Future Forum: Guilt, Innocence, and the Death Penalty 
Law
The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover
The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover, published by Simon and Schuster
Why has Frances Kaiser of Kerr County succeeded as one of the few female sheriffs in Texas today? First of all, there’s her arresting personality.
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But there has never been a shortage of bubbas in this world and even after the biblical miracle had occurred and Frances Kaiser was elected sheriff, things didn’t get much easier. “If you were a man,” threatened a courthouse politician shaking with rage, “I’d have handled things differently.” “How would you have handled them?” Frances asked coolly. The man sputtered, stammered, and eventually drove off in a vintage 1937 Snitmobile. And then there was the county court commissioner who, when Frances’ name came up for a raise, told her, “You don’t need a raise. Your husband makes a good salary.”
Frances admits her up-front style may sometimes ruffle feathers. In proving themselves in public life, she believes, women must be humble—a rather novel idea that other politicians, both men and women, might consider. “There’s a way to do it,” she says, “and I don’t think it’s to go in like gangbusters: ‘By God, I’m a woman and you’re damn well going to accept me.’ I think it’s: ‘Here I am. I think I can do the job. Give me the chance.’”
Her fellow Kerrverts, of course, have given her that chance, and so far she has survived and thrived in that office for more than eight years, which is about six years longer than Suzanne Somers’ television series She’s the Sheriff lasted (but, unfortunately, a somewhat shorter life span than Suzanne Somers’ Thighmaster commercials). Nonetheless, in that time the lady sheriff in the good ol’ boy town has solved more cases and collared more bad guys than anybody can remember: a double-murder suicide in which the bodies were discovered in a torched house, a triple murder featuring an elderly woman beaten to death in a wheelchair, the decapitation of a pet buffalo at a local wildlife preserve (the culprit got forty years and will eventually be hopping on a pogo stick in hell for all eternity). Not to be outdone, according to the local papers, there was the guy who O.J.’ed his wife by cutting her up into fajita-size pieces. Frances has also made one of the biggest drug busts in the history of the Hill Country and worked closely with enough child abuse, substance abuse, and domestic violence cases to make you wonder why anybody would want to be sheriff in the first place.
Aside from the normal risks and stresses of the job, on May 19, 1993, the sheriff was operated on for ovarian cancer, a circumstance that did not slow her down, although subsequent chemotherapy did force her to wear a wig to the sheriffs’ convention in El Paso later that year. Just as almost none of her constituents were aware of the cancer, almost none of her colleagues were aware of the wig. When the hairpiece began to irritate her while on a hotel elevator, she calmly reached in her purse and replaced it with a homemade turban, thus prompting a fellow sheriff from East Texas to make one of the more unintentionally humorous understatements of the year. “Jesus Christ, Frances,” he said. “Whatever have you done to your hair?”
Today the sheriff appears to have triumphed over both the cancer and the good ol’ boy system, though it’s always possible, of course, that the good ol’ boys are only in remission. She has accomplished this feat by combining a large measure of strength with a large measure of compassion. “I can handle a drunk in a fight if I have to,” she says. She also says, “I believe in second chances.” Both of these virtues were called front and center in late December 1994 when a local man Frances knew barricaded himself in a building in downtown Kerrville and threatened to kill himself and anybody who tried to stop him. Against all conventional procedure, she entered the building by herself. The man was as taut as piano wire, his face and features locked in a wild-eyed, shivering rictus of terror. With both hands he maintained a shooter’s death grip on a .357 Magnum. Frances walked up to the man.
“Darlin’,” she said. “I think you need a hug.”
In the long, legendary, and sometimes lurid annals of law enforcement, this may well be the only case on record of a man turning over his gun to a Texas sheriff and receiving, in return, a hug.
“I see,” said the sheriff as she stared past the window out into the fury of the storm. Her face was an emotionless porcelain mask that in some strange way seemed more unnerving than any display of mere emotion. I puffed politely on the cigar and waited.
“You obtained these documents—”
“Down the hall,” I said. “But it was Earl Buckelew’s idea to check the marriage license applications.”
“Ol’ Earl,” said the sheriff, her eyes going back in time. “We used to sneak onto his place and go fishin’ when I was a kid.”
“The same. He claims widow women always lie about their ages.”
Sheriff Kaiser smiled. It was a nice smile. Sheriffs usually don’t get to smile a lot but when they do it’s always appreciated. Kind of like Ronald Reagan giving a turkey to an orphanage on Thanksgiving.
The sheriff stood up, got rid of the smile, and stacked the pages neatly on her desk. It was a gesture of dismissal and I edged toward the door.
“You’ve been a good citizen,” she said. “We’ll take it from here.”
“I just did what anybody would do.”
“If that was really true,” she said, “I’d be out of a job.”
I opened the door and headed for the hallway.
“One more thing,” the sheriff called after me.
I turned around. She was standing like a giant in the doorway.
“Tell Earl Buckelew that one of the little Kaiser girls said hello.”
—from Armadillos & Old Lace
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