Former Mayor of Biloxi Is Charged With Con-Game Slayings
Nine years after a judge and his wife were killed, a former mayor of Biloxi was indicted Tuesday on charges he ordered the slayings in a dispute over missing profits from a con game that preyed on gay men.
Pete Halat Jr., 54, mayor of Biloxi from 1989 to 1993, was charged along with four other people with murder conspiracy, racketeering and other federal charges in the slayings of Vincent and Margaret Sherry.
The Sherrys--he was a circuit judge, she a former city councilwoman--were shot in the head in their Biloxi home in 1987 in what the FBI said was a $20,000 hit.
The FBI said the two were killed on orders from Halat. Halat believed that Sherry, his law partner, had stolen from a bank account maintained by Halat on behalf of an imprisoned client, the FBI said.
It was Halat who found the bodies and delivered the eulogy at Sherry’s funeral.
Halat’s lawyer, David Chesnoff, said his client is innocent. “He’s upset that they want to believe the word of a bunch of convicts and con men over his,” Chesnoff said.
Four people were convicted in 1991 for the “lonely hearts club” scam that prosecutors said led to the slayings of the Sherrys.
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