Dixie Mafia kingpin who ordered Biloxi judge, wife killed wants out of prison. Here’s why

The Dixie Mafia kingpin who orchestrated the murders of a prominent Biloxi couple over 36 years ago is asking for compassionate release from federal prison.

Kirksey McCord Nix Jr. was a 44-year-old inmate serving life without parole at Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana when he ordered the murders of Mississippi Coast Circuit Court Judge Vincent Sherry and his wife, Margaret, a former Biloxi councilwoman with mayoral aspirations.

The Sherrys were each 58 years old when a professional hitman knocked on the door of their brick ranch house in North Biloxi, shot Vincent Sherry dead in their den and killed Margaret Sherry in their bedroom as she got ready for bed on September 14, 1987.

Today, 80-year-old Nix says in federal court filings that he is suffering from congestive heart failure, high-blood-pressure, diabetes, sleep apnea, a severe infection in his left leg, and knee and back problems that have left him in a wheelchair. He wants to live out his final days a free man under the care of relatives.

The city has never forgotten the shocking murders that Nix masterminded, or the investigation that played out for more than 10 years before all the conspirators were convicted, including a former Biloxi mayor.

Nix filed his own motion for release, first reported by Jackson Jambalaya. He says the federal Bureau of Prisons is paying another inmate to wheel him around the prison. He eats, bathes and uses the toilet only with the assistance of paid and unpaid inmates who help him, he says.

He also says the doctor who treated him for 20 years at an Oklahoma medium-security prison has retired without an on-site replacement.

“Defendant’s ability to care for himself diminishes further and further each day,” Nix’s motion says.

He called his request for release, “the final chapter of what the Honorable U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett characterized as ‘the sordid tale of Kirksey McCord Nix.’ “

As the judge who inherited the case, Starrett will decide whether Nix should be released.

Kirksey Nix named as Dixie Mafia

Nix, the son of an Oklahoma appellate court judge, has spent most of his adult life in prison.

Nix was well-known to law enforcement agencies before he was imprisoned. They had identified him as a member of the Dixie Mafia, a band of loosely organized criminals who worked together across the southeast, including in Biloxi.

The Sherrys were not his first murder victims. By 1972, Nix was serving life without parole at Angola, one of the most notorious state prisons in the country, for the murder of New Orleans grocer Frank Corso during a home invasion.

He has long been suspected of ambushing “Walking Tall” Sheriff Buford Pusser and his wife Pauline in 1967 on a back road in McNairy County, Tennessee.

Pusser had the lower part of his face shot off but survived. The barrage of gunfire instantly killed Pauline Pusser. Nobody was ever charged in the crime, but author W.R. Morris said Pusser believed the Dixie Mafia planned the murders and Nix was one of the hitmen.

The late 1980s plot to kill the Sherrys was detailed during two federal murder-conspiracy trials. Although local and federal law enforcement officers investigated the case, FBI Special Agent Keith Bell, now retired, saw it through from beginning to end.

At Angola, Nix was trying to buy himself a pardon. He was amassing money through a scam that he ran on lonely homosexuals by pretending to be a young man looking for love. “Eddie,” as he often called himself, just needed money to make his way to these men who responded to his phony ads in gay publications.

Killer’s Biloxi, MS, connection

A Biloxi striptease club owner and Dixie Mafia contact, Mike Gillich Jr., introduced Nix to Biloxi attorney Pete Halat, who set up and managed a trust account for the inmate. When $100,000 went missing, Halat and Gillich convinced Nix that law partner Sherry, by then a judge, had stolen it.

Nix, Gillich and two others were convicted of federal crimes in the Sherry case in 1991. After Gillich turned federal witness under pressure, Halat and the hitman Thomas “The Thumb” Holcomb of Texas, were convicted in a second trial in 1997, as was Nix.

Halat, Vincent Sherry’s best friend, came under suspicion in the case before he was elected mayor in 1989. The public learned shortly after he took office that Nix’s fellow inmate and Dixie Mafia member, Bobby Joe Fabian, had turned on Nix and exposed the murder plot.

Fabian was hoping his cooperation would lead to his early release from prison. He told the Sun Herald in a jailhouse interview in 1990 in the Simpson County jail, where he was being held as a witness in the case, “We gonna get it understood, I’m not doing this to win a citizen of the year award.”

Federal authorities backed Fabian’s request for freedom, but it was not to be. He died at age 67 of liver disease in 2012 at Parchman penitentiary. He had been serving a life sentence in Louisiana for aggravated kidnapping and was serving a life sentence in Mississippi for the contract killing of a wealthy horse breeder.

Gillich lived out his life a free man after early release for his cooperation in the case, while Halat was released after serving an 18-year sentence. Holcomb died in prison.

Is compassionate release warranted?

Nix says a sister and niece, both registered nurses, would look after him in his hometown of Eufaula, Oklahoma.

But the U.S. Attorney’s Office has filed a motion opposing compassionate release for Nix. Federal authorities say Nix is receiving adequate medical care in prison, failed to show he would not pose a safety risk to the public, and should remain in prison out of respect for the law and to deter other crimes.

Near the end of one motion for release, Nix writes: “The defendant is not the same person who stood before this court at sentencing, and he does not pose any type of threat to any individual or society at large.

“The impact of confinement has been one of nightmare proportion. The defendant has had to learn his lesson the hard way, but it is a lasting experience.”

Retired FBI agent speaks out

Retired FBI Special Agent Bell told the Sun Herald that Nix “should never be released from prison.”

Bell said: “He is a habitual criminal who has been involved in serious criminal activities all of his adult life. He was involved in criminal acts when previously free, and he continued his illegal actions even after being incarcerated.

“In one of his last criminal involvements as a free person, he led the Easter Sunday, 1971, home invasion of wealthy businessman Frank Corso in New Orleans, resulting in Corso’s murder. After Nix’s conviction and incarceration at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, for that crime, he eventually coordinated the so-called homosexual scams for years, from inside Angola, resulting in the loss of likely millions of dollars from innocent victims across the United States and Canada.

“Then, in September, 1987, while still incarcerated at Angola, he directed the conspiracy resulting in the contract murders of state Circuit Judge Vincent Sherry, and his wife Margaret in Biloxi. His activities, throughout his life of crime, have ended the lives of innocent victims, and destroyed the carefree lives of multiple families, for which, in my opinion, he should not be rewarded.”