everyone in the office was on edge. my husband, i mean, he stayed up all night with a gun in his hand. i know that i started carrying a gun. sleep with a gun under my pillow. even shannon, who wouldn t carry a gun before, now slept with protection nearby. we had a big ol shotgun sitting on our dresser ready to go just in case. the killer s threat to unleash more violence in kaufman county kept the task force working around the clock. a special team scoured the surveillance video collected near the mcclelland crime scene, hoping for a new lead. so many people now have surveillance cameras on their house. so, we re trained to go in and collect that sort of evidence. and, finally, the video team s painstaking search seemed to pay off. they found images of a car that didn t belong, a white ford crown victoria, cruising near the mcclelland home during the
a lot more than tough talk. this was just this was more than a crime scene that terrorize the people who protected us. now, no one was safe! coming up. that investigation would also present an overwhelming challenge. thanks to a suspect list, including the hundred of defendants mark had put away. i started with his crime cases. and the murder cases that have been prosecuted, people were starting to roll out. anyone in particular stick in your head? when dateline continues! n dateline continues your home. for romance. your home for big savings. [ laughs ] hey, mom, have you seen m ew. because when you bundle home and auto with progressive, your home is a savings paradise. bundles progressive. your home for savings. i mean, we really did love him!
it was a straight up whodunit. we didn t know. texas ranger eric casper was part of the team who entered the home. the front door was not kicked in. the door was unlocked. shell casings are 223 caliber. that told them the killer used an ar-15 or mr-type semi-automatic like this one. it started when the door opened. mr. mcclelland and mrs. mcclelland were retreating, trying to get away from the gunfire. cynthia s body was clearly in the middle of the living room. she was trying to get dressed. there were shell casings next to mike s body, indicating the killer had finished him off at close range. the suspect was standing right on top of him, over him, shooting him. to investigators, it looked
before they left this world. they really did. they made a large impact on a lot of people. a beefed-up multi-agency task force vowed to catch whoever killed the mcclellands and mark hasse. investigators had seen that ford crown victoria on video roaming near the mcclelland home and thought it might be a police car. the terrible possibility it might be one of their own had to be ruled in or out immediately. we checked with every law enforcement agency in the area and identified where every police car was in the area. and none of them were even close to where this image was captured. next, they looked for anyone who for any reason had issues or disputes involving both prosecutors. there didn t seem to be anybody in that group of people that were upset enough that they would want to commit homicide. but there was one defendant involved in a felony they couldn t ignore. there was only one common denominator for those two prosecutors. which was? that was eric williams. e
but he hadn t sat down for a formal interview with investigators. because of his connection to both mark hasse and mike mcclelland, investigators had to take a serious look at him. on the surface it may seem implausible because he s a lawyer and a judge and successful. the more we learned about him, the more viable in our minds he became as a suspect. just the year before, williams had been prosecuted for theft by hasse and mcclelland. you must be champing at the bit to talk to eric williams. obviously, we wanted to talk to him. the problem with that was he was still represented by lawyers. lawyers who kept williams from talking. but then, two weeks after the mcclellands were killed in their home, the special prosecutors got a big opening they hadn t seen coming. we get an email back from the lawyers basically saying, we no longer represent eric williams. they figured this was their one window to talk to him, and they knew they had get it right