CrimeWife of former judge accuses husband of Texas prosecutor killings

The investigation into the murders of two prosecutors in Texas has taken a strange twist. The wife of a former justice of the peace has come forward, admitting she was involved in the murders of Mike McLelland, his wife Cynthia McLelland, and Mark Hasse, who worked in McLelland’s office.

The New York Times reports that Kim Williams told police that she was the driver in both shootings and that her husband Eric, whose legal and political career collapsed after he was convicted  on theft and burglary charges involving a dispute about three computer monitors worth less than $2,000, carried out the killings.

At first,  local and federal law enforcement agencies were looking into white-supremacist groups and Mexican drug cartels as potential suspects. The belief that the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas was involved was so strong that a federal prosecutor dropped out of a separate investigation of the group due to safety concerns.

The Times notes that according to an affidavit filed by the authorities, Kim Williams confessed to her role in the shootings during an interview with investigators on Tuesday. She also told investigators that her husband was the shooter in both incidents.

“I find it hard to believe that someone could have written a novel with all these twists and turns in a small rural county in Texas,” Bruce Wood, the county’s top elected official told the Times. “People are relieved but still stunned.”

During the interview, Kim gave investigators detailed accounts of the crime scenes which were not released to the public. The authorities did not formally charge Eric Williams with the murders until Thursday afternoon; instead he was arrested on Tuesday for sending an anonymous e-mail threatening another attack, and was being held on a $3 million bond.

Eric was a successful lawyer, a member of the chamber of commerce, and was elected a justice of the peace in May 2011, when he was accused of stealing the monitors from a county office.

After McLelland and Hasse worked the case, Williams was found guilty in 2012 and was removed from office, had his legal license suspended, and lost his state-issued peace officer license. Court documents say that Williams felt the evidence against him was tampered with and that McLelland took the case to settle a political grudge. 

After the case ended, both Hasse and McLelland started to carry firearms, because they felt Williams was a threat to their safety. The affidavit, filed by authorities state that McLelland told his associates and those close to him that he believed investigators should consider Williams to be a suspect in the death of Hasse. As a result, Williams being a suspect did not surprise many people, but the news that his wife was in on the plot did.

Authorities spent weeks trying to find evidence to tie Williams to the case, but could not find anything until the authorities arrived at a self-storage center just outside Kaufman last weekend.

At the center, police found a large unit where Williams stored the guns used in the murders and the car his wife described. The unit was rented by an associate of Williams and it is unclear whether that person will face charges.

Kim Williams has been charged with capital murder and is currently being held on a $10 million bond.