Mike Gillich, whom Nix had described as his “second father,” took the stand next, humble and soft-spoken, the sixty-one-year-old son of immigrants who, he swore, had given every paycheck he ever earned to his mother, right up until the day he got married.
Gillich swore he knew nothing of scams. Instead, guided by his attorney Albert Necaise, he painted a portrait of himself as a hardworking, hard-living man who gave generously to the Catholic Church, who left school at age nine to take his first job delivering ice, and who still worked seven days a week, twelve hours a day.
He only reluctantly admitted that he ran strip clubs for a living. When asked why his competitors were shut down while he remained open, he denied getting favors from city government in Biloxi, despite his ties to the city council and the offices of Mayors Blessey and Halat.
“Those other clubs were closed . . . because they violated the law. They had prostitution and sold narcotics in the clubs. They had trick rooms in the buildings. And they turned tricks in there and sold dope. And I never did that.”
He swore he never took scam money deliveries, he never acted as Nix’s banker, he never discussed murder with Bill Rhodes, he never met John Ransom. And the only time he met Bob Hallal was when the ex-con asked about buying Nix’s Mercedes and a couple of video recorders. When Gillich declined to accept a credit card for the VCRs, Mr. Mike swore, Hallal said he’d be back with cash, but never returned.
“I have never seen that man again until I have seen him in this courtroom,” Gillich vowed.
He called Hallal’s account of meeting Ransom at the Golden Nugget a lie, as he did the account of Becky Field’s son Greg, who swore he saw Gillich put his arm around Ransom one day and tell his son, “If anything or anybody needs taking care of, this is the man to call.”
In his simple, earthy way, unassuming on the witness stand—at one point asking the prosecutor to read aloud from a document because “I don’t read too good”—Gillich seemed at first to belie his image as the Dixie Mafia godfather. But he stumbled badly when he described his motel encounter with Beau Ann Williams and his supposed warning to Nix about LaRa talking to the police.
“That is a lie. There was . . . nothing about warning anyone about anything,” he said. He had simply gone by to get the keys to the Mercedes Beau Ann had borrowed, and to tell Nix’s cousin that his son, Mike III, would drive her to the airport in the morning.
“And we was sitting there talking . . . and then the conversation came up about the, the, the, Sherry murders,” Gillich testified. He said he dismissed for Beau Ann’s benefit two false rumors linking him to the murders, one that had him and Gerald Blessey arranging the hit, and another that put Gillich and Pete Halat behind the killings. “And I told her I ain’t killed nobody. And I never have killed anybody or set a contract out on anybody.”
“Who brought it up?” lawyer Necaise asked, and this is where Gillich made his mistake.
“She did,” he swore. “And about Junior, and this and that. And I told her, I said, listen, don’t worry about all that. There ain’t nothing to that. I said, as a matter of fact, LaRa came by the club last night and telling me the police had been questioning her about the Sherry murders, and that I was a killer and that she was going to be in trouble, and somebody was going to kill her. And I told LaRa, I said, man, if that’s what they are telling you, you ain’t got no worry at all.”
Gillich’s rendition would have been a reasonable-sounding—and innocuous—version of Beau Ann’s more ominous account of the conversation, except for one thing. The meeting in the motel between Beau Ann and Gillich occurred in March 1989—well before Bobby Joe Fabian had told anyone his story, long before any public discussion of Kirksey Nix’s involvement in the Sherry killings surfaced, and long before anyone had accused Pete Halat and Mike Gillich of being involved in the murders. At the time of that meeting, Beau Ann Williams had no reason to bring up the subject. The second “rumor” Gillich said he was quashing, about him and Peter Halat arranging the murders, did not yet exist.
* * *
Later, in the rebuttal phase of the trial, the prosecution had a chance to disprove Gillich’s claims that he was a law-abiding, truthful, God-fearing man whose strip clubs operated within the law. The chief of special investigations for the Biloxi Police Department, the chief of police for the city of Gulfport, and Mickey Ladner, a former highway patrol investigator now working for the Harrison County sheriff, all testified that Mike Gillich had a reputation for law-breaking and lying, his lack of felony convictions and his kindness to church and mother notwithstanding.
By law, the prosecution could go no further than that—they could only ask, What is Mike Gillich’s reputation for being a law-abiding citizen? “Not good,” the witnesses each said. But here, Gillich’s lawyer, Albert Necaise, fell into a trap: Instead of leaving it at that, he could not resist going after these witnesses on cross-examination and, in the process, introducing much more damaging information through his own questioning.
If Gillich had such a reputation for being a terrible criminal, Necaise asked Mickey Ladner, why had he never been convicted of a felony? Ladner responded, “Just because a person is never arrested doesn’t mean they are not criminals. It means that they are better than average and we just didn’t get a chance to get them. I think a person with a long criminal history is just not a good criminal.”
Necaise repeated his mistake with Tommy Moffett, the chief of special investigations who had been police chief in Biloxi at the time of the Sherry murders, only to be demoted by Pete Halat. When asked why there was no documentation of any wrongdoing by Gillich on file at the Biloxi P.D., Moffett revealed that Mr. Mike’s records were mysteriously missing from the department’s files.
Necaise attempted to mock this assertion, sarcastically asking, “Is it easy to remove somebody’s arrest record from the Biloxi Police Department?”
Moffett surprised him by saying, sorrowfully, “Yes, sir, it is easy.”
Later, Moffett answered one of Necaise’s questions by explaining that Gillich had been arrested in a prostitution case after an undercover investigation at his nightclub. When the lawyer tried to undermine this assertion by saying Gillich had never been prosecuted for this offense, Moffett replied that city prosecutors appointed by the mayor declined to take on a case against Gillich, even while identical evidence was used to go after other club owners. “We did the same thing with some other clubs earlier . . . and we closed probably twelve, fifteen clubs or more. . . . Sometimes decisions are made by people in the city that might be higher up.”
And with that, Necaise managed to introduce into evidence a suggestion the prosecutors had not been able to get in on their own—evidence they had been specifically ordered to keep out. At Necaise’s prodding, jurors were told that Mike Gillich and his strip joints benefited from a hands-off policy in the city of Biloxi, breaking the law with impunity, then having records of his offenses disappear and his record remain clear.
Mike Gillich’s own defense attorney made him appear to be nothing less than the Godfather of Biloxi.
* * *
LaRa Sharpe had a better time of it on the witness stand—at first. Very little evidence linking her to the murder plot had been introduced—just the “Wilbur” Bob Wright swore he saw in her camera bag. LaRa’s main battle was to avoid conviction in the scam case.
Like Gillich, she was out of custody during the trial, dressing fashionably in a different outfit every day, tossing her long blond hair as she entered the courthouse, her lawyer trudging at her side, laden with files. She smiled at Lynne Sposito one time, but the hateful stare Lynne returned ended any possibility of an exchange between them.
As in the past, LaRa swore that her involvement in the scams was minimal, while insisting Gillich and Halat had no role in the ripoffs at all. Like Nix, she embellished her answers whenever possible, trying to insert self-serving comments whether they applied to questions put to her or not. The judge repeatedly cautioned her to stop, with little effect. Each time, LaRa shot an apologetic look at jurors, who seemed less than impressed, either stonily staring back, or glancing away in embarrassment.
LaRa did make some admissions, however. She conceded that she had made scam-related phone calls to Nix from the law office, something she previously had denied. But again, she was careful to say Pete Halat knew nothing of this.
LaRa had an easier time on the witness stand than her lawyer expected. She was not confronted by testimony from Chuck Leger and other law-office employees, who knew LaRa had the run of the Halat and Sherry office long after she claimed to have left. Nor was she confronted with her contradictory statements to the Biloxi police, in which she had denied any role in the scams and insisted she was a part-time employee of Halat and Sherry. And she was not asked to explain why her ex-boyfriend Mike Lofton, whom she said she met in June 1986—after she swore she had bailed out of the scams—knew all about her scam activities, and claimed to have witnessed them for the better part of a year.
Likewise, LaRa was not questioned intensively about the Sherry murders beyond the allegation that she had received a silenced pistol from John Ransom, which she heartily denied. The only gun she ever owned, she said, was a rusting old revolver Mike Gillich gave her for self-protection—an account buttressed by Gillich, LaRa’s mother, and a carpet cleaner who spotted such a gun while working in Nix’s house in Ocean Springs. That type of gun could not have been the murder weapon.
LaRa’s denial of the Wilbur had an effect beyond supporting her claims of innocence, however. It kept Ransom from the witness stand, because he had told investigators long ago that he had delivered the gun to LaRa. And though that information had been offered with the promise that it would not be used against him, there was one exception—if he got up on the stand and denied delivering the gun. Then prosecutors could introduce his earlier statement to show he lied, which would surely lead to his conviction.
Before trial, during a meeting of lawyers and defendants at the Harrison County Jail, Nix had tried to persuade LaRa that she was mistaken in her recollection, that she had received the silenced gun. If she were to admit it—with, of course, an innocuous explanation about its disposition long before the murders—then Ransom could testify. But LaRa remained adamant: She had never gotten a silenced pistol from John Ransom.
If Ransom testified anyway, he would have to contradict her or change his story. Either way, prosecutors then would be able to show at least one of them lied. Their fragile defense would be doomed by the appearance they were hiding something. Reluctantly, Ransom had to agree to stay out of the witness chair. He would not be able to rebut Pegi Graham or Bill Rhodes, nor could he make his cowboy boot argument to the jury. Alone among the defendants, he would remain silent, thanks to LaRa.
Instead of testifying, Ransom had to settle for having his wife and daughter take the stand in his place. In simple, believable fashion—far more effectively than the prosecutors would have liked—they swore that Ransom was with them vacationing in Florida on the day he was supposed to have met with Mike Gillich and Robert Hallal to discuss the Sherry hit. They even produced vacation snapshots.
LaRa, meanwhile, might have been better off staying off the stand herself. She fumbled badly when questioned about the note she left for Beau Ann Williams. Asked to relate its contents, she made the note sound like a series of innocuous questions for the lawyer, left because LaRa was confused and frightened by her encounter earlier that day with the Biloxi police. Williams had testified she destroyed the note, and LaRa must have thought her recollection of it would go unchallenged. She said the note read, “What’s going on? Many questions about V. and M. Many questions about P.H. And many questions about JR.” She could not explain why she would have used initials, or why she expected Beau Ann to understand what they meant. She said she left her motel room number on the note so Beau Ann could call her, but she never heard back.
LaRa said she was terrified because the police told her she would be murdered—an exaggeration at best. The police offered her protection. But it raised an interesting question—if there was a threat to her life suggested by police, it would have been from Nix and Gillich. Yet when prosecutor Barrett asked her about that, the inconsistency became clear: She denied having any fears of either man.
“I wasn’t worried about anybody that I knew. . . . I’ve never had a hint of danger from anyone but Kellye.” Kellye Nix, LaRa Sharpe swore, had threatened her years before if she talked to the FBI.
The deception in LaRa’s account became more clear a few days later, when, to everyone’s surprise, the note she had left for Beau Ann Williams surfaced. She had not destroyed it after all. Robert Richardson, a meticulous individual who had worked as a motel security guard in 1989, had taken the note from Williams and filed it. When he read about LaRa’s testimony in the newspaper, he called the authorities, and the note turned up still buried in the files at the motel where Richardson had left it.
In red ink and LaRa Sharpe’s hand, the note was a numbered list:
1. I was questioned three hours.
2. Mostly V. and M. questions.
3. Not much Junior questions. Then later, many.
4. Many questions Pete.
5. Mr. G. many questions.
6. Offered protection yesterday.
7. Today I said, “Leave me alone or take me in.”
(Give him my love, Punkin)
The note, clearly, was not a scared set of questions to Beau Ann Williams—it was a report. There was no phone number. It was a message to Nix about the investigation—and a reassurance that LaRa would not be cooperating with the police.
The abbreviation of V. and M.—Vince and Margaret—proved that the topic of the Sherry murders had been discussed before by LaRa and Nix.
The security guard also made clear that Beau Ann Williams’s reaction had not been the casual disinterest that Nix’s cousin had described to the jury. The note had terrified her, he swore.
“She was very shaken, very upset . . . . [Her hand] was trembling. . . . I don’t see how she could read it.”
* * *
When the defendants finished testifying, their lawyers made a final attempt to blunt the prosecution’s case. It was their worst mistake.
They brought in Brett Robertson—the Sherry’s neighbor whom Lynne had spoken to so many years before on the day of the wake. Robertson described how he saw the yellow Ford cruising the street on the night of the murders, and a man who strongly resembled Biloxi Police Officer Ric Kirk behind the wheel. The man could not have been John Ransom. And though investigators and polygraphs had cleared Kirk long before, the jurors didn’t know that.
Then Robertson’s friend, Mark Lamey, who had been visiting that evening, swore he saw not only Kirk in the car, but a second man in the Sherrys’ yard. He also glimpsed this same man through the Sherrys’ window, inside the house, he swore. Though he could not describe the man, he clearly was heavier than Ransom, Lamey said.
The defense sought to use this eyewitness testimony to undermine the entire conspiracy case—to suggest that someone else murdered the Sherrys.
But the prosecutors were jubilant at this testimony—this was the trap George Phillips had told Lynne about early in the trial. It opened the door for extensive rebuttal by the government, entitling prosecutors to introduce evidence that the defendants were involved in the murders. Because the conspiracy indictment ended in August, before the murders, they had been barred from doing this on their own initiative—until the defense opened the door. And the bonus was, unlike a murder case where the evidence must convince jurors beyond a reasonable doubt, this rebuttal portion of the case allowed them to present evidence about the murder without any burden of proof at all. All the little things Randy Cook and Keith Bell had put together that cast suspicion on the alleged murderers, but fell short of absolute proof, now became admissible. It was a gift.
And it made the difference in the case.1
First the prosecutors brought in Biloxi police evidence technician Robert Burris to explain the theft of the yellow Ford and how it appeared to be the getaway car in the murders. When it was found, he told the jury, the hub on the steering wheel covering the horn mechanism was missing. He also explained the modified license plate on the Ford, that it actually belonged to an Oldsmobile reported stolen in 1984.
The next witness, a resident of the St. Andrew’s Apartments in Biloxi—owned by Mike Gillich’s brother, Andrew—swore he saw that same Oldsmobile just before it was stolen. Gillich’s brother was standing next to it, and inside sat Mike Gillich’s close friend, the locksmith Lenny Swetman. The witness claimed he saw Swetman fiddling with the ignition of the Oldsmobile, the implication being that he stole the car—and its license plate.
Randy Cook then testified about what he saw when he arrested Swetman in a marijuana case a year earlier. Cook found the locksmith inside an old car, working on the steering column with the horn cover off. When Cook asked him what he was doing, Swetman explained that was how he started cars without having a key, by removing the horn mechanism and using a tool to manipulate the ignition from the inside—the same as the yellow Ford.
Former FBI agent and State Attorney General Investigator Ed O’Neill came next, casting doubt on the testimony of Brett Robertson and Mark Lamey. Three years earlier, he had interviewed both men about whom they saw in the yellow Ford and at the Sherry house on the night of the murders. In 1988, O’Neill found that Lamey could not identify photographs of Detective Ric Kirk—the man he now claimed he recognized. And Brett Robertson, at the time of the interview, had helped put together a composite drawing of the man he saw driving the yellow car—a clean-shaven man. Ric Kirk at the time sported a mustache, O’Neill said. And Lamey said at the time that Robertson’s composite looked like the man he saw as well. The testimony of Lamey and Robertson was thrown into doubt.
The prosecutors then compared a photograph of Lenny Swetman to the composite. Peter Barrett wanted O’Neill to say there was a striking resemblance. Defense attorneys objected to this, and the judge sided with them, but it was too late. The jury got the message: The government was raising the possibility that Gillich’s good friend Lenny Swetman could have been the wheelman in the murders, not Ric Kirk.
It was only insinuation: Lamey and Robertson never claimed to have seen Swetman that night, nor is there any evidence or testimony linking him to the crime. But this possibility did fit with Bill Rhodes’s testimony. Rhodes had said Ransom wanted to hire his own wheelman quickly. Otherwise, according to Rhodes, the people who wanted the hit would pressure him to use someone local. Someone close to Gillich.2
* * *
The last rebuttal witness for the prosecution was a surprise addition to the list—a former Biloxi cop who had contacted the U.S. Attorney a week earlier with startling new information.
Mike Green, now a private investigator in Southern California, had been an officer for the Biloxi P.D. until 1981, when he was demoted after trying to bust a gambling operation at Gillich’s Horseshoe Lounge. The police department he recalled had been a corrupt and distrustful place, where training was scant, where a sergeant kept a picture of the Ku Klux Klan’s grand dragon on display over his desk, where members of the Dixie Mafia befriended and bribed cops, then enjoyed their protection in return.3
Most important, Mike Green recalled a meeting in the summer of 1986 with Vince and Margaret Sherry. He had come back to Biloxi to apply for the job of police chief, hoping to reform the department he had left in disgust.
Vince and Margaret Sherry had met with him twice in the law library at the Halat and Sherry office, Green said. He sought their advice on how to get the job, though Gerald Blessey—the Sherrys’ nemesis—was mayor at the time. Green knew both the Sherrys well, knew Vince through service in the Air Force, and he trusted their advice.
When Margaret asked him what he would accomplish as chief, he said the first thing would be to clean up The Strip—the unfinished business he had left behind in 1981.
“I’m going to run for mayor again in 1989,” he recalled Margaret telling him then. “This time, I expect to win. And when I do, I’m going to close the strip clubs down once and for all. I’ve been threatened already because of it, but I’m going to make it part of my platform anyway.”4
Green said she did not identify the origin of the threats, but the implication was obvious—Mike Gillich owned the only joints in operation on The Strip then. He was Margaret’s target for shutdown—making him the only logical source for the threats she spoke of.
One other comment stuck in Green’s mind. While they spoke, Pete Halat had poked his head in the door, then entered the law library to get a book. Vince introduced him as his partner, Green and Pete exchanged hellos, then Halat walked back out. He left the door ajar.
A moment later, Margaret hissed, “Vince, make sure that door’s closed,” Green recalled, “I don’t trust him.”
This testimony contradicted what Pete Halat had said about his close and trusting relationship with the Sherrys. It left Lynne Sposito thunderstruck—she had never heard any of this before. Halat had sworn there were no bad feelings between Margaret and Gillich, and no plans to shut him down if she became mayor. Green—a man with no hidden agenda, no criminal charges to work off, no need for immunity, no stake in how this case turned out—called all that into question.
As Vince stood up and shut the door, Green recalled, Margaret looked at him and said, “I dislike that man, and one of these days, I am going to be able to put him and his criminal friends, including Mike Gillich, in prison.”
Vince said nothing, Green testified. Pete Halat’s friend and partner just stood at the door, nodding his head in sorrowful agreement.