Kirksey Nix

Although he dabbled in insurance fraud and drug dealing, Nix's primary money-making scheme was a "lonely hearts" scam designed to defraud homosexual men.

Nix and his prison syndicate would place personal advertisements in national homosexual magazines.

Coincidentally, Judge Sherry's wife Margaret was a Biloxi mayoral candidate critical of Gillich's operations.

The prosecution produced evidence that the three men arranged to have the Sherrys killed.In 1991, a jury convicted Nix, Halat, Gillich, Sheri LaRa Sharpe, and John Ransom of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and it found Nix and Gillich guilty of travel in aid of murder-for-hire.

[4] Holcomb was serving a life sentence for carrying out the killings for pay and died in prison in 2005 at age 52.