Prosecutor Mark Hasse Killing: Investigators Working Around the Clock to Solve Execution-Style Murder
Reward for information leading to killers upped to $70,000.
Feb. 3, 2013— -- Investigators are working around the clock to find information leading to the killers of Texas prosecutor Mark Hasse, who was gunned down execution-style outside of the Kaufman County Courthouse on Thursday.
Authorities confirmed they are combing through past cases handled by the assistant district attorney for a possible motive.
Surveillance video from businesses around the courthouse is being reviewed to see if it yields possible clues, said Pat Laney of the Kaufman County Sheriff's Department.
The reward for information leading to the killers of Hasse has been upped to $70,000 by state and federal authorities, who said they do not have a motive or suspects in the shooting.
Hasse was shot Thursday just before 9 a.m. by one or two unknown assailants as he walked from his car to the courthouse in the small town of Kaufman southeast of Dallas.
READ: Texas Prosecutor's Killer Had Faces Covered
The assailants, who may have been masked and dressed in black, fled the scene in a silver four-door sedan. The murder came the same morning that two members of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, a violent prison gang, pleaded guilty to racketeering in a Texas federal court.
On Thursday morning, the Dallas Morning News reported that "authorities with knowledge of the assistant DA's caseload [said] he had been heavily involved in the investigation of members of the Aryan Brotherhood."
The Kaufman County DA's office, where Hasse and a dozen other ADAs worked, was listed as one of 22 agencies on the task force that handled the racketeering case.
In a press conference Friday, Kaufman County Police Chief Chris Albaugh said that it "seems to be a coincidence" that the two events happened on the same morning and called a link between the guilty pleas and the shooting "speculation," but did not rule out the possibility that the shooting was related to one of Hasse's cases.
"We're not ruling out any involvement until we know," Albaugh said. "And we have no specific information that the Aryan Brotherhood is a factor here.
"We are reviewing Mr. Hasse's cases and following up on any leads within those cases that would give us a person of interest," he said.
Hasse, 57, had been a longtime felony prosecutor for the Dallas County District Attorney's Office, according to the ABC's Dallas/Fort Worth affiliate WFAA-TV. He headed the organized crime unit in Dallas in the 1980s. He started work in Kaufman County three years ago.
