked by the opioid epidemic.
The sheriff reportedly got here out of the courtroom along with his palms up after the capturing. Nevertheless, he pleaded not responsible to first-degree homicide.
With Submit wires
