I can’t help but get the feel­ing that some­thing even big­ger is afoot.

Now a pros­e­cu­tor has quit the case due to secu­ri­ty con­cerns:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301–201_162-57577663/texas-prosecutor-quits-white-supremacists-case/

CBS/AP/ April 3, 2013, 5:57 AM
Texas pros­e­cu­tor quits white suprema­cists case

(snip)
In the wake of the week­end slay­ings of a Texas dis­trict attor­ney and his wife that prompt­ed inves­ti­ga­tors to sus­pect a vio­lent white suprema­cist prison gang, an assis­tant U.S. attor­ney in Hous­ton has with­drawn from a large rack­e­teer­ing case against the Aryan Broth­er­hood of Texas, CBS News cor­re­spon­dent Anna Wern­er reports from Kauf­man, Texas.

Richard O. Ely II, a Hous­ton defense attor­ney for one of the 34 defen­dants, told The Dal­las Morn­ing News that Assis­tant U.S. Attor­ney Jay Hile­man sent him an email on Tues­day inform­ing him that he was off the case.

“I under­stand why some­one would want to step back,” Ely told Hous­ton tele­vi­sion sta­tion KTRK-TV. “It makes sense to me, espe­cial­ly peo­ple that have fam­i­lies.”
———————-

Now get this: Mclel­land had secu­ri­ty at his house until short­ly before he was hit:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/31/texas-district-attorney-wife-killed

(snip)
Sam Rosander, who lives in the same unin­cor­po­rat­ed area of Kauf­man Coun­ty as the McLel­lands, told the Asso­ci­at­ed Press that sher­if­f’s deputies were parked in the dis­trict attor­ney’s dri­ve­way for about a month after Has­se was killed. The DA had also armed him­self for pro­tec­tion, telling reporters that he car­ried a gun every­where and took extra care when open­ing the door at his home fol­low­ing his assis­tan­t’s death.

“I’m ahead of every­body else because, basi­cal­ly, I’m a sol­dier,” the 23-year army vet­er­an boast­ed in an inter­view less than two weeks ago.
Byrnes declined to com­ment on secu­ri­ty arrange­ments ahead of the shoot­ing and would not go into detail as to the mea­sures now being brought in to pro­tect oth­er indi­vid­u­als.”
—————————-

Why was the secu­ri­ty pulled?
Now a pros­e­cu­tor quits due to secu­ri­ty con­cerns.
It may be pos­si­ble that the Aryan reach goes into the bow­els of Texas law enforce­ment.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of so much dam­age in one depart­ment, espe­cial­ly in macho Texas.

More on the motive mys­tery and pos­si­ble ties to the Aryan Broth­er­hood’s Mex­i­can car­tel busi­ness part­ners. Whether it was the Aryan Broth­er­hood, the car­tels, a mul­ti-gang oper­a­tion or what­ev­er, if we’re see­ing an orga­nized assas­si­na­tion oper­a­tion com­ing from gangs those gangs will pre­sum­ably be utter­ly destroyed if caught. Are they just real­ly con­fi­dent that they won’t get caught in the first place? Bizarre:

Dal­las Observ­er
Expert: Aryan Broth­er­hood of Texas are “Dumb Ol’ White Boys” Who Would­n’t Kill a D.A.
By Anna Mer­lan Wed., Apr. 3 2013 at 11:23 AM

When I spoke to Ter­ry Pelz late yes­ter­day after­noon, he sound­ed hoarse and exhaust­ed. “I’m just about talked out,” he said.

Pelz is a for­mer prison war­den at the Dar­ring­ton Unit who now runs a crim­i­nal jus­tice con­sult­ing firm in Mis­souri City, about 20 miles south­west of Hous­ton. He’s been in high demand the past cou­ple days, as an expert on the Aryan Broth­er­hood of Texas. The ABT are being eyed as pos­si­ble sus­pects in the killing of Kauf­man Coun­ty DA Mike McLel­land, his wife Cyn­thia and assis­tant DA Mark Has­se. The group is, as we out­lined yes­ter­day, a vio­lent and grow­ing crim­i­nal enter­prise through­out the state and espe­cial­ly in north Texas.

...

Although Pelz cer­tain­ly sees the ABT as a vio­lent and not par­tic­u­lar­ly pleas­ant group of peo­ple, some­thing does­n’t sit right with him in the McLel­land and Has­se killings.

“That’d be a big leap for them,” he says. “I just don’t think it’s cred­i­ble that it’s them.”

Why is the ABT the focus of so much spec­u­la­tion in these mur­ders to begin with? A cou­ple rea­sons. As The Dal­las Morn­ing News’ Tanya Eis­er­er wrote in Feb­ru­ary, after Has­se’s killing, the Texas Depart­ment of Pub­lic Safe­ty issued a bul­letin in Decem­ber, warn­ing that they had “cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion” that the ABT was plan­ning retal­ia­to­ry attacks on law enforce­ment offi­cers, after the mas­sive fed­er­al indict­ment that net­ted 34 of their mem­bers, includ­ing five high-rank­ing “gen­er­als.” (Yes­ter­day, a Hous­ton fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor involved in that case qui­et­ly with­drew from it, prompt­ing spec­u­la­tion that he was afraid for his fam­i­ly’s safe­ty).

In Kauf­man Coun­ty, McLel­land him­self had gone after the ABT aggres­sive­ly. In August, he secured a con­vic­tion against James Patrick Craw­ford, a reput­ed ABT mem­ber on tri­al for aggra­vat­ed kid­nap­ping, aggra­vat­ed assault, direct­ing gang activ­i­ties, pos­ses­sion of a con­trolled sub­stance with intent to deliv­er and engag­ing in orga­nized crim­i­nal activ­i­ty. Craw­ford, as the Kauf­man Her­ald not­ed at the time, was the first gang mem­ber to be pros­e­cut­ed in the coun­ty under a newish sec­tion of the Texas Penal Code, which in 2009 added penal­ties for direct­ing crim­i­nal street gangs. Craw­ford got two life sen­tences.

“I’m just ecsta­t­ic about the sen­tences,” McLel­land told the Her­ald at the time. “It shows that those peo­ple can’t come down here and run roughshod over folks in Kauf­man Coun­ty.”

But in the Kauf­man Coun­ty mur­ders, Pelz says, “It’s just not their style. I stud­ied them for almost 30 years. Like all prison gangs, they make threats on pub­lic offi­cials, but I’ve nev­er seen them car­ry them out.”

Why not? Well, Pelz says, after a moment of reflec­tion, “You’re deal­ing with a bunch of dumb ol’ white boys who are meth cook­ers.”

Mark Potok of the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, a for­mer jour­nal­ist who’s also stud­ied the ABT, agrees that if the gang is involved, it would be an unprece­dent­ed move for them.

“I would­n’t say [the mur­ders] look like any­thing we’ve seen before from the ABT,” he says. “If in fact this is them, it would be an astound­ing kind of move to make.”

He points out that only about 20 pros­e­cu­tors in the U.S. have been mur­dered over the course of the entire 20th cen­tu­ry. “It’s an incred­i­bly rare phe­nom­e­non. And I’ve nev­er heard of any prison gang assas­si­nat­ing cor­rec­tion­al offi­cials,” oth­er than the occa­sion­al prison guard.

Potok, who lived in Dal­las for a time and did some work in East Texas, also found, like Pelz, that meth has thor­ough­ly per­me­at­ed the ABT. “That’s prob­a­bly their num­ber one thing,” he says.

It’s been sug­gest­ed that the ABT could be con­nect­ed with the killing of Col­orado pris­ons head Tom Clements through the drug trade; the prime sus­pect in the Clements killing, Evan Ebel, was a reput­ed mem­ber of a white pow­er gang called 211 Crew that also has a taste for meth.

“We know 211 Crew is also involved in the drug trade,” Potok says. But he sounds skep­ti­cal. “How that relates, I don’t know. It’s con­ceiv­able that in some way these groups are work­ing togeth­er. I’m not sug­gest­ing that’s true or that I even think that’s true. It seems hard to believe, frankly.”

...

That house­clean­ing some­times involves mur­der, Pelz acknowl­edges. But he spec­u­lates that the mur­ders in Kauf­man Coun­ty — and he’s quick to note that this is only spec­u­la­tion — have some­thing to do instead with the ABT’s grow­ing rela­tion­ship with Mex­i­can drug car­tels, who have bond­ed across racial lines over their shared love of sell­ing meth.

“Car­tels love that meth,” Pelz says. “They make bil­lions off of it.” Last year, as he points out, a raid on a meth lab south of the bor­der seized an eye­brow-rais­ing $4 bil­lion worth of the drug.

Pelz puts his mon­ey on a part­ner­ship between the ABT and the car­tels that’s soured. “Some­thing was dis­rupt­ed and some­body got pissed off in the car­tel, I think,” he says. “And they got one of their asso­ciates to take care of busi­ness. I just don’t think the ABT was direct­ly involved in it.”

Drug car­tels have cer­tain­ly assas­si­nat­ed law enforce­ment offi­cials before, although in Mex­i­co, not the Unit­ed States. In 2008, the police chief of Mex­i­co City, Edgar Euse­bio Mil­lán Gómez, who had been aggres­sive­ly pur­su­ing the car­tels, was shot dead out­side his home. The same year, three oth­er Mex­i­co City police offi­cials were also killed. The Texas Depart­ment of Pub­lic Safe­ty has warned that car­tel mem­bers along the bor­der are becom­ing “increas­ing­ly con­fronta­tion­al” in their encoun­ters with law enforce­ment. A huge AP sto­ry released this week sug­gests that the car­tels may be mov­ing fur­ther into the U.S., cut­ting out Amer­i­can mid­dle­man drug traf­fick­ers they’ve long relied upon.

...

Assum­ing these are indeed con­nect­ed killings, we’re look­ing at some ter­ri­fy­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties whether its the Aryan Broth­er­hood of Texas or the Mex­i­can Car­tels. Pick­ing a fight with the gov­ern­ment is a big attempt at pro­ject­ing an image of invul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, but as ter­ri­fy­ing as these gangs might be to pub­lic offi­cials at this point, the prospect of the full force of the US Fed­er­al law enforce­ment sys­tem crack­ing down on you should be pret­ty ter­ri­fy­ing too if you’re in one of these gangs. It’s kind of gang-sui­cide of these real­ly are orga­nized hits.

And if there real­ly is Mex­i­can car­tel involve­ment, does­n’t that raise the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the unof­fi­cial gov­ern­ment of Mex­i­co just declared war on the US? Sure, lots of MIC and the glob­al far-right would LOVE the propect of taunt­ing the US into grander mil­i­tary adven­tures South of the bor­der, but would all of the MIC be into that? And do the car­tels real­ly want that? There’s a lot of del­i­cate rela­tion­ships that could become dif­fi­cult to main­tain. They are also com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ships, so who knows, but there’s A LOT of mon­ey being made by drug car­tels right now and it’s unclear why these high­ly lucra­tive crim­i­nal enter­pris­es would want to essen­tial­ly force the US into Mex­i­can con­flict. There are plen­ty of oth­er par­ties that would love to see that out­come but it’s real­ly not clear the car­tels would have any inter­est in being this brazen. It’s just bad for busi­ness.

It looks like inves­ti­ga­tors may have solved the Kauf­man Coun­ty mur­ders and their prime sus­pect has no con­nec­tions to the Aryan Broth­er­hood of Texas or Mex­i­can car­tels: it’s Eric Williams, the for­mer Kauf­man Coun­ty Jus­tice of the Peace that was accused of mak­ing ter­ror­is­tic threats towards Kauf­man Coun­ty employ­ees fol­low­ing a con­tentious dis­missal that both of the assas­si­nat­ed pros­e­cu­tors were involved with. Williams was arrest­ed Sat­ur­day and charges con­nect­ed to the mur­der are expect­ed this week accord­ing to sources:

Exclu­sive: Author­i­ties trace email threat of anoth­er attack to for­mer jus­tice of the peace Eric Williams
By Tanya Eis­er­er
teiserer@dallasnews.com
3:09 pm on April 14, 2013

The day after the bod­ies of Cyn­thia and Mike McLel­land were found, an anony­mous writer sent an email to coun­ty offi­cials threat­en­ing that anoth­er attack would hap­pen if the writer’s demands were not met.

Law enforce­ment author­i­ties have since linked the the threat back to Eric Williams, a for­mer jus­tice of the peace who is now the prime sus­pect in the slay­ings.

The McLel­lands were found dead in their home over East­er week­end. Assis­tant Dis­trict Attor­ney Mark Has­se was gunned down Jan. 31 as he walked to the coun­ty cour­t­house.

A charge of a cap­i­tal mur­der in con­nec­tion the slay­ings is expect­ed to be filed this week, pos­si­bly as ear­ly as Tues­day, law enforce­ment author­i­ties said.

Williams, 46, was arrest­ed ear­ly Sat­ur­day on a ter­ror­is­tic-threat charge after dozens of law-enforce­ment work­ers exe­cut­ed a search war­rant at his Kauf­man home on Fri­day.

Williams was con­vict­ed of steal­ing coun­ty equip­ment last year and sen­tenced to pro­ba­tion in a high­ly con­tentious case pros­e­cut­ed by McLel­land and Has­se. That case is on appeal. Williams faces anoth­er theft charge in a case relat­ed to mon­ey alleged­ly mis­used from a law library fund.

Author­i­ties searched the Williams’ home and that of his in-laws, who live down the street from them, on Fri­day. Those search­es led to the exe­cu­tion of a search war­rant on Sat­ur­day at Gib­son Self Stor­age on Seagov­ille Road near U.S. High­way 175.

Author­i­ties seized more than 20 weapons from the unit, which was rent­ed on behalf of Williams. Some of the weapons are sim­i­lar to those used in the Has­se and McLel­land slay­ings. Bal­lis­tics tests are now being con­duct­ed by the Texas Rangers crime lab on the weapons that are of the same cal­iber as those used in the killings.

...

Part of what makes these reports a lit­tle con­fus­ing is that all of these reports about impend­ing mur­der charges are based on anony­mous sources but the state­ments issued by the Kauf­man Coun­ty Sher­rif­f’s depart­ment last night said that, while Williams was indeed arrest­ed Sat­ur­day, he isn’t the prime sus­pect or even a sus­pect in the mur­ders:

Charges expect­ed in Kauf­man Coun­ty mur­ders

by JOBIN PANICKER, REBECCA LOPEZ and TODD UNGER

WFAA

Post­ed on April 13, 2013 at 10:56 PM

Updat­ed today at 8:41 AM

KAUFMAN — Sources tell News 8 there is strong evi­dence link­ing for­mer Kauf­man Coun­ty Jus­tice of the Peace Eric Williams to the mur­ders of Dis­trict Attor­ney Mike McClel­land and his wife and to the mur­der of pros­e­cu­tor Mark Has­se.

Charges are expect­ed soon.

Accord­ing to sources, weapons sim­i­lar to those used in the mur­ders were found dur­ing the search of Williams’ Kauf­man res­i­dence on Fri­day.

State and fed­er­al agents exe­cut­ed a search war­rant at a stor­age facil­i­ty in Seagov­ille on Sat­ur­day night, but they would not say whether that devel­op­ment was linked to Williams.

Williams was jailed after being arrest­ed ear­ly Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

Law enforce­ment sources con­firmed to WFAA that Williams, 46, was picked up at his home and tak­en to the Kauf­man Coun­ty Jail. The jail web­site showed that he was booked at 12:32 a.m.

The arrest fol­lows Fri­day’s exhaus­tive search of his Kauf­man home by fed­er­al agents.

Late Sat­ur­day, Kauf­man Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Depart­ment spokesman Lt. Justin Lewis told News 8 that Williams has not been charged with the McLel­land or Has­se mur­ders and is not a sus­pect or a prime sus­pect.

FBI spokes­woman Kather­ine Chau­mont in Seagov­ille echoed Lt. Lewis’ state­ment.

“Now know­ing that they arrest­ed him on a ter­ror­is­tic threat charge, it could just be one of those things that he made com­ments to some­body and they are hav­ing to run down those leads,” said legal expert and attor­ney Pete Schulte.

Bond was set at $3 mil­lion total; $1 mil­lion for the threat charge and $1 mil­lion each on two charges of “insuf­fi­cient bond.”

“To raise it as high as $1 mil­lion, the judge is like, ‘You know the best place for Mr. Williams at this point is in jail until we can fig­ure out what’s going on,’ ” Schulte said.

As of late Sat­ur­day night, Williams had not been charged with any mur­ders. Our calls to Williams’ attor­ney were not returned.

...

Also note that, as of Sun­day night, state­ments from law enforce­ment offi­cials reit­er­ate that they have no sus­pect or prime sus­pect. So we prob­a­bly should­n’t be sur­prised if Eric Williams is charged with mur­der in the next week but maybe we also should­n’t be sur­prised if he isn’t:

April 14, 2013, 7:07 p.m. ET

Ex-Offi­cial Jailed in Texas Coun­ty Racked by Slay­ings

By NATHAN KOPPEL and ANA CAMPOY

DALLAS—A for­mer elect­ed offi­cial who has been ques­tioned in the recent killings of two Texas coun­ty pros­e­cu­tors was still behind bars Sun­day after being arrest­ed on charges of mak­ing a ter­ror­ist threat.

Eric Williams, 46 years old, has been ques­tioned sev­er­al times by inves­ti­ga­tors but has­n’t been iden­ti­fied as a sus­pect in the March killings of Kauf­man Coun­ty Dis­trict Attor­ney Mike McLel­land and his wife, who were shot in their home, or the Jan­u­ary slay­ing of Assis­tant Dis­trict Attor­ney Mark Has­se.

“We have not named any sus­pects, prime sus­pects, or per­sons of inter­est in the case,” Lt. Justin Lewis, a spokesman with the Kauf­man Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Office, said on Sun­day. “The inves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues and all leads and tips con­tin­ue to be worked.”

...

The lat­est twist in the mur­der inves­ti­ga­tion man­ages to be both unsur­pris­ing and still kind of sur­pris­ing:

Woman con­fess­es to involve­ment in killing Texas pros­e­cu­tors

By Lisa Maria Garza

KAUFMAN, Texas | Wed Apr 17, 2013 4:29pm EDT

(Reuters) — The wife of a for­mer Texas jus­tice of the peace con­fessed to her involve­ment in shoot­ing deaths of the local dis­trict attor­ney, his wife and a pros­e­cu­tor who had helped to con­vict her hus­band for steal­ing com­put­er mon­i­tors, the Kauf­man Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Office said on Wednes­day.

Kim Williams, 46, told inves­ti­ga­tors she was involved in the killings ear­li­er this year of Kauf­man Coun­ty Dis­trict Attor­ney Mike McLel­land, his wife, Cyn­thia, and Assis­tant Dis­trict Attor­ney Mark Has­se. She has been charged with cap­i­tal mur­der and is being held in the Kauf­man Coun­ty Jail on a $10 mil­lion bond on Wednes­day.

Her hus­band, Eric, who was charged over the week­end on sus­pi­cion of threat­en­ing vio­lence, denied involve­ment in the attacks to sev­er­al media out­lets last week. He has not been charged in the killings.

The devel­op­ment resolves the sus­pense that has sur­round­ed a dis­turb­ing series of mur­ders that had rocked the rur­al area out­side of Dal­las and stirred fears about the safe­ty of law enforce­ment offi­cials.

After the McLel­lands’ mur­ders, sus­pi­cion fell on the Aryan Broth­er­hood of Texas, a white suprema­cist prison gang that had threat­ened retal­i­a­tion against pros­e­cu­tors, includ­ing Kauf­man Coun­ty pros­e­cu­tors, who were involved in a mul­ti-agency task force that announced a sweep­ing fed­er­al indict­ment of dozens of gang mem­bers last fall.

“Kim Williams con­fessed to her involve­ment ... in the shoot­ing deaths,” said a war­rant for her arrest released by the sher­if­f’s office.

The two pros­e­cu­tors helped to con­vict her hus­band, Eric Williams, who lost his posi­tion as jus­tice of the peace in Kauf­man Coun­ty after he was found guilty of steal­ing com­put­er mon­i­tors from a pub­lic build­ing, accord­ing to law enforce­ment author­i­ties there.

Coun­ty employ­ees and law enforce­ment offi­cials told inves­ti­ga­tors that Has­se and McLel­land believed Williams blamed them for his removal from office and that both car­ried hand­guns because they thought he was a threat to their safe­ty, the war­rant said.

...

In some Mex­i­can drug cartel/pros­e­cu­tors-relat­ed news, a small plane car­ry­ing six peo­ple from the Mex­i­can Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s office recent­ly crashed in Mex­i­co. They were on their way back to Mex­i­co City after help­ing to serve an arrest war­rant to mem­bers of the Zetas car­tel. The cause of the crash is still being inves­ti­gat­ed, although it’s report­ed that audi­tors found seri­ous main­te­nance and air­wor­thi­ness issues in this plane and in the whole pros­e­cu­tors’ fleet. So who knows if this was a Zetas hit or the result of a lack of pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance, but it’s a reminder that dam­aged or aging infra­struc­ture that is prone to cat­a­stroph­ic fail­ure can be as dead­ly as vio­lent orga­nized crime:

6 dead in crash of Mex­i­can pros­e­cu­tors’ plane

The Asso­ci­at­ed Press

Wednes­day, May 1, 2013 | 1:34 p.m.

Mex­i­can author­i­ties say six employ­ees of the Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s Office have been killed in the crash of a small plane, and a news­pa­per says an audi­tors’ report indi­cat­ed months ago that the air­craft fleet for pros­e­cu­tors was in bad shape.

Attor­ney Gen­er­al Jesus Muril­lo Karam says the cause of the crash Tues­day in north­ern Zacate­cas state is being inves­ti­gat­ed.

The offi­cials had flown to Zacate­cas to serve an arrest war­rant on mem­bers of the Zetas drug car­tel. Muril­lo Karam says their small, twin-engine pro­peller plane was about 28 years old.

The news­pa­per El Uni­ver­sal said Wednes­day that an audi­tors’ report issued in Octo­ber found seri­ous prob­lems with main­te­nance and air­wor­thi­ness in the pros­e­cu­tors’ fleet of air­craft.