Update — New Developments since the last edition of Mississippi Mud. But beware of spoilers — DO NOT READ if you have not read the book.

Closing the Book: The Final Chapter

There he is, seated behind the defense table in his shirtsleeves, thinning gray hair plastered in strands over massive head, stolid features as inscrutable and oddly pleasant as ever, part favorite uncle, part thug: The Godfather of Biloxi.

Even during morning recess, with the judge gone to chambers and the gallery filled with the murmur and rustle of spectators released from courtroom decorum, all eyes keep drifting back toward this cipher of a man. For years, his rise, fall and pending resurrection have been the talk of the Gulf Coast, where he is known as the sort of fellow who tips waitresses with Hawaiian vacations one day, then coolly arranges contract murders the next — a career criminal who could count upon the Bishop of Biloxi to sing his praises, yet whose stable of stripper-prostitutes included one young woman kind enough to advise me, “Asking questions about that man’s business is best done by long-distance telephone.” (It’s a warning I remembered vividly the other day when I found “The Funeral March” hummed tunelessly into my answering machine shortly after reserving a room in Biloxi for this hearing.)

The Godfather’s back is to the courtroom, but when he shifts in his chair, you can glimpse his face, worn as an old purse, and you can’t help but try to divine the feelings behind the heavy brow and thick glasses: Could it be true, as his lawyers say, that this crime lord finally feels sorrow for the misery he wrought? After ten long years, has he at last revealed the truth about Mississippi’s most enduring murder mystery, bringing finality to a wounded family and healing to a city divided? Or are his detractors right in claiming the old pirate, far from solving the Sherry Murder Case, has simply pulled his last and best con-job of all?

“I’m going to talk to him,” Lynne Sposito abruptly announces to her sister. And before anyone can say a word, the forty-five-year-old nurse leaves her seat behind the prosecutors to make her way to the other side of the courtroom, the defense side, the side where Mike Gillich, the fallen Godfather of Biloxi, sits. Gillich awaits his fate for the cold-blooded assassination ten years ago of Judge Vincent Sherry and his wife Margaret, Lynne’s parents.

Lynne has sat all morning with her family watching this man who plotted with five others the deaths of her father and mother. She already endured one interminable sentencing hearing a day earlier, an exhausting and acrimonious affair in which Pete Halat played a starring role, bitter and unrepentant to the very end. This is the moment Lynne has lived for. Yet the long-awaited sensation of relief, or at least accomplishment, is eluding her this day. For there is an added twist: The prosecutors do not want to put Mike Gillich away. They are here to ask for his freedom. This Dixie Mafia Don who once ruled Biloxi like an ancient war lord, with a facility for keeping dark secrets and telling cops to shove off, has done the unthinkable: He has confessed to the Sherry murders, then lived to testify against his cronies. And now he wants his pay-off.

As Lynne approaches this man whom she has publicly despised and privately longed to see dead — though they have never spoken in all the many years she has pursued him — the courtroom falls silent. All eyes shift from Gillich to this tall, blonde figure who walks stiffly, uncertainly to the bar, where she looms over the seated defendant. Lynne says nothing for a moment, but Gillich must sense her presence because he suddenly looks up, startled to see her there, his eyes wide behind thick glasses, her face looking eerily like her dead father’s beneath harsh courtroom lights, pale and grim. The marshals standing a few paces away stiffen, unsure of what is about to happen. There have been death threats in this case, and Lynne’s feelings about her parents’ killers are well known. And then, as everyone else seems frozen in place and the scene takes on the aspect of a Renaissance painting, seemingly lit from within while the rest of us swim by greyly in shadow, Lynne’s hand slowly rises from her side, reaching out toward the man who helped destroy her family.

 

Even as this closing chapter took place, the murders of Vincent and Margaret Sherry continued as a watershed for the Gulf Coast, an event whose significance goes far beyond the awful fact that two of Biloxi’s most prominent citizens had been assassinated within the sanctity of their own home. Everyone on the Coast seems to divine a different pattern, a different solution, and a vastly different moral to the story, as if the murders were a particularly messy kind of inkblot test for the community. Even now, with the sphynx-like Mr. Mike finally breaking his silence, with the cases closed and the verdicts in at last, the city of Biloxi remains as divided as ever, segregated into those who believe the questions have been answered, and those who see nothing but lies and government cover-ups. They peer at one another across a chasm of distrust and defiance that simply cannot be bridged by mere jury verdict and judicial edict. Husbands and wives, parents and children, find themselves divided in their opinions. Barmaids wail at the notion of the poor former mayor wrongly imprisoned, while their customers toast his downfall. Shoppers in the mall recall Mike Gillich’s kindness, how he let the Catholic Church hold bingo games in his strip club on Sundays, while an ex-cop talks about how such good works made Gillich virtually immune from prosecution. One passerby calls this book “bitter medicine that Biloxi needs.” Another spits a curse at this author and cackles about the bonfire she stoked with the sixteen copies she purchased.

“Why don’t you just let it rest. Let it die,” one woman implores shortly after the sentencing this fall. “No one wants to hear the truth about this anymore. Now we just want it to go away.” This last is one of the few sentiments most folks in Biloxi seem willing to embrace these days when it comes to the Sherry case: Just let it go away.

 

Mike Gillich turns around in his seat, staring up at the daughter of Vince and Margaret Sherry, looking at the hand Lynne has thrust out at him. Slowly, both his hands come up, enveloping her cold palm in his large, thick fingers, warm and firm, a workingman’s hands, unadorned by jewelry or manicures. At the same time, Lynne speaks, voice halting and husky. She is a strong woman, someone who could unflinchingly view her parents’ autopsy photos and brave death threats to testify before the grand jury, but today she is nervous, clearing her throat just to make herself audible. “I wanted to thank you,” she manages. “Thank you for telling the truth. You were the only one who would. And I just wanted to say thank you.”

She would have turned to go then, to flee back to her seat, but Gillich will not release her hand. He grips her as if clutching a life-preserver. The look of stoicism he wore in court on previous occasions — an impenetrable and intimidating poker face, a stare not easily met — slips away, his lips curling down and his eyes suddenly streaming tears. His face crumples into something formless and wounded, as everyone else in the courtroom looks in astonishment. “I’m so sorry,” Gillich says in a hoarse, desperate whisper. “I’m so sorry.”

Lynne looks as if she had been struck. Whatever reactions she had expected when she finally confronted Mr. Mike, remorse is not one of them. Certainly not sobs. This man, as far as she knew, has never shed a tear in his life. When he was first indicted in the case a long six years ago, he defiantly strode into court, loudly burping and thrusting his middle finger in an obscene gesture at every television camera in range. He must have hoped that would keep him off the air, though instead, the crude image had been broadcast statewide. He cared not a whit, it seemed. But that man is gone now, replaced by a shaking, weeping, lost soul. It doesn’t matter if it’s an act or not, Lynne realizes: Just the mere fact that the mighty Mr. Mike would appear in public abject, face wet, no matter how sincere or false that display might be, means the Don has fallen. The aura of disdain for authority, of stubborn invincibility, can never be recovered. Mr. Mike is no more.

“I’m so sorry,” he says one last time. And then he cannot speak another word. His plea dissolves into choking sobs.

When he at last lets go of Lynne’s hands, she walks slowly back to her seat next to the youngest of the four Sherry children, Leslie, who had been nineteen when their parents died, a freshman in college who had almost been home when the murders occurred. She has always maintained a cold fury about the case, but on this day, after watching Mike Gillich, she turns to her older sister and says in a shaky voice, “I’m sorry, Lynne. But I believe him. I really believe he’s sorry for what he did.”

Lynne is quiet for a moment. They are words she never expected to hear from anyone close to her or her parents. A year ago, a week ago, maybe an hour ago, she would have been outraged by the mere suggestion. But now Lynne just nods at her sister and, uttering words she can hardly recognize as her own, says, “That’s all right, honey. I believe him, too.”

 

The consquences of his new cooperation with authorities is almost more than Mike Gillich can bear. When people close to him were captured on tape, trying to influence witnesses to bolster Mr. Mike's appeals, Gillich stepped in to save them, turning state's evidence rather than see his loved ones sit in prison cell like his own. Now his friends and family and the civic leaders who stood by him through the first trial, when he defied logic and fact to insist he was an honest and god-fearing man, abandoned him en masse once he did the right thing and helped bring killers to justice. The courtroom in his first trial had been filled with supporters and character witnesses; hundreds of letters had been written on his behalf. But, once he told the truth, Biloxi turned its back on Mr. Mike: He spent the next two years sitting in prison alone, his only visitors FBI agents and lawyers.

During the five years that passed between the first and second trials, the mood in Biloxi shifted. The press coverage of the new indictments seemed curiously one-sided, all but predicting Halat’s acquittal and asserting that the case came down to nothing more than Gillich’s word against Halat’s. It was implied that Pete Halat could never lose such a credibility contest, and many in Biloxi suggested it was unfair to tar the former mayor on the basis of Gillich’s story alone. This was, of course, the key assertion by Halat’s attorneys, but it was more smokescreen than fact: There was ample testimony and evidence to back up Gillich’s story, though this was rarely conveyed in news reports. There were the Halat and Sherry law firm’s records of phone calls to Nix during critical phases of conspiracy, Halat’s suspicious tax returns and unexplained income, his past lies, his seeming foreknowledge of the murders and the time of death. And beyond that, when it was finally time for the showdown in court, to see just who was believable and who was not, Gillich’s testimony, its simple believability, could not be denied. And when it was Halat’s turn to tell his side of the story, as he had long claimed he wished to do, the former mayor shocked everyone, even his die-hard supporters. For there was to be no credibility contest after all. Halat sat on his hands and refused to take the stand. He had nothing to say. He offered virtually no defense.

“The press got it all wrong,” the foreman of the jury told me after the sentencing. “We would never just take Mike Gillich at his word. We believed only the parts of his story that could be corroborated.” Of Pete Halat, the foreman said, “We all felt he was in on the conspiracy. Why he did it, we don’t know. Just greedy, I guess.”

During the trial, Halat’s carefully calculated emotional outbursts outraged Lynne and her family. At a hearing outside the presence of the jury, Halat had intently and emotionlessly watched a police video of the grisly murder scene. Later, when it was replayed with the jury present, Halat wept loudly at the same images. Just before his sentencing, haggard and defiant after two months in lockup, he spoke at length to Judge Charles W. Pickering, still asserting his innocence and angrily attacking Lynne and her family. He managed to mention in the course of his tirade all sorts of embarrassing but irrelevant family problems, including the fact that Lynne’s son Tommy, devastated by the murders, had been arrested and imprisoned himself for a burglary committed to buy drugs. It was a twisted and vicious last-ditch attack, with the unintended effect of completely undermining Halat’s simultaneous plea for sympathy.

Thoroughly disgusted by the display, Judge Pickering finally told Halat to stop. And in case there was any doubt about what the jury verdicts in the case meant, the no-nonsense Hattiesburg judge spelled it out for all: “I find that the Sherry murders were brought about by Mr. Halat’s greed for money... (and) his cowardliness... You could have prevented the death of your friend. Even after he was dead, you could have kept his children and the citizens of Biloxi from having to endure many years of frustration, confusion and misery. You will forever have to live with your own conscience and what you have done.”

In her statement to the court, just before Halat was sentenced, Lynne Sposito put it this way, her voice strong and clear: “There is not enough time left in your life to atone for all the pain your choices have caused.”

When the day was done, Kirksey Nix had another life sentence to serve – though Pickering made sure it would be served in federal prison, in isolation, in a high-tech facility where human contact is minimal and even his food is delivered by robot. There are no phones. LaRa Sharpe got a five year sentence for lying in the first trial. Holcomb, the hit-man who pinch-hit for John Ransom, got a life sentence. Glenn Cook, the ex-cop turned getaway driver, had his trial postponed because he was psychotic, though he would later be convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison. And the former mayor of Biloxi got eighteen years. The mixed verdict the jury has reached

The sheer scope of Pete Halat’s betrayal still makes her reel if she dwells upon it too long; the sound of this cold man’s outrage at her and her family lay like an ice pick in a heart she had long thought immune from further injury. After he was sentenced, the television cameras doused her in spotlights as she strode from the courthouse and the reporters, dripping beneath their makeup and polyester in the furnace of Hattiesburg autumn, had asked Lynne the same tired questions. She could only shake her head and say, No, she doesn’t feel any “closure.” Her parents are dead, her son is in prison, she has shut down her emotions for ten years, too afraid to feel lest she lose the strength to continue. Later, she and her family gathered at a Hattiesburg diner to pick at hamburgers and milkshakes. They looked disconsolate, untethered. There had been no joy in the courtroom confrontation, just pain.

 

As she sits in the courtroom, listening to Mike Gillich tearfully apologize to the court as he had already done to her, Lynne thinks how different this day is from the day before, when Pete Halat stood there wild-eyed and bitter. Gillich’s apology has changed everything. There is no tension in the courtroom today. One side is filled with the Sherry family; across the aisle, the other half is empty. Yesterday, it was filled with Pete Halat’s supporters, their stares drilling into Lynne and her family. Now, Mr. Mike is alone.

“You are a broken man,” Lynne hears the judge say. “You have lost everything.” Lynne knows this is true, and that the judge clearly has been moved by Gillich’s abject state. The Godfather is weeping again, apologizing, telling the court he would do anything to undo the harm he has wrought. He never knew what losing family was like — until now. To Lynne, Pickering seems on the verge of tears himself. So is she. This is federal court, no television cameras are allowed inside, so there is nothing beyond memory to record the odd and unlikely magic that briefly inhabits the courthouse this day. She thinks, if only all of Biloxi could see it, feel it, take part in what is happening here, it would change everything. The factions, the rifts, the distrust just might start to fade. After all the lies and posturing and speechifying, something essential is at last being laid bare.

But there is a problem. For Judge Pickering, sentencing Halat, Nix and the others had been relatively easy, but the Gillich question troubles him. Mr. Mike is, after all, repulsive, a career criminal, an admitted murderer — yet, weighing against that it the fact that it was Gillich alone who had told the truth and made justice in the case possible. The prosecutors want to reward his cooperation with a release from the twelve years in prison still ahead of him, but Pickering shakes his head no, that would be too lenient. Yet he can’t just let the sixty-seven-year-old crime boss rot in prison unrewarded. How could prosecutors ever get people like Gillich to cooperate in the future if their promises of leniency went nowhere? The judge finally says he’ll compromise: He’ll let Gillich go in another five years, when he’s 72.

The judge clearly feels he’s being more than generous, but Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Barrett jumps to his feet and begs Pickering to reconsider. Barrett, who has been with the case since the beginning, tells the judge his sentence isn’t good enough, that it will hinder their future ability to make such deals with the devil. This is gonna hurt us, he says. It is a presumptuous challenge to a judge who likes to have the last word. Lynne has seen him slap other lawyers down for coming at him like that, but to her surprise, Pickering agrees to think about it a bit more over the noon recess. He is glancing at the Sherry children when he says this. Sure enough, as Lynne and her family walk out of the courthouse, a marshal puffs to a halt beside them. The judge wants them in chambers.

So they all troop back upstairs where the judge can question each of them — Lynne, Leslie, Eric and Vincent Sherry III — about what to do with Mike Gillich. To a one, they each surprise the judge, as well as one another, by saying they believe he is, indeed, a broken man, that he truly seems sorry, and that they believe the prosecutor’s request to be reasonable. They want the next family in search of justice to be able to find it, too, they say. And though his culpability is greater than Pete Halat’s, so is his repentance.

“He’s lost his family,” Lynne later reflects. “That meant more to him that his freedom. More than his life. He will never recover from that, just like we’ll never completely recover from losing Mom and Dad.”

Judge Pickering appears astonished, moved beyond words for the second time that day. He is a man who believes in maintaining absolute control of his courtroom. You make a decision and you stick with it, he likes to say, that’s the secret of keeping lawyers in line. But it seems this is a day to break rules and obliterate expectations. After a long silence, he finally says, if the children of the Sherrys, who have lost so much, can find forgiveness in their hearts for the likes of Mike Gillich, who am I to gainsay it? If Mike Gillich can be forgiven — and if Mike Gillich can repent — perhaps there is hope for us all, after all.

After lunch, he reverses himself. He hasn’t the legal authority to set Gillich free that day, he says, but he will reduce the Godfather’s sentence as much as the law allows, so that he will walk free in just over two years. Then he must be on parole and do community service for five years. The judge suggests a soup kitchen might provide the right mixture of humble good works.

“Eternity is a long time,” Pickering says. “It’s forever... Mr. Gillich, you have a lot to live with.

“Yes, sir,” Gillich whispers, head bowed.

And there it ends. The courthouse empties, spectators and marshals, innocents and cynics, all of them shaking their heads in wonderment. Lynne and her family linger, chatting with the prosecutors and the FBI agents and others who have become like family to them. Prosecutor Barrett puts his arm around Lynne’s shoulder and says, “What you did up there was strong, Lynne. Strong.” He puts emphasis on that last word, giving it two syllables. His voice is filled with awe and pride.

They would be parting now, for good, the case over but for the inevitable appeals (all of which, over time, would be lost by the conspirators). The group of them reminisce, using their secret nicknames for the defendants and witnesses, giggling like school kids. They pat one another on the back and put their feet up on the big table in the U.S. Attorney’s conference room. Somebody lights up a cigar. Officials whom Lynne once chastised for their inaction now embrace her. They can laugh and joke now, the sensation of relief coming to them not because the guilty have been sent to prison, but because they have fought and won leniency for a killer.

It is an ending Lynne never could have envisioned. She remembers the father who once happily let a thief make off with the family’s Christmas presents, and decides he would have approved of what happened this day. It brings her a fierce joy.

---

A longer version of this article previously appeared in the Oxford American Magazine.

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