1. This account is drawn from the author’s interviews of Lynne Sposito and Eric Sherry.
2. From the author’s interview with Lynne Sposito. Sposito recalls the conversation taking place sometime in mid- to late May 1987.
3. The conversation portrayed here is based solely on the recollections of Lynne Sposito. Pete Halat refused repeated requests from the author—in person and in writing—for an interview. The substance of the conversation as related by Lynne closely resembles accounts Halat provided to police and in public forums. There are, however, here and throughout the book, potentially crucial discrepancies between Lynne’s recollection of Halat’s statements to her and his subsequent accounts.
4. Again, this account is based solely on Lynne Sposito’s recollection of a telephone conversation with Pete Halat. It resembles some of his public statements, with some variations.
5. Based solely on Lynne Sposito’s recollection of the conversation with Halat, who refused the author’s interview requests.
6. Lynne Sposito’s suspicions about Mayor Blessey were based solely on the political enmity between her mother and the mayor, and on her assumptions about information Margaret Sherry claimed to have passed on to the FBI—not on any actual evidence. Though perhaps understandable, Lynne’s suspicions were misplaced. No credible evidence ever surfaced to link Gerald Blessey to the murders. Quite the opposite: Evidence in the case points elsewhere. Despite Lynne’s urgings, no investigative agency ever considered Gerald Blessey a suspect in the Sherry murders.
1. From testimony before the Armed Services Committee on October 22, 1951, at hearings chaired by Sen. Lester Hunt of Wyoming.
2. The officials charged included Sheriff Leroy Hobbs, accused of drug trafficking and other crimes, District Attorney Glen Cannon, indicted for bankruptcy fraud, City Councilman Roy Mattina, charged with perjury, and Mayor Gerald Blessey, accused of misappropriation of federal funds. All were convicted but Blessey, who was acquitted of every charge against him.
3. From the author’s interviews with Eric Sherry and Lynne Sposito. As previously stated, Pete Halat declined to be interviewed by the author.
4. From the author’s interviews with Lynne Sposito and Eric Sherry.
1. Details of the murder scene, the method of killing, and the wounds to the Sherrys were drawn from the autopsy reports on Vincent and Margaret Sherry; from the crime scene synopsis dated September 23, 1987, by Detective Kevin Ladnier, Biloxi P.D. Case No. 87-30529; the investigative report dated September 21, 1987, by Detective Otto E. Wills, same case number; the untitled report dated September 16, 1987, by Lt. Robert Burris; and the author’s interviews with Biloxi Police Detective Gerald Forbes and Lt. Richard O’Bannon. The police and the coroner initially found only two wounds in Vincent Sherry, though a second autopsy revealed a third wound that had been so close to one of the others as to have been obscured. The second autopsy was performed because nine empty shell casings were found in the house, but only eight bullets had been accounted for.
2. From the Biloxi Dept. of Public Safety statement of witness/complainant, a transcript of the tape-recorded interview of Peter Halat on September 16, 1987, by detectives Buddy Wills and Ric Kirk.
3. As recalled by former Harrison County Sheriff’s Investigator Greg Broussard, in an interview with the author. Broussard was assigned to a multiagency task force investigating the Sherry murders. He and Biloxi Police Detective Otto “Buddy” Wills became the primary investigators in the case after the initial flurry of activity in the week following the murder.
1. From the transcript of a tape-recorded interview of Leslie Sherry by the Biloxi Dept. of Public Safety on September 17, 1987.
2. From the transcript of a taped interview with Eric Sherry, dated September 17, 1987, by the Biloxi Dept. of Public Safety; police reports contained in Biloxi Police Dept. Case No. 87-30529; and the author’s interviews with Eric Sherry, Lynne Sposito, and Greg Broussard.
3. This account is based on the recollections of Lynne Sposito, corroborated by Greg Broussard. It is neither corroborated or contradicted by police reports on the interview with Sposito, which do not mention the adoption issue but make clear that much was discussed while the tape recorder was switched off.
1. From a transcript of proceedings on May 12, 1987, in Biloxi Circuit Court in the case of State vs. Troy James, Case No. 5079.
2. This account is based on the recollection and notes of Lynne Sposito. Robertson told the same story to FBI agents four days later, according to FBI summary reports on the Sherry murder case. He repeated the story again to Biloxi Police Lt. Mike Meaut, as reflected in Meaut’s “Confidential Report for Insp. Payne” dated April 7, 1988.
3. Detective Ric Kirk was never seriously viewed by police investigators as a suspect in the case, a conclusion with which Lynne Sposito eventually concurred. No evidence ever surfaced tying him to the crime, or to those ultimately charged with conspiracy to kill the Sherrys. Nevertheless, the Sherry family spent months fearing the Biloxi police as a result of Robertson’s claims, and the fact that the yellow Ford he described would be identified by police as the getaway vehicle compounded their fears. However, it now seems certain that Robertson was wrong about whom he described as the driver of the car. Ric Kirk eventually volunteered to clear his name by submitting to a polygraph test conducted by an outside, disinterested police agency. He passed the test.
4. From the author’s interviews with Lynne Sposito.
1. From the author’s interview with Lynne Sposito. Harrison County Medical Examiner Steve Delahoussey’s recollection and notes confirmed Lynne’s account. Halat would not respond to written and oral requests about this rendition of events.
2. According to Margaret Sherry’s friend and the former president of the Biloxi City Council, Dianne Harenski, who says she was shown the list by Margaret.
1. From the author’s interviews with Lynne Sposito and Greg Broussard.
2. “Vince Sherry had a questionable background,” Sheriff’s Investigator Greg Broussard wrote in his report that day, summing up the discussion at the end-of-the-day task force meeting less than thirty-six hours after the bodies were found. “Sherry and Halat [were] always seeming to represent known crime figures on the Coast.” In weeks and months to come, investigators would speculate in their reports that Vince might have even been in partnership with one of these crime figures, though evidence to support this supposition never appeared.
3. The preceding account is drawn from the author’s interviews with Lynne Sposito, Eric Sherry, and Greg Broussard, and from police reports describing investigators’ discussions with Eric and Lynne.
4. In a December 1992 letter to the author, Gerald Blessey declined to be interviewed or to answer most questions posed by the author. However, he vigorously denied that there was any bias in the murder investigation because the task force included a variety of agencies other than the Biloxi Police Department. “The suggestion that the investigation was ‘politically biased’ is an absurdity, contradicted by the overwhelming weight of the evidence for anyone who really cared about learning the truth,” Blessey wrote.
5. From the author’s interviews with Greg Broussard and Lynne Sposito.
6. From the handwritten notes of Investigator Greg Broussard, dated October 26, 1987, filed in the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office as the “Sherry Homicide Case,” no file number. The note reads: “0830 met w/Chief Price. Advised that Blessey demanded me to be off the case. Price was advised by Saxon.” Broussard confirmed these events in an interview with the author.
1. The intact ignition system and the lack of hot-wiring probably meant a key had been used, the police initially theorized. Investigators knew that the car dealer still had its set of keys for the car. The logical conclusion: a copy of the ignition key had been made, perhaps when someone took the car for a test drive. Making a wax impression of the key would have been a simple matter for a thief, requiring but a few seconds out of the car salesman’s sight. Yet months would pass before investigators thought to ask if any of the car dealer’s salesmen remembered taking the Ford out for a spin with a prospective customer. By the time police got around to asking, memories had long since faded—more investigative bungling.
2. Finding usable latent fingerprints on the suspected getaway car did not represent a breakthrough in the case. The fingerprints of an unknown, nameless person are worthless without a suspect—police have to have something in hand to compare, a name and a face and a known pair of prints extracted from the inked fingers of a person with a prior criminal record. Some states have computer systems that can match unknown prints to known criminals whose fingerprints are on file. Financially strapped Mississippi has no such system, however. Pulling criminal files at random by hand, hoping to find a match, would be a hopeless, massively time-consuming exercise in futility. For all they knew, the culprit had never been fingerprinted before.
3. From the Biloxi Police Department report dated March 10, 1988, by Lt. Mike Meaut, Case No. 87-30529. Meaut, who assumed responsibility for the Sherry murders as head of a second “task force” in March 1988, wrote: “On the Fairmont, Insp. Williams reported that the investigation into it was suspended because it was considered not to have played a part in the murders. The reasoning for this was ‘the time frame of the murders and the first time the car was noticed was not right.’ ” Meaut concluded that this had been a misjudgment, and that the Ford was, indeed, a valuable potential link to the killers, which he began to pursue intensively.
4. Several other suspects were getting a secondary look as well, notably a mysterious fellow who called himself Bates who arrived in town claiming to be a writer researching a book about organized crime. Bates had appeared in the Biloxi area shortly before the murders, then disappeared shortly afterward, skipping out with a leased Mercedes and leaving behind a rented house he had masked with heavily tinted windows and muted lights so no one could see inside. His identity and previous address proved to be phony. Detectives considered him a possible hit man, and began to research his movements. Still, Eric and Diamond Betsy remained priority targets of the investigation. For all the police knew, one of them could have hired Bates to do the dirty work on Hickory Hill Circle. Bates turned out to be a mere con man from Kentucky, disappointed investigators eventually learned.
5. From “Police work Sherry leads in Florida,” by Gene Swearingen, Biloxi Sun Herald, November 6, 1987.
6. From the transcript of a tape-recorded interview of Barbara Anderson on November 4, 1987, at her home in Orlando, by Detectives Greg Broussard and Buddy Wills, and from a report filed by Wills on November 17, 1987, under Biloxi P.D. Case No. 87-30529.
7. From Wills’s November 17, 1987, report, and from the author’s interview with Greg Broussard.
8. From the author’s interviews with Eric Sherry and Greg Broussard.
9. From “Sherry murder case investigators lose one lead, pick up another,” Biloxi Sun Herald, November 11, 1987.
10. From statements by Pete Halat in an August 1989 press conference.
1. From the author’s interviews with Lynne Sposito and Greg Broussard. Lynne had promised Broussard she would not reveal the source of this tip—she identified him merely as a member of law enforcement. Broussard, however, confirmed that he had provided the warning.
2. From the author’s interviews with Lynne Sposito and Greg Broussard.
3. Ibid.
4. From a December 5, 1987, police report filed by Investigator Ric Kirk.
5. Ibid.
1. From an April 4, 1988, report by Biloxi Police Lt. Mike Meaut, on a conversation with a confidential informant.
2. From the transcript of a taped Biloxi police interview with Pete Halat on January 26, 1988, at Halat’s office.
3. From “Son says someone on Coast knows who killed Sherrys and why,” Jackson (Mississippi) Clarion Ledger, May 23, 1988.
4. From the report by Lt. Mike Meaut, dated May 23, 1988, in Biloxi Police Dept. Case No. 87-30529. In a letter to the author, Gerald Blessey, who declined to be interviewed in person, stated that investigative decisions in the Sherry case “were done, not by the direction of the mayor or any other elected official, but by good law-enforcement practice and judgment. I can tell you that there has never been any retaliation of any kind, before, during or after this investigation by me against the Sherry family or any other person.”
5. According to the May 26, 1988, Biloxi Police Dept. report by Lt. Mike Meaut, in Case No. 87-30529.
6. As told by convicted murderer Bobby Joe Faubion. Armistead has denied any improprieties in his investigative techniques, a contention supported by several law-enforcement officials, including his former colleague, Harrison County Sheriff Joe Price.
1. According to the March 1988 report by Lt. Mike Meaut. An FBI interview of a different witness at the car dealership puts the yellow Fairmont on the lot as late as Monday afternoon, September 14—a day on which a car lot employee said he twice locked the car and rolled up its driver’s window, only to find it lowered later. The same employee told the FBI that he noticed the car missing the next day, Tuesday, September 15. Because the murder took place on the evening of September 14, the times noted by the FBI’s witness, though different than the Biloxi Police Department’s information, still allow time for the car to have been used in the murders.
2. Another day, Lt. Mike Meaut came by to show them photos of the scene. He was supposed to have screened out any pictures that included the bodies, but he missed a few in the big stack of color snapshots. Lynne blanched at the sight as she flipped through the thick stack of photos, but said nothing until her sister, Leslie, who had accompanied them to the house, left the room.
“You probably didn’t mean to show me these,” she said calmly, revealing the shots of her father’s bloated, disfigured corpse that she had kept pressed against her side. Meaut wouldn’t stop apologizing. Armistead was furious. But Lynne couldn’t stop looking, saying, “It’s really not as bad as I thought it would be.”
3. The preceding account of the visit to the house is drawn from the author’s interviews with Lynne Sposito and John and Becky Field, and from Biloxi police reports on investigative findings at the murder scene. Rex Armistead declined to be interviewed.
4. This conversation is based upon the recollections of Lynne Sposito—an account she provided the author, to newspaper reporter Gene Swearingen for the August 5, 1989, edition of the Biloxi Sun Herald, as well as in her sworn testimony before a federal grand jury in Jackson, Mississippi, on September 18, 1990. The conversation, according to Sposito, took place May 16, 1988.
Ann Kriss did not corroborate this account for the author, though she admits re-creating the ledger on Nix’s account in approximately the time frame Sposito recalls. In the August 1989 newspaper article, Kriss was questioned by the reporter, and quoted as saying, “I don’t have any recollection of that [conversation with Sposito]. I can’t deny I made that statement, but I don’t have any recollection of it.” Kriss denies preparing an inaccurate record—just a partial one, beginning with the year 1985. The account dated back to 1979, the only time there had been an actual zero balance. She also questioned Sposito’s ability to remember conversations more than a year after they occurred.
However, Sposito apparently relayed her account of this conversation shortly after it occurred. A Biloxi police report dated May 26, 1988, shows that Sposito told both the FBI and the police that Ann Kriss had produced “doctored books” on Kirksey Nix’s accounts.
5. The basic facts of Hignight’s visit to Halat, his statements about the scam, and the request for the ledgers is based on Halat’s sworn testimony, and, unlike other portions of this conversation with Lynne Sposito, is not in dispute. The letter to Nix in which Halat says he will no longer represent the convict was dated May 13, 1988—four days before this conversation between Sposito and Halat. However, testimony from Beau Ann Williams, Nix’s cousin and an attorney, as well as other records, show Halat did maintain contact with Nix after this date, and continued to work on legal matters for Nix’s wife and stepdaughter.
6. This May 17, 1988, encounter with Halat is based primarily on the account provided by Lynne Sposito to the author and before a federal grand jury in sworn testimony. Halat, in comments published in the Biloxi Sun Herald on September 16, 1990, disputed Sposito’s recollections, though more in tone than in substance. He was quoted as saying that he may have said something about Nix and Gillich being friends and clients of his, but that he would not have related this to Lynne in any threatening way. “Her recollection doesn’t correctly characterize the conversation that we had, which doesn’t surprise me,” the paper quoted Halat as saying. Sposito’s account is supported somewhat, however, by the statement of a secretary who once worked in the Halat and Sherry law office, who told the FBI, in a report dated November 9, 1990, that she recalled that Lynne and Halat argued loudly for about twenty minutes in Halat’s office one day, long after the murders. She recalled Lynne leaving looking furious, and Halat slamming the door behind her.
7. From the author’s interviews with Lynne and Dick Sposito.
1. From the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Vol. 4, Charles Reagan Wilson and William Ferris, eds. (New York: Doubleday, 1989), and The Mississipi Gulf Coast: Portrait of a People, Charles L. Sullivan (Northridge, CA: Windsor Publications, 1985). The book on Copeland by Sheriff J. R. S. Pitts was entitled The Confessions of James Copeland, and was later republished in 1980 under the title Life and Confessions of the Noted Outlaw James Copeland.
2. With gambling causing a crisis on the air base, one senator asked Keesler’s commander why he had not simply ordered gambling establishments off limits to Air Force personnel. The general responded that he had considered such a move, but decided against it. Gambling was so rampant throughout the community, he said, that such an order would virtually quarantine the base. None of the troops would ever be able to leave without being airlifted out, then parachuted into some remote area away from the one-armed bandits and croupiers, the general testified before the Senate.
3. Sen. Lester Hunt, Democrat of Wyoming, convened the hearing on behalf of the Armed Services Committee on October 22, 1951.
4. The rampant prostitution in Biloxi strip clubs in the sixties, seventies, and eighties is detailed in numerous investigative reports by the Mississippi Highway Patrol and other law-enforcement agencies, as well as in the news media—in particular, in a series of copyrighted articles published in the Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger, March 23–26, 1981, entitled “Mississippi Gulf Coast: Wide Open and Wicked,” by W. Stevens Ricks and Stephanie Saul. A particularly detailed account of sex-for-hire in several Biloxi nightclubs circa 1970 is contained in a document entitled “Memorandum to Albert Necaise, District Attorney, from Gene Evans, Investigator, District Attorney’s Office,” reporting on his undercover visits to strip joints on February 1, 1972.
5. This sheriff, Eddie McDonnell, with his bulbous, quivering nose and blustery manner (later to become chief deputy sheriff under a corrupt successor), became the prototype for Biloxi law enforcement at its worst, fearless and corrupt. He was sheriff for two nonconsecutive terms in the fifties and sixties. He once threatened to jail a group of state alcohol commission agents—and their boss, the governor—for busting a gambling operation in which he had a secret share.
Later, he addressed a convention of policemen in Biloxi, regaling them with a tale about his latest meeting in the Mississippi capital. The governor had summoned him to Jackson to threaten him with the National Guard—which the governor ultimately deployed to help close down gambling houses and bordellos McDonnell protected. As was his habit then, McDonnell wore an expensively tailored suit on his stocky frame, gaudy in color, an equally gaudy diamond stickpin glittering on his lapel. “And where the hell does a sheriff get off wearing a diamond that big?” the governor railed, as McDonnell told it.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, gov!” the sheriff replied, jumping to his feet. “If you’d just leave me alone, we’ll all be wearing ’em.”
The aura of corruption in Biloxi was so complete then, Sheriff McDonnell felt comfortable recounting this story to three hundred lawmen gathered on the Mississippi Coast. He was met with laughter and applause. Biloxi was never more wide open.
1. From the author’s interview with Beau Ann Williams, Nix’s first cousin and lifelong friend, and a practicing attorney in Oklahoma City.
2. From the Dallas Morning News, “Trial set in judge’s slaying. Man allegedly killing from prison,” by Jason Berry, September 29, 1991. The information on State Senator Nix is based on the reporter’s interview with Nix.
3. From copies of Mississippi Highway Patrol intelligence reports retained by Harrison County Sheriff Joe Price, who was an investigator with the MHP in the sixties and seventies, involved in several investigations of crime on The Strip in Biloxi. Powell, also known as Jack Powers and Donald Baugh, had a seven-state criminal record for burglary, theft, possession of gambling devices, liquor violations, swindling, forgery, and grand larceny. His associates, according to MHP reports, included the most notorious Dixie Mafia killers, drug smugglers, and armed robbers, along with Judge Nix. Information on Judge Nix’s association with Mike Gillich is drawn from the sworn testimony of Gillich and Kirksey Nix Jr.
4. From the sworn testimony of Kirksey McCord Nix Jr. and Mike Gillich Jr., in U.S. vs. Nix, Gillich, Ransom and Sharpe, Criminal Case No. S91-40, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi.
5. Law-enforcement sources and early press accounts alternately credit a crime commission in Dallas, a Houston newspaper reporter, and the director of a Southern-based regional criminal intelligence network with coining the term “Dixie Mafia.” All sources agree that the criminals themselves did not begin referring to themselves as Dixie Mafia until after the press popularized the term. Harrison County Sheriff Joe Price, who was investigating crime on The Strip since the 1960s, gives credit for coining the term to Rex Armistead, the former chief investigator of the Mississippi Highway Patrol.
6. Nix denies his involvement in the murder. Bennett was a partner in an illegal Biloxi gambling club with a close friend of Nix’s, a Dixie Mafia nightclub operator and drug dealer named Dewey D’Angelo. The rigged gambling house was closed down by federal agents; Bennett was killed six days before he was to go on trial. Nix skipped on his rent for a Biloxi apartment two days before the killing. He was sought for questioning in the case, but this was short-circuited when James Blackwell, another Dixie Mafia nightclub operator, convicted felon, and good friend of Nix’s, was arrested for the Bennett murder along with a gambler named Aris Toles Diamonicus, commonly known on The Strip as Art Diamond. Nix later denied any involvement.
A convicted felon had told police that Blackwell and Diamond had tried to hire him to kill Bennett because the gambler was talking to federal investigators in order to cut a deal in his own case. The ex-con later told Blackwell’s defense lawyer that his story was a lie, and that yet another bar owner on the Coast—rivalries erupted on The Strip constantly—had forced him to falsely accuse Blackwell and Diamond. The lawyer, Robert Adam, revealed this change in the witness’s story on the first day of Blackwell’s trial; that night, Adam’s house was consumed in a fire and he was killed, along with two of his children. A mistrial was declared, and the case against Blackwell and Diamond was never pursued further.
The labyrinth of the Bennett case continued, however. A burglar and escaped convict with no connections to the Dixie Mafia eventually confessed to the killing after he was arrested in Florida for shooting it out with policemen there while robbing a hamburger stand. Later, the burglar, Harold Diddlemeyer, recanted his confession, claiming he constructed it from news accounts so he would be extradited to Mississippi, where he felt he had a better chance at a lenient sentence. He said he felt comfortable doing this because he knew he had evidence to prove his innocence. But despite a witness who put him out of state at the time of the Bennett killing, and a police-administered lie detector test that showed him to be truthful in asserting he did not commit the murder, Diddlemeyer was convicted. He is still serving a life sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.
(The preceding account is drawn from the Harrison County Sheriff’s Department files on the murder of Harry Bennett and the confession and trial of Harold Diddlemeyer; from the author’s interviews with Harrison County Sheriff Joe Price and Captain Randy Cook; and from “Bennett slaying: What was the motive for murder?” by Gene Swearingen, Biloxi Sun Herald, September 11, 1990.)
7. The account of the shooting and Nix’s alleged involvement is drawn from multiple sources: the author’s interviews with Harrison County Sheriff Joe Price, Jefferson Parish Deputy Chief Sheriff Gene Fields, and convicted felon and former Biloxi policeman Harvey Felsher, a friend of Nix’s; The State Line Mob, W. R. Morris (Nashville, TN: Rutledge Hill Press, 1990); and “Hit List,” Biloxi Sun Herald, September 15, 1990.
8. Though Nix admits a relationship with White, he denies involvement in the Pusser shooting. He has never been charged in that crime, though numerous inmates who served time with Nix have told investigators that Nix often boasted of killing Buford Pusser.
The men Pusser named as his wife’s killers were Nix, a Boston-based Mafioso named Carmin R. Gagliardi, and two Dixie Mafia cronies, Gary Elbert McDaniel and George Albert McGann. Towhead White hired Nix, who then picked his accomplices, according to Pusser. Allegedly, Nix made the phone call that lured Pusser into the ambush, and the Cadillac used in the crime supposedly was the same one that later exploded in Oklahoma City. Gagliardi’s body was found two years later, riddled with bullets in Boston Harbor. McDaniel, under indictment for conspiring to kill a Mississippi prosecutor, was found shot in the head and back, floating facedown in the Sabine River in Texas in March 1969. McGann was shot three times through the heart and back in Lubbock, Texas, in September 1970. And Towhead White died in April 1969, shot in the head outside a motel with another man’s wife.
Pusser was never charged in any of these killings; all but one of them are officially unsolved. Police admit that the deaths of such notorious gangsters provoked little enthusiasm in pursuing their killers. In the case of Towhead White, another man, Barry “Junior” Smith, confessed to the shooting, but claimed he acted in self-defense during a confrontation outside the motel. Smith eventually was exonerated, although evidence showed White had been shot by a gunman on the motel roof, not on ground level, as Smith had claimed. Pusser’s authorized biographer, W. R. Morris, reports in his 1990 book, The State Line Mob, that Pusser had hired Smith to set up the murder, and that another assassin had been employed to do the shooting from the rooftop while Smith acted as the fall guy.
9. Police records and news accounts from that period show Gwinn had been busted the previous year with Nix after an aborted burglary attempt and a high-speed police chase in Oklahoma. The pair skated on the charges in classic Nix style: a $150 fine apiece.
10. Louisiana warrants were issued for five Dixie Mafia cohorts: Nix; Gwinn; a small-time thief named Charles Christian; a hulking Biloxi drug-smuggler and Dixie Mafia enforcer named William Mansker Clubb; and a diminutive Oklahoma armed robber and thief named Charles Floyd Yandell. All of the men were friends of Nix. Three of the five—Nix, Gwinn, and Christian—along with four other men and a woman of the Dixie Mafia, had met in Biloxi a few weeks earlier. According to Mississippi Highway Patrol Intelligence files maintained by the Harrison County Sheriff’s Department, an undercover agent watched them gather at the home of Christian’s girlfriend, a nightclub worker and close friend of Mike Gillich. The meeting appeared to have been a planning session for upcoming Dixie Mafia crimes, including the Gypsy camp raid.
Of the four other men, William Mansker Clubb was the most interesting. He and Kirksey Nix were extremely close. Clubb was notorious in his own right, having been linked to (but never convicted of) several murders, including the killing of an FBI agent. He was under indictment in Oklahoma for perjury for testifying on behalf of Nix’s old friend Bobby Joe Faubion in a gun-running case in Dogpatch, Oklahoma. Later, he would be accused of being the Dixie Mafia’s premiere cocaine smuggler, in years to come achieving legendary status among his peers by crashing a small plane loaded with the drug, then escaping arrest by claiming to be a doctor responding to a medical emergency. His getaway was detected only because a news photographer inadvertently snapped him getting into a car, carrying a briefcase. He was at the controls years later in the crash of another plane just short of the runway in New Orleans, his body and the cocaine he was smuggling lost in the flames.
11. According to Jefferson Parish Chief Deputy Sheriff Gene Fields, who has extensively investigated Nix and other Dixie Mafia criminals, and retired Drug Enforcement Agent William Warner of Mobile, who was at the time a sheriff’s detective. Warner interviewed Gwinn when he was picked up with Cook, five days before the murder. It was during this interview, according to Warner, that Gwinn promised to cooperate—and expressed fears that he might be killed for doing so.
12. Nix denies involvement in the Gypsy camp killing. In a March 1978 interview with the Louisiana State Penitentiary news magazine, The Angolite, Nix claimed the ballistics evidence in the case was trumped up by the police, and that bullet casings were planted at the dump to falsely match those at the scene of the murder. He admitted in the interview that he had been target-shooting at the dump outside Covington, but he said that proved nothing. He denied that any of the defendants was going to cooperate with authorities, and he denied any ininvolvement in Gwinn’s murder. He said the case was dismissed not because of a key witness’s murder, but because of the shoddy police investigation and manufactured evidence.
13. Within two months of his release, the Dallas police raided an apartment where Nix and three cohorts were living. Detectives found a few ounces of marijuana, along with three pistols, a sawed-off shotgun, the usual Nix kit of burglary tools, a police radio, and a telephone test set—this last item for tapping into phone lines. The police believed they short-circuited a burglary Nix had been plotting that involved a telephone alarm system of some kind, but because no major crime had been committed, charges were not pursued against Nix. Two months later, three million dollars in precious metals and gems were stolen by a sophisticated team of vault burglars, who spent a whole weekend in January breaking into a Dallas jewelry store protected by a sophisticated alarm system. The burglars electronically circumvented this system and its connection to telephone lines while drilling into the safe. The break-in artists left no clues, but the Dallas police said at the time they suspected Dixie Mafia burglars of returning to town to finish what had been started in November. This was never proven, and Nix was never arrested in the case.
1. From the sworn testimony of Marian Corso, in Louisiana vs. Nix, Mule and Fulford, contained in transcripts filed in the Louisiana Supreme Court, Case No. 56371.
2. Ibid. Also, from the testimony of Susan Corso in the same case.
3. Nix denies any role in the ski-mask robberies, as well as the Corso killing. Eugene Fields, chief deputy for the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Department and a sergeant for the New Orleans Police Department at the time of the Corso killing, had conducted the Mule-Nix surveillance, then took a lead role in investigating the Corso case. It was his informant who first tipped police to the identities of the killers.
According to Fields, shortly after the stakeout began, the ski-mask robberies stopped. Investigators found this odd, because until then, they had occurred once every two weeks. The captain of investigations at New Orleans P.D. ordered the surveillance ended a few weeks after it began, saying Mule “wasn’t worth the trouble.” Only years later, long after the captain had died in a car accident, would New Orleans detectives learn he had been in the employ of New Orlean’s Mafia chieftain, Carlos Marcello, all along and had tipped off Mule about the surveillance van outside his apartment, according to Fields. The ski-mask robbers had been warned off.
Investigators would also learn that robbery had not been a motive in the break-in and murder at the Corso house, after all. Instead, they learned Corso had refused to cooperate in an organized crime venture and had been targeted, not for death, but for intimidation, perhaps a beating, when the plan fell apart. That was why handcuffs were brought for the whole family—they were to be held hostage and terrorized so that Frank Corso would willingly accept whatever terms the mob dictated. Marian Corso had spoken of this mob connection to the rogue police captain, who cautioned her to keep silent on the matter for her own safety. The captain never reported this to his department, again protecting his mob cronies, just as he had protected them earlier by canceling the surveillance of Mule and Nix.
4. From “Nix says paper seeks his ouster,” Oklahoma Journal, October 30, 1968.
1. Water Bill Sanford was a bookie to the Coast’s wealthiest gamblers, a gentle con artist who knew every killer and crook in town, but who eschewed violence himself. He made his fortune in bootlegging, like some other now-respected families in Biloxi with old money. A shrewd businessman, he also was a Coast character—installing brilliant airplane landing lights on his Cadillac one year because, he said, he hated driving in the dark. He also killed, cleaned, roasted, and ate a two-hundred-dollar myna bird he had bought for his bar because it refused to talk as had been promised by the man who sold the bird to him. When his wife shot him in the head during an argument over her supposed involvement in witchcraft, Water Bill recovered, refused to press charges, and went home with her from the hospital, her bullet still lodged at the base of his brain.
Sanford died in the 1970s. The information on him is drawn from the author’s interviews with Boyce Holleman, district attorney in Harrison County in the fifties and sixties, and a personal friend of Sanford’s; and Mickey Ladner, of the Harrison County Sheriff’s Department. Ladner and Holleman are in agreement on most points, though Holleman recalls Sanford being a small-time bookie, while Ladner pegged him as one of the Coast’s biggest bookmakers. Mike Gillich confirmed his relationship with Sanford during his sworn testimony at his trial, without conceding any illegal activities.
2. From the author’s interviews with Biloxi Detective Gerald Forbes and other law-enforcement sources.
3. The murder plot against the Gulfport chief unraveled when an informant told federal investigators about the conspiracy. No convictions resulted. Hobbs was eventually arrested in a cocaine sting operation, convicted of a series of felonies, thrown out of office, and sentenced to prison. Larkin Smith, his archenemy, succeeded him as sheriff of Harrison County, the first man to hold that office in decades without scandal. Little Henry also went to prison, on unrelated charges.
4. Even when dozens of state investigators worked undercover on The Strip and elsewhere in town, documenting violations of the law on a nightly basis, nothing happened, records and press clippings show. City authorities, who had jurisdiction to prosecute misdemeanors within Biloxi’s city limits, declined to act on most of the cases the Mississippi Highway Patrol put together. The county district attorney at the time, Boyce Holleman, tried to fill the void, using court injunctions to close down several of the worst offenders, with limited success.
But with a corrupt sheriff and police department as his only investigative tools, Holleman recalls that his main tactic was to forget the letter of the law and instead draw an arbitrary line: gambling, some prostitution, and B-drinking would be overlooked, but robbing customers, displaying perversion (Holleman was particularly riled by several acts on The Strip involving bestiality), and violent crimes would be prosecuted. When something particularly egregious came up, the D.A. called meetings with the club owners to discuss their “going too far.” Gillich was particularly adept at walking this line of “now-boys-let’s-be-reasonable” form of frontier justice. He yes-sirred Holleman, then did what he always had done.
5. Years later, James Granger, one of the thugs accused of the murders, returned to the Mississippi Gulf Coast after a long prison term and moved into a house owned by Kirksey Nix, according to LaRa Sharpe, John Ransom, and other associates of Nix’s. After Granger supposedly absconded with several thousand dollars and a truckload of furniture that belonged to Nix, his body was found in Louisiana. He had been beaten to death with a baseball bat.
6. Then-MHP Investigator Joe Price, Harrison County’s current sheriff, noted in a report at the time that Gillich knew about the murder in Texas of a Dixie Mafia burglar and strip-club worker named George Fuqua as quickly as police on the Coast learned of it. The same day the bodies were found, Gillich knew the type of weapon used, the caliber of bullets, and the number of times Fuqua was shot.
“I just heard it through the grapevine,” Gillich told Price. Every bit of Mr. Mike’s information was accurate, demonstrating his intelligence-gathering network was as good as law enforcement’s.
That same year, a February 1, 1972, report to then-District Attorney Albert Necaise from one of his investigators, Gene Evans, described at length the prostitution and other illegal activities in his clubs. “Mike Gillich . . . has been known to stop at nothing to make a dollar,” the investigator concluded in his report. Necaise, like Holleman, moved to the criminal defense field, and later represented Gillich.
7. “Gillich always a step ahead,” by Anita Lee, Biloxi Sun Herald, September 9, 1990. The newspaper performed a comprehensive review of court records for this story.
8. Gerald Blessey, now in private practice in Biloxi, declined to be interviewed by the author on this and other subjects. In a written response to a series of questions, Blessey responded to only two, saying he would have to conduct too much research to answer the author’s other inquiries. The unanswered questions included queries about his administration’s posture toward Gillich’s operations, as well as the nature of Blessey’s personal relationship, if any, to Gillich. In a subsequent letter, Blessey amended his explanation for declining to be interviewed by saying he was writing his own book and did not wish to share material with another author.
9. Cono Caranna, a city prosecutor in the Blessey administration, now district attorney in Harrison County, said he was never aware of any scheme to protect Gillich’s operations. He suggested Gillich’s longevity, compared to his rivals, owed more to his outside sources of income than any favoritism by the city. The income, he said, lay in the illegal enterprises he conducted with Kirksey Nix. Former District Attorney Boyce Holleman, who in private practice represented Gerald Blessey, said the Blessey administration did end up giving Gillich a de facto monopoly on vice, but only because it tried to shunt strip clubs into a narrow zone of The Strip while cleaning up the rest of the city. It just happened that Gillich’s establishments lay within this unofficially designated red-light district, Holleman said.
Others dispute Caranna and Holleman on this point and say Gillich was afforded special protection and virtual immunity from prosecution despite official knowledge and evidence of his law-breaking. The author interviewed five current members of the Biloxi Police Department and the Harrison County Sheriff’s Department, and eight former members of those agencies, all of whom asserted personal knowledge of illegal activities by Gillich that were never prosecuted. The former chief of police under Blessey, Tommy Moffett, has testified that city police records pertaining to Gillich’s criminal activities have been tampered with or destroyed to protect the strip-club owner, and that decisions were made at levels higher than the chief not to prosecute Gillich.
10. According to a federal grand jury indictment in U.S. District Court in Jackson, Mississippi, Criminal No. J89-0003(w), U.S. vs. Roy N. A. Mattina, Mattina was indicted for four counts of perjury for lying to the grand jury about receiving tips about police raids and passing them on to Gillich. He pleaded guilty to one count involving his receiving tips; the other counts, including the one referring to his passing on information to Gillich, were dismissed as part of the plea bargain. He was sentenced to six months of confinement in a halfway house.
11. Even when some enterprising policeman—always in the lower ranks and without permission from the department brass—managed to surprise Mr. Mike, the results invariably were decided in Gillich’s favor.
• In 1972, when an investigator for then-District Attorney Albert Necaise witnessed prostitution operations at a Gillich club, the only consequence was a warning to Gillich to stop.
• In 1979, a sweep through The Strip by Biloxi police—with help from undercover officers borrowed from an outside department—netted sixteen arrests for prostitution and other crimes at eight joints. Three women were arrested for prostitution at the Golden Nugget and the Dream Room; Gillich was pulled in for permitting indecent exposure there. As minor as those charges against Mr. Mike seemed, they theoretically could have ended his career on The Strip by preventing him from obtaining a work card from the city. Multiple prostitution convictions would have enabled the city to shut down the clubs as public nuisances. Strictly enforced, local ordinances coupled with convictions from this raid could have closed Gillich and his competitors down. Instead, most of the charges were dropped when city prosecutors decided that—contrary to common practice—two witnesses, rather than just one arresting officer, were needed to try the prostitution charges. It seemed almost as if the men hired to prosecute crimes were acting as defense attorneys, finding reasons not to go after the crooks on The Strip. The burden was impossible to meet in many cases, and the city decided to drop vice operations against the club for the rest of the O’Keefe administration. Gillich eventually pleaded his case down to allowing B-drinking, paid a four-hundred-dollar fine, then had some or all of it refunded by the city.
• In 1981, a group of patrol officers at Biloxi P.D. tried repeatedly to get detectives to investigate illegal gambling at Gillich’s Horseshoe Lounge. None of the vice detectives would take the case, so the officers finally raided the place themselves, seizing bookie sheets, arresting Gillich’s employees, then taking over the phones themselves, accepting telephone bets and building a case. Once again, though, city prosecutors decided to drop the case, telling the enterprising officers they had conducted an illegal search.
• In 1984 and again in 1986, undercover officers found prostitution, B-drinking, and other violations in all three of Gillich’s clubs—the same type of evidence that was being used by the Blessey administration to shut down other rival joints. But once again, city prosecutors found insufficient evidence to take Gillich to court, allowing him to keep his monopoly on vice.
• Gillich’s stranglehold on The Strip continued even after slot machines and crap tables were found in the Golden Nugget in 1986, and when he was found in 1988 to be operating without a work card from the city. In both cases, judges dismissed the charges.
12. When asked to explain his action to the Biloxi Sun Herald in an article dated September 9, 1990, Halat was quoted as saying, “A cursory reading of the [expungement] order will reveal that the petitioner and the city were both represented by counsel and that the order was issued in open court. A review of the file will also reveal that no objection was raised prior to the order and no appeal was taken on the actions of the court.”
1. From the author’s interview with Biloxi Police Detective Gerald Forbes. Halat declined to be interviewed, so the account of the courthouse conversation is based entirely on Forbes’s recollection. However, it is undisputed that Halat drove the Mercedes registered to Gillich for about two years.
2. From the sworn testimony of Pete Halat in U.S. vs. Nix, et al., Criminal Case S91-40, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Mississippi.
3. From the sworn testimony of Kellye Dawn Newman Nix in U.S. vs. Nix, et al., Criminal Case S91-40, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Mississippi. Kellye Nix gave similar testimony before a federal grand jury, and in statements to the FBI and the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office.
4. From the November 20, 1990, report on a telephone interview with Kellye Nix by Harrison County Sheriff’s Captain Randy Cook, contained in the Sherry Homicide File, Case No. 87-37181.
5. From the author’s interview with Eugene Fields, chief deputy of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Department in Harvey, Louisiana.
6. From the sworn testimony of Peter Halat.
7. From the sworn testimony and police statements of Kellye Dawn Newman Nix.
1. James Dickey’s experience with Eddie Johnson took place over twelve days in September 1988. This account is based upon the sworn testimony of James Dickey in U.S. vs. Nix, Gillich, Ransom and Sharpe; on police reports on the scam; on a written summary of events supplied by Dickey to police; on the author’s interview with Dickey; and on the testimony and statements of other scam participants, including Roy Garland.
2. The penitentiary would seem an unlikely location for anything refined. There is nothing subtle or sophisticated about Angola’s roots, just a legacy of brutality going back to 1880, when Louisiana prisoners were first moved from Baton Rouge dungeons to a plantation in the wild, near-impassable Tunica Hills. Since before the Civil War, the state had leased its prisons and all of its inmates to private entrepreneurs—turning its correctional facilities and the unfortunate souls imprisoned within into private property. Long after black slavery was abolished, prisoner slavery flourished, with inmates manufacturing rope and textiles, farming, and building levees for the lease-holder, a retired Confederate major named Samuel James who drove dozens of inmates to their deaths with inhuman conditions at his Angola plantation, earning a fortune in the process.
The notion of privatization of prisons, touted near the end of the twentieth century as new and revolutionary in an era of overcrowded and costly penitentiaries, is in fact an old, much-tried, and unworkable experiment. It finally ended in Louisiana in 1901 after a series of graphic newspaper accounts of brutality at Angola revealed that twenty-seven inmates had died of disease and overwork in the space of a year, all in the name of cost control and profit. Major James and his son, who inherited the lease and its inmate-money machine after his father’s death, suffered no punishment. Their family had become one of the wealthiest in the state of Louisiana thanks to their prison lease.
In a gesture at reform, the legislature and governor created a three-man public Board of Control to take over corrections. But because no one in government knew anything about prisons—having leased their operation for more than fifty years—the men appointed to the board consisted of the major’s son and two of his employees, the only living “experts” on corrections in Louisiana. They promptly bought Angola from themselves at a huge profit—$200,000 for eight thousand acres. The fact that the state was able to buy ten thousand adjoining acres from other plantation owners twenty years later at half the price showed just how badly the James family had scammed the state of Louisiana, a fittingly corrupt beginning for an eternally corrupt prison.
3. From the author’s interview with Captain D. K. Basco, Angola’s chief investigator.
4. Guard D. K. Basco, later to become a captain and the prison’s chief investigator, recalls Nix blithely scamming on prison telephones that year, with access to the phones far in excess of what prison regulations permitted. On a daily basis, Basco would receive orders from the warden’s office to give Nix special access to the phones, supposedly to make legal calls to Pete Halat or other attorneys. With the warden or one of his deputies issuing the orders, Basco could not refuse. He would, however, stand by close enough to listen to Nix’s end of these “legal calls.” He would hear Nix using falsetto voices to woo suitors, making real-estate deals, arranging to have automobiles purchased, sold, or refurbished, and conducting all manner of business—anything but legal calls. Basco dutifully reported his observations to his superiors. Nothing was done. Nix began bragging to other inmates about having prison officials in his pocket.
5. From the statements and testimony of Robert Wright and Robbie Gant, and from the author’s interviews with D. K. Basco, Captain Randy Cook, and others.
6. From scam materials seized from Kirksey Nix’s cell in Angola in 1987.
7. Robbie Gant, a handyman and small-time crook introduced to Nix through Dixie Mafia connections, made some forty pickups for the scam. In a three-month period in 1986, Gant fetched about $24,000 for Nix at Western Union, all of it sent by lovelorn gay men throughout the U.S. and Canada, with a smattering of Australians and Japanese thrown in for good measure. In the course of a year, Gant picked up nearly $50,000 total.
Roy Garland, a convicted murderer recruited into the scam by Nix once he left Angola in 1988, did even better: Playing a bogus New Orleans police lieutenant and other characters, Garland picked up at least $200,000 in scam money in the space of year, he would later estimate. There seemed to be no end to the money Nix could generate with his various scripts, which included titles like, “The Second Step Plan,” and Fabian’s favorite, the “Quickie Method.”
8. Prison authorities once managed to seize a pocket computer from Nix before he could erase the memory, but they were never able to break the access code Nix had used to protect his scam data. As for the larger personal computers his cronies maintained for him on the outside, investigators learned they had last been in the control of Kellye Dawn Newman Nix. Then they were taken to a preschool operated by Marlene Clubb, the widow of Nix’s old Dixie Mafia partner, William Mansker Clubb.
9. From the testimony of inmate Arthur Mitchell.
1. LaRa Sharpe, in an interview with the author, said Fabian deceived her mother, failing to mention he was a fugitive and almost getting her arrested. Fabian, however, said Granny willingly harbored him, knowing he was a wanted man.
2. According to Robert Wright, in his statements to police and the FBI, and his sworn testimony before a federal grand jury and in the trial of U.S. vs. Nix, et al. Wright’s testimony came in exchange for a grant of immunity from prosecution, a factor cited by those he accused as providing motive for him to lie.
3. According to Robbie Gant, from a series of statements to the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies, and from his sworn testimony before a federal grand jury and in U.S. vs. Nix, et al. Like Wright and many other witnesses who ultimately testified against Nix, Gant received immunity from prosecution in exchange for cooperation. Those he accused of participating in the scam—principally Nix and Sharpe—and their lawyers attacked his credibility, saying he had a motive to lie about them in order to receive immunity from prosecution. Like Wright and others, Gant provided key evidence that investigators and prosecutors needed to pursue their case. LaRa has denied making the sort of scam calls Gant and others describe.
4. Ibid.
5. This incident was recounted by LaRa Sharpe in her sworn testimony in U.S. vs. Nix, et al.
6. From the testimony and statements to police of LaRa Sharpe.
1. From the transcript of a recorded telephone conversation between Kirksey Nix and a confidential FBI informant on April 3, 1984, contained in FBI file No. 183B-815, with the date mistakenly stated as May 3, 1984.
2. From the August 3, 1984, report of FBI Special Agent William H. Deily Jr., in New Orleans, in FBI file No. 183B-815. The report, captioned “Administrative,” reads in part:
“KIRKSEY NIX continues to telephone source from Angola State Penitentiary. NIX informed source that he continues to receive money from his lonely heart and homosexual scheme. He has asked source to pick up some money from a Western Union office and send it to PETER HALAT, Post Office Box 1346, Biloxi, Mississippi 39130.”
The fact that the scam was known to authorities at least as early as 1984 would become a source of controversy in the case, since nothing was done for years while Nix continued to victimize hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent victims.
3. Kellye’s run-in with the FBI, and Halat’s role in her release, was described in the sworn testimony of Peter Halat and Kellye Nix, in U.S. vs. Nix, et al.
4. From the police statements and sworn testimony of Kellye Dawn Newman Nix. Because of this comment, Kellye would later claim Halat knew all about the scams—something Halat would vehemently deny.
In an August 29, 1990, interview with FBI Special Agent Keith Bell and Harrison County Sheriff’s Office Captain Randy Cook, Kellye used the word “fags.” In subsequent testimony, Kellye paraphrased Halat by using the word “homosexuals” instead.
Although Halat has repeatedly denied having any knowledge of the scams, he was curiously equivocal when asked under oath about the statement Kellye attributed to him. In his sworn testimony in U.S. vs. Nix, et al., he said, “I do not recall having made that statement to Kellye Dawn Nix. And assuming that I would have made that statement, I would not have used the word ‘homosexual,’ which leads me to believe that I did not say that to Kellye Dawn Nix.” None of the prosecutors or defense lawyers questioning Halat asked whether he might change his mind if the word “fag” was substituted for “homosexual.”
The author did not have the opportunity to question Halat on this point, or any other. As previously stated, he refused repeated requests to be interviewed.
5. From the author’s interviews with Angola’s chief investigator, Captain D. K. Basco.
6. From the author’s interview with D. K. Basco. LaRa eventually swore that the photo was hers, left over from a batch she had copied many months earlier for Nix. In this final version of events, LaRa explained that she had forgotten it was in her things and had not intended to smuggle the photograph into the prison. At the time, she later swore, she had disassociated herself from the scam and was just trying to help Nix with his case. She also blamed a boyfriend for hiding the pot in her car without telling her.
7. Ibid.
8. From “Envelope with nude photos was addressed to Halat,” by Jerry Mitchell, Jackson Clarion Ledger, October 26, 1989, and “Nude photos addressed to Halat found at prison,” by the Associated Press, Biloxi Sun Herald, October 26, 1989. Both stories quoted Halat through his spokesman at the time, Cliff Kirkland, who purported to provide the newspapers direct quotations from Halat.
9. From the testimony and statements to police of several of Nix’s fellow inmates, including Bobby Joe Fabian.
10. From the sworn testimony and police statements of Charles Leger.
1. The preceding account is based on the recollections of Lynne Sposito and Becky Field, in interviews with the author. Armistead declined to be interviewed.
2. This account of Harenski’s comments to Lynne is drawn from the author’s interviews with the women as well as from police reports and a transcript of Harenski’s interviews with the Biloxi police and the FBI.
3. From a tape recording of a conversation between Pete Halat and Lynne Sposito, made by Sposito without Halat’s knowledge in January 1989.
4. From Lynne Sposito’s September 1990 testimony before the federal grand jury in Jackson. Pete Halat refused requests to be interviewed and has never commented publicly on this particular recollection of Lynne’s.
5. These comments were the subject of a press conference by Mayor Blessey, and an eight-page, February 26, 1988, letter to the FBI’s then-director, William S. Sessions. The letter portrayed the FBI investigation as a groundless and politically motivated attack by racist conservatives intent on destroying a liberal, crusading mayor. It made clear that the prototypes of such racist conservatives were, in Blessey’s opinion, Margaret Sherry and FBI Agent Royce Hignight.
“Mr. Hignight continues to engage in political terrorism to destroy the credibility and effectiveness of my administration in order to advance the political cause of his radical, right-wing allies in local politics,” Blessey’s letter said.
In decrying the Sherrys as inappropriate friends for an FBI agent, Blessey also claimed that Vince “went beyond the normal limits of defense counsel in associating with the business and social life of his underworld clients,” and made suspicious appearances at a local house of prostitution where, Blessey reported, he had been spotted by an undercover policeman.
While he did not hesitate to use his police department’s findings to further his attacks on the FBI agent and the Sherrys, Blessey bitterly criticized Hignight for doing the same thing: using his work for the Sherry murder investigation task force to further his own investigation of city officials. The mayor claimed Hignight promised to help investigate the murders, accepted assignments from the task force, then failed to carry them out, amounting to an “obstruction of justice” that hampered the murder investigation. Much later, Biloxi Director of Public Safety George Saxon stated that the assignment Agent Hignight supposedly accepted, then failed to carry out, was to go to Angola to talk to Kirksey Nix. In fact, other agents in the FBI were already fumbling an investigation of the Nix prison scams by then, making a trip by Hignight unnecessary. In any case, Biloxi Police Department detectives ultimately took the trip to the Tunica Hills themselves—after which they promptly and inexplicably dropped any thought of linking Nix and the scams to the Sherry murders. Saxon eventually admitted that decision could not be blamed on Hignight or the FBI—in other words, there had been no “obstruction of justice.”
Blessey’s complaint made a brief stir in the Mississippi press, but nothing more. The FBI shrugged off the letter and continued its investigations of Biloxi city government. A spokesman for the FBI explained that, contrary to Blessey’s assertions, FBI agents never joined the Sherry task force because murder is a state crime, outside the jurisdiction of federal agencies. Judge Sessions never responded to the letter.
6. At Sheri’s request, the author has agreed to withhold her full name. She is fearful about becoming a target, and about going public with her professed psychic abilities.
7. From the author’s interviews with Lynne Sposito and “Sheri.”
8. Ibid.
1. From the author’s interviews with LaRa Sharpe, her attorney Arthur Carlisle, and Lynne Sposito, who received a report from Armistead on his conversation with LaRa.
2. From the author’s interviews with Michael J. Lofton, Biloxi Police Detective Gerald Forbes, and Harrison County Sheriff’s Captain Randy Cook, as they recounted what Lofton said during his police interview. The author did not have access to the actual report or transcript of that interview.
3. The preceding quotations and paraphrases from LaRa’s interview with the Biloxi police on March 8, 1989, are drawn from a transcript of the tape-recorded portion of the interview, captioned Case No. 87-30529. The tape covers about one hour and fifteen minutes of the interview, and therefore is not a complete representation of the three hours of discussion between LaRa and the police that day. In an interview with the author, LaRa’s attorney, Arthur Carlisle, confirmed that the transcript reflects the major points raised in the interview. LaRa, however, claimed in an interview that the police threatened her and told her she was a suspect in the murder during portions of the interview not tape-recorded. She said she left the meeting terrified and frightened for her life, although the conclusion of the tape—which coincides with LaRa’s departure from the meeting—does not reflect this.
4. This description of Mike Gillich’s visit is based upon Beau Ann Williams’s sworn testimony before a federal grand jury in Jackson, Mississippi, on August 20, 1990, and on a report on an interview with her written by Harrison County Sheriff’s Captain Randy Cook, dated July 2, 1990. In subsequent testimony and in an interview with the author, however, Williams seemed to back off her earlier account, saying Gillich was merely acting as Nix’s friend, wanting to let him know that he was under investigation, and that he in no way intimated to her that he might be involved in criminal activity. Although her grand jury testimony cast doubt on Nix, Williams later told the author that she believes her cousin to be innocent of any involvement in the Sherry murders, and she criticized the grand jury process for forcing her to say negative things about Nix without allowing her to discuss any positives.
5. From the testimony of Robert V. Richardson, former security guard at the Ramada Inn in Biloxi, called as a witness in U.S. v. Nix, et al.
6. From the grand jury testimony of Beau Ann Williams.
7. From the author’s interviews with Lynne Sposito and Bobby Joe Fabian.
1. From the author’s interviews with Lynne Sposito and Becky Field, as well as “Sheri,” whose journals indicate she “received” names “that sounded like” John Rathman and Hicks in October 1988. Notes written by Becky Field that same month corroborate Sheri on the timing. This was long before Ransom’s name had ever surfaced in the case, and long before Nix’s name had been mentioned in any press coverage related to the murders. There is no evidence that Sheri used any inside information or other trickery. Rex Armistead’s initial reaction was, “What’s her connection to the case?” None was found. She has never sought compensation or publicity of any kind. Thus there is no apparent motive for her to have contacted Lynne, other than a desire to help with the investigation. It should be noted that Sheri’s psychic abilities, if they exist, have never been tested scientifically, and her contribution to the investigation remains little more than a curiosity, if a dramatic one. However, at least one investigator involved in the Sherry murder investigation has consulted with her repeatedly and confidentially.
2. A few months after this meeting, before he ever got a chance to see an end to the investigation’s new direction, Mike Meaut slumped to the floor in midsentence while talking to a fellow officer outside the county courthouse’s grand jury room. He died at age forty-two of heart failure.
3. The preceding account of Fabian’s statement is drawn from a document entitled “Statement Under Oath of Bobby Joe Fabian,” dated May 19, 1989, from the files of the Harrison County Sheriff’s Department. Pete Halat has vigorously denied attending such a meeting at Angola, and points to prison visitor logs to support this. He has denied any role in the murder of the Sherrys, and he has denied knowingly aiding Nix’s scams.
1. The preceding account of Fabian’s second interrogation is drawn from a document entitled “Statement Under Oath of Bobby Joe Fabian,” dated June 21, 1989, from the files of the Harrison County Sheriff’s Department, and all quotations represent verbatim extracts. Additional information was provided by Harrison County Sheriff’s Captain Randy Cook, in interviews with the author.
2. With news breaking about the long-stalled investigation of his best friend’s murder, Mayor Halat would have seemed a likely source for the media to seek out for comment. Oddly, though, the flood of stories detailing breaks in the Sherry case contained not a single quote from the new mayor. His new police chief, however, complained bitterly in one story about being left in the dark about the investigation’s new course.
3. Immediately after the broadcast of Fabian’s interview, Halat said at his press conference, he had ordered his newly appointed chief of detectives, Kevin Ladnier, to call Angola and to ask if they had any record of him visiting in March 1987. The answer, Halat announced at the press conference, had been no.
Halat also informed the press corps that he had ordered his own Biloxi Police Department to resume investigating the Sherry murders, so that “the truth” could be brought out. Potential conflicts of interest notwithstanding, they had retrieved the department’s files from the district attorney and were busily at work, Halat said. Records and interviews by the author suggest that this investigation was more concerned with absolving the mayor than with solving the murder, with Chief of Detectives Ladnier driving to Angola, then faxing pages from the visitor logs back to Biloxi for distribution to reporters.
1. Although he initially told Cook that his encounter with Ransom occurred anywhere from one day to two weeks before the murders, Leger’s recollection on this point has varied. He told his friend Betsy Walker in 1988—when his memory presumably was fresher—that he saw the gaunt man ten days to two weeks before the murders. Later, he testified that the range was one to two weeks, and that he was certain it occurred after Labor Day 1987. Labor Day fell on September 7 that year. The murders were discovered on September 16.
2. Attorney Betsy Walker, in sworn testimony, confirmed Leger’s story, saying he first mentioned the dreams in 1988, and described a man who fit Ransom’s description. Neither Leger nor Walker associated the recollection with the murders of Vince and Margaret at that time. Leger said he saw no need to report the matter to the authorities before seeing Ransom on the news broadcast.
3. The account of the Ransom encounter and ensuing dreams is drawn from the transcript of a tape-recorded sworn statement of Charles Patrick Leger, taken August 9, 1989, by Sheriff’s Captain Randy Cook and District Attorney’s Investigator Hayward Hargrove, and from the federal grand jury testimony given by Leger on September 12, 1989, in Jackson, Mississippi.
4. From Leger’s August 9, 1989, sworn statement and September 12, 1989, grand jury testimony.
5. Ibid. LaRa’s truthfulness was a key issue. Her only obligations under her immunity agreement were that she cooperate with investigators, and that she tell the truth. Lying could provide grounds for prosecutors to revoke her immunity and to file charges against her.
6. Halat told police on the day the bodies were discovered that he personally tried the door, and that no one went inside the house with him—which might explain why the initial investigation bypassed Leger. The Sherry children later recalled Halat saying his elbow pushed the door open inadvertently. In any case, though Halat did tell the police Leger drove to the house with him that day, his taped statement to detectives did not mention many of the details Leger offered.
7. The account of the discovery of the bodies—and Leger’s opinions on Halat—are drawn from Leger’s statement to Cook and his grand jury testimony. Since then, Leger has been inconsistent in his opinions about Halat, at times expressing doubts, then later saying he believed in Pete’s innocence.
A report on a November 13, 1990, interview of Leger by FBI Special Agent Keith Bell states that, because of Halat’s declaration about Margaret being dead, “Leger believes Halat knew before arriving at the residence that Vince and Margaret Sherry had been murdered. . . . Leger stated that, looking back on the series of events surrounding Leger’s contacts and observations of Halat since September 1987, it appears Halat has considerable more knowledge concerning the murders of Vince and Margaret Sherry than he has apparently yet shared with investigating authorities.”
In subsequent testimony a year later, in U.S. v. Nix, Gillich, Sharpe and Ransom, however, Leger’s account seemed to differ subtly, becoming more favorable to Halat. In recounting the morning the bodies were found, for example, Leger omitted mentioning Halat’s declaration about Margaret being dead, and prosecutors neglected to clarify the point. In a 1993 interview with the author, Leger said he did not believe Halat was “acting” on the day the bodies were found. He said he felt confident Halat had no involvement in the Sherry murders. He remained adamant, however, about seeing Ransom outside the law office.
1. This account of Hallal’s initial statement to the investigators drawn from an FBI report on an interview with Robert Michael Hallal dated October 7, 1989, File JN166-17725; the FBI interview of Hallal dated October 6, 1989, by Agent Keith Bell; a transcript of Hallal’s sworn testimony before a federal grand jury in Jackson on October 18, 1989; and the author’s interview with Captain Randy Cook.
2. From the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office report dated November 1, 1989, by Captain Randy Cook, and the author’s interview with Cook.
3. From the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office report on an interview with Alice Powers dated May 5, 1990.
4. From police interviews and the testimony of Robert Wright. Both LaRa and her mother, Juanda Jones, eventually denied this gun allegation, though they admitted the mysterious meeting in Jackson with Ransom had taken place. LaRa claimed she made that long drive through the night with her two young girls in the car to meet with Ransom to pick up some jewelry.
5. From the author’s interview with Randy Cook and his written report on conversations with Hallal’s ex-wife, Pat.
6. Much later in the investigation, Hallal changed his story numerous times, providing details that could not be corroborated, badly damaging his credibility and providing a means for defense attorneys to attack his testimony. One of the greatest problems he created for himself lay in subsequent retellings, where he swore he phoned Gillich before visiting him. In his first interview with Cook and Bell, Hallal never mentioned calling Gillich and said that the first time they spoke was at the Golden Nugget, in person. Later, though, he changed that story, insisting that he called Mr. Mike at Nix’s direction. He even switched his story about the Jimmy James code name, saying Gillich told him to use it during this phone conversation, not Nix. Defense lawyers later pointed out that the phone bills from the Powers home in Leesville showed all sorts of long-distance calls by Hallal, none of them to Gillich, proving Hallal had lied. The defense lawyers tried to make this a pivotal point, but it remains unclear just what it proves. An examination of Hallal’s grand jury testimony, in which he first mentioned the supposed phone call to Gillich, reveals that Hallal said only that he called Gillich from Leesville. He never actually said he used the Powers telephone to make that call. If he had used a pay phone, or if the call was a three-way—both techniques commonly used by the scam crews—there would be no record of a call to Gillich.
7. From the February 1, 1990, Harrison County Sheriff’s Office report on an interview with William O’Neal Rhodes; the May 18, 1990, FBI report on an interview with Rhodes, File No. 166C-JN-17725; and from the sworn testimony of Rhodes in U.S. vs. Nix, Gillich, Ransom and Sharpe, Criminal Case No. S91-00040, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi. Rhodes recalls the conversation took place in mid- to late March 1987, predating the Sherrys’ comments about threats.
8. Indeed, the fact that law enforcement had known for years about the scam that ultimately led to the Sherrys’ death, yet failed to shut it down, was intensely embarrassing, and the FBI and other agencies involved had scrupulously avoided mentioning it to the press. An argument could be made that shutting down the scam when it was first discovered in 1984 could have prevented the murders.
1. The account of this conversation is based primarily on the recollections of Lynne Sposito. In an interview with the author, Cono Caranna recalled having such a general discussion with Sposito, but he could not recall the details. He did not dispute Sposito’s account, and he made similar observations about the Sherrys and the case to the author.
2. As district attorney for Harrison County, Caranna’s job was to prosecute violations of Mississippi law. As in every state, the crime of murder falls strictly under state laws—except when it involves federal officials and a few other special circumstances, there is no federal crime of murder. Therefore, if Cook and Bell gathered sufficient evidence to prove who murdered Vincent and Margaret Sherry, only the D.A. could prosecute.
The investigation, however, was being directed by the U.S. Attorney, whose authority lay under federal law and who had a powerful grand jury system at his disposal that district attorneys in Mississippi lack. The only prerequisite for federal intervention was that the crime crossed state lines, which both the scam and the murder plots did, allowing federal conspiracy charges, which carried potentially severe penalties.
With ample evidence of multiple conspiracies but little to prove who physically entered the Sherrys’ house and shot them, Cook’s and Bell’s first priority became putting together a workable federal case. But their hope, like Lynne’s, was to find evidence for a state murder charge, the only venue in which the killers could face a capital murder charge and a possible death sentence.
3. From the author’s interviews with Kent McDaniel and Lynne Sposito.
1. From the sworn testimony of William Forehand before a federal grand jury in Jackson, Mississippi, May 20, 1990.
2. From the sworn testimony of Beau Ann Williams before a federal grand jury in Jackson, Mississippi, on August 20, 1990, and the original notes from Sheriff’s Captain Randy Cook’s interview with Williams that same month. In subsequent testimony and in an interview with the author, Williams revised her version of events, placing a far less damaging interpretation on Nix’s and Gillich’s words and actions, although the basic account remained the same. She did, however, express the belief that the phone call from Nix had been on September 18, 1987, two days after the bodies were found—contrary to her grand jury testimony. In the author’s interview, Williams harshly criticized the government’s conduct in the case and said she believed her cousin to be innocent.
3. From the sworn testimony of Arthur Mitchell before a federal grand jury in Jackson, Mississippi, on November 15, 1990, and from his statements to investigators on November 16, 1990. Pete Halat has repeatedly denied receiving such large sums of money from Nix, and denies knowing anything about Nix’s “standing offer” to pay $100,000 to anyone who helps arrange his release. Payments made by Nix to the trust fund maintained by Halat indicate a total of $71,286 sent during a three-and-one-half-year period between 1985 and 1988—far less than the quarter of a million dollars Mitchell spoke of. However, Mitchell also made it clear that the money he was speaking of was to be used for influence buying and possibly other illicit purposes—and, presumably, would have been paid “under the table” without being recorded in any official ledger.
Mitchell was unable to put an accurate time reference on when this conversation occurred—only that it came after a scheduled attorney-client meeting with Nix, perhaps in early 1987. The only such visitation by Halat on record at Angola occurred in December 1986. Another visit was scheduled for February 1987, but was canceled at the last minute.
1. An added incentive came in the form of pressure from a long-lost half brother of Eric’s, who wanted to reveal their shared parentage and reunite with Eric—which also would have tipped him off about being adopted.
1. This account of the meeting with John Ransom is based on recollections of Harrison County Sheriff’s Captain Randy Cook, in an interview with the author. Ransom did not respond to requests for an interview made through his attorney, Rex Jones.
2. From police and FBI reports on John Ransom.
3. From a Harrison County Sheriff’s Office report on Ransom’s polygraph test, and the author’s interviews with Randy Cook and Ransom’s attorney in Mississippi, Rex Jones.
4. From the author’s interview with Kent McDaniel.
5. The author verified this information through three independent sources who asked not to be named. Halat, as noted previously, declined to be interviewed. He was specifically asked to comment on the polygraph matter in a certified letter from the author. He never responded.
1. From the author’s interview with Assistant U.S. Attorney James Tucker and other prosecutors in his office involved with the case.
2. Ibid. Normally, evidence of one crime, in this case the prison scams, cannot be used to help prove a separate crime, in this case the Sherry murders. Defense lawyers undoubtedly would argue that the tie between the scam and the murders was too ambiguous. If that argument prevailed, then a judge might rule that the scam evidence, which was strong, would serve only to bias jurors called upon to decide the more iffy evidence in the murder case. Such a ruling would mean Tucker’s indictment would have to be dismissed, and he would have to try to prove a murder case without discussing the Angola prison scams, an impossible task with the evidence in hand.
3. The account of the decisionmaking leading up to the grand jury indictment is based upon the author’s interviews with U.S. Attorney George Phillips, First Assistant Kent McDaniel, Assistant U.S. Attorneys James Tucker and Al Jernigan, and Harrison County Sheriff’s Captain Randy Cook.
4. In interviews with the author, George Phillips and Kent McDaniel said they would have sought an indictment against Halat if they could have proven conclusively he had gone to Angola in March 1987, as Bobby Joe Fabian and one Angola guard claimed, or if documentary evidence showed he personally profited from the scams. But the best evidence available suggested Halat had not gone to Angola to discuss murder in March, and that he had not profited visibly from scams.
1. Nix’s outrage was something of a pretense. A system-savvy jailhouse lawyer, he already knew the answer to his question: Prosecutors rarely polygraph their own witnesses, for the same reasons the tests cannot be admitted in court. Medical conditions, nervousness, a shading of truth rather than an outright lie, a host of mental states other than lying—all can influence the test, impairing its reliability. There also are some techniques for supposedly beating the test, as well as the fear that a true sociopath could lie with impunity, yet appear truthful—one explanation Randy Cook and Keith Bell offered for Nix’s polygraph results. Finally, though law-enforcement officials are loath to admit it, there is an all-too-cynical bottom line dictating against the widespread use of polygraphs in criminal cases: Once a prosecutor decides he believes a witness and that his or her story is supported by independent evidence, there is no mileage in administering a lie detector test. Passing would only ratify a decision that had already been made. Failure—for whatever reason—could wreck a case.
The problem for the U.S. Attorney in this case was that the office already had used polygraphs to weigh the credibility of LaRa Sharpe, John Ransom, and Pete Halat. Once that door was opened, with potential legal immunity denied to Sharpe and Ransom based on the results, Nix’s argument became more compelling, enabling him to label the government’s position arbitrary and disingenuous.
1. From the author’s interviews with George Phillips, Kent McDaniel, and defense attorneys Rex Jones and Kelly Rayburn.
1. The date of the phone call remained ambiguous throughout the trial. Williams’s analysis on the witness stand of her phone bills remained unclear, even under questioning from both sides, leaving jurors uncertain just when the call had been made, and leaving prosecutors room to argue she had been right in her first version. The bills themselves show calls on both days, either of which could have been the one in which the Sherry murders were discussed.
2. From the author’s interview of Lynne Sposito. Beau Ann Williams, in an interview with the author, maintained that she believed in Nix’s innocence, and said the grand jury process had distorted her testimony to make it sound less favorable to Nix than she wanted.
1. The defense attorneys eventually did successfully challenge one key recollection of Hallal’s—that Mike Gillich had a telephone in his office at the Golden Nugget, which Hallal said Gillich used to arrange a drug deal in his presence. Several of Gillich’s employees later swore there was no phone in the office, making the encounter sound like a fabrication by Hallal. The jury never heard it, but this most effective attack on Hallal was itself built on lies. Biloxi Police Detectives Gerald Forbes and Richard O’Bannon could have sworn that they used the phone in Gillich’s office to call their department after busting some of Mr. Mike’s girls on work-card violations. The phone apparently had only recently been removed. The prosecution could have damaged the defense and bolstered Hallal’s credibility with this testimony, but it was never offered.
1. From front-page articles in the Jackson Clarion Ledger and the Biloxi Sun Herald on October 23, 1991.
2. Ossie Brown did not testify at the trial, but he told the grand jury that he did not meet Halat that day. Phone records show that Halat used his calling card to phone his office in Biloxi at 11:01 a.m. from Brown’s office. He said he may have called his office to have his secretary cancel the appointment at Angola. Someone in the law office called the prison and canceled the visit with Nix at 1:23 p.m. Halat testified that he drove directly back to Biloxi, and should have been in his office by then. Prosecutors tried to imply that Halat could have gone on to Angola, but they had no evidence.
1. In interviews with the author, defense attorneys Rex Jones, representing Ransom, and Kelly Rayburn, one of Nix’s attorneys, said they believed the introduction of alternative murder suspects was a strategic error by the defense. Rayburn said he believed they might have had a better chance at winning acquittals if they had presented no defense at all.
2. Despite this suggestion made by the prosecution, investigators do not believe Swetman was present at the murders. Subsequently convicted with Nix and Gillich on a drug charge, he was paroled in 1994. Investigators have sought his cooperation in the Sherry case.
3. From the author’s interview with Mike Green.
4. In his testimony, Green paraphrased Margaret Sherry’s remarks. In a subsequent interview with the author, Green provided the more exact quotes reflected here—which, in substance, mirrored his original testimony.
1. From the author’s interviews with Kent McDaniel, George Phillips, and Al Jernigan, and the Biloxi Sun Herald, November 13, 1991.
2. From the Biloxi Sun Herald, November 12, 1991.
1. From the author’s interview with George Phillips.
1. U.S. Supreme Court Case No. 99-1511, Halat v. United States of America, “Brief for the United States in Opposition,” May 2000.