The reason, Jackson said, was that Webb had been targeted by the Aryan Brotherhood.
"We put some real dents in the Aryan Brotherhood around here in the past year, " he said.
There are at least 425 members of the Aryan Brotherhood in Texas prisons.
"We put some real dents in the Aryan Brotherhood around here in the past year, " McLelland told the news agency.
The US's original neo-Nazi prison gang, known simply as the Aryan Brotherhood, emerged in California's San Quentin State Prison during the late 1960s.
In California, members of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang go on trial in one of the largest death penalty cases in U.S. history.
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In an interview with The Associated Press after Hasse's death, McLelland said his deputy hadn't been involved in the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas investigation.
Previous possible culprits mentioned included a white supremacist prison gang known as the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, which had been targeted by a task force that included McLelland's office.
Hasse died the same day as the justice department said the Kaufman County district attorney's office was pursuing a racketeering case against the white supremacist group, the Aryan Brotherhood in Texas.
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The murder has also shed light on the fact that state prisons in Texas and across the South have become purveyors of white supremacy, recruiting susceptible men into violent gangs such as the Aryan Brotherhood.
But McLelland's office was one of numerous Texas and federal agencies involved in a multi-year investigation that led to the indictment last year of 34 alleged members of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, including four of its senior leaders, on racketeering charges.
However, McLelland's office was one of numerous Texas and federal agencies involved in a multiple-year investigation that led to the 2012 indictment of 34 alleged members of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, including four of its senior leaders -- on racketeering charges.
Ebel is not on the radar of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups, but the center rates the gang as one of the most vicious white supremacist groups operating in the nation's prisons, comparable to the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas.
While authorities have not said whether they have linked the deaths of Hasse and McLelland, or the involvement of white supremacists, Texas law enforcement agencies did warn shortly after the November 2012 indictment that there was "credible information" that members of the Aryan Brotherhood were planning to retaliate.
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