Cold Case Files - Presenting Gone South Season 2: The Dixie Mafia

Episode Date: October 19, 2022

Welcome to Season Two of Gone South, the Edward R. Murrow-Award winning documentary podcast from C13Originals. Starting in the early sixties, a rag-tag confederation of traveling criminals known as The Dixie Mafia terrorized every state from Georgia to Oklahoma. Its hundreds of members, unofficially headquartered in Biloxi, Mississippi, specialized in scams, heists and murder. Their ringleader — the estranged son of a prominent Oklahoma politician — was a skilled and charismatic outlaw named Kirksey Nix. When Nix was sentenced to life in prison at Angola for a murder he committed in New Orleans, The Dixie Mafia was thought to be extinct. But fifteen years later, a sitting criminal court judge named Vincent Sherry and his wife Margaret, a mayoral candidate for the city of Biloxi, were assassinated. As the case ran cold, authorities were forced to confront a disturbing reality: the reign of Kirksey Nix and The Dixie Mafia was far from over. Gone South is a creation and production of Peabody-nominated C13Originals, a Cadence13 studio, in association with Jed and Tom Lipinski.

In 1968, law enforcement from across the South held a secret meeting in Dallas, Texas to discuss a loosened gang terrorizing the region. It was a group of outlaws from, like, Oklahoma all the way to the East Coast. And at the time, we were referring to them only as traveling criminals. Dealing drugs, cracking safes, committing murder,

there wasn't much they wouldn't do. It's drugs, it's prostitution, it's extortion, it's everything. And at that meeting, the group was given a name. The Dixie Mafia. It's a brotherhood of criminals who've done just about everything from organized drug rings to murdering elected officials. If you talk to some of them, and I have, they would tell you there was no such thing as the Dixie Mafia. While they may not be as organized as other mafia rings, the trail they leave behind is just as deadly.

Throughout the 60s and 70s, cops hunted down key figures of the Dixie Mafia, including its enigmatic ringleader, Kirksey Nix. Kirksey McCord Nix Jr. is the so-called godfather of the Dixie Mafia. Kirksey McCord Nix Jr. Louisiana inmate Kirksey Nix, a Dixie Mafia leader. Dad was a judge, his mama was an attorney. He was very smart, but almost totally amoral. If you had to kill somebody to rob a jewelry store, that was no big deal.

What was his reputation? Don't fuck with him. This call is from a federal prison. Can you hear me? Yes, sir. I'm an outlaw, and I was a thief, but I'm far from being the psychopathic nutcase that I've been made out to be. Right. 15 years into Kirksey's life sentence at Angola, the Dixie Mafia was practically folklore. But that would soon change. Mississippi Circuit Court Judge Vincent Sherry and his wife Margaret, a former Biloxi council member,

were assassinated in their Biloxi home. It was a professional hit. This wasn't random. This will be a very difficult crime to solve. This wasn't a robbery. I'm interested in difficult crime to solve. This wasn't a robbery. I'm interested in making money. I'm not interested in hurting people. This wasn't mistaken identity. Was he the target? Was she the target?

This was very much a case of taking out a politician and a judge on purpose. Did the mayor have anything to do with this? I was not in any way involved in any plot to murder my friends Vince and Margaret Sherry. It's a canard. It's a pig trail. It never happened. Everything down there is crooked, is dealing with this case.

All of those other officers and all those other FBI people lied through their fucking teeth. So who do you trust? Who do you go to? Who do you trust to see in a case like this? I'm telling you everything I know because you guys have really got it wrong. You guys have really got it screwed up.

I'm Jed Lipinski. This is Gone South, a documentary podcast from C-13 Originals, a Cadence 13 studio. Season 2, The Dixie Mafia. I was there when the agreement was made.

Somebody was going to die. Listen to Gone South now for free wherever you get your podcasts.