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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker, DTK. Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 4: journalist and author Dan Zufanski. Good evening on a cold
Speaker 4: January morning, the killer executed Assistant District to Attorney Mark
Speaker 4: Haas in broad daylight. Eight shots fired a block from
Speaker 4: the Kaufman County Courthouse. Two months later, a massacre the
Speaker 4: day before Easter, the couple slept bunnies eggs, a flower
Speaker 4: centerpiece gracing the table. Death rang their door bell and
Speaker 4: filled the air with the sound of an assault weapon
Speaker 4: discharging round after round into their bodies. Eric Williams and
Speaker 4: his wife Kim celebrated the murders with grilled steaks. Their
Speaker 4: crimes covered front pages around the world, many saying the
Speaker 4: killer placed a target square on the back of law enforcement.
Speaker 4: Williams planned to exact revenge on all those who had
Speaker 4: wronged him one at a time. Throughout the spring of
Speaker 4: twenty thirteen, Williams sowed terror through a small Texas town
Speaker 4: in a quest for vengeance turned to deadly obsession, his
Speaker 4: intention to keep killing until someone found a way to
Speaker 4: stop him. Book their feature this evening is in Plain Sight,
Speaker 4: the Kaufman County Prosecutors Murders, with my special guest, journalist
Speaker 4: and author Katherine Casey. Welcome back to the program, and
Speaker 4: thank you very much for agreeing to this interview. Katherine Casey, glad.
Speaker 7: To be here, Dan, thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 8: Thank you. This is, as I mentioned to you just before,
Speaker 8: we got on one really exciting book. Edge of your seat,
Speaker 8: page turner. I know those are cliches, folks, but this
Speaker 8: is incredible and let's get right to this incredible story.
Speaker 8: Now we start, and you start with the book where
Speaker 8: we really get a really detailed background on how this
Speaker 8: incredible disaster came to be from promising people and careers
Speaker 8: and a small little community in Kaufman County. Let's first
Speaker 8: talk a little bit about Kaufman County and before we
Speaker 8: start talking about the the early life of our main character,
Speaker 8: Eric Williams.
Speaker 7: Well, Kaufman is kind of a sleepy little town and
Speaker 7: it's the county seat. The courthouse is kind of an
Speaker 7: undistinguished building in the center of it, and it's surrounded
Speaker 7: by a town square with old storefronts, and it's kind
Speaker 7: of a quiet little place. But it's on the outskirts
Speaker 7: of Dallas, and it's the kind of place where people
Speaker 7: of families have been there for generations. There are cattle
Speaker 7: ranches surrounding Kaufman Proper. It's the kind of place where
Speaker 7: Aunt Ban in the Old Mayberry series might be seen
Speaker 7: walking down the street carrying one for pies to a
Speaker 7: neighbor's house. It's, you know, not the kind of place
Speaker 7: where you would think people would be gunned down in
Speaker 7: the street.
Speaker 8: Now, you talk about Eric Williams and not such a
Speaker 8: spectacular or eventful early life, But would you talk about
Speaker 8: high school and some of the oddness is noted by people.
Speaker 8: So tell us a little bit about some of the
Speaker 8: oddness at high school. You mentioned a briefcase, and really
Speaker 8: what his character is known for by people in that
Speaker 8: little community. What do they see and what are the
Speaker 8: first things that he does at high school towards his dreams?
Speaker 7: Well, Eric really wanted to go into the military, and
Speaker 7: he was really geared toward that mindset. He was very bright.
Speaker 7: Eric Williams is a very smart man. He was one
Speaker 7: of the brainy kids in high school, and he was
Speaker 7: a little quirky. Instead of talking to the other kids
Speaker 7: on the school bus, he'd sit and he'd read a book.
Speaker 7: He carried a briefcase, which is unusual in a small
Speaker 7: town for a kid to do. I think it's actually
Speaker 7: unusual any place, but especially in a little Texas town.
Speaker 7: And he was an Eagle Scout. He was really well
Speaker 7: thought of, but people did notice that he was a
Speaker 7: little odd like when he took his Eagle Scout exam,
Speaker 7: he was asked some questions, and the man who asked
Speaker 7: him the questions, a scout master, noticed that when Eric
Speaker 7: couldn't answer a question, his eyes just got kind of
Speaker 7: dark and dead, and the guy thought, there's really something
Speaker 7: wrong here, but he didn't know what it was. And
Speaker 7: then he was off to college and it was just
Speaker 7: it continued like that. People have told me that in
Speaker 7: high school, Eric and his group of friends. He had
Speaker 7: a really tight group of friends that he played games
Speaker 7: with like Dungeons and Dragons, where they took on rolls
Speaker 7: of fictional fantasy characters. He played Star Trek, and they
Speaker 7: played different characters from Star Trek, and he was really
Speaker 7: into that. That was his life. And I've heard it
Speaker 7: referred to as being a little bit like the popular
Speaker 7: show on TV, The Big Bang Theory, right right.
Speaker 8: You talked about too that he was very intelligent and
Speaker 8: he had got a chemistry scholarship at the Texas Christian
Speaker 8: University and he start but then he had joined ROTC
Speaker 8: and he focused on law enforcement. Tell us how he
Speaker 8: progresses in his interests for military and how that changes
Speaker 8: his direction and education.
Speaker 7: Well, he really did want to be a soldier. Eric
Speaker 7: really wanted to be a career, career army, but the
Speaker 7: army was at a downsizing point when he was graduating
Speaker 7: from TCU and he wasn't picked up. A lot of
Speaker 7: his friends were. And Eric had always been this kid
Speaker 7: who was you know, everybody talked about how smart he was,
Speaker 7: how great he was, And this was like the first
Speaker 7: failure to I mean this, and this was a really
Speaker 7: sad one for him. So he enrolled in a or
Speaker 7: he joined another group of like a voluntary military organization
Speaker 7: and uh then he went into law enforcement and he
Speaker 7: he was after college, he started getting jobs working for
Speaker 7: small police departments in and around the Fort Worth area
Speaker 7: where he was living at that time.
Speaker 8: You talk about those early jobs, you say that certainly
Speaker 8: there was a disappointment in him not having a future
Speaker 8: in the military. Realized that, so you said that he
Speaker 8: applied to small police forces in Fortworth, Texas, and you
Speaker 8: talk about a suburb called White Settlement. What was the
Speaker 8: situation that he left both of those police departments.
Speaker 7: Well, he was fired from both and this wasn't something
Speaker 7: people expected of Eric Williams. Eric was gung ho and
Speaker 7: Eric was going to be a success. And the first
Speaker 7: department he was let go after he asked to have
Speaker 7: time off to take a college class and he was
Speaker 7: denied it and then he called in sick and just
Speaker 7: didn't shook for work to go to the class. But
Speaker 7: the second one was more troubling. One evening, Eric and
Speaker 7: another police officer, instead of circulating through town as they
Speaker 7: were supposed to be this is a small Texas town
Speaker 7: checking on residents, didn't do that, and it's thought that
Speaker 7: they went to a topless bar and instead Eric hacked
Speaker 7: into the fourth level of the computer system at the
Speaker 7: police office, which was the most secure and changed his
Speaker 7: report to show that he had been in town circulating
Speaker 7: that night. The police chief got to call that night
Speaker 7: reporting and showed up the next morning, looked at the
Speaker 7: proof and confronted Eric. Eric denied it, and he fired Eric.
Speaker 7: And at the time the police chief thought that the
Speaker 7: whole thing was very odd because obviously Eric was very
Speaker 7: well schooled in how to hack into the computer, and
Speaker 7: he thought he should have been able to cover his
Speaker 7: footprints if he'd wanted to. And the police chief thought
Speaker 7: it was almost as if Eric was thumbing his nose
Speaker 7: at them, that he wanted them to know that he'd
Speaker 7: been able to hack into the computer system and do
Speaker 7: what he wanted with it.
Speaker 8: Now you talk about In November ninety three, at twenty
Speaker 8: six years of age, Eric moves with his friend Paul
Speaker 8: Lilly to Kaufman County, says about forty minutes southeast of Dallas,
Speaker 8: and his friend Lily got a job at the sheriff's
Speaker 8: office and they lived in Terrell and Eric began studying
Speaker 8: for a law school entrance exam. So tell us what
Speaker 8: he does in terms of he needs money, So what
Speaker 8: happens and who does he meet?
Speaker 7: Well, Eric went into kaufmin looking for work, and work
Speaker 7: got to the county judge that there was this promising
Speaker 7: young man who'd been an Eagles scout, who'd been in
Speaker 7: law enforcement, who was looking into law school, who was
Speaker 7: looking for work in the area. And the county judge
Speaker 7: called him in and his name is Ashworth, Glenn Ashworth,
Speaker 7: and interviewed him and Eric was very impressive. He you know,
Speaker 7: he looked on paper, he looked very good. And the
Speaker 7: judge needed a new county clerk, or I'm sorry, a
Speaker 7: clerk for his office. The clerk's act is kind of
Speaker 7: an assistant. They do the scheduling. They're kind of the
Speaker 7: gatekeepers for the judges. They do a lot of the paperwork.
Speaker 7: He sat down, talked to Eric, and he hired him.
Speaker 7: Glenn Ashworth at that point was the only state level
Speaker 7: judge in Kaufman County, Texas, and he wielded a substantial
Speaker 7: amount of power in that little community. And with that hire,
Speaker 7: Eric became aligned with one of the most powerful men
Speaker 7: in this in Coftin County.
Speaker 8: You also talk about all of the as you mentioned,
Speaker 8: all the things that he oversaw for the judge as
Speaker 8: a court coordinator, and he wielded a lot of power
Speaker 8: just in that rule, but also what Judge Ashworth suggested
Speaker 8: Eric do was register as an unpaid reserve officer with
Speaker 8: the DA office. And once he did that, what did
Speaker 8: that enable Eric to do which was very important to Eric.
Speaker 7: He was able to keep his gun with him to
Speaker 7: go through security and into the courthouse and even into
Speaker 7: the court room. The judge wanted him to have it.
Speaker 7: I mean, it's one of those things a lot of
Speaker 7: the you know, the bailiffs are there and they're armed,
Speaker 7: and we all have metal detectors now at the entrances
Speaker 7: at the courthouses, and this was another level of security.
Speaker 5: So Eric liked this.
Speaker 7: He started doing some things part time with the Sheriff's Department.
Speaker 7: He became kind of an active volunteer.
Speaker 8: You also talk about that first summer though that there's
Speaker 8: a little, well not a little, an incident that in
Speaker 8: hindsight forebod things to happen in the future. But that
Speaker 8: first summer he attended a court coordinating a court coordinator's conference,
Speaker 8: and he met a woman named Janice Gray. What happened
Speaker 8: that summer with janis Gray.
Speaker 7: They started dating. Eric hadn't dated a lot of girls.
Speaker 7: But he'd had a few girlfriends over the years, and
Speaker 7: he liked Janice. Janis liked him initially. She thought he
Speaker 7: was just this great guy, you know, a little quirky,
Speaker 7: kind of funny, you know. It seemed like a really
Speaker 7: sweet guy. And they dated for a while, talked on
Speaker 7: the phone, got together even though they lived in separate counties,
Speaker 7: they lived quite a distance apart, and then something and
Speaker 7: then Janie found somebody she really really was attracted to,
Speaker 7: really cared for, and saw a future with, and she
Speaker 7: broke it off. She thought that Eric took it well.
Speaker 7: But then they showed up at the Cork Coordinators conference
Speaker 7: that next year, and Eric came up to her and
Speaker 7: showed her a gun in the lobby of the hotel
Speaker 7: that they were staying at, and then said that he
Speaker 7: brought it to give to her son. Janice didn't want it.
Speaker 7: It kind of gave her an odd feeling. So but
Speaker 7: later that and he wanted to go out to dinner,
Speaker 7: but she refused. Later that evening, she showed up with
Speaker 7: friends at a restaurant bar and Eric was suddenly there again,
Speaker 7: standing right beside her, and he pulled the gun out
Speaker 7: and showed it to her. He pulled her away from
Speaker 7: her friends and then showed her the gun and said,
Speaker 7: I don't have anything to lose. Her friend saw this
Speaker 7: happen and came over and got her and walked off
Speaker 7: with her, and they reported it to the police. The
Speaker 7: police couldn't find Eric, but when they got into the
Speaker 7: conference next morning, there he was sitting in the conference
Speaker 7: room as if nothing had happened. The police took him
Speaker 7: away and brought him to the courthouse. Janice was filing
Speaker 7: charges and they talked. The police talked to the district
Speaker 7: attorney and Kaufman, who talked to Judge Ashworth. Judge Ashworth,
Speaker 7: who assumed, and probably not unsurprisingly so, just thought that
Speaker 7: his young coordinator had done something foolish, had too much
Speaker 7: to drink and done something foolish, took responsibility for him
Speaker 7: and had him brought back to Kaufman, and Janie agreed
Speaker 7: not to go forward with anything as long as Eric
Speaker 7: left her alone.
Speaker 8: Yeah, amazing. In the fall of ninety five, you write
Speaker 8: that at twenty five years of years of age, he
Speaker 8: began law school in Fort Worth and his future seemed
Speaker 8: really bright, and that Judge Ashworth and Eric became increasingly closer.
Speaker 8: Tell Us a little bit about this developing relationship between
Speaker 8: the two. How far did it really go and how
Speaker 8: close did they become?
Speaker 7: You know, they were really good friends. They went out
Speaker 7: to the judge included Eric and pretty much most of
Speaker 7: the things that he did. Eric was invited into the
Speaker 7: judges home for different events when he had parties. They
Speaker 7: had lunch together every day, along with a couple of
Speaker 7: other people in Kaufman, people from the courthouse and the
Speaker 7: county surveyor. They liked Eric. The judge really liked Eric,
Speaker 7: thought he was funny. Eric did a good job for him.
Speaker 7: Judge Ashworth was proud of the fact that Eric was
Speaker 7: going to law school and bittering his future. It got
Speaker 7: to the point where they became such good friends at
Speaker 7: one point that the judge actually included Eric as a
Speaker 7: beneficiary in his will. He just thought, Eric is this
Speaker 7: really great kid, and he was trying to help him start.
Speaker 7: He was acting as his mentor, and he obviously saw
Speaker 7: Eric as his protege and he was proud of him.
Speaker 7: And when Eric did so well in law school and
Speaker 7: then graduated from law school, Eric actually gave the judge
Speaker 7: a plaque thanking him for what he had done for him.
Speaker 7: People in Kaufman saw the two of them as just
Speaker 7: very close friends.
Speaker 8: You said that time, and you include though that again,
Speaker 8: he was accepted as a quirky guy with his odd
Speaker 8: smile and his behaviors, just accepted overall. They considered him
Speaker 8: a nice guy. But you include this odd statement about
Speaker 8: if he you say, if I ever if he ever
Speaker 8: decided to go out, what did he say? And in
Speaker 8: the context of how did he come up with the
Speaker 8: statement which people thought was odd?
Speaker 7: Eric said odd things at times. You know, he was
Speaker 7: one of those guys he sat there and kind of
Speaker 7: had a little smile on his face, and people weren't
Speaker 7: sure what he was thinking. And at times he'd blurred
Speaker 7: out strange things. And there'd been a shooting someplace in
Speaker 7: the country that was in the news, and sitting at
Speaker 7: lunch one day with a group of friends, Eric said,
Speaker 7: if I ever go out, I'm going to take a
Speaker 7: bunch of people. If I ever decide to go out,
Speaker 7: I'm going to take a bunch of people with me.
Speaker 7: And no one knew quite what to think of it,
Speaker 7: you know, I mean, it's such an odd thing to say.
Speaker 7: They knew Eric, they liked Eric, Eric's friend, They didn't
Speaker 7: think Eric would really do that. Why would Eric really
Speaker 7: do that? So they kind of looked at each other,
Speaker 7: and then one remark to the other when they were
Speaker 7: leaving that Charles Whitman, who shot from the ut Tower
Speaker 7: in the nineteen sixties, was an eagle scout like Eric,
Speaker 7: and somebody wondered if one day Eric would shoot people
Speaker 7: from the roof of the Kaufman County Courthouse.
Speaker 8: Wow, you talk about that. In ninety six, he was
Speaker 8: on online message board and he met someone. Tell us
Speaker 8: who he meets and a little bit about Kim Johnson's
Speaker 8: early background.
Speaker 7: Kim was working at that point at a doctor's office.
Speaker 7: She was kind of a medical receptionist. She'd done very
Speaker 7: well in high school. Smart, pretty, big, blonde Texas hair,
Speaker 7: a great laugh. People liked to Kim. She'd gone to college,
Speaker 7: she went to SMU, decided to drop out, and was working,
Speaker 7: you know, for a doctor at that point. Kim, on
Speaker 7: the surface looked kind of like just a happy, go
Speaker 7: lucky girl. The truth was that her home life had
Speaker 7: been pretty traumatic. Her father. She describes her father as
Speaker 7: having been abusive over the years, and the family home
Speaker 7: had not been as happy as people, you know, as
Speaker 7: Kim portrayed from the outside. So she was somebody who
Speaker 7: had kind of this undercurrent of tension in her life
Speaker 7: growing up, and she was looking for somebody kind of
Speaker 7: like Eric. She the guys she dated, she decided, were
Speaker 7: too you know, laid back, and they weren't the kind
Speaker 7: of guys she wanted to be with. And Eric was fun,
Speaker 7: and he was smart, and she was really attracted by
Speaker 7: his intelligence. And Kim is a smart woman, and they
Speaker 7: kind of saw in each other something and in no
Speaker 7: time at all, Eric was you know. They met, they
Speaker 7: met online, and then they met in person, and they
Speaker 7: spent time together and they fell in love.
Speaker 8: You say. Shortly after this union really seemed to change
Speaker 8: Eric around the office, and his character almost seemed to change,
Speaker 8: including some things in behavior where he lost weight, seemed
Speaker 8: to get healthier. Tell us a little bit about some
Speaker 8: of the positive changes it seemed to happen.
Speaker 7: But once he met Ke, well, Eric's friends were a
Speaker 7: little worried about this relationship in the beginning. You know,
Speaker 7: people who meet on the internet, especially back then. A
Speaker 7: lot of people do it nowadays, but back then this
Speaker 7: was all pretty new, and people were concerned about who
Speaker 7: Kim was and you know whether or not should be
Speaker 7: good for Eric. But Eric's friends saw that he was happier.
Speaker 7: He seemed more content in his life. He was really
Speaker 7: proud of Kim. He carried a picture of her in
Speaker 7: his wallet, had a picture of her on his desk,
Speaker 7: talk to people about, you know, how beautiful she was.
Speaker 7: And he just seemed to be opening up to life.
Speaker 7: He did. He looked healthier, life looked really promising, he
Speaker 7: was finishing law school, the future was ahead. Everything looked
Speaker 7: really good for Eric Williams.
Speaker 8: Now you talk about that he lost weight, but that
Speaker 8: at the same time, the again, this story has got
Speaker 8: a lot of people with not good health. So what
Speaker 8: does he discover in terms of his own health. Soon
Speaker 8: after meeting Kim, well.
Speaker 7: Had they had some bad turn of events. Shortly after
Speaker 7: they married, Eric found out he started losing weight. He
Speaker 7: started having to rush to the restroom all the time.
Speaker 7: It turned out that he had type one diabetes, and
Speaker 7: this was something that really changed his life in many ways.
Speaker 7: He had continued to be a volunteer in the Armed
Speaker 7: Services and at that point had to tender his resignation
Speaker 7: because he knew he could never be called up for
Speaker 7: active duty and things hadn't really gone very well for
Speaker 7: Eric at that point. I mean, his life was opening
Speaker 7: up for him. His legal degree was you know, he
Speaker 7: was getting to the point where he was graduating. But
Speaker 7: he'd had all of those disappointments. The military thing, hadn't
Speaker 7: worked out, the law enforcement thing, he'd been fired at
Speaker 7: the jobs that he'd had, and now this, you know,
Speaker 7: now this health thing. And then Kim got some bad news.
Speaker 7: It turned out that she developed a lump on her
Speaker 7: leg and she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. So both
Speaker 7: of these young people at the beginning of their lives together,
Speaker 7: you know, all of a sudden, their lives as they're
Speaker 7: turned around.
Speaker 8: You talk about Becky Calabria, and they owned a little
Speaker 8: law office and she was one of Becky Collabria was
Speaker 8: one of the people that went for lunch routinely with
Speaker 8: Judge Ashworth and Eric. And so when nineteen ninety eight
Speaker 8: he starts working with these people, tell us what happens
Speaker 8: at this law office.
Speaker 7: Well, at the law office, Eric signed on right after
Speaker 7: he got his law degree, as he said, and the
Speaker 7: intention was that he would work and that a percentage
Speaker 7: of whatever he earned would go toward the law firm.
Speaker 7: But Eric was a known quantity in Kaufman Car County,
Speaker 7: and so he immediately started getting court appointments and he
Speaker 7: was a good friend of the judge handing out the appointments.
Speaker 7: Not that he was getting really special treatment from Judge Ashworth,
Speaker 7: but he, you know, he got his fair share of
Speaker 7: the cases and they started, you know, his calendar started
Speaker 7: to fill up, the money started to come in and
Speaker 7: he Eric wasn't paying Becky Calabriel what she had thought
Speaker 7: she had expected he would be paying. So there were
Speaker 7: some words that passed between the two of them, and
Speaker 7: Eric describes it as a misunderstanding over the wages. But
Speaker 7: he left and he hung out his own shingle right
Speaker 7: across from the county courthouse and opened his own office.
Speaker 8: You talk about the really good money that flowed in
Speaker 8: from Eric's court appointments. And in two thousand and one
Speaker 8: they bought a almost a twenty nine hundred square foot
Speaker 8: three bedroom house about a mile and a half from
Speaker 8: the courthouse at sixteen hundred Overlook with a three car garage.
Speaker 8: Tell us how close Judge Ashworth was with him.
Speaker 7: Literally, Judge Ashworth was right across the fields at the
Speaker 7: back of the well, at Eric and Kimsey house, he
Speaker 7: had a place that was directly across that whole area.
Speaker 7: Kaufman is kind of an incubator. A lot of little
Speaker 7: towns are. But the area that the Williams has bought
Speaker 7: in was actually developed by one of the Judge's cousins.
Speaker 7: And the house that Eric and Kim bought was once
Speaker 7: owned by a member of the judges family. It was
Speaker 7: all very close.
Speaker 8: You talk about Eric at this point indulges his interests
Speaker 8: at the courthouse, he shows off firearms and at least
Speaker 8: you say, ten or so handguns and rifles was the
Speaker 8: word around town about his weaponry. But you say, why
Speaker 8: was that not a concern?
Speaker 7: Well, Eric had always when Eric and came married, he
Speaker 7: had about ten guns, ten firearms, and once there the
Speaker 7: money started coming in. He was buying more and he
Speaker 7: was showing them to people at the courthouse, letting them
Speaker 7: hold them. He was really proud of the guns, the rifles.
Speaker 7: He bought some ar weapons. He was really into this,
Speaker 7: and word started floating around the courthouse that Eric had
Speaker 7: an arsenal, a small arsenal in the closet at his office.
Speaker 7: People didn't think a lot about it because this is
Speaker 7: rural Texas, and most people in rural Texas have guns.
Speaker 7: So it was something that people noted. It was something
Speaker 7: that they knew about Eric, but it didn't foster any
Speaker 7: major concern.
Speaker 8: You talk about the political climate in this town changing,
Speaker 8: and in two thousand and two, Judge Ashworth is a
Speaker 8: Democrat facing re election in a county that's turning conservative.
Speaker 8: Tell us what happens as a result, and what is
Speaker 8: this effect? What does this change in Eric's life?
Speaker 7: Well, the judge, Judge Ashworth, decides not to run again.
Speaker 7: A lot of Texas judges do this. They step down
Speaker 7: at a certain point after they've got all their years
Speaker 7: in and they start working on the side of visiting
Speaker 7: judges and they take life a little bit easier. So
Speaker 7: Judge Ashworth makes that decision. Eric at the time was
Speaker 7: concerned about it. But another judge, the new judge that
Speaker 7: came in, the Republican. Judge Ashworth had been a Democrat,
Speaker 7: as he mentioned, Judge asked Judge Tigrid, who is the
Speaker 7: Republican took over, and all of a sudden things started
Speaker 7: to change a little bit in the legal community in Kaufman.
Speaker 7: Judge Tigrit started paying the contract attorneys who are working
Speaker 7: for the state more and you know, and Eric was
Speaker 7: one of those. And Eric had decided a little while
Speaker 7: earlier to specialize in CPS cases to do family law,
Speaker 7: and he soon kind of carved out a niche for
Speaker 7: himself where he was the CPS attorney who was appointed
Speaker 7: by as guardian at lightem cases in the county. Judge
Speaker 7: Tigrit gave him a lot of assignments. It was before
Speaker 7: long Eric had real stature in the community as the
Speaker 7: CPS ad item.
Speaker 8: You talk about too, that the Tigrit, the new judge,
Speaker 8: also increased the amount of money that he was paying
Speaker 8: to these people. So he actually didn't do worse. After
Speaker 8: Ashworth retired, he actually did better. But there is a yes.
Speaker 8: And you say that Ashworth was a visiting judge and
Speaker 8: visited courthouses and one day there was an incident with
Speaker 8: Eric again, the person that he had helped and had
Speaker 8: befriended and treated just like almost like a son. Tell
Speaker 8: us about this little incident.
Speaker 7: Well, Judge Ashworth walked into the lunch room at the
Speaker 7: courthouse and saw Eric sitting at a table and went
Speaker 7: over to talk to his friend. And what he saw
Speaker 7: was Eric surrounded by paperwork from the county and they
Speaker 7: were blank forms for him to fill out the hours
Speaker 7: that he spent on his CPS work as a guardian
Speaker 7: at LTEM for the on these cases that he was
Speaker 7: appointed to and Judge Ashworth was troubled when he saw
Speaker 7: that they had already been signed by Judge tygrit So
Speaker 7: Eric was filling in his time, putting down whatever he
Speaker 7: wanted without oversight. The judge said something to him about
Speaker 7: that he shouldn't be doing that, and that night Eric
Speaker 7: sent him an email and chastised him for criticizing him
Speaker 7: and said that they couldn't be friends anymore. Judge Ashworth
Speaker 7: responded and said, well, I'm sorry you feel that way.
Speaker 7: I always think of you as a friend. And then
Speaker 7: Eric responded and said something on the order of let's
Speaker 7: just forget about this, and the two men went out
Speaker 7: to lunch and everything continued on as if nothing had happened.
Speaker 7: But at home at the house, Kim noticed that Eric
Speaker 7: talked differently about Judge Ashworth. Where before he'd always been
Speaker 7: proud of his allegiance with the judge and talked about
Speaker 7: what a great man he was. All of a sudden,
Speaker 7: Eric started saying he was prissy and fighting about him,
Speaker 7: and this kind of animosity was building up within Eric
Speaker 7: against Judge Ashworth.
Speaker 8: You also talk about a woman, Sandra Howard, that worked
Speaker 8: with him, and by two thousand and five she had
Speaker 8: some disturbing emails from him. Again, you talked about his
Speaker 8: shift in how he spoke about Judge Ashworth. What was
Speaker 8: his attitude in these emails to her? What was conveyed well.
Speaker 7: Eric was becoming a powerful person in this little town
Speaker 7: of Kaufman and in Kaufman County. He was wielding a
Speaker 7: substantial amount of influence over these cases, and he started
Speaker 7: sending emails. Sandra represented the state, Eric was representing the
Speaker 7: children as a guardian at Latam, and then there were
Speaker 7: attorneys for the parents or for the relatives, and the
Speaker 7: most of them defense attorneys in the area. And Eric
Speaker 7: started sending out these strange emails at night in which
Speaker 7: he called the defense attorney's horrible names and talked about
Speaker 7: doing terrible things to them, and in one case actually
Speaker 7: talked threatened the defense attorney's family. Sandra didn't believe that
Speaker 7: Eric would do it. She didn't believe any of it
Speaker 7: was serious. She kind of thought, as you know, the
Speaker 7: people in the courthouse did when he talked about if
Speaker 7: I go out, I'm going to take other people with me.
Speaker 7: She kind of took it as Eric just spouting off,
Speaker 7: letting off steam. Later, of course, they'd look at that
Speaker 7: very differently.
Speaker 8: Absolutely, Now you chronicle the time that the first time
Speaker 8: that Eric meets Michael McClellan, So tell us who this
Speaker 8: Michael McClellan is, just a little bit of his background,
Speaker 8: and even from the start you say that they clash.
Speaker 8: So tell us why, and tell us a little bit
Speaker 8: first about Michael McClelland.
Speaker 7: Mike McClelland grew up in that part of Texas. He
Speaker 7: grew up kind of in central Texas near Dallas, and
Speaker 7: he was a military guy. He'd been a major. He
Speaker 7: was a retired major from the US Army. He'd served time,
Speaker 7: and he'd been over in Germany and then had been
Speaker 7: in the reserves and had retired out, and he'd gone
Speaker 7: back to school and become a law a lawyer, and
Speaker 7: he signed on with the same agency that Sandra Harward
Speaker 7: worked with, and so he was representing the state of
Speaker 7: Texas in the CPS cases. Well, Mike was the real thing.
Speaker 7: He was a soldier, he'd been a major, and Eric
Speaker 7: had always wanted to be what Mike was, and he
Speaker 7: would have thought maybe that would have been a bond
Speaker 7: between the two men. But from the beginning there was
Speaker 7: just bad blood there. They just they brushed each other
Speaker 7: the wrong way. You know, Dan, It's like walking and
Speaker 7: meeting somebody for the first time and for some reason
Speaker 7: you can't stand that person. Well, that's what the two
Speaker 7: of them were like. Mike saw Eric as a wannab soldier,
Speaker 7: as somebody who was pretending to be what he wasn't.
Speaker 7: He was a you know, would be soldier who never
Speaker 7: got in the army. He was a wannabe cop who
Speaker 7: couldn't work, you know, who'd been fired by law enforcement
Speaker 7: and was a volunteer soldier with the Sheriff's department, and
Speaker 7: he couldn't abide Eric Williams and around Eric, Mike kept
Speaker 7: talking about his military experience as if he was kind
Speaker 7: of showing off a little bit, and before long Sanders
Speaker 7: said it was when it was like tying two cats
Speaker 7: together with a rope and throwing them over a clothesline.
Speaker 7: They were at each other, hissing and just posturing whenever
Speaker 7: they got together. Sandra didn't like working cases with the
Speaker 7: two of them because it was just so uncomfortable being
Speaker 7: around both of them.
Speaker 8: How does Mike McClelland tell us a little bit briefly
Speaker 8: about how he gets to the point where these people
Speaker 8: are working and competing and at odds with each other.
Speaker 7: Again, Well, Mike had always wanted to go into criminal law,
Speaker 7: but had no history in it. He actually had a
Speaker 7: master's in psychology and had worked as a counselor and
Speaker 7: it had done a lot of mental health law before
Speaker 7: he worked for CPS. But he decided to run for
Speaker 7: the DA slot in Kaufman County and he and his wife, Cynthia,
Speaker 7: who is a nurse, a mental health nurse at the
Speaker 7: state hospital there, very funny, kind woman who used to
Speaker 7: break into song at the drop of a hat. They
Speaker 7: went out campaigning and they worked really hard, and Mike's
Speaker 7: family helped. He was a real underdog, but he got
Speaker 7: into the runoffs and it looked like maybe he'd have
Speaker 7: a shot at the DA's office. People would say, well,
Speaker 7: he doesn't have the experience, and he didn't. He was
Speaker 7: running against a guy who was a seasoned Dallas County prosecutor.
Speaker 7: But Mike maintained that he didn't need experience, that the
Speaker 7: DA was a figurehead, that he ran in office, that
Speaker 7: he was a manager, and that he you know, he
Speaker 7: could do that, that he had this military experience and
Speaker 7: it would work. But Eric, who didn't like Mike, Eric
Speaker 7: who did like the guy Mike was running against, ran
Speaker 7: an ad in the local newspaper questioning Mike's character and
Speaker 7: making kind of a veiled comment about ask him why
Speaker 7: he left the state of Texas, you know where he
Speaker 7: was working with Sandra Harwood. Well, Mike had left under
Speaker 7: rather a cloud because Mike was doing something he wasn't
Speaker 7: supposed to do at the time. He was taking court
Speaker 7: appointment cases in other counties, which was frowned upon by
Speaker 7: the state. Right, Mike lost the election. I think it
Speaker 7: was by about sixty five votes, which isn't a lot,
Speaker 7: and that letter that ran in the paper that could
Speaker 7: have cost him the election. So at that point, if
Speaker 7: there'd been animosity between Mike McClelland and Eric Williams, there
Speaker 7: was just flat out bad blood.
Speaker 8: Absolutely. So you talk about how he doesn't give up,
Speaker 8: and so what happens in the ensuing time for Eric
Speaker 8: and what happens in the ensuing time for Mike McClellan.
Speaker 7: Selection comes around, and four years later and they're both
Speaker 7: running for office. This time Mike is back running for
Speaker 7: the DA's slot again against the incumbent, the guy who
Speaker 7: defeated him, the former the you know, the first time around,
Speaker 7: and Eric has decided to run for a slaughter as
Speaker 7: Justice of the Peace. There was a guy named Johnny Perry,
Speaker 7: and it's just the piece. He was the lone Democrat
Speaker 7: in office in Kaufman County because, as we said earlier,
Speaker 7: the county had turned Republican, and Eric decided to go
Speaker 7: ahead and throw his hat and he thought that the
Speaker 7: Perry had been in that office for like twenty years,
Speaker 7: but Eric thought that he was beatable. So they were
Speaker 7: both on the ballot that year and it was a
Speaker 7: hard fought but they both won. So as that year started,
Speaker 7: I think it's twenty eleven, Mike mc clelland comes in
Speaker 7: as the news or maybe it's at twenty eleven. Is
Speaker 7: that right, Dan, I haven't got the timetable right in
Speaker 7: front of me. Yes, yeah, okay. Eric comes in as
Speaker 7: a new Justice of the Peace in Kaufman County and
Speaker 7: Mike McClelland is the new district attorney.
Speaker 8: Now with Eric's role as Justice of the Peace, it's
Speaker 8: very similar to a judge ship, or at least he
Speaker 8: believes it's a path ship to judge ship like Judge Ashworth.
Speaker 8: Tell us about those powers and what is Eric's behavior
Speaker 8: before we get to what happens shortly after.
Speaker 7: Well, you know, Eric had always been one of those
Speaker 7: guys who didn't like to ask permission to do things,
Speaker 7: and he got into the Justice of the Peace office
Speaker 7: and started to change things right away. His duties were
Speaker 7: to preside over a court room. It's kind of like
Speaker 7: a junior jem. You know. They have they handle small cases, misdemeanors,
Speaker 7: they do traffic court. They you know, they have all
Speaker 7: kinds of different cases. They don't do the big cases.
Speaker 7: But he was handling the small cases in rural Texas
Speaker 7: where there aren't corners and counties. They go out on
Speaker 7: death investigations and rule whether or not they're be an autopsy. Uh.
Speaker 7: They perform weddings and often make quite a bit of
Speaker 7: additional money. Uh, you know, performing weddings. That money is
Speaker 7: money they make on the side. And Eric, but Eric
Speaker 7: did have that rebellious stint and he started doing things
Speaker 7: on his own for the office, much of which were good.
Speaker 7: He put up a mailbox outside to get separate mail
Speaker 7: for the Justice of the Peace office because he thought
Speaker 7: it worked better. He installed a safe in the closet,
Speaker 7: bought it with his own money, put it in. He
Speaker 7: had already done some other things with the county computers
Speaker 7: where he had tried to update them on his own
Speaker 7: without getting permission. He'd had his hands slapped by the
Speaker 7: IT department, but he didn't. Once he got in the
Speaker 7: JP's office, he started talking a lot about putting in
Speaker 7: a video magistration system. Eric Williams loved technology. He loved computers.
Speaker 7: He was always on the cutting edge. He wanted Kaufman
Speaker 7: County to be there too. He didn't want to have
Speaker 7: to go down to the jail to read people their rights.
Speaker 7: He wanted to be able to do it over a
Speaker 7: Skype type of hookup, which a lot of the other
Speaker 7: counties in Texas were already doing. Kaufman County is a rural,
Speaker 7: slow moving county. They'd been talking about this for a
Speaker 7: long time, hadn't gotten anything done. Eric at a certain
Speaker 7: points started to get frustrated. He wanted the changes he
Speaker 7: brought a couple of the judges, the other justices at
Speaker 7: the pieces in to his office showed him how it
Speaker 7: could work. They all liked it, but they had to
Speaker 7: go through committee. It had to go through the IT department,
Speaker 7: and Eric wasn't very patient.
Speaker 8: You talk about these video monitors and some of the
Speaker 8: things that he wanted for this and him going not
Speaker 8: getting requests filed. Tell us what he does and how
Speaker 8: do they find out what he has done?
Speaker 7: Well, Eric didn't want to wait for that hookup to
Speaker 7: go through, and he started kind of nosing around in
Speaker 7: the IT department with the office was in the same
Speaker 7: building that his Justice of the Peace Court was in,
Speaker 7: so during off hours, especially on Sundays, he started popping
Speaker 7: over and looking through the IT department. One Friday, there
Speaker 7: was a woman named Lorii Friimel who was working there
Speaker 7: and she had a pile of monitors next to her desk.
Speaker 7: There were about six of them, and she had her
Speaker 7: computer up on them working on it. She left for
Speaker 7: the weekend, got back on Monday morning and three of
Speaker 7: those monitors were gone. They were brand new Dell monitors.
Speaker 7: They each cost around one hundred and eighty dollars. They
Speaker 7: were just gone. So she called around, tried to find
Speaker 7: out if somebody had taken them to deliver them to
Speaker 7: the Sheriff's department. That's where they were going, That's what
Speaker 7: they were bought for for the nine to one to
Speaker 7: one system. No one knew what had happened to them.
Speaker 7: She pulled the videotape for the surveillance and was shocked
Speaker 7: to see Eric Williams walking out of the IT department
Speaker 7: and through the courthouse the Sunday before the day before,
Speaker 7: carrying the boxes Dell computers. He had taken them. He
Speaker 7: wanted them for his video magistration system. The next day
Speaker 7: she walks in and she sees one of them on
Speaker 7: Eric's deaths. By then, the county sheriff is becoming involved,
Speaker 7: and you.
Speaker 8: Talk about his chief's deputy, Rodney Evans, questioning Eric. What
Speaker 8: else did they see on that videotape that struck them
Speaker 8: as very unusual and disturbing.
Speaker 7: Well, the videotape was troubling. Eric was holding a little radio,
Speaker 7: like a shortwave radio, as if he was monitoring calls
Speaker 7: to the Sheriff's department. You know, it was one thing
Speaker 7: that he had taken the computers, but then he didn't
Speaker 7: say to Lauri on Monday. Hey, I took three computers.
Speaker 7: I'm trying them out for the video magistration system. And
Speaker 7: they found one of the computer boxes out in the
Speaker 7: dumpster behind the courthouse. It was just odd the way
Speaker 7: Eric had done all of this, so Evans they started
Speaker 7: investigating and they put up a they get more evidence, said,
Speaker 7: Eric is going into the ITEA.
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Speaker 7: The following Sunday, they see him leaving with something else
Speaker 7: and they show up at the JP's office with a
Speaker 7: warrant for Eric's arrest for the theft of the three monitors.
Speaker 7: They take him down to the courthouse and Evans starts
Speaker 7: interrogating him, and Eric says, yeah, I took the monitors,
Speaker 7: but one of them's in my office and the other
Speaker 7: ones in my car. He claimed that he had returned
Speaker 7: the third one, and he says they're for the Medio
Speaker 7: magistration system, and Evan says, well, you didn't have permission
Speaker 7: to take those, and we don't have the third monitor back.
Speaker 7: So Eric is booked and charged with the theft of property.
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Speaker 8: we spoke of Eric being arrested for equivalent of six
Speaker 8: hundred dollars worth of monitors. Given that he had all
Speaker 8: this power, all this importance, and the powerful friends that
Speaker 8: he had, and the incredible background he seemed to have.
Speaker 8: What does Eric think is going to happen as a result,
Speaker 8: and what does happen as this progresses?
Speaker 7: Well, Eric in the beginning tried to work something out
Speaker 7: with the DA's office, you know, and they did make
Speaker 7: an offer to him. They offered to allow him to
Speaker 7: plead to a misdemeanor, but the misdemeanor included a theft charge,
Speaker 7: and Eric believed that he would lose his law license,
Speaker 7: so he decided to go ahead and fight it. He
Speaker 7: decided he wanted to go to court. His attorneys wanted
Speaker 7: to have the case moved out of Coffman Colony, but
Speaker 7: Eric said, hey, you know, these people just elected me
Speaker 7: Justice of the Peace. I'm well liked here, I have
Speaker 7: a lot of friends here. I'll be okay, let's do
Speaker 7: it here. And Mike McClellan wasn't about to walk back.
Speaker 7: I mean here he had Eric Williams, who'd been this
Speaker 7: thorn in his side since he got to Kaufman County.
Speaker 7: Didn't like the guy at all, and you know, he
Speaker 7: decided to pursue it. So he brought in a guy
Speaker 7: named Mark Hassey, who was one of his chief prosecutors
Speaker 7: in the office. He'd once been a really good prosecutor
Speaker 7: in Dallas County, and they pursued the case. They took
Speaker 7: it to court. A lot of the people in Kaufman County,
Speaker 7: especially in the law community, were really unhappy with this.
Speaker 7: They didn't like that the Sheriff's department showed up in
Speaker 7: Eric's office, handcuffed men walked him out. They didn't like that.
Speaker 7: Everything Eric held he here, you know, his his justice of
Speaker 7: the piece, his judgeship, his law license, everything was hanging
Speaker 7: in the balance over six hundred dollars worth of computers,
Speaker 7: especially when our computer monitors, Especially when one of the
Speaker 7: monitors was found in his desk and the other one
Speaker 7: was out in his car in the county parking lot.
Speaker 7: He was planning to take it to the jail. So
Speaker 7: they were upset over it. This really tore the county apart,
Speaker 7: especially the legal community. But Mike McClellan was bound and
Speaker 7: determined that Eric Williams was going to pay for what
Speaker 7: he did.
Speaker 8: We did not mention, and this is a very important
Speaker 8: part of the story is the importance of the Texas
Speaker 8: State Guard for Eric and for this case. So let's
Speaker 8: go just a little bit backwards and talk about his
Speaker 8: importance to Eric of the Texas State Guard.
Speaker 7: Eric once he left lawn for once he left military
Speaker 7: after he was diagnosed with diabetes and really felt kind
Speaker 7: of at a loss, so he joined what's called the
Speaker 7: Texas State Guard. It's kind of a state militia and
Speaker 7: they do all kinds of things during they handle like
Speaker 7: security at parades, at big events. They go in when
Speaker 7: there's been a hurricane here on the Gulf Coast where
Speaker 7: I live, and they help people out. They bring in
Speaker 7: water and food and things like that. And Eric loved it,
Speaker 7: and he was moving up the ranks and he'd actually
Speaker 7: gotten a promotion shortly before this happened. I think he
Speaker 7: was a captain at that point when he was arrested,
Speaker 7: and he was living and breathing the Guard. He used
Speaker 7: to he had a segue. Eric had one of those
Speaker 7: little you know, those little vehicles, personal vehicles that people
Speaker 7: ride on and okay, he had when he used to
Speaker 7: go through the neighborhood in his stateguard uniform with an
Speaker 7: air weapons strap to his back and circulate around it
Speaker 7: at night patrolling the neighborhood. I mean, he had really
Speaker 7: got gotten into this so and he'd worked his way up.
Speaker 7: He was really he worked really hard at it. Well.
Speaker 7: When he got arrested on the charges, the theft charges,
Speaker 7: he was forced to step down from that as well.
Speaker 7: He was suspended from the guard. So Eric was really
Speaker 7: looking at losing pretty much everything that was important to
Speaker 7: him if he lost this case.
Speaker 8: You also mentioned too, just to add to this, that
Speaker 8: Mike mccolland personally mailed the video of the guards to
Speaker 8: this Austin headquarters to make sure that he was removed
Speaker 8: from State Guard, wasn't he?
Speaker 7: You know, I think there's no question that this was
Speaker 7: personal for Mike McClelland, and certainly that was one of
Speaker 7: the things that he didn't have to do that he
Speaker 7: did as you said, he mailed, He personally mailed that
Speaker 7: to the to the State Guard.
Speaker 8: You talk about his behavior afterwards in terms of his
Speaker 8: substantial arsenal. What happened in terms of that substantial arsenal
Speaker 8: didn't increase.
Speaker 7: Well, all along it had been increasing. Kim said. There
Speaker 7: were she didn't know how many guns Eric had. That
Speaker 7: there were guns all over the house. There were the
Speaker 7: guns at the office. And after Eric lost the case,
Speaker 7: after he was convicted on the theft charge, much to
Speaker 7: his surprise, he was forced to he was told he
Speaker 7: was going to have to get rid of the guns.
Speaker 7: Felons in Texas and I think most states aren't allowed
Speaker 7: to have firearms. So he was told that he that
Speaker 7: the case went the theft case was on appeal, but
Speaker 7: he was told he was going to have to get
Speaker 7: rid of the guns. He told the sheriff that he
Speaker 7: was doing that, but in truth, he had no intention
Speaker 7: of getting rid of the gun.
Speaker 8: You talk about too, that there was so much controversy
Speaker 8: with this that Taron Davis, his attorney, withdrew from the case.
Speaker 8: And then Eric asked a friend from the Guard named
Speaker 8: John Sickle, and they had to get another person as
Speaker 8: a second chair. David Sergey, a colonel in the Guard,
Speaker 8: tell us how things proceed with this court case?
Speaker 7: Well, they went to court with it, and Mark Hassei's
Speaker 7: a good was a really good prosecutor. He was trained
Speaker 7: in Dallas during the during the you know, I mean
Speaker 7: he handled mob cases. He handled murders and drug cases.
Speaker 7: He didn't want to handle this case. He said from
Speaker 7: the beginning that he thought it was too personal. He
Speaker 7: wanted them to bring in a special prosecutor to do it,
Speaker 7: but Mike didn't want to. Mike second chared as he
Speaker 7: sat right next to Mark during the case. And they
Speaker 7: brought in their evidence and you know, tried to prove
Speaker 7: that Eric had done this, that he had taken this.
Speaker 7: Appealed to the jury as citizens of Coffman County, saying
Speaker 7: he's stealing from you. Batman's a thief. At one point,
Speaker 7: Mark has He pointed at Eric Williams and said, you know,
Speaker 7: he's a thief. Look at him, that's what he is.
Speaker 7: It got pretty nasty in that courtroom. Dan and Eric
Speaker 7: was convicted on the case, and the case did go
Speaker 7: into an appeal and in the meantime Eric lost everything.
Speaker 7: It had been a gamble. He was put on probation
Speaker 7: two years probation, but he lost his law license, was
Speaker 7: taken away, He lost the JP position, which meant that
Speaker 7: he had was also looking at losing his insurance, his
Speaker 7: health insurance, and he had a sick wife with rheumatoid
Speaker 7: arthritis and he was a Type one diabetic. This was
Speaker 7: a problem. He was no longer a member of the
Speaker 7: National or the State Guard, something he was really proud of.
Speaker 7: Eric Williams lost his life over basically six hundred dollars
Speaker 7: worth of computer monitors, two of which were on county property.
Speaker 8: Now, Mike and Mark Hassei, what kind of relationship did
Speaker 8: they have and even after this conviction, you say that
Speaker 8: they continued, So what was that continuance of what did
Speaker 8: they do and what did they say?
Speaker 7: Well, you know, there was this animosity in the law
Speaker 7: community in Kauflin County over this case. A lot of
Speaker 7: people were upset about the way this case had been handled,
Speaker 7: so they were spending a lot of time trying to
Speaker 7: appeal to the attorneys in the area, showing them things
Speaker 7: like that surveillance tape, saying, look, look the guy's a thief.
Speaker 7: Look what he did. And you know, Mike didn't have
Speaker 7: the background that he probably needed to be the district
Speaker 7: attorney in Kaufman County. Mark did. But Mark wasn't in
Speaker 7: a position to tell Mike what to do. Mike was
Speaker 7: his boss, so Mark backed him up, did what Mike
Speaker 7: told him to do, and you know, the result was
Speaker 7: that Eric lost his life basically everything. Oh you know,
Speaker 7: he had no way to support himself, he had a
Speaker 7: sick wife, he had no insurance, He'd lost everything. So
Speaker 7: Mike and Mark were really good friends. They went out
Speaker 7: to lunch off and together. You know, this is really
Speaker 7: it's kind of like like I said earlier, small town
Speaker 7: courthouses are kind of incubators, and this was festering in
Speaker 7: that courthouse and county.
Speaker 8: Now, after this conviction, what was the response in terms
Speaker 8: of how close he lived to the courthouse and that
Speaker 8: former access he had to the courthouse and this arsenal
Speaker 8: of weapons that everybody knew.
Speaker 7: About, well everybody knew about these weapons, and they were
Speaker 7: worried about the weapons. And one day Eric showed up
Speaker 7: at the courthouse. Remember his office is right across the
Speaker 7: street from the downtown courthouse, and they stop him coming
Speaker 7: in and they search him. So where before he'd had
Speaker 7: his own pass key, which was unusual for lawyers to
Speaker 7: get into the courthouse. Now he was so untrustworthy, so
Speaker 7: worried about that he was being treated differently when he
Speaker 7: walked in the door. The Justice of the Peace office
Speaker 7: that he worked in was right across the field from
Speaker 7: his office, in a different direction than Judge Ashwad. They
Speaker 7: kind of made a triangle. And when in the winter,
Speaker 7: when the leaves were off the trees, you could actually
Speaker 7: see the courthouse building from Eric's backyard, so it was
Speaker 7: just really close quarters. Another thing that happened, and I
Speaker 7: think you were talking about this earlier, Dan, I didn't
Speaker 7: pick up on it was that throughout this time Mike
Speaker 7: and Mark were making disparaging remarks about Eric to Eric's
Speaker 7: friends at the courthouse. They were voicing their opinion of
Speaker 7: who Eric Williams was. They found out about the Janice
Speaker 7: Gray incidents in Huntsville, the one where he had shown
Speaker 7: the woman the gun and said I have nothing to lose.
Speaker 7: So they thought, perhaps rightly, that Eric was kind of,
Speaker 7: as we'd say in Texas, locked and loaded, that he
Speaker 7: was kind of on the edge, and they started to
Speaker 7: worry about Eric. They did throughout this They were worried
Speaker 7: about Eric. Mike thought. Mike, with his experience as a psychologist,
Speaker 7: thought that Eric was dangerous, that he could go over
Speaker 7: the edge and over the top. And Mark was very
Speaker 7: worried about Eric Williams. He told a lot of friends
Speaker 7: that of all the cases he'd handled, and he'd had
Speaker 7: major criminals he prosecuted, this was the guy that scared him.
Speaker 8: You also talk about Mark talking about running for Eric's
Speaker 8: judge ship or justice of the Peace, which couldn't have
Speaker 8: made him anything more than just more angry than he was.
Speaker 7: You know, Eric didn't know that Mark was looking at
Speaker 7: doing that. That was something that Mark talked about with
Speaker 7: some of the people in his office. But it certainly
Speaker 7: raises the question of you know, did Mark, like Mike
Speaker 7: have a personal reason to want to go after Eric Williams.
Speaker 7: It's not that Eric shouldn't have been punished for what
Speaker 7: he did, it's the extent to which he was punished.
Speaker 7: A lot of people in Coffin knew that he wanted
Speaker 7: to build that computer system, and that Eric had a
Speaker 7: history of trying to do things on his own without
Speaker 7: going through channels. So when you look at his intentions
Speaker 7: on this, it kind of raises the question of how
Speaker 7: personal was all of this. And Mark very wisely, he
Speaker 7: was a good prosecutor, He knew what he was doing.
Speaker 7: He very wisely thought he should not be the one
Speaker 7: to prosecute that case, and that Mike shouldn't and that
Speaker 7: somebody from the outside should be brought in to take
Speaker 7: a look at it. But Mike wouldn't have anything to
Speaker 7: do with that.
Speaker 8: You talk about all the punishments that happened immediately, and
Speaker 8: all the loss for him, including insurance and all the privilege,
Speaker 8: and his life has turned upside down. Yet at the
Speaker 8: same time, Mike McClelland still wanted and had asked for,
Speaker 8: and still demanded jail time for these minor crimes.
Speaker 7: Mike was determined that he'd run on a clean up
Speaker 7: costin County you know, no favoritism in the courthouse platform.
Speaker 7: And he was determined that Eric Williams was going to
Speaker 7: pay to the full extent of the law for what
Speaker 7: he had done. And yeah, he wanted jail time for Eric.
Speaker 7: To judge didn't agree. Eric put it in Judge Mike
Speaker 7: Cichi's hands, and he did not agree, and he came
Speaker 7: back and gave Eric probation. Mike was unhappy with that,
Speaker 7: and he told people he was unhappy with that. He
Speaker 7: saw Eric Williams as a thief and he wanted him
Speaker 7: in prison.
Speaker 8: Now you say, meanwhile, Kim, married to Eric, is really
Speaker 8: livid about him losing his job. And she has the
Speaker 8: same blame for the people. The obvious blame for who
Speaker 8: had him was his job. And you say they're at
Speaker 8: home playing video games called Mafia Wars. But you talk
Speaker 8: about that in November. There's another bit of things to
Speaker 8: worry about for Eric. And what is that in terms
Speaker 8: of something coming from Mike McClelland again, well, they.
Speaker 7: Found out while they were working on all of this
Speaker 7: that Eric was the head of the law library, which
Speaker 7: was a room that the attorneys were supposed to be
Speaker 7: able to use at the main courthouse and that Eric
Speaker 7: had been ordering supplies for the library. The library had
Speaker 7: a big budget, It had like two hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 7: in the bank out of a ten dollars fee on
Speaker 7: civil cases that went into the coffers, and that he'd
Speaker 7: be having that Eric had been having supplies that he
Speaker 7: ordered from the local office supply place delivered to his office,
Speaker 7: not to the law Library. Well, actually made sense because
Speaker 7: nobody was at the law library to sign for them.
Speaker 7: But some of the things raised questions, things like headphones
Speaker 7: that they went up and looked at the Law Library
Speaker 7: didn't find all of the things that Eric. As a
Speaker 7: matter of fact, found very few of the things that
Speaker 7: Eric had ordered through the office supply store for the
Speaker 7: law library. And they filed more charges against Eric for theft.
Speaker 7: This time I think it was for up to seventeen
Speaker 7: hundred dollars worth of misappropriation of office supplies from the county.
Speaker 7: And despite the fact that they had already taken away
Speaker 7: everything they could from Eric, the only thing that remained
Speaker 7: was jail time. They filed those charges, and those were
Speaker 7: hanging over Eric's head.
Speaker 8: You also talk about a very disturbing thing that wouldn't
Speaker 8: help Eric whatsoever in terms of his mental attitude. Is
Speaker 8: that his lawyer was speaking with the prosecution, and meanwhile
Speaker 8: she had her tape recorder on and recorded some of
Speaker 8: the things that they said about her client, and she
Speaker 8: transcribed those and sent copies to lawyers and to Eric. Again,
Speaker 8: just what is some of the things that they said
Speaker 8: or intimated in that conversation.
Speaker 7: Well, that was with Mark Cassey, and he was calling
Speaker 7: Eric names, calling him a thief, saying he was dishonorable
Speaker 7: and that they were going to go after him. And
Speaker 7: you know that the lawyer representing him, he felt sorry
Speaker 7: for him because he had such an unsympathetic client. Things
Speaker 7: like that. But they, you know, Dan, they were saying
Speaker 7: things all over that courthouse and it was getting back
Speaker 7: to Eric through Eric's friends. You know, the animosity was
Speaker 7: just building. It was just building.
Speaker 8: So they talk about the court case itself. And to
Speaker 8: add even more complication to this, Mike is not supposed
Speaker 8: to be Mike mccaugh is not supposed to be involved
Speaker 8: in this prosecution. Tell us how he does become involved
Speaker 8: with this?
Speaker 7: Well, when he's another woman, a woman named Michelle Gosh.
Speaker 7: I'm sorry I'm losing her last name, right, now I
Speaker 7: think it's sutten, but I'm not positive. Is that righting
Speaker 7: it was second. There's so many people in this book.
Speaker 7: I think I interviewed well over one hundred people. Michelle
Speaker 7: was supposed to be second chare with Mark, but Michelle
Speaker 7: was diagnosed with breast cancer and stepped down, and rather
Speaker 7: than assigning somebody else in the office to work with Mark,
Speaker 7: Mike decided he wanted to do it. This was one
Speaker 7: of the first criminal cases Mike McClelland had ever u
Speaker 7: the DA in this county, and he had, you know,
Speaker 7: a handful of criminal cases he'd worked over the years.
Speaker 7: It was his first in Kaufman County.
Speaker 8: Now with this they also you talk about, meanwhile, what
Speaker 8: is Eric and Kim doing at home with all of
Speaker 8: this faced What is their behavior and what are they doing?
Speaker 8: And what is Eric researching and doing? And we soon
Speaker 8: find out planning.
Speaker 7: Well, he starts even before the end of the theft trial.
Speaker 7: Eric is walking around the house talking about Mike and Mark.
Speaker 7: He had names for them. Oh gosh, I'm drawing a
Speaker 7: blank now, I'm so sorry, disparaging names for the two
Speaker 7: of them. He stopped calling them Mike and Mark uh
Speaker 7: and started using other terms for them, and he starts
Speaker 7: there they're playing on their computers all the time, as
Speaker 7: he said, they've played Mafia Awards incessantly. And he also
Speaker 7: starts looking up he has he's still able to log
Speaker 7: into the Lexus Nexus account through the courthouse, and he
Speaker 7: starts looking up personal information like addresses uh and information
Speaker 7: on car registration and things like that for Mike and Mark,
Speaker 7: and you know, he's searching for information. And then he
Speaker 7: starts talking to Kim about his enemies list, the people
Speaker 7: he plans to get revenge against. And the list has
Speaker 7: names on it that are at this point not surprising.
Speaker 7: Judge Glenna Ashworth is on the list. Early Wiley, who
Speaker 7: is one of the judges at the courthouse and who
Speaker 7: had been responsible for Eric losing some of his CPS work,
Speaker 7: was on the list, and of course high Am the
Speaker 7: list were Mike and Mark, and the sheriff was on
Speaker 7: the list. At that time, he was angry with the sheriff.
Speaker 7: He saw the sheriff as a friend and thought the
Speaker 7: sheriff should have protected him.
Speaker 8: Now, what is the health of Kim at this time.
Speaker 7: Well, Kim is getting sicker and sicker, and she's getting
Speaker 7: increasingly dependent on painkillers and pain medications. She starts out
Speaker 7: she's taking things like vicodin and opiates, and before long
Speaker 7: you know she's needing perkadin. She's taking more and more
Speaker 7: of these things in order to just function. She's spending
Speaker 7: an increasingly large amount of her time in bed. Parents
Speaker 7: live nearby, they've moved a block away, and when she's
Speaker 7: not in bed, she's over at her parents house, watching
Speaker 7: over them. They're elderly and her father's dying of cancer.
Speaker 7: But most of Kim's time is spent in bed in
Speaker 7: kind of a Hayes, a drug induced haze from her
Speaker 7: prescription medication.
Speaker 8: You talk about this list that Sam Keats talked about,
Speaker 8: and where does that list go, what happens from that list,
Speaker 8: and finally who's on the list.
Speaker 7: Well, one day Sam Keats, who's a friend of Mike McClellan's,
Speaker 7: is in his office and a secretary comes in with
Speaker 7: a faxed list and it has five names on it,
Speaker 7: four or five names. They had five names on it,
Speaker 7: and she said, this came over. It's a list that
Speaker 7: Eric Williams supposed to is supposed to put together, and
Speaker 7: on it were the names of Judge Ash towards early Wiley,
Speaker 7: Mike Mark and a woman named Denise who runs a
Speaker 7: small newspaper in UH in the in that area, in
Speaker 7: the Forny area, which is nearby. And Mike says, well,
Speaker 7: what am I supposed to do with this? This is
Speaker 7: some kind of a hit list. And he looks at
Speaker 7: Sam and they look at the names, and he folds
Speaker 7: up the list and he puts it in his desk
Speaker 7: drawer and then uh, you know. And but then afterward
Speaker 7: he he says, do you think I should tell these people?
Speaker 7: And Sam says, well, yeah, I think you should. And
Speaker 7: afterward he does get in touch with Denise, the UH
Speaker 7: newspaper woman who's on the list, and says, hey, you know,
Speaker 7: Eric Williams got this list and and your name's on it,
Speaker 7: and if things start to go bad, run.
Speaker 8: You talk about Ron Harrington After that, whenever he ran
Speaker 8: into Mark at the courthouse, he talked about Eric. Mark
Speaker 8: talked about Eric, and he said, what did he say
Speaker 8: about Eric to Ron Harrington?
Speaker 7: He said he said that Eric was going to kill him,
Speaker 7: that he was afraid Eric was going to try to
Speaker 7: kill him. Mark started carrying a gun. Mark flew airplanes
Speaker 7: and at the small airport where he flew his plane
Speaker 7: out of When people would see him working on his plane,
Speaker 7: he'd have a He never did this before. He had
Speaker 7: a holster on with a handgun at his side. He
Speaker 7: wore one in the courthouse at all times, registered with
Speaker 7: the DA's office as a you know, law enforcement officer,
Speaker 7: so he could bring it into the courtroom with him.
Speaker 7: He was afraid. Mark was afraid. He moved his car.
Speaker 7: He used to park his car a block from the
Speaker 7: courthouse behind the dry cleaner. He'd done that since he
Speaker 7: started in Kaufman. All of a sudden he was parking
Speaker 7: in the county lot, you know, coming at different times,
Speaker 7: fluctuating a schedule. Mark hass he was really afraid. Eric Williams, you.
Speaker 8: Talk about Eric and Kim, and Eric talking to Kim
Speaker 8: in this drug out state that she was sick and
Speaker 8: mostly in bed, but she shared his anger and listened
Speaker 8: to him. It's hard to say how seriously she took him,
Speaker 8: but he was talking about very serious things like assassinating
Speaker 8: these some of these people. Now, when he talked about
Speaker 8: some of these things, what did he also include in
Speaker 8: terms of preparation to do these things? What else did
Speaker 8: they do together?
Speaker 7: Well, he started talking more and more about killing Judge Ashworth.
Speaker 7: He was really angry with Judge Ashworth. He thought that
Speaker 7: jash Worth had told Mike and Mark about the Janice
Speaker 7: Gray incident. Ashworth hadn't, but he thought that he had,
Speaker 7: so he started talking about different ways to kill the judge.
Speaker 7: He talked about buying a crossbow, going over to the
Speaker 7: judge's house and then shooting him with a crossbow, bringing
Speaker 7: him back to the house, to Eric in Kim's house,
Speaker 7: pouring nap hom, gutting him while he was alive, pouring
Speaker 7: napalm into his stomach to kill him, and burying him
Speaker 7: in the backyard. And Eric started digging up the rose
Speaker 7: bushes in the backyard and Eric Kim walked out, So
Speaker 7: what's that for? And he said, well, I want to
Speaker 7: see if if the judge's body will fit in here.
Speaker 7: Eric made an a palm to do this. And one
Speaker 7: day Eric came home after shopping with Eric with Kim's
Speaker 7: father at a store, and he had bought the crossbow,
Speaker 7: but then he changed his mind and he thought he'd
Speaker 7: go after Mark first, and he drove he and Kim.
Speaker 7: Kim didn't want to go with him. Kim kept saying,
Speaker 7: you know, I'm not going to do this now. She
Speaker 7: was angry at Mark and Mike. They had destroyed their
Speaker 7: lives as far as Kim was concerned. But she kept saying,
Speaker 7: I'm not going to do this, and Eric's response was
Speaker 7: you have to, You're my wife. And Kim was afraid
Speaker 7: of Eric. She had reason to be afraid of him.
Speaker 7: So at one point she drives them out to Mark's
Speaker 7: house out in the country and they sit down at
Speaker 7: the end of the driveway and watch the cars coming
Speaker 7: and going, and Eric hatches a plot where he's going
Speaker 7: to shoot Mark because he leaves for the office in
Speaker 7: the morning through the glass window of his truck and
Speaker 7: he thinks then that Mark's carl kind of careen off
Speaker 7: the road and hit a tree and people think he's
Speaker 7: been hit by a stray bullet.
Speaker 8: This plan obviously changes, but we'll talk about part of
Speaker 8: this plan too, is that he had some friends in
Speaker 8: this State Guard Texas State Guard. In fact, they keep
Speaker 8: calling them captain, so there's a lot of respect from
Speaker 8: these fellow State Guard members. And he calls a fellow
Speaker 8: Guard member named Roger Williams no relation to him, but
Speaker 8: a man named Roger Williams. What does he ask him
Speaker 8: to do and what does Roger agree to do.
Speaker 7: Eric calls Roger Williams and says that Kim's brother is
Speaker 7: moving to the area needs to put his stuff in storage,
Speaker 7: and the families asked Eric to get a storage building
Speaker 7: form to put in and or you know, storage like
Speaker 7: a garage kind of thing at a storage center, and
Speaker 7: Roger Williams agrees to go down and help Eric get it.
Speaker 7: The reason Eric says he can't do it on his
Speaker 7: own is that because of the theft conviction, that it
Speaker 7: could be searched at any time, and Eric doesn't want
Speaker 7: Kim's family to go through that embarrassment. So Eric the
Speaker 7: other I'm serious. So Roger Williams agrees to do this
Speaker 7: with Eric goes to this storage area in Siaguville and
Speaker 7: they rent a unit. And after they rent this unit,
Speaker 7: it's kind of the size of a one car garage,
Speaker 7: you know. Roger offers to help Eric move Kim's brothers
Speaker 7: things in, and Eric says, oh, don't worry about it.
Speaker 7: It in, I'll take care of it, no problem, And
Speaker 7: you know, Roger Williams drives off, assuming that that's what's
Speaker 7: going in that storage area. But that's not what Eric
Speaker 7: intends it for.
Speaker 8: You're saying that Eric also logs onto the Lexus Nexus
Speaker 8: website account and searches for information about mark driver's license
Speaker 8: and where Mike mccloull lived. You talk about the bottom
Speaker 8: Mercury Sable, So they had a getaway car that wasn't
Speaker 8: their sport track black truck that also that he prepared
Speaker 8: by buying all kinds of assault and military equipment before
Speaker 8: in preparation for this. Let's get to the day that
Speaker 8: Mark hasse is assassinated.
Speaker 7: Well, it's a cold morning in Dallas, outside of Dallas,
Speaker 7: in this little town, and Eric wakes him up that morning.
Speaker 7: She knows that it's the morning that they're going to
Speaker 7: do this. By then she's agreed because he's threatened to
Speaker 7: kill her parents if she doesn't help. And they drive
Speaker 7: into downtown Kaufman where they've left this getaway car, this Sable,
Speaker 7: and she drives him. They get in the Sable, leave
Speaker 7: the sports track Eric's car there, and they drive into
Speaker 7: town and they wait for Mark in the parking lot.
Speaker 7: Eric has hit him under surveillance obviously because he knows
Speaker 7: that's where Mark's parking, and as Mark gets out of
Speaker 7: the car out of his truck that morning. Eric gets
Speaker 7: out of the car dressed all in black, wearing a
Speaker 7: hood with mesh in front of it over his face,
Speaker 7: and walk surround and you know, walks up to Mark.
Speaker 7: There are words between the two of them. Eric pushes
Speaker 7: and then the shooting starts. Mark has a gun on,
Speaker 7: but he's got a coat on over it, and the
Speaker 7: coat's buttoned and he can't get to it. And Mark's
Speaker 7: a smaller man, and Eric's pushing and shooting, and he
Speaker 7: Marks takes the Eric takes the gun and shoots like
Speaker 7: it at the base of Mark's neck, straight down into
Speaker 7: his body, and Mark falls and by then Eric is
Speaker 7: used up the five shots the five bullets, and one
Speaker 7: handgun pulls out another one shoots him two more to
Speaker 7: shoots him again, shoots the bullets into the air. They
Speaker 7: get into the car and Kim drives Eric away.
Speaker 8: Incredibly, there was a witness, somebody that knew Eric because
Speaker 8: of the situation. She thought there was a much taller
Speaker 8: and much heavier man. Eric is, of course a natural suspect.
Speaker 8: Tell us how on earth he gets away with this?
Speaker 7: You know, in investigations like this, sometimes chance plays an
Speaker 7: incredible role, and in this case, it certainly did. When
Speaker 7: Mike McClelland hears about this, the first thing he says
Speaker 7: is at Eric Williams. He's standing over Mark's body at
Speaker 7: the hospital, and he tells the corner, the Justice of
Speaker 7: the Peace who's there looking at the body order in
Speaker 7: the autopsy, that Eric Williams did this. He told everyone
Speaker 7: that Eric Williams had done this. But the problem was
Speaker 7: that at the same time he's saying this, there were
Speaker 7: things going on at Coffin Connie involving the Riyan Brotherhood,
Speaker 7: and there had been threats made by the Aryan Brotherhood
Speaker 7: that had been reported by different law enforcement agencies, including
Speaker 7: the FBI and the Texas Department of Public Safety, warning
Speaker 7: people that the Aryan Brotherhood could be coming after people
Speaker 7: in law enforcement. So this whole situation unfolds where you
Speaker 7: have Mike McClellan telling anyone who will talk to him,
Speaker 7: and a lot of other people in Coffman County pointing
Speaker 7: the finger at Eric Williams. But the local police chief
Speaker 7: in Kaufman, Texas, who's the lead investigator on the case,
Speaker 7: he's in charge of the case, is sending the FBI
Speaker 7: the Texas Rangers and a lot of his resources off
Speaker 7: on a wild goose chase looking for evidence against the
Speaker 7: Aryan Brotherhood or the Mexican mafia. The irony in this
Speaker 7: case is just overwhelming, man, I mean you have you know,
Speaker 7: there were so many people talking about Eric Williams and
Speaker 7: the people in law enforcement because of the circumstances, and
Speaker 7: they do have to investigate all leads. It could have
Speaker 7: been the area and brotherhood, but they're off investigating, spending
Speaker 7: most of their resources in investigating dead ends.
Speaker 8: At the time, you say, meanwhile, Eric Williams kim is
Speaker 8: still sick and wants to be oblivious to what's going on,
Speaker 8: but still a participant in and hearing about these plans,
Speaker 8: and they has plans for the next person on his list,
Speaker 8: not content to have gotten away, been so intelligent to
Speaker 8: have fooled all these law enforcement experts. At the same time,
Speaker 8: Mike McClelland puts an ADT securities service in his home,
Speaker 8: and this is a man that has a hundred weapons
Speaker 8: in his home and this military experience, and he still
Speaker 8: believes that Eric is the person responsible. Despite that the police,
Speaker 8: FBI profilers, and this increasingly big group of people are
Speaker 8: still chasing leads as the Riian Brotherhood and also the
Speaker 8: Mexican cartel. Tell us how long what is going on
Speaker 8: and what happens to Mike McClellan and his wife Cynthia.
Speaker 7: Well, this goes down for two months where they're trying
Speaker 7: to figure out what happened in this case. The FBI arrives,
Speaker 7: the Texas Rangers are there. There are a lot of
Speaker 7: people working this case, but most of them, as I said,
Speaker 7: are off investigating the Arian Brotherhood. Eric has his lawyers
Speaker 7: from the deaf case. They're a barrier against interviewing him.
Speaker 7: He's refusing to be interviewed. This wears on, The investigation
Speaker 7: wears on and wears on and wears on, and in
Speaker 7: the house on overlook, Eric is saying to Kim, we're
Speaker 7: going to do the next one. We've got the next
Speaker 7: one coming up. He starts talking about Mike and Cynthia
Speaker 7: and she says, well, you know what if Mike's all right?
Speaker 7: So it goes They have different scenarios again, like drive
Speaker 7: by shootings and things that they talk about, and then
Speaker 7: Eric says that he's going to kill Mike at the
Speaker 7: house the day before Easter, and what he's seeing is
Speaker 7: that the investigation is kind of winding down. It's not
Speaker 7: that they've given up, but fewer people are working. At
Speaker 7: the command station, which is a block from Erik's house,
Speaker 7: has been vacated and they've moved a smaller force into
Speaker 7: the Sheriff's department. Easter Sunday, a lot of the detectives
Speaker 7: and a lot of the people will be with their families.
Speaker 7: They won't be working over the Easter holidays. So he
Speaker 7: sees this as his opportunity. So the next one on
Speaker 7: his list is Mike McClelland. So the Saturday before Easter,
Speaker 7: Holy Saturday, again, they get up early. Kim and Eric
Speaker 7: get up early. They go to the storage area. This
Speaker 7: time he's driving a Crown Victoria. He's dressed in full
Speaker 7: swat gear, and they drive out to McClelland house. Kim,
Speaker 7: who's ill, is scrunched up against the door, not wanting
Speaker 7: to be there. Eric goes up to the front door,
Speaker 7: disappears inside. He's got an ar weapon with him. She
Speaker 7: hears the gunshots. He's in there a short period of time,
Speaker 7: just rat tat tat, and he less than two minutes later,
Speaker 7: he walks back out puts his the AAR weapon in
Speaker 7: the backseat of the car and they drive off, and
Speaker 7: as he leaves, he said, she opened the door for me,
Speaker 7: which is Cynthia, and then went to get Mike and
Speaker 7: I just started shooting.
Speaker 8: Now, they had bought a Crown Victoria getaway car, the
Speaker 8: first car they got rid of, and again chance plays
Speaker 8: a part in them being able to get We only
Speaker 8: have a couple minutes left in this interview, and we
Speaker 8: can't get into some of the more exciting things that
Speaker 8: go on afterwards. And you got to interview both of
Speaker 8: these Eric and Kim later. Maybe just in closing, you
Speaker 8: could tell us a little bit about those interviews.
Speaker 7: You know, they were really pretty remarkable. Eric's on death
Speaker 7: row now and I spent quite a bit of time
Speaker 7: with him. I think I interviewed him five times. And
Speaker 7: he insists that he didn't do it. He says that
Speaker 7: Kim is lying. Kim turned state's evidence. Eric got the
Speaker 7: death penalty, Kim got forty years, Kim is repentance. Kim
Speaker 7: understands that they killed three people and what they did
Speaker 7: to these families. Eric still maintains his innocence, and I
Speaker 7: think he feels entitled to have done what he did
Speaker 7: based on what he believes Eric, what he believes Mike
Speaker 7: and Mark did to him.
Speaker 8: It was an incredible trial as well, and we didn't
Speaker 8: have time to go through it whatsoever. There is so
Speaker 8: much incredible detail. The characterization is so visual this book,
Speaker 8: and it's so exciting. You're at the edge of your
Speaker 8: seat through this entire thing, even though you know just
Speaker 8: from the description of the book itself, you know what
Speaker 8: the outcome is. But this is a very exciting book.
Speaker 8: I want to thank you very much Catherine for coming
Speaker 8: on and talking about in plain site the Kaufman County
Speaker 8: Prosecutors murders. For those that might want to read about
Speaker 8: other work you've done. Do you have a website or
Speaker 8: Facebook page for this? How can people look at this
Speaker 8: other information about I do?
Speaker 7: I have both on Facebook. It's my name Katherine Casey
Speaker 7: k A T h R Y n c A s
Speaker 7: e Y and my website is Katherinekacy dot com. And
Speaker 7: thank you so much. Dan, It's always such a pleasure
Speaker 7: to talk with you.
Speaker 8: It is always a pleasure, and you've outdone yourself with
Speaker 8: this book. Incredible story and incredible writing. Thank you very
Speaker 8: much for coming on and talking about in plain site.
Speaker 8: Hope to talk to you again.
Speaker 7: Thank you very much, than bye, good night,