Original subtitles

Before 2013, only 11 prosecutors in history

had ever been killed in the line of duty.

This case changed that number to 13.

Prosecutors are aware of the risk that comes with the job,

but I think the general public doesn't really think

that a prosecutor's job is that risky.

I remember one time I was working on a case

where I was leaving the courthouse

late at night by myself,

and that particular case involved a defendant

who was in a gang.

And the gang members were all outside the courthouse

cussing me and calling names, and I thought,

"If they could shoot me here, they could follow me home."

And I was scared that night.

But this case went beyond just being scared and threats.

This case involved two very well-respected prosecutors

who lost their lives,

as well as an innocent bystander

who was murdered in cold blood.

This put prosecutors all over Texas

and all over the country on red alert.

I am at the office that morning.

I'm sitting at my desk and I look out the window,

and I see two detectives running out to the parking lot.

So I called up the dispatch, and I asked, "Hey, what's going on?"

And the dispatcher told me that they had just had a report

of an attorney being shot outside the courthouse.

Upon arrival,

there were first responders there

that were trying to render aid.

The victim was Mark Hasse from the DA's office.

We had already started kind of quartering off the area

creating a crime scene.

There were a few witnesses there,

and there are officers

already conducting searches for evidence.

We found out that a silver sedan had been broadcast

as the suspect vehicle.

So, the focus was find the silver sedan.

As we are driving through neighborhoods,

I came across one of the ladies that worked in the DA's office,

and she was getting out of her car.

And I said, "Hey, there's been a shooting."

And she looked at me, and she's like, "I know. It was Mark."

And then she told me that he had died.

It was just shock.

There's just so many unknowns.

We don't know why Mark was targeted,

and we don't know who we're looking for,

other than a silver sedan.

And so, the schools are getting locked down.

The courthouse is getting locked down.

It was controlled chaos.

He was a good guy. He didn't deserve that.

I met Mark Hasse back in the late '90s.

I got a job with the district attorney's office

in Dallas County.

He was representing someone in a family violence case,

but he had been a prosecutor in Dallas County before that

for quite some time.

He's kind of a nerdy guy.

He would almost always have a crazy sweater on.

And so, it's one of those things that you look for.

You see somebody walking down the hall

wearing a crazy sweater, you know it's Mark Hasse.

Mark had no spouse. Mark had no kids.

Mark had a brother, a little older than Mark,

and then Mark's mother.

That was all the family he had.

I was a detective for the sheriff's office

when Mark came to work for the Kaufman County DA's office.

There were four felony prosecutors.

Mark was one of them.

Working with Mark was an amazing experience.

When he found out I had an interest in the law,

he mentored me.

He took the time to really delve into the cases with me.

As a prosecutor in Kaufman County,

he really, really had a strong sense of justice.

He was a warrior.

My phone blew up with prosecutor friends from North Texas,

throughout Texas, throughout the nation.

This really rattled the prosecutorial community.

When prosecutors all across the country heard about

Mark Hasse being shot as he walked to the courthouse,

every one of us thought, "It's got to be related to work.

"It's got to be somebody he's prosecuted before.

"It's got to be somebody he made mad because he went after him."

The Kaufman County DA's office couldn't take this on.

They couldn't be objective.

So someone else had to look at this

and decide who did it,

and can we make that case and prove it.

So, Kaufman County appointed special prosecutors

from Dallas County.

We were asked very quickly

if me and Toby would consider coming out there

to help the investigation.

Bill and Toby were immediately called upon

to be special prosecutors,

so they were able to get to the crime scene

while it was still fresh.

That's probably a pretty rare thing to have happen.

So Mark would have parked right here with his truck

and he was facing out.

Got out of his door

and started walking over the block to the courthouse.

He gets up to the sidewalk and halfway through this entry,

that's when a silver gray car comes in.

A handful of eyewitnesses saw different parts

of the encounter, and they described

a man dressed in black with a mask.

And the man in black gets out and confronts him

about right here.

And eyewitnesses were the man in the body shop.

Well, that door's open, he was standing right there.

He could see them shoving and Mark saying,

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

Mark Hasse's shot five times.

And the final shot was like right there.

And Mark drops, and that's the wound

that primarily bleeds out on the parking deal.

This witness saw the shooter pull out another gun

and start shooting in the air,

probably to frighten everyone away.

You know, it's easy to get away with something in broad daylight

if you scare everybody and keep their head down.

And then the car flees down here.

And our civilian's able to follow him

-for a few blocks... -Right.

...before she loses, and she's on the phone with 9-1-1.

There's a Kaufman patrol officer a few blocks that way,

working a burglary.

Dash cam picks up the gunshots.

He hears them. Self-dispatches over here.

Parks about right there,

so his dash cam is shooting this way.

And you can see the last moments of Mark's life.

-We had no casings around here. -Yup.

So we're figuring he had to be a revolver,

which means it's somebody that may be familiar

with law enforcement,

because he doesn't want to leave spent shell casings.

The DA, Mike McLelland, gave a press conference

very quickly after Mark's murder.

And I think all of us that were there

or watched it were concerned, because Mike was so angry.

This hit him so personally

that he basically issued a challenge to the murderer.

I hope that the people that did this are watching.

We're going to find you,

we're going to pull you out of whatever hole you're in

and let the people of Kaufman County prosecute you

to the fullest extent of the law.

We knew the killer would be watching somewhere.

We were just hoping the killer wouldn't take it as a challenge.

Mike was super concerned for the safety of his employees,

especially as they went in and out of the courthouse

on the town square.

He would assign some of his police officers

to kind of bodyguard people, walk them in and out.

Everyone was extra skeptical of people

that came through the metal detectors at the front door.

People from all over the state just started flooding in.

Rangers and troopers, federal agencies, FBI, DEA, ATF,

probably 200 agents in Kaufman working this case at one time.

The fact that a prosecutor was gunned down in broad daylight

on the steps of the courthouse,

of course, they're going to bring in everybody

that they possibly can to get to the bottom of who did it.

What makes the murder of a prosecutor so different

is the suspect pool.

Other than the traditional motives

where law enforcement is trained to look,

we now have additional suspects,

which is any case that Mark Hasse's ever prosecuted.

So, the clues could be buried in the courthouse.

They could be in Mark's office. They could be in his files.

We need to go back and reinvestigate Mark's cases.

Mark Hasse was a prosecutor for a very long time,

and he was handling the highest profile,

most serious cases that Kaufman County had.

So, it could take them years

to get to the bottom of all those cases.

The investigation had a lot more work to be done.

In the months that followed,

Kaufman County is still trying to figure out

who killed Mark Hasse.

I was home with my family in Dallas,

looking forward to Easter Sunday,

and I got a call from the police chief at Kaufman

that said, "Bill, the sheriff wants you out here.

"Mike and Cynthia McLelland have been found dead in their home."

I hope that the people that did this are watching.

We're going to find you.

We're going to pull you

out of whatever hole you're in.

The district attorney and his wife were killed,

and I proceeded straight to the McLelland residence.

I locked the scene down.

The immediate assumption was these murders

were connected to Mark Hasse.

Now, we got to figure out what the connection is.

We don't know who we're looking for.

We don't know if there's other targets.

We don't know who's next.

The killer said, "We will not be stopped."

In the black bag was this grim reaper mask.

It had a pickle jar full of homemade napalm.

Even though he looks normal, he is a deadly psychopath.

As rare as it is to have a prosecutor killed,

to have two from the same office killed

within two months is unprecedented.

Mark Hasse's been killed two months earlier.

This is his boss and his boss's wife.

After Mark Hasse's murder,

I wouldn't go anywhere without a gun.

I was concerned for the safety of my family.

And I told my wife what was happening,

and I gave her two guns.

And said, "If you don't know

"it's me coming through that door,

"get ready to use these guns."

Because we were freaked out.

The district attorney and his wife were killed,

and we begin the methodical process

of handling a major crime scene.

I didn't see any signs of forced entry,

so the door must have been opened to a known party,

or opened because there was some type of trickery involved.

I noticed that there was quite a bit of

firearms-related evidence there.

Cartridge cases.

Based on just the visual survey,

it would have been a semi-automatic rifle,

.223 caliber.

There was damage from bullet impacts to furniture,

walls, as well as the two bodies of Mr. McLelland and his wife.

And they were both shot multiple times.

McLelland crime scene, way too many rounds were fired

just to kill two people.

There were 20-plus rounds fired.

It seemed very personal,

that they probably knew the person that killed them.

We were canvassing the neighborhood.

We asked, "Did the neighbors hear the shots?"

We couldn't find anyone that heard it.

But there was a neighbor a few houses down,

and they spotted a white car driving down

and then driving back.

This white car is different than the gray sedan

seen fleeing Mark Hasse's murder.

At this point, the investigators were not sure

what to make of that car,

but they needed to track it down as soon as possible.

That day, we were all going to meet and go out,

and then we got the call later that next day

that they had been killed.

I was in shock.

I even went so far as to say,

"Okay, y'all, this hasn't really happened."

And it wasn't until the funeral home, you know,

that it dawns on you that it did happen.

Mike was a fatherly figure in the office,

and his wife, Cynthia, would always bring in cookies

and baked goods to the office

and very motherly in her interactions

with the office staff.

When the McLellands were murdered,

the enormity of it really hit me.

I lost some friends.

The command post opened back up Easter Sunday.

We had an anonymous Crimestoppers tip line.

It was web-based, and we got an online tip

from someone claiming credit for the murders and said,

"I shot Mark Hasse, and I used a .38 and a .357."

That's somebody that has some knowledge

that hasn't been released publicly.

So, we had a pretty good idea

that we were interacting with our actual killer.

The email said, "Do we have your attention?

"As a show of good faith,

"have one of the county judges resign by Friday,

"or the killings will continue.

"We will not be stopped."

What was really unique about this tip,

it was somebody that was fairly sophisticated at that point

with the internet.

They were using an IP anonymizer.

That's the program for somebody

to start masking their identity online.

So, it makes it more difficult to trace.

So, we were not able to track down

the person who wrote the tip.

To me, the similarities with Mark Hasse

and the McLellands were overkill.

Mark Hasse was shot five times with a revolver.

Mike McLelland was shot 16 times,

Cynthia four times with a rifle.

It looked personal.

They have to be connected.

We found out Mark Hasse and his boss, Mike McLelland,

only tried one case together,

and that was in 2012, when they tried Eric Williams.

Eric Williams had been tried for the theft and burglary

of computer monitors from the courthouse.

Eric Williams had actually been a commissioned police officer,

and then he was elected Justice of the Peace in Kaufman.

Justices of the Peace are pretty prevalent in the South.

My dad was a JP, and believe it or not,

they don't need to be lawyers,

because Daddy sure wasn't a lawyer.

They're elected every four years,

just like every other government official.

They can marry people,

but they also deal with traffic tickets,

class C misdemeanors.

Usually the things where all you have to do is pay a fine,

that's what you go see the JP for.

Eric was accused of stealing from the courthouse.

Dad approached him and said,

"Hey, resign or I'm going to prosecute this."

He refused.

Eric Williams is a very, very smart man,

very high IQ.

I think he thought he could beat it.

And went to trial and he got convicted.

The courthouse surveillance footage

of a man stealing, seen here,

was used in the criminal court case

against former Kaufman County Justice of the Peace,

Eric Williams,

who was convicted in the theft of computer monitors.

You're a JP who's been prosecuted

for any kind of theft.

You can lose your license, you can lose your livelihood.

That's going to devastate your life.

So, we made the decision to try to do

a knock and talk on Eric Williams,

to see if he's involved with the murders.

We sent two officers over to his house, and in fact,

when they knocked on the door, they said,

"Can we come in and talk with you?"

And the lawyer that Eric was,

he actually said what he was thinking.

He narrated his thoughts.

"I know I shouldn't,

"but yeah, guys, come on in."

Eric let them in

and they saw pieces of AR rifles in the house.

The type of weapon used at the McLellands' murder.

Since he was a convicted felon, he could not have any firearms.

So based on that knock and talk,

we were able to get probable cause to search his house.

We went in the house.

It looked like somebody that's into computers

and is on the Internet a lot.

Law enforcement did a quick download

of his computer searches.

He was kind of doing surveillance

on Hasse and the McLellands.

He was running license plates

that were connected with the addresses,

neighbor's license plates, trying to get a pattern of life.

This eagle-eyed investigator we have

found a note in his kitchen.

It said, "This looks like a Crimestoppers password."

The Crimestoppers tip line is web-based.

The system itself is set up to be anonymous.

However, the person that gives the tip

is assigned a unique password.

And when we tracked it back,

that's how we knew

it was Eric Williams that had sent the tips.

We didn't have enough for capital murder charges.

So, we had this terroristic threat charge

that we had enough evidence to be able to lock up Eric.

Eric Williams' motive seemed like it was revenge-driven,

because of that trial in 2012.

We had pieces of AR rifles and his computer searches,

but we didn't have cars

and weapons that'd connect Eric Williams to the murders.

The next day, my cell phone goes off

and a friend of Eric Williams calls me.

He had seen the coverage of the search warrants.

And he goes, "I don't know if this is important,

"but I rented a storage unit for Eric Williams."

I thought, "Oh, my God, it's actually happened.

"We're going to find something

"that links Eric Williams to those murders."

The command post personnel obtained information

from a source that indicates

he has rented a storage unit at the request of Eric Williams.

So, we obtained warrants

so that we can enter that storage unit

and make a search for evidence

that might be related to the murders.

There was a lot of stuff crammed into it,

but in particular, we found a solid white Crown Vic.

It looked like the prototypical law enforcement vehicle.

We had received information in the neighborhood

that there had been a white vehicle

in front of the McLellands' home the morning of their murder.

We found law enforcement- related memorabilia.

We found tons of firearms-related evidence.

Some .38 caliber weapons.

Quite a bit of boxed ammunition.

But what struck me is we found .223 caliber bullets.

The same bullets that were fired at the crime scene.

In the storage shed, Eric Williams had ejected

a live round into a plastic container.

And the tool marks of the ejection site

matched the 20 rounds found at the house.

That was a smoking gun.

We've got enough now

to move forward with capital murder charges.

Just the nature of these murders,

there's so many moving parts that it was pretty easy for us

to believe there had to be more than one person involved.

Is there somebody we're missing?

People or persons that are guilty of this

that haven't hit our radar.

Because the eyewitnesses from the Hasse murder

saw the second person in the car

and the shooter getting in the passenger side.

So as we're looking at Eric Williams,

we're obviously getting information about his wife,

Kim Williams.

And what we heard from the locals was,

Kim has bad arthritis.

She hardly leaves the house.

She takes lots of medicine.

We asked Kim Williams to come down to the sheriff's office.

She came down voluntarily.

And as a part of that, she voluntarily decided

to talk to law enforcement.

She was talked to by multiple different officers

for a long number of hours.

Finally, she broke down

and gave us that she and Eric were the killers.

And that she was the driver on both murders.

And Eric Williams actually pulled the trigger himself.

Kim Williams told us, on the McLelland murders,

that Eric Williams was dressed as a police officer.

And that was his plan to come up as kind of a SWAT officer,

knock on the door and say, "There's a shooter in the area,

"let us in, we're here to protect you."

And once she decided to finally tell the truth

that she and Eric were involved in these murders,

she kind of dropped her head and said,

"You wouldn't understand."

And basically told us that Eric's anger at Mark

and Mike for the conviction, she shared that anger.

This was a pure revenge killing

against the people that had prosecuted them.

Because two Kaufman County prosecutors

were murdered,

that entire office can't handle this case.

They're conflicted out for all kinds of reasons.

You're going to have to call in somebody new who's an outsider.

And so Bill and Toby were appointed

as special prosecutors for Kaufman County.

It's a unique position because it's not your home territory.

And you have to learn as quickly as possible

to do things their way,

at the same time, bringing all of the knowledge

and experience that got you appointed

as a special prosecutor in the first place.

We wanted more information from Kim Williams

against Eric Williams.

Toby and I talked extensively.

You never really trust an accomplice

unless you can corroborate 'em.

They had to tread very lightly in figuring out

how to handle her, how to deal with her

and how to use her as a potential witness.

We didn't have the murder weapon

from the Mark Hasse murder and from the McLelland murders.

So when we talked to Kim, she said Eric Williams

threw the guns from the Hasse murder into Lake Tawakoni.

So DPS brought in their dive team.

The lake they were searching

was just zero visibility.

So, it's like fingertip searches by feel,

kind of in chocolate milk.

They were out there probably 30 days total,

spread over almost a year of searching.

We were hours away from abandoning the search,

we're never going to find anything,

when we got the phone call

that the dive team had found guns and a phone.

When the guns and the phone came up

out of Lake Tawakoni, they were in a black bag.

And we didn't think much of the black bag

until we dried it out.

And the black bag was this Grim Reaper mask.

So, it had the guns that were used

to kill Mark Hasse, contained in the killer's mask.

Eric Williams wanted his face disguised from the witnesses,

but he also wanted Mark Hasse to be able

to recognize exactly who was about to kill him.

And that's when you, witnesses heard Hasse say,

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,"

right before he was shot by Eric Williams.

So, we knew Kim Williams was at least telling us the truth,

because everything she told us

was corroborated with physical evidence.

Bill and Toby decided to try

Eric and Kim Williams separately.

When you are trying Eric Williams,

from the beginning, it's pretty apparent you're going to need

to seek the death penalty

because he killed two prosecutors,

and his wife is also involved,

but as a lesser player, and you're not going to seek

the death penalty on her.

If you're not going to seek death on both of them,

they are never going to be tried together.

Their trials are always going to be separate.

We had three murders and two separate incidents.

So, we put a lot of thought

and we went to prosecute the McLelland murders first.

Eric Williams' beef was with Mark and Mike.

He shot Mark in public by himself.

He could have done the same thing to Mike.

Instead, he chose to kill Mike at home,

knowing Cynthia would be a witness.

There was absolutely no reason for Cynthia McLelland to die.

So, we wanted to try that case first

because it was a very strong case for the death penalty.

They charged him with capital murder,

because they broke into the house.

Burglary plus murder equals capital murder.

With Mark Hasse, you have to prove the whole retaliation

part of it to charge him with capital murder,

which is another layer that you have to prove.

With the McLellands, you didn't have to even go into that.

There's circumstantial evidence, forensic evidence,

fingerprint evidence, ballistic evidence.

And finally, you will hear a confession.

A confession this man made to the murderers.

He sent an email in to law enforcement claiming credit

for the murders, thinking he would remain anonymous.

But he was wrong.

When I did the initial opening statement,

and I turned that email in

to Crime Stoppers, the confession,

he got very agitated at the table

and was trying to stare me down.

But that's because he's a psychopath

with a huge ego, that thinks he's smarter,

and he can get himself out of any situation.

Because he'd gotten away now with three murders.

During the trial, I went very methodically

through the evidence.

And two key points were the emails

about Mark Hasse's murder,

where he said the killings will continue.

We knew it came from Eric Williams because

he left that password for the tip line.

The other was the physical evidence found

in the storage shed at the McLelland house.

That the marks on the case of this cartridge

indicate that it was cycled in the same firearm that fired

all of the cartridge cases recovered from the crime scene.

We didn't find the actual murder weapon,

but it was as good as finding the murder weapon.

We didn't call in Kim Williams,

because anytime you call an accomplice or a co-defendant

in front of a jury, it's an easy cross

for a defense lawyer to say

"Kim Williams was the shooter and not the driver."

And we just didn't want to open up that can of worms.

We were blessed with so much circumstantial evidence.

I asked the jury to consider this.

"If it's not Eric Williams, then who would it be?"

No one else fits. No one else has motive.

No one else is the common denominator.

We felt our case was strong.

But anytime you're in front of a jury,

you can get somebody that just doesn't want to deliberate.

You can get a hung jury, 11-1.

So, something can still go wrong.

But the defense in this case was so hamstrung,

most of the witnesses were not cross-examined.

So, they kind of saved their defense fireworks

for the closing argument.

Not one fingerprint. Not one piece of DNA.

There's no burden on the defense

to put on a single witness.

The whole burden is on the state of Texas to prove the case.

There is no known murder weapon in this case.

That is the core of the state's indictment,

That Eric Williams went into the home

and shot Cynthia McLelland.

When you have a case like this,

where the evidence is so strong and so compelling,

the only argument you usually are going to be able to make

is reasonable doubt.

Can a jury say, based on this evidence,

beyond a reasonable doubt, Eric Williams is the person

who killed the McLellands?

It's like a net.

If you piece it all together, and it tracks Eric Williams.

We have proven this case beyond a reasonable doubt,

and we'll ask you for that verdict.

Right before the verdict came back,

Eric Williams looked very, very confident.

He sat over there with a smirk on his face the entire trial.

We, the jury, unanimously find the defendant,

Eric Lyle Williams, guilty of capital murder

as charged in the indictment. You may be seated.

And I think when he heard that the jury found him guilty,

it just kind of deflated him.

I think he was so delusional,

he thought he was going to walk away.

The guilty verdict was a relief.

There was a sense of comfort, like, okay.

It was the next phase.

That was the nerve-wracking part of it all,

is whether he was going to get the death penalty or not.

The challenge here for Bill and Toby was,

would a jury give Eric Williams the death penalty?

Because you're talking about

not your usual capital murder defendant.

He was an elected official. He was a Justice of the Peace.

He was law enforcement.

He worked for the people of Kaufman County

for a number of years,

and everybody thought he was a good guy.

So, are you going to give somebody like that

the death penalty,

or is life without parole a good enough punishment?

Bill and Toby have to prove,

in order to get the death penalty in this case,

two things, that Eric Williams is a future threat to society,

and is there anything

in his life that mitigates or makes you think that, "Okay,

"because of that circumstance in his life,

"a life sentence is good enough.

"That's appropriate enough to deserve that

"over the death penalty."

Eric Williams was a MENSA member,

so they couldn't say he was mentally challenged in any way.

He was raised by two parents

in a nice home out in the country.

He's given every chance in the world.

You know, he had a good job as a Justice of the Peace.

So really, what was the mitigation going to be?

Eric Williams looks like every man.

And in fact, we made it very clear to the jury that

even though he looks normal, he is a deadly psychopath.

We actually put on the contents of that storage unit

and his massive gun and tactical fantasy collection,

just so the jurors could get a glimpse

into the mind of Eric Williams.

He wasn't the successful lawyer judge.

He was really a violent, dangerous person,

and whenever anything went wrong in his life,

people were going to pay.

Plus, in the punishment phase, we can put in past crimes,

bad acts, anything we think might be relevant

to helping the jurors.

Take your seat. Witness stand.

We were able to track down the girlfriend from 1995.

And he said, "I have a gun.

"I have nothing to lose."

Take your seat in the witness stand.

During the punishment phase of the trial,

the prosecutors called Janice Gray to the stand

to talk about an incident that happened to her

back in 1995, after she and Eric Williams broke up.

We went to like a little, like a, I don't know,

guess it was a sports bar type.

We had a small conversation about me wanting,

you know, to have another relationship.

It wasn't anything big. And he said, "Well, I have a gun.

"If you walk away, I'll use it. I have nothing to lose."

I was maybe shocked, maybe scared.

I just stood there.

What Bill and Toby were trying to do is show,

with Janice Gray, this was just another step

in a line of violence that Eric Williams committed.

It didn't just begin and end with what happened

to Mark Hasse and the McLellands.

It started way before that.

And that Bill and Toby are showing the jury,

you think you know him because he was

our Justice of the Peace in Kaufman County.

You don't know him at all.

And then we called Kim Williams to the witness stand.

The defense was nervous.

They didn't know when we were going to call Kim Williams.

You could see the defense lawyers like,

"Is she ever going to come?" Because they didn't want her.

Are you guilty in these capital murders?

Yes, I am.

Do we have any deal?

No, we do not.

Did you pull the trigger in these murders?

No, I did not.

-- Who did? -- Eric Williams.

He was mad at Mark Hasse. He was mad at Mr. McLelland.

Who did he bear the most animosity towards?

Mark Hasse. Because he prosecuted him.

And what was to be your role in the murders?

He wanted me to drive.

I so believed in Eric and everything that he told me.

His anger was my anger.

I think her testimony was just ice cold,

at how they plotted this revenge, they planned it.

One of the things that was so compelling and cold was how

the night before they were going to murder the McLellands,

Eric would model his different law enforcement uniforms.

It was like a runway.

He would come in and change out,

"What do you think of this or this one?"

And his plan was to talk his way in.

He was going to say, "Hey, there's an emergency,

"you're in danger, I need to come in."

Once he goes into the McLelland home,

what happens next?

-I hear shots. -How many?

A lot. But--

What did he tell you about killing Cynthia McLelland?

That she had to die because she would be there as a witness,

and he described it as collateral damage.

Kim provided a real glimpse into the sickness

that was their life together.

She talked about how they went to celebrate after a murder.

How did you and Eric spend the rest of the day,

the Saturday before Easter Sunday?

Cooking out.

Were y'all celebrating with steaks?

That's correct.

What was the mood like at the cookout?

Happy.

Joyous.

The big piece that we really needed for her

in a death penalty trial,

we had heard about a potential hit list.

And I think in our mind, we were thinking,

maybe it was written down.

When we talked to Kim, she said, "No, it wasn't written down.

"It was just a list that we talked about."

In order to get the death penalty,

we needed that hit list in

to prove that Eric Williams was a future danger.

After the McLellands were killed,

were there more on the hit list?

-Yes. -Who was that?

Erleigh Wiley.

-- And who else? -- Judge Ashworth.

They were next to be killed by Eric Williams?

Yes.

Lots of items were recovered

from that storage shed.

And one strange item was a backpack.

It had a crossbow and had, like a pickle jar,

full of some weird liquid.

They tested it, and it was homemade napalm.

That was going to be very compelling evidence

for the penalty phase.

After the McLellands died, who was going to be next?

-- Judge Ashworth. -- Why did he tell you

he wanted to kill Judge Ashworth?

He told me that Judge Ashworth was prissy, a prima donna.

He got mad all the time at Eric.

Where was the murder supposed to take place?

At his home.

-- With a crossbow? -- That's correct.

What was the napalm for?

I guess to drive in an extra kind of "F you."

He was gonna bore a hole in his stomach

and pour it in.

Why are you cooperating with law enforcement?

Why are you here testifying against your husband?

Because those families deserve this.

And I want to give it to 'em.

At the conclusion of final argument,

the jury is sent out to deliberate.

And after the jury deliberated for just a little bit,

the judge sent the jury home, so everybody in the courtroom

went home wondering what the verdict was going to be.

Anytime you've got a jury out,

and they go home for the night,

that's a long night for the lawyers involved,

no matter what side you're on.

So, maybe started second-guessing ourselves

because if we don't give the death penalty,

he's going to keep killing.

He's smart enough to be a danger behind bars, too.

We came back the next day.

Almost immediately, they had a verdict.

Mr. Williams,

the jury have found you guilty of the offense

of capital murder, in this court,

to carry out the sentence of death.

It was death.

I think it was just an overwhelming sense of relief.

Lawyers don't high-five after big verdicts,

and the community didn't high-five on this case.

It was just relief that maybe

we can try to get back to our normal life.

It's not a it-makes-everything-better

kind of feeling, once they came back with the death sentence.

People talk about it being a closure.

There is no closure.

That's not going to bring Dad back.

It's not going to bring Cynthia back.

It's not going to bring Mark Hasse back.

You're still dealing with life without them.

We were proud of the Kaufman County Sheriff's Office,

and Bill and Toby both did a great job.

We couldn't have hand-picked anybody better

to stand up there and be the prosecutors.

Those guys were top-notch.

After Eric Williams' conviction and death sentence,

we sat down with all the family members involved

and law enforcement,

and we got feedback from everyone involved.

Of course, in the run-up to Eric's trial,

everyone wanted the death penalty

for Kim Williams, including the families.

But they were present in the courtroom

for Kim's testimony, and saw how devastating it was

and what a huge role it played in the death penalty

for Eric Williams,

that they actually had a little bit of mercy

and forgiveness in their heart.

We ultimately let her plead guilty to 40 years behind bars.

So, that's the sentence she's currently serving.

I never tried a death penalty case

where I knew the victims.

This was the first time that I felt

pursuing my passion, prosecuting murder cases,

would somehow jeopardize my loved ones and my family.

It was very personal in that way,

and also you felt like you were fighting

for the criminal justice system.

If you're going to make lawyers targets,

then you will have to pay for it.

Mike and Mark lost their lives

because of their jobs.

And I know we don't typically think of line-of-duty deaths

involving prosecutors, but that's because they're so rare.

I do consider it a line-of-duty death,

and I'm glad their service is kind of honored in that way.

I want people to realize and never forget the victims.

The name of the person that committed these murders

will be in the history books forever.

But the three people that he killed

were wonderful people,

and I want their memories to be carried on.

Every day of their lives, they did stuff together.

There wasn't a time that

he wasn't there and she wasn't there.

They were always together doing something.

I hope people remember the determination

of our father, and how he didn't quit,

and how he was bullheaded, but he loved everybody.

Mark Hasse stood up for what he believed in,

and he paid the price for it.

The man who would bring justice for other victims

had justice brought for him.

When you take your oath, your job is,

as a prosecutor, to seek justice.

People don't really think of the prosecutor as being the one

who keeps the streets safe, but ultimately,

if you do your job right, that is what you're doing.

When you hear about the elected DA

and his main assistant being murdered in Kaufman County,

that was a huge reminder to all of us

that it's a risky job.