Kentucky judge killed in chambers accused of trading sexual favors for influence at wild parties

The rural Kentucky judge who was allegedly gunned down in his chambers last year by a local sheriff possibly ran a scheme by which he demanded sexual favors from women to get them out of trouble, an accuser claims. 

Tya Adams told News Nation she would attend sex parties for District Court Judge Kevin Mullins and his friends in the small rural town of Whitesburg in exchange for money or to get offenders out of trouble. 

Adams told NewsNation’s “Banfield” that Mullins had warned her to keep quiet about what was taking place. 

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She said she felt she couldn’t say no because she feared retribution from the legal system and Child Protective Services would upend her life.

“They would make sure to make you feel as small and degraded and belittled as possible to take your power away,” Adams said. “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.

“That was just a given,” she added. “And who would believe it anyway? Because the whole town was doing it. Nobody cares. They’re all swingers. It’s all a big party to them. It was just so normal.”

It wasn’t immediately clear if Adams had a criminal history or if CPS was familiar with her. 

Sarah Davis, a former deputy at the Letcher County jail, told the news outlet she had never seen anyone initiating sex, but that the stories she heard were “nasty and sickening.”

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“Pretty much everybody in the county knows,” she said. “But it was confirmed to me after working in the county jail, especially after being invited to a party myself.”

She described the lockup as a “brothel” where staffers had sexual encounters with each other and  with inmates. 

Mullins invited Davis to a sex party once, but she said she declined. 

“I was raised better than that,” she said.

Mullins, 54, was shot and killed in a Sept. 19, 2024, attack inside his chambers, allegedly by Letcher County Sheriff Shawn “Mickey” Stines. Stines, who is no longer a sheriff, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. 

Video footage of the shooting captured Stines shooting Mullins as he sat at his desk. The sheriff, the judge’s longtime colleague and friend, allegedly continued to fire after Mullins fell to the floor. 

The two men had eaten lunch together hours earlier with a group, authorities said. 

At a preliminary hearing, Kentucky State Police Det. Clayton Stamper testified that Stines attempted to call his daughter on his phone, then on Mullins’ phone. Stines’ daughter was stored in Mullins’ contacts, The Associated Press previously reported.