On a chilly January morning in Atlanta, Lita McClinton Sullivan answered her doorbell and found a delivery person at the front door holding a white box with a large pink bow.
Friends said McClinton Sullivan, 35, must have believed the flower delivery was a gift from a friend, so she opened the door. That’s when the man holding the flowers pulled out a gun and killed her with a shot to the head.
“She wasn't robbed. Somebody came to the door with roses and shot her dead,” said private investigator Pat McKenna who worked for Lita’s family.
Those who knew McClinton Sullivan described her as elegant, stylish and graceful.
Judge M. Yvette Miller, who credited McClinton Sullivan as helping to guide her to become the first African American woman crowned Miss Macon in 1979, recalled McClinton Sullivan as a mentor and close friend.
“We bonded, and she became like a big sister,” Miller said. “She was beautiful, and I really liked her. She wanted to help me succeed.”
The story of Lita McClinton Sullivan’s murder will be featured in a new “20/20” episode, “A Puzzling Murder,” airing tonight on ABC at 9 p.m. and streaming on Hulu.
Born in Atlanta in 1953, McClinton Sullivan was the eldest of three children. She came from a distinguished family: her father, Emory McClinton, was an executive with the U.S. Department of Transportation, and her mother, Jo Ann, served as a Georgia state representative. McClinton Sullivan graduated from Spelman College with a degree in criminal justice, although she later pursued a career in fashion.
“Lita had been reared in Atlanta’s Black elite. The hopes for her, the expectations for her life were high,” said Clint Rucker, former Fulton County assistant district attorney.
After graduating from Spelman College, Lita McClinton met businessman Jim Sullivan, who was originally from Boston. Sullivan had recently inherited a thriving liquor business from his uncle. He was ten years older than McClinton and, notably, white.
“He showered her with gifts and took her out for fancy dinners and dancing . . . just completely showered her with attention,” said Deb Miller Landau, author of the new book, “A Devil Went Down to Georgia: Race, Power, Privilege, and the Murder of Lita McClinton.”
To many, their interracial relationship seemed unlikely, and McClinton Sullivan’s parents were concerned. The McClintons worried about how the world would view the couple and the impact of racial differences. According to Landau, they found Jim Sullivan to be opportunistic and uncouth.
About a year after meeting, Lita McClinton and Jim Sullivan married in a small ceremony in Macon, Georgia.
They were wed just nine years after Loving v. Virginia — the 1967 landmark civil rights decision that legalized interracial marriages in the U.S.
Even after it became legal, interracial marriage was still frowned upon in many parts of the country at that time, especially in the deep South, where it was still uncommon to see mixed-race couples.
“It was just incredibly rare to see an interracial couple, let alone an interracial marriage, in the South,” Landau told ABC News.
The cracks in the couple’s relationship started to show the night before they said, “I do.”
On the eve of their wedding, Sullivan asked McClinton to sign a prenuptial agreement.
As a millionaire, the terms were heavily in his favor, but McClinton signed.
The agreement was straightforward: if the marriage ended, Sullivan would keep all his assets, while McClinton would be given $2,500 a month for three years.
While Sullivan’s wealth and status brought certain perks, the dynamics of race and power seemed to have been present in their relationship. The prenup, McClinton Sullivan would discover, appeared to symbolize Sullivan’s desire to not only control finances, but to control her.
“It was about power and money to him — money and power, and the control he had over his wife at the time,” said John Lang, a retired special agent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Sullivan moved the couple to a mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, but McClinton’s family and friends said Jim’s penny-pinching and alleged infidelity strained the marriage.
McClinton Sullivan, who had a lingering suspicion Sullivan had been unfaithful, alleged that she once found lingerie in their bedroom.
She filed for divorce in August 1985. Shortly afterward, according to Landau, Sullivan had the electricity turned off to their Buckhead, Atlanta, townhouse, where she lived separately to be closer to her family. Rick Schiffman, divorce attorney for McClinton Sullivan, said the prenup left her with no equitable division of property.
“The problem that Jim had with his prenuptial agreement was it gave her virtually nothing.”
McClinton Sullivan, despite her nearly decade-long marriage, stood to lose everything.
On January 16, 1987, McClinton Sullivan was scheduled to contest Jim’s assets in court.
Instead, she was murdered, sending shockwaves throughout her community.
At her funeral, a notable face was missing from the large gathering of mourners: Jim Sullivan.
“It was just business as usual for Jim... no concern whatsoever,” said Lang.
Sullivan continued his life in Palm Beach without interruption. Eight months after McClinton Sullivan's death, Sullivan married a Palm Beach socialite named Suki Rogers. It was his third marriage and Rogers’ fourth.
McClinton Sullivan’s family and authorities never stopped searching to determine who was behind her murder. They had always suspected it was Sullivan, as he was the only one with a motive, but the challenge was finding evidence linking him to the hit on McClinton Sullivan that January morning.
Over the course of several years, authorities conducted an extensive investigation into the McClinton Sullivan case. In 1992, Sullivan stood trial in federal court after being charged with conspiring to have McClinton Sullivan killed. The judge dismissed the case for lack of evidence, and Sullivan was acquitted.
Years later, authorities received a tip from a woman who said she thought her ex-boyfriend may have been involved in a murder-for-hire in Atlanta years earlier. This ultimately led investigators to North Carolina, where, under questioning, Philip “Tony” Harwood confessed that he had been paid by Sullivan to, in his words, “take care of” McClinton Sullivan.
Phone records, a payoff allegedly witnessed by Harwood’s girlfriend at the time, and Harwood’s own testimony provided the crucial evidence authorities needed to connect Sullivan to the murder. Harwood, who was arrested for McClinton Sullivan’s murder in 1998, eventually pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter.
But when an arrest warrant was issued for Sullivan in 1998, he vanished. Sullivan had recently purchased a home in Costa Rica, but fled to Panama when he learned he faced arrest.
From there, Sullivan’s trail went cold.
Authorities initiated an international search, but it took four years and a crucial tip before Sullivan was finally arrested in Thailand.
Sullivan was arrested and extradited to Atlanta, where, in 2006, he was convicted and sentenced to life without parole.
According to Landau, who has spent more than 20 years researching and reflecting on the search to get justice for McClinton Sullivan’s murder, it may appear like a typical true crime story. But its roots run much deeper.
“I think it goes a lot into the history of the South. It goes into race dynamics in the South [and] the power of wealth, especially regarding the judicial system,” she said.
Harwood was released from prison in 2018, after serving a 20-year sentence. Sullivan remains in prison in Augusta State Medical Prison.