Up next, the k*ller is
hunting law enforcement.
He was m*rder*d
right outside the courthouse.
I was just amazed and shocked.
Possible targets are on edge.
It felt like there
was a vendetta
against law enforcement
as a whole.
This hit very close to home.
That att*ck was very brazen.
But the k*ller's
own arrogance creates the clue
that exposes him.
We had our evidence.
Just a profound sense of relief
that we had our guy.
It was kind of a mix
of Christmas morning
and the Texas Rangers
winning the World Series.
Kaufman County, Texas,
is close to Dallas,
yet retains many of
the down-home qualities
Texans still hold dear.
But proximity to Dallas
is not without its cost,
and Kaufman city,
the county seat,
sees more than
its fair share of crime.
It's kind of like Mayberry,
but Mayberry with
methamphetamine, maybe,
and the Aryan Brotherhood.
Just by being situated
close to Dallas County,
they get a lot of
that big-city crime slopping
over their county borders.
On a January morning in 2013,
it was business as usual around
the Kaufman County Courthouse.
The time of day,
this is the time
when the courthouse
really starts to come alive
and the square itself
comes alive.
For Mark Hasse,
a well-respected prosecutor,
it looked to be
a regular day at work.
As Mark made his way
to the courthouse,
a man came up to him
and appeared to confront him.
Lenda Bush, a prosecutor
and a former police officer,
saw all of this
as she was parking her car.
Mark was walking toward
the courthouse.
As they got closer
to each other,
the person who was walking
toward Mark shoved him.
Within seconds, this became
much more than a shoving match.
The man who'd approached Mark
pulled out a p*stol,
pushed it into Mark's neck
and sh*t him five times.
Mark crumpled to the sidewalk.
The sh**t, who Lenda
couldn't identify,
ran to a waiting car and was
driven away from the scene.
Lenda's police training
kicked in,
and she followed
the getaway car.
There was not
a license plate there,
so I saw no number or anything.
Lenda tried to tail the car,
getting as many details on the
make and model as she could
and then rushed back
to help her friend.
Police arrived moments later.
Mark was still alone
when I got there,
and I started giving him CPR.
And more importantly, I started
telling him that we're here,
we know what's happened,
and help is on its way.
But it was too late.
The courthouse community
was a tight-knit group.
Everyone was stunned
by this m*rder.
It was horribly brazen.
It was horrific.
It was terrible.
The att*ck itself
was in broad daylight,
right off a busy town square.
It was unprecedented.
The m*rder was seen
by a lot of people,
but eyewitness descriptions,
as is common, vary wildly.
However, in this case,
the witnesses agreed
on one thing.
The sh**t
was all dressed in black.
Even his face seemed
to be concealed in some way,
like he had some type
of a mask on
that they really
couldn't describe it.
They couldn't put it into words.
This had all the
trappings of a professional hit.
Someone had clearly
targeted Mark Hasse,
a prosecutor known
for his scrupulous honesty.
The assassination
of a public prosecutor
was a national news story.
Investigators tonight combing
through leads
in a desperate attempt
to track down the k*ller
who sh*t and k*lled Mark Hasse.
For Mark Hasse's coworkers,
it was an unmitigated tragedy.
The unmarried 57-year-old
had put a lot of criminals
behind bars.
He was known around
the courthouse
as kind of the little lawyer
with the big voice,
and just very tenacious and kind
of a prosecutor's prosecutor.
And it appeared
that's what got him k*lled,
which had his coworkers
wondering if anyone else
could be a target.
People were concerned.
Citizens were concerned.
Law enforcement were concerned.
It was the not knowing
who's doing this,
not knowing who's possibly next,
and not knowing why
this was being done.
After the shocking
m*rder of Mark Hasse,
the point man on finding
his k*ller was Mark's boss,
District Attorney
Mike McLelland.
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.
Mike took Mark's death
very personally.
It was on Mike's watch,
and especially since it was
right outside of the courthouse,
Mike felt like he should have
been able to protect him
or been there in some way.
Suspicion immediately
fell on people Mark Hasse
had put in jail.
He prosecuted a
lot of organized-crime individuals,
heavy hitters, g*ng-related-type
cases, so you thought
maybe it might have been
retribution for one of them.
He tried a lot of
high-level drug cases,
a lot of very violent
drug cases.
A major focus was to look
back at some of those old cases
and see if anybody
had paroled out,
or any of those guys that
he'd gotten so much time on
still carried
that level of vengeance
that they would have him
gunned down.
In line with the theory
that this was a professional hit,
there was only one piece of
evidence at the crime scene...
a single b*llet,
apparently a missed sh*t.
It was kind of a unique
type of amm*nit*on,
not one that you see a lot.
It was .38 +P amm*nit*on.
This amm*nit*on is
built to be more powerful
than a standard .38 caliber,
perhaps another sign
the sh**t was a professional.
That b*llet was fired
from either a .38 Special
with five lands and grooves,
with a right-hand
or clockwise twist.
Possible manufacturers
of the firearm
that could have fired
that b*llet included,
but were not limited to, Ruger,
Smith & Wesson, or Taurus.
Detectives pored over
Mark Hasse's case files,
looking for potential suspects.
Then, six weeks
after the m*rder,
there was a nearly
identical m*rder in Colorado.
We begin now with
the breaking news
in the m*rder of Colorado's
prison chief.
The head of
the state's Department of Corrections
was gunned down
on his front porch.
Two days later, a car linked to
that m*rder was found in Texas.
The driver,
was a white supremacist
with a history of v*olence.
He promptly sh*t and wounded
the deputy who pulled him over
and then led police
on a miles-long car chase
that only ended after he crashed
into a truck and later d*ed.
This bizarre series of events
had a possible direct connection
to Mark Hasse.
He has put a lot of members
of the Aryan Brotherhood,
a notoriously violent
white supremacist g*ng, in jail.
So, obviously, getting into
a sh**t-out with law enforcement,
somebody connected to
the white prison gangs.
We looked at him
almost instantly
as a potential suspect
in this case.
A b*llet recovered
from this sh**t-out with police
was consistent
with the caliber of b*llet
recovered from the Hasse m*rder,
but this connection
quickly fizzled out.
Evan Ebel was not in Texas
at the time Mark was sh*t.
It was a strange coincidence
how all of this happened.
Everything just kind of
intersected at the same time.
A lot of our county officials
had protection.
We didn't know who was watching,
and I had two daughters that
I wanted to make sure were safe.
Nine days after
the Evan Ebel sh**t-out,
a Dallas police officer
paid a visit
to the home of Kaufman County
district attorney
Mike McLelland,
an old family friend,
and what that officer discovered
brutally confirmed suspicions
that someone was
after local law enforcement.
This is a targeted event.
It has to be.
Somebody just doesn't come
in your house
and k*ll you in
your own home for no reason.
Mike McLelland was the
hard-charging district attorney
of Kaufman County.
His wife, Cynthia, was a nurse
who loved her role
as the D.A.'s
at-home right hand.
She definitely
enjoyed kind of being the mom
of the D.A.'s office.
She would bring in cookies,
or if someone was having a new
housewarming or a new baby,
she would make them a quilt.
She loved hosting
Christmas parties for everybody.
The McLellands, like everyone
in Kaufman County law enforcement,
were on guard after
the execution-style m*rder
of Mark Hasse,
one of Mike McLelland's
top prosecutors.
Everyone was definitely on edge.
I mean, you had a first
assistant district attorney
that was m*rder*d
right outside the courthouse.
So, I think it made everybody
a little bit nervous
as to what was going on and how
they should proceed after this.
C.J. Tomlinson,
a Dallas police officer,
had close ties
to the McLelland family.
His parents had known them
for years.
In fact, he later married
their daughter, Christina.
On the Saturday before Easter,
the McLellands weren't
returning any calls.
I had received
a phone call from my mother
saying that she was going
to go over
to the house and check on them
because she hadn't been able
to get ahold
of Mike or Cynthia all day.
At that point, I didn't think
a whole lot about it.
I said, "Okay, go over there."
C.J.'s mother arrived
to find the house locked,
with the lights on
and the cars in the driveway.
Concerned, she called her son.
Soon, both C.J. and his
mother entered the home
and found a scene
of stunning v*olence.
Whoever did that was a monster.
Whoever was capable
of doing that,
walking into someone's house
and sh**ting two people,
and an innocent lady that had
nothing to do with anything
besides being married
to the D.A.
You're a monster.
The McLellands,
still dressed in their pajamas,
had been sh*t repeatedly...
Mike, 16 times, Cynthia, 8.
It was just a savage,
brutal crime scene
that just kind of
screamed "overkill"
when you looked
at the crime scene.
There was no forced entry.
No one knew how the k*ller
got into the house.
But it was clear
he had only one purpose.
If I had to describe it,
it was almost like a hunt.
It was very concentrated
on them.
There's no doubt that he went
in there
with the intent to k*ll
whoever was in there.
There was no w*apon
at the scene,
but analysts recovered
which the sh**t clearly
didn't attempt to hide.
These .223-caliber casings
were consistent with b*ll*ts
recovered at the McLellands'
autopsies.
On the b*ll*ts,
were were able to look
at those microscopic patterns
to determine that
one single firearm had fired
all of those b*ll*ts.
So, essentially, investigators
were looking for one firearm
that was used in that offense.
And that firearm was
some sort of semiautomatic as*ault r*fle.
A piece of surveillance video
from a nearby business
raised a disturbing possibility
that the k*ller might be
a disgruntled member
of local law enforcement.
There was this one video
that was captured near
the McLellands' home,
and it was an unmarked
white Crown Victoria
that was similar
to a police car.
That raised a red flag for us.
Did Mike McLelland
know his k*ller?
Had he let a police officer
into his home,
not knowing he and his wife
could be a target?
No one had any answers,
and Kaufman County had never
seen anything like this before.
To have two prosecutors
from the same office,
along with one of their spouses,
gunned down in such
a short time frame,
it just makes your head spin.
I didn't have any context
in which to put it.
All I knew is, I was scared.
after the McLelland murders
came a possible break.
Among the hundreds of tips
that poured
into the Crime Stoppers website
was one that jumped out.
This tipster claimed credit
for the murders under a headline
that read, "Do we have
your full attention now?"
The tip actually named
the amm*nit*on type
in the Hasse m*rder,
which did get our attention,
because until now, it was only
law enforcement who knew this.
So it was either the sh**t
or law enforcement,
because we were the only ones
who knew at the time.
The tipster threatened
to commit more murders
unless a local judge
resigned that week.
Despite the tip, frustrated
detectives were no closer
to identifying a suspect,
until they found out something
that Mark Hasse
and Mike McLelland had in common
before they were m*rder*d.
One year earlier, they convicted
a local justice of the peace,
for theft of public property.
His case appeared to be
the only thing that tied
the murders together,
but theft of public property
is a long way
from cold-blooded m*rder.
It's a big stretch, for sure...
stealing computer monitors
from the county I.T.
to capital m*rder.
Yeah, that's a big stretch.
Just six months
into Eric Williams' job
as a local justice of the peace,
he was caught on tape taking
computers from his office.
He said it was perfectly legal.
He compared the computer
monitors with toilet paper.
He thought it was okay to go
in the room
and get toilet paper
for his bathrooms in his office,
so he just went into the room
and took what he wanted.
Mike McLelland assigned
his toughest prosecutor, Mark Hasse,
to prosecute the case with him.
Eric Williams was convicted
and got probation,
but the conviction
ended his career.
His life had been on
an upward trajectory for quite some time,
and then when he was convicted
of these crimes
by Mark and Mike,
that was the first bad thing
that had gone wrong in his life.
Was this the vendetta
feared by local law enforcement?
A criminal record and
the possibility of revenge
was enough for a search warrant.
In Williams' house,
on a piece of scrap paper,
detectives found
a game-changing clue...
the password to
the Crime Stoppers' tip line.
Every time a tip
is submitted online,
it generates a unique password
to that website,
and Eric Williams,
as the user of that tip,
had a distinct
individual password,
and he wrote that down.
One of the agents recognized
that that was the password
for the online tip
we had been concerned about,
so it was a good piece
of detective work.
When word got out that
Williams was a suspect,
detectives got a call
from a friend of his.
He knew of a storage shed
that might have a connection
to the murders.
Investigators descended
on the facility,
found a white Crown Victoria
similar to the one
caught on video
leaving the crime scene.
And that wasn't all.
There were plenty of weapons
that look like A.R.-type weapons
or .38 caliber, .357s.
That was an amazing moment.
There's probably not words
that would adequately express
what it felt like
when we saw that door go up.
Among all
the firepower in the shed,
the key piece of evidence
appeared to be
one unfired round,
apparently left by accident.
Everything else, all the other
thousands of rounds
Eric Williams
had in that storage unit
was meticulously put away
and kept in place.
He was a neat freak.
But this one live round
was found in the bottom
of a tactical bag,
and a fast-thinking
FBI agent collected it,
packaged it separately,
and sent it to the lab.
This live round had apparently
been in one of Williams'
a*t*matic r*fles
and then taken out
without ever having been fired.
But when the b*llet
was put in the g*n
and when it was ejected,
tool marks
were left on the soft metal
of the b*llet's shell casing.
I determined that that unfired
cartridge had at one time
been cycled in the same
unknown firearm
as all the fired cartridge cases
from the McLelland crime scene.
Looking at those
microscopic patterns,
we determined that
that unfired cartridge had,
in fact, been loaded and then
unloaded from the same firearm
as the fired cartridge
cases from the crime scene.
The ballistics was huge for us
because it put Eric
in the home of the McLellands.
There was one last question.
Who drove Williams away
from the Mark Hasse m*rder?
Williams' wife, Kim,
was questioned.
When told of the mountain
of evidence against her husband
and that both of them
faced possible execution,
she immediately admitted
she was in on the plot.
She told us
that Eric's pain was her pain,
"His joy was my joy."
So I think she was
his biggest cheerleader.
She felt wronged by Mark
and Mike,
and she wanted payback just
as bad as Eric Williams did.
Kim Williams led
police to a local lake
where she claimed she
and Eric disposed of evidence.
Dive teams later found
the mask Williams wore
when he sh*t Mark Hasse.
Also found were two g*ns,
one of which was tied back
to the Mark Hasse m*rder
by ballistic analysts.
Prosecutors say Eric Williams
planned everything.
At the McLelland home,
he came in sh**ting,
knowing his as*ault r*fle would
leave shell casings behind.
What he apparently didn't know
was that when he emptied
the unused b*ll*ts
from that g*n after the m*rder
and picked up those b*ll*ts,
he missed one,
and that b*llet had microscopic
tool marks
that tied it back to the g*n
used to k*ll the McLellands.
After the murders,
Eric Williams and his wife
celebrated with a steak dinner.
One thing to understand
about Eric Williams,
he's a psychopath that thinks
he's smarter than everyone.
Finally, his ego
was his undoing.
And that ego was on full display
when Williams drove his Segway
to talk to reporters
shortly after the murders.
My heartfelt condolences go out
to both the McLelland family
and the Hasse family, because
they were in public office,
doing the right thing,
and for some reason
that we're not aware of,
paid the ultimate price
for that.
In December of 2014,
Eric Williams was convicted
of capital m*rder
and got the death penalty.
Kim Williams pleaded guilty
to first degree m*rder
and was sentenced to 40 years.
The murders left their mark
on the community,
and might not have been solved
if not for the microscopic marks
left on the single b*llet that
finally broke the case open.
This case would
have been exponentially more difficult
if we did not
have the forensics.
Even though we don't have
the g*n,
we know the g*n that was in
Eric Williams' storage unit
was the same g*n that was
at the McLelland crime scene.
So that ballistic piece, for us,
without that m*rder w*apon,
was just absolutely a home run
for us.