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The wife of a disgraced justice of the peace has been arrested and charged with the murders of the Kaufman County district attorney, his wife, and another prosecutor, the authorities said on Wednesday.
Mr. Williams, 46, was already being held at the county jail on $3 million bond. He was jailed shortly after midnight on Saturday, accused of sending an anonymous e-mail to law enforcement officials threatening another attack if his demands were not met.
A turning point in the investigation came late Saturday afternoon, when the authorities arrived at a self-storage business a short drive from Kaufman. There, investigators found a large storage unit where Mr. Williams had kept a white sedan and an assortment of guns, including handguns and assault rifles. He had attempted to conceal the existence of the shed, the car and the guns from investigators, law enforcement officials said.
The car, which he had purchased under someone elses name, was a white Ford Crown Victoria that resembled an unmarked police car and was similar to the silver or gray Ford Taurus that witnesses had described fleeing the scene of the shooting of Mr. Hasse in January. The shed itself had been rented by an associate of Mr. Williams, at Mr. Williamss request, law enforcement officials said.
Mr. Williams had been a sought-after lawyer, member of the chamber of commerce and newly elected justice of the peace when he was accused of stealing computer monitors from a county building in May 2011. The two prosecutors aggressive work on the case helped persuade a jury to find him guilty in March 2012. He was removed from office and his law license was suspended. His state-issued peace officer license Mr. Williams had nearly two decades of law enforcement training was revoked.
Without a county salary or the ability to practice law in the state, Mr. Williams was unemployed and under financial stress, and he and his lawyers were convinced that evidence used to convict him had been tampered with and that Mr. McLelland had gone after him to settle a political grudge, according to court documents.
Shortly before he was sentenced last year, Mr. Williams told the state prison agency in a pre-sentencing report that he had taken the computer equipment to test a video magistration system that would allow him to conduct hearings on the Internet. I did not steal anything, Mr. Williams said in the report written in April 2012. This incident has become a tragic misunderstanding that has taken my livelihood and reputation.
He spoke of the stress the case had put on his wife and her parents. My life has taken a drastic turn, he said, according to the report. My wife of 14 years is ill and on disability. My father and mother-in-law are elderly and in need of medical attention; they moved to Texas so I could be a resource to them. If I do jail time, they and my wife will be the ones being punished.
