Site of Sherry murders to be demolished

BILOXI, Miss. (AP) - Biloxi authorities plan to demolish the house where prominent Circuit Judge Vincent Sherry and his wife were murdered in a conspiracy that involved the Dixie Mafia and a lonely hearts scam for homosexuals.

The Sherrys were slain in 1987, victims of a plot involving a lawyer, a Louisiana prisoner and a seedy strip club owner. The killing drew widespread notoriety.

Nobody has lived in the Sherry home since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The Biloxi City Council voted this past week to advertise for bids to tear down the dilapidated structure.

Royce Hignight, a retired FBI agent who worked on the case, lives nearby.

"I hope this is the final ending to this saga," Hignight told the Sun Herald newspaper in Biloxi.

Reputed Dixie Mafia kingpin Kirksey McCord Nix Jr. was convicted of ordering the murders of Sherry and his wife, Margaret, a former city council member. The Dixie Mafia was a ring of interlocking criminal groups that operated mostly in the South in the 1960s and 1970s. Biloxi was a main base of operations.

Former Biloxi Mayor Pete Halat allegedly told Nix that Sherry, his law partner and friend, stole money from a lonely hearts scam for homosexuals that Nix ran from his Angola, La., prison cell, where he was already serving life without parole for murder. Halat, Nix and four others were convicted on charges related to the killings.

Nix had scammed hundreds of thousands of dollars from lonely homosexuals by running ads in classifieds and posing as a young homosexual prisoner looking for true love and a chance to turn his life around. A mailman is said to have sent him $100,000. A California journalist reportedly wired him $17,000. Nix's friends on the outside picked up the funds at Western Union offices.

Nix wanted to use the money to buy his way out of prison, but Halat allegedly stole it and blamed Vincent Sherry.

Edward Humes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, chronicled the case in his book "Mississippi Mud."