Bigger reward sought in mysterious killings of Texas prosecutors

By Chris Francescani

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Texas prosecutors raising reward money to find the killers of two colleagues are seeking to double the existing $200,000 fund, an effort seen by some law enforcement experts as an indication the investigation into the killings has stalled.

No arrests have been made in the execution-style slayings of two Texas prosecutors within two months of each other, homicides that have alarmed people in Kaufman County, Texas, and raised questions whether the shootings could be linked.

Authorities have offered a $200,000 reward for information leading to a conviction in the January 30 killing of Assistant District Attorney Mark Haase or the slaying of Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife Cynthia over Easter weekend.

Now, a number of Texas law enforcement officials are aiming to double the figure, said Anderson County District Attorney Doug Lowe.

Lowe said he has received pledges of $60,000 in additional reward money and is in discussions with Bell County District Attorney Henry Garza, president-elect of the National District Attorney's Association, to try and raise another $100,000 nationally in the week ahead.

"That's an indication that they (investigators) haven't gotten anywhere with all the leads," said a former federal prosecutor who asked not to be named so as not to offend colleagues working on the case.

Authorities have given no public indication they were any nearer to cracking the cases than they were over Easter weekend, when the bullet-ridden bodies of Mike and Cynthia McLelland were found in their home.

If there have been any breaks in the cases, investigators have yet to communicate them to the public.

The mystery surrounding the killings has prompted speculation among law enforcement experts and people in Kaufman, about 30 miles east of Dallas, that they could be the work of a white supremacist Texas prison gang, Mexican drug cartels or their U.S. associates, or the scores of Kaufman County cases that involved both murdered prosecutors.

The cases have drawn attention to the sharp spikes in both violence and threats of violence against U.S. law enforcement officials over recent years.

Between 2000 and 2010, there were 74 attacks on federal enforcement officials - including judges and prosecutors - said Steve Swensen, a judicial security consultant and former Deputy U.S. Marshal.

"We're currently on track to double that number, to 150 by the end of this decade," Swensen said.

Carl Caulk, who heads the U.S. Marshal Service's judicial security division, said there was a "marked increase in threat activity" against U.S. federal law enforcement officials last decade.

"We've had threat cases in every major city in the U.S.," he said.

Two days after the McLellands were found, an unspecified security concern prompted federal prosecutor Jay Hileman, a veteran assistant U.S. attorney in Houston, to withdraw from a major racketeering case against suspected members and associates of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas prison gang.

In Colorado, authorities arrested a pair of white supremacists in the past two weeks identified as a persons of interest in the killing of Colorado's prisons chief, Tom Clements.

Clements, appointed two years ago as executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, was gunned down at his home south of Denver on March 19 in what investigators said appeared to be a targeted killing.

Police suspect he was shot to death by parolee Evan Spencer Ebel, who belonged to a Colorado-based, neo-Nazi prison gang known as the 211 Crew, and authorities have been seeking to question other white supremacists in connection with the killing.

Ebel died following a shootout with police.

(Additional reporting by Elizabeth Dilts, Simon Gardner, David Adams and Mark Hosenball; Editing by Daniel Trotta, Paul Thomasch and Eric; Walsh)

(This story was refiled to correct the spelling of prosecutor's name to Haase in paragraph three)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/bigger-reward-sought-mysterious-killings-texas-prosecutors-220906095.html

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