KAUFMAN, Texas — A former justice of the peace has been charged with murder in the slayings of a North Texas district attorney and his assistant who prosecuted him for theft, officials said Thursday.
Eric Lyle Williams, 46, and his wife, Kim Lene Williams, 46, have been charged with capital murder in an apparent revenge plot that shook Kaufman County and sparked fear of an unprecedented attack on the rule of law in Texas.
Suspicion of involvement by Mexican drug cartels and a white-supremacist prison gang faded, as officials think the couple acted alone in killing Kaufman County Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse outside the county courthouse in late January, and District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, in their home March 30.
Eric Williams did the shooting and Kim Williams did the driving in Hasse’s killing, and she waited in the car while her husband killed the McLellands at their home, Kaufman County Sheriff David Byrnes said at a news conference Thursday.
“It’s kind of mind-boggling to me that someone would go out and shoot three innocent people for any motive,” Byrnes said. “It would appear any motive would be from his past legal problems.”
The former justice of the peace had been prosecuted by McLelland and Hasse in the theft of three computers. In that case, the prosecutors presented testimony that Williams had made death threats against a former girlfriend and an attorney.
A jury found Williams guilty. He received two years’ probation and lost his law license and job.
Byrnes said the case broke open when officials discovered a storage unit containing weapons and a vehicle. Kim Williams confessed to her role and that of her husband, officials said, and a capital murder charge against her followed.
Eric Williams has been in the Kaufman County jail since Saturday, when officials had arrested him on suspicion of making a “terroristic threat” against investigators from his personal computer the day after the McLellands’ deaths.
