Infamous America - Introducing "Gone South" Season 2: Dixie Mafia from C13 Originals

Episode Date: November 2, 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everyone, I've got a preview to share with you, and this one is a doozy. No podcast about infamous people and events would be complete without some version of the story of the Dixie Mafia, and it's on our list for Infamous America. Now, many of you might not have heard of the Dixie Mafia. I hadn't until I watched the TV show Justified. I'm a huge fan of the series, and I was fortunate to meet a few of the writers over the summer, but I had never heard of the Dixie Mafia until they mentioned it on the show. I remember chuckling. and thinking the writers had made it up, but it's very, very real. In the 1960s and 70s, the loosely connected groups that formed the Dixie Mafia

terrorized communities all over the south. One story from the era was made into the 1973 classic movie Walking Tall, which was then remade in 2004, starring The Rock. One of the roughest groups was headquartered in Biloxi, Mississippi, and they sold drugs, ran extortion rackets, pulled robberies, and committed murders. They were led by a man named Kirksey Nix, who ended up going to prison for murder.

The authorities thought that might be the end of the Dixie Mafia, but they were wrong. When a judge and his wife, who was running for mayor, were assassinated, lawmen were forced to confront Kirksey Nix and the Dixie Mafia all over again. This is a preview of Gone South,

Season 2, the Dixie Mafia. Gone South is a C-13 Originals production, the one the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award for outstanding achievement in journalism. Find Gone South Now, wherever you get your podcasts. 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 him 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 is 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 ring leader, Kirksey Knicks. Kirksey McCord Nick's Jr. is a so-called godfather of the Dixie Mafia. 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, would he?

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 Kirxie'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 Hall. 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 to 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, Vincent Margaret Sherry. It's a canard. It's a pig trail. It never happened. Everything down there's crooked. Just 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? Is they any 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. Available now on the audience, or wherever you get your podcasts.