Grace and Disgrace: Living with Faith and the Leader of the Dixie Mafia

Grace and Disgrace: Living with Faith and the Leader of the Dixie Mafia by Ruby Nell Birt. paperback edition. ISBN: 9781665306447.

As soon as Shane Birt says in the Introduction, “I know what it’s like to be loved by murderers, because all my life I’ve been loved by murderers.” He was two and a half years old when his father went to prison for the first time. At the age of sixteen, his daddy started talking about some of his hits, accounts offered bits and pieces. Shane remembers those jailhouse talks. He remembers enough to have helped solve a 50-year-old triple murder in Boone, North Carolina. One day, during a prison visit, Shane asked Bill, “Daddy, how could you have done all those awful things?” Bill said, “Son, to me, it was just a job.” Bill had a reason behind every one of his killings. Much has been written about Billy Birt, and much of it romanticized. Some of it is not true. What is truly genuine is the life of Ruby Nell Birt, Shane’s mother and Billy’s wife. She is a devout Pentecostal woman who worked five jobs to put food on the table and clothes on the backs of her children – the true family hero. A plaque hangs on the screened-in front porch of Ruby’s house. It says, “Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass… It is about learning to dance in the rain.” Ruby Nell Birt learned to dance in a flood.