Dishonorable Judge Mullins: Above the Law

14:35Amanda Knox:Things only escalated from there. Taya confirmed that for years, she and many of her girlfriends, who were often either incarcerated or on house arrest, regularly slept with Mullins and other higher-ups in the county in exchange for legal favors.

14:54Chris Sweeney:We would do sex parties and perform shows and have sex with them for money, things like that.

15:01Amanda Knox:According to Taya, these sex parties were arguably consensual, but they came at a cost.

15:08Chris Sweeney:I have to say, like, we were having fun, too. You know, like, we were doing drugs, was doing coke, doing a lot of cocaine, partying. You know, like it wasn't like they were just like, they weren't raping like physically, like, you know, what people think about when they hear the word rape. It was consensual. But it was the thing that we were so young and then they used it against us and to destroy our lives later. How so? With the legal system. With the legal system.

15:38Amanda Knox:In reality, women like Taya had little to no real power. Sure, they could say no, but they knew the risks. Turning down someone like a sheriff's deputy or a judge, or trying to expose someone as powerful as Mullins, could come with devastating consequences.

15:57Chris Sweeney:He's the one with the power. He holds my entire life in his hands. He's the one that makes the decisions over whether I get to keep my children or not. He's the one that makes the decisions on whether I go to jail. He could influence the drug court. He could influence the criminal court. He could influence the child support court. He had a hand in what happened to a lot of these women. And they were fearful of that.

16:25Amanda Knox:They say that in Whitesburg, everybody knows everybody's business. And Mullins' affair with Letcher County inmates were no exception. But while this sex-for-favor scheme wasn't exactly a secret in Letcher County, it wasn't something Mullins or his peers were eager to publicize either. Did they ever tell you that you couldn't say anything? Yeah. Yeah.

16:50Chris Sweeney:I mean, that was just a given, you know? And like, who would believe it anyway because the whole town was doing it, you know? Nobody cares. They're all swingers. It's all a big party to them.

17:02Amanda Knox:What's more, for someone like Taya, the odds were already stacked against her. think about it. Who would a jury be more likely to believe? An enmate with a history of addiction or a reputable district judge? Chances are the latter. But what happens when the most powerful people, the ones who are meant to enforce the law, stop following it themselves? What are the consequences for a judge who, at least from the outside, appears untouchable. In this case, he's killed in cold blood. Spring cleaning means resetting my closet. I'm trying to do that by buying less, but buying better. Last week, I got a long sleeve, 100 % organic cotton poplin shirt and a pair of organic cotton chino shorts from Quince.

17:59Amanda Knox:And they both hit that sweet spot in the Venn diagram of well-made, easy to wear, and they look more expensive than they are. The shirt is crisp and lightweight. The shorts are comfortable but still polished, and both are the kind of basics that make getting dressed easier. Quince makes beautiful everyday pieces using premium materials, works directly with ethical factories, and cuts out the middleman so you get high-quality pieces without the usual markup. Refresh your spring wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com slash opportunist for free shipping and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too.

18:40Amanda Knox:Go to quince.com slash opportunist for free shipping and 365-day returns. quince.com slash opportunist. I'm kind of blown away by how much people pay for wireless just because they assume that's the normal price. If I could switch right now, Mint Mobile is exactly the kind of service I'd look at first, because premium wireless plans start at just$15 a month. And for me, that's almost$100 cheaper a month. So why keep overpaying if you don't have to? You can bring your own phone and number, activate with eSIM in minutes, and get high-speed data plus unlimited talk and text on the nation's largest 5G network.

19:25Amanda Knox:No long-term contracts, no hassle, no big carrier pricing. If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at mintmobile.com slash opportunist. That's mintmobile.com slash opportunist. Upfront payment of$45 for a 3-month 5GB plan required, equivalent to$15 a month. New customer offer for first three months only, then full price plans options available. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.

20:07Amanda Knox:When shots rang out at the Letcher County Courthouse on September 19, 2024, it didn't take long for authorities to find the gunman. That's because they didn't have to. Moments after killing Mullins, Steins walked out of his chambers, hands in the air, and promptly surrendered to law enforcement. The shooting was also, of course, entirely caught on tape. Here's Taylor Six.

20:35Chris Sweeney:This is not a whodunit, right? Pretty much everyone has seen the video. It's out there. The facts are what they are, but it has not been fully adjudicated.

20:47Amanda Knox:so steins killed mullins in the middle of the afternoon in a building full of witnesses in clear view of a security camera and immediately afterward he turned himself in surely he knew he wasn't going to get away with murder so the real question is why did he do it here's madeline goins when it came across the wire we knew there was a shooting near the

21:14Chris Sweeney:courthouse. We didn't know it was inside. We didn't know who was involved at that point. It was one of the biggest stories that has come across our newsroom. People were enamored by it. Their attention was grabbed. Like it was so shocking. And to being such a small community where everyone knows everybody, that's the kind of community where like the sheriff is your neighbor. You're going to see him out at the restaurant while you're at dinner with your family. And for someone that you know in that way, to learn that they've done something like this, it's definitely shocking for everyone. There's a lot of questions as to what could possess someone to do that, someone of that stature in the community.

22:05Amanda Knox:Contrary to what many thought, Whitesburg wasn't a picture-perfect, low-crime town. With rampant drug use and, according to Taya, an alleged sex ring involving hundreds of people over the years, Letcher County reeked of corruption. Still, for Steins to be at the center of this crime seemed out of character to the people who knew him.

22:30Chris Sweeney:He's got a good reputation. He was well-respected. He was always good to me, fair, firm. You know, he'd take you to jail and stuff, but he wasn't like a groper and raper and stuff like the other ones. and he was always good to me.

22:45Amanda Knox:He wasn't a groper and raper. Ty is saying here that in her years of sexual relations with Mullins and other law enforcement officials in Letcher County, Steins was never involved. Still, he was named in Sabrina Adkins' civil lawsuit against Ben Fields. But it wasn't because Steins himself was part of this sex ring. At the time of Fields' indictment, Steins was Fields' supervisor. He was included in the lawsuit for failing to train Fields properly and appropriately intervene. In fact, Steins was deposed in that lawsuit just three days before he shot Mullins. It makes you wonder, could it really just be a coincidence?

23:34Amanda Knox:Ned Pillerstorf, the lawyer who filed the civil suit against Steins, shared his observations the day after the shooting.

23:42Chris Sweeney:We wonder, was there a connection between the ongoing lawsuit we filed and the timing of all this? Yeah. I just don't know. Was the sheriff at all agitated during the deposition? Defensive? Angry? Probably all of those.

23:58Amanda Knox:To those who knew him well, Steins wasn't acting like himself. not during the deposition and not in the days following leading up to Mullins' death. True, there could be several reasonable explanations for this. Perhaps it was the stress of the deposition itself or the possibility he'd lose his job. But then again, maybe it was something else, something a little more personal.

24:25Chris Sweeney:There were those initial rumors of, you know, the judge was allegedly having a relationship with Steins' minor daughter or his wife.

24:38Amanda Knox:It's unclear exactly when the rumors about Steins' wife and daughter began circulating. But the release of the now infamous video of the shooting definitely fueled more speculation. That's because the calls Steins made just minutes before shooting Mullins were to his own daughter.

24:59Chris Sweeney:Before shots are fired, the sheriff uses his phone and the judge's phone to make calls to his teenage daughter. And as soon as he sets that phone down, that's when he stands up and shoots him.

25:16Amanda Knox:Following this shooting, many believe that Judge Mullins had the phone number of Steins' daughter saved in his contacts. The implication being that maybe, just maybe, she had more than a personal relationship with the judge. But that theory has been disputed. Since then, both Steins' wife and daughter have also denied the claims that they had any sort of relationship with Judge Mullins, or contact with him whatsoever. Still, we're left to wonder why Steins made that call.

25:52Chris Sweeney:There's been a lot of questions about why the daughter's name keeps getting brought up, and in a court filing just a couple weeks ago, we finally seemingly got an answer to what may have been going through the sheriff's head at that time, why he may have dialed his daughter's phone number that day. But we find out that Sheriff was in an active state of psychosis at the time of the shooting. And there had been signs that he was going into it for quite a while. There was a bunch of witness testimony from his colleagues saying that they were noticing it seemed like he hadn't been sleeping at all.

26:29Chris Sweeney:He hadn't been eating. His actions were very erratic, very questionable. He was doing things that weren't like him. He was asking about family members who had been passed away for years. He was asking people to do routine check-ins on his wife and daughter and his family and make sure that they were okay. And he seemed truly in fear for their lives.

26:53Amanda Knox:He seemed truly in fear for their lives. According to Madeline Goens, there's also a new video, yet to be released to the public, that reinforces just how fearful and paranoid Mickey Steins was leading up to the shooting.

27:12Chris Sweeney:Apparently there's ring camera footage of the sheriff going home the day before the shooting, I believe, and is running in to check on his wife and daughter and actually have some put on bulletproof vests and is having people come to check on them. So it's very clear that something was going on to make him seemingly crack under the pressure.

27:38Amanda Knox:Based on the information provided from this recent court filing, it seems pretty clear that Mickey Steins was acting strange the week of September 19th. But even if that's true, there's still a chance it's not the whole story.

27:54Chris Sweeney:The sheriff believes that one of Mullins' friends told him what he needed to say in his deposition and that he needed to give him a certain amount of money and kill himself or they were going to kill his wife and daughter.

28:18Chris Sweeney:We got to make sure that your side was right now. Yeah. You got up my face a while ago, I don't feel safe. Man, I've worked with you all for years, man. For years, I don't feel safe. Listen to me. Listen to me. When you pull my wife up there, you know. Y 'all don't kill me now.

28:40Amanda Knox:That was Steins talking to fellow law enforcement officers mere moments after murdering Mullins. I don't feel safe, he said. Y 'all gonna kill me now. Based on body cam footage worn by one of Stein's own deputies, Stein's repeated this over and over while being led to the Leslie County Detention Center. Now, you could chalk that all up to paranoia and psychosis. Perhaps Stein's concern for the safety of his wife and daughter was all in his head too. Maybe he pulled the trigger on Mullins simply because he'd lost his grip on reality. and on one hand you'd probably be right following his arrest steins underwent a formal mental health evaluation that confirmed he displayed signs of active psychosis and jeremy bartley steins attorney has been exploring an insanity plea ever since but that doesn't mean there wasn't something else more sinister at play.

29:43Amanda Knox:Here's one of Mullen's victims, Taya Adams. Do you know why the sheriff killed the judge?

29:51Chris Sweeney:I don't, but I have my own suspicions and beliefs. I think that he seemed that nothing was ever going to stop. Nothing was ever going to change unless something big happened. I don't know what it was that triggered him to actually do that. Like, I don't know. I couldn't say. But knowing everything. And then if you notice, they put that charge on Ben Fields, right? Like he's the only one or something. And Mickey ended up getting named in a lawsuit for not doing anything about it or not properly training them. So I wonder, like, if he was like, like, this is so far out of my hands, what am I supposed to do?

30:34Amanda Knox:Former Letcher County Jailer Sarah Davis shared a similar sentiment.

30:40Chris Sweeney:I believe that the sheriff, he either knew something or something was going on that he knew about that we all might not know about, but he was doing something to protect us.

30:50Amanda Knox:Maybe he was. Maybe Steins took the initiative to kill Mullins on behalf of those in the community who didn't have the power to stand up for themselves. And maybe he really was saving the lives of his wife and daughter. According to Taylor Six, the town of Whitesburg is divided on whether Steins was justified in shooting the judge.

31:13Chris Sweeney:There has been a lot of rallying in terms of this kind of idea of vigilante justice, right? So people have said, you know, I would have done the same thing. But then you have other folks saying kind of this idea of, well, you can't take the law into your own hands. So I don't know that that's just specifically the town. I think Kentucky as a whole, the Commonwealth, depending on who you ask, everyone's going to have their opinion about it.

31:45Amanda Knox:Steins was indicted on a charge of first degree murder and is currently being held without bond while he awaits trial. Whether or not we get more answers from him remains to be seen. As for Mullins, unfortunately, we'll never get his side of the story. Mullins and Steins were friends for decades, and to many who knew him, Judge Mullins was a good, honorable man. So where did it all go wrong? For surviving government officials allegedly involved in Letcher County's sex for favor scheme, a civil lawsuit is finally underway. But it seems that even after Mullins' death, people are still afraid to speak up.

32:30Amanda Knox:Here's Sarah Davis again.

32:33Chris Sweeney:Everybody knows. They might not speak on it. They might not want to be involved in it because of the fear of retaliation, because there's so many people that have come out and spoke out about what Judge Mullins has done or other crimes that have been participated in just regards of Mullins and Mickey Steins and all this, and they go to speak out, and they either end up overdosed when they're clean, or you don't hear from them again.

33:02Amanda Knox:What happened to Judge Kevin Mullins was shocking. But what came to light afterward, the stories of the women he abused, might be even more disturbing. He was a man who allegedly used his position not just to interpret the law, but to exploit it for personal gain. Where the courtroom became, rather than a place of fairness, an opportunity for control and manipulation. Yet in the wake of tragedy and exposed corruption, there is a small silver lining. People are finally paying attention. and maybe that will be enough to spark real change.

33:47Chris Sweeney:Things like this that happen in small communities and small towns, even if we're afraid to speak up on it, we need to because is this what we want for our next generation? Is that what we want for our kids, what we're going through, what our past people have gone through? Do we want that for them? No, I don't want that for my daughter. I don't want that for my son. I want better for them. I want an actual community that's not based on if you got money and know people and if you're willing to get on your knees or on your back. It's sickening and I want better for them. I want better for not just my babies, for Lexi's babies, for Ty's babies, for all of them.

34:28Chris Sweeney:My grandchildren one day, I want better for them all.

34:39Amanda Knox:Thank you for tuning into The Opportunist. This episode was written by Mira Hansen, produced by Abby Newhouse, and executive produced by Connor Powell. We'll be back in two weeks with news stories about people seeing an opportunity to get ahead and taking it. Until next time.

35:11Thank you.

35:40Amanda Knox:With movies like Pineapple Express, the entire Star Trek film franchise, and Gladiator, and TV shows like Survivor, SpongeBob SquarePants, The Fairly Odd Parents, and Ghosts, Pluto TV is always free. Huzzah! Pluto TV.

35:55Chris Sweeney:Stream now. Pay never.