The Fall of the House of Zeus (32 page)

“An embarrassed man.”—Steve Patterson on his way to another court appearance in Oxford.
(photo credit i15.6)

The Insider
—On the set of Michael Mann’s 1999 film, shot in part in the Scruggs’s Pascagoula home, life imitates Hollywood as Scruggs,
60 Minutes
producer Lowell Bergman, and CBS correspondent Mike Wallace—all portrayed as characters in the movie—enjoy a laugh.
(photo credit i15.6a)

“This ain’t my first rodeo.”—Attorney Tim Balducci insisted that he had been involved with Scruggs in other scandalous activities.
(photo credit i15.7)

A “childish” and “hurtful” advertisement—Insurance Commissioner George Dale blamed his defeat in the 2007 election on this full-page ad, placed in Mississippi newspapers by Scruggs.

“He has so much to offer society.”—Robert Khayat (
center
), chancellor of Ole Miss, annoyed Judge Biggers when he suggested leniency for Scruggs (
right
). Before the case developed, the two old friends from the Gulf Coast met with a visiting Dan Rather on the Ole Miss campus.
(photo credit i15.7)

“He knows a lot of people.”—P. L. Blake, one of the stealthiest players in a political organization that has had influence in Mississippi for decades.
(photo credit i15.8)

“Their family could not survive without him for a decade.”—After urging her husband to plead guilty to a lesser charge rather than face the possibility of a harsh sentence at the end of a trial, Amy Scruggs, six months pregnant, hosted a farewell party for Zach before he left for prison. Their daughter, Augusta, plays at the left.
(photo credit i15.8a)

“I had to stand there … ​and take an ass-whipping.”—On his way to sentencing in federal court, Dick Scruggs is accompanied by his chief attorney, John Keker (
left
), son Zach (
rear
), and wife, Diane.
(photo credit i15.8b)

D
uring the early stages of the investigation, the FBI relied upon Judge Lackey to ensure that his telephone calls with Balducci were recorded and that sophisticated equipment installed in his office captured Balducci’s visits on videotape. Now it was necessary to go a step further.

Four days after Balducci met with Lackey, Tom Dawson of the U.S. Attorney’s Office applied for authorization for the FBI to begin intercepting all calls made over Balducci’s cell phone. The request went to the senior federal judge for Mississippi’s Northern District, Neal Biggers, and for the purpose of the prosecution the case could not have gone into better hands.

Biggers was seventy-two and had a reputation as a stern jurist. More important to the federal authorities, the judge had a background as a prosecutor himself. He had served as a county prosecutor in his home town of Corinth shortly after getting his law degree from Ole Miss in 1963, and he later served two terms as a district attorney in northeast Mississippi, handling myriad criminal prosecutions in a region with a long history of redneck gangsters. Corinth, a crossroads city that had been fought over in the apocalyptic Civil War battle at nearby Shiloh, lay on the Tennessee border, and a murderous band of bootleggers and gamblers had operated in the area for years. Just across the state line, Sheriff Buford Pusser, the hero of the movie
Walking Tall
, had flirted
and fought with the mob before his death. Biggers was no stranger to thugs, and he had little sympathy for them.

There was another aspect to Biggers’s record that would be helpful to the federal investigators. Before he became a federal judge, he had served for almost ten years as a state circuit judge—the same position that Lackey held—and he could be sure to be insulted and indignant at any attempt to undermine the sanctity of the office.

On September 25, Biggers signed an order authorizing the FBI to begin tapping Balducci’s phone. Almost immediately, it produced results.

    
One of the first recorded calls involved an effort by Patterson and Balducci to make a name for themselves in Fred Thompson’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Hedging their bet on Biden, the pair funneled a sizable contribution to Thompson through a third party and wanted to be represented at an upcoming Thompson fund-raiser in the Mississippi Delta by Balducci’s father, a banker in the area.

Patterson urged his associate to ask the elder Balducci to attend the event and “to look up Tommy Anderson and tell him who he is” by identifying himself as the father of Patterson’s partner.

Patterson said he had just “talked to Tommy” and knew that Anderson would be with Thompson at the party.

In the years since Jim Eastland had passed from the scene, the dark side of the Force had become, if nothing else, bipartisan.

    
Before nine o’clock on the morning of Thursday, September 27, Patterson called his partner as Balducci, who had been up early, drove between Oxford and Calhoun City.

“Since you’re stopping by there to see Dickie,” Patterson said, there was something Balducci should know. “I mentioned very cryptically to P.L. one day last week that I had a pretty good problem that I had solved, and I was gonna go ahead and solve it.” Patterson said he had asked Blake, “What should I do?” and Blake had replied, “Solve it, and if you need help, let me know.”

Balducci told Patterson he planned to tell Scruggs that “I’ve taken care of something you and I have gotten handled, and I was gonna get you to talk to P.L. and let P.L. visit with him at some point.”

“I’ve already done that,” Patterson said. “P.L. doesn’t know what it’s about. He just knows the amount.”

“What’d you tell him?” Balducci asked.

“Forty.”

“So you didn’t pad it?”

“No.”

“Great job,” Balducci said. “Way to go.”

“Yeah,” said Patterson. “I just told him the truth.”

Patterson said he asked Blake, “Do I go ahead and take care of it or what?” And Blake told him, “Yeah, go ahead and take care of it.” Patterson said he assured Blake, “We’ve already taken care of half of it.”

Balducci, bearing $20,000 in cash and en route to Lackey’s office, told Patterson that he would “reinforce that this morning.” He added that he had already stopped by Scruggs’s office “to pick up that thing Sid had gotten for me,” a reference to the order Scruggs’s associate was supposed to be preparing for Lackey. Balducci told his partner he would return to Oxford after meeting with Judge Lackey and talk to Scruggs.

“I’m gonna lead with this issue,” Balducci said. Then he would ask Scruggs to make two calls that would serve as a blessing for their dream firm, the association they intended to call Patterson, Balducci and Biden.

The pair had become deeply involved in negotiations with Senator Biden’s brother, Jim, whose wife, Sara, was a lawyer and could lend the Biden name to the law firm. They wanted to add other big names to their masthead.

“Mention Ieyoub to him,” Patterson suggested, speaking of the former attorney general of Louisiana, Richard Ieyoub, whom Patterson had approached about lending his name to the group. “See what his reaction is. I think it’ll be positive.”

He asked Balducci if he had heard yet from another contact named Zeke Reyna, a Texas lawyer whom they were counting on to send $500,000 to buy a share of a mass tort case.