Kaufman county, southeast of Dallas, is "God and guns" country without a doubt. Rural hardcore conservative "values" dominate the area like most (all?) of rural Texas. And when those values come into conflict we found out just how brittle they can be. Some people may call what happened an anomaly. I call it a pattern for the future in this ever more conservative, judgmental country of ours. There's no honor among liars, even when they win they always self-devour in the end.
Let's start at the beginning of the chain reaction of events that led to the murder of an assistant D.A, the D.A. and the D.A's wife in this Texas county. Eric Williams, a Kaufman Justice of the Peace, was having trouble with his boss. Williams had a sterling background with a seemingly very bright future as "a member of Mensa; an honorably discharged Army lieutenant; a captain and weapons instructor in the Texas State Guard; a Kaufman County sheriff's reserve officer; and a licensed peace officer since the '80s." And one thing he wanted to do was vastly improve the county government by bringing it into the 21st century.
His predecessor, in fact, couldn't even send an email. And since "conservative" means resistant to change, Williams ran right into a stone wall in his attempts to eliminate waste and improve efficiency. Ever try to get your mom to learn a new piece of technology? Same sort of thing: "Over my dead body!" So Williams decided to take things in his own hands, taking three monitors out of the county building to jump start the process. This triggered a chain reaction that led to three dead bodies and national headlines for weeks. It's a plot straight out of a TV series because stuff like this just doesn't happen in real life.
But damned if it didn't!
Eric Williams (He needs your love)
The Kaufman D.A. had in his mind bought the stairway to heaven. He was a "black and white" sort of person with zero tolerance for being on the wrong side of the law - God's law to him. Only problem was like every other person ever born, he was not qualified to make that absolute judgment. But he was wholly seduced and corrupted by this idea, longing to prove himself and show the world his sterling morality. Pride goeth before a fall and whatnot.
When the surveillance tapes were reviewed showing Williams taking out the three monitors, William's boss saw the perfect opportunity to get rid of this thorn in his side, drawing up felony theft charges with an excited D.A. against the newly elected JP who had such high ambitions. Change must be fought at every turn! Williams was stunned when later that week arrest warrants were issued and he was cuffed, taken to jail and dragged across the headlines of the local paper.
And where was the loot in question? On eBay? Listed on craigslist? In a pawnshop? No. "One monitor was right there on Williams' desk, one was in the closet, and the last was in the back seat of his pickup." Williams claimed there was a simple explanation but by that time everyone had their "gotcha" wienies in a wad and didn't want to hear it. Too much stunted emotional growth, too much stubbornness, too much willful ignorance. Time for Kaufman officials to play the hero!
D.A. Mike McLelland (He needed your love too)
Kaufman D.A. Mike McLelland "lived by a code" because, you know, a code is much easier than a conscience to live with and made it easier for him to delineate his black-and-white outlook. To his eyes Williams represented government corruption that McLelland had been elected to clean up. Marshall Dillon gonna get them bad guys, prove the rightness of his code and get a ticker tape parade in one fell swoop! He fought in his moral indignation to drop the hammer on this perp and give him the maximum two year sentence. McLelland was mighty upset when the judge only gave Williams probation.
But that was not the real sentence for Williams. It was, in fact, much harsher. "The legal career, the elected position he'd held for less than five months, the good name he'd made for himself, the health insurance he needed for his wife — all was gone...He lost his seat as a justice of the peace. He lost his law license. He was no longer a member of the Texas Guard or a licensed peace officer." Williams, feeling he had nothing to live for and with his own rigid sense of outlaw justice feeling violated decided he wasn't going to stand for being railroaded into oblivion. That's how prosecutor and Assistant D.A. Mark Hasse ("A pitbull in court") wound up shot dead.
Wild speculation ensued. Aryan brotherhood, old grudges, Mexican cartels were all the rage in a salivating media. No one in his right mind kills an authority figure like that because they know the blowback would be enormous. The FBI and Texas Rangers were swarming the area, hellbent on finding the killer. No one thought to look inside their own community and weeks passed with no concrete evidence. Then dead bodies two and three, D.A. McLelland and his wife, were shot down in their own home, McLelland still in his pajamas. These were passion killings, a mind gone over the cliff.
On a tipoff police found the incriminating evidence they needed, arresting Williams and his wife (who allegedly confessed to driving the car while her husband pulled the trigger) and are holding them now on combined 33 million dollars in bonds. The combined worth of the three monitors was under $500. The ensuing wreckage of life: incalculable.
Rigid thinking. Zero tolerance. Black and white. Those are phrases that scare the hell out of me, I don't care how moral or right you think you are. Mind your own fucking business. We're all stupid and get on our high horse at times but uncorrected corruption like this can lead to horrific consequences. This is just an extreme case of the many thousands of injustices done every day by backwoods prosecutors playing to a corrupt conservative populace. Ruining lives over a joint, setting people up to play hero, and other crimes like this have been going on for decades. (See Tulia, Texas). In most cases those victims don't kill in retaliation but this was a victim of a different sort.
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