Mississippi Mud: Southern Justice and the Dixie Mafia [Mass Market Paperback]

Edward Humes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1995

On a quiet September afternoon, Lynne Sposito learned that her parents, Vincent and Margaret Sherry, had been shot to death in their Biloxi, Mississippi, home. One of the city's most prominent couples -- he served as Circuit Court judge and she was runnng for mayor -- the Sherry's were mourned by a community. But for a stunned and grieving daughter, the nightmare was hust beginning.

Racing to Biloxi for answers, Lynne found the police investigation in chaos. The only sure lead was that the Sherry's murder somehow was connected to the Dixie Mafia, a predatory band of criminals who ran Biloxi's beachfront hub of sex, drugs, and sleaze known as The Strip. Lynne, armed with a savvy private eye -- and a .357 Magnum -- set out to accomplish what the authorities could not or would not do: hunt down her parents' assassins and bring them to justice.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Edward Humes delivers a shocking and bizarre tale set against a teeming underworld of merciless killers, ruthless con men, and venal politicians. Mississippi Mud portrays how one woman's steely obsession for the truth shook a city to its foundation -- and nearly destroyed everything she loved.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Biloxi, Mississippi, has a "strip" of nightclubs and casinos where prostitution, drugs, and crooked gambling flourish unchecked. An older couple who thought they were retiring to a quiet seaside town got too deeply involved with local politics and the Dixie Mafia and were murdered. The investigation would've sunk beneath the muddy swirl of graft and business as usual but for the tenacious efforts of the victims' daughter. Despite death threats and indifferent law enforcement officials, she hired a private detective and swore to do whatever it took to bring her parents' killers to trial. Horror/suspense writer Peter Straubfinds the story reminiscent of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen: "Like those writers, Edward Humes can make the wild, amoral, scheming sleazoids he parades before our eyes all but sing and dance on the page. Here is America, fat and happy, both hands crammed into the till." Mississippi Mud was a 1995 finalist for the Edgar Award in Fact Crime.

From Publishers Weekly

Vincent Sherry, a circuit court judge in Biloxi, and his wife, Margaret, city council member and a reform mayoral candidate, were fatally shot at their Mississippi home in 1987. The eldest of their four children, Lynne Sposito, hired a private detective. Biloxi had a history as a sin city; some of its cops were corrupt, while others were barely competent, and the police tried to implicate the Sherrys' adopted son in the murder. The individual perceived by Sposito to be most likely to suffer from a reform administration was Mike Gillich, who owned a number of strip joints in Biloxi; he was connected to con man Kirksey Nix, who was subsequently convicted of murder in Louisiana and given a life sentence. Nix's longtime lawyer was Vincent Sherry's law partner, Pete Halat, who may or may not have profited from Nix's many scams. Four years after the slayings, Gillich, Nix and two others were found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Sherrys' murder and given long prison terms. But questions remain, notes the author: "No one has been charged with the actual killings." Humes ( Buried Secrets ) has written an exceptionally fine depiction of a multifaceted case. Photos.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Pocket (December 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671535056
• ISBN-13: 978-0671535056
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #361,585 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

QUICK STORY: A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, Edward Humes' latest book is FORCE OF NATURE: The Unlikely Story of Wal-Mart's Green Revolution (Harper Collins, May 2011). His other books include the PEN Award-winning NO MATTER HOW LOUD I SHOUT: A Year In the Life of Juvenile Court, the bestseller MISSISSIPPI MUD, and MONKEY GIRL: Evolution, Education, Religion and the Battle for America's Soul, now under development at HBO.

BACK STORY: When I was six I decided I wanted to be a writer, and I've been at it ever since. I started my writing career in newspapers, and I think I probably would have paid them, instead of the other way around, for the thrill of seeing my first byline in print. As a newspaper reporter, I gravitated toward stories that allowed me to dig behind the scenes and beneath the surface, looking for questions others hadn't asked or imagined. For me, the job amounted to this: license to find out the things I had always wanted to know, about anything and everything that interested, touched or outraged me. Then, within the space and time limitations of a daily newspaper, I had the chance to mold it all into a story to pass onto others. I loved that work.

When I left newspapers to write nonfiction books, I suddenly had weeks or months, rather than hours or days, to immerse myself in the inner workings of the places, characters and events I seek to understand and write about. I had found the greatest job I can imagine.

In my books, I try to take readers inside worlds most don't get to visit or see close up on their own. My first stories were about crime -- real-life murder mysteries-- and I still enjoy reading and writing true crime. But I've pursued broader and more varied narratives in my more recent books. I've written about the nation's crumbling juvenile justice system, the California high school that went from worst to best in the state, the harrowing but surprisingly humane world of a neonatal intensive care unit, the front lines of a modern-day Scopes Monkey Trial, a Gulf Coast murder mystery solved by the victims' own daughter.

Lately - in ECO BARONS and my next book, FORCE OF NATURE (due out in spring 2011) - I've focused on narratives about the environment and sustainability. I believe this to be the most important story of our age - for ourselves, and for our children.

OTHER WRITING: I've written for numerous publications, including Los Angeles Magazine, Sierra Magazine, Readers Digest, California Lawyer, the Oxford American, the Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times. I have taught writing and journalism at the University of California, Irvine, Chapman University, and the University of Oregon.

SPEAKING: I enjoy speaking about my work, and have been invited to address a wide range of groups and organizations:the National Education Summit, the National Steinbeck Center, the ALOUD series, the National Association of District Attorneys, the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, the National Association of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, the Dole Center for Politics, the National High School Journalism Conference, the National College Newspaper Convention, the National Association of Teachers of English, the California Department of Corrections, the California Appellate Project, the American Psychology and Law Society, the Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Poynter Institute, the Crichton Club and numerous universities and other schools. I was called to testify about my reporting on juvenile court before the U.S. Senate and a joint session of the California Senate and Assembly. I've had the pleasure of delivering a commencement address at Hampshire College in Amherst, my alma mater, and have enjoyed speaking at venues throughout California as a contributing writer to MY CALIFORNIA, an anthology from which all proceeds were donated to the California Arts Council to support arts and writing programs for the state's school children. I served as a Regents Lecturer at the University of California, Irvine, and taught writing workshops at the University of Oregon graduate program in literary nonfiction.

HONORS: I received a Pulitzer Prize for my newspaper coverage of the military, a PEN Center USA award for NO MATTER HOW LOUD I SHOUT, a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism for "The Forgotten," my LA Magazine account of life inside Los Angeles's nightmarish home for neglected children, and a Silver Gavel honor for MONKEY GIRL. The Washington Post named SCHOOL OF DREAMS a best book of 2003; the Los Angeles Times named MEAN JUSTICE a best book of 1999.

BORN: Philadelphia.

EDUCATION: Hampshire College, Amherst, Mass.

CURRENT WHEREABOUTS: Southern California

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredibly accurate: I know, I lived it!, October 17, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Mississippi Mud: Southern Justice and the Dixie Mafia (Mass Market Paperback)

On September 16th of 1987, the world as I knew it changed. My brother Eric called to inform me he had received a call from a woman in Biloxi who had heard on the news that our parents were dead. Nothing could have prepared me for the next ten years. I shared information with the author of this book from documentation, not imagination, in an effort to not allow the case to be as buried as were my parents... after all, at some point I will see them again. I could never look them in the eye and tell them I loved them and not have done everything possible to bring their killers to justice. I can assure you every tear I shed in reading this, attests to its accuracy in capturing both the event and the emotion.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Life & Death on The Strip, December 16, 2001

By 

Gary F. Taylor "GFT" (Biloxi, MS USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mississippi Mud: Southern Justice and the Dixie Mafia (Mass Market Paperback)

At the time I first read Hume's Mississippi Mud I worked in downtown Biloxi, and I found the book so powerfully evocative that each time I passed City Hall I caught myself shuddering.

Superior to the more famous MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL, Humes' MISSISSIPPI MUD paints a portrait of an infamous lonelyhearts scam being run out of notorious Angola prison by a member of Mississippi's good-old-boy crime ring--a scam that ultimately involves a sitting Judge, Vincent Sherry, his mayorial candidate wife, Magaret, and a law partner who has political aspirations of his own, Pete Halat. And the involvement quickly spirals into a double murder that would haunt the city and the entire region for years to come.

The story is extremely convoluted, but Humes tells it with disturbing clarity and in the process captures the atmosphere of a city with a long history of political corruption and social hypocrisy, where strip joints and churches and slums and great mansions co-exist cheek-to-cheek. In some respects the book does a disservice to the respectable citizens of the city, tarring them with the same brush as it does the criminal element, but there is no denying the power of this pitch-black story of life and death on the Biloxi strip, and Humes' book accurately follows the news updates on the case as they so slowly unfolded on the Mississippi gulf coast, as well as drawing material from those most intimately involved in the investigation. In the same league as Capote's IN COLD BLOOD and Alexander's NUTCRACKER, those who read Hume's MISSISSIPPI MUD will find themselves in for a well-documented, increasingly disturbing, chilling, and fascinating time.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dixie, dirt and a determined daughter., February 1, 2003

By 

Themis-Athena (from somewhere between California and Germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mississippi Mud: Southern Justice and the Dixie Mafia (Mass Market Paperback)

"Mississippi Mud" is, as author Edward Humes's introductory words explain, the name of that particular kind of poker where the cards themselves become irrelevant and the only thing that really counts is the ability to bluff and betray. It is also the name of a sweet, rich pie made from chocolate, eggs, sugar, vanilla and corn syrup (and according to some recipes, vanilla ice cream and/or whipped cream). In this book, "Mississippi Mud" is Humes's term of reference for the loosely organized group of people otherwise known as the "Dixie Mafia," whose members not so long ago used to leave traces of their unsavory plots all over the "Old South," from Louisiana to Texas and beyond. And one day in September 1987, their activities hit home in the Gulf Coast resort city of Biloxi, Mississippi.

Not that this should necessarily have come as a complete surprise, you will say, if you've heard the gossip about the city's one-time notoriety, if you know some of the historic facts that have contributed to those rumors (such as early 18th century con artist John Law's get-rich-quick scheme which crushed the hopes of thousands of European settlers, or the exploits of James Copeland, arguably the "Dixie Mafia"'s 19th century forefather), or if you have made it all the way through this book's first third to read Humes's account of Biloxi's past. And of course, from New York to Atlantic City, Chicago, Las Vegas, Palermo, Corleone, Moscow, Hong Kong and Macau, there are plenty of cities large and small all over the world that have at one time or another seen their share of mafia, mob and triad activity; and gambling, illegal liquor and sex schemes often, although not necessarily, have something to do with it. More than once, those who have made it their business to rake out the mud get bogged down by it and die, instead of bringing the perpetrators to justice thus adding to the list of casualties in the seemingly never ending war against organized crime. And all too often the culprits get away with murder: literally so.

Well, not here, however, and that is the difference in this story - or one of them, anyway. Granted, the "Dixie Mafia" may not have been as intricately organized as the Chinese triads, any of their Italian and Russian counterparts or the organizations run by the likes of Al Capone, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, Salvatore "Lucky" Luciano and John Gotti; but Humes's account of a city government and a police force partly unwilling and partly too incompetent to mount a proper investigation into the murder of an outspoken critic of official corruption and of her husband, a prominent judge, sounds eerily familiar; and so does the involvement of a contender for public office with a group of notorious criminals running a scam out of a supposedly high security prison, with little to no interference from prison officials, and with a shadowy organizer pulling his strings in the background. The odds of successfully pitting a sole determined woman - the victims' eldest daughter - and her dogged investigator against the combined forces of political clout, an endless supply of seedy money, utter ruthlessness and sheer police incompetence were slim to none. Yet, Lynne Sposito persevered, and after ten years, finally got justice for her murdered parents.

Edward Humes tells the story of Sposito's quest with a journalist's detachment; in a chilling matter-of-fact style and with an excellent eye for detail. He does not fall into the trap of glorifying the victims; both Vincent and Margaret Sherry were far from perfect, and the reader learns about their flaws and personal pitfalls as well as their strengths and, in particular, Margaret Sherry's undying commitment to rooting out corruption in Biloxi. Nor does Humes unduly vilify those involved in the conspiracy (although given their colorful personal and criminal histories and their various roles in the conspiracy to kill the Sherrys, any further vilification would have been unnecessary anyway and would actually have taken away a lot of the narrative's effectiveness). Equally unsettling as "In Cold Blood," to this day the benchmark of all true crime literature, although less literary in its description than Truman Capote's account or, for that matter, John Behrendt's famous "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," Humes's "Mississippi Mud" unravels the web of corruption and crime in which much (although undoubtedly not all) of Biloxi's society once used to be caught. And although the consequences of the events related here won't be as terminal for any of the conspirators as they are for Lynne Sposito and her parents, Mrs. Sposito can now at last, as Humes quotes her at the end of the book's paperback edition (which updates the narrative's conclusion vis-a-vis the earlier hardcover version), "get a good night's sleep" again - thus eerily echoing the sentiment expressed in Eliot Ness's (Kevin Costner's) final comment in Brian de Palma's "The Untouchables," who, when asked by a reporter what he will do after prohibition has been lifted, drily responds: "I'm going to have a drink."

Also recommended:
Mean Justice
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
In Cold Blood
The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast