Bobby Joe Fabian (Britt Prentice), a Dixie Mafia member who linked Angola prison telephone scams against homosexuals to the 1987 execution-style murders of Biloxi Circuit Court Judge Vincent Sherry and his wife, Margaret, a former Biloxi councilwoman, as reported by James Minton for The Advocate:
Federal trials in 1991 and 1997 convicted former Angola inmate Kirksey McCord Nix Jr., former Biloxi Mayor Pete Halat, strip-club owner Mike Gillich, contract killer Thomas Holcomb and others of participating in the murder plot. While serving time at Angola in the 1980s, Fabian, Nix and other inmates began running "lonely hearts" telephone scams that mainly targeted homosexuals who coughed up thousands of dollars, thinking they were helping young men get out of minor scrapes with the law to join up with them. Fabian said, estimating the ring may have collected $5 million. Halat took some of Nix's money he was keeping for Nix but blamed Vincent Sherry for taking it. Nix retaliated by ordering the contract murders of the Sherrys, prosecutors said.