FILE PHOTO: McLennan County, Texas Sheriff Parnell McNamara
Published: May 13, 2025 at 11:42 AM CDT|Updated: 36 minutes ago
WACO, Texas (KWTX) – The Ellis County District Attorney’s Office has agreed to serve as special prosecutor in the ongoing investigation of McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara on allegations he improperly ordered a deputy to work at his Bosqueville farm over a three-year period while the deputy was on the county payroll.
McLennan County District Attorney Josh Tetens, who recused his office early in the nine-month investigation, said he had a difficult time finding another agency willing to accept the appointment, adding he was turned down by the Texas Attorney General’s Office as well as a number of district attorneys in Central and North Texas before the Ellis County DA’s Office signed on as special prosecutor.
“In this matter, there is no case filed, there are no reports that have been created or certainly given to our office, there is no judge overseeing this case,” Tetens said. “We don’t know if there is a case. This was a request by the grand jury for the Rangers to conduct an investigation. Throughout that process, the Rangers reached out and said, ‘Where do we go for questions or needs or comments in regard to the investigation? Is it your office?’
“We politely declined and said from the very beginning we would be recusing and did not want to involve ourselves in this case or in this investigation at any level. So they requested assistance seeking out a prosecutor who would be able to answer any questions they had throughout their investigation,” Tetens said.
Department of Public Safety Sgt. Ryan Howard confirmed in September that the Texas Rangers are investigating the allegations against McNamara and said last week that the investigation remains “active and ongoing.” He declined additional comment.
Texas Ranger Bradley Freeman of the Ranger’s Public Corruption Unit in Austin is conducting the investigation. Neither he nor McNamara returned phone messages from KWTX last week.
Ricky Sipes, first assistant district attorney in Ellis County, confirmed his office has agreed to serve as special prosecutor in the investigation and said he expects to meet with Freeman soon to discuss the case.
Sipes said “most of what I know now is what you and your television station have put out on this.”
Tetens has said that along with the grand jury Ranger inquiry request he included a copy of an Aug. 12 KWTX story in which former sheriff’s deputy Johnathan Crawley and other former sheriff’s office employees spoke publicly for the first time about McNamara ordering Crawley to work at the sheriff’s farm during his normal duty hours, clearing land for McNamara’s new home, mending fences and a variety of other jobs.
In response to the allegations from Crawley and others, McNamara has said they are “totally false” and that Crawley is a “known liar” who resigned after he was stopped for suspicion of drunken driving and lied about it.
McNamara said Crawley’s accusations and those from the three former employees are the product of “disgruntled ex-employees who would do anything to make me look bad.”
The Public Corruption Unit is charged with enforcing public corruption “as it relates to public officials, law enforcement officers and others who hold a position of public trust,” according to the DPS website. The Texas Ranger Public Integrity Unit, also housed in Austin, is similar in that it investigates crimes by state officers and state employees.
The allegations center around reports that McNamara ordered Crawley to work at McNamara’s farm while Crawley was supposed to be working for the department’s Mental Health Unit.
Crawley and three former sheriff’s office employees confirmed the sheriff ordered him to work on his farm. Crawley said the work started about three years ago with him mowing around a gun range on McNamara’s property and evolved to clearing land where McNamara is building a new home, mending fences and prepping the 140-year-old McNamara homestead for demolition.
“I was doing what I was told, and I needed a job,” Crawley said. “He was my boss, and at the time, he was giving me an order to do something and I felt like I needed to do it. I wasn’t sure at first that it was wrong.”
Crawley said McNamara never paid him for his work and he turned in his regular county timecards that reflected full-time work as a deputy.
McNamara said Crawley left the sheriff’s office after he was stopped on drunken driving allegations. He said Crawley became belligerent with the officer and lied to his supervisors about the incident.
Crawley admits he said things that night that he shouldn’t have but denies he was drunk. He said the officer did not arrest him and allowed his wife to come pick him up. He said he resigned out of concern he embarrassed himself and the sheriff’s office.
Crawley said his work schedule at McNamara’s farm was sporadic over about three years, with the sheriff ordering him to work there one or two days before he returned to his normal duties to working there two weeks or more at a time.
“(McNamara) said to tell my immediate supervisor that I was going out to work at the range,” Crawley said.
Crawley said he suffered a serious eye injury on June 15, 2022, while using a chain saw to clear trees on what turned out to be the site of the McNamaras’ new home. A large splinter or thorn flew into his eye, causing significant scratches that required Crawley to be treated by an eye specialist.
Crawley’s pay records obtained by KWTX show he was paid by the county for regular working hours as a deputy on the day he was injured. His medical records also show what day he was injured and note that his injury was caused when he was cutting a tree with a chainsaw.
McNamara took photos of Crawley mowing around the gun range, which Crawley suspects the sheriff staged to provide an explanation if questions arose about what Crawley was doing at the farm during what was supposed to be his regular county work hours.
Crawley said he also was asked to help strip the historic McNamara family home to ready it for demolition and answered late-night calls to come fix fences when the McNamara’s horses got out.
News of Crawley’s routine absence from his regular work shift filtered up the chain-of-command and eventually became common knowledge throughout the department, said David Kilcrease, the former chief deputy who retired in 2023.
“I knew it was going on and I confronted Parnell about it,” Kilcrease said. “I told Parnell, ‘This needs to stop.’”
Copyright 2025 KWTX. All rights reserved.
congratulations! Great story to read.
Thanks. I have no hope of success, however. None. Being a pain is all the satisfaction we have. Fkn. Sad.
The gaunt appearance of “‘Merica’s Sheriff” tells me somebody had better keep the safety scissors or his supposed cache of automatic weapons and explosives away from Old Par. I could see him & the Mrs. going out in a blaze of glory at the old homestead, similar to David Koresh when the Rangers come to slap the cuff on them…