THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 29, 1995 TAG: 9501271104
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY LAURA LAFAY
LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines
MISSISSIPPI MUD
A True Story from a Corner of the Deep South
EDWARD HUMES
Simon & Schuster, 364 pp. $23.
ON A MID-SEPTEMBER evening in 1987, someone visited the spacious home of Biloxi, Miss., Judge Vincent Sherry, stuck an automatic pistol into the judge's mouth and fired. That same someone then opened the door to the judge's bedroom and shot the judge's wife four times in the head.
Margaret Sherry, who had recently lost her bid to become Biloxi's mayor, ``slumped down into a sitting position, her legs straight out in front of her, feet under her dresser, her back against the bed, hands cupped at her sides, still holding one earring.''
Who would do such a thing to such a prominent and respectable couple? And for what? Journalist Edward Humes' excruciatingly detailed book, Mississippi Mud: A True Story from a Corner of the Deep South, explores several possibilities but offers no answers. And like the four-year investigation Humes chronicles, the results are interesting but ultimately unsatisfying.
Although four people were convicted of federal conspiracy charges involving a plot to kill the Sherrys, the actual murders were never solved. The motive for the killings also remains unclear. Was Judge Sherry set up by his unscrupulous law partner? Was he killed because he accepted a bribe to spring an inmate from prison and then reneged on the deal?
Or was the target actually Margaret Sherry? A tireless crusader against Biloxi smut king and Dixie Mafia member Mike Gillich, Margaret Sherry had spoken obsessively about an FBI investigation into Gillich's cozy relationship with city officials. But was her own husband one of those officials? Was she killed because she knew too much? Because she was giving information to the feds?
No one has ever been able to find out. And, as Humes' book long-windedly and painstakingly describes, many have tried.
Mississippi Mud tells the story of the search for the Sherrys' killer through the eyes of the couple's daughter, Lynn Sposito. A middle-aged nurse and mother of three, Sposito had just moved with her family to Raleigh when the call came that her parents were dead. From that moment on, she was obsessed with finding out why.
For four years, Sposito pushed, prodded, cajoled and publicly denounced the law enforcement officials who were supposed to be solving her parents' murders. When the Biloxi police failed - either by ineptitude or design - to investigate the case thoroughly, she hired a private detective. Sposito and the detective pieced together a vast web of intrigue that led them to Kirksey McCord Nix, a brilliant con man serving life without parole in a Louisiana prison.
From prison, with the assistance of a small army of employees on the outside, Nix spent years using personal ads to scam lonely men out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Chief among his allies in the lucrative scheme were two people with connections to Margaret and Vincent Sherry.
One of them was Vincent Sherry's law partner. The other was Gillich.
While Mississippi Mud offers a fascinating and well-researched glimpse into the relationships among well-respected citizens and the criminal element of a small Southern city, it is a flawed and ultimately inadequate expose.
For one thing, it is too long. For another, it's flat.
The Sherrys' murders are interesting, but the Sherrys themselves, as portrayed by Humes, a 1989 Pulitzer Prize winner for specialized reporting, are not. In fact, they come off as so shallow and banal that outrage over their deaths is almost negligible. They hardly seem worth all the fuss.
The same goes for Sposito. Humes explores only superficially her feverish need to find out what really happened to her parents. Facts can be intriguing; but emotion is what compels.
MEMO: Laura LaFay is a staff writer.
ILLUSTRATION: Jacket design by CARIN GOLDBERG
Jacket photo by ELLIOT ERWITT
by CNB