Epilogue

IN THE MIDST of the everyday rhythm of life, these murders came to my community and to me, unplanned and unexpected. No one expects to be the target of a murder plot, particularly by a former colleague.

After all the years of being around the criminal element, this situation taught me one important lesson: don’t be fooled by the well-dressed and well-heeled educated criminal.

Eric Williams had taken entitlement to a new level. He proved far more deadly than the average street-level criminal. Eric Williams and his ilk can be easily overlooked as a danger.

The good news is that psychopaths like Eric Williams are a very small part of our population. And like most criminals, they make mistakes. Eric Williams’s mistakes came with his crime stopper tip that he couldn’t resist making and the contents of his storage unit, which contained his evil tools. The now famous Unit 18 in Seagoville, which contained the getaway vehicle: a white Crown Ford Victoria. Besides the getaway vehicle, there were weapons and a single unspent shell casing, effectively tying the crime scenes together with one weapon.

It became even more evident to me as the months after the trial unfolded, as we made through Christmas, New Year’s, and Valentine’s Day, that I had been fortunate to miss my brush with this evil psychopath who had created so much havoc in the lives of the McLelland and Hasse families and the citizens of Kaufman County.

Then, in late February, the Williams trial team set a motion for new trial hearing in front of the court, based upon newly discovered evidence, namely brain scans that had been performed on Williams. The defense asserted that Judge Snipes would not grant a continuance during the trial to allow for this type of testing. Further, if the jury had heard the evidence, the defense argued that the jury would not have imposed the death penalty because the scans showed he had a broken brain.

They were wrong.

I had mistakenly thought that by the time I testified against Eric Williams, he was a broken man. That perhaps as he sat in the courtroom with his head bowed, he was contrite for the sufferings of the families that had lost loved ones at his hands. I assumed his bowed head signified compliance, contrition, defeat.

I was wrong, too.

It was an act. He felt none of those emotions. That became clear at the motion for new trial hearing.

Once there, Eric Williams did not want to remain in the courtroom. So after the judge questioned him and was assured he understood he had a right to be in the courtroom during the proceedings, Eric Williams was allowed to leave under armed guard after he insisted that he wanted to leave.

Unbeknownst to anyone, I was walking down an empty hallway heading toward one of the court offices after the judge’s admonishment. Flanked by two deputies, one on each side, Eric Williams walked toward the exit door and the waiting squad car to go back to the county jail.

In that moment, I locked eyes with Eric Williams.

His head was not bowed. His spirit was not broken. He passed me without a word. He never flinched, wavered, or looked away.

Although Eric said nothing, he glared at me all the way down the hall. Squinting and narrowing his gaze at me, his eyes dared me to look away. I didn’t. The two deputies hustled him by as fast as they could propel his shackled feet.

Once he passed me, he never looked back.

Those few seconds were one of the most uncomfortable moments of my life. I exhaled when he passed and headed out the door. It had been unnerving.

I knew in those moments that I never wanted that man out of prison. I knew he felt that his work was not done. He had left unfinished business.

And I was it.

ARE WE AT a time in history when we can’t work out our differences? Have we forgotten that freedom means that we are meant to solve our disagreements through discourse and not violence? Ultimately, Eric Williams could not handle the outcomes of his decisions. The decision to overbill the county; the decision to steal computer equipment from the county; the decision to not accept responsibility when the jury found him guilty; and the final decision to take innocent lives.

Are people like Williams evil? If he was in fact evil, then can you ever overcome evil? I truly believe that putting light into the darkness is the only way to overcome fear.

Fear is real … it can temporarily paralyze the senses, or leave your heart pounding uncontrollably, altering the way you breath. It’s very real.

We all have fears and anxieties. It can be a new job, changing cities, or simply introducing yourself to strangers. It may be small or large, but overcoming that tension as we move through our lives is a goal that every person wants to achieve.

I was raised as the only girl in a family of four brothers. I had a strong mother, and a father who was never intimated by my mom’s strength. He was a social trailblazer, committed to supporting the women in his life. This passed down through the generations of my family, my father’s strong mother, then my mother, and then me.

My parents believed that their children could accomplish anything. And they instilled that belief in us as we grew up. It didn’t matter that I was a girl—that just made my mother push harder. Sometimes when I doubt what I should do, I think of my mother and I wonder what she would do. And no matter how difficult the task is before me, I always know that the accomplishments she and her contemporaries achieved in their time were much greater than the tasks before me.

As the murders in 2013 unraveled and the investigation hung in the balance, I decided to make a leap of faith, not because I’m brave, but because I knew it was the right thing to do. I stood at the crossroads, not just of my career, but of my life. So I stepped up, just like so many people every day step up to the challenges that are before them. The fear I felt then is no different than the anxieties that other people have as they make difficult decisions, but, like all anxieties about our choices, acting is the hardest part.

After I accepted the appointment as DA, I never questioned the decision again. The DA position is where I am supposed to be and it is where I have remained since the appointment. My children are no longer teenagers, but college-age men fulfilling their own lives. My husband continues to thrive. He left the government and is a partner in a law firm in the private sector. He still likes to tell me when he thinks he is right; sometimes I listen, sometimes I don’t.

Over fifty years ago, I was born in Kaufman County, and I have lived there most of my life. A killer came to Kaufman County, and hunted people that he thought wronged him. He is gone now, but my county and I survived.