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'via Blog this'excerpt-
— calee@sunherald.com
BILOXI -- The house where a hitman killed them has been torn down, as have the strip clubs where their murders were planned.
Biloxi has changed. The Coast has changed in the 25 years since Circuit Judge Vincent Sherry and his wife, former Councilwoman and mayoral candidate Margaret Sherry, were each shot multiple times in the head in their brick ranch home blocks from the Sunkist Country Club in North Biloxi.
The crime, and investigations that consumed 11 years, are embedded as the final chapter in the Coast's history as a Mecca for Dixie Mafia members drawn by the illegal gambling, drugs and prostitution permitted, and even condoned, by corrupt local law enforcement agencies in Biloxi and Harrison County.
"It was a lawless atmosphere," said Royce Hignight, a retired FBI agent whose investigations of Harrison County corruption began in 1981. He needed a partner, he said, because the criminals were more likely to shoot him if he worked alone. Special Agent Keith Bell was tapped to join him, then headed the Sherry investigation when the FBI officially entered the case in 1989.
The FBI noted the 25th anniversary of the Sherry murders with a story on its
website that quoted Bell, who grew up on the Coast: "It meant a lot to me to return to my home and do something about the corruption that had worked its way into government and law enforcement there … the majority of citizens realized that if the FBI had not stepped in, the lawlessness and corruption would likely have continued unabated."
Dixie Mafia
By the time the Sherrys were murdered, a corrupt Harrison County sheriff, Leroy Hobbs, had been imprisoned as a result of the FBI's work, and most of the striptease clubs in Biloxi and the county closed for repeated violations of vice laws.
Mike Gillich Jr. was the last man standing. He operated three striptease lounges in Biloxi, two of them housed in a large building beside the beach on Biloxi's tourist strip. As it turned out, a corrupt councilman was tipping off Gillich to police undercover operations so he and his strippers could avoid arrest.
A telephone, listed in the councilman's name, sat in a storage room adjoining the clubs. Gillich used the phone to talk with his old friend Kirksey McCord Nix Jr. Nix, a habitué of Coast strip clubs in his younger days, was serving life without parole in Louisiana's Angola prison for murdering a New Orleans grocer.
Law enforcement authorities had identified Nix as a leader of the Dixie Mafia. To this day, they suspect him of at least two murders, one of them committed in Biloxi, with which he was never charged.
Federal authorities came up with the Dixie Mafia moniker to connect and track criminals who worked together throughout the Southeast. The criminals in this loosely organized gang never referred to themselves as the Dixie Mafia and many of them, including Nix, snickered at the suggestion such a group existed.
Hitman hard to find
Gillich played the role of facilitator for his Dixie Mafia friends, maintaining a public façade as a local businessman and generous Catholic. Gillich introduced Nix to Pete Halat, a Biloxi attorney who happened to be Vincent Sherry's law partner.
Nix, as voluminous evidence would later show, sent Halat money the inmate earned through a telephone scam he ran on homosexuals, convincing them he was a handsome young man looking for love. The portly, balding inmate conned men into sending money, promising it would go toward getting him out of various jams so they could be together.
When some of Kirksey Nix's money came up missing, Halat convinced Nix that Sherry, by then a Circuit Court judge, had taken it.
Nix decided Sherry should die. Gillich, who detested Margaret Sherry for her crusade against his strip clubs and vice in general, obliged.
It took him awhile to find a hitman. One candidate, former heroin addict and armed robber Robert Hallal, later testified at one of the Sherry trials he was not interested in the heat he would draw by killing a judge.
Dixie Mafia member and Georgia hitman John Elbert Ransom also considered the job, but backed out after his getaway driver was arrested for bank robbery.
Gillich wound up hiring Thomas Leslie Holcomb out of Texas. Gillich also lined up a car for Holcomb. Ransom supplied the .22-caliber weapon and silencer Holcomb used to kill the Sherrys.
Justice to honor Sherrys
Vincent Sherry, evidence showed, opened the door to Holcomb on a Monday night. Holcomb killed him in the den, then shot Margaret Sherry in the bedroom, where she was getting ready for bed.
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