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9781937449582

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From early in my life, I heard tales of the infamous 'Dixie Mafia' gangster, Billy Sunday Birt. As with most people who become famous - or infamous, in this case - there are often exaggerations and untruths. Phil Hudgins' account of the life led by Birt's wife, Ruby Nell, his son, Shane, and of Birt himself is a telling of a bizarre life in which right and wrong get turned upside-down. It's a world controlled by a man who lived by his own strange codes of conduct and whose love, while genuine, was hard to understand, much less live with. Regardless, the tale is fascinating and attempts to explain that even a cold-blooded killer has many sides to his life. - Robert Williams, former president, now consultant, National Newspaper Association Grace and Disgrace is a famous/infamous Georgia story that has been waiting for a capable storyteller for too long. Now Phil Hudgins has stepped up to that plate and has given us the horror and the history of this true story through the voice of a sympathetic narrator. No one would accept Billy Sunday Birt as a hero. Instead, Hudgins gives us the story of his wife and the mother of his five children. Ruby Nell Birt is truly heroic. Only twelve when they married (he was nearly seventeen), Ruby Nell stayed with Birt. By the time he was known as a man who would kill for money and had done so uncountable times, she had five children and feared for her own life. After Birt was in prison, Ruby Nell spent her life working to feed and clothe her children and to teach them that they had done nothing wrong through their father. The times she received help and encouragement from the people of Barrow County are moving and heart-lifting. You will not be sorry to meet Ruby Nell Birt. - Sally Russell, author of Roots and Evergreenand Shatter Me with Dawn A 12-year-old 'angel' marries a handsome 16-year-old, who becomes a 'devil, ' murdering more than 50 people. Billy Sunday Birt spent most of his life on Georgia's Death Row, and his angelic ex-wife Ruby never stopped praying for him and their five children. If evangelist Billy Sunday knew that a ruthless killer was named after him, the revered man of the cloth would roll over in his grave. Read journalist Phil Hudgins' Grace and Disgrace: Living with Faith and a Dixie Mafia Hit Man, written in the voice of the now 80-year-old 'angel.' Your heart will be chilled one moment and warmed the next. - Dink NeSmith, Co-owner, Community Newspapers Inc. This book offers a welcome and enriching new dimension on the astonishing life and expanding legend of one most cold-blooded killers in modern-day Georgia history. - James C. Cobb, author of Georgia Odyssey andhistory professor emeritus of University of Georgia

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