By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
April 21, 2023 | Most people in Gwinnett may not have heard of the “Dixie Mafia.” That is the term applied years ago to white Southern gangsters operating in several areas, though not connected to the Italian Mafia members who hung around together operating in the northeast. The Dixie Mafia had many illegal operations outside the law in the South.
According to Wikipedia, these criminal gangs of Dixie Mafia operated independently and primarily in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama, particularly around the outer areas of the cities of Birmingham, Baton Rouge, Hattiesburg, Dallas, and Atlanta.
One gang of these criminals was centered in nearby Winder and Barrow County in the late 1960s and 1970s. Its leader, Billy Sunday Birt, is said to have murdered over 50 people, the number depending on who you talk to. He was mainly a contract killer, but quick to take offense at what people did or said to him. He was proficient in using dynamite (which he is said to have stolen from the Rock Quarry near Buford) to blow up homes, killing those inside with no notice, which apparently did not bother his conscience.
Birt
He ended up in prison for robbing the National Bank of Walton County in Loganville, and he robbed others. He also was later convicted of earlier murdering two people in a robbery in Wrens, Ga. and for this was sentenced to die. Later the death sentence was set aside and re-sentencing was ordered, which never happened. However, Birt spent the rest of his life, about 40 years, in prison, eventually suffering from Parkinson’s Disease, and hung himself in his cell.
Billy Birt’s wife, Ruby Nell Birt of Winder, has detailed facts about the Dixie Mafia and her husband in a book, Grace and disgraced, as told to a veteran newspaperman of Gainesville, Phil Hudgins. Though Ruby Nell Birt is essentially the author of the book, through the skilled writing of Hudgins, she is also the main victim of the story, as the long-suffering and innocent wife who often knew little of her husband’s criminal activity. She stuck by him through thick and thin, even while he was in prison. She would often take her children to visit him in the several prisons where he was incarcerated. She eventually divorced him, but stayed in contact. One of her happier times was when a sheriff got him released into his custody, so that one of his sons could baptize him in church before his whole family. He had never been in churches before. Then he was returned to prison.
Hudgins describes Ruby Nell Birt as a God-fearing, hard-working Christian woman, who had to work several jobs at a time to keep her five young children with her. Before he was locked up for the last time, Birt was often either was away into mischief, or was carousing with other women. He never discussed his illegal activities with his wife, though he would sometimes tell her about his other women. Strung out on drugs before his final arrest, Birt seldom provided the money his wife needed in raising the kids, and later could not provide any needs, since he was in prison.
The 406-page book goes into great detail in telling the Birt story. Passages in the book include Birt’s own words in letters written from prison.
The book is available for $24.95 at chartebooks.com, Amazon and at philhudgins.com.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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