Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - ‘Smoke Show’ Coach Sent Nudes To Student: Police

Episode Date: April 3, 2026

Mary Hanna Mattingly is a married mother of two young children. On Monday March 30, 2026, Bardstown Police in Kentucky took Mattingly into custody on charges related to allegations she sexually abused a high school student and sent nude photos to the student. Mattingly is a substitute teacher and assistant soccer coach. Law&Crime’s Angenette Levy looks at what we know about the case so far in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Download the FREE Upside App at https://upside.app.link/crimefix to get an extra 25 cents bonus for every gallon on your first tank of gas.Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guests: Colonel Alex PayneChrista RameyCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A high school student meets a substitute teacher and coach, and police say the relationship turned into a disgusting crime. This 31-year-old mom is now under arrest accused of sexually abusing the student, with investigators pointing to messages and even half-naked photos. So what do police say happen? I've got it laid out right here in the complaint. I'm Annette Levy, and this is Crime Fix. Before we get into this really disturbing case, I want to tell you about something that I've been using that I really like.

It's called Upside. It's an app that will get you cash back on things that you buy every day like gas, groceries, and takeout. Here's what you do. You download Upside for free. You claim an offer at one of their 100,000 plus locations and pay like normal with your card. Then verify the purchase and boom, you get money back. So say I need gas or want takeout one night, I'll search for upside offers first. After I spend money, it appears in my app so I can transfer it straight into my bank account.

Upsides frequent users earn an average of $254 back a year. So to start getting your cash back, click the link in the description or scan that QR code that you see on the screen and use the promo code Crime Fix to get an extra 25 cents bonus on every gallon on your first tank of gas. Mary Hannah Mattingly is 31 years old. She's married and a mother to two beautiful children, a boy and a girl. She lives in the small town of Bardstown, Kentucky, and on Facebook, her life seems idyllic. She has a cute family, a photo by the Christmas tree, a family vacation to the beach. But now all of that has been marred by something that happened earlier this week. The substitute teacher and high school girls assistant soccer coach found. herself in handcuffs and in jail, accused of sex crimes involving a student. In a small town like Bardstown, something like that doesn't stay quiet for long. And then, word of the arrest hit the news. To understand how surprising this was, you have to understand Bardstown. It's a city of less than 14,000 people in Nelson County. Fort Knox is about 35 miles to the west in Louisville

is an hour's drive to the north. Bardstown sits along Kentucky's famed bourbon trail. It's a small town where families go to the Friday night football game. Many people work at the local distilleries. Mary Hannah Mattingly worked as a substitute teacher at Bardstown High School, and for the past two school years, she worked as an assistant coach for the high school girls' soccer team. Then on Thursday, March 26th, the staff at Bardstown High says they received an anonymous letter that was very, very concerning. That letter was about Mary Hannah Mattingly, the sub and soccer coach. Now, when I reached out to the superintendent with questions, he sent a media release to me that states, on Thursday, March 26th, an anonymous letter was received,

alleging inappropriate conduct by a female substitute teacher and a Bardstown High School juvenile. Bardstown City Schools immediately initiated an investigation, removed the individual from her job duties, placed her on administrative leave, and alerted the authorities. On Monday, March 30th, we learned that Mary Mattingly was arrested and charged by the Bartstown Police Department. We are unable to comment any further due to this being a personnel matter and an active investigation. As a school district, we always take any report seriously and investigate thoroughly. We are committed to the safety and education of our students. As always, we encourage our students, parents, and staff to report to district administrators anything they see or hear that is alarming or inappropriate.

Bardstown police officers picked up Mary Hannah Mattingly on March 30th, and she was booked into the Nelson County Jail on one count of sexual abuse in the first degree and a second count of procuring or promoting the use of a minor by electronic means. The complaint filed with the court offers just a little bit more detail it states. In May of 2025, above being in a position of special trust and a school teacher at Bardstown High School engaged in sexual contact with a high school student. Above also had communication with the same student by electronic means that included partially nude photographs of above sent to the student. Now the married mom of two, she's in big legal trouble. Her husband seems to love her a lot. In June of 2024, he posted on Instagram,

Hannah Mattingly, dang, look at this smoke show. Thank you for everything you do for the kids and me. I hope you enjoy tonight. You deserve it. She appeared to be enjoying a night out. Okay, so to discuss this case, I'd like to bring in Colonel Alex Payne. He is the chief deputy at the Bullock County Sheriff's Office, sort of a neighboring county over from Bardstown. He is not involved in this case at all. So Colonel Payne, I was really excited that we were able to bring you on to talk about this case because it's pretty concerning. We've got a small town, you know, Bardstown, less than 14,000 people live there. And we have a teacher, a substitute teacher, who's also a soccer coach, accused of sexual abuse of a student, but also sending like half-naked pictures. So we have electronic evidence here. The school, it sounds like, from what we can tell, reported this immediately to law enforcement when they learned of it in this anonymous letter. So what are your first thoughts based on what we know about this case? My initial thoughts are the system that they have in place over their work.

So evidently, they open themselves up, the school system there. in Nelson County, they have a process, you know, where you can send in an anonymous tip, which is, I believe, what this was. And that process actually has a little bit of backbone to it. You know, it, well, it has a lot because they take these anonymous tips seriously to the point to where if one of those tips comes in, they actually initiate an investigation by passing, you know, when appropriate to law enforcement if they believe there's been some type crime that's been committed and it seems to be the case here like you know that's exactly what

happened and when law enforcement got that information they acted so let's say um let's say you get this tip um at the bullet county sheriff's office so how do you handle something like this because you know the school they're mandatory reporters they can't just say like oh you know there there's nothing to this like you know oh we'll bring her in and talk to her and she's she's she's denying it. She says it's not true. So we're just going to let it go. But they have a duty to report this type of conduct. So under the law, talk to me about when, you know, the principal or the superintendent calls in and says, hey, we got this letter. And it says that, you know, Hannah Mattingly is having sex with a student and sent nude picks to the student. What do you

you. Well, you know, first things first, you know, all those things, you know, it's an anonymous tip, so it's alleged, you know, criminal behaviors. So there's the point. You treat it just like any other investigation that you get information on. It'd be no different than, you know, if you had a crime tip line established like we do here, you know, and sometimes we get some actual good information over that crime tip line. The thing is, we act on all of it, you know, because you'll find out pretty quick, fast, in a hurry, whether or not that information is legitimate or not. And when that information is legitimate, it leads to one thing after another. When it's not legitimate, it just, it completely ends.

So when you start to do the follow-up on that info, which you begin that criminal investigation, if that takes you to place after place after place, and then it actually leads to a suspect, you know, as it did in this case, and then you can actually take charges on that suspect, and that was good information to begin with. But there has to be a vetting process there, And that's basically as law enforcement and position that we have, that's what we do.

And then the prosecution, you know, in that county, we will actually charge. But then you have to be the best witness for your particular case based upon what the evidence is that you found to get that conviction. So the tip comes in on a Thursday. By Monday, Hannah Mattingly is in handcuffs. So the cops found some there there. And so I'm assuming, you know, this is my assumption based on just the limited amount of probable cause we've seen, that there was some electronic evidence that they were able to view to say there were half nude pictures sent by her to this student. So is that what you would gather? Yes.

You know, and of course, according to the charges, you know, they're on the citation. That's exactly, you know, what's happened. You know, they have some type of electronic evidence against Ms. Mattingly, you know, in order, and they have to have that, you know, in order to bring that charge, you know, to at least, you know, to have a successful case. So whatever it is that they have, you know, is pretty damning, you know, towards her. And they evidently came by that information fairly quickly. And because, you know, from a Thursday, to a Monday and that's pretty quick. It seems pretty quick to me for sure. One thing that I find interesting about this is that the school has confirmed the district, the superintendent, that Hannah Mattingly was a substitute teacher. So she wasn't full time, but it doesn't matter. She's there interacting with kids. And of course she's innocent until proven guilty as any criminal defendant is.

but she was also a high school girls assistant soccer coach so she's interacting with kids students on on two levels here and so the allegation is that this happened back on May 1st of 2025 it's been almost a year and so this is an initial charge this is an initial you know in the uniform citation I would I would call an initial complaint. My gut is telling me that maybe this, you know, if these allegations are indeed true and they're proven in a court of law, I mean, we're talking a matter of days that they arrested her and charged her.

The investigation is still ongoing. I mean, are you telling me that there was just one incident on May 1st of 2025? I'm thinking maybe there's a search warrant for a phone or two. Maybe we're gonna hear about text messages later on in this case. More investigation and interview of the accuser or the alleged victim in this case. I mean, a one time thing. I mean, typically in these types of cases we see a pattern of possible grooming leading up to, you know, an event or more than in one event? Is it possible? There's more there like stretching from May 1st, 2025 to the present

or even over the summer. We just don't know. Right. And that's, you know, what you're talking about there is exactly why that investigation is continuing. But what they initially find, if that's criminal in its nature, you have to take action on it right then and there. Now, that doesn't mean that there won't be any further charges forthcoming based upon completely. that investigation because you've got to understand that just arresting Hannah Mattingly doesn't close that case. It's not over. You know, they arrested her based upon what they initially found and what they were provided. Now, you talk about electronic crime. I'm sure, and again, I don't know anything about this

case, but I'll just take it from the perspective of like what we would do here. We would obtain search warrants for all of her electronic devices. That means our laptops or home computers, however, many cell phones she has, all of those things are going to be dumped and searched to see if any more of that same material is there. And basically what you're looking for within the confines of those search warrants is evidence of other crimes related to what you have initially found. And so you're going to have all of that information to go through. You may have, you may end up with more people coming forward, for example, that have known her. I mean, it opens up a whole big can of

worms and it's going to take you down a lot of paths. So until all those paths have been traveled by law enforcement and charges or no charges as the result of that traveling of those paths, this investigation is still ongoing. This is just what you have initially. Most certainly. How long do you think that takes? Because we know when you, well, you know, from covering trials and stuff like that, when you dump a cell phone, I mean, that's that's a lot of data. that comes out. And when you're talking about, you know, copying over a hard drive from a computer, I mean, that can take a really long time to weed through all of that stuff. I mean, you kind of, I would assume, know what you're looking for and you know what you're looking for because you're,

you're going to talk to the accuser and you're going to say, okay, how did you guys communicate? There's going to be some, I'm assuming we're talking text messages, Facebook Messenger. or, you know, her Facebook account is magically gone all of the sudden. So there could have been a preservation order sent. Yeah. Yeah. I forgot to even mention that because you'll have search warrants for like all of her. If she has a lot of social apps, for example, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, whatever,

there will be search warrants issue for all of those as well. So talk to me about, though, how tedious that is to go through all of that. I mean, all of that data. Well, we've got people that are good at it. You know, it's not, that's a good thing to say it. It's a bad thing to say it. You wish you didn't have to have people that were good at that. But we do.

And they do an amazing job. And I'm sure Nelson County has people that are capable of doing the exact same thing. It's electronic crimes are nothing new. And law enforcement has had to play catch up for a little while. but I'd say for the most part that we're holding our own. And again, we could always use help in that area, but it's out there. You know, we have federal partners. We have people that we can reach out to to help with these specific types of cases

and depending on how complex it gets. And, you know, because you've also got the other thing. We may dump a phone. We may dump a personal computer or what have you. And there may not be anything there. This may be just the first time. You know, it's just, you just have to take what you, find and go with it and not have any expectations you know beforehand you're just you're just

looking if you find things great if you don't well you know at least you know we've got this initial one and hopefully it began and ended right there you know a lot of times that's not necessarily the case but we can only hope so do you think that we could be talking like a month do you think we could be talking two months i mean the what's going to happen next is that she's going to have an arraignment because she posted bail before she even went to court so she's out she goes back to court for you know an arraignment you know this initial appearance or whatever the case has to go to a grand jury so you know so what what happens next in your opinion well after that after the case goes to the grand jury she'll you know say she's indicted uh you know then there'll be a trial date

set and so she'll have her day in court but still you know it all during that time that in investigation still moves forward. There could be, you know, new charges brought forward. There's all kinds of possibilities that, you know, could happen between now and then, but she has to at least face the charges that she's been charged with right now and the evidence involving those charges. So it depends, you know, well, how much, how complex it is. If this is, if it gets into other things, the more information that's there that can be acted on, As far as placing criminal charges, the more complex the case will be, the more time it's going to take. Do you think it will take a couple of months to get through all that data, though, and then turn it over to the Commonwealth's attorney?

Or you said people, you know, usually people are pretty good at doing this, the people that handle this stuff. Could it be pretty quick? It could. You know, it just, like you said, it just depends on how much they come across. And that'll determine, you know, how fast it is. Well, we will certainly keep an eye on it because, you know, it's a small town, Birdstown. This stuff happens everywhere, as we know. No town, city is a, no school district, unfortunately, is immune to this type of thing.

But it sounds like the school, from what we know, did the right thing. They got the tip. They turned it over to law enforcement as they should have immediately. Yes. and they took the steps that they should have to investigate this. Yes, man. Yeah, which is refreshing because we hear so many times about how things are mishandled. Colonel Alex Payne of the Bullitt County Sheriff's Office.

Thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it. You're most welcome, ma'am. Thank you. I want to turn now to Krista Ramey. She represents victims in sexual abuse cases. Krista, you know, we have the school getting this note, this letter, anonymous letter on a Thursday. By Monday, the following Monday, we have Hannah Mattingly in handcuffs.

So it sounds like from what we know, based on what we know, things went right here. We know that things went fast once there was a report to the police. What we don't know is what was happening behind the scenes before someone gave that anonymous tip. I think that when we get to the point of a student and a teacher having a relationship, there are almost always a lot of red flags that should have been seen in the form of what we, in this industry called grooming. because a teacher and a child don't go immediately from, you know, that kind of relationship to, you know, the intimate kind of relationship that is not appropriate. There is a process that happens in between. And usually that is happening in plain sight in front of other educators, in front of other administrators, and in front of other students.

And that there was probably, and we'll learn, you know, later whether or not there was, a lot of red flags that should have been caught. because I find it hard to believe that a teacher gets arrested, gets put on administrative leave, and everyone did everything right. Interesting. She was a sub and an assistant girls soccer coach. So she's got access to students on two levels here. We don't know if she was a long-term sub. We don't know if she was, you know, one of the subs that's there intermittently like, hey, You know, Ms. Smith is sick. Can you come in and cover, you know, math classes today?

We just don't have all of that information. But, you know, still, she has access to kids. So the criminal complaint says this happened on May 1st, 2025. We're now almost a year out from that. So my question is this didn't just happen on May 1st, 2025. It's usually not just an isolation. Oh, this happened on May 1st, 2025. Oops, that was it. So was this going on prior to May 1? And this is just the evidence they have right now to make the initial arrest. Was there something happening prior to May 1, 2025? And then it's carrying out through the summer months until present day or something. There's still a lot we don't know about the investigation and the allegations here. We don't. And when we're talking about a child that's a little bit older, too, a lot of times you don't get really good information from the kid because of the relationship that they have with this teacher that they're having this inappropriate relationship with. So I've had situations in some of my cases where my client will not be honest with the police, try to protect her abuser and, you know, cover up for him so he doesn't get into trouble. And so you don't. learn everything right away and it takes some time for that survivor to understand what happened was not appropriate and this person did something wrong and to start then giving information and that happens sometimes with you know therapy

you know and you know good conversations with parents where they realize they're not going to get into trouble you know because a lot of times kids think they're going to get to trouble if they give information about what had happened and so I think that you will learn over time everything that happened or that it was just one isolated incident. But I tend to agree with you. I don't think it was one isolated incident. I think we're going to learn more as the investigation progresses.

And, you know, this moved quickly, just a matter of days. There are still, you know, we talked with Colonel Alex Payne before you about, you know, downloading of electronic devices, what will happen there, sifting through the data, whether or not more charges could come of this. And those things are a possibility. Yeah, they are. They're real possibility. And a lot of times with kids, they'll share things over their phones.

That could end up with, you know, C-SAM charges, you know, unfortunately, if the child is sending anything to her, you know, with pictures of himself, which happened in cases as well. So, you know, you might see a lot of text messages that have happened to them over time. There's going to be a lot of data on the phone, I would imagine, that will be very revealing. A lot of data on the phone. And I think social media accounts because her Facebook page is magically gone. It is no longer out there. So I think that could probably contain some data as well. What do you think?

Well, that could be because the police shut it down. Preservation letter to Facebook. Yeah. That evidence is not having new comments go on. Because I was looking at some Facebook stories before I came. on and you know the amount of comments that people just have you know in their opinions and you don't want people flooding her Facebook page with information that could be misinformation it could be just spamming her page whatever you

want to preserve that so I'm sure that that was you know taken down or down to private intentionally and by authorities and a lot of times kids and their abusers will communicate completely on Facebook Messenger or on more commonly on Instagram Messenger or Snapchat Messenger and they will have they can do phone calls that way as well and so they you know you'll look at WhatsApp with encrypted messages and disappearing messages so there's a lot of ways that you know they try to get around the data fortunately you know the data preservation is a little bit better than people think that it is and a lot of this data can be recovered

even on Snapchat and Instagram with disappearing messages so hopefully they'll a lot. That is a very good point. Krista Ramey, thank you so much for your time, as always. Thank you for having me. Now, as I mentioned, Mary Hannah Mattingley posted her $20,000 bond. She'll be in court on April 7th, whether or not she's still employed technically with the Bardstown School District. That's an open question. The superintendent said that they are going through their process right now. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Janette Levy. Remember, you can always watch us on YouTube and you can also watch and listen to us on Spotify. I'll see you back here next time.