Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 15, 1992 TAG: 9202150346
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: VICTORIA RATCLIFF and
DATELINE: GATE CITY LENGTH: Long
IN SHERIFF, CITY SAW ONLY ONE SIDE OF A TWO-SIDED MAN
A retired police investigator says that there was a long pattern of corrupt behavior by Bristol Sheriff Marshall Honaker. But Honaker escaped real scrutiny for years - until he bought that expensive house.
M.A. Lunsford tosses to the floor the front page of a newspaper dominated by a photograph of a crowd gathered for the burial of Bristol Sheriff Marshall Honaker.
"He got a hero's funeral," the retired state police agent says of the popular sheriff, who killed himself after being accused of stealing almost $400,000 from the city he served.
"The people of Bristol cannot understand his behavior was criminal. . . . Bristol's got a warped sense of value." They saw only one side of a two-sided man, Lunsford says.
The side Lunsford sees was revealed through more than 15 years of information-gathering, first by state police intelligence agents, then by the state's Bureau of Criminal Investigation, and finally by a federal crime task force.
Others, like Bristol Police Chief Oscar Broome, prefer to remember the hero side - the generous public servant who ran a nationally recognized jail, the man who was about to be recognized as one of the nation's leading law enforcement officers.
Honaker, 55, was like a brother to Broome, and he proudly served as a pallbearer to show respect.
"Nobody is condoning something that is wrong," Broome says. "A friend who falls off the big, white horse and falls down in the mud. . . . You don't stomp on him . . . and forget the good things he done."
Citizens of Bristol showed their respect for Honaker by putting on "the largest funeral that Bristol, Virginia, ever had," Broome says. People lined the funeral route with hats off, hands on heart, men, women, children with tears in their eyes. "They're remembering how much this man helped them," Broome says. "I've never seen that kind of thing."
The people of Bristol know that Honaker "screwed up," Broome says. They also know that "you don't wipe out the whole book because one page was bad."
Some federal and state investigators say Honaker's book had more than one bad page.
Their information and documents point to a long pattern of corrupt activity that ultimately led to Honaker's suicide last month as federal authorities closed in on him.
And they resent that, while he systematically ripped off the city for years, he held himself up as one of the country's top law officers - first as president of the Virginia Sheriffs' Association and later as president of the National Sheriffs' Association.
"It tarnishes all our badges," says former Bristol Police Chief Tom Stone, the primary person who pushed for years for an investigation of the sheriff's activities.
Stone says he was "aghast" to see law enforcement officers paying tribute to Honaker at his funeral. "I don't see the reason the contemporary law enforcement community is canonizing Marshall when they know what he was involved with," Stone says.
On Jan. 22, Honaker went to his office and blew his chest open with a shotgun. He left a suicide note saying, "God has forgiven me. I hope you all will."
He wanted forgiveness, federal authorities say, for cheating the city of Bristol of at least $377,000 over five years by simply pocketing federal checks paid to him for keeping federal inmates in his jail. Federal authorities say their continuing investigation of records seized from Honaker show the amount could be well in excess of $500,000.
The money was supposed to go into the city's coffers. But city officials rarely questioned Honaker, a Democratic kingpin who had been sheriff since 1973 and kept a double set of books to conceal his thefts. Instead, city officials seemed content that Honaker's jail ran at no cost to the city in recent years and was touted as a national model.
Before FBI and IRS agents shattered that image with a raid on Honaker's home last month, a small group of state and local police had been investigating numerous allegations against him since the mid-1970s.
Lunsford, who retired from the Virginia State Police in September, had been one of the key investigators in that inquiry, according to Jay Cochran, former head of the state police Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
Cochran says police obtained authorization from then-Attorney General Marshall Coleman - a Republican - to investigate Honaker on allegations that the sheriff received kickbacks, misused jail labor for personal reasons, and was a silent partner of a local adult bookstore and massage-parlor operator.
But, Cochran says, investigators weren't able to come up with enough evidence to support prosecution.
Among the specific allegations was one that Honaker pocketed money he required deputies to pay for meals while they were on duty, whether they ate at the jail or not. That money was used to create a "flower fund" that the sheriff used to enhance his image by buying everything from shoes for needy inmates to flowers for grieving widows.
Honaker also was suspected of using inmate labor at a jail farm to grow a profit-making tobacco crop, the income from which was difficult to trace.
Broome, Honaker's friend, says so many allegations swirled around Honaker at the time that "I got duped into being awful suspicious myself." But, he says, when the state police investigation ended, it was because there was no truth to the allegations. "In the final evaluation, they had nothing."
After no charges resulted from the initial inquiry, Honaker became brazen. Authorities say the sheriff might have continued ripping off the city for years had his overconfidence not led him to buy a big house on a hill overlooking Bristol - one of the city's nicest homes.
It was too big a house for a man making $47,000 a year.
The house was just the blatant excess that Police Chief Stone needed to finally convince federal authorities that something wasn't right.
"It was the house," Lunsford says. "Marshall thought he was so insulated in Bristol and the state - through the state and national sheriffs' associations - he thought nobody'd touch him. He thought he could flaunt it in the community."
In the mid-1980s, Honaker found a source of income from which he could easily pilfer large amounts, federal documents show. That money came from the U.S. Marshal's Service and the Washington, D.C., government, which paid Honaker to keep federal prisoners in his jail. He was getting $55 a day for each D.C. inmate, and it cost him only $6 a day to keep them.
By tracing the money Honaker embezzled from the federal payments, federal investigators were able to get the hard evidence that had eluded state police for years.
What had also partially stymied the state police investigation was Honaker's control of the political power structure in Bristol, and the fact that the state didn't have the investigative power the federal government possesses, says Stone, who left the Bristol Police Department in November to become public safety director in Norristown, Pa.
State police never asked for charges to be placed against Honaker because investigators say they felt they had to have an ironclad case if they were to have any chance in Bristol.
Bristol Commonwealth's Attorney George Warren, Honaker's attorney and close friend, says he doesn't remember state police ever coming to him about investigating Honaker.
If there had been evidence of a crime, Warren says, he would have gone after a conviction, regardless of who was involved.
State police began gathering information on Honaker in the mid-1970s as part of an effort to develop intelligence files on possible criminal activity. Lunsford, part of the intelligence operation, says Honaker's name first surfaced in intelligence records dating to the late 1950s, when it showed up on a mailing list of a pornography distributor.
It came up again in the mid-1970s, when police raided an adult bookstore in Bristol owned by a man named Larry Grigsby. Lunsford says Grigsby told him at the time that Honaker, then sheriff, was a silent partner in the adult bookstore business.
Lunsford says Grigsby told him he had a safety deposit box containing business records proving Honaker's connection. But Grigsby never gave him the records and Lunsford never was able to locate any record on file with the state.
In a telephone interview earlier this week, Grigsby denied telling Lunsford that Honaker was a partner. "There was no relationship there," he said, and he threatened to sue anyone who said there was.
But on Feb. 4, Grigsby told the Roanoke Times & World-News he had "a story to sell" about his relationship with Honaker. "I could show another side of the coin going back to 1968," he said, adding he had documentation to prove his story.
When told that the newspaper did not pay for stories, Grigsby said he would try to sell his story to a tabloid instead. "I'm definitely not going to give it to anyone out of the goodness of my heart. . . . I need enough money so I can relocate."
A Bristol police officer who claimed to be investigating a prostitution ring run from the jail in the mid-1970s also gave Lunsford information. That officer, Dennis Ely, was fired and filed a lawsuit against the city. In the suit, he accused Honaker of being behind his firing. He lost that suit.
When none of that information enabled state police to file criminal charges against Honaker, Stone decided in 1986 to go to the FBI. His request for a federal investigation was rejected. Stone's motives were suspect because he and Honaker had clashed publicly several times. Among those clashes was an effort in Bristol to place all police powers under the sheriff instead of the police chief.
Stone eventually got approval for a federal investigation - after Honaker bought his big house in 1989 and it appeared that federal authorities might be able to prosecute him for tax evasion and fraud.
"Finally, we were listened to, and from the results, our complaints obviously had merit," he says. "It was a very frustrating experience."
The day Honaker killed himself, the sheriff was supposed to go to Roanoke, where his attorney hoped to negotiate a plea bargain with federal prosecutors.
Despite the suicide, investigators are continuing to go over the volumes of financial records and stacks of reportedly pornographic videotapes seized from Honaker's office.
Bristol Police Chief Broome has been subpoenaed to appear Tuesday before a federal grand jury in Roanoke. He was ordered to bring along his files on the investigation of Honaker's death.
Meanwhile in Bristol, citizens continue to support Honaker and his family. A memorial fund has been established at Highland Union Bank to help the family with expenses. The fund had $800 by Thursday.
Family friend Carolyn Helton, who established the fund, says it has created some controversy because of the federal allegations against Honaker. But, she says, nothing has been proven yet. "I know this is a person who did a lot of good for people. We are not to be the final judge."
Broome agrees and points out that Honaker had not been tried or even formally charged when he committed suicide.
"He died an innocent man."
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