Thai Court Upholds American's Extradition

[george]

Thai Court Upholds American's Extradition

BANGKOK, Thailand - A Thai court on Friday cleared the last hurdle in the way of the extradition to the United States of a Florida millionaire wanted in the 1987 murder of his socialite wife.

James Vincent Sullivan, 62, is accused of paying another man $25,000 to kill Lita McClinton Sullivan to avoid losing property in a divorce.

U.S. authorities say Sullivan is wanted on murder, aggravated assault and other charges. Sullivan denies the allegations.

Lita McClinton Sullivan, 35, was fatally shot in the head on Jan. 16, 1987, at her Atlanta home by somebody posing as a flower delivery man.

Thailand's Appeals Court on Friday confirmed a lower court ruling that Sullivan can remain in custody on the extradition request, and he can be sent back to America at any time, said his lawyer, Puttri Kuvanonda.

The ruling does not allow any more appeals by Sullivan, he said.

State prosecutor Sopon Siriratana said that the authorities have 90 days to send Sullivan back, otherwise he will be released.

The man charged with killing Lita Sullivan, Phillip Anthony Harwood, pleaded guilty in February last year in Atlanta to reduced charges in exchange for testimony against Sullivan. Harwood, who was arrested in 1998, was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Although Harwood admits being involved in the slaying, he denies being the gunman.

Sullivan was arrested in Thailand after weeks of police surveillance of his condominium in the beach resort of Cha-am, 100 miles south of Bangkok.

In 1992, Sullivan was acquitted of making telephone calls across state lines to facilitate the murder. Sullivan is believed to have left for Costa Rica in 1997, where he bought a home. He fled after a 1998 indictment by a U.S. court.

Sullivan obtained a residency permit in Thailand in 1998 after marrying a local woman.

--AP

[mrvietnam2001]

Hahahahaha and they will say "welcome home"!

Mr Vietnam

[DaveYo]

Hmmmmm, murder charges have no statue of limitations. Maybe it is best this guy deals with this and gets it over with rather than be running for the rest of his life. Who knows if he is found not guilty, he can return back to Thailand and be in peace. If guilty, well I am sure there is a nice warm cell waiting for him in Florida

Daveyoti

[dr_Pat_Pong]

Crime doesn't pay but the hours are good

[mrvietnam2001]

Who knows if he is found not guilty, he can return back to Thailand and be in peace. If guilty, well I am sure there is a nice warm cell waiting for him in Florida

There was a smart asss in Ft Lauderdale who threw his wife off his boat so she would drown.

It was seen by another passing boat .

Even though they never recovered the body, he was convicted and given the death penalty.

Mr Vietnam

[DaveYo]

That might be so as of the conviction Mr. Vietnam. However you said the key words that nailed that person. "Witnessed from a passing boat." Bingo.

Without that, it would be hard I would think to prove the person committed murder >>>> am I right or wrong???????? What does Florida say in a case like that????

Daveyoti

[mrvietnam2001]

There was still NO BODY.

No evidence.

"I saw or I think I saw" is not what would make me feel too comfortable would it you?

Jeesh, I mean cmon.

Don't kill your wife in FLA. We come and getcha no matter where you are!

Hahahahahahahahaha!

Mr Vietnam

[SoCal]

Mr. V.,

Surprised to see you ha ha ha ing it.

Don't forget, you are about to see your tax dollars at work.

Wonder how long the line is of FL agents wanting to come get him in BKK.

[mrvietnam2001]

Mr. V.,

Surprised to see you ha ha ha ing it.

Don't forget, you are about to see your tax dollars at work.

Wonder how long the line is of FL agents wanting to come get him in BKK.

Socal, I'm not about to make any confessions on a public forum. That said, it's not my dollars they'll be using.

Mr Vietnam

[SoCal]

Mr. V,

Well it's certainly not my dollars. All my money is going to education, and medical expenses of illegals.

A stupid country we may at times be, but a bunch of oil mongering sadists we are not.

Anyways, off topic. Glad you will have your boy safe at home. Ask him how he likes being a human pin cushion.

PS- whose your accountant?

[DaveYo]

Mr Vietnam, I must say this overall. It does not matter whether there is a body or not to prove death or otherwise. The way the American laws that are written today is quote>>>>> if the authorities have strong reason to believe and that circumstances strongly point and paint the picture within reason however regardless of proof being self evident, they will charge you with Murder!!!!!!!!

I could care less of the saying that one is innocent till proven guilty. The fact that one is arrested whether or not there is evidence says this same person better prove their innocense in court or you can bet the odds are you get convicted.

Mr. Vietnam I have personally witnessed myself people here getting arrested just for being at the wrong place and at the wrong time and they did not even hurt a earthworm. They had to fight and prove their claim that they had nothing to do with such offense. This is very common here in America. At the very same token they went financially broke to keep their freedom paying lawyers huge fees. And there are people now doing time just based on circumstances, because the prosecutors are so good at lying ball faced in the courtrooms they can say and accuse you of things that will make you so mad you'd want to kill them to keep your honor intact.

That is the system here Mr. Vietnam. The Police here don't give two bits shits of who you are. The money tree belongs in the system period.

I hate to argue Mr. Vietnam but this is the truth and reality of America as of this particular subject.

Daveyoti

[sriracha john]

UPDATE

'We never could figure him out'

By Joe Kovac Jr., Macon Telegraph

1/22/06

As James Sullivan goes on trial for the 1987 murder-for-hire slaying of his socialite wife, locals recall his years in Macon. In the town where he struck it rich half a lifetime ago, back when James Vincent Sullivan was plain old Jimmy the liquor distributor's nephew, some who knew him figure the fate that has befallen him couldn't lay ruin to a finer fellow.

Sullivan, a Massachusetts-raised outsider supreme on the good-buddy Southern liquor scene, fashioned himself a persona that has, to this day, done something the man himself never quite has: hung around.

An international fugitive for more than three years since his Macon days, Sullivan's ties to the town where he married the woman he is now accused of having killed, while itinerant at best, left a trail he is yet to outlive.

As Sullivan, 64, stands trial in Fulton County in the 1987 murder-for-hire slaying of his second wife, Lita, recollections of the once-local millionaire with "the world by the tail" have re-emerged.

Part mystery and all Yankee, Sullivan and his penchant for polyester splashed down in Macon in 1973. A couple of years later, he inherited his uncle Frank Bienert's company when Bienert died. But within a decade of that, Sullivan, a former department store accountant, sold Crown Beverage Inc., which carried the bankable Seagram's line, for a reported $5 million.

Sullivan, whose first wife, Catherine, had divorced him in 1976, then married Lita McClinton, whom he met while shopping at an Atlanta boutique where she worked. Upon selling Crown in 1983, the Sullivans soon moved to Florida, into a Palm Beach mansion. By some accounts, Lita didn't like the life there and in the mid-'80s moved away to a townhouse the couple owned in Atlanta.

The Sullivans were in the midst of a divorce in early 1987 when Lita was shot and killed at her front door by someone who'd apparently posed as a flower deliveryman.

Sullivan, in the 19 years since Lita's death - in Macon at least - has become a character locals can't seem to forget, something of a rich man's Anjette Lyles. They ate in her restaurant; they drank his gin.

Gerald Neal, who worked for Sullivan at Crown Beverage for about three months in the mid-1970s, says he was hired with the idea of helping Sullivan smooth things over with local retailers. Neal says liquor-store owners had tired of Sullivan's practice of "selling off the dock" to friends and others, thereby draining the potential sales of the very vendors he was licensed to supply.

Neal and some liquor-store owners at the time say it got so bad that stores began taking Seagram's products off their shelves, selling them only when customers requested them.

Neal, 63, says Sullivan "asked me what I thought he ought to do and I told him, I said, 'You need to rent the Macon Auditorium down there and invite everybody you do business with and tell them what a no-good, rotten SOB you've been.' ... He said he would never do that, that it was his business and he could do what he wanted to.

"Nobody liked him," Neal says. "I don't know of anybody in Macon, Georgia, ... anybody that came in contact with him that cared for him. There's just no way to describe the man."

Neal recalls Sullivan as a "good bull shooter" who wore out-of-style polyester suits and liked to drive fast.

"If you got around him talking, you would think that he was the greatest thing that ever was about being smart about things," Neal says. "His business could have been at least 50 percent better than what it was had he acted like a human being. But he chose to go the other way."

'DIDN'T LIKE HIS AIR'

Sullivan's notoriety as a Boston boy turned multimillionaire turned "America's Most Wanted" murder suspect has long since hit home in his native Massachusetts.

Last month, a newspaper column in Worcester's Sunday Telegram referred to Sullivan as "persona non grata" at his alma mater, Holy Cross, noting that a former college president who, five weeks after Lita Sullivan's 1987 death, "attended a party in Florida hosted by Mr. Sullivan for Holy Cross alumni ... was unavailable for comment - permanently."

In 1998, a time when, according to authorities, Sullivan had fled the country to Central America and, later, to Thailand to avoid prosecution, the Boston Globe ran a profile of Sullivan. The paper noted how, a few years earlier, "when Sullivan's father died ... the millionaire son spoke at the funeral at Sacred Heart Church in Quincy. The sight unnerved a close family friend. 'Imagine that,' the friend said. 'Satan himself on the altar.' "

In his prime, Sullivan had reddish, sandy-blond hair and bore some resemblance to singer Jerry Lee Lewis. He was 5 foot 10, but his long face and low-slung jawline lent him the distinguished look of a man 3 or 4 inches taller.

A 1992 article in Atlanta Magazine noted his "nasal, clipped" Boston accent and quoted Lita Sullivan's mother, JoAnn McClinton, recalling the man who'd courted her daughter: "We just didn't like his air. ... He had horn-rimmed glasses (and wore) either green or red polyester knit pants."

By some accounts, Lita, who'd once had fashion-design aspirations, dressed up her man, perhaps helping him move in social scenes in Macon, Atlanta and, later, Palm Beach.

Edwina Barnes of Macon remembers her former neighbor in the upscale Shirley Hills neighborhood as "a nice-looking man," adding that "he just could not have been nicer when I did fund-raisers. He always supplied the liquor and everything. He was always very, very nice to us. Always a very pleasant person."

Barnes also knew of Sullivan from his days in Palm Beach, where Barnes also had a home.

"He was always nice to invite us to the parties," Barnes says, "and you just never, ever saw this other side that we're assuming that he has. But he could not have been nicer to us."

That said, Barnes recalls that Sullivan "certainly did have kind of a stronger personality than most people in the South."

'HAD THE WORLD BY THE TAIL'

Bobby Sanders, who owned the Pinebrook Village Package Store on Forsyth Road and had dealings with Sullivan on a weekly basis for more than two years, figures Sullivan "could have gotten along, he just didn't, I guess, want to."

"He alienated everybody and he was such a miser," says Sanders, 71, telling of a time when, he says, Sullivan sold him bottles of "bad wine" that Sullivan had been reimbursed for and was "supposed to take to the dump."

On its Web site, the television show "America's Most Wanted" lists Sullivan as "captured" and describes him as someone who is "frugal but likes to entertain the lifestyle of a millionaire," a man "police say ... may steal condiments."

"He thought he was smarter than anybody down here," Sanders says. "He wouldn't mind telling other people that people in the South was a bunch of idiots, a bunch of rednecks. We never could figure him out. He had the world by the tail. He had one of the top wholesale companies in America. ... He could have had anything he wanted."

Sanders adds, "I actually told him this when he came to my store, 'Let me tell you one ###### thing, you go right out behind my store here at the (Idle Hour) country club and you sell those folks liquor and they could give a s--- about you because you are not a Macon blue blood. You will never be a Macon blue blood. They are nice, but you'll never be accepted in the Macon blue-blood crowd.' "

Nick Block of Macon, who owned two Thunderbird liquor stores here, says Sullivan's so-called "off-the-dock" sales didn't do much for Sullivan's business reputation.

Block says, "I had a friend and his daughter was getting ready to get married, and they called me and said, 'Nick, you gonna give us a good price on some booze and wine?' I said, 'Sure.' And my wife mentioned to me about a week before the wedding, 'Have you gotten an order out of Mrs. XYZ?' And I said, 'No.' And we go to the reception and all the wine and all the liquor there came out of Crown Beverage company, so you didn't have to be a Phi Beta Kappa to figure what happened."

Block, 79, remembers Sullivan as "very intelligent."

"He took me out to lunch (at Shoney's - "really impressed me") one day with the idea of healing the rift between us," Block says, "and he promised he wasn't gonna sell anything off his dock or out the back door, and that very afternoon he sells a couple of cases of liquor to a dentist. Truth wasn't his long suit."

YEARS HAVE WORN ON HIM

Here now three decades later, what pertinent truths there are to be had about Sullivan and his past will, in an Atlanta courthouse, no doubt conjure memories of his Macon years.

No full picture of Sullivan is complete without mention of the place where he rose to riches. One of his slain wife's best friends still lives here, as do many of the people who knew James and Lita Sullivan as a couple.

Sullivan, of course, doesn't much look the same. The years and time behind bars since his arrest in Thailand in 2002 have worn on him.

The once disheveled Northerner who skewed debonair down South has, with his sagging features, taken on the carriage of a man who has long since resigned to slouch. The gold-buttoned navy blazer he wore in court earlier this month wasn't pressed, and had it been his 150-or-so-pound frame wouldn't have come close to filling it. And there was a blankness about him that would not have been out of place at a wake.

When he stood to greet prospective jurors on the first day of proceedings at his trial, Sullivan, who has pleaded not guilty, faced his peers without expression.

He had listened again and again while a judge read the charges against him to one group of potential jurors after another. He had heard over and over how his life was on the line, that the death penalty may be in order.

At a table to his right, prosecutors also stood. They gave their names. Then one of Sullivan's attorneys, Ed Garland, took the floor.

"First let me introduce you to James Sullivan," Garland told would-be jurors, gesturing to his client.

"Good morning," Sullivan said with a nod.

"Good morning," the people replied.

***

THE SULLIVAN CASE: A TIMELINE

1973 - James Sullivan moves to Macon to manage his uncle Frank Bienert's liquor-distribution company, Crown Beverage Inc.

1975 - Bienert dies, leaving Sullivan control of the company. Two months later, Sullivan's first wife, Catherine, files for divorce.

1976 - Four days after Christmas, Sullivan marries Lita McClinton of Atlanta. The couple soon moves into a home on Nottingham Drive in Macon's affluent Shirley Hills neighborhood.

1983 - Sullivan sells Crown Beverage for a reported $5 million and buys and renovates a $2 million mansion in Palm Beach.

1984 - Sullivan buys a Buckhead condo, and the couple splits time between Florida and Georgia.

1985 - In August, Lita Sullivan moves into the Buckhead residence and later files for divorce.

1987 - Jan. 16, shortly after 8 a.m., a gunman believed to have been pretending to deliver pink roses to Lita Sullivan shot her when she answered her door. The Sullivans' divorce case was still ongoing. James Sullivan was later named a suspect in Lita's death. Sullivan remarried in September to a woman he'd reportedly been seeing for two years.

1992 - In late November after federal prosecutors contend Sullivan used long-distance calls to arrange Lita's death, a judge ruled that they failed to make their case.

1998 - In April, acting on a tip, authorities arrest Phillip Harwood, then 49, at his North Carolina home and contend he is the gunman who shot and killed Lita Sullivan. Later the same week, a warrant for Sullivan's arrest is issued, charging that he arranged Lita's death. Sullivan disappears.

1999 - In February, Fox TV's "America's Most Wanted" airs. Authorities say Sullivan, again divorced, is out of the country, possibly living in Central America.

2002 - Sullivan is arrested at a beachside condo in Thailand.

2004 - Sullivan, after prosecutors here announce they will seek the death penalty against him, is extradited to Georgia.

2005 - The buried remains of Sullivan's uncle, Frank Bienert, are exhumed in his home state of Massachusetts after authorities suspect that Bienert, who died and left his fortune to Sullivan, may have been poisoned. An autopsy shows Bienert died of natural causes.

2006 - In January, jury selection begins in the murder case against Sullivan. Testimony is expected to start in mid- to late February.

[Carmine6]

UPDATE

'We never could figure him out'

By Joe Kovac Jr., Macon Telegraph

1/22/06

As James Sullivan goes on trial for the 1987 murder-for-hire slaying of his socialite wife, locals recall his years in Macon. In the town where he struck it rich half a lifetime ago, back when James Vincent Sullivan was plain old Jimmy the liquor distributor's nephew, some who knew him figure the fate that has befallen him couldn't lay ruin to a finer fellow.

Sullivan, a Massachusetts-raised outsider supreme on the good-buddy Southern liquor scene, fashioned himself a persona that has, to this day, done something the man himself never quite has: hung around.

An international fugitive for more than three years since his Macon days, Sullivan's ties to the town where he married the woman he is now accused of having killed, while itinerant at best, left a trail he is yet to outlive.

As Sullivan, 64, stands trial in Fulton County in the 1987 murder-for-hire slaying of his second wife, Lita, recollections of the once-local millionaire with "the world by the tail" have re-emerged.

Part mystery and all Yankee, Sullivan and his penchant for polyester splashed down in Macon in 1973. A couple of years later, he inherited his uncle Frank Bienert's company when Bienert died. But within a decade of that, Sullivan, a former department store accountant, sold Crown Beverage Inc., which carried the bankable Seagram's line, for a reported $5 million.

Sullivan, whose first wife, Catherine, had divorced him in 1976, then married Lita McClinton, whom he met while shopping at an Atlanta boutique where she worked. Upon selling Crown in 1983, the Sullivans soon moved to Florida, into a Palm Beach mansion. By some accounts, Lita didn't like the life there and in the mid-'80s moved away to a townhouse the couple owned in Atlanta.

The Sullivans were in the midst of a divorce in early 1987 when Lita was shot and killed at her front door by someone who'd apparently posed as a flower deliveryman.

Sullivan, in the 19 years since Lita's death - in Macon at least - has become a character locals can't seem to forget, something of a rich man's Anjette Lyles. They ate in her restaurant; they drank his gin.

Gerald Neal, who worked for Sullivan at Crown Beverage for about three months in the mid-1970s, says he was hired with the idea of helping Sullivan smooth things over with local retailers. Neal says liquor-store owners had tired of Sullivan's practice of "selling off the dock" to friends and others, thereby draining the potential sales of the very vendors he was licensed to supply.

Neal and some liquor-store owners at the time say it got so bad that stores began taking Seagram's products off their shelves, selling them only when customers requested them.

Neal, 63, says Sullivan "asked me what I thought he ought to do and I told him, I said, 'You need to rent the Macon Auditorium down there and invite everybody you do business with and tell them what a no-good, rotten SOB you've been.' ... He said he would never do that, that it was his business and he could do what he wanted to.

"Nobody liked him," Neal says. "I don't know of anybody in Macon, Georgia, ... anybody that came in contact with him that cared for him. There's just no way to describe the man."

Neal recalls Sullivan as a "good bull shooter" who wore out-of-style polyester suits and liked to drive fast.

"If you got around him talking, you would think that he was the greatest thing that ever was about being smart about things," Neal says. "His business could have been at least 50 percent better than what it was had he acted like a human being. But he chose to go the other way."

'DIDN'T LIKE HIS AIR'

Sullivan's notoriety as a Boston boy turned multimillionaire turned "America's Most Wanted" murder suspect has long since hit home in his native Massachusetts.

Last month, a newspaper column in Worcester's Sunday Telegram referred to Sullivan as "persona non grata" at his alma mater, Holy Cross, noting that a former college president who, five weeks after Lita Sullivan's 1987 death, "attended a party in Florida hosted by Mr. Sullivan for Holy Cross alumni ... was unavailable for comment - permanently."

In 1998, a time when, according to authorities, Sullivan had fled the country to Central America and, later, to Thailand to avoid prosecution, the Boston Globe ran a profile of Sullivan. The paper noted how, a few years earlier, "when Sullivan's father died ... the millionaire son spoke at the funeral at Sacred Heart Church in Quincy. The sight unnerved a close family friend. 'Imagine that,' the friend said. 'Satan himself on the altar.' "

In his prime, Sullivan had reddish, sandy-blond hair and bore some resemblance to singer Jerry Lee Lewis. He was 5 foot 10, but his long face and low-slung jawline lent him the distinguished look of a man 3 or 4 inches taller.

A 1992 article in Atlanta Magazine noted his "nasal, clipped" Boston accent and quoted Lita Sullivan's mother, JoAnn McClinton, recalling the man who'd courted her daughter: "We just didn't like his air. ... He had horn-rimmed glasses (and wore) either green or red polyester knit pants."

By some accounts, Lita, who'd once had fashion-design aspirations, dressed up her man, perhaps helping him move in social scenes in Macon, Atlanta and, later, Palm Beach.

Edwina Barnes of Macon remembers her former neighbor in the upscale Shirley Hills neighborhood as "a nice-looking man," adding that "he just could not have been nicer when I did fund-raisers. He always supplied the liquor and everything. He was always very, very nice to us. Always a very pleasant person."

Barnes also knew of Sullivan from his days in Palm Beach, where Barnes also had a home.

"He was always nice to invite us to the parties," Barnes says, "and you just never, ever saw this other side that we're assuming that he has. But he could not have been nicer to us."

That said, Barnes recalls that Sullivan "certainly did have kind of a stronger personality than most people in the South."

'HAD THE WORLD BY THE TAIL'

Bobby Sanders, who owned the Pinebrook Village Package Store on Forsyth Road and had dealings with Sullivan on a weekly basis for more than two years, figures Sullivan "could have gotten along, he just didn't, I guess, want to."

"He alienated everybody and he was such a miser," says Sanders, 71, telling of a time when, he says, Sullivan sold him bottles of "bad wine" that Sullivan had been reimbursed for and was "supposed to take to the dump."

On its Web site, the television show "America's Most Wanted" lists Sullivan as "captured" and describes him as someone who is "frugal but likes to entertain the lifestyle of a millionaire," a man "police say ... may steal condiments."

"He thought he was smarter than anybody down here," Sanders says. "He wouldn't mind telling other people that people in the South was a bunch of idiots, a bunch of rednecks. We never could figure him out. He had the world by the tail. He had one of the top wholesale companies in America. ... He could have had anything he wanted."

Sanders adds, "I actually told him this when he came to my store, 'Let me tell you one ###### thing, you go right out behind my store here at the (Idle Hour) country club and you sell those folks liquor and they could give a s--- about you because you are not a Macon blue blood. You will never be a Macon blue blood. They are nice, but you'll never be accepted in the Macon blue-blood crowd.' "

Nick Block of Macon, who owned two Thunderbird liquor stores here, says Sullivan's so-called "off-the-dock" sales didn't do much for Sullivan's business reputation.

Block says, "I had a friend and his daughter was getting ready to get married, and they called me and said, 'Nick, you gonna give us a good price on some booze and wine?' I said, 'Sure.' And my wife mentioned to me about a week before the wedding, 'Have you gotten an order out of Mrs. XYZ?' And I said, 'No.' And we go to the reception and all the wine and all the liquor there came out of Crown Beverage company, so you didn't have to be a Phi Beta Kappa to figure what happened."

Block, 79, remembers Sullivan as "very intelligent."

"He took me out to lunch (at Shoney's - "really impressed me") one day with the idea of healing the rift between us," Block says, "and he promised he wasn't gonna sell anything off his dock or out the back door, and that very afternoon he sells a couple of cases of liquor to a dentist. Truth wasn't his long suit."

YEARS HAVE WORN ON HIM

Here now three decades later, what pertinent truths there are to be had about Sullivan and his past will, in an Atlanta courthouse, no doubt conjure memories of his Macon years.

No full picture of Sullivan is complete without mention of the place where he rose to riches. One of his slain wife's best friends still lives here, as do many of the people who knew James and Lita Sullivan as a couple.

Sullivan, of course, doesn't much look the same. The years and time behind bars since his arrest in Thailand in 2002 have worn on him.

The once disheveled Northerner who skewed debonair down South has, with his sagging features, taken on the carriage of a man who has long since resigned to slouch. The gold-buttoned navy blazer he wore in court earlier this month wasn't pressed, and had it been his 150-or-so-pound frame wouldn't have come close to filling it. And there was a blankness about him that would not have been out of place at a wake.

When he stood to greet prospective jurors on the first day of proceedings at his trial, Sullivan, who has pleaded not guilty, faced his peers without expression.

He had listened again and again while a judge read the charges against him to one group of potential jurors after another. He had heard over and over how his life was on the line, that the death penalty may be in order.

At a table to his right, prosecutors also stood. They gave their names. Then one of Sullivan's attorneys, Ed Garland, took the floor.

"First let me introduce you to James Sullivan," Garland told would-be jurors, gesturing to his client.

"Good morning," Sullivan said with a nod.

"Good morning," the people replied.

***

THE SULLIVAN CASE: A TIMELINE

1973 - James Sullivan moves to Macon to manage his uncle Frank Bienert's liquor-distribution company, Crown Beverage Inc.

1975 - Bienert dies, leaving Sullivan control of the company. Two months later, Sullivan's first wife, Catherine, files for divorce.

1976 - Four days after Christmas, Sullivan marries Lita McClinton of Atlanta. The couple soon moves into a home on Nottingham Drive in Macon's affluent Shirley Hills neighborhood.

1983 - Sullivan sells Crown Beverage for a reported $5 million and buys and renovates a $2 million mansion in Palm Beach.

1984 - Sullivan buys a Buckhead condo, and the couple splits time between Florida and Georgia.

1985 - In August, Lita Sullivan moves into the Buckhead residence and later files for divorce.

1987 - Jan. 16, shortly after 8 a.m., a gunman believed to have been pretending to deliver pink roses to Lita Sullivan shot her when she answered her door. The Sullivans' divorce case was still ongoing. James Sullivan was later named a suspect in Lita's death. Sullivan remarried in September to a woman he'd reportedly been seeing for two years.

1992 - In late November after federal prosecutors contend Sullivan used long-distance calls to arrange Lita's death, a judge ruled that they failed to make their case.

1998 - In April, acting on a tip, authorities arrest Phillip Harwood, then 49, at his North Carolina home and contend he is the gunman who shot and killed Lita Sullivan. Later the same week, a warrant for Sullivan's arrest is issued, charging that he arranged Lita's death. Sullivan disappears.

1999 - In February, Fox TV's "America's Most Wanted" airs. Authorities say Sullivan, again divorced, is out of the country, possibly living in Central America.

2002 - Sullivan is arrested at a beachside condo in Thailand.

2004 - Sullivan, after prosecutors here announce they will seek the death penalty against him, is extradited to Georgia.

2005 - The buried remains of Sullivan's uncle, Frank Bienert, are exhumed in his home state of Massachusetts after authorities suspect that Bienert, who died and left his fortune to Sullivan, may have been poisoned. An autopsy shows Bienert died of natural causes.

2006 - In January, jury selection begins in the murder case against Sullivan. Testimony is expected to start in mid- to late February.

4 years on the run, then 4 years from arrest to trial. Sounds like he would have gotten a long sentence back then, so hope he goes away for a long time now.

[mouse]

I don't know wether he is guilty or innocent, but, in my eyes innocent until proven in a court of law. But did you ever notice how when someone is going up they all hold on to the pant cuffs then when on a dowward turn of life, they all try to jump on top and suddenly no one has anything positive to say. "He was a fast driver..Polyester suits" People!

[dr_Pat_Pong]

He does sound different doesn't he ?

[sriracha john]

UPDATE

PalmBeachDailyNews.com

February 26, 2006

James Sullivan talks to one of his attorneys, Ed Garland, at a hearing in Fulton County Superior Court. He will be back in court Monday, charged in the murder of estranged wife Lita McClinton Sullivan. If convicted, he faces a possible death sentence.

James Sullivan lived at Casa Eleda, 920 S. Ocean Blvd., a landmarked oceanfront manse, which he purchased in 1981 and sold in 1991 for $3.2 million.

James and Suki Sullivan in an undated photo.

James and Lita Sullivan

Murder case going to trial 19 years later

From his blue-collar upbringing to his meteoric rise in Palm Beach as chairman of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the twists and turns of James Vincent Sullivan's life could be fodder for a suspense novel.

Sullivan lived the best of times in Palm Beach, hosting dinner parties, inserting himself into local politics and climbing the social ladder.

But just as quickly, things took a downward turn after Sullivan became a suspect in the 1987 shooting death of his estranged wife. It took 11 years to get a break in the case. But when a tip led to the triggerman in 1998 and a subsequent arrest warrant for Sullivan, he disappeared. His 2002 capture in Thailand propelled him into the headlines once again, followed by his incarceration in a Thai prison and extradition to a U.S. jail.

The next, and perhaps final, chapter is about to be written as Sullivan stands trial for murder in the contract hit of Lita McClinton Sullivan, 19 years after the crime took place. The trial begins Monday in Fulton County Superior Court in Atlanta with Fulton County Superior Court Judge John Goger presiding. If convicted, Sullivan faces a possible death sentence.

At 8:20 a.m. on Jan. 16, 1987, hours before she was to appear at a divorce hearing, Lita was shot to death by a gunman posing as a flower delivery man and concealing a 9mm pistol behind a box of pink roses. The 35-year-old was shot in the face as she answered the door to the couple's town home in Atlanta's upscale Buckhead section.

From the beginning, law enforcement officials suspected Sullivan had his wife murdered to avoid losing millions and his Palm Beach mansion in their pending divorce. Authorities also knew Sullivan had moved on long before the murder with a new girlfriend, the exotic Suki Rogers, whom he was anxious to wed.

Sullivan was in Palm Beach at the time of the murder. But authorities traced three phone calls, made days before the murder, from an Atlanta-area motel to Sullivan's Palm Beach mansion. Less than an hour after the murder, authorities traced a phone call made from an interstate rest stop just outside of Atlanta to Sullivan's home in Palm Beach.

The 19-year saga of bringing Sullivan to trial for murder has included many headline-grabbing events, including a racy divorce trial at which Suki testified that Sullivan confessed to Lita's murder; a 1992 federal criminal trial, in which the judge dismissed the case before sending it to the jury; a 1994 civil trial that awarded Lita's parents $4 million for their daughter's wrongful death; the 1998 capture and confession of the hit man; and Sullivan's flight to Thailand and his subsequent capture and extradition.

Among those on the witness list: Suki, who became Sullivan's third wife; the confessed triggerman Phillip Anthony "Tony" Harwood; Harwood's ex-girlfriend, Belinda Trahan, who says she saw Sullivan pass her boyfriend an envelope full of money at a Florida diner; Palm Beach County Jail inmate Paul O'Brien, who was incarcerated with Sullivan and says Sullivan confessed to the murder to him; and Lita's parents, Jo Ann and Emory McClinton.

A new witness — an imprisoned Florida burglar with a long rap sheet — has emerged in the past few weeks, claiming that Sullivan approached him as a backup hit man. William Richard Hawley, 42, currently housed in the Indian River County Jail, alleges he has known Sullivan since 1986 and that Sullivan offered him $50,000 "to do the job" if the first attempt failed.

Atlanta attorneys Ed Garland and Donald Samuel will lead Sullivan's defense. The two defended Sullivan in the 1992 federal criminal trial.

In an e-mail to the Palm Beach Daily News, Samuel said he will challenge the credibility of the state's key prosecution witness, Harwood, who confessed and pleaded guilty to the crime but has since recanted his confession. He is serving 20 years in prison for manslaughter. Prosecutors say Sullivan paid Harwood $25,000 to kill Lita.

"The person who at one point claimed to be the hit man will certainly be cross-examined at length about the scores of inconsistent statements he has made about his involvement and Mr. Sullivan's involvement in the homicide," Samuel said. "Jim Sullivan had nothing to do with the killing of his wife, Lita Sullivan. He does not know who the perpetrator is and does not know the motive of the perpetrator."

"I think it's fairly standard for the defense to challenge the credibility of the prosecution's witnesses," said Eric Friedly, spokesman for Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard. "We intend to call [Harwood] and to present what he has told us. We expect he will make the same statements he had previously made when he entered his [guilty] plea."

Four prosecutors from Fulton County will spearhead the state's case: assistant district attorneys Clint Rucker, Sheila Ross, Kellie Hill and Anna Green.

Friedly said he doesn't think the 19 years it took to bring Sullivan to trial will be a factor.

"The time involved is a result of Mr. Sullivan's actions," Friedly said. "It's not something we feel is a reflection of our case. The time issue isn't a concern. In preparing for this case, people remember this incident quite well."

Humble beginnings

James Sullivan grew up in a blue-collar Boston neighborhood, the son of a typesetter.

He graduated from the Boston Latin School, a public school known for academic rigor. He attended the College of Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., on a scholarship and graduated with a degree in economics in 1962.

Sullivan had four children, now grown, with first wife Catherine Murray, who, like Sullivan, was an Irish-Catholic Boston native. He worked as an accountant while Catherine raised the children.

In the early 1970s, Sullivan moved the family to Macon, Ga., so he could work for his uncle's wholesale liquor business. When his uncle died in 1975, Sullivan inherited the business, which he sold in 1983 for $5 million.

For years, rumors abounded that Sullivan had poisoned his uncle, Frank Beinert, for the inheritance. Those rumors were put to rest last year, when Beinert's body was exhumed and a medical examiner ruled he died of natural causes — most likely a heart attack.

After taking over his uncle's business, Sullivan and Catherine separated and she returned to Boston with the children.

Lita McClinton was a college-educated, light-skinned black woman from a prominent Atlanta family. Her mother, Jo Ann McClinton, was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in the 1980s and still serves there today. Her father, Emory McClinton, retired from a high-profile position in Atlanta as regional civil rights compliance director for the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Sullivan met his second wife while she was working at an upscale Atlanta boutique. Ten years her senior, Sullivan courted Lita in earnest, taking her to the best places and showering her with expensive gifts. Lita later described the money Sullivan spent on her during their courtship as "extravagant."

Sullivan's divorce from Catherine became final in January 1976. He married Lita on Dec. 29 of the same year. The couple resided in Macon, but Sullivan harbored Palm Beach aspirations.

In 1981, he bought the Maurice Fatio-designed mansion, Casa Eleda, at 920 S. Ocean Blvd., a landmarked oceanfront manse nicknamed the "ham and cheese house" for its layered exterior of red brick and white coquina.

Lita didn't know about the purchase until after Sullivan completed the deal, putting the house in his name only. They moved to Palm Beach in 1983 against Lita's wishes. Those who knew her said Lita never felt comfortable in Palm Beach, where interracial marriages were frowned upon.

Sullivan attempted to climb into Palm Beach society by playing tennis, attending social functions and holding small dinner parties at his home.

Town Council President Bill Brooks and his wife, Muffy, attended one of those parties.

"Lita was just so gracious and nice," Bill Brooks said. "She had a hard time here. He was a social climber, and she sensed she was not welcome with open arms."

Sullivan inserted himself into local politics by stumping for the 1985 re-election of Mayor Yvelyne "Deedy" Marix. He held a block party at his house for Marix's re-election campaign. After getting re-elected, Marix proposed Sullivan for the Landmarks Preservation Commission. He served two terms on the commission and was elected chairman.

"He had one outstanding trait," said Donald Curl, who served with Sullivan on the commission. "When we considered landmarking a house, he was more than willing to meet with the owners and explain the advantages of landmarking. He tried to change it from being imposed by the government to showing them what landmarking really meant and making it a nice process. That hadn't been true before."

But Lita had become more and more unhappy.

In 1985, while her husband was out of town, Lita packed up her things, moved back to Georgia and filed for divorce. The divorce filings contained allegations that Sullivan was a philanderer, was stingy and used money to control Lita.

Sullivan met the Korean born Hyo-Sook Choi — known as Suki — at a Palm Beach party in 1985, which she attended with her then-husband Leonard Rogers.

Suki gave her account of their meeting during Sullivan's 1992 federal criminal trial.

According to Suki, Sullivan introduced himself to her. A few moments later, a woman whom Suki had noticed standing by herself joined the group. Sullivan introduced the woman as "Lita Sullivan." It was only when Suki remarked on their same last names that Sullivan told her that Lita was his wife.

Suki and Sullivan started dating while both were still married. Lita had left town and was living in Georgia. Leonard Rogers was away on business a good deal of the time. Suspecting something was going on, Rogers hired a private investigator. When Leonard Rogers received confirmation that Sullivan spent the night at his house, he filed for divorce.

But Sullivan's divorce to Lita was dragging on.

On the day that Lita was shot to death in Atlanta, Suki and Sullivan had dinner at Jo's Restaurant in Palm Beach. They married nine months later, on Sept. 26, 1987, at the Royal Poinciana Chapel. The marriage was the third for both.

A minor three-car fender-bender on South Ocean Boulevard would put a series of events into play that eventually led to Sullivan's 1992 federal criminal trial.

Palm Beach police ticketed Sullivan in March 1990 for driving his Rolls Royce with an expired driver license. The previous year, Sullivan had lost his Florida driver license after 17 traffic violations tagged him as a "habitual traffic violator."

On the day of the accident, the expired license Sullivan showed the police was from Georgia and so was the car's registration, which was also expired.

When Sullivan went to court to fight the traffic charges, he told the judge that Palm Beach police made a mistake and that he had not been driving at the time. Suki took the stand and testified that she was the driver. The police officer was not in court and the judge dismissed the charges.

When the police officer found out what happened, he arrested Suki and she was charged with perjury.

Police discovered that Sullivan's Florida driver license was revoked, reopened the earlier traffic case and charged him with driving without a Florida license. Sullivan pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charge and was sentenced to six months house arrest.

Suki pleaded guilty to perjury and received one year's probation. By this time, their marriage had begun to unravel.

Sullivan went before the Town Council in June 1990 to ask for a leave of absence from the Landmarks Preservation Commission, citing "personal reasons." While he was at that meeting, Suki moved out of the mansion and filed for divorce.

That November, the Town Council voted unanimously to remove Sullivan from the commission. Town Council President Bernard Heeke said Sullivan's prolonged absence "created a problem for the functioning of that committee."

Already on house arrest for pleading guilty to driving without a valid Florida license, Sullivan was convicted on the felony charge of perjury in June 1991 and began serving another house arrest while living at his South Ocean Boulevard estate.

At about the same time, the FBI received information from a confidential informant about a plot to kill a black woman in Atlanta who was married to a wealthy white man in Florida. That led the FBI to Sullivan's Palm Beach mansion.

In September 1991, the FBI raided Sullivan's Palm Beach estate, looking for his appointment books, address books and financial records. FBI agents seized four guns. Sullivan was arrested on weapons charges and jailed without bond.

While in jail, Sullivan was housed with O'Brien, who was charged with armed robbery. O'Brien alleged that Sullivan had confessed the murder to him and the two ended up in a jailhouse fight. O'Brien broke Sullivan's nose.

O'Brien wasn't the only one to have allegedly heard Sullivan confess. In her divorce filings, Suki said she had "an extreme fear" of her husband and wanted the location of her temporary residence kept from him.

During the divorce trial, Sullivan testified that Suki took his jewelry, clothes, luggage, kitchenware and hoarded 400 pairs of pantyhose before leaving him. Suki testified she fled from Sullivan in terror after he allegedly confessed to having Lita murdered.

The marriage ended in December 1990 with a judge ruling in favor of Sullivan, giving him everything from his $4.9 million landmarked mansion to Coco, the family dog. Suki ended up with $47,000 worth of jewelry, $30,000 in attorney's fees and no alimony.

Sullivan sold the oceanfront home in September 1991 for $3.2 million and moved around Palm Beach County, including Boca Raton, Boynton Beach and Gulf Stream.

In January 1992, Sullivan was indicted on federal charges of using interstate phone lines to arrange the murder of his wife. The crux of the prosecution's case centered on four phone calls between Sullivan's Palm Beach home and the Atlanta area. Three calls were made in the days before the murder and one call was made less than an hour after the murder.

Throughout the trial, testimony revealed that Sullivan had a Jekyll-Hyde persona.

Witnesses testified that Sullivan was so tight with a buck he wore underwear that he inherited from his uncle and saved paper towels to reuse as hand wipes . But testimony also revealed that Sullivan could be extremely generous, lavishing Lita with ropes of pearls, a 7 1/2-carat diamond ring, a $110,000 ruby necklace and a $26,000 diamond bracelet. He would also spend "tremendous amounts of money" on gourmet dinners and fine wines to entertain small groups of people. Jurors in that trial also heard accusations of extensive infidelities during his marriage to Lita.

Defense attorneys claimed Lita had a cocaine problem and was unfaithful in the marriage, trying to provide motives for her murder by drug dealers or jealous lovers.

Testimony wound through several weeks before the judge dismissed the charges before the case went to the jury, saying prosecutors failed to prove that calls made to Sullivan's house in the days preceding the murder were connected to Lita's death.

Next came a 1994 civil trial in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, where the McClintons sued Sullivan for their daughter's wrongful death. Sullivan represented himself at trial and West Palm Beach attorney Brad Moores represented Lita's parents. A jury awarded the McClintons $4 million, but Sullivan has never paid any portion of that amount to them. Since Moores took the case on a contingency basis, he hasn't seen any of his fees either.

"After a while, the money isn't what you think about," Moores said. "You think about how he's been able to avoid his accountability."

The big break

In 1998, after Tony Harwood's former girlfriend, Belinda Trahan, saw a TV show about Lita Sullivan's unsolved murder, she told investigators that she had seen Sullivan handing Harwood an envelope full of money at a Florida restaurant. The information led to Harwood's April 1998 arrest. An arrest warrant was issued for Sullivan.

Sullivan was tipped off. He left Palm Beach County for Costa Rica in 1997, then fled to Panama, Venezuela and finally Thailand, where he eluded authorities until another tip led to his July 2, 2002, capture.

Sullivan had been living in a second-floor condominium overlooking the Gulf of Thailand with his fourth wife, Chongwattana Reynolds, a divorced West Palm Beach woman. He fought extradition before he was returned to Atlanta in March 2004.

Sullivan's attorneys tried to get the case thrown out in pretrial appeals, citing the federal trial and asserting he can't be tried for the same crime twice. In November, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled the federal charges, where prosecutors tried to show Sullivan used interstate phone calls to arrange the murder, do not constitute double jeopardy. The ruling cleared the way for the state trial.

"As the trial begins, my thoughts are with the McClintons," Moores said. "They are devastated by the murder of their daughter, but they never allowed bitterness and anguish to dilute their feelings about letting the system work. There's been a lot of ups and downs and a lot of frustrations, but they never lost hope that it would somehow lead to a courtroom and that he would be held accountable for what he's done."

-------------------------------------------------

I presume the movie is waiting for the conclusion of the trial...

[TAWP]

The guy must be one of the least clever ever. Have the (cute) former wife shot while entering diverce proceedings. Yeah, no-one will figure that one out.

[sriracha john]

UPDATE: GUILTY!

Ex-Hua Hin fugitive convicted of Atlanta murder

Atlanta: A jury Friday convicted a millionaire of murder for hiring a hit man to kill his socialite wife 19 years ago, and then hiding in Thailand - even marrying a Thai woman and buying a Hua Hin condo.

Prosecutors and the jury said James Sullivan did it because he feared losing money and a Florida mansion in the couple’s divorce.

MSNBC reported that the jury of three men and nine women took a little more than four-and-a-half hours to find Sullivan guilty of arranging the fatal shooting of Lita Sullivan, his 35-year-old second wife, who was black, on Jan. 16, 1987.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. A sentencing hearing will occur later.

Sullivan, 64, a Boston native who was once one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives, was captured in Thailand in 2002, four years after taking off on an intercontinental run around the time he was indicted on state murder charges in 1998.

Sullivan lived in luxury as he eluded authorities. In Thailand, he married a local woman, his fourth wife, and bought a condominium in the posh beachside neighbourhood of Hua Hin.

After two years of fighting extradition from Thailand, James Sullivan was returned to the U.S. in March 2004 to face murder charges for arranging his ex-wife's murder, in one of Atlanta's most highly anticipated trials in the past 20 years.

Edited March 12, 2006 by sriracha john

[Carmine6]

The guy must be one of the least clever ever. Have the (cute) former wife shot while entering diverce proceedings. Yeah, no-one will figure that one out.

Worked for 11 years. If the guy who pulled the trigger had kept his mouth shut, this guy would still be free.

[sriracha john]

Millionaire James Sullivan spared death penalty; receives life without parole sentence

ATLANTA — A jury spared wealthy investor James Sullivan the death penalty and instead sentenced him to life in prison without parole for the 1987 murder-for-hire of his wife.

The same jury that found Sullivan, 64, guilty of malice murder in less than five hours Friday took longer to decide that he should receive a life sentence for hiring a hit man to kill his 35-year-old wife, Lita.

"This has been very a long and difficult, horrible, horrible story," Fulton Superior Court Judge John Goger told Lita Sullivan's parents during the hearing. "These lawyers did a very good job for you and for the memory of your daughter."

The couple, Emory and Jo Ann McClinton, said they were satisfied with the decision, and smiled as they hugged supporters in the courtroom following the hearing.

"We were hoping for one thing — for him to be found guilty," Emory McClinton told reporters. "He thought he could get away with it because he has funds."

Before announcing the verdict, the jury foreperson said they found that Sullivan directed another to commit the crime, an aggravating factor that could have enabled them to impose the death penalty.

Even so, a juror who spoke after the verdict said that, from the outset of deliberations, death was not a consideration for the panel.

"We thought life without parole would be enough," said juror Debra Klayman, citing religion as an influential force in the deliberations. "We didn't want to be the judge of someone else's life. We wanted God to do that."

Sullivan, who has shown little emotion throughout the trial, maintained his characteristic frown, though his lawyers said they were relieved by the sentence.

"We are very thankful that the jury did not impose the death penalty," said defense lawyer Ed Garland. "These people recognized that mercy is superior to vengeance."

Goger sentenced Sullivan to two additional sentences of 20 years for aggravated assault and burglary, to run consecutively.

"They [the jury] showed Jim Sullivan a measure of mercy which he was unwilling to show Lita," Fulton County Assistant District Attorney Clint Rucker said.

Lita Sullivan was shot to death Jan. 16, 1987, when she opened the door of her Buckhead home to a man posing as a flower deliveryman. She was due to attend a crucial hearing in the couple's acrimonious divorce the same day.

The accused hit man, Tony Harwood, was spared death in exchange his testimony against Sullivan and a guilty plea on a lesser charge. Although he told jurors that Sullivan paid him to carry out the hit, he ultimately denied pulling the trigger.

Sullivan, who was acquitted of federal charges related to the murder in 1992, was not indicted in Georgia until 1998, when Harwood's ex-girlfriend, Belinda Trahan, came forward with information about the arranged hit.

Sullivan was living in Costa Rica at the time, but eventually moved to Thailand, where he was apprehended in 2002, following a tip from a viewer of "America's Most Wanted."

He fought extradition for two years before finally being returned to the U.S. in 2004.

"They could have not brought in Tony Harwood or Belinda to the stand and we still could have made the decision without them," Klayman said of the pair's often contradictory testimony.

The juror said the most persuasive evidence came in the form of phone calls between Sullivan and the alleged hit man.

Phone records entered into evidence linked Sullivan to a hotel room where Harwood was staying on Jan. 13, 1987, the same day the alleged hit man made his first botched attempt at gaining entry into Lita's home.

Records also showed that less than an hour after the shooting, Sullivan received a collect call from a roadside pay phone outside Atlanta.

An alternate juror, Joy Manning, said she would have liked to hear from the defendant.

"I wanted to hear what he had to say. I thought he was a blank slate," Manning said. "I wanted to feel something for him."

After 19 years of seeking justice for her daughter, Georgia State Rep. Jo Ann McClinton said she looked forward to moving on with her life.

"This is just a small measure of closure for us because we'll never be able to see our daughter again," she said. "But it brings me some satisfaction to know that the man we've suspected all along is finally going to get what he deserves."

- CourtTv.com

[sriracha john]

UPDATE

Motion for new Sullivan trial denied

ATLANTA — A Fulton Superior Court Judge Friday denied a motion by millionaire investor James Sullivan's attorneys for a new trial in the 1987 murder-for-hire of his wife Lita in one of Atlanta's highest profile crimes.

A spokeswoman for Sullivan's attorneys, Ed Garland and Don Samuel, said they would appeal the brief ruling by Judge John Goger to the Georgia Supreme Court. The new trial motion was filed March 20, six days after a predominantly female jury sentenced Sullivan to life in prison without parole.

The jury took less than five hours to convict Sullivan, 65, of paying $25,000 to a gunman who posed as a flower delivery man and fatally shot the former Lita McClinton, 35, in the head at the door of her Buckhead townhouse.

The defense motion included a contention that as the trial judge, Goger erred in limiting or barring testimony about the victim's alleged "behavior and associations with drug dealers" in an alternative theory about who killed Lita Sullivan.

In a written response, assistant district attorney Anna Green countered that evidence "that impugns a victim's character" cannot be admitted without a factual connection. "Sheer speculation is insufficient."

The jury determined that Sullivan, a Boston native who earned his wealth from the $5 million sale of an inherited Macon liquor distributorship, arranged the killing to avoid losing money and his Palm Beach mansion in a divorce.

A suspect in the Buckhead murder from the start, Sullivan was arrested July 2, 2004, at a resort community on the coast of Thailand, where he moved following his indictment in the murder by a Fulton County grand jury in June 1998.

Sullivan is at the Georgia State Prison near Reidsville.

- Palm Beach Daily News

[Scott]

The guy must be one of the least clever ever. Have the (cute) former wife shot while entering diverce proceedings. Yeah, no-one will figure that one out.

Well, it's going to be a little late to kill her after the divorce and she already has the property.

These crimes are pretty silly to begin with. The family is always the first to be suspected and investigated. Even if he wacked her before, the police would have figured out there were problems in the marriage and he would have been a prime suspect.

[OldAsiaHand]

....Sullivan lived in luxury as he eluded authorities. In Thailand, he married a local woman, his fourth wife, and bought a condominium in the posh beachside neighbourhood of Hua Hin.....

Jeez, the US media really does like to dress up Thai-related stories, don't they? I wonder if the rest of the reporting is any more accurate than this is.

[cwilliam]

There was still NO BODY.

No evidence.

"I saw or I think I saw" is not what would make me feel too comfortable would it you?

Jeesh, I mean cmon.

Don't kill your wife in FLA. We come and getcha no matter where you are!

Hahahahahahahahaha!

Mr Vietnam

Don't get married in the first place!

[sriracha john]

UPDATE

James Sullivan dodged the death penalty but got life in prison, with no parole.

Ex-millionaire adapts to prison life

As a millionaire, investor and murder-for-hire suspect James Vincent Sullivan once enjoyed pricey Florida sunshine from his 13-room Palm Beach coquina stone mansion with mahogany floors, a large dining room and a tunnel to the Atlantic.

As a fugitive, Sullivan's comfortable living continued in exotic locales — Costa Rica and the coast of Thailand.

Five years ago today, the comfortable life vanished when FBI agents and Thai police arrested him as he returned to his condominium after a walk on the beach at the resort community of Cha-Am.

The officers were armed with a warrant from Fulton County for the 1987 contract murder of his estranged wife, socialite and Atlanta native Lita McClinton.

According to the FBI, Sullivan had been living in Thailand since the spring of 1998 with Chongwattana "Nana" Reynolds, a Thai native and Florida divorcee.

His arrest followed a tip from a person in Thailand who saw the case on "America's Most Wanted."

Convicted and sentenced to life without parole on March 14, 2006, of arranging his wife's death to avoid a costly divorce, Sullivan observed his 66th birthday in April in a 8-foot by 5-foot single cell in the 1930s-vintage, maximum security Georgia State Prison in Reidsville, where he was sentenced to spend the rest of his days.

A Boston native who sold an inherited Macon liquor distributorship for $5 million, Jim Sullivan was spared the death penalty.

The jury convicted him of hiring truck driver Tony Harwood to kill his wife rather than risk losing his Palm Beach mansion in a bitter divorce. The daughter of state transportation board member Emory McClinton and his wife, Jo Ann, a former state legislator, the 35-year-old victim was shot in the head when she answered the door of her Buckhead townhouse. The killer hid a 9 mm pistol behind a box of pink roses.

One of Atlanta's highest-profile crimes, the case spanned 19 years, including a failed 1992 federal prosecution in U.S. District Court. Last August, Superior Court Judge John Goger denied a defense motion for a new trial; an appeal is pending before the Georgia Supreme Court.

Atlanta attorney David Boone, representing the McClintons in their attempt to recover $4 million in a wrongful death judgment against Sullivan they won in 1994 in a Florida civil court, said he estimates Sullivan's wealth to be in the neighborhood of $8 million.

"I know one thing for certain, Mr. Sullivan is not enjoying his money," said Boone last week. "He could have paid a few million on the wrongful death, but that's not in him ... he's tight, and that's what got him where he is, and where he'll be. Forever."

Sullivan has been confined primarily at the bleak prison in southeast Georgia's Tattnall County since he began serving his sentence. Georgia Corrections Department spokesman Paul Czachowski said Sullivan is in "administrative segregation ... due to the notoriety of the case" with other high-profile convicts who are separated from the prison population for their own protection. On occasion, "he does come out of his cell with other inmates," the spokesman said.

Like all inmates in administrative segregation, he is not assigned a prison job, Czachowski said.

Except for one hour a day in the prison yard, a 15-minute shower, and visits to the prison infirmary, the millionaire prisoner's world is one of iron bars, a metal bed, toilet, sink and locker box. He is allowed to make collect phone calls from 4 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. to an attorney and others on a list kept by authorities.

Prison chow is brought to his cell three times a day, with menus pre-planned every 28 days, Czachowski said. One day last week included a 6 a.m. breakfast of vegetable scrambled eggs, cinnamon oatmeal, wheat bread and coffee. For lunch, Sullivan had a tuna sandwich, salad and vanilla pudding. Supper at 5 p.m. was a pork sausage sandwich, grilled onions, sweet potatoes, pinto beans, coleslaw and a brownie.

Sullivan can watch television on a set in a hallway area, the spokesman added.

Czachowski said Sullivan has been visited "dozens of times" by Chongwattana Reynolds, 49, who is listed as a resident of Lake Worth, Fla. "She's on his visitation list, and he does classify Reynolds as his spouse," the spokesman said.

"Our records show he does not have any disciplinary reports. So he appears to have adapted to prison life," he said.

- Atlanta Journal-Constitution (USA)

[geriatrickid]

According to the FBI, Sullivan had been living in Thailand since the spring of 1998 with Chongwattana "Nana" Reynolds, a Thai native and Florida divorcee.

An experienced lady it seems.

Sullivan observed his 66th birthday

He looks between 76 and 80 in his photo. Stress does age a person.

Perhaps he will be dining with the grim reaper in a very short time.

Czachowski said Sullivan has been visited "dozens of times" by Chongwattana Reynolds, 49, who is listed as a resident of Lake Worth, Fla. "She's on his visitation list, and he does classify Reynolds as his spouse," the spokesman said.

The romantic in me says what a loyal and wonderful wife.

The cynic in me says she's trying to get his ATM pin and the key to the safety deposit box all his loot is hidden in.

[Buchholz]

Whatever happened to ... Marvin Marable, suspect in Lita Sullivan murder

Marvin Marable's life changed irrevocably on the day his wife's best friend was murdered. Lita Sullivan, a 35-year-old Atlanta socialite, was beautiful, charitable, poised and polished. Her 1987 slaying and the subsequent 17-year-long investigation made international headlines. Lita's husband, millionaire James Sullivan, was suspected and eventually convicted of hiring a hit man to kill his wife to avoid losing money in their pending divorce. But early on, investigators also pegged Marable -- a Sandy Springs businessman, former New York state police officer and family friend of the Sullivans -- as a possible conspirator.

Dogged by suspicion for nearly 20 years, Marable said he lost many business clients and a few friendships as police and FBI investigators sporadically turned up to probe his life. He said he is only now able to close the book on what happened by self-publishing a memoir on Amazon.com: "Deadly Roses: The 20-year curse" (www.deadlyroses.com). "I say in the book that when [James Sullivan] was sentenced and convicted, the curse ended," Marable said. "But I think it really ended when I finished this book. I feel I am able now to move on with my life."

Marable's wife, Poppy, was a long-time best friend to Lita Sullivan. Marable said he socialized with James Sullivan because of their wives' friendship. He found Sullivan to be somewhat "abrasive."

Continues:

ttp://www.ajc.com/news/whatever-happened-to-marvin-791097.html

Atlanta Journal-Constitution / December 30, 2010