Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 26, 1992 TAG: 9201260183
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BRISTOL LENGTH: Long
2,000 MOURN BRISTOL SHERIFF
One month to the day before Marshall Honaker was due to be in Los Angeles, to pick up a lifetime achievement award for upholding the law, stunned citizens of this Southwest Virginia city gathered Saturday to bestow on him a far sadder benediction.Some 2,000 mourners came to bid farewell to the longtime sheriff and local Democratic kingpin whose shotgun suicide has left this mountain community of 18,000 anguishing over how to reconcile the public and private faces of perhaps its most prominent citizen.
"So many of us were willing to walk through the dark valley with him, but he was not willing to," Chaplain Tom Bradley told an overflow crowd at State Street United Methodist Church. "I choose to believe it was because of his love for us."
Commonwealth's Attorney George Warren said during the service that the turnout in a church that seats only 1,100 showed the community had forgiven the sheriff.
"He enriched the lives of many people; his contributions to this community will long be remembered," Warren said. "Nothing that has happened heretofore or anything that can happen hereafter can erase that. . . . We shall miss him."
An honor guard from the Kingsport, Tenn., Police Department presided at Honaker's burial in Mountain View Cemetery.
The funeral came eight months after Gov. Douglas Wilder, Lt. Gov. Donald Beyer and Attorney General Mary Sue Terry's top deputy flew to Minnesota for Honaker's inauguration as president of the National Sheriffs' Association.
It was just two weeks after FBI and IRS agents swept into the sheriff's office and spacious hillside home, seizing records and assets gained - they alleged - through an embezzlement scheme in which Honaker bilked the city of more than $377,000 in recent years.
And it followed by four days the convening of a federal grand jury to investigate those claims.
To many, Honaker's story remains that of a beloved, 55-year-old community and family man whose achievements should not be tarnished by a single mistake, grave though it may have been. No charges had been filed in the case, friends noted.
Although questions about Honaker and his management of the city's regionally renowned jail had occasionally surfaced during his 18-year stint as sheriff, most residents chalked up the complaints to politics.
What many saw was a tough, but soft-hearted native son who bought cigarettes and shoes for needy inmates, pushed prisoners to take classes and required them to grow their own food, urged tougher standards for his profession, and whose jail operation had cost Bristol nothing in recent years.
The reason for the financial bonanza - and for Honaker's demise - was his decision in the mid-1980s to open the jail to federal prisoners and others from outside his jurisdiction.
According to an IRS affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, between July 1986 and October 1990 alone Honaker diverted more than $500,000 in payments for those prisoners into the personal checking account of him and his wife, Brenda. About $135,000 was returned from the account to the city during that period.
It is not clear from the affidavit when the practice began or if it had ended.
The money was used to buy the Honaker's $265,000 home - one of Bristol's more lavish - certificates of deposit for their two children, a 1987 Chevrolet pickup, a 1989 Toyota sedan and various other items, according to the court papers. The cars, bank accounts, and house were among the items seized by government officials during their Jan. 10 search.
Honaker and his family had been granted permission to remain in the house pending court action.
The scheme outlined in the affidavit resulted from payments to the Bristol jail far outstripping actual costs for the prisoners who were housed there.
Most payments were from the Washington, D.C., Department of Corrections and the U.S. Marshals Service. D.C. officials, for instance, paid about $55 per prisoner per day for services valued at about $6.
Some checks were deposited by Honaker with the city, but the bulk - 72 percent in one three-year period - went to Honaker's personal account, according to the court papers.
City officials declined to discuss jail finances last week, citing the prospect of an ongoing grand jury investigation. Jurors were sent home last week after Honaker's suicide, and there has been no formal word on whether the inquiry will continue. Prosecutors have said that Brenda Honaker is not under investigation.
Many of Honaker's friends said last week that they prefer to regard the allegations as claims that were never proven. "We deal in an area of work and ministry where we learn that people are innocent until proven guilty. The shoplifter, the drug addict. Why not the sheriff?" said Bradley, the jail chaplain.
Honaker's attorney, James Bowie, acknowledged that a plea agreement - in which the accused usually acknowledges some guilt in return for a lesser charge - was one alternative his client considered. No decision had been made, he said.
Throughout his last two weeks, Honaker remained silent on the charges. The only exception was a brief note found beside his body.
"My last thoughts are of my wonderful family and friends. I love you all very much. God has forgiven me; I hope you all will."
The Associated Press provided information for this story.