BLUE CAT, MISSISSIPPI — A social-media noodler reaching blindly into the murk of the mighty Mississippi in search of a trophy catfish instead surfaced with a human femur — and, with it, the solution to a mob murder that had gone cold since 1959.
Dixie “Dandy” Redear, known to her followers for her sweet Southern twang and her fearless habit of diving into questionable water, had gone under — her noodling partner, Sally Bream, filming from the johnboat — hoping to wrangle a flathead.
“I thought I’d found me a dinosaur,” Dandy said. She dives regularly for Megalodon teeth and, in the moment, assumed she’d hit the jackpot.
So she called in reinforcements: the Mississippi Megalodon Maniacs, a 4,000-member Facebook group.
Their leader — a man who goes by “Bonesaw” Puckett and works nights at the county morgue — took one look and delivered his verdict. “That there,” Puckett announced, “is ninety-seven percent human.”
He was right. Authorities have since identified the remains as those of Vincent “Whiskers” Marino, a fixture of the old St. Paul underworld.
Marino was known for three things. The first was a talent for making problems disappear. The second was an all-consuming fishing obsession that sent him driving clear across the country chasing the hottest bite, handlining giant catfish with his bare hands — which were, by all accounts, the size of a grizzly bear’s. The third was the finest fried catfish fingers the Upper Mississippi has ever tasted, served out of a riverside supper club.
The supper club, like his fishing boat, was a front. Marino moved narcotics up and down the river tucked inside the bellies of his catch — a detail that has locals reconsidering what, exactly, gave those famous catfish fingers their unforgettable kick.
He vanished in the spring of 1959. According to legend, Whiskers had crossed a rival — a flamboyant fly fisherman who was never seen without two cases, one for his fly rod and one for his tommy gun — and the two fell into a bitter duel over a single prized fishing hole.
Whiskers, it seems, lost.
