Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary

Mickey Stines' defense team just filed a motion that could reshape the entire trajectory of this case. The former Letcher County sheriff, charged with shooting and killing District Judge Kevin Mullins inside his chambers in September 2024, is now claiming he has a serious intellectual disability or serious mental illness that should legally exempt him from execution under a 2022 Kentucky statute.
But here's what the motion doesn't include: a diagnosis. No named condition. No medical records attached. Just a legal citation and a request for a hearing. Kentucky's HB 269 requires a documented diagnosis of one of exactly four conditions — schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, or delusional disorder — with active symptoms at the time of the offense. The law has been used successfully one time in the state's history, in a case where the judge said the evidence of lifelong mental illness was overwhelming.
We go deep on what that precedent looked like, what evidence Stines' defense has assembled so far — including witness accounts of paranoia, a jail evaluation describing active psychosis, and his claim of California encephalitis — and what the prosecution has ready to counter it. The doctor's visit the day before the shooting. The surveillance footage. The sealed psychiatric evaluation that nobody's talking about. And the broader question of whether this motion is about saving Stines from the needle or about building an insanity narrative before a jury is ever seated.
This is the legal chess match underneath the case everyone's been watching. And the next move matters.
#MickeyStines #ShawnStines #KevinMullins #LetcherCounty #KentuckyMurder #DeathPenaltyDefense #InsanityPlea #CourthouseShooting #HB269 #HiddenKillers
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We brought Robin Dreeke the footage, the operation, the contradictions, and the silence. We asked him every question this case demands — and his answers are something you need to hear for yourself.
Dreeke spent 21 years at the FBI and ran the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program. We asked him to apply his behavioral framework to every movement in the surveillance clips and tell us whether the man on that porch matches the operation that happened around him. We asked what the footage reveals about whoever planned this — the target selection, the camera removal, the silent extraction — and what the gap between what this man was told and what he clearly wasn't tells us about whoever was directing him. We asked about the 41-minute timeline gap. We asked what happens when they identify this man.
Then we gave him the communications. The family's four escalating videos. The FBI's social media release with no press briefing. The sheriff's complete reversal on the footage. The ransom notes with insider details but no proof of life. The silence after the deadline passed.
We asked Dreeke to read every public voice and tell us who's being straight, who's managing a narrative, and what the gaps between statements reveal about where this case actually stands. His answers reframe how you look at everything in this investigation.
#NancyGuthrie #RobinDreeke #HiddenKillers #FBIBehavioral #FullInterview #DeceptionDetection #TucsonKidnapping #CatalinaFoothills #SavannahGuthrie #TrueCrime
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The headlines said Kouri Richins was fighting to move her trial. What they didn't tell you is that fight was already over.
Judge Mrazik denied the defense's second venue change request on February 2nd — the same motion Fox News reported on five days later as though it were still pending. The defense argued 85 percent of prospective jurors recognized the case and the pool had shrunk to roughly 72 viable candidates. Prosecutors fired back with different numbers from the same data: 830 potential jurors who said they either hadn't heard of the case or hadn't followed it. The judge sided with the state. Again.
But the venue motion may never have been about winning. Look at the defense's broader pattern heading into trial — Crozier's fentanyl recantation, the witness intimidation allegations against Detective O'Driscoll and investigator Hopper, the timeline objections, and now a second failed venue bid. Each motion builds a paper trail. Each denial becomes a potential appellate issue. The question isn't whether the defense expected to move the trial. The question is whether they're already building the record for what comes after a conviction.
Meanwhile, the reason this case is famous isn't media hype. It's a children's grief book, a jailhouse letter prosecutors call witness tampering, nearly $2 million in alleged insurance fraud, and a drug chain that's falling apart on the witness stand before trial even begins.
Kouri Richins has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Jury selection begins February 10th.
#KouriRichins #EricRichins #HiddenKillers #VenueChangeDenied #WitnessIntimidation #JeffODriscoll #RobertCrozier #FentanylCase #SummitCounty #TrueCrimePodcast
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The ransom deadline passed. No follow-through. No proof of life. No verified contact. We asked Robin Dreeke what that silence means — and it's not the only contradiction we put in front of him.
Dreeke ran the FBI's Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program. His career was reading communications for authenticity and detecting when what people say doesn't match what they know. We asked him to assess every public voice in the Nancy Guthrie investigation.
The family has released four escalating videos. The FBI says there's been no verified kidnapper contact. Those two positions exist at the same time. Ransom notes arrived at media outlets with insider details — but no proof of life and no way for the family to respond. The sheriff said the Nest footage was permanently gone. Ten days later the FBI says private sector partners recovered it. The director released it on his personal X account with no press briefing.
We asked Dreeke to read each of these. We asked which voices are communicating authentically and which are managing a narrative. We asked what the gaps between public statements reveal about what's actually happening. And we asked what the silence after the deadline tells a deception analyst about whether the ransom threat was ever real.
#NancyGuthrie #RobinDreeke #RansomDeadline #HiddenKillers #DeceptionDetection #NarrativeControl #FBIBehavioral #RansomNotes #SavannahGuthrie #TrueCrime
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The FBI released surveillance footage today from Nancy Guthrie's Nest camera. Six photos. Three video clips. And the most important thing they reveal isn't who is on that porch — it's who isn't. A masked individual walks up to the 84-year-old's front door in the Catalina Foothills outside Tucson, reaches toward the camera, turns around, grabs a plant from Nancy's own garden, and covers the lens. He didn't bring tape. Didn't bring spray. His solution for the camera on the front door was whatever he could pull from the ground. Someone told him to cover his face, his hands, his body. Nobody told him what was six inches from the entry point.
The operation around him tells a completely different story. A specific target in a dark-sky neighborhood with no streetlights. Cameras disabled and physically removed. An elderly woman who can't walk fifty yards taken without a trace. A 41-minute window between the camera going dark at 1:47 a.m. and Nancy's pacemaker losing its Bluetooth connection at 2:28 a.m. That operation required planning, coordination, and knowledge the man on the porch clearly did not have about the camera. The gap between his preparation and the operation around him is the detail this case turns on.
The FBI released this footage without a timestamp despite a known timeline with a 41-minute gap at its center. The footage was declared unrecoverable for ten days before appearing today as residual data from backend systems. Director Kash Patel posted it personally on X with no press briefing scheduled. Former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker publicly questioned whether this is even a kidnapping. When they find the man on that porch — and they will — watch whether the investigation ends with him or continues past him. That answer tells you who actually matters in this case.
#NancyGuthrie #SavannahGuthrie #FBISurveillance #NestCamera #TucsonKidnapping #HiddenKillers #TrueCrime #CatalinaFoothills #KashPatel #MissingPerson
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