Don Hill Slides From Mayoral Candidate to Alleged Criminal

Other times, Hill's neighbors would join him on those walks, armed with questions and gripes about City Hall. One of them was Culbreath, who used to argue with Hill about his opposition to the strong-mayor proposal. The two could really go at it, but Hill seemed to enjoy the debate, and when they exhausted their points, the pair hugged and laughed.

Years later, Steward says, Hill continued to hold a grudge against her even as he pretended to show her affection. In fact, just a few days before the indictments were announced, Steward ran into Hill at another neighborhood function.

"He shook everyone's hand, and then he shook mine really hard. He just squeezed my hand really hard, and I kept talking to him trying to figure out what I did," she says. "Then he gives me that squeaky little smile of his."

Although Hill was unquestionably ambitious, with his sights set on the mayor's seat well before most people thought of him as a serious candidate, he wasn't a showy politician. Many of his friends say he preferred the role of moderator, even if that meant pleasing no one.

Lynn Flint Shaw says that Hill was often the voice of reason between the urban and suburban voices on the DART board.

"There would be times when there were heightened tensions in the room, and he never got angry," she says. "He was always the calming voice.

Today, Shaw nearly laughs at the new image of Hill as the kingpin of southern Dallas, spinning a web of bribery and corruption. Although she lauds his intelligence, particularly his ability to quickly grasp a complicated issue, she chuckles at how scatterbrained Hill could be.

"He'd be late for meetings, and we'd call him and hear him say, 'I'm on my way, I'm on my way, five minutes,'" she recalls. "And then 15 minutes later we'd call him, and he'd say, 'I'm down the street, I'm down the street.'"

Barr, Hill's former boss, says that Hill, while flawed, was gifted in the courtroom.

"When Don would talk to you, you would think you were very important to him and what you were saying was very important to him," Barr says. "He had a tremendous gift for talking to juries. He came across as compassionate, understanding and a man who had scruples, morals and character."

A respected attorney in his own right, Barr says that Hill never made the law a priority, focusing most of his efforts on tending to the ho-hum routines of a city council member.

"He could have made $250,000 a year working for me, but he just could never turn City Hall off. He just couldn't."

Now that Hill faces detailed allegations of graft and extortion, his friends and colleagues are stunned. Even though it's been more than two years since the FBI conducted its very public raids of his law and council office, Hill's supporters thought—or maybe just hoped—nothing would come of it. As the months and then years dragged on without news from the feds, the cloud of suspicion that hovered over Hill started to drift. But then on October 1, when a federal indictment placed Hill behind a church taking a $10,000 bribe, the people Hill seemed to serve so well were heartbroken. Here was a church deacon using the house of God as a criminal outpost.

"With Councilman Hill it was never about 'I,' it was always about 'we,'" Pemberton says. "So when these indictments came down I was shocked. I cried many days."

"This is just surreal. It's surreal," Barr says suddenly as if he just realized what's become of his former colleague. "I'm talking to a reporter about Don Hill being indicted."

In January, Hill launched a long-shot bid for mayor even as the FBI investigation promised to plague his campaign. Hill wore the same suit at nearly every candidates' forum. Still, he was mesmerizing on the campaign trail, outshining his rivals at nearly every public appearance—once he got there, that is. While the other candidates stuck to dry, forgettable stump speeches, inundated with either clichés or obtuse policy points, Hill delivered a hopeful message grounded in reality.