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Jeff Davis County Justice of the Peace Mary Ann Luedecke is on tape fantasizing about assaulting journalist David Flash, admitting she now carries a gun everywhere she goes in case she sees him and feels threatened.
“Had I not been 70 years old,” she said during a sworn interview with state prosecutors,
“I’d pop him in the mouth and be done.”“I’ve got a gun now. I carry it with me everywhere I go.”
Flash never threatened her. Video shows him calmly filming a public sign in a courthouse hallway, never entering her office, never yelling, and walking away without confrontation.
Despite that, Luedecke repeatedly claimed he was dangerous — even as the video shows she was the one yelling “You’re detained!” while Flash quietly responded, “You can’t detain me, ma’am.”
“She talks about violence, she carries a gun, and she lies — on the record,” Flash said.
“I told her I’m a vetted hospice and Meals on Wheels volunteer, a former Crime Stoppers board member. I asked her to stop treating me like a threat. Her response was: ‘Are you threatening me?’ I believe she’s dangerous.”
Luedecke is the key witness and complainant in the state’s ongoing harassment case against Flash — even though a separate terroristic threat charge has already been dropped and multiple elements of her story have been directly contradicted by video evidence.
Flash has filed complaints with the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct, which has confirmed that the matter is under investigation.
“She created a fake story, triggered panic alerts, and now says she’s armed and ready to shoot if she sees me,” Flash said. “All because I exposed misconduct. This is not justice — it’s a threat to press freedom.”
Big Bend Times will continue reporting on the case, the state’s failure to act, and the ongoing danger of empowered officials with a record of lying and a license to carry.
