Mother, Son of Slain DA Speaks to NBC's Today Show

In an exclusive interview, the mother and son of slain Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland spoke with NBC's Today show over the weekend.

JR McLelland and his grandmother Wyvone McLelland spoke with the Today show about the murder of Mike and Cynthia McLelland while addressing recent reports that the district attorney was in a gun store in the days before the murders.

McLelland said his father owned several weapons and that his father visiting gun stores shouldn't be interpreted as him feeling threatened.

"I can tell you now that if they checked records of all the other gun stores and all the gun shows, he was at every one of them too.  It was nothing new for him to have a gun. He had plenty of guns. He taught me and my brothers and my sisters all how to use them. That was nothing abnormal," JR McLelland said.

JR said his father was a man who was good at his job, but rarely spoke to family about the details of being the district attorney.

"When he came down, when he came to Wortham or he met us at rodeos, it was about us. He didn't share his DA life with us, that time was spent with family. When he went to work, he was the DA and he was good at his job while he was at his job. He didn't discuss cases with us.  We talked about grandkids, my boys' rodeos, baseball games," JR McLelland said.

Of his father and step-mother, JR said the two were rarely apart and the family has found solace in the fact that one hasn't been forced to live without the other.

"They were two people who were deeply in love, all the time, every day.  They were together all the time. They were just two people happy in life," said JR McLelland. "We've taken a small bit of gratefullness out of this whole thing that they went together. Because, neither one of them would have wanted to live without the other. And we would have had to deal with that. For them both to go together was something we kind of take a little gratitude in."

Neither JR or Wyvone McLelland, the DA's mother, would speculate on who was responsible for the deaths of the DA, his wife and Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse.  However, Wyvone did share her theory about why her son and daughter-in-law were targeted.

"I was devastated [after learning of the shooting]. But why?  Who did it? Why did they do it? They thought maybe they might get caught ... and they knew they would if he stayed there very long. That's my feelings. And he would, because he would have kept on.  If it had been at all possible, he would be there now. Still digging for something," said Wyvone McLelland. "When he starts something, he finishes it."

The DA's mother said her son's last words to her, "I love you," were in a phone conversation that took place about a week before the murders.

"He loved everybody, everybody loved him," Wyvone McLelland said.

See edited selections from the interviews by clicking on the clips to the left.

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