Kentucky judge murdered by sheriff said to have urged women to trade sex for legal favors

A Kentucky judge gunned down by a sheriff last year reportedly ran the courthouse like a "brothel" and urged women to trade sex for legal favors.

News Nation reported that Judge Kevin Mullins had operated a sex-for-favors scheme that expanded outside of the courthouse into the small town of Whitesburg, Kentucky, according to an accuser. Mullins was allegedly shot execution style in his Letcher County chambers by his longtime friend, Sheriff Shawn Stines, last September.

Alleged victim Tya Adams told the network on Monday in an exclusive interview that she met Mullins while working as an assistant attorney, saying, "That's when he started introducing me to his friends. And we would do sex parties and perform shows and have sex with them for money, things like that."

When asked why Adams didn't say no to Mullins' behavior, the attorney said she feared the legal system 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," she continued. "But it was the thing that we were so young, and then they used it against us to destroy our lives later."

Adams said Judge Mullins and other individuals involved in the sex ring ordered her to stay quiet about the depravity occurring in the town's judicial system. "Who would believe it anyway?" said Adams. "Because the whole town was doing it. Nobody cares. They're all swingers. It's a big party to them. It was just so normal."

Sarah Davis, a former deputy jailer at Letcher County Jail, corroborated Adams' "nasty and sickening" claims, saying that Mullins allegedly invited her to a sex party, but she declined.

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

"I was raised better than that," Davis told NewsNation.

Judge Mullins was initially the subject of an investigation after a woman, Sabrina Adkins, included his name in a criminal investigation in 2022 regarding a Letcher County sheriff's deputy who was convicted of rape and sodomy of a female inmate.

Adkins told police in an interview at the time that she witnessed "Judge Mullins having sex with a girl...in the judge's chambers," per the New York Post.

Mullins' killing was caught on surveillance cameras, which showed the sheriff stepping into his office, making a few phone calls, and then shooting him to death. Sheriff Stines is being held in jail without bond and pleaded not guilty to murder charges.