Nearly four years had passed since Vince and Margaret Sherry died. Lynne Sposito’s thoughts had seldom focused elsewhere. And yet, she had dreamt of her parents only once. That one time, in her sleep, she saw her mother sitting at the kitchen table in Raleigh—just sitting there, calmly smiling. Even in her dream, Lynne had said to herself this could not be real. You can’t be here.
“No, I’m here,” Margaret told her.
That voice Lynne knew so well, strong and clear, just as it always had been, the gentle Kentucky lilt, a sound that evoked memories of walks on the beach and rum cake at Christmas. In her dream, Lynne reached out, almost touching her mother’s hand, then stopped herself, fearing she would end the moment.
“No, it’s okay,” Margaret said. “I promise, I won’t disappear.”
So Lynne reached all the way across the table. She took her mother’s hand in hers, warm and solid, a small woman’s fingers gently curling around her own. The sensation felt so real, Lynne awoke with a jolt, disoriented, her hand still tingling with the touch of another’s skin, searching the darkness for a moment, then realizing, with a freshness of anguish she had not felt in years, that her mother and father were dead. She tried diving back into sleep, to find her way back to that table, the late-afternoon sun filtering in her kitchen and gently painting her mother, but it was not there. She could find neither Margaret, nor rest, just the ticking of her pulse in the pillow. She ended up trudging to the laundry room, an all-too-familiar insomniac’s haven, where she began sorting whites from colors. Except when Lynne left town, the Sposito household had not had dirty clothes for four years.
The next morning at the breakfast table, before Lynne could mention the dream, her daughter Cathy said, “I dreamt about Grandma last night. She was talking to me, but I can’t remember what she said.” Lynne stopped what she was doing to listen as Cathy described the eeriest part of the dream: the earring. Cathy often slept with Margaret’s earrings on—the gold ones she had died in. It gave her a link to her lost grandparents, she felt. When Cathy woke that morning, though, she felt something in her hand—one of the earrings. Somehow, in her sleep, she had removed one of the gold balls, closed its post, and awoke clutching it in a fist—a mirror image of how Margaret’s body had been found, one earring on, the other in hand.
“It freaked me out so much, I threw it across the room,” Cathy said.
When Lynne told her daughter she, too, had dreamt of Margaret that night, they tried to dismiss it as a coincidence of longing. But they couldn’t. They weren’t sure what it meant, but somehow their tandem dreams left them at peace with developments in the case. Lynne felt renewed confidence in the investigation, and in the belief that the killers, someday, would be identified, charged, and convicted. This new indictment, she kept telling herself, was just a first step. The dreams were a sign.
“It won’t stop here,” she told her family. “It can’t.”
* * *
The newly indicted suspects and their attorneys seemed to think otherwise.
Confident, even cocky, they derided the case against them at every turn, saying the government—unwittingly or willingly—had been scammed by lying inmates. After four years and three different task forces, the best the authorities could come up with was an indictment that didn’t bother to say who murdered the Sherrys, or why. They made their indictment sound like the biggest con job of all.
Certainly Mike Gillich seemed supremely confident, free on bail, his strip joints still flouting the law, his strippers still selling themselves and collecting swizzle sticks to keep count, his cronies still gathering at the Krispy Kreme each night to speak out of the sides of their mouths over coffee and cigarettes. To the rest of Biloxi, Gillich’s business-as-usual demeanor suggested nothing would ever change. Even his choice of attorney sent a message: the flamboyant and theatrical Albert Necaise, who, as district attorney two decades earlier in Biloxi, received reports of Gillich’s law-breaking from his investigators, yet never filed a case against Mr. Mike.
When Gillich appeared for his arraignment on two earlier drug-trafficking indictments, he responded to the crush of news cameras and reporters surrounding the courthouse by extending the middle finger of his right hand, then proceeding to adjust his glasses with it, pick his nose with it, and otherwise wave it around in as obtrusive a fashion as possible.
Perhaps Gillich thought the obscene gestures would keep him off the evening news, but he was wrong. His crass message and display of contempt was replayed repeatedly statewide, cementing his image as a lowlife thug for all of Mississippi to see. Ever the class act, when television anchorwoman Gurvir Dhindsa shoved a microphone in his face and asked for a comment as Gillich emerged from the courthouse, he extended his middle digit once again, then belched loudly into the microphone. “That’s some comment, Mr. Gillich,” the bemused reporter responded. Mr. Mike burped again, then stalked off. It was the closest thing to an interview he would ever grant.
Unlike his silent benefactor, Kirksey Nix did not remain quiet while awaiting his day in court. He had been filing his own fruitless appeals in the Corso murder case for the better part of two decades, ignored by all. Now in the limelight, he delighted in peppering prosecutors and the courts with outrageous motions, objecting to everything from the rigid restrictions on his visitation privileges, to complaints that the cuisine at the Harrison County Jail amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.
Nix began granting a long string of press interviews, with reporters ascribing to him “refined manners, a wicked wit and a brilliant mind,” and dubbing him the “dough-boy-shaped genius jailed for life.”
His pudgy, balding image, the oddly tilted head, the habitual nod he affected when speaking, and the jowls and soft hands heavy with gold jewelry all became familiar sights on the evening news. The soft-spoken, middle-aged convict in the immaculate white jumpsuit and white Reeboks seemed hard to square with the handsome and wild Dixie Mafia killer jailed twenty years before in the Corso case.
He capitalized on public confusion about the ambiguous conspiracy charges, wondering aloud why the complex indictment neglected to name a murderer outright, or to mention where Mayor Pete Halat fit in, if he fit in at all.
Then he paid for his own polygraph test, which purported to show he told the truth when he denied knowledge of or involvement in the Sherry murders—findings he immediately released to the news media.
Although the government questioned the conclusions, methods, and reliability of the test, Nix pointed out that at least he had submitted to one. No one had ever polygraphed Bobby Joe Fabian, Robert Hallal, Bill Rhodes, or any of the government’s other key witnesses, he complained, asking, “What are they afraid of?”1
Lynne saw the interview while visiting at Becky Field’s house, mesmerized and disgusted by Nix’s performance. He was so smug, she felt like punching him, pummeling him, wiping that smile off his face. He even made a direct plea to her, staring dramatically into the camera with fluttering eyelids and pouty expressions of sincerity.
“As the son of a judge giving an oath to the daughter of one, please know that I am totally innocent and in every way uninvolved in your parents’ deaths,” he said. “I understand your quest for their killer or killers—but it is not me.”
Becky groaned. “Shut it off, Lynne. He’s making me sick.”
“No,” Lynne said quietly. “I want to remember this. I want to remember it when I see his face on the day he’s found guilty. Then I’ll be the one smiling.”
* * *
Lynne’s anxiety mounted as the trial approached, set to begin just five months from the day of the indictment. Often, she felt useless and left out, unable to release her tension by contributing to the case.
But then, a few weeks before trial, the lawyers defending Nix, Gillich, Sharpe, and Ransom had to divulge their witnesses to the prosecution. When McDaniel, Tucker, and their colleagues saw some unfamiliar names, they called Lynne for help. Her familiarity with her parents’ friends and enemies, her newfound expertise in the history of the Dixie Mafia—and, they had to admit, her superior knowledge of the early police investigation of the murders—made Lynne a valuable resource to the prosecution.
One of the character witnesses on Mike Gillich’s list particularly troubled them. With no idea who she was or what she might have to say, they turned to Lynne for help.
“What’s her story?” Peter Barrett asked her. Barrett was one of two young prosecutors assigned by George Phillips to try the case.
Lynne laughed when she heard the name, overjoyed to be pitching in again at last. “Well, she’s a very nice, very kind seventy-year-old lady,” Lynne explained, “who just happens to be P. J. Martino’s widow.”
“Yes!” Barrett exclaimed. It was just the sort of information he needed to attack the witness. P. J. Martino, a bookie with ties to the New Orleans Mafia, had run a gambling operation at one of Gillich’s clubs, the Horseshoe Lounge, protected—and patronized—in the seventies and early eighties by senior officials at the Biloxi Police Department.
Lynne had more to tell. Martino’s widow had called her a few weeks earlier, concerned and upset about being a potential witness for Gillich. The woman had been close to friends of the Sherry family and had known Leslie Sherry all her life. “I wanted to talk to you about it,” the woman told Lynne, “because I would never do anything to hurt you or Leslie, and if I say no, I won’t testify, then I know I won’t be hurting you.”
“Well,” Lynne had asked, “what do they want you to testify about?”
“I’ve been a neighbor of Mr. Mike for twenty-six years. The lawyers came and asked, as far as my dealings with him, do I know him to be honest and nonviolent? And I have to say yes. I’ve never seen him behave otherwise. And if they ask, as far as I know, is he capable of murder, I’d have to say no to that, too.” The widow had paused for a moment, then added, “I really don’t believe he could pull the trigger, Lynne.”
“I don’t think he could pull the trigger either,” Lynne agreed. “That’s why he hired to have it done.”
The woman chuckled grimly. “I know, I know. I’m sure he’s in it up to his ass, honey. But I got to answer the questions honestly.”
Certain that defense attorneys would claim she had interfered with a witness if she tried to tell this woman what to say or do, Lynne said simply, “You have to do what your conscience dictates.”
But she had no problem relaying the entire conversation to Barrett. Lynne suggested he could use it to undermine any favorable testimony the woman might give Gillich.
“She’s really very sweet, and I like her,” Lynne told the prosecutor. “But I’ve come too far for that to matter now. If she hurts the case, get her on the stand and tear her apart.”