From Midnight to Guntown

by Hailman, John

  North Mississippi is still a unique place where one regularly encounters a diverse universe of colorful and disturbing characters, not just bungling bank robbers and psychopathic killers but humorous informants, thoughtful judges, traumatized victims, scheming bureaucrats, brilliant investigators, eloquent witnesses with second-grade educations, outraged citizens, and sleeping jurors. People here like to give each other funky nicknames like “Cat Daddy” and “Hard Time.” The cast of characters is easily as varied as the nineteenth-century London of Charles Dickens. Outsiders may call Oxford “Mayberry on the Yocona,” but we cherish our eccentricities. This book tries to recapture the spirit of our place, which even now finds its past continually reincarnated in its present. Just as Faulkner and Grisham took their characters from real lives lived by real people in this region, the stories told here contain the same odd mixture of beauty and grace, tragedy and farce, played out before its natural scenic splendor at odds with its recurring acts of random, senseless violence but redeemed by moments of nobility and self-sacrifice. The book is by necessity episodic, like a weekly TV crime drama, but like Law and Order has consistent themes and characters.

  All the stories in this book are true. They are public record, for now. In some cases, the victims are indentified by initials only. Certain towns, counties, and witnesses are also left unidentified to protect privacy. Out of respect for the deceased and their living descendants, some names have been omitted and dates and places obscured to protect innocent bystanders. For the really curious, citations to case names and numbers are supplied in endnotes for each chapter. For errors, omissions, and failures of memory, I apologize. I did not try to “enhance” these stories but just told them as the remaining official records tell them, supplemented by my own fragile human memory and those of other players I’ve interviewed. I studiously avoided trying to settle any old grudges and just told the stories, as nearly as possible, “with malice toward none and charity for all,” as Lincoln famously said.

  One challenge in putting these stories together was finding a structure. I first tried the lawyerly way, telling all the stories in chronological order, but that proved confusing. Then one day I spied in Oxford’s Square Books a little paperback entitled Careers in Crime. Written in mock-serious style, it ranked the top fifty “careers” for people seriously considering a life of crime. From my own experience, “normal” criminals like thieves become criminals mostly by chance, starting with minor thefts and petty drug deals and graduating to greater financial rewards and harsher punishments. Violent criminals, by contrast, often seem to have endured childhoods as victims of violence and then internalize it and pass it on, as it were, as adults, often ending up in the worst of our prisons with the worst people of similar backgrounds.

  The author of Careers, Michael Weinberg, took a different approach. He assumed criminals start off as practical, entrepreneurial sociopaths who lucidly seize upon crime as a profession both easier and more profitable than a dull eight-to-five job working in a cubicle for someone else. Weinberg then did a detailed statistical study of the pros and cons of various criminal “careers,” assuming that successful criminals would do better by specializing in a single area of criminal expertise.

  After considerable research, Weinberg came up with his fifty hottest criminal occupations. It would not be proper to call them the “Top Fifty” because several, such as “snitch,” rank low on any cost/benefit scale. His observations were useful to me in coming up with an organizational scheme. The wildly different natures of the cases I saw as a general crime prosecutor at first seemed to be a random hodgepodge of wrongdoing. Looked at by the Weinberg categories, however, dividing criminals into bank robbers, killers, crooked cops, and so forth, the criminals seemed to group themselves into a series of logical “career choices,” reinforcing my own rough conclusions from a lifetime of personal experience. Most bank robbers are such bungling amateurs that the rare “professionals” really stand out. Drug dealers are easily the laziest and least reliable of criminals, constantly cheating their customers, running out of product, or forgetting to show up for drug deals altogether. Out of fifty criminal careers, Weinberg ranked bank robbery as forty-seventh worst and drug dealing as fortieth. Only white-collar criminals made the Top Ten.1

  Why North Mississippi has produced such colorful characters and stories is perhaps best explained by quotes from Mississippi writers engraved in large letters on the walls of the Overby Center at Ole Miss, where I was a fellow for two years during the writing of this book. The first quote is from an old friend who strongly encouraged me to write the book. He says of Mississippians:

  We are talkers. We talk about ourselves, each other, our ancestors, events, the funny and quirky and bizarre things people do. True stories, more or less, and the richer and more plentiful the detail the better.

  —Willie Morris

  The second quote is a subtle one by the soft-spoken southern lady who tried for a whole year at Millsaps College in Jackson to teach me how to write:

  Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them.

  —Eudora Welty

  The stories that follow are the ones I listened for and listened to in the forty years I spent as both actor and observer in the courtrooms and jails of Faulkner country.

  Common Law Enforcement Abbreviations and Acronyms

  ADA

  Assistant district attorney.

  ATAC

  Anti-Terrorism Advisory Councils, task forces formed right after 9/11 and similar to JTTFs (see below), headed by the U.S. Attorney for each federal district.

  ATF&E

  Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, now part of the Justice Department but formerly in the Treasury Department where it was called simply the ATF, the term still used by most of law enforcement.

  AUSA

  Assistant U.S. Attorney, formerly Assistant U.S. District Attorney.

  Beast, The

  Section 666 (see Revelations) of the Code makes bribery of state officials a federal crime if more than ten thousand federal dollars are involved.

  Bitch, The

  A “three-strikes” law which makes an offender a “habitual offender” subject to a life sentence without parole, known as “real life.”

  CCE

  Continuing criminal enterprise, a criminal drug gang of at least five members, subject to punishment by up to life in prison. The “drug kingpin” law.

  CI

  Confidential informant, usually a criminal cooperating with law enforcement for a reduced sentence.

  CID

  The dreaded Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue Service, recently renamed, confusingly, just the CI.

  DA

  State district attorney. In Mississippi, each elected DA has jurisdiction of from two to seven counties.

  DEA

  Federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

  DOJ

  Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. Also often called “Main Justice.”

  FBI

  Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  ICE

  Immigration and Customs Enforcement (the sometimes unhappy merger of the former U.S. Customs with the former Immigration and Naturalization Service).

  JTTF

  Joint Terrorism Task Forces, district-wide groups headed by the FBI with members from all federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, including U.S. Attorneys.

  JP

  Justice of the Peace.

  LECC

  Law Enforcement Coordinating Committee. A special task force in each district composed of federal, state, and local officers, headed by the LEC (law enforcement coordinator), a U.S. Attorney employee, usually a former deputy sheriff or police officer, whose job is to conduct joint training and to prevent law enforcement turf battles. A little-known but highly effective force.

  Mailing, The

  The key jurisdictional element
of 90 percent of our federal fraud and corruption cases; a scheme to use the U.S. mails to defraud someone of something.

  MBI

  The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, formerly the Criminal Division of the Mississippi Highway Patrol.

  MBN

  Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics, an elite statewide antidrug agency.

  MHP

  Mississippi Highway Patrol.

  OCDETF

  Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, a team of federal, state, and local drug agents, commonly referred to as the “Oh-suh-deff.” I was lead prosecutor for this group for five years.

  RICO

  Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, a federal law originally designed to combat traditional organized crime such as the Mafia but that DOJ and the courts have greatly expanded to reach just about any organized criminal group, even if loosely organized. See our case U.S. v. Bright, 630 F.2d 240 (5th Cir. 1977).

  SAC

  Special Agent in Charge of a federal investigative agency.

  SCIF

  Secure Compartmentalized Intelligence Facility, known to viewers of the old TV show Get Smart as the “Cone of Silence” room.

  SO

  Sheriff’s Office.

  SS

  The Secret Service. The oldest federal investigative agency. Not at all secret, this elite agency not only is responsible for protecting the president and other key federal officials and political candidates, but also investigates the counterfeiting of U.S. currency and all thefts of federal checks.

  Supervisors

  In Mississippi, as in California, we refer to our highest elected county officials as Supervisors, unlike Arkansas where they are referred to as “Judges.” Some states call them Commissioners. Other states name them for their original function “road supervisors.” In Mississippi the supervisors and their statewide organization still exert enormous power and influence under their unofficial name “the Courthouse Crowd.”

  UC

  Undercover operative in an investigation.

  USM

  U.S. Marshal’s Service. Often thought of as primarily assigned to guard courtrooms and prisoners, the marshals are the primary agency responsible for the Federal Witness Security (Protection) Program and the apprehension of federal fugitives and bail-jumpers. They have their own investigators known as inspectors.

  USPIS

  Little-known but highly sophisticated and effective criminal investigative arm of what Benjamin Franklin named simply the “Post Office.” Postal inspectors enforce the critical white collar crime statutes against frauds committed by use of the mails.

  From MIDNIGHT to GUNTOWN

  Prologue

  The Making of a Career Prosecutor

  For years, it never really occurred to me why I enjoyed being a prosecutor so much, but I knew I did. In my office, we used to say, “If I didn’t need the money, I would do this job for free.” What we all enjoyed most were the jury trials, which were like sports, full of intense competition performed before an audience of jurors. Our Anglo-Saxon system is clearly a modern form of deadly combat, mental and moral, with the underlying motives of violence and revenge focused and controlled.

  My daughter Allison, now a medical doctor, caused me to think seriously about my subconscious motivations for enjoying trials so much. When she was fifteen and going through a period of adolescent rebellion, she did not think very highly of me. One day she introduced me to a teenage friend with the comment, “This is my father. He puts people in prison for a living.” Looking at it that way caused me to ponder.

  Most federal prosecutors take the job to gain experience, then move on after two or three years to more lucrative careers in private practice. Most find the job too stressful to consider long term for the modest salary it pays. A recent survey called the job one of the five most stressful jobs in the American workplace, up there with air traffic controller and pro quarterback. Yet a handful of us have made careers of it. Over time, as my daughter’s words sank in, I began a sort of Freudian review of my motives.

  I vividly recall my first encounter with law enforcement—the police officers who would later be my career partners. When I was little, my father was on the road all the time. One weekend we were playing in the backyard when a big, strange-looking dog approached, swaying from side to side. His mouth was covered with white foam. Just after my father said, “He is sick,” there came the biggest explosions I had ever heard. There were red and yellow flashes and blue smoke, and the dog collapsed. Two officers walked up to the dead dog and started to carry him away. The officers apologized to my father for my having seen them shoot the dog. My father explained to me that they were helping the dog because he was too sick to live and suffering a lot of pain. It was a good explanation and gave me a positive image of officers that has never left me—even though I’ve had to prosecute a few.

  Maybe my love of cops-and-robbers was partly genetic and partly family history also. My father’s favorite uncle was a Pinkerton detective and used to regale us with stories about cases he’d had. In retrospect, there was another event that impacted me even more strongly. When I was in second grade, our school had two bathrooms (one for boys, one for girls) in the basement for all twelve grades. A couple of sixth-grade boys had a favorite sport: holding us little boys upside down by our ankles and dunking our heads in the toilet. We would put our little hands on the seat and push back with our little arms as hard as we could, but always ended up sucking toilet water.

  One day a heroic rescuer appeared, a high school athlete named Larry Payton. When he saw me getting dunked, he grabbed the sixth-grader who was doing it, slammed him against the wall, and choked him till his eyes bugged out. He told him in front of the other evil-doers that if he ever caught the little felon or anyone else dunking us, he would hold their heads under water in the toilet until they drowned. My feeling of relief is still palpable.

  Years later, Marty Russell of the Tupelo Daily Journal asked me why I liked prosecuting. The dunking story suddenly came back to me, and I blurted out, “Prosecutors are there to remove the bullies from the playground.” There is now a movement to combat bullying, but back then no one talked about it. We were expected to look out for ourselves as part of becoming men.

  Later, sports were a huge influence. The camaraderie of the team soothed our painful adolescent egos and our need to be accepted as part of a gang. Our coach, a just-retired Marine Corps drill instructor, used many of their techniques on us. His practices were like boot camp, except you got to go home at night. His favorite way to end basketball practice was something he called Last Man Standing. He’d put us all in the foul circle and tell us the last one in the circle could go home. No punching or kicking was allowed, just pushing and pulling, but it was exhausting. The last two or three guys out were almost too weak to walk back to the locker room.

  But it was really my father who was the key to my life as a prosecutor. A hard-nosed Amish German, he believed people learned things only through hard work. When I was sixteen, I told him I needed a car. He said I could have one as soon as I could pay for it myself. I spent the next two summers baling hay for local farmers. By the summer of 1959, before my senior year I had enough money to buy an old red Plymouth convertible. The first day I had the car, I baled hay all morning and had a long, hot baseball practice all afternoon. Wasting no time showering, I hosed myself off with my clothes on and let the wind air-dry my T-shirt and blue jeans as I drove to an outdoor dance. It was in a field full of pretty girls in thin summer dresses dancing barefoot on the grass to a live band. I asked the first girl I saw to dance with me. When people began tapping guys on the shoulder, I assumed they were cutting in. The pretty brunette and I danced without a break and were having a really good time when I noticed there were only three or four other couples still dancing. “Where did everybody go?” I asked her. “Silly, this is a dance contest,” she said. “The rest of them have been eliminated.” Even though we did not yet know each other
’s names, we somehow won the dance contest.

  I asked if she would go out with me that weekend. “Of course, but you have to meet my mother first.” I should have noticed she was driving a new Cadillac convertible that made my old Plymouth look pretty bad. But I was young. When we got to her house, a big one on a hill with columns and a manicured lawn, her mother greeted us on the tall, graceful front steps. I thought I made a good impression with my muscles and suntan, and forgot about all the hay in my hair and holes in my clothes. I should also have noticed the personal questions she asked me but was blinded by the dance experience and the girl’s beauty and enthusiasm. Once back home I called her and asked what time I should pick her up. She was crying and said, “I’m so sorry. I cannot go out with you. My mom says you’re too countrified.” After I hung up, my mother asked what was wrong. I explained. My usually quiet mother called out to my father, “Dear, we’re sending Johnny to Paris. We need to knock off his rough edges. Nobody calls my son countrified.”

  After two years of college French, a summer school in rural France, and another at Laval University in Quebec, I was accepted to the Sorbonne in Paris to have my rough edges knocked off. I enjoyed my first year in Paris so much that I refused to come home. My father said, “You can stay if you can pay for it. I’m not paying another dime.” I got a job as a gofer with Air France, worked my way up to a gig as an interpreter, and stayed a second full year at the Sorbonne. By the time I returned home, I was fluent in French. Unfortunately, I never saw the girl’s mother again to thank her for inadvertently giving me such a wonderful present.