A verdict for a 19-year-old murder case
Posted: Friday, March 24, 2006 8:37 PM by Dateline Editor
Filed Under:
Crime, Behind The Scenes
by Victoria Corderi, Dateline correspondent
As I sat in the Atlanta courthouse listening to attorneys’ dramatic closing arguments, it was hard not to think about the dignified couple sitting in the front row—to wonder what these minutes were like for them. Indeed, what the past 19 years have been like. They were sitting not ten feet from the man charged with engineering the brutal, point-blank assassination of their daughter.
Ric Feld / AP
Lita Sullivan's mother, state Rep. Jo Ann McClinton, right, and father, Emory McClinton, left, react as a jury reads the verdict in the case against James Sullivan, for hiring a hit man to kill his socialite wife 19 years ago.
When we cover a murder trial, we go to great lengths to present the back story. We interview friends and family and attorneys in an effort to make the case come alive. The victim in this case was Lita McClinton Sullivan. She was murdered in 1987 when a gunman posing as a flower deliveryman shot her with a 9mm gun hidden by the roses he carried. Her parents were the people who really helped me to understand who Lita was, and the insight came not so much from what they told me about their daughter and her disastrous marriage, but what they conveyed about themselves and how they raised Lita.
JoAnne and Emory McClinton have almost a regal bearing. They live in an old Southern house that makes you think of Tara in “Gone with the Wind.” Huge white columns anchor the front of the brick house, and the expansive rooms are formal, but welcoming. Mr. McClinton told me the house was built in 1910 and has been a work in progress since they bought it in the 1960s. It was there they raised their three children in a strict and traditional way. They insisted on manners and responsible behavior. As a teenager, Lita was not allowed to wear short-shorts or have sleepovers at other people’s homes. Her parents would chaperone her to parties, concerts and even discos. Lita’s friends always gathered at their house because the McClintons wanted to keep an eye on the festivities. Even into adulthood, Lita was required to have a formal brunch with the family on Sundays and to make the corn fritters. The McClintons family held meetings regularly to discuss issues with their children. Parents, they told me, are not there to be friends with their kids, they are there to guide them.
Imagine how hard it was for them to let go when she became an adult! They were able to, they told me, because of their respect for the woman Lita had become.
They didn’t approve of the man Lita was dating in 1976. The McClintons found Jim Sullivan, a transplanted Bostonian, arrogant and disrespectful of their genteel Southern ways. Also, Lita was only 23, and Sullivan was a 34-year-old divorced father of four. The McClintons worried their daughter would face difficulties as part of an interracial couple. They said they told her that in one of their family meetings. Still, she decided to marry him anyway, and they didn’t interfere.
What happened next was a blur of bad news. The marriage soured early on, according to Lita’s friends and family, because Sullivan was stingy and controlling. He sold a business he’d inherited for $5 million and the couple moved to a stunning mansion in Palm Beach. But while Sullivan was living the high life on the social circuit, his wife sat home, miserable. The McClintons say Jim Sullivan was brazenly unfaithful, and it took their daughter a long time to admit it. They believe Lita endured it because she wanted to prove to them she could make the marriage work. Lita’s best friend told me she and Lita had been raised to believe divorce was not an option. The McClintons, when I interviewed them, had been married 56 years.
Lita finally called it quits after eight and a half years of marriage. She moved back to the elegant Atlanta townhouse the couple owned. It was supposed to be the beginning of a new life— instead it became a dead end, thanks to a cold-hearted hit man who shot her dead as she opened the door to receive her favorite flowers, roses. She was 35 years old.
That was in 1987.
Jim Sullivan became the main suspect because on the day Lita was murdered, she was supposed to go to a divorce hearing that would decide how much money she would get. Sullivan was in Palm Beach that day, but the McClintons told me they knew he was behind the killing. Police, though, could never gather enough evidence to make a case stick, and when authorities finally were able to bring a murder indictment against him, Jim Sullivan was living in Costa Rica. But he fled his home before he could be arrested.
It wasn’t until 2002 that authorities tracked him down in Thailand. Two years later, he was extradited to the U.S.. The prosecution’s theory is he hired a hit man to get rid of his wife before he had to pay her a dime in their increasingly nasty divorce.
Sullivan looked like a tired, elderly man in court— not the bon vivant social climber who went to the right parties in Palm Beach. He was inscrutable throughout the trial. No matter how emotional or intense the atmosphere in the courtroom became, Sullivan sat there, sphinx-like.
My eye couldn’t help wandering to that front row often, to the bench behind Sullivan, where the McClintons sat, clutching each other for support through the difficult testimony.
Was there enough evidence to show Jim Sullivan paid a hit man to kill his wife? It had been 19 years, and this certainly was not an open-and-shut case.
I was there in that emotion-charged courtroom when the verdict was announced. Tune in to "Dateline" Sunday to find out Jim Sullivan’s fate and see exclusive interviews with the jurors and reaction from Lita’s parents.
This report first aired in March of 2006, and rebroadcasts on June 3, 2007, Sunday, 7 p.m.
