September 1997, Hattiesburg
U.S. District Court sentencing hearing
T here he is, seated behind the defense table in his shirtleeves, thinning gray hair plastered in strands, stolid features as inscrutable and oddly pleasant as ever—the Godfather of Biloxi. Even during morning recess, with the judge gone to chambers and the gallery filled with the murmur and rustle of spectators released from courtroom decorum, all eyes keep drifting back toward him. For years, his rise and fall have been the talk of the Gulf Coast, where he is still known as the sort of fellow who tips waitresses with Hawaiian vacations one day, then coolly arranges murders the next—a career criminal who could count upon the Bishop of Biloxi to sing his praises, yet whose stable of stripper-prostitutes included one young woman kind enough to advise, “Asking questions about that man’s business is best done by long-distance telephone.”
The Godfather’s back is to the spectators, but when he shifts in his chair, you can glimpse his face, worn as an old purse, and you can’t help but try to divine the feelings behind the heavy brow and glasses: Could it be true, as his lawyers say, that this crime boss finally feels sorrow for the misery he wrought? After ten long years, has he at last revealed the truth about Mississippi’s most enduring murder mystery, bringing finality to a wounded family and healing to a divided city? Or are his detractors right in claiming the old pirate, far from helping to solve the Sherry murder case, has simply pulled his last and best con job of all?
“I’m going to talk to him,” Lynne Sposito abruptly announces to her sister. And before anyone can say a word, the forty-five-year-old nurse leaves her seat behind the prosecutors to make her way to where Mike Gillich, the fallen Godfather of Biloxi, sits awaiting his fate.
Lynne has sat all morning with her family, watching this man who had plotted with five others the deaths of her father and mother. She already endured one interminable sentencing hearing a day earlier, an exhausting and acrimonious affair that ended with punishing stretches in prison for Gillich’s cronies. They included the Dixie Mafia killers who planned the crime and pulled the trigger and, most spectacularly, Pete Halat, the former mayor of Biloxi, who, after conspiring with his best friend’s killers, had the gall to wrap his arms around the Sherry children before delivering a stirring eulogy at their parents’ funeral. This is the moment Lynne has lived for, a moment she helped bring about as much as any cop, agent, or prosecutor. Yet the long-awaited sensation of relief, or at least accomplishment, is eluding her this day. For there is an added twist: The prosecutors do not want to put Mike Gillich away. They are here to ask for his freedom. This Dixie Mafia don who once ruled Biloxi like a warlord, with a facility for keeping dark secrets and telling cops to shove off, has done the unthinkable: He has confessed to his involvement in the Sherry murders and testified against his fellow conspirators. And now he wants to be rewarded with a lighter sentence.
As Lynne approaches this man whom she has publicly vilified and privately longed to see dead, the courtroom falls silent. All eyes shift from Gillich to this tall, blond figure who walks stiffly, uncertainly to the railing where she looms over the seated defendant. They have never spoken in all the many years she has pursued him, and Lynne says nothing for a moment. But Gillich must sense her presence because he suddenly looks up. His eyes widen behind the thick spectacles. Beneath the courtroom’s harsh fluorescent lights, Lynne’s pale face looks eerily like her dead father’s. The marshals standing a few paces away stiffen, unsure of what is about to happen. There have been death threats in this case, and Lynne’s feelings about her parents’ killers are widely known. And then, as the scene takes on the aspect of a Renaissance painting, seemingly lit from within while the rest of us swim by grayly in shadow, Lynne’s hand slowly rises from her side, reaching out toward the man who helped destroy her family.
* * *
The impasse in the Sherry murder case had ended in 1994 when federal prosecutors finally got the leverage they needed against Mike Gillich. He was caught on tape attempting to bribe a witness. The evidence was irrefutable, the penalties severe. Gillich had little hope of ever getting out of prison.
That alone probably wouldn’t have broken him. But the hard old man who wouldn’t talk to the authorities to save himself folded as soon as investigators made it clear that a girlfriend and others close to him were under suspicion as well. Mr. Mike had a heart after all, it seemed. He could not bear to see his loved ones behind bars, and so he cut a deal and agreed to testify against those who had conspired to kill the Sherrys for money, politics, and revenge.
Investigators spent two years hunting down evidence to verify Gillich’s chilling account, which showed that Bobby Joe Fabian, the old con man who had launched the case with so many lies he could never testify, had been right all along about the broad strokes of the plot, if not its details. Gillich implicated all the original suspects and named a few additional helpers whom Keith Bell and Randy Cook had never heard about, including—to the investigators’ surprise—a different triggerman.
Gillich said the murder conspiracy began as he and Halat visited Nix in Angola in December 1986, when the convict first complained about $100,00 missing from his scam savings. Halat blamed the theft on his law partner and best friend, and Gillich and Nix eventually agreed to split the cost of having Vince killed. Later, when Halat expressed his desire to be mayor, Gillich said it was decided that Margaret had to die as well, to clear the way for a friendlier administration in city hall. Gillich recalled Pete offered to pay a share of the hit—the price tag for two murders was $20,000—but Gillich told the mayor of Biloxi not to worry. It was taken care of.1
With Gillich onboard as a witness (and repeatedly polygraphed), a second round of federal indictments came down in 1996. The principal charges were participation in organized crime and racketeering; obstruction of justice; and conspiracy to commit fraud. The racketeering counts included allegations of conspiracy to commit murder and the Sherry murders themselves. The strategy behind the first indictment and trial of avoiding the actual murders finally had paid off, Lynne realized. Prosecutors were able to lodge fresh charges in the new indictment against some of the same defendants while avoiding claims of double jeopardy. This time Pete Halat, who had returned to private practice after his election defeat, was charged along with Nix. So was Thomas Leslie “The Thumb” Holcomb, a Texas carnival worker, part-time hit man, and longtime Dixie Mafia associate of Mike Gillich’s. Mr. Mike had revealed Holcomb as the true triggerman in the Sherry murders, pinch-hitting for the one-legged John Ransom. Although Gillich swore Ransom still helped plan and carry out the crimes, he had already been tried and convicted for doing that and so was not charged again. But LaRa Sharpe was also named in the indictment in a supporting role, as was an ex–Biloxi cop and manager of one of Gillich’s strip joints named Glenn Cook, who later admitted he had test-fired the murder weapon and delivered the payment to Holcomb.
The irony for Gillich was that friends, family, and civic leaders who stood by him through the first trial, when he defied logic and fact to insist he was an honest and God-fearing man, abandoned him en masse once he did the right thing and helped bring the killers to justice. The courtroom in his first trial had been packed with supporters and character witnesses; hundreds of letters had been written on his behalf. But once he told the truth, Biloxi turned its back on Mr. Mike. He spent the next two years sitting alone in prison. His few visitors consisted of lawyers and FBI agents working painstakingly to corroborate his story.
During the five years that passed between the first and second trials, the mood in Biloxi shifted in other ways, too. Press coverage of the new indictments seemed curiously one-sided, all but predicting Halat’s acquittal and asserting that the case came down to nothing more than Gillich’s word against Pete’s.
“The outcome of the long-awaited Sherry murder conspiracy trial hinges largely on whether jurors believe the testimony of people who have lied to juries before,” The Biloxi Sun-Herald told readers as the trial began. Prosecutors and, later, jurors in the case, would say they did not see it this way at all. It was, however, how Pete Halat’s defense team saw it. “Their case relies strictly on the word of con artists, felons, and escape artists,” Halat’s lawyer, David Chesnoff of Las Vegas, said before the trial. “It’s going to be a credibility question. I’ll put Pete Halat’s credibility against anyone.”
Many in Biloxi began to echo these sentiments, suggesting it was unfair to tar the former mayor on the basis of an admitted criminal’s testimony. But there were ample supporting witnesses and evidence to back up Gillich’s story. There were the Halat and Sherry law firm’s records of phone calls to Nix during key moments in the conspiracy. There were Halat’s suspicious tax returns and unexplained income, his past lies, and his seeming foreknowledge of the murders and time of death. And beyond that, when it was finally time for the showdown in court, to see just who was believable and who was not, Gillich’s testimony simply could not be dismissed out of hand. Lynne Sposito and most everyone else in the courtroom found him riveting on the stand, convincing in every way, right down to his description of how he had disposed of the murder weapon by hurling it from a bridge over Biloxi’s Back Bay, then destroyed the box that the ammunition had come in by shredding it into tiny pieces and letting the bits of brown cardboard fly one by one out of his car window in a long, fluttering trail.
When it was Halat’s turn to tell his side of the story, as he had long claimed he wished to do, the former mayor shocked everyone, even his die-hard supporters. Halat sat on his hands and refused to take the stand. He offered virtually no defense. There was to be no credibility contest after all.
Each of the defendants was convicted of at least some of the counts in the indictment, except for the bagman Cook, whose trial was delayed because he was hospitalized for psychosis. (Cook was later convicted.) The jury found that Pete Halat had been part of a conspiracy that led to the murder of the Sherrys.
“The press got it all wrong,” the jury foreman explained. “We would never just take Mike Gillich at his word. We believed only the parts of his story that could be corroborated.” Of Pete Halat, the foreman said, “We all felt he was in on the conspiracy. Why he did it, we don’t know. Just greedy, I guess.”
* * *
Mike Gillich turns around in his seat, staring up at the daughter of Vince and Margaret Sherry, looking at the hand Lynne has thrust out at him. Slowly, both his hands come up, enveloping her palm. At the same time, Lynne speaks in a halting and husky voice. She is a strong woman, someone who could force herself to view her parents’ autopsy photos and brave death threats to testify before the grand jury, but today she is unnerved, clearing her throat just to make herself audible. “I wanted to thank you,” she manages to say. “Thank you for telling the truth. You were the only one who would. And I just wanted to say thank you.”
She is ready to flee back to her seat then, but Gillich will not release her hand. He grips her as if clutching a life preserver. The look of stoicism he wore in court on previous occasions—an impenetrable and intimidating poker face, a stare not easily met—slips away, his lips curling down and his eyes suddenly streaming tears. His face crumples into something formless and wounded, as everyone else in the courtroom looks on in astonishment. “I’m so sorry,” Gillich says in a hoarse whisper. “I’m so sorry.”
Lynne looks as if she has been physically struck. Whatever reactions she had expected when she finally confronted Mr. Mike, sobs of remorse were not among them. This was the same man who, when first indicted six years before, defiantly strode into court, loudly burping and thrusting his middle finger in an obscene gesture at every television camera in range. The crude image had been broadcast statewide, and he cared not a whit. But that man is gone now, replaced by a shaking, weeping, lost soul. It doesn’t matter if it’s an act or not, Lynne realizes. The mere fact that the mighty Mr. Mike would appear in public abject, face wet, means the don has fallen. The aura of disdain for authority, of stubborn invincibility, can never be recovered. Mr. Mike is no more.
“I’m so sorry,” he says one last time. And then he cannot speak another word. His plea dissolves into sobs.
When he at last lets go of Lynne’s hands, she walks slowly back to her seat next to her sister, Leslie, who was a nineteen-year-old college freshman when their parents were killed. Leslie has always maintained a cold fury about the case, but on this day, after watching Mike Gillich, she turns to her older sister and says in a shaky voice, “I’m sorry, Lynne. But I believe him. I really believe he’s sorry for what he did.”
Lynne is quiet for a moment. They are words she never expected to hear from anyone close to her or her parents. A year ago, a week ago, maybe an hour ago, she would have been outraged by the mere suggestion. But now Lynne just nods at her sister and, uttering words she can hardly recognize as her own, says, “That’s all right, honey. I believe him, too.”
* * *
During the trial, Pete Halat’s seemingly calculated emotional outbursts outraged Lynne and her family. At a hearing outside the presence of the jury, Halat had intently and emotionlessly watched a police video of the grisly murder scene. Later, when it was replayed with the jury present, Halat covered his face and wept. Just before his sentencing, haggard and defiant after two months in lockup, he spoke at length to Judge Charles W. Pickering, still asserting his innocence and angrily attacking Lynne and her family. He managed to mention in the course of his tirade all sorts of embarrassing but irrelevant tidbits, including one about Lynne’s son, Tommy, who had been arrested for burglary. It was a twisted and vicious last-ditch attack, with the unintended effect of completely undermining Halat’s simultaneous plea for sympathy.
Disgusted by the display, Judge Pickering finally told Halat to stop. And in case there was any doubt about what the jury verdicts in the complex case meant, the no-nonsense Hattiesburg judge spelled it out for all: “I find that the Sherry murders were brought about by Mr. Halat’s greed for money . . . (and) his cowardliness . . . You could have prevented the death of your friend. Even after he was dead, you could have kept his children and the citizens of Biloxi from having to endure many years of frustration, confusion, and misery. You will forever have to live with your own conscience and what you have done.”
In her statement to the court, just before Halat was sentenced, Lynne put it this way: “There is not enough time left in your life to atone for all the pain your choices have caused.”
When the day was done, Kirksey Nix had another life sentence to serve—though Pickering ordered him placed this time in isolation in federal prison, in a high-tech facility where human contact was minimal and even his food would be delivered by robot. There were to be no phones. LaRa Sharpe got a five year sentence for lying in the first trial. Holcomb, the hitman who pinch-hit for John Ransom, got a life sentence. Glenn Cook, the ex-cop and bagman, would later be sentenced to nine years in prison.
The former mayor of Biloxi got eighteen years.
The sheer scope of Pete Halat’s betrayal still makes Lynne reel if she dwells upon it too long; the sound of this cold man’s outrage at her and her family hit like an ice pick at a heart she had long thought immune from further injury. Afterward, the television crews doused her in spotlights as she left the courthouse and the reporters, dripping beneath their makeup and polyester in the furnace of a Hattiesburg autumn, asked Lynne the same tired questions. She could only shake her head and say, no, she doesn’t feel any “closure.” Her parents are dead. Her son was in jail. She had shut down her emotions for ten years, too afraid to feel lest she lose the strength to continue. Later, she and her family gathered at a nearby diner to pick at hamburgers and milkshakes. They looked disconsolate, untethered. There had been no joy in the courtroom confrontation with Halat, just pain.
* * *
As she sits in the courtroom, listening to Mike Gillich tearfully apologize to the court as he had already done to her, Lynne thinks how different this day is from the day before, when Pete stood there wild-eyed and bitter. Gillich’s apology has changed everything. There is no tension in the courtroom today. One side is filled with the Sherry family; the other side is almost empty. Yesterday, it was filled with Pete Halat’s supporters, their stares drilling into Lynne and her family. Now, Mr. Mike is alone.
“You are a broken man,” Lynne hears the judge say. “You have lost everything.” The judge clearly has been moved by Gillich’s abject state. Gillich is weeping again, apologizing, telling the court he would do anything to undo the harm he has wrought. He never knew what losing family was like—until now. To Lynne, Pickering seems on the verge of tears himself. So is she. This is federal court—no television cameras are allowed inside—so there is nothing beyond memory to record the odd and unlikely magic that briefly inhabits the courthouse this day. She thinks, if only all of Biloxi could see it, feel it, take part in what is happening. The factions, the rifts, the distrust just might start to fade. After all the lies and posturing and speechifying, something essential is at last being laid bare.
But there is a problem. For Judge Pickering, sentencing Halat, Nix, and the others had been relatively easy. Gillich, though, troubles him. Mr. Mike is, after all, a life-long underworld figure and admitted conspirator to murder. His role was pivotal in the killings. He could have stopped them with a single phone call. Weighing against this is the fact that Gillich alone, of all the defendants, told the truth. He had made justice in the case possible. The prosecutors want to reward his cooperation with a release from the twelve years in prison still ahead of him, but Judge Pickering shakes his head and says no, that would be too lenient. And yet he can’t just let the sixty-seven-year-old man rot in prison with no reward for his testimony. How could prosecutors ever get people like Gillich to cooperate in the future if their promises of leniency go nowhere? The judge finally says he’ll compromise. He’ll let Gillich go in another five years, when he’s seventy-two.
Judge Pickering clearly feels he’s being more than generous, but Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Barrett jumps to his feet and begs Pickering to reconsider. Barrett, who has been with the case since the beginning, tells the judge his sentence isn’t good enough, that it will hinder their ability to make such deals in the future. “This is gonna hurt us,” he says. It is a presumptuous challenge to a judge who likes to have the last word. Lynne has seen him slap other lawyers down for coming at him like that, but to her surprise, Pickering agrees to think about it a bit more over the noon recess. He glances at the Sherry children when he says this. Sure enough, as Lynne and her family walk out of the courthouse, a marshal puffs to a halt beside them. The judge wants them in chambers.
So they all troop back upstairs where the judge can question each of them—Lynne, Leslie, Eric, and Vincent Sherry III—about what to do with Mike Gillich. To a one, they surprise the judge, as well as one another, by saying they feel Gillich is indeed a broken man, that he truly seems sorry, and that they believe the prosecutor’s request to be reasonable. They want the next family in search of justice to be able to find it, too, they say. And though the evidence shows Gillich’s culpability is greater than Pete Halat’s, so is his repentance.
“He’s lost his family,” Lynne later reflects. “That meant more to him than his freedom. More than his life. He will never recover from that, just like we’ll never completely recover from losing Mom and Dad.”
Judge Pickering is caught off guard by this unprecedented plea, moved beyond words for the second time that day. He is a man who believes in maintaining absolute control of his courtroom. You make a decision and you stick with it—that’s the secret of keeping lawyers in line. But it seems this is a day to break rules and obliterate expectations. After a long silence, he finally says, if the children of the Sherrys, who have lost so much, can find forgiveness in their hearts for the likes of Mike Gillich, who am I to gainsay it? If Mike Gillich can be forgiven—and if Mike Gillich can repent—perhaps there is hope for us all.
After lunch and back in court, Judge Pickering reverses himself. He hasn’t the legal authority to set Gillich free that day, he says, but he will reduce the Godfather’s sentence as much as the law allows, so that Gillich will be walking free in just over two years. Then he must serve parole and perform community service for five years. The judge suggests a soup kitchen might provide the right mixture of humble good works.
“Eternity is a long time,” Pickering says. “It’s forever . . . Mr. Gillich, you have a lot to live with.
“Yes, sir,” Gillich whispers, head bowed.
And there it ends. The courthouse empties, spectators and marshals, innocents and cynics, all of them shaking their heads in wonderment. Lynne and her family linger, chatting with the prosecutors and the FBI agents and others who have become like family to them. Prosecutor Barrett puts his arm around Lynne’s shoulder and says, “What you did up there was strong, Lynne. Strong.” He puts emphasis on that last word, giving it two syllables.
They would be parting for good that day, the case over but for the inevitable appeals (all of which, over time, would be lost by the conspirators). The group begins to reminisce, using their secret nicknames for the defendants and witnesses, giggling like school kids. They pat one another on the back and put their feet up on the big table in the U.S. Attorney’s conference room. Somebody lights up a cigar. Officials whom Lynne once chastised for their inaction now embrace her. They can laugh and joke now, the sensation of relief coming to them not because the guilty have been sent to prison, but because they have fought and won leniency for a killer.
It is an ending Lynne never could have envisioned. She remembers the father who once let a thief make off with the family’s Christmas presents, and decides he would have approved of what happened this day. It brings her a fierce joy.