(1, 2) Margaret and Vince Sherry, one of Biloxi’s most prominent and politically active couples, in 1986, one year before they were assassinated in their home.
(1, 2) Margaret and Vince Sherry, one of Biloxi’s most prominent and politically active couples, in 1986, one year before they were assassinated in their home.
(5) As the twin coffins of Vincent and Margaret Sherry lay ready for burial, the police probe of their murders had already faltered—prompting daughter Lynne Sposito to act on her own.
(6) Lynne Sposito stares at long-stem roses for her parents as her brother, Vincent III, touches his mother’s coffin in a final goodbye.
(10) Lynne and Margaret in the late 1970s, when Margaret first grew obsessed with cleaning up Biloxi’s corruption.
(12) Lynne and Dick Sposito, in the spring of 1987—a few months before the course of their lives would be altered forever by the assassination of Lynne’s parents.
(13) Margaret Sherry with son Eric in 1986. Biloxi police wrongly accused him of the murders, despite evidence showing his innocence.
(14) Left to right, the Sposito children a few months before the murders: Beth, 7, Cathy, 16, Tommy, 12.
(16) Investigators confer on the front lawn of the Sherry home while the murdered couple’s son Eric sits beneath a tree a few hours after the bodies were found, September 16, 1987.
(17) In November 1991, verdicts were reached, the toll showing in Lynne Sposito’s face. “It’s not over yet,” she announced grimly. “When the people responsible . . . are awaiting their own death sentences, then we’re done.”
(19) Gillich’s strip joints were long suspected as havens for crime and vice, but Mr. Mike’s friendly ties to police and politicians helped keep them open.
(20) Mug shot of young Kirksey McCord Nix Jr. as he rose in the ranks of the Dixie Mafia. Two decades later, he would be accused of engineering the Sherry murders.
(21) John Ransom, the Dixie Mafia’s notorious one-legged hit man, in 1970. Nix and Mike Gillich were accused of hiring Ransom to arrange the Sherry murders.
(22) Sandra Rutherford Nix, Nix’s first wife and a partner in crime, died in a car accident shortly before his 1975 life sentence.
(23) Louisiana lifer Bobby Joe Fabian, in an August 1989 interview broadcast throughout Mississippi, accused Vince Sherry’s best friend and law partner, Pete Halat, of participating in the murder plot.
(24) LaRa Sharpe, Kirksey Nix’s paramour, worked out of the Halat & Sherry law office and was a key player in Nix’s massive wire-fraud scheme.
(25) Kellye Dawn Newman Nix, Kirksey’s stepdaughter turned wife, became a crucial witness in the Sherry case.
(26) The Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola in 1975, when Kirksey Nix began serving his life sentence—and engineering the massive and lucrative con games that ended with the Sherry murders.
(27) Biloxi Mayor Pete Halat, flanked by his wife and son, proclaims his innocence after testifying before a federal grand jury. An entire city was paralyzed when its mayor was accused of murder.
(28) Pete Halat became mayor just before allegations tying him to the Sherry murders surfaced. Though unproven, these highly publicized accusations cost him when he sought re-election in 1993.
