An Accountability Project · Rockwall County DA

You did everything right. The A-rated schools. The quiet street. The locked doors.

It won’t protect your family.

The danger in Rockwall was never the stranger from Dallas you were taught to fear. It is the insider — and you are not one of them. Twice now, when the accused was one of their own, the record shows the same ending: evidence that wasn’t preserved, a file that was sealed, no charges. That is the side of the ledger you are on.

Was your grandfather prom king at Rockwall High? Is the DA in your phone? Do you lunch at the club? If not — you are the funding source, not the family that gets protected.

See What They Buried ↓ Submit a Confidential Tip
Kenda Culpepper, Rockwall County District Attorney.
Kenda Culpepper · Rockwall County District Attorney

What the quiet was hiding

Two cases. Two of their own. Two times the evidence simply vanished.

Case File · The Classroom · No charges filed

A Rockwall ISD teacher was accused of abusing a child.

The hallway video that would have shown what happened wasn’t preserved in time. The investigation stalled. The grand jury never saw the tape. No charges — and the teacher went back to work, at a different campus.

Your child’s school is also “a different campus.”

In her own words · Rockwall City Council, 2016

“Sex predators … will use this issue as an excuse to get into the bathroom to possibly assault children.”

That was Kenda Culpepper, testifying for her husband’s ordinance. When protecting children was a political talking point, she showed up. When it was a case her own office had to build — this one — the video wasn’t preserved.

Ouida Springer Elementary School, Rockwall ISD — the campus where the allegation was reported.
Ouida Springer Elementary · Rockwall ISD

Case File · The Crossing Guard · Sealed, no charges

In 2017, the District Attorney of the next county over struck and killed an 87-year-old school crossing guard — in a school zone.

Police cited his failure to yield. No arrest followed. The special prosecutor appointed to handle his case was Kenda Culpepper. She took it to a grand jury behind closed doors. He was never charged. The file was sealed.

You were never supposed to read that.

Christine Sandlin, 87, and her husband in their school crossing-guard vests, each holding a stop sign.
Christine Sandlin & her husband · Greenville crossing guards

Neither of these is an accusation. Both are the public record — the part that wasn’t sealed. Read the files, with their sources →

The Incumbent Problem

You are not in the club. You never will be.

Kenda Culpepper has been the county’s top prosecutor for eighteen years — and somehow the cases against the connected keep vanishing. A teacher accused of abusing a child, returned to a classroom. A district attorney who struck and killed a crossing guard, never charged. That is not tough on crime. That is one set of rules for the club, and another for everyone who had to earn their way in.

You earned Rockwall. You built the business, made the payments, chose the schools, and moved your family somewhere that was supposed to be better — and better protected. She was handed her seat and has kept it for eighteen years. She summers where the club summers and runs the county from a comfortable distance, because to her Rockwall was never something to build. It was something to inherit.

And it isn’t only that she’s connected — she’s careless with it. She and her husband, a former judge, hauled their own property-tax bill to the Texas Court of Appeals and couldn’t file the paperwork on time; the case was thrown out. Two lawyers who can’t manage their own taxes — deciding which of yours gets justice.

And the establishment’s choices land on what you paid for. Soft on the border, soft on the connected — while the community you invested in absorbs the cost. The club keeps the convenience and ships the consequences to the people who actually built something here.

They were handed it. You built it. And they still think you don’t belong.

Here’s what the club counts on: that you’ll fall in line. You didn’t on school choice. You stood with Ken Paxton when the establishment came for him. You’ve broken ranks before — and you were right.

Kenda Culpepper is that same entrenched establishment — Cornyn-brand incumbency: comfortable, connected, and certain you’ll do as you’re told. Why protect the incumbent now?

The Verdict

She has run the courthouse for eighteen years. This is a standing audit of that record — not a campaign.

None of this gets fixed in a courtroom she runs. It gets fixed by the people she actually answers to — the voters of Rockwall County — and by every document they refuse to let vanish. Eighteen years in the same office is not a verdict in her favor. It is what happens to a record when no one keeps it.

Don’t just get angry — get operational. — three things that actually move the powerful.

Open Records

The Texas Public Information Act gives you a legal right to internal communications. Stop asking politely — file. We provide copy-and-paste templates.

Show Up

Empty auditoriums pass the agenda. The Rockwall ISD board and the County Commissioners meet on a public schedule. Sign up for public comment and ask the question on the record.

The Ballot Box

In Rockwall County these offices are decided in the Republican primary — often by a few hundred votes. Whenever it next comes, an organized neighborhood outweighs the country-club boardroom. Until then, the record you force into daylight is the pressure.

The era of polite, suburban silence is what kept this in the dark. Get the full playbook →

They are banking on your silence.

You saw the favoritism. You have the docket number, the timeline, the email they tried to bury. What you send, we never publish who sent it.

Submit a Confidential Tip Read the Record