commentary by Patrick H. Moore
Rather shockingly, in January of 2013, Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse was shot and killed outside a courthouse in Kaufman County, southeast of Dallas. Two months after Hasse’s death, District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, were found shot dead in their home.
At that time, with typical Texas law enforcement misdirection, speculation ran wild as to the identity of the perpetrator(s) of these rather unusual crimes. No less a luminary than Texas Governor Rick Perry opined that the villains were probably (cartel) drug traffickers and that the motive was revenge for the aggressive prosecution of these miscreants in Kaufman county.
The theory that got the most press, however, was the notion that the perpetrators were white supremacists, possibly members of the Aryan Brotherhood. This story, at least, did not come out of left field for the simple reason that Mark Hasse had been involved in the prosecution of the Aryan Brotherhood:
In a statewide bulletin a month before Hasse’s death, the Texas Department of Public Safety had issued a warning that the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas was planning retaliation against law enforcement personnel.” Following Hasse’s assassination, and preceding his own murder, McLelland gave a news conference in which he said, “I hope that the people that did this are watching, because we’re very confident that we’re going to find you. We’re going to pull you out of whatever hole you’re in.”
You know what they say about the best laid plans…
It turned out, of course, that neither the narco-traffickers not the Aryan Brothers had anything to do with the murders of Hasse or McLellan and his wife.
Rather, once the dust had cleared and the investigation proceeded, evidence was uncovered that led to former Justice of the Peace Eric Williams and his wife, Kim being arrested on capital murder charges for all three victims. Williams and his wife are currently scheduled to go to trial later this year.
Eric Williams apparently bore a grudge against McLelland and Hasse for successfully prosecuting him for stealing three county-owned computer monitors. That conviction ultimately cost Williams his job as a justice of the peace and his law license.
At that time of their arrest, Ms. Williams — who has been described as a congenial woman but who had the odd habit of riding a big adult size tricycle around the neighborhood — reportedly made a full confession when questioned by the arresting officers.
Asst. DA Mark Hasse
Now, a year after Williams and his wife were arrested, in a truly amazing development, a law enforcement official familiar with the case, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, informed the AP that a dive team had recovered a weapon earlier this year from Lake Tawakoni, 50 miles east of Dallas, that authorities believe was used in the fatal shooting of at least one of the prosecutors.
Investigators had previously found several weapons in a storage locker used by Eric Williams, but those weapons had not been linked by testing to the crime before the dive team’s search.
According to the official, two guns were found in the lake, concealed inside a black mask.
WFAA-TV first reported the results of the dive team’s search.
The Texas Department of Public Safety refused to comment on this new development and a message left with the sheriff was not immediately returned.
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Now presumably, unless the authorities are engaging in wholesale fabrication and prevarication, which, as the record shows, is always a possibility in Texas, at least one of the guns that were just recovered must be one of the murder weapons used in the DA assassinations.
DA Mike McLelland
So how in the world did the divers know to look for the guns in the black mask in Lake Tawakoni? And how did they know where in the lake to look? Clearly someone, possibly Ms. Williams, assuming she knew where the weapons had been disposed of, must have sung like a little birdie. Considering Ms. Williams reportedly made a full confession at the time of her arrest, she could have subsequently disclosed this new information as part of an ongoing effort to obtain a “sweet deal” in return for her full cooperation.
If this is what happened, it does not say much for Eric William’s crime savvy. It’s bad enough to let your large, eccentric adult-tricycle riding wife give you a hand with the murders, but it’s completely unacceptable to let her know where you stash (or in this case drown) the weapons afterwards.
This scenario assumes that Eric Williams hasn’t caved and confessed himself, perhaps in return for a promised life sentence in lieu of the death penalty.
Although Kim Williams may have once been Eric William’s Yellow Rose of Texas, adult tricycle notwithstanding, he may be somewhat disillusioned with her at this point. After all, she has broken the two cardinal rules of pulling off successful murders. First, you don’t confess to the crimes and second, you certainly don’t divulge the location of the murder weapons.