Could this have been prevented?

This is a very disturbing news story out of Houston. How is it that this pastor was able to deceive himself and his members by committing such an atrocity? Could it have been prevented if members and fellow ministers simply paid attention, prayed and acted?

The son of a Houston minister told Harris County sheriff’s detectives he was paid to kill his father’s wife last month, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Tracy Bernard Burleson, 44, a pastor, is charged with murder.

Pastor Tracy Bernard “T.B.” Burleson, 44, and his son, William Darnnell Fuller, 20 — both jailed without bail on charges of murder — also were having romantic relationships with the same woman, who is accused of trying to burn the murder weapon, according to detectives and court documents.

Both men are charged in the May 18 shooting death of Pauletta Ross Burleson, 56, at the family’s home in north central Harris County. The men’s romantic interest, Tyonne Marie Palmer-Pollard, 31, is charged with tampering with evidence.

Detectives and court records suggest the Burleson family was rife with conflict. Fuller told detectives that he frequently fought with his stepmother, according to Sgt. Wayne Kuhlman of the Sheriff’s Office Homicide Division. And court records show the slain woman was prosecuted twice on child abuse charges, receiving deferred adjudication both times, while her husband was cleared of any wrongdoing in those cases.Pauletta Burleson knew of her husband’s infidelities and had discussed them with others, Kuhlman said. And the pastor, who heads First New Mount Calvary Baptist Church in the Fifth Ward, told sheriff’s detectives that Palmer-Pollard was not the only woman with whom he’d had an affair, the sergeant said.

During a magistrate hearing Wednesday, Harris County prosecutor Justin Wood said Fuller, a Texas Southern University pre-nursing student, told investigators he shot his stepmother after being paid by his father to commit the crime. Wood did not say how much the son was allegedly paid.

Sheriff’s detectives broke the case after a confidential informant told them Fuller admitted he had shot his stepmother, according to an affidavit released Wednesday.

Pauletta Burleson — known to her family and friends as “Paulette” — had argued with her husband in the driveway of their home in the 11800 block of Green Loch near North Lake Houston Parkway on the night of her death, one neighbor told detectives, court records show.

During the argument, the neighbor heard a man say, “You are always trying to control me,” according to an affidavit

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