Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 24, 1992 TAG: 9201240590
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
WHY?
WAS SHERIFF Marshall Honaker a Jekyll/Hyde personality? Not likely.The events that led to his public disgrace and his suicide Wednesday leave a perplexing and incomplete picture of the man. The evidence suggests Honaker was a dedicated and decent law-enforcement official who was fooled - and corrupted - by his power and success into believing he was invincibly above the law.
Around Bristol, he was called the "high sheriff." During his 35-year law-enforcement career he built a Daley-style political machine in the city, and became a Democratic mover-and-shaker in Southwest Virginia and beyond.
He was probably Virginia's best-known sheriff. Appointed by governors to various state boards. President of the 20,000-member National Sheriffs' Association. Due to receive that organization's lawman-of-the-year award next month in Los Angeles - until the bottom fell out of his life on Jan. 10.
That was the day a small army of federal agents swept through Bristol, seizing Honaker's office files, his $275,000 home, three vehicles, several bank accounts and loads of city financial records. The agents found $64,000 in cash in Honaker's desk drawer.
The 55-year-old Honaker, who earned about $60,000 a year, had come to the attention of federal authorities because he'd taken up a lifestyle associated with the rich and famous. Now, suddenly, he was the focus of a federal grand-jury probe into allegations that, since 1986, he'd embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to the city jail for the housing of federal prisoners.
It must be asked how such wrongdoing could go on so long without notice, in a system supposed to be full of checks and balances. Honaker's death does not end the need for a review of federal accounting methods and, perhaps, a shakeup in Bristol government.
For now, though, the overwhelming reaction seems to be sorrow - even from some who were once his prisoners. Money? Power? The high life? What was Honaker's crucible? The Bristol jail's chaplain, Tom Bradley, said upon hearing of his death: "He was a good man. Good men make mistakes just like bad men make mistakes."
It's not a satisfying answer, or epitaph. But it may be the best we'll get.