From [HERE] and [HERE] Elected officials near Dallas were given extra security Sunday after a local district attorney and his wife were shot to death inside their suburban home.
The bodies of Kaufman County District Attorney Michael 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 the murders.
And though no connections have yet been made, the executions have many wondering if a threat that emerged in December from one of the country’s most violent extremist groups, the Aryan Brotherhood, against Texas state law enforcement is in play.
In December 2012, Texas officials issued a statewide bulletin warning that the Aryan Brotherhood was "actively planning retaliation against law enforcement officials" who worked to prosecute the gang’s leadership Two months earlier, Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse was shot and killed outside a Dallas-area courthouse. [MORE] Hasse, 57, had reportedly been involved in the prosecution of the Aryan Brotherhood, a notorious gang of white supremacists. [MORE]
In October, a multi-agency task force secured the indictments by a federal grand jury in Houston of 34 members of this 49-year-old white supremacist organization, which has its roots in the prison system. The men include four top lieutenants in the group involved mainly in racketeering and drugs. “Today’s takedown represents a devastating blow to the leadership of ABT,” Assistant Attorney General Breuer said in announcing the indictments in November.
Listed among the many members of this multi-agency task force is the Kaufman County District Attorney’s Office.
In December the Texas Department of Public Safety issued a statewide alert warning members of Texas law enforcement of credible evidence that the Aryan Brotherhood was 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.”
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.''
McLellan, 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.
WFAA-TV in Dallas reported that 14 shells from .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.
One investigator compared the situation to the drug-gang violence in Mexico. The door had been kicked in. Shell casings were peppered all over the floor. Nearby, the bullet-riddled bodies of Texas district attorney Mike McLelland and his wife Cynthia Woodward McLelland were discovered by police on Saturday in Kaufman County, east of Dallas.
This was the second apparent assassination of a local member of law enforcement in two months, and the Texas Rangers were taking no chances.
Since Saturday security has been provided to the staff of the district attorney’s office as investigators try to make a connection between the cold-blooded murder of the McLellands and the Jan. 31 execution of Kaufman prosecutor Mark Hasse, who was shot and killed exiting his vehicle on his way to work.
“I think everybody there is a target. They’re not safe in the streets in downtown Kaufman. They’re not safe in their homes,” Eric Smenner, a Kaufman defense attorney, told the Dallas Morning News.