Kade Johnson

PALESTINE, Tex. – Authorities said the sole survivor of the mass murder of six people at an East Texas campsite over the weekend alerted them to the killings and identified the man arrested in the carnage.

Anderson County Sheriff Greg Taylor said William Hudson, 33, of rural Palestine, Texas, had been charged in connection with the multiple homicides. He was arrested at his mother’s home near the murder scene.

Cynthia Johnson, 73, told the sheriff she eluded the killer by running from the campsite and hiding in nearby piney woods 100 miles southeast of Dallas. Taylor said he received her 911 call at 7:02 am. Sunday.

 “Apparently he (the killer) did not see her run away,”  said Sheriff Greg Taylor. “She was able to hide, thank God.”

Mrs. Johnson’s husband, Carl, 77, the couple’s daughter, Hannah, and their 6-year-old grandson Kade were victims of the mass murder, along with Hannah’s boyfriend, Thomas Kamp, 45. and his two adult sons – Nathan Kamp, 23, and Austin Kamp, 21.

Deputies found the bodies of Johnson and his daughter in a travel trailer at the campsite. They had been shot to death.  Hannah Johnson’s son and the three Kamps were discovered at mid-day Monday in a pond on Hudson’s property adjoining the campsite. It was not clear if they had also been shot.

Sheriff Taylor ascribed no motive for the killings.  But Carina Kamp, the former wife of Thomas Kamp and the mother of their two sons slain, told the Palestine Herald-Press that it might have resulted from anger over her ex-husband’s purchase of the campsite land from Hudson’s father.

Hudson, 33, resented the sale and Kamp’s construction of a locked chain fence on the property, cutting it off from Hudson’s and public access, according to Carina Kamp.

“Mine and my family’s theory is that Mr. Hudson got mad that my husband bought the land and this (the murders) was something he planned on doing,” she said.

Kamp lived with Hannah Johnson and her son in the Dallas suburb of Midlothian. His former wife moved with their four sons to California after the couple’s divorce several years ago. Nathan and Austin Kamp, the oldest of the four, were visiting their father in Texas at the time of the murders.

The Johnsons moved to Texas a decade ago after Cynthia and Carl retired as employees of the University of Maine at Farmington. Daughter Hannah worked as an insurance adjuster in Fort Worth, Texas, according to her Facebook account.

Bail bond was set at $2.5 million for Hudson, 33, on a single charge of murder. But prosecutors said they would add additional murder charges after they had completed their initial investigation.

Sheriff Taylor said Hudson was apprehended without incident at his mother’s home in the area. He said the suspect had a record of violence “but nothing like this.” The sheriff described the mass murders as “like a war movie.”

The sheriff said Cynthia Johnson, the lone survivor, told him Hudson came over to the campsite on Saturday to help free a vehicle stuck in the mud, stayed around to socialize afterwards “then something went wrong.”  He released neither other details nor a possible motive for the slaughter.

“We’ve never had anything like this,” said Taylor. “Nothing of this magnitude.”

Details for this story were provided by the Anderson County, Texas, Sheriff’s Office and the Palestine, Texas, Herald-Press.