Flower delivery turned murder

Victoria Corderi Correspondent • Profile

ATLANTA, GEORGIA - It was an unremarkable January morning. Outside, it was cool and damp. Inside an elegant Atlanta home, one could fell the warmth of two old friends talking about the day ahead. Some time after 8 a.m., the doorbell rang.

It was a flower delivery—a delightful surprise, followed by moments later, terror.

Poppy Marable: I was confused.  Like are these really gunshots?

The delivery man fired a 9mm gun hidden by the flowers, then fled. 35-year-old Lita Sullivan would not live out the morning. 

The ruthless murder has haunted and obsessed her loving family for 19 long years.

Jo Ann McClinton, Lita’s mother: There is no closure as far as Lita McClinton is concerned.

Emory McClinton, Lita’s father: This is just to make sure that there is justice.  Completed.

What started with gunshots and roses in 1987 has expanded into a saga of greed and deception, involving bizarre characters, stalled investigations, contentious court cases and a world-wide search for a fugitive. Through it all, Emory and Joanne McClinton have persisted in trying to bring to a close the case of their slain daughter—Lita, their first born.

Jo Ann McClinton: She was just very, very special to everybody.  But it is something about your first one. 

Lita grew up in a proper and elegant southern home.  She went on to Spelman college, where she met her best friend Poppy Marable.

Marable: She was the extrovert.  I was the introvert.  And so she had this charismatic personality.

Victoria Corderi, Dateline correspondent: So, people were attracted to her?

Marable: Yes, uh-huh, absolutely.

They were both political science majors, but Poppy says their first love was fashion.

Marable:  And we hoped to have a boutique some day or a small business.

After college, Lita began working at an upscale Atlanta boutique.  Where, in 1975, she met a customer who would change her life. She was 23. Jim Sullivan was eleven years older and charismatic.

Marable: He courted her as an older gentlemen could.  He had resources.

Corderi: What was your first impression?

Marable:  Jim can be charming.

But not everyone succumbed to those charms. Lita’s parents, the McClintons, say they found him brash and arrogant, and told their daughter they were concerned.

Emory McClinton: I said, “You know I don’t think it’s a good idea.”  And I gave my reasons.

Corderi:  His age, his arrogance.

Emory McClinton: And the difficulties that they would encounter socially.

Corderi:  As an interracial couple.

Emory McClinton: As an interracial couple.

And Sullivan was divorced with four children. But the McClinton they say they didn’t interfere, and Lita married Sullivan in December, 1976.  Poppy was her maid of honor.

Marable: I think you can tell on one of the wedding pictures where she’s just laughing and crying at the same time. She was really happy about being married.

The couple settled down to a comfortable life in Macon, Georgia. Sullivan ran a successful liquor distributorship he’d inherited, while Lita worked in a department store.  Seven years later, in 1983, after Sullivan sold his business, they traded up—way up: to ritzy Palm Beach Florida and a prestigious oceanfront mansion. Jim Sullivan became a regular on the town’s exclusive social circuit. They had the trappings of a glamorous life, but Lita’s friends and family say that she was miserable.

Corderi: For her, it was like a prison?

Emory McClinton:  It was worse.

Corderi:  It was worse?

Emory McClinton:  Yes.

Because for all of his wealth, her family says Jim Sullivan was a skinflint when it came to his wife.

Corderi: She was always strapped?

Emory McClinton:  Yeah. If he didn’t bring home napkins from Wendy’s, they didn’t have napkins.

But worse than his stinginess, they say, was Sullivan’s brazen infidelity.

Jo Ann McClinton: When you find blond hair in your bed  and Jim’s hair was dark then, obviously, you know, very—

Corderi: So, in her own home?

Jo Ann McClinton:  In her own home, yes.

Lita endured it, Poppy says, because of her traditional upbringing.

Marable: It was just assumed that you married.  You’re married forever.  You may have some challenges but you work through them.

But—not every challenge...

Jo Ann McClinton:  It was known that he would pick up prostitutes and that was the last straw for Lita. 

After eight and a half years of marriage Lita, then 33, finally decided to call it quits...

Lita’s friends say she was looking to start over, to find happiness in her home town. So she moved back to Atlanta, dove into charity work and even began dating again.  So when a flower deliveryman rang her doorbell on the morning of January 16, 1987, Lita had every reason to think it was a sign of great things to come.  She was wrong.

Poppy had spent the night at Lita’s and was with her three year old daughter when she heard the shots fired.

Marable: My daughter was in the bed.  I grabbed her out of the bed into the bathroom and then into the closet.

Corderi:  Your maternal instinct took over—

Marable: Yes. I was afraid to come out.  I didn’t know if the person was in the house.  I didn’t know if the person was coming upstairs.

Poppy says she surfaced when she heard the police in the house...

Marable: I asked if Lita was okay, if she was living.  And he said barely.  Because I knew she’d been shot.  I didn’t want to look.

Instead she frantically called Lita’s mother.

Jo Ann McClinton: I just remember Poppy screaming, “Lita’s been shot!  Lita’s been shot!”

Lita was rushed to the hospital, but it was too late.

Emory McClinton:  Well, the doctor came out—

Jo Ann McClinton:  Immediately.

Emory McClinton: -- immediately and told us that there was really no hope.

MORE FROM DATELINE

Dateline Section Front

Stories of economic struggles in St. Petersburg, Florida A mom's quest: Saving her twin daughters' lives            A block party by the Apollo Theater    Where There's Smoke... Secrets in the Box Slideshow: The yacht murder Dateline Section Front   Add Dateline headlines to your news reader: