In 1987, a former prosecutor named Margaret Coon took her dog for a walk in one of Louisiana’s safest and most affluent parishes. The next morning, she was found dead on the side of the road with a single stab wound in her back. St. Tammany Parish advertises itself as a safe haven from the crime and corruption of New Orleans, attracting thousands of residents over the last several decades. But there is a darker side to St. Tammany and that darkness ultimately consumed Margaret Coon. Welcome to Gone South Season 1: Who Killed Margaret Coon? Over the course of this documentary podcast series from C13Originals, a Cadence13 studio, journalist Jed Lipinski investigates the theories and motives surrounding Margaret Coon’s unsolved murder, shedding new light on a bewildering crime that has haunted St. Tammany for over 34 years.
Welcome to Season Two of Gone South, the Edward R. Murrow Award-winning documentary podcast from C13Originals.
Starting in the sixties, a loose-knit 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 alleged leader — 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 Dixie Mafia was not done yet.
Gone South is a creation and production of Peabody-nominated C13Originals, a Cadence13 studio, in association with Jed and Tom Lipinski.
After years of denial, Biloxi strip club owner Mike Gillich agrees to help the government solve the Sherry murders. His cooperation reveals the true trigger man and the people responsible for the killings, including former Biloxi Mayor, Pete Halat. But as a new trial unfolds, Pete maintains his complete innocence.
A Special Thanks to Celia Tisdale and the Mississippi Department of Archives & History
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