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Vengeful judicial Officer, Wife Killed 2 Texas Prosecutors Plus One of Their Wives, Were "Happy” Afterwards
Eric Williams, a former justice of the peace, and his wife Kim almost got away with killing three people in Texas, but a secret storage unit helped crack the case.
The shocking murders of two Texas prosecutors and the wife of one of them left the small town-area of Kaufman County shaken and on edge.
A task force made up of local, state, and federal agents had to investigate whether the victims’ reputations for putting bad guys behind bars was the motive for revenge-seeking criminals tied to a white supremacy group, as once theorized, or if was there a killer among those living in Kaufman County.
The case made national headlines and is now the focus of the "Vendetta" episode of Dateline: The Smoking Gun, airing Thursdays at 8/7c p.m. on Oxygen.
Prosecutor Mark Hasse shot dead on way to court
On January 31, 2013, Mark Hasse, a 57-year-old chief assistant district attorney for Kaufman County, was gunned down just before 9 a.m. while walking to the courthouse in Kaufman, about 30 miles southeast of Dallas. Jason Stastny, then an officer with the Kaufman Police Department, was responding to a burglary just blocks away from the shooting, and raced to help.
“It was just a slow and methodical five shots,” Stastny told Dateline. “Then there was a little pause, I guess you’d say, and then three more shots after that.”
Hasse, once a prosecutor who'd specialized in organized crime for the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office, died on the scene, having sustained multiple gunshot wounds, including one to the face.
Witnesses saw the unidentified shooter get into the passenger’s seat of a white Ford Crown Victoria before the driver sped away from the scene, a fact that suggested more than one person was involved. The gunman wore a bulletproof vest and tactical gear. A lack of shell casings at the scene indicated he used a revolver.
One witness reported hearing Hasse tell the assailant, “I’m sorry,” which suggested the shooting could have been personal.
“We had a very bad person that was still on the loose,” Jolie Stewart, then a lieutenant with the Kaufman County Sheriff’s Office, told Dateline: The Smoking Gun. “I just never in a million years would have expected one of our prosecutors — much less somebody that I knew personally — to be laying on the ground dead.”
Authorities try to figure out who wanted Mark Hasse dead
The crime sent shockwaves around the community. Residents, especially those in law enforcement, feared they could be targets of a madman seeking revenge against authorities.
Kaufman County Criminal District Attorney Mike McLelland took the murder to heart, making public appeals to find the killer, as seen in a press conference replayed on Dateline.
“We lost a really, really good man,” McLelland said in the address. “I hope that the people that did this are watching because we’re very confident that we’re gonna find you. We’re gonna pull you out of whatever hole you’re in, and we’re gonna bring you back and let the people of Kaufman County prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.”
Federal agents looked into Hasse’s past cases, but there were no red flags as to who might have wanted the prosecutor dead. Days and weeks went by, and according to former Kaufman County prosecutor Shannon Hebert, McLelland’s return to the office was “very difficult” after Hasse’s death.
McLelland and his wife, Cynthia McLelland, had close ties with Hasse. The district attorney's wife — a nurse and quilter who regularly baked sweets for Hasse and others at the courthouse — was beloved in the office,
Investigators had few leads in the case until about a month after the homicide. That’s when an anonymous tip came through to the county’s Crime Stoppers branch, special prosecutors Bill Wirskye and Toby Shook shared with Dateline: The Smoking Gun.
“The tipster said that they’d been in a bar in a small town in Kaufman and overheard two white males talking about the Hasse killing and taking responsibility for it,” Shook said.
However, the tipster did not leave enough details for authorities to chase the lead anywhere significant.
Investigators then looked into the Aryan Brotherhood, as there had been general threats by the white supremacist gang since Kaufman County prosecutors were recently named as helping indict 34 alleged members on racketeering charges. The tip gained traction about seven weeks after Hasse’s death when Tom Clements, then-head of the Colorado Department of Corrections, was assassinated on March 19, 2013, at the front door of his Monument, Colorado, home some 800 miles away from Kaufman.
The suspect was Evan Ebel, a former inmate with ties to white supremacy.
While on the run, Ebel shot a deputy in the face during a routine traffic stop (the deputy survived). His time as a fugitive ended in a shootout that left Ebel dead in Wise County, Texas, about 100 miles from Kaufman. But eventually, he was ruled out as a suspect in the Hasse killing, and investigators were back to square one.
District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife fatally shot
On March 30, 2013 — two months after Hasse’s murder — loved ones grew concerned when they couldn't connect with District Attorney McLelland and his wife, Cynthia. It was Easter weekend, and that Saturday morning, Cynthia had plans to prepare a big holiday feast for friends and family.
Her friend, Leah Phillips, told Dateline: The Smoking Gun that she headed to the couple’s rural home to drop off vegetables. With the help of her son, a Dallas police officer, they found the McLellands shot to death inside the house.
Texas Ranger Eric Kasper was on the case, citing no signs of a break-in. Like with Hasse’s case, the shooter drove a white Ford Crown Victoria, as captured on security video. Motion detectors placed the two-minute-long shooting at around 6:40 a.m.
“This started as soon as the door opened,” Kasper said of the ambush. “Ms. McLelland and Mr. McLelland were retreating.”
On Sunday night, a new tip to Crime Stoppers piqued investigators’ interest when someone claiming to be behind all three murders offered details about the ammunition. It was information only the killer or someone close to the killer could have known.
“Do we have your attention now?” the tipster began.
The person who left the tip promised not to proceed with yet another attack if a particular judge was taken out of office: “We are not unreasonable, but we will not be stopped.”
Meanwhile, investigators found one common denominator between Hasse and the McLellands: a former sheriff’s deputy, longtime attorney, and justice of the peace, Eric Williams.
Who is Eric Williams?
Williams was an elected official who made headlines after he was charged and convicted of stealing three computer monitors from tKaufman County, Texas, as captured by surveillance video.
District Attorney McLelland’s stepdaughter, Christina Foreman, confirmed that McLelland was “offended” that someone of Williams’ position would commit a crime. He partnered with Hasse to prosecute the case himself, something he rarely did.
“These people elected you,” said Foreman. “You’re supposed to be doing good things for the community, not stealing from it.”
Ultimately, Williams was found guilty of theft, lost his license to practice law, and was booted from his job as justice of the peace.
Williams was previously questioned in the Hasse murder investigation, and following the McLelland murders, he spoke about the shootings in front of news cameras. Investigators learned that Williams had lied to authorities about using his position to access county databases, where he searched for Hasse's and the McLellands’ home addresses.
During an official search of Williams’ home, which he shared with his wife, Kim Williams, investigators found a scrap of paper containing a series of numbers. A deputy recognized the numbers as ones tied to the county Crime Stoppers tip line. As it turned out, it was Williams who'd been leaving tips, claiming responsibility for Hasse's and the McLellands' murders.
It wasn’t enough to charge Williams with murder, but it was enough for authorities to charge him with making terroristic threats, and he was subsequently arrested. According to prosecutors Wirskye and Shook, their best lead came from a former National Guardsman who’d served with Williams.
“He said, ‘Mr. Wirskye, I have something to tell you about Eric Williams: I think I may have rented him a storage unit,’” Wirskye told Dateline: The Smoking Gun.
The smoking gun in the case
Authorities headed to the storage facility in Seagoville, Texas, about 15 miles west of Kaufman, where they found a treasure trove of evidence. Williams’ unit contained tactical gear (including bulletproof vests), more than a dozen fake police badges, police uniforms, thousands of rounds of ammunition, a small arsenal of firearms, and even jars of homemade napalm.
They also found the white Ford Crown Victoria that was spotted at both crime scenes, registered under the alias “Richard Green.”
Furthermore, surveillance video from the storage facility captured the Crown Vic leaving and returning in a one-hour window that matched when the McLellands were killed less than 15 miles away.
“It’s a feeling I’ll never forget,” Kasper told Dateline: The Smoking Gun. “We’d been on this rollercoaster ride for so long, and this was the big break. The puzzle pieces fit together now.”
On April 18, 2013, Williams was charged with three counts of capital murder, which prosecutors decided to try separately.
Williams pleaded not guilty, and as part of the defense for Cynthia's homicide, attorneys cited that there was no ballistic evidence tying Williams to the crime. But at the end of trial in December 2014, a jury unanimously found Williams guilty of capital murder.
A twist in the case
Prosecutors saved a surprise witness for the penalty phase of trial, where it would be decided whether Williams would be sentenced to death or life in prison. Williams’ wife of 15 years, Kim, took the stand, explaining they had a dress rehearsal of sorts the night before the McLelland murders.
She confessed to being her husband’s accomplice and driving the getaway car in the Hasse murder, as well.
“It was a cold day, and there was excitement in the air,” she told the courts.
Kim said it was her husband’s plan for them to dress as law enforcement to carry out the murders. She said that Williams had planned on posing as a policeman in anticipation that Cynthia would open the door as Kim stood as a lookout.
While revenge for Williams’ theft conviction was aimed at Hasse and McLelland, they also killed Cynthia for being “collateral damage,” Kim told investigators. She admitted to “celebrating” the murders by cooking steaks on the grill at her parents’ residence.
On the stand, Kim said both she and her husband were “happy” after driving away from the Hasse murder.
“I so believed in Eric and everything he told me,” she continued. “His anger was my anger.”
Kim led authorities to the murder weapons, which the pair threw into a lake. She also revealed plans for them to kill a judge with a crossbow, but not before torturing him with napalm.
“I think it proved that, beyond any doubt, that Eric Williams was a psychopath, and this was a horribly toxic, screwed up marriage,” Wirskye told Dateline: The Smoking Gun. “I think it lets you know what kind of darkness was going inside that house and inside their hearts.”
Williams was sentenced to death for Cynthia’s murder. Prosecutors, satisfied with the sentence, did not try him for the murders of Hasse and McLelland. Kim was convicted of murder and sentenced to 40 years behind bars, after her cooperation led to prosecutors taking a death sentence off the table.
Both remain in prison.
Watch all-new episodes of Dateline: The Smoking Gun on Thursdays at 8/7c p.m. on Oxygen.
