Security beefed up after 2nd Texas prosecutor slain

Rick Jervis | USATODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Texas sheriff: Extra security after D.A. killed Kaufman County Sheriff David Byrnes confirmed that DA Mike McLelland and his wife had been shot. As for whether their deaths were related to the slaying of an assistant DA, Byrnes said there was nothing to indicate that "for sure." (March 31)

Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife%2C Cynthia%2C were found dead at their home

Investigators are looking at possible link to assistant%27s death

Assistant Kaufman County District Attorney Mark Hasse was gunned down Jan. 31

Elected officials near Dallas were given extra security Sunday after a local district attorney and his wife were found shot to death inside their home.

The bodies of Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, were found Saturday, just two months after another prosecutor in the county was murdered on his way to work.

No suspects or motives have been identified in any of the murders.

Kaufman County Sheriff David Byrnes said it wasn't clear the three murders were connected. "We have nothing indicating that for sure," he said.

But a federal law enforcement official who has been briefed on the case but is not authorized to comment publicly told USA TODAY a connection between the killings seemed likely. "Given the profile and the position of (McLelland), you start with that theory until you have discounted that connection,'' the official said. "The way it appears is like an assault on the rule of law.''

McLelland, 63, and his wife Cynthia, 65, a psychiatric nurse at a state hospital, appear to have been killed Friday night when neighbors heard shots they mistook for thunder during a storm. Friends discovered the bodies Saturday in the couple's rural Forney home, about 20 miles from Dallas.

WFAA-TV in Dallas reported that 14 shells from a .223-caliber rifle were found at the scene. The station also reported that the district attorney's body was found in the hallway and his wife in a front room. USA TODAY could not independently verify the information.



Investigators have not yet connected the killings to the slaying of Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse, one of a dozen prosecutors who worked for McLelland.

Hasse, 57, was shot just before 9 a.m. on Jan. 31 after he got out of his car in a parking lot behind the county courthouse on his way to work.

STORY: Texas prosecutor gunned down

"There will be increased security at the courthouse tomorrow -- visible security," Sheriff Byrnes said Sunday.

"This is unnerving, unnerving to elected officials. It's unnerving to the community at large," he added.

McLelland told the Associated Press before his death that he carried a gun everywhere he went and took extra care when answering the door at his home.

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

Hasse, the assistant district attorney, also reportedly carried a gun for protection.

Investigators in Hasse's shooting had various theories, including the possibility that the violent white supremacist gang, the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, was involved in the killing.

McLelland himself, in the Associated Press interview, raised the possibility that Hasse was killed by a white supremacist gang. He said Hasse hadn't personally prosecuted any cases against white supremacists but that his office had handled several, and thee gangs had a strong presence in the area.

"We put some real dents in the Aryan Brotherhood around here in the past year," McLelland said after Colorado's corrections director, Tom Clements, was shot to death Mar. 19 when he answered the doorbell.

In November, the FBI announced that 34 members of the Aryan Brotherhood, including four senior leaders, were indicted by a federal grand jury in Houston for racketeering.

Robert Kepple, executive director of the Texas District Attorney's Association, said Sunday that law enforcement and his members—about 5,000 prosecutors across the state—received a bulletin late last year from Texas Department of Public Safety, warning that the Aryan Brotherhood might be plotting retaliation against law enforcement officials.

"Our people took notice of that, but it is hard to guard against these kinds of acts,'' said Kepple, who cautioned that investigators had not yet linked the latest killings to gang-related retaliation. "I know that is the working theory, but I don't want to prejudge this.''

The FBI checked to see if Hasse's killing was connected to the Mar. 19 killing of Clements, the Colorado prison chief who was shot and killed after answering the doorbell at his home.

Evan Spencer Ebel, a former Colorado inmate and white supremacist whom authorities believe killed Clements and a pizza delivery man two days earlier, was gunned down in a March 21 shootout with Texas deputies about 100 miles from Kaufman County.

Investigators in that case, however, have not found any links to Hasse's murder. The federal law enforcement official briefed on the case said investigators compared ballistics evidence in both cases but did not find an immediate match.

McLelland, elected in 2010, bought the house near Forney in 2011. His home was located in the middle of the block, with about 18 homes on one-acre lots on each side.

McLelland was a former platoon leader and company commander in the U.S. Army infantry. Born in the small town of Wortham, Texas, he'd gone to junior college on a football scholarship and got a history degree from the University of Texas at Austin, according to his biography on the county website.

He got a degree in psychology and got his law degree while working as a psychologist for the state of Texas. He had five children, including a son who is a Dallas police officer.

McLelland was a "well respected prosecutor who pulled together his staff'' following Hasse's slaying, Kepple said. "He (McLelland) was a strong and good public servant.''

Murders of prosecutors are still relatively rare.

Prior to the Kaufman County cases, the last prosecutor murdered in Texas was Gil Epstein, an assistant district attorney in Fort Bend County near Houston in 1996.

Epstein was shot to death in an armed robbery when authorities said the gunman, Marcus Cotton, noticed Epstein's badge. Cotton was executed in 2004.

Contributing: The Associated Press