From Cotton to Balls

Her older sister, after all, was a perfectionist. Jacquie Levitz earned a good living making things just so. She bought fixer-uppers and turned them into dream homes. She met Ralph Levitz, her third husband, while redecorating his mansion and she felt comfortable in the wealthiest of social circles in Washington, D.C., California and Florida. But there was nothing tony about her upbringing.

Levitz was one of nine children raised on a cotton farm in Oak Grove, La.

"She was not a Southern belle. It was a working farm and she worked," said Shivers. It was before mechanical cotton pickers were invented and it was not uncommon for Levitz or one of her siblings to pick 300 pounds a day.

Levitz eventually left Louisiana and moved to Texas to attend secretarial school. She married Walter Bolton Jr. and bore him one son, Walter III. The marriage didn't last and she moved north to the Washington, D.C., area. There she began working in real estate and married a prosperous restaurant owner named Banks L. Smith. After his death, she relocated to Florida.

She became Levitz's sixth wife in 1987 and they renewed their vows two years later at an elaborate ceremony in the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach. At first, the Levitz's were staples of society pages, attending charity balls and entertaining in their $3.9 million oceanfront palace.

"She was a butterfly. She was very well liked. Men admired her, women envied her," said Barbara Norcross, a Florida psychic who counted Levitz as both a client and good friend.

Robert Marschall, the Levitz's attorney for 15 years, said people were drawn to Jacquie's effervescence and down-home sensibility.

"She has the reputation of being a Palm Beach socialite, which she was, but she was also very friendly and lots of fun," Marschall recalled.

In the last five years of his life, Ralph Levitz suffered a series of strokes and the couple curtailed their public life.

"She was a very lonely gal," said Norcross. "We'd sit and talk to Ralph over dinner and then go out back and sit around the pool. She was a great one for vodka and apple juice. She'd have her limit of two and then we'd just talk."

In 1995, Ralph died, leaving his wife a trust fund of several million dollars. Upon her death, the money would pass to his grandchildren from previous marriages. Jacquie Levitz, a multimillionaire in her own right, began making plans shortly to move to Vicksburg. Four of her siblings lived within 50 miles of the city.

Ralph's illness, according to Tiki Shivers, "made her realize that the same thing could happen to her and who would take care of her, that blood runs thicker than water."

A Smaller World

View of the Mississippi from the house

Levitz bought the home on the river bluff from Betty Moody and her husband. Moody, a retired realtor who developed a fast friendship with Levitz, said she was stunned when Levitz explained that she was going to expand the three-bedroom ranch into a sprawling seven-bedroom home.

"I think for her it was not the house so much as the location, location, location," said Moody. Levitz wanted to be close to town, her siblings in Louisiana, the airport, the riverboat casinos and of course, the river.

"She just loved looking at the boats," recalled Moody. The day before Levitz vanished, she called Moody to gush over a particularly beautiful boat navigating the river. Moody made a mental note to give Levitz a pair of binoculars as a gift.