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KAUFMAN (CBSDFW.COM) - Eric Williams, once the school kid considered most likely to succeed in life, will now die by lethal injection for being a cold-blooded killer.
The former Eagle Scout, lawyer and justice of the peace kept his head down, showing no emotion, when the jury delivered his fate for killing Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McClelland and his wife Cynthia on Easter weekend 2013.
But for the first time in his three weeks on trial, after he’ was told he will die for his crimes, Williams looked up as relatives of the dead took the witness stand, each telling him how much he had hurt their families.
When it came his turn, one of the DA’s sons from a previous marriage, J.R. McLelland, picked up on chilling testimony from the day before that revealed Williams and his now-estranged wife, Kim, had celebrated with a backyard cookout after they’d murdered the McLellands.
Turning to his father’s killer, J.R. McLelland told him: “Tonight, when you’re in a jail cell eating baloney sandwiches, I’m going to eat steak… I’m going to eat ribeye.”
Williams continued to stare, but still showed no emotion, when the DA’s grieving daughter, Krista Ball, delivered another verbal punch, “You’re a sorry SOB, and we hope you rot.”
One of the most powerful statements against Williams came from a family member who was not even in court.
A victims’ assistance official said the mother of Mark Hasse, a Kaufman County prosecutor that Williams is also accused of killing, is too old, and still hurting too much, to even be publicly identified.
In her statement read in court, the mother told Williams, “You are a small-time thief,” referring to the fact that prosecutors say Williams killed the DA, and is charged with murdering Hasse, because they had prosecuted him a year earlier for stealing a small amount of computer equipment.
“My son showed the world that you were a violent felon and a lousy lawyer,” the mother said in her statement, adding that he and the DA “gave their lives putting scum like you in prison.”
“My son never saw his death coming,” she said, “but you will. And I hope you suffer in fear every day until you get the execution you so richly deserve.”
The jury gave Williams the death penalty a day after hearing from his wife, Kim, who has admitted and been charged as his accomplice in killing Hasse and the McLellands.
She told them her husband was “happy, joyous,” after each murder, and that he had bragged about shooting one last round in to Cynthia McLelland’s head, at close range, “because she was still moaning.”
That was fresh on Christina Foreman’s mind when it was her turn to lash out at her mother’s killer.
“F…. you,” she told Williams, then glanced up at the judge and said: “My apologies to the court.”
-By J. D. Miles & Jack Douglas Jr.|CBS 11 I-Team
(©2014 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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