Kaufman County Texas District Attorney Killed

Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife were killed at their house this weekend.  This follows the shooting death of a Kaufman County Assistant District Attorney two months ago.

"Texas DA, slain in his home, had armed himself after an assistant was gunned down 2 months ago," is the AP report, via the Washington Post.

Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland took no chances after one of his assistant prosecutors was gunned down two months ago. McLelland said he carried a gun everywhere he went and was extra careful when answering the door at his home.

“I’m ahead of everybody else because, basically, I’m a soldier,” the 23-year Army veteran said in an interview less than two weeks ago.

On Saturday, he and his wife were found shot to death in their rural home just outside the town of Forney, about 20 miles from Dallas.

While investigators gave no motive for the killings, Forney Mayor Darren Rozell said: “It appears this was not a random act.”

And:

The slayings came less than two weeks after Colorado’s prison chief was shot to death at his front door, apparently by an ex-convict, and a couple of months after Kaufman County Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse was killed in a parking lot a block from his courthouse office. No arrests have been made in Hasse’s slaying Jan. 31.

McLelland, 63, is the 13th prosecutor killed in the U.S. since the National Association of District Attorneys began keeping count in the 1960s.

Sheriff David Byrnes would not give details Sunday of how the killings unfolded and said there was nothing to indicate for certain whether the DA’s slaying was connected to Hasse’s.

The New York Times reports, "Gunfire Claims 2nd Prosecutor in Texas County."  It's by Manny Fernandez, Michael Schwirtz, and Serge F. Kovaleski.

After the daylight assassination of his deputy two months ago, Mike McLelland, the district attorney in largely rural Kaufman County, responded with a flash of angry bravado, denigrating the perpetrators as “scum” and vowing to hunt them down.

A former Army officer who served in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm, Mr. McLelland carried a gun and refused to be intimidated, according to a friend and the local news media, even as his wife expressed unease, worrying that her husband, too, could be in danger.

“I hope that the people that did this are watching, because we’re very confident that we’re going to find you,” he said at a news conference hours after his deputy was killed. “We’re going to pull you out of whatever hole you’re in. We’re going to bring you back and let the people of Kaufman County prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.”

On Saturday evening, the authorities found Mr. McLelland, 63, and his wife, Cynthia, 65, shot to death inside their home in Forney, Tex., in Kaufman County. The killings galvanized law enforcement officials and frightened and bewildered local residents, many of them still shaken by the shooting of the deputy, Mark E. Hasse, 57, on Jan. 31. That case remains unsolved.

The police said Sunday that they had increased security for local elected officials and would tighten security at the county courthouse. The courthouse was scheduled to be open Monday, but Mr. McLelland’s office will be closed.

The Times also has an infographic, "Could Killings be Connected?"

"Another Texas prosecutor is slain; officials seek motives," by Matt Pearce in the Los Angeles Times.

The last time a prosecutor was gunned down in Kaufman County, Texas, in January, top county prosecutor Mike McLelland stood in front of reporters and vowed to carry on.

"We’ll still make the walk, and we’ll still show up," McLelland said of the courthouse parking lot where one of his assistant district attorneys, Mark Hasse, was gunned down by an unidentified assailant Jan. 31. "And we’ll still send bad guys out of Kaufman County every chance we get. We’re not stopping. We’re not slowing down.”

Two months later, on Saturday evening, McLelland, 63, and his wife, Cynthia, 65, were found shot dead in their home near Forney, east of Dallas. And once again, Kaufman County Sheriff David Byrnes stood in front of reporters without answers as the attack raised fears of a Christopher Dorner-style plot on the lives of law enforcement officials in Texas.

Byrnes wouldn't say whether the two prosecutors' deaths were related. He wouldn't say if the home showed any sign of forced entry. He wouldn't say if there were any indications that a white supremacist group was involved, as McLelland himself had speculated about the Aryan Brotherhood's involvement with Hasse's death.  

Byrnes also said McLelland had not voiced any concerns about his safety, although McLelland himself told a slightly different story in an interview with the Associated Press two weeks ago: The prosecutor had started carrying a gun after his colleague's death and had started answering the door more carefully.

"Texas prison gang to get scrutiny in double slaying, sources say," is the Dallas Morning News report by Kevin Krause.

The killing of the Kaufman County district attorney and his wife is likely to turn up the heat on the notorious Aryan Brotherhood of Texas prison gang.

Suspicion already had fallen on the Aryan Brotherhood after Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse was gunned down Jan. 31 near the Kaufman County Courthouse.

Now, with the slaying of District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, at their home near Forney, law enforcement sources say authorities will pursue any possible connections between the cases and the violent white supremacist gang.

Federal, state and local law enforcement dealt a serious blow to the gang in October with the federal racketeering indictments in Houston of 34 alleged members, including four top bosses. The Kaufman County district attorney’s office was part of the multi-agency task force credited with bringing the cases.

In December, the Texas Department of Public Safety warned that the Aryan Brotherhood could be “planning retaliation against law enforcement officials” who helped secure the indictments in Houston.

“High-ranking members … are involved in issuing orders to inflict ‘mass casualties or death’ to law enforcement officials who were involved in cases where Aryan Brotherhood of Texas are facing life sentences or the death penalty,” the department said.

It also warned that the gang was “conducting surveillance on law enforcement officers.”

Shortly after that alert, Hasse was killed in front of witnesses.

An official with the U.S. Marshals Service recently said in a widely circulated email that the Aryan Brotherhood was the focus of its investigation into Hasse’s death.