BEAUMONT, Texas--Seventy-one-year-old Gelnn Cook, Sr. walked out of a Texas prison Friday. He had been there since 2008, but the main reason he was in prison was for plotting the 1987 murders of Judge Vincent Sherry and his wife in Biloxi.

It's been a quarter of a century since the murders and one of the other figures in the killings, former Biloxi mayor Pete Halat, was released to a halfway house in late October.

Cook will also report to a halway house in the New Orleans area. He was first released in 2008 and ordered to stay out of Mississippi. He was almost immediately arrested on a domestic violence charge in Jackson County. That sent him back up-to a medium security federal pen.

Cook is a former Biloxi police officer. The murders became a national sensation when they happened, casting a spotlight on dirty goings-on on the coast and the involvement of the "Dixie Mafia".