Tampering with a delicacy

By Jeffrey Goldberg
A true story: Marshall Honaker was the sheriff of Bristol, Virginia, a mountain town near the Tennessee border, until the day earlier this year, January 22 to be exact, when he walked into his office and shot himself dead. Apparently, a grand jury was investigating charges that Honaker, formerly the head of the National Sheriffs Association, embezzled more than $350,000 from the local government till Robert O'Harrow Jr., a staff writer of The Washington Post, reported that Honaker was considered a political boss in Bristol, which is located nearly 300 miles southwest of Richmond in the Appalachian hill country. Read more

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/1992/09/tampering-with-a-delicacy/8155/