Texas DA, Wife Found Shot to Death in Their Home - East Idaho News
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Texas DA, Wife Found Shot to Death in Their Home

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ShootingIngramPub?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1364735692091Ingram Publishing/Thinkstock(DALLAS) — The Kaufman County, Texas, district attorney and his wife were found shot dead inside their home on Saturday, police said, nearly two months to the day that the county assistant district attorney was murdered in the county courthouse parking lot.

Police would say nothing more than that Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife Cynthia were found shot in their home in Forney, but sources told ABC affiliate WFAA-TV in Dallas that their front door was reportedly kicked in.

Investigators from the FBI, the Texas Rangers, the Department of Public Safety and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were all on scene and a wide roadblock was set up around the crime scene in the small rural town.

The task force investigating the murder of Kaufman County Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse was also at McLellands’ home.  Hasse was gunned down execution-style outside of the Kaufman County Courthouse on Thursday, Jan. 31, just before 9 a.m. by one or two unknown assailants as he walked from his car to the courthouse in Kaufman, southeast of Dallas.

The assailants, who may have been masked and dressed in black, fled the scene in a silver four-door sedan.

Hasse, 57, had been a longtime felony prosecutor for the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office, according to WFAA-TV. He headed the organized crime unit in Dallas in the 1980s. He started work in Kaufman County three years ago.

McLelland had vowed to hunt down Hasse’s killer.

“He knows and I know there will be a reckoning,” McClelland said at Hasse’s memorial service, WFAA reported. “Too many people are focusing on that. That’s not going to be a problem.”

Authorities have also been trying to determine whether Hasse’s killing was related to the murder of Tom Clements, Colorado’s prison director, last month.

The Colorado man implicated in Clements’ murder, Evan Ebel, was killed in a shootout with police in Texas two days after the killing. He was pulled over by police in Texas and fired at deputies, launching a high- speed chase and shootout that ended when he was fatally struck by police gunfire.

Ballistics testing showed that the gun found on Ebel in the Texas shooting was the same one that was used to kill Clements. Police are trying to determine whether there are any other suspects who acted with Ebel in the murder.

Ebel is also a suspect in the murder of a pizza delivery man last Sunday, March 17, in Denver.

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