Biloxi Confidential

On September 18, four days after the murder and on the eve of her parents' wake, Lynne Sposito and her brother Vin drove up to their parents' house and found it still cordoned off by the police. On impulse they decided to go next door to their parents' neighbor, Brett Robertson, to ask him if he had seen anything that night. To their surprise and shock, he had.

Robertson not only told them he had seen a yellow Ford Fairmont drive up to the Sherrys' house, he also got a glimpse of the driver. It was a Biloxi policeman in plain clothes, whom Robertson claimed to have recognized as one who had stopped him for a traffic citation a few years earlier.

When Lynne asked him why he didn't report this to the police, Robertson told her that the cop who came up to his door during the murder scene investigation was the same one he had seen driving the car. Of course, he was too scared to confront the cop with what he had seen, so he kept silent. Robertson didn't know the cop's name but he gave Lynne a description. The man was described as being over six feet tall, between 250 and 300 pounds, with brownish black hair parted in the middle, a thin beard and wearing glasses. Robertson also recalled that the cop drove a white Chevy Caprice or Impala.

Reporting her findings to Investigator Broussard at her parents' wake, Broussard said the description fit a Biloxi narcotics detective named Ric Kirk. It was shortly thereafter confirmed that Kirk had questioned Robertson shortly after the murder and that he drove a white Chevy Caprice or Impala. Broussard kept quiet about the revelation, unsure at the time where to go with it.

Vince Sherry

In the meantime, at the Sherrys' wake, Lynne claimed to have overheard a conversation between Halat and a medical examiner who had conducted the inquest. The medical examiner was discussing a parole officer who claimed to have had a conversation with Vince on the morning of Tuesday, September 15, to which Halat allegedly had replied, "That's impossible. They were long dead by then." Since, at that point in time, the time of death had not been firmly established, Lynne's suspicions were aroused. How could Halat have known that?

At the funeral the next day, Halat gave the eulogy for the murdered couple, but his tribute, toward the end, took on the guise of a political announcement. He implied that, as a legacy to Margaret, he might run for mayor as she had planned to do. "I believe she would want us to continue her good fight for honest, open, and accountable government." And, to ensure that his words were preserved for posterity, he had distributed printed copies of his eulogy to the media. Several weeks later he made it official.