Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Anything more on William Hudson, killed neighbors camping next door in TX?

story just dropped off the MSM AND the 24 HR Campfire?

Anything in local news?

Sycamore

“All attorneys, their staffs, and law enforcement officers involved in this case shall not discuss this case with the media,” the judge asserted. From article in Star Beacon

Well, it seems like they are holding to it.

Sycamore

PALESTINE, Tex. – State District Judge Deborah Oakes Evans amended her gag orders in the East Texas mass murders case Tuesday to restrict lawyers and law officers from talking to reporters but specifically not restraining news coverage.

The judge filed the amended order with the Anderson County District Court just before it closed at 5 p.m. She said it supersedes previous orders signed by her that muzzled the press as well as the officers of the court.

The latest order, which the judge said is the “controlling order,” allows the public and the press to attend live pretrial hearings and publish “any information they have already obtained or may obtain in the future.”

She said the restraint on lawyers and law officers is intended to balance the right of accused killer William Hudson, 33, to a fair trial with the news media’s right to report news of public interest in a criminal case.

She said she considered the “unusually emotional nature of the issues involved in this case” and the “extensive local and national media coverage” of the Nov. 14 massacre of six members of two families at an East Texas campsite outside Palestine.

“All attorneys, their staffs, and law enforcement officers involved in this case shall not discuss this case with the media,” the judge asserted.

The language is nearly identical to an order Judge Evans issued four days after she had also granted a motion by defense attorney Steven Evans (no relation) for a sweeping gag order on news coverage of the murders.

News media and lawyers were puzzled over the conflict between the defense motion she granted Nov. 20 and her subsequent narrower restriction, and questioned whether both were in force.

The Palestine Herald-Press, in an editorial Tuesday morning, urged the judge to clarify her position or step down from the case. The Dallas Morning News also took the judge to task for considering unconstitutional prior restraint of legitimate news coverage.

The 24 Hour Campfire CSI Special Target Forensic Unit declined to investigate because preliminary reports did not reveal any credible or incredible information that could tend to make any peace officers look bad. If you can find some nexus, the 24HCFCSISTFU will be scouring social media and local news sources and conducting interviews with the victim daughter’s second cousins’ children’s babysitter’s mother for statements before you know it. That probably is your best bet if you want some info.

http://www.palestineherald.com/news...a481e66-e0e0-11e5-a8ed-834522e3c818.html


William Mitchell Hudson, 33, was arraigned by District Judge Mark Calhoun on Feb. 25. Hudson plead “not guilty” to all three counts of capital murder.

Hudson was indicted for the capital murders of Carl Johnson, 76; his daughter, Hannah Johnson, 40; his grandson, Kade, 6; Thomas Kamp, 45, and his two sons, Nathan, 23, and Austin, 21, at a campsite in Tennessee Colony in December.

While prosecutors are reporting that this trial could be a year or more away, they are currently working on a pretrial scheduling order.

These murders occurred in mid-November, when the Johnson and Kamp families were spending the weekend at the campsite Thomas Kamp had purchased from a relative of Hudson adjacent to property owned by Hudson and his family.

Authorities found the bodies of Carl Johnson and his daughter in a travel trailer at the campsite, and the other victims in a pond on Hudson’s property. All of the victims were shot to death with the exception of Hannah Johnson, who was killed with blunt force to the body.

The indictments confirmed investigators’ findings that Hudson, who lived next to the campsite, was drinking with the group when he accompanied four of them into the surrounding woods and shot them to death. The documents said Hudson returned alone to the campsite to kill Carl Johnson and his daughter in the trailer.

Cynthia Johnson, the wife of Carl Johnson and mother of Hannah, was the only survivor. Johnson reportedly hid from the assailant when she heard the shots in the woods. She called the sheriff’s office to report the murders.

Hudson has been held without bond at the county jail since the arrest.

It is expected that the Anderson County District Attorney will seek the death penalty in this case.

Questions to key officiants of the law were met with “no comment” due to the motion of restraint that has been filed in this case.