Flower delivery turned murder

The brutal killing of 35-year-old Lita Sullivan disrupted the quiet of this upscale Atlanta neighborhood.  Immediately police began to try to piece together what happened, and why. 

One of the witnesses, a neighbor and friend of Lita’s told authorities he’d seen the gunman approach her door that morning.

Bob Christensen, neighbor and witness:  Our eyes kind of locked. I was going to ask him, “What are you doing here?”  And then I got a very bad feeling about the guy.

Major Welcome Harris was the lead investigator on the case. 

Corderi: Do you recall your first impressions? What were you thinking?

Major. Harris: Well, one thing is obvious.  She was the target.  Now the next thing to me would be who might have wanted her dead. 

The primary evidence at the scene—a bullet, two 9mm bullet casings, a bloody nightgown, an unopened box of roses.

Harris: She never got to open the box.  The box had one single hole through the box. She might have even threw the box up.

Corderi:  To protect herself?

Harris: To protect herself. Could have been just a reflex.  Yeah.

Within a couple of days, investigators uncovered important information from a local florist who described the man who had come in that morning to buy roses, and another man who was waiting for him in the car.

Police drew up these composite sketches of three men, based on the descriptions from the florist and Lita’s neighbor. And there was something else authorities found out: Lita and her husband Jim were in the middle of a drawn-out divorce that had become a fierce battle over money. 

The McClintons say they knew who was behind the murder: Jim Sullivan.

Jo Ann McClinton: Emory called a friend of ours that was with the Atlanta police department and said, “This son of a bitch killed our daughter.”

Detective Harris says police questioned Jim Sullivan several times.

Harris: He didn’t have any idea who’d might of want to harm his wife.

Corderi:  Did he seem concerned?

Harris:  No. I didn’t see any evidence of any grief or anything. 

Sullivan had an iron-clad alibi:  he was in Palm Beach at the time of the murder.  But, police suspected he may have had a role because they uncovered phone records of some mysterious calls between a motel Atlanta and Sullivan’s palm beach home before and after the murder.

Corderi: You had witnesses that described the men.  The flowers.  You had the phone call.

Harris: Yes ma’am.  We had to identify the men.  That’s the needle in the haystack.  We know they were there.  But who are they?  We felt like in theory that Sullivan was behind it, but how do we prove it? 

But Poppy wasn’t so convinced.  She couldn’t believe that Jim Sullivan—the same man who was her daughter’s godfather—would be capable of such a thing. 

Marable:  Jim had become a part of all our lives.  He was like a family member. I just couldn’t believe that he was evil enough to commit murder. 

With no gunman in custody, no murder weapon, the district attorney at the time decided not to press charges against Sullivan.

Then, in 1990, three years after Lita’s death, there was a bombshell from the woman who married Sullivan after Lita’s murder: they were now getting divorced and one day she stunned the courtroom.

She said Sullivan admitted to her that he’d planned and paid for Lita’s murder. Sullivan denied the accusation.  And because it had been made in the heat of a nasty divorce battle, authorities felt it was not enough to charge him.

But, a year later, the McClintons’ hopes were raised when a federal grand jury did indict Sullivan on a murder conspiracy charge stemming from the phone calls to and from his mansion at the time of Lita’s murder. But the judge dismissed the case for lack of evidence.  Jim Sullivan, Lita’s parents say, was getting away with murder.

Emory McClinton: It was very difficult because we felt that they were not pursuing the person that did this—James Sullivan.

So the McClintons tried another tactic—and hit Sullivan  where it hurts: financially. In 1994, in civil court, they filed a wrongful death suit, claiming Sullivan hired the hit man who posed as a flower delivery man and shot Lita.

Sullivan decided to defend himself, enabling him to cross-examine the McClintons.

Corderi: Of all these frustrations and indignities you’ve had to face, was having him question you on the stand—

Emory McClinton:  That was the worst.

Corderi: Because?

Emory McClinton:   We knew what he had done.

The jury awarded the McClintons a $4 million judgment, but he never paid, claiming he was broke. The family says he hid his money and vowed to keep fighting.

The McClintons continued to press for justice, hoping for a break. Then in 1998, they got one—a tip led Atlanta police to North Carolina and a man who confessed Jim Sullivan paid him $25,000 to murder his wife. He later agreed to testify in exchange for a plea to voluntary manslaughter. Finally there was enough evidence to charge Jim Sullivan with the murder of his wife.  Trouble was, no one could find him.

By that time, 11 years after the murder, Sullivan was living in Costa Rica.  But when authorities went to his home, they discovered he’d fled.  Now Sullivan was a man on the run --  One of the FBI’s most wanted.

Sullivan reportedly traveled through Venezuela and Panama, but authorities had no solid leads.

Then, four years after he went missing, a tipster who saw the story on “America’s Most Wanted” led authorities to Thailand where Sullivan had been living in a beachfront condo with a girlfriend. He was extradited to the U.S. in 2004. After almost two decades, the McClintons thought justice was within reach.

Jo Ann McClinton:  We lost a daughter.  And Jim deliberately had our daughter killed.  Jim could not get away with this.

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