Archer City's one of the classical American small towns but in the autumn of 1990, the town and its Sheriff found themselves embroiled in a scandal that was not only fact, it was way stranger than fiction. A female suspect, under investigation for shooting her estranged third ex-husband, stunned the entire town when she accused the sheriff of handling her case in an unsavoury manner.

Presley Lamar Pippin, or PL as friends knew him, was a rancher's son with a tough childhood. Having served two tours of duty in Vietnam, the second in the Special Forces, he retired from the army in 1977, a colonel, and returned to his hometown of Archer City. He missed the military life, so took a job as a sheriff's deputy and by 1990, was serving his second term as county sheriff. The former Green Beret ran a tight department and earned a reputation as a straight-shooting lawman. That is, until he ran into Gail Bennett in July of 1990.

Gail wasn't from Archer City and her disruptive childhood on a poor farm outside Waco included a father who drank and a mother who didn't care. Gail did what most girls in rural Texas did and married her high school sweetheart right after graduation. The marriage didn't last and neither did her second. By the mid-eighties, she'd met Tony Bennett, the man who would become her third ex-husband. He was a vacuum cleaner salesman, who, according to Gail, could dance like Patrick Swayze. Tony and Gail had a whirlwind romance that culminated in a Vegas wedding and a third divorce. But just because they were divorced didn't mean they weren't still dating. By 1990, the divorced couple had shacked up again, making a second stab at romance.

On the evening of 2 July 1990, Gail shot Tony after a drunken argument. It was just a flesh wound, the bullet ricocheted off a pen in his chest pocket, but it earned Tony a trip to the hospital. Whilst she wasn't charged with anything, the shooting also earned Gail a trip to the Sheriff's office for questioning. It was past two in the morning when Gail got back to the house. Exhausted, frightened and with Tony's blood all over the floor, Gail was actually relieved when Sheriff Pippin dropped back by to check on her.

A few days later, the grand jury concluded that Gail had acted in self-defence. She moved to Austin and Archer City reckoned they'd heard the last of Gail Bennett. That is until October, when a Texas Ranger and the local District Attorney walked into the Sheriff's Department and arrested Pippin for sexual assault. Gail Bennett had filed charges accusing Sheriff Pippin of raping her the night she shot her ex-husband.

Pippin admitted to sleeping with Gail that night, but insisted their relations were consensual, saying he didn't strike her and she didn't fight back. This was enough for the Archer County Grand Jury to throw out the charges. A few months later, Pippin was re-elected to a third term and Gail filed a $2 million civil lawsuit in Federal Court. Unlike the local grand jury, the fact that Pippin was sheriff and Gail was, at the time, an attempted murder suspect, wasn't lost on the federal judge. Gail won the suit, despite the fact that, even after appeals, she only received a fraction of the money. Pippin served the rest of his term as sheriff, even although the scandal led to divorce and bankruptcy. After all, as far as a lot of folks in Archer City were concerned, he hadn't done anything wrong.