Authorities said the wife of a former judge has confessed to being involved in the shooting deaths of a North Texas district attorney, his wife and an assistant prosecutor, the Associated Press. Kim Lene Williams was arrested early Wednesday morning as Kaufman County sheriff's spokesman Lt. Justin Lewis says Williams is being charged in all three deaths.
The McLellands were found dead March 30, two months after Hasse was slain. Williams is a former justice of the peace whose legal and political career collapsed in a hard-fought legal battle was accused Wednesday of killing the two prosecutors, who had been his courtroom rivals.
His wife, Kim named him as the gunman, and also confessed to having been the driver in both shootings as part of her role in the vendetta, the authorities said.
"I find it hard to believe that someone could have written a novel with all these twists and turns in a small rural county in Texas," said Bruce Wood, the county's top elected official. "People are relieved but still stunned."
The two prosecutors that the authorities said the couple conspired to kill had helped convict Mr. Williams last year on burglary and theft charges in a dispute about three computer monitors worth less than $1,500. The Williamses had been accused of the executions of two prosecutors, and the wife of one, to avenge a guilty verdict.
Ms. Williams joined her husband at the jail about 3 a.m. on Wednesday and was in custody on a $10 million bond.
According to an affidavit filed by the authorities, Ms. Williams confessed to her involvement in the shootings in an interview with investigators on Tuesday, and told them that her husband had been the one who shot Mr. Hasse in January and Mr. McLelland and his wife in March.
She also used the storage unit where Mr. Williams had kept a car and more than 20 guns.
The authorities had not yet formally charged Mr. Williams with the three murders, though officials said they were preparing to and had called a news conference for Thursday afternoon. Before his arrest on Saturday over the e-mail, both Mr. Williams and one of his lawyers had repeatedly denied he had any involvement in the shootings.
Mr. Williams was a lawyer, a member of the chamber of commerce and a newly elected justice of the peace when he was accused of stealing the computer monitors from a county building in May 2011.
Mr. McLelland and Mr. Hasse handled the case, and helped persuade a jury to find Mr. Williams guilty in March 2012. He was soon removed from office and his law license was suspended.
His state-issued peace officer license - Mr. Williams had nearly two decades of law enforcement training - was revoked, the New York Times reported.
