The Boys from Biloxi: A Legal Thriller (45 page)

The post-election partying came to an abrupt halt a week later when a far more sensational story gripped the state. The winners and losers were suddenly forgotten when it became apparent that Mississippi was about to use its cherished gas chamber for the first time in over ten years. A notorious murderer ran out of appeals and his date with the executioner became front-page news.

In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court, in
Furman v. Georgia,
stopped all executions. The Court split 5–4, and in a bewildering hodgepodge of opinions, concurrences, and dissents, left little guidance for the states to follow. The law was cleared up somewhat in 1976 when the Court, again split 5–4, but with a different composition, gave the green light for the death states to resume the killing. Most did so with great enthusiasm.

In Mississippi, though, officials became frustrated with the slow pace, and from 1976 to 1983 there was not a single execution at Parchman. Politicians of every stripe and from every corner of the state railed against the system that seemed soft on crime. At least 65 percent of the people believed in the death penalty, and if other states had been turned loose, then what was wrong with Mississippi? Finally, one death row inmate lost his appeals and emerged as the likeliest contender.

His name was Jimmy Lee Gray, and a more perfect villain could not have been found on any death row in the country. He was a thirty-four-year-old white drifter from California who had been convicted of murder in Arizona when he was twenty years old. He served only seven years, was released on early parole, and made
his way to Pascagoula where he kidnapped, raped, and strangled a three-year-old girl. He was caught, convicted, and sent to Parchman in 1976. Seven years later his luck ran out and state officials excitedly began preparing for his execution. On September 2, Parchman was swarming with law enforcement officials, reporters from around the world, and even a few politicians trying to wedge into the act.

At the time, the gas chamber had a vertical steel pole that ran from the floor to the top vents, directly behind the chair. As witnesses watched from crowded observation rooms, Gray was led into the cramped chamber, a cylinder barely five feet wide. He was secured by leather straps and left alone with the door open. The warden read the death warrant. Gray refused last words. The door was shut and locked securely, and the executioner began his work. There was no strap to secure Gray’s head, and as he breathed the cyanide he began thrashing and banging against the steel pole. He hit it repeatedly with the back of his head as he struggled and groaned loudly. Eight minutes after the gas was released, officials panicked and cleared the observation rooms.

Far from a swift and painless death, the execution was botched and it was clear that Gray suffered greatly. Several reporters described the scene in detail, one calling it nothing but “cruel and unusual punishment.” The State took so much flak it quickly switched to lethal injection, but only for those inmates sentenced after July 1, 1984.

When his time came, Hugh Malco would not be lucky enough to die peacefully by lethal injection. He had been sentenced in April of 1978, and the gas chamber was still waiting for him.

Because the men were in solitary confinement twenty-three hours a day, and showered and exercised alone, friends were hard to make on death row. Hugh never considered Jimmy Lee Gray a friend, but their cells were adjacent and they talked for hours daily. They traded cigarettes, canned food, and paperback books when they had them. Gray never had a dime but never asked for anything. Hugh was perhaps the wealthiest inmate ever sent to death
row and was happy to share with Gray. A secretary back at Foxy’s sent him $500 a month, the maximum allowed, for better food and a few extras. No one else, other than perhaps his father, had access to such funds.

Gray’s execution, less than a hundred feet away, saddened Hugh far more than he expected. Like most inmates on the Row, he was expecting a last-minute miracle that would delay things for years. When Gray was led away, Hugh said farewell but was certain nothing would happen. After Gray died, his cell was empty for a week and Hugh missed their long conversations. Gray had a miserable childhood and was destined to have a rough life. Hugh had a wonderful childhood and was still asking himself what went wrong. Now that Gray was gone, Hugh was surprised at how much he missed him. The hours and days were suddenly longer. Hugh fell into a deep depression, and not for the first time.

The Row was much quieter following Gray’s execution. When the inmates heard what happened in the “Death Chamber,” and how the State had botched things, most were suddenly aware of what they might one day face. The joke around the Row had been that the State was too incompetent to kill an inmate, but that was over. Mississippi was back in the killing business and its leaders demanded more.

Jimmy Lee Gray’s appeals took less than seven years. Hugh’s had been active for only five, but his appellate lawyers seemed to be losing enthusiasm. With his enemies gaining power, he began to worry about actually being put to death. He had arrived at Parchman confident that his father’s money and contacts could somehow spare his life, perhaps even buy freedom, but a new reality was settling in.

If the execution cast a pall over the Row, it had little impact elsewhere around Parchman. Over at Unit 18, only two miles away
across the cotton fields but a different world, life went on as if nothing had happened. When Nevin Noll heard the news about Jimmy Lee Gray, he actually smiled to himself. He was pleased to hear the State was finally back in the execution business. Maybe they would get to Hugh sooner rather than later.

But Noll spent little time thinking about the Malcos. He was convinced they would never find him, and even if they did he would be ready. His alias, one chosen by the prison officials, was Lou Palmer, and if anyone succeeded in finding his bogus file they would learn that he was serving a twenty-year sentence for selling drugs around Jackson.

In his five years at Parchman, Noll had solidified his membership in an Aryan gang and was a rising lieutenant. It took only two fistfights to catch the attention of the gang leaders, and he survived the initiation with little effort. Not surprisingly, organized crime suited him well; he’d never really known anything else. The gangs were divided by color—blacks, browns, and whites—and survival often depended on who was watching your back. Violence simmered just under the surface, but outright warfare was frowned upon. If the guards were forced to pull out their shotguns, the punishments were severe.

So Nevin Noll washed dishes for five dollars a day, and when the cooks weren’t watching he stole potatoes and flour which he funneled to a distillery run by his gang. The home-brewed vodka was quite popular around the camp and provided income and protection for the gang. Noll figured out a way to traffic the stuff to other camps by bribing the trustees and guards who drove the vans and trucks. He also set up a pot-smuggling route by using contacts on the Coast who mailed the drugs in packages to a post office in Clarksdale, an hour away. A guard retrieved them and sneaked them into Unit 18.

Noll at first had no interest in the sex trade and was startled at how vibrant it was. Since the age of twenty, he’d had unlimited
access to loose women and had never been exposed to sex among men. Always enterprising, though, he saw opportunity and established a brothel in a restroom of an old gymnasium that was now used as a print shop. He controlled it with strict rules and kept the guards away with bribes of hard cash and fruit-flavored vodka.

Bingo was popular, and before long Noll had restructured the game and offered small jackpots of pot and junk food stolen from a central warehouse.

In short, after a couple years at Parchman he was doing the same things he’d always done in Biloxi. After five years, though, he was ready for a change of scenery.

His goal had never been to take over a gang. Nor was it to make profits. From the day he arrived at Parchman he had been planning his escape. He had no intention of serving thirty years. Long before he could ever think about parole, he planned to be hiding in South America and living the good life.

He watched everything: every vehicle that entered and left the camp; every changing shift of the guards; every visitor who came and went; every inmate that was assigned to the camp and everyone who left. After a few months in prison, the men slowly became institutionalized. They fell into line without complaint because complaining only made their lives worse. They followed the rules and the schedules made by the officials. They ate the food, did their menial jobs, took their breaks, cleaned their cells, and tried to survive each day because tomorrow was another step closer to parole. Almost all of them stopped waiting, noticing, counting, plotting, wondering, and scheming.

Not Nevin Noll. After three years of careful scrutiny, he made the important decision of selecting Sammy Shaw as his running mate. Shaw was a black guy from a tough Memphis neighborhood who’d been caught smuggling drugs and pled guilty to forty years. He, too, had no plans to hang around that long. He was savvy, tough, observant, and his street smarts were second to none.

Noll and Shaw shook hands and began making plans. A prison that sprawled over 18,000 acres was impossible to guard. Its borders were porous. The traffic in and out was barely noticed.

Parchman had a long and colorful history of escapes. Nevin Noll was biding his time. Watching, always watching.

On January 5, 1984, Keith Rudy was sworn in as Mississippi’s thirty-seventh attorney general. It was a quiet ceremony in the supreme court chambers with the chief justice doing the honors. Ainsley and their two daughters, Colette and Eliza, stood proudly beside Keith. Agnes, Laura, Beverly, Tim, and other relatives watched from the front row. The Pettigrew brothers, Egan Clement, Rex Dubisson, and a dozen close friends from law school clapped politely after he took the oath, then waited for their chance to be photographed with the new AG.

During the previous holiday break, Keith and Ainsley had completed the move to Jackson and were now unpacking in a small house on a quiet street in Central Jackson, close to Belhaven College. His daily commute to his new office on High Street across from the state capitol was fifteen minutes.

At 7:30 the following morning, he was in his office with his jacket off and ready for his first appointment. Since 1976, Witt Beasley had run the AG’s Criminal Appeals Division, and in that capacity was in charge of defending the convictions of the thirty-one inmates currently on death row. The excitement of Jimmy Lee Gray’s execution had only increased the pressure on Beasley and his team to wrap up the cumbersome delays and give the green light to the executioner at Parchman. After years in the trenches, Beasley knew full well the complications and frustrations of death penalty litigation. Politicians did not. He also knew his new boss had a burning desire to speed along the appeals of Hugh Malco.

Keith began with “I’ve reviewed your capital caseload, all thirty-one cases. It’s difficult to say who might be next in line.”

“Indeed it is, Keith,” Beasley said as he scratched his beard. He was twenty years older than his boss and was not being disrespectful. Keith had already implemented a first-name policy for the forty-six lawyers currently on his staff. The secretaries and clerks would be expected to stick with “Mr.” and “Mrs.”

Beasley said, “Jimmy Lee Gray’s appeals were finished rather quickly, relatively speaking, but he didn’t have much to argue about. As of today, I don’t see another execution for at least two years. If I had to guess, I’d go with Wally Harvey.”

“What a horrible crime.”

“They’re all horrible. That’s why they got the death penalty. That’s why the people out there are clamoring for more.”

“What about Malco?”

Beasley took a deep breath and kept scratching his beard. “Hard to say. His lawyers are good.”

“I’ve read every word.”

“I know. Right now we’re five-plus years post-verdict. We should win the habeas in federal court this year, maybe next. They don’t have much to argue: the usual ineffective assistance of counsel at trial, verdict against the overwhelming weight, that sort of thing. They’re doing a nice job of whining about the proof. As you know, the only real witnesses were Henry Taylor and Nevin Noll, two ex-confederates singing to save themselves. Malco is making a decent argument, but I can’t see the court falling for it. Again, I’d say two years to get to the finish line with the Feds, then the usual Hail Marys. These guys’ll try everything and they are experienced.”

“I want it to have priority, Witt. Is that asking too much?”

“They all have priority, Keith. We’re dealing with men’s lives here and we take these cases seriously.”

“I know that, but this is different.”

“I understand.”

“Put your best people on it. No delays. Right now, I’m guaranteed only four years in this office. Who knows what happens after that.”

“Understood.”

“Can we do it in four years, Witt?”

“Well, it’s impossible to predict. We’ve had only one execution since 1976.”

“And we’re lagging behind. Texas is burying them right and left.”

“They have a much larger death row population.”

“What about Oklahoma? They’ve had five in the past three years and we have more men on death row.”

“I know, I know, but it’s not always left up to the AG’s office. We have to wait on a bunch of federal judges who, as a group, loathe habeas work. They are notoriously deliberate and uncooperative. Their clerks hate death penalty cases because there’s so much paperwork. This is my world, Keith, and I know how slow things move. We’ll push as hard as we can, I promise.”

Keith was satisfied and offered a smile. “That’s all I ask.”

Beasley eyed him carefully and said, “We’ll make it happen, Keith, and as soon as possible. One question, though, is whether you’re ready for it. You’re considered the victim of the crime, you and your family. It’s a unique case in which the victim wields such enormous power over the machinery of death. Some observers have already brought up the issue of a conflict of interest.”

“I’ve read every word, Witt, and I understand what they’re saying. I’m not bothered by it. The people elected me as their AG knowing full well that my father was murdered by Hugh Malco and it would be my responsibility to defend the State against his appeals. I will not be distracted by a handful of critics. Damn the press.”

“Very well.”

Witt left the meeting and returned to his office a few doors away. Alone, he chuckled to himself at the AG’s rather lame effort
to feign disinterest in the press. Few politicians in recent history had shown greater affection for cameras than Keith Rudy.

For the first three months of each year, the electorate held its collective breath as the state legislature convened at the capitol. The city of Jackson felt under siege as 144 elected lawmakers, all veteran politicians, arrived from every corner of the state with their staffs, entourages, lobbyists, agendas, and ambitions.

Thousands of bills, virtually all of them useless, were thrashed about in dozens of committees. Important hearings drew little attention. Floor debates dragged on before empty galleries. The House spent weeks killing the bills passed by the Senate, which, at the same time, was busy killing the bills passed by the House. Little was accomplished; little was expected. There were enough laws already on the books to burden the people.

As the State’s attorney, Keith’s office had the responsibility of representing every agency, board, and commission in existence, and it took three dozen lawyers to do so. At times during his first months in office, he felt like nothing more than a well-paid bureaucrat. His long days were filled with endless staff meetings as proposed legislation was monitored. At least twice a day he stood at the large window of his splendid office, gazed across the street to the capitol, and wondered what the hell they were doing over there.

Once a week, at precisely 8:00
a.m.
on Wednesday, he had a fifteen-minute cup of coffee with Witt Beasley and got the latest update on the appeals of Hugh Malco. With glacier-like speed, they were inching along the federal docket.

In early May, he was informed that Lance Malco would be released in July, eight years and three months after pleading guilty to operating a house of prostitution. Keith admitted it was a harsh sentence for a relatively harmless offense, but he didn’t care. Lance
had committed far more serious crimes in his violent career and deserved to die in prison like his son.

Of far more importance, Keith would always be convinced that Lance ordered the hit on Jesse Rudy. Short of a dramatic confession, though, it would never be proven.

As if to herald his return to civilian life, or perhaps to simply limber up for the tasks ahead, Lance, still in prison, sent a message.

For the past six years, Henry Taylor had served his time in a series of county jails throughout the state. With each transfer he was given a new name and a slightly modified background. Each new sheriff was leaned on by the state police and told to take care of the boy, treat him well, perhaps even allow him to help around the jail as a trustee. The sheriffs were assured the inmate was not dangerous but had simply run afoul of some narco-traffickers somewhere along the Coast. Each sheriff ran his own little kingdom and rarely shared notes with his colleagues next door.

Late one afternoon, Henry was running errands. He left the circuit clerk’s office with a stack of juror subpoenas to be taken to the sheriff’s office for service the following day. As a trustee, he wore a white shirt and blue khakis with a white band down the leg, a warning to all that he was a resident of the Marshall County jail. No one cared. Trustees came and went and were common sightings around the courthouse. As he was about to leave through the rear door, a steel club landed at the base of his neck and knocked him out cold. He was dragged to a small, dark utility closet. With the door locked, he was choked to death with a two-foot section of nylon ski rope. His body was stuffed in a cardboard box. His assailant stepped out of the closet, closed the door, locked it behind him, and eased into a restroom with two urinals
and one stall. At 4:50
p.m.
, a janitor entered, glanced around, and turned off the light. The assailant was in the stall, crouching on the lid of the toilet.

Two hours later, as the empty courthouse began to darken, the assailant tip-toed along the downstairs and upstairs corridors and saw no one. Since he had scoped out the building, he knew there were no guards, no security system. Who breaks into rural courthouses?

Taylor should have returned to the jail two hours earlier and was probably already being missed. Time, therefore, was becoming crucial. The assailant walked to the rear door, stepped outside, signaled to his accomplice, and waited for him to drive a pickup truck to the door under a small veranda. It was long past closing time and the shops and offices around the square were empty and dark. Two cafés were busy but they were on the other side of the square.

The corpse was oozing blood so they wrapped his head with some dirty shop-rags. They carried him in the cardboard box and quickly placed him in the rear of the truck. Back inside, the assailant, wearing gloves, tossed the subpoenas along the rear hallway and made no effort to wipe away Taylor’s blood. Three miles south of the town of Holly Springs, the pickup turned onto a county road, then onto a dirt trail that disappeared into the woods. The body was transferred to the trunk of a car. Six hours later, the car and the pickup arrived at the Biloxi marina where the body of Henry Taylor was carried to a shrimp boat.

At the first hint of sunlight, the trawler left the dock and headed into the Sound in search of shrimp. When there was no other boat in sight, the body was dumped onto the deck, the clothing was stripped, and a string of netting was wrapped around its neck. It was hoisted on an outrigger boom for a moment as photos were taken. After that, the boom swung over the water, the netting was cut, and Henry was fed to the sharks.

Just like in the old days.

Henry’s disappearance from the Marshall County Courthouse was a mystery with no clues. A week passed before the state police stopped by the AG’s office to inform Keith that their protected witness had not been so protected after all. Keith had a good idea of what had happened. Lance Malco was about to go free and he wanted his enemies to know he was still the Boss.