WASHINGTON, April 1 (RIA Novosti) – Public officials in Kaufman County, Texas are on a high state of alert and some are under around-the-clock protection, after the second county prosecutor in two months was shot to death.
Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, were gunned down inside their home near Dallas over the weekend. Their murders come two months after Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse was shot to death near the county courthouse on his way to work Jan. 31.
“This whole thing is shocking to all of us,” said Kaufman County Judge Bruce Wood during a Monday news conference. “I would be less than honest if I told you I was not worried.”
The killer or killers are still at large and investigators are trying to determine if the murders are linked. Several dozen FBI agents are assisting in the case.
Staff who showed up for work Monday at the Kaufman County courthouse were escorted into the building by armed guards, and security has been stepped up for prosecutors and other officials around the state.
After Hasse’s murder in January, McLelland told reporters, “I hope the people that did this are watching. Because we’re very confident that we’re going to find you, pull you out of whatever hole you’re in, bring you back and let the people of Kaufman County prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.”
Another law enforcement official in nearby Colorado was also murdered recently. State prisons chief Tom Clements was shot dead on March 19 in the doorway of his home near Colorado Springs.
Clements is believed to have been killed by a white supremacist who did time in a Colorado prison. The suspected shooter, Evan Ebel, died in a shootout with police in Decatur, Texas, on March 21, two days after Clements’ murder. Evidence found in Ebel’s car appeared to link him to the murder of Clements.
US media reported Monday that Texas law enforcement officials are investigating whether an offshoot of the white supremacist group, the Aryan Brotherhood, might be involved in the murders of the McLellands and Hasse.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization that fights hate crimes in the United States, dozens of members of the Aryan Brotherhood in Texas (ABT) were charged last year by the US Department of Justice with everything from murder to conspiracy, arson, robbery and drug trafficking. Ten members of the group could face the death penalty if convicted.
Kaufman County prosecutors, including Hasse, helped bring the right-wing group to justice, but McLelland said after his deputy was killed that Hasse was only marginally involved in the case.
Law enforcement officials said Mexican drug cartels could also be behind the killings. A report released March 27 by the Texas Department of Public Safety called the cartels “the most significant organized crime threat to the state.”
The report noted that six cartels “control networks operating in the state” and said Mexican drug rings are responsible for 60,000 deaths since 2006 in Mexico.
Officials refused to draw ties between the murders in Texas and Colorado, but some residents in Kaufman County were convinced the killings of the three law enforcement officials were linked, and the work of an organized group.
“It has to be organized for them to disappear the way they do,” Betty Bryant, a resident of Kaufman, told National Public Radio. She added that she was convinced that the killers “know who they want… the officials.”
A report in the Denver Post said that the sheriff’s office in El Paso County, Colorado which is investigating the murder of Clements, has “reached out” to officials in Kaufman County, Texas to talk about the two investigations in the neighboring states, but insisted that there was “nothing to indicate that they are connected.”
