″The government’s indictment is not worth the paper it’s written on.″
″The government’s been on a wild goose chase,″ attorney Jim Rose, who represents Nix, said in his opening statement. Once relationships developed through the mail and by telephone, they were asked to send money.įabian also claimed Sherry was killed because inmates believed he skimmed $400,000 from the enterprise.ĭefense attorneys, who begin calling witnesses this week, say prosecutors desperate to solve the slayings charged the wrong people. Men who replied to the ads, thinking they were contacting potential lovers, were sent photos of attractive men. That’s when a state prison inmate, Bobby Joe Fabian, testified before a federal grand jury that he and fellow inmates bilked homosexuals by advertising for pen pals in gay magazines. The case had frustrated investigators until two years ago. Sharpe is charged with conspiracy and wire fraud. Gillich, Ransom and Nix are charged with interstate commerce, murder for hire, conspiracy, wire fraud and aiding and abetting. Gillich, 61, is the well-connected owner of striptease joints on the Gulf Coast and a longtime friend of Halat’s. Sharpe, 36, who once worked in Sherry’s law office, pleaded guilty last year to theft in connection with the scam. He appears frail and often dozes during testimony. Ransom, 64, also a reputed Dixie Mafia member, is serving a 12-year sentence for manslaughter at a Hardwick, Ga., prison. A career criminal arrested 20 times by age 40, the younger Nix is a reputed leader of the Southern underworld known as the Dixie Mafia. Nix, 48, whose father and namesake was a chief judge of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, is serving life without parole for the 1971 murder of a New Orleans grocer. ″Neither the federal government or the state government or any court in this land will be able to prove the premise upon which the prosecution is based in Hattiesburg,″ Halat has said. Halat denies any criminal involvement and says the case is flimsy, based on the lies of a convicted killer. The visits were halted when she was caught with a photograph of a young man, a tool prosecutors said was used to lure homosexuals into the scam. Halat represented Nix for about 10 years, and gave Sharpe paralegal credentials so she could visit Nix in prison. He has been called for questioning by the prosecution and defense. 22-caliber pistol, authorities said.īiloxi Mayor Pete Halat, at onetime Sherry’s law partner, has been linked to all the defendants, mainly through telephone records, and has been mentioned throughout the trial. Sherry was shot four times in the head by the same. The judge was shot three times in the face. If convicted, the four defendants could face up to 30 years in prison and fines exceeding $1 million.
The indictments don’t deal with the death of Sherry’s wife, former Biloxi Council member Margaret Sherry. The four are charged with conspiring to cheat homosexual men of up to $1 million and plotting to kill Harrison County Circuit Judge Vincent Sherry over missing profits in the pen pal scheme. and John Ransom, an aging Georgia prison inmate.
HANDSOME GAY MEN JAIL FOR PEN PALS TRIAL
They have come to see the trial of Kirksey McCord Nix Jr., a convicted killer his former girlfriend Sheri LaRa Sharpe of St. That’s only part of the sordid story unfolding in a trial of a woman and three men, including the owner of Gulf Coast strip joints and a judge’s son turned career criminal, accused in an alleged murder plot and a scam that also implicates the mayor of Biloxi.įor three weeks, spectators have packed the courtroom of U.S. (AP) _ Vincent Sherry and his wife were shot in cold blood after prisoners heard the state judge skimmed money from a scheme in which inmates bilked their homosexual pen pals, federal prosecutors say.