A Sit-Down with One of Austin’s Top Guns

by Nancy C. McLaughlin, CLAS

During my drive along the one-lane streets winding through West Lake Hills west of Austin, I thought about the questions I wanted to ask Chris Gunter and his family during our interview. This got me to thinking about how long I had known Chris and the circumstances of our meeting and our subsequent friendship.

I moved to Austin in August 1980 to open a restaurant on 6th Street for a well-known Texas restaurant company. My first residence was a small two-bedroom duplex in what was then far-South Austin. Back then, William Cannon Blvd. was basically the line between living in Austin and living in the country. A couple of years later, Chris bought the duplex next door and moved in. We were pretty much opposites. I worked (mostly) nights as a bartender and he was a prosecutor for the Travis County Attorney’s Office. I loved dogs; he had never had one in his life. I have never hunted and wish no one else would either; Chris is an avid hunter. But, surprisingly, after meeting, we found that we had some things in common. Before working in the world of bars and restaurants, I had worked for more than five years for attorneys in Dallas. One of them, Tim Banner, was a prominent criminal defense attorney and I found that dealing with his clients and their cases was a lot more interesting than the civil side of the docket. Our mutual interest in criminal law was the initial basis for my friendship with Chris. I thoroughly enjoyed our discussions of criminals and the law during hot summer evenings sitting in lawn chairs on the grass between our two houses.

Now, eighteen years later or thereabouts, I was on my way to interview my old friend and neighbor. Now, don’t get the wrong idea. Chris and I have kept up with each other over the years. One of his long-time former legal assistants, JoAnn Scott, is one of my best friends. I got to know JoAnn from talking to her on the telephone when my firm would refer clients to Chris. Chris was and is one of the best-drawing speakers for the monthly meetings of the Capital Area Paralegal Association. And, of course, I have followed Chris’ career on television and in the newspaper. However, it has been a long time since we had the opportunity to just sit and talk at length about his career, family and the criminal justice system.

I arrived at the Gunter home, an absolutely fabulous white limestone which sits on five acres at the top of a hill in Westlake. Alice, Chris’ wife of fourteen years and a former flight attendant, greeted me at the door. I had not seen her in several years and was delighted to find that she was still just as nice as I had remembered. And after all those years of marriage and the birth of a child, still petite. I heard noises which turned out to be Hank, a five-month old golden retriever. Talk about surprised! Chris Gunter with a dog! That only goes to show you the power of persuasion a 10-year old child can have over a doting father.

As Chris had not yet arrived home, Alice, Hank and I began the interview. Ever since I heard that Chris and Alice had had a child, I had been wondering how they would deal with his defense of certain types of criminal behavior. So my first question of Alice dealt with her feelings about Chris defending pedophiles and rapists. "There are two kinds of people that I have problems walking in their shoes and it’s child abusers and women that are abused. It’s real hard for me to sympathize with the person who has done the abusing . But I’m not frightened or scared that he is defending those kinds of people because there are some that are probably innocent that have been accused of those types of crime."

Knowing that not all cases turn out the way the defendant or his friends and family would like, I asked if she had ever feared for her family’s safety. "I used to think that if anybody ever decided to do something to any of us, Chris wouldn’t be home," Alice stated matter-of-factly. "They wouldn’t get him anyway. There’s only one time that I have been terribly frightened and that was during the Kenneth McDuff case (for which Chris was the court-appointed attorney). One of the witnesses called the house real late at night and Chris was not there. He was down in Seguin working on the trial. He (the witness) kept insisting and I was not going to let him know Chris was not there. It scared me. I finally said, ‘Look you’ll just have to call him in the morning.’ I thought that maybe he knew where we lived."

If you are unfamiliar with the Kenneth Allen McDuff case, I’ll give you just a little background. On December 29, 1991, McDuff, described as one of Texas’ most vicious and sadistic killers, and his cohort, Alva Hank Worley, kidnapped a young woman, Colleen Reed, from a West 5th Street Austin car wash at 9:30 on a Sunday evening. Reed was not seen again until her remains were discovered October 6, 1998. After an extensive manhunt, on May 3, 1992, McDuff was apprehended in Kansas City, Missouri and subsequently linked to several other kidnaping, rape and torture murders of other women in the Central Texas area. He had previously been convicted and sentenced to die for the August 1966 rape/murder of 16 year old Edna Louise Sullivan near Forth Worth, Texas. However, after the death penalty was overturned by the Supreme Court, on August 29, 1972 McDuff’s sentence was commuted to life in prison. He was eventually paroled in October 1989. The sensational crime spree by McDuff since his parole in 1989 led to an investigation of the procedures used by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, a subsequent 1993 rewrite of Texas’ criminal laws and a construction program that tripled the size of the Texas prison system. So, as you can easily imagine, it was normal for Alice to be concerned by this late night call from a witness for Kenneth McDuff.

In Central Texas, and especially in Austin, there was extensive news coverage of these events. I asked if their daughter, Carley, had suffered any problems with the kids at school during the media circus surrounding the arrest and trial of McDuff. "No, more the adults," Alice replied. "They would come up to me in the schoolyard and say, ‘How can your husband defend these people?’ I said, ‘Well, sooner or later, you never know, you may need an attorney for something. It’s people from all walks of life (who need attorneys). It isn’t just the hard-core criminals that you should be afraid of.’"

Carley was only 5 or 6 years old at the time of the McDuff trial, so perhaps she wouldn’t have suffered as much peer pressure at that age. But what about now? How would Alice and Chris answer her if she asked why her daddy would want to help a horrible person? Without missing a beat Alice said, "First, you’re innocent until you are proven guilty. His line of work leads into a lot of discussions. In this day and time with alcohol and drug abuse and just abuse in general, it allows us to emphasize these things and talk about them with her; where in some families these kinds of things might never come up. It’s part of our life and we discuss it. We’re hoping and praying that later in life she will take these stories and make some good choices and not bad ones like some of these people."

Chris also takes Carley to the office with him and when she comes home she tells Alice all about her day. Alice remembered a time when Carley told about "some middle school kids who came into the office (for Chris’ help)". "So, it was almost right there on her level. She can really relate to that."

About this time, Chris arrived home from the office. After changing out of his suit and tie into a more comfortable Chuy’s t-shirt and getting us both a beer (Shiner Bock for him; Miller Lite for me), we continued the interview. Chris was born in San Marcos and grew up in Austin, where he attended Crockett High School and the University of Texas, for both his undergraduate work and law school. 44-year old Chris Gunter decided to become an attorney while still in high school. He was inspired, he said, "by two neighbors that were lawyers who I admired a great deal." First working for him as a law clerk, Chris later partnered with one of those neighbors, Bill Fitzgerald, for a number of years at Fitzgerald, Meisner, Augustine and Gunter. His interest in criminal defense work really gelled when he clerked with Fitzgerald and Roy Minton at Minton, Burton & Fitzgerald. "Back at that time, that firm did primarily criminal work. I just really became enamored with it then and decided that’s what I wanted to do."

However, first he went to work for the Travis County Attorney’s Office. I asked why with those kind of connections would he want to take a relatively low-paying job as a civil servant? "Well," he said, "because all of the guys over at Minton, Burton & Fitzgerald advised me that if I wanted to do defense work, the thing for me to do was to go to work for the prosecutor first and spend a couple of years. In fact, Minton was very adamant about that. He said ‘Don’t spend any more than two years over there and learn as much as you can as a prosecutor and then go do defense work.’ That’s what all of those guys did. There was a time when I think every lawyer but one in that firm began as a prosecutor. It’s changed since then, but back then, they all had prosecution experience."

After 1Ω years of prosecuting DWI’s, shoplifting cases and other misdemeanor offenses, Chris, along with one or two other attorneys, was asked by County Attorney Will Flowers, now judge of the 147th District Court, to go to work with him for Ronnie Earle in the Travis County District Attorney’s office. Although he was only with the DA’s office for seven months, Chris was the prosecutor for four jury trials, one of which lasted three months. His record—4 for 4. I remembered him telling me all those long years ago about one particularly heinous crime which just happened to be the one that took three months to try. It concerned a young man, Leroy Barrow, who was subsequently tried for capital murder. As Chris tells it, "He (Barrow) was only 17 or 18 when this happened. He had just been released from TYC, the Youth Commission. He had been in trouble all the time as a juvenile and finally they had sent him to a youth facility. He had just gotten out and had gotten a job down in Galveston doing some heavy labor. He got drugged up one night and (allegedly) killed a security guard down in Galveston, stomped him to death, stole his car and drove to Austin where he went on a one-man crime spree for a couple of days. He needed some money and remembered that old man, Lynn Sternberg was his name, who lived just a couple of blocks from where we used to live (in South Austin). Mr. Sternberg was an old arthritic man who was confined to a wheelchair. Leroy burned him a few times with a cigarette lighter and then beat him to death with a board. He stole a pistol and then went over to one of those massage parlors right there where Congress and I-35 come together, walked in and robbed them. The police were called and they arrested him." Barrow was tried for capital murder since the murder had been an act performed during the commission of another crime, in this case robbery. Although the prosecution was successful in obtaining the death penalty, the case was reversed on appeal. At the second trial, the defendant received life in prison, thus making him eligible for parole. The point of error? Preemptory strikes during jury selection. "In capital cases, each side is given fifteen strikes," Chris explained. "However, the judges always give the defense an extra preemptory strike or two to clean up any errors they may have made in properly granting the State a challenge for cause for somebody. The judge in the case would not give the defense any extra preemptorys, and the Court of Criminal Appeals found that he had made an error in letting one juror be excused at the request of the State. So, back then, that was reversible error and that’s what it got reversed on. Two months we took to pick the jury." Did it just drive him crazy when defendants would get off on technicalities? "No, not really. That has never bothered me as much as it seems to bother some folks. I guess that word has such negative connotations, but I don’t think there are such things as technicalities. It’s either the law or it’s not the law and if the law is not followed in the court room, then the case runs the risk of being reversed."

As mentioned earlier, one of Chris’ most high-profile and hotly debated cases was that of Kenneth Allen McDuff. Being curious, I asked, "Now, although we are all supposed to believe that people are innocent until proven guilty, I think that probably the majority of us that followed the (McDuff) case, just knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the man did it. He was just not a nice person. How do you, when you go to defend someone who seems to be evil and you know that everyone has this mind set, I don’t care what they say, that the man is guilty. How do you prepare a defense for that?"

After a long pause, Gunter stated, "You just do it. You just do it. You just start. You figure out who the State is going to rely on. Are there witnesses? You start going through their anticipated testimony, looking for holes and trying to undermine what they are saying."

"In this particular case, I would assume that one of your main points was trying to deflect that witness, Hank Worley. Was that mainly what you were trying to do? Was the most damaging testimony or evidence that they had his statement?" I asked. Chris responded, "We were able to pick at Hank Worley quite a bit. He told a variety of stories to the police. I recall that we were able to show that he told the police the route that they took after they kidnaped Colleen Reed. On four different occasions he gave four different stories about where they went and what they did. We spent a good amount of time when he was on the stand just trying to show all the various stories that he told and trying to get him to admit that he would lie when it was in his interest." Worley had a plea agreement for which he received 40 years in exchange for his testimony against McDuff which will make him eligible for parole after 20 years confinement.

One of the things that has always been uppermost in my mind when hearing about particularly sensational crimes is, "Why do they do it?" I asked Chris if McDuff had ever confided in him as to the reasons he committed his crimes, or even if he had ever admitted to being involved in the Reed disappearance before the trial. "Well, that probably is attorney-client privilege. The interesting question is probably whether the attorney-client privilege extends after a person is dead and I think the safe way is for me to assume that it does," was the answer he gave. "I’m comfortable in saying, it’s pretty much public knowledge (that McDuff committed the crime since he eventually told where Reed was buried). We were very close to getting that case settled without the death penalty during jury selection. It would have involved him revealing the location of Colleen Reed’s body. The incentive to the DA was that he already had one death sentence out of Waco and Kenneth was prepared to plead guilty to the Colleen Reed murder as well as the murder of Valencia Joshua in Waco, Texas and take two life sentences stacked on top of one another. And, he would still have had the death penalty."

"Still, I guess what I really want to know and I assume what other people would want to know is why did he do the things that he did. Was he truly an evil person who had no conscience, a sociopath?"

"I think that everyone would have to agree that McDuff was a sociopath. He had no conscience. He never really talked about details."

Along those lines, I asked Chris if he would just as soon not know if his client is guilty? "Not necessarily," he said. "Sometimes it just really depends on what the facts are. Very, very seldom do I look at a client and say ‘Did you do this or not?’ My general practice is to let the client tell me what they think is important and I of course am asking them what happened, tell me what you can, but I don’t really lean on people to. I’m more interested in knowing what the State can prove than I really am in knowing what the defendant’s story is. Obviously the client’s story is important, and we spend a lot of time together talking about the facts, but I generally let them tell me what they want to tell me. What I’m more interested in is what the prosecutor is going to be able to prove."

I wondered if at some point in his career Chris had ever found a client distasteful, one that he truly disliked and felt should be off the streets and, if so, did he feel that his personal feelings affected his ability to defend them. After a moment, Chris replied, "Well, I’ve certainly had clients that I did not particularly like and I felt that they were dangerous and needed to be off the street. But, I don’t think my feelings ever affected my ability to defend them."

As he has a young daughter, I questioned Chris about his feelings concerning child molesters and rapists. As he listens to the accused and thinks about the crimes for which he has been charged, does he ever think about his daughter? How does he deal with it? "Well, it’s certainly something I think about especially in these times," he began. "It’s not so much the cases where the guy, the pedophile, comes in and he has sexually molested a young girl. I guess the reason I don’t get too worried about that is I would like to think that Carley has enough sense not to let that happen. The ones that bother me the most are the ones involving these 17-18-19-20 year old men who take advantage of these 13-14-15 year old girls. It’s a much more subtle type offense and they are taking advantage of younger women. That’s what I can see almost any young woman falling prey to." What about the InterNet? "I have had a number of those cases. Those cases aggravate me more than the classic ‘dirty old neighbor’ who talks a little girl into coming into his house. I think so often it’s the parent’s fault for not teaching the child to know those danger signals. But those young guys that are taking advantage of these young girls, that bothers me." Chris went on to say, "I have had a number of them (InterNet related cases). I think about Carley all the time and that’s why I come home and we talk about those cases. I don’t know if Alice told you, but we’ll sit around the dinner table and I’ll tell Carley these stories." "Do you think she understands?" I asked. "I tell them in such a way, I put it on her level. I think she understands."

I followed up with a question I had asked Alice earlier: whether he had ever been concerned about his family or his personal safety. He agreed with his wife that the only time had been during the McDuff case when the witness called his home late at night while he was out-of-town. "I know Alice gets concerned whenever I have to leave the house at night to get someone out of jail, but that’s the about only time."

Although most of the publicity surrounding him comes from some type of physical assault by one human being on another, Chris has also had his share of "white collar" criminal cases, most recently one in which he is defending the Austin Independent School District. I asked him to tell me a little bit about that one. He explained that after the District was indicted in April 1999, he was asked to represent it. Specifically, "An employee of the school district (allegedly) manipulated some records in such a way that a certain number of TAAS tests were not considered in four different schools ratings. As a result of those individual tests not being considered, the ratings changed for each school. The school district got indicted based upon the actions of this single employee. It’s the first time in the history of this state that a governmental entity like a school district, or any other governmental entity for that matter, has been charged with a crime. We reached an agreement with the County Attorney last fall that we would appeal, pre-trial, the question of whether a governmental entity can be prosecuted for a crime. If we win that appeal, then obviously all 16 indictments are dismissed. If we lose that appeal, then we agreed that the school district will plead guilty to one of the 16 indictments and pay a fine." This question was argued in early May 2000 and is still pending.

"I guess this AISD case is quite unusual for you?" I asked. "It’s been extremely interesting" Chis stated. "I have been able to work with some wonderful people, some fascinating legal issues and there are no bloody pictures."

A number of con artists have recently been in the news, among them Brian Russell Stearns and Russell Erxleben. Had Chris been involved in any of those types of cases? Not surprisingly, he had some contact with both of them, though not with these particular individuals. In commenting on these Chris had this to say, "You have two consummate con men who can talk you out of your britches. It’s just really impressive to me just how skillful these guys are in talking total strangers into giving them vast sums of money. But, you know, I don’t feel sorry for these people. Greed is motivating them. If they can’t see the signals, well... In the Erxleben case, for example, his come-on included statements like ‘my company is getting 100% return on investments.’ He just makes these preposterous claims that anybody with any sense whose judgment isn’t clouded with greed, would say ‘This is a scam. No investment returns 100%.’ But people will become blinded." "If it’s too good to be true, it probably is?" I asked. "That’s right. That’s the absolute truth," was his immediate reply. "But," I stated, "I thought the sad thing about the Stearns case was the fact that he got the relatives involved and the friends who believed ‘Oh, he wouldn’t do that to me.’"

"Well, Erxleben was the same way. He would get his friends in and give them a little return make them feel that they were getting some good money and they would go out and they would be his best advertisement. That’s the classic way of doing a pyramid scheme. But people are foolish sometimes," Chris stated with a small sigh.

What is his opinion with regard to the new .08 legal alcohol limit? "We are going to see more DWI cases filed. I think the more pertinent question is are we going to see a reduction in the number of fatalities because of the lower blood alcohol limit? I don’t know the answer to that, but I did read an article in the paper the other day where the experts are saying that we are not going to see it," was his reply.

Austin has a great many students due in part to the number of colleges and universities in the area. "You deal a lot with the fraternities and sororities. Do you ever try to give them fatherly advice and say, ‘get your act together!’ How do they usually react? Or is there a usually?" I wanted to know. "They always say, all my clients always say the right thing. They tell me what they think I want to hear. Do they follow my advice? I don’t know." "Well, I guess you know if they come back." "That’s right," Chris said laughing.

No interview with a criminal defense attorney would be complete without his comments on what has been touted the "Crime of the Century"—the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Chris stated that although he didn’t follow it as religiously as some, he did keep up. I asked what he thought of the outcome. Did he feel the State really bungled it? " No," he said, "I thought the State tried a good case. Everyone wanted to blame the prosecutors, but I thought they did a fine job. I think the reason he was acquitted was that he had eight black people on the jury. You say whatever you want to say, but he had eight black people on that jury."

Was there anything he would have done differently if he had been prosecuting? "I would have tried to move it to a county where I wouldn’t get as many blacks on the jury," Chris stated. I asked, "But isn’t there something about you have to be tried by a jury of your peers?" "That’s true. But you asked me if I had been trying the case would I have done anything differently? I understand the politics that the District Attorney had to be sensitive to. He had a choice. He could have tried that case in one of a couple of different counties as I understand it. And in one county there was a better chance of blacks not being on the jury. But he would have been opening himself up to criticism if he purposely tried the case in that county to avoid blacks getting on that jury. I think that the DA wisely decided that, politically speaking, he needed to try it where there was a chance of blacks being on the jury."

Did he feel that even if the trial had been in a different county, that even though there might have been blacks on the jury, they might not have been as politically motivated as the ones in Los Angeles County? "No," was his immediate reply. "You think it just came down to a matter of race?" I asked. "Oh, yeah. Look what happened in the civil case. The jury mix was different and that jury didn’t have any problem at all in finding him guilty. But you asked what I felt about that case. The jury did their job and rendered their verdict. I feel like the guy killed his wife and the case, unfortunately, hurt the rest of us—the criminal justice system—for a long time after that. You had a lot of people disenchanted with the criminal justice system and felt like it didn’t work."

"You said earlier that you and your family will sit around the dinner table and you will talk to Carley. As she gets older, it’s going to get tougher as she begins to feel the peer pressure. What are you going to tell her? You deal with people all the time and you see the mistakes they make, but you defend them. So how do you tell Carley, ‘You can’t do this, it’s bad.’ How do you justify what you do to get these people off?"

"I talk to her about what I do to help these people get through the system." Chris said. " I think Alice and I both are always emphasizing what they are doing is wrong and bad and just because I help them through the system is not in any way us saying that we are justifying what they did. I think we really work to make that distinction. It’s my job to help them through the system. To be honest with you, I don’t think I have ever told her that I got somebody off who was guilty. I think we always try to leave her with the impression that these people who do wrong are going to get punished and my job is to make sure that the punishment is fair. I don’t think I’ve ever come home to her bragging to her that I got somebody’s dope case dismissed today and ‘hip hip hooray.’"

I asked if he felt that environment and they way their parents have brought them up play a great part in how people turn out. "Oh, yeah." What about education? "Oh, yes, big time."

"But," I stated, "I guess sometimes your white collar criminals are very well educated and they have just decided that the power and money are more important." "That’s right. People have just gotta’ overlook the rules sometimes when money is involved," he replied.

With all of the interesting people and cases with which he has been involved, has Chris ever thought of writing them down? "You know, honestly, when I get done with these cases, it’s just like pulling the plug in the bathtub and it all kinda’ drains out," Chris stated. "I forget about it. I’m so bad at remembering these cases. Guys at work, Alice, other people from time to time, say ‘You really ought to be making notes and keeping a journal.’ But, I get done with one and I’m worrying about the next one. I’m worrying about what I have to do tomorrow morning."

Speaking of books, does he read for pleasure? "I read a wide range of stuff," he stated. "Right now I’m reading For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway. Every other kid got to read it in high school or college and I never read it. I’m enjoying that. I just finished a wonderful book written by an old lawyer in San Antonio that was published in the 1950’s. It was his reminiscing about his old cases. You May Take the Witness by Clinton Brown. Wonderful book. His story about trying cases and I loved reading it." Does he read books by Grisham and other attorney authors? He has, but it’s not his favorite kind of reading as it’s kind of like "a busman’s holiday."

If he had to pick one book, what would be his favorite? Lonesome Dove. I asked the same question of Alice and Carley. The Color Purple (Alice) and Small Steps (Carley)

Were there any cases that he could recall where he truly felt good about getting the defendant acquitted? Cases where it really looked bad for the defendant, but he believed in them? "One case comes to mind. A couple of years ago my client was charged with sexually assaulting his step-daughter. She was about 6-7 years old and I really, initially, had my doubts about his innocence. Even though he had some prior problems with the law, the more I got to know about him, the more convinced I became that he was absolutely innocent and that this was a trumped up charge by this little girl’s mother. They were going through a divorce. In a case like that, you just really get behind your client. We put in a lot of time getting ready for the case and we tried it. The jury took 45 minutes to acquit him. And, yeah, you feel really good about that.

"I remember that there was a father up in Burnet County, a pharmacist that was accused of stealing drugs from the pharmacy. They were claiming he had a drug problem. Just a good guy. I forget how old this fellow was, probably in his early 60’s, and never been in any trouble in his life, had a wonderful family. The more time I spent with him, the more convinced I became that this was just not right. We tried it and he was found not guilty."

"We touched on this a little bit, but has there ever been a case that you won but in the back of your mind you thought, "I kind of wish I hadn’t, although I did my very best." was my next query. "No, I have never had any regrets about winning a case. The law helps us there. The question is not whether the person did it or not. The question is whether the State can prove it beyond any reasonable double. And I can’t tell you how many times juries have come back once they have found somebody not guilty and have shaken their finger at me and told me, ‘We know your client did it. We know he did it. But we just felt like the State did not prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.’" "That’s a good point for the jury system, isn’t it?" I asked. "Oh, absolutely," was his reply.

Ten-year-old Carley had joined us and I wanted to get a little insight as to her thoughts about her Dad’s profession. Had she given any thought to being a lawyer like Chris? "Yes," was her quick reply. What does she do when she goes to Dad’s office? "I file things, I get folders ready for him and sometimes I type and I answer the phone. I get to go visit the judges and sometimes I get to help them, too." "What did you get to do in my office that you haven’t done before?" Chris interjected. After a moment’s thought, Carley said, "Listen in on cases." "You got to sit in on some client interviews. Do you remember which ones?" Chris asked. Very matter of factly, Carley replied, "A teenager taking marijuana. And someone said that they killed someone and a DWI." I asked if Chris had told her that she couldn’t repeat anything the clients said? "Uh-huh," Carley said nodding. "I have to keep some things a secret." "Do you know what that’s called?" I asked. "Secret agent?" she asked. "The attorney-client privilege," Chris reminded her. " What the client tells us we can’t tell anybody." I asked, "When you hear those stories that are kind of interesting, I bet there are times you would like to go and tell a friend. Sometimes it’s hard to keep a secret. But I bet your dad has told you that you can’t do that or Daddy’s going to get in a lot of trouble." Looking right at Chris, she said, "Or, Daddy gets mad at me."

I asked if she had ever gone down to the jail with her dad? Thinking I meant in the middle of the night, Chris said, "Never done that. I don’t think I could roust either Carley or Alice to do that." Alice shot back with "I used to do it back when we first got married." "That’s when she was still trying to impress me," was Chris’ dry reply.

"But sometimes I go down there in the middle of the day and I meet the policemen," Carley informed me. Chris said, "You’ve been back there in the jail a time or two haven’t you?" Carley agreed. I asked if she thought the jail was scary? Yes. Then Chris stated, "And it smells bad too doesn’t’ it?" Carley again agreed and added, "And there are all these men..." The way she scrunched up her nose I could tell that it was not a pleasant thought.

"Do your Dad and Mom give you good advice about how to stay out of trouble and what to be careful of, people to avoid and things like that?" I inquired. "Yes," she agreed. "What do we tell you? Gut feelings," Alice added.

Finally, I asked Alice if there was anything that she would like to tell our readers about one of Austin’s "top guns"? After only a moment she stated, "He works hard and really puts his heart into it. We don’t get to see him as much as we would like, but he’s a hard worker and he does a good job."

Although there were many other questions I wanted to ask and I knew that Chris could keep me entertained with his stories all night, we had already been talking for over two hours and I knew it was past dinner time. As I left the house on the top of the hill, accompanied by the whole family, including Hank, I was already thinking about a follow up interview at which time I might be able to ask a few more of those many questions. And, by the way, I only had the one beer. After all, I didn’t want to get taken to that smelly jail and have to call Chris in the middle of the night to get me out!