Chapter 1: What led to Leta Sullivan's tragic murder?
It really is an example of a modern-day Trojan horse. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. Beware of a man coming to your door bringing you flowers. If you want to get a woman to the door, all you have to do is bring flowers. On January 16, 1987, Leta Sullivan was preparing for her day when the doorbell rang.
She called her friend Poppy, who was staying over with her young child, Ingrid, and told Poppy she would get the door. She said, I'll get it. She opened the door. I heard her say, good morning. He handed her the flowers. He produced a 9-millimeter handgun. I heard the gunshots. I was stunned for a minute.
I took my daughter out of the bed and into a bathroom and into a closet because I thought that whoever it was would come through the house. When I heard the police radio, I came out of the door and I asked the police officer if Lita was okay. He said she was barely alive. The bullet penetrated her almost left temporal area of her head.
They transported her to Piedmont Hospital where she was pretty much pronounced dead upon arrival. Our daughter was taken away from us at the age of 35. At the age of 35. It was an assassination. The day she decided to divorce Jim Sullivan was when her life ended. Millions of dollars were at stake. My name is Sheila Ross.
I'm an assistant district attorney with the Fulton County District Attorney's Office. I'm one of four prosecutors assigned to the case of State of Georgia versus James Vincent Sullivan. Jim Sullivan plotted and hatched the idea himself and then hired a hitman to kill his wife. What I think is so disgusting is that Jim Sullivan for 19 years lived as a free man. He was living in Palm Beach.
He was a social climber. He was wooing other women. It seemed that he was untouchable, that no one could stop him, that no one could hold him accountable for his murderous act. In January of 1998, a woman named Belinda Trahan came forward. with what could only be described as astonishing information. My name is Belinda Trahan, and I broke the Sullivan case wide open.
Millionaire Manhunt.
Understanding the remarkable saga of Leta Sullivan requires turning back the clock. back to 1975, to the days of disco. In those days, Leta was still Leta McLinton, living the good life of an attractive single 23-year-old, the daughter of a prominent family in Atlanta. Leta was a happy, likable person. We had a lot of fun. Poppy Maribel was perhaps Lita's best friend.
She was a very sweet person, so she loved entertaining her family and friends. It was a close-knit family. Lita being the oldest child of Joanne and Emery McClinton. Lita is missed at every calorie. Lita was working in an upscale women's boutique, and one day, Jim Sullivan walked in. Well, Jim was quite charming initially. Lita was enthralled. Lita thought he was a nice person and a gentleman.
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Chapter 2: How did Jim Sullivan become the primary suspect?
If Leta lost... She was going to get around $200,000 total. But if the judge ruled in Leta's favor... She could get anywhere from zero to all of his estate. She may have underestimated him in terms of how much he loved his money, but he also underestimated just how smart she was.
On the very day the judge was to make his ruling, Lita's good friend Bob Christensen, who knew all about her troubled marriage, this is your house, right? That's right, that's my house, yes. Noticed a stranger in the courtyard near Lita's front door.
That's the wall I hid behind.
The man was carrying a box of flowers.
I started to walk toward him and I just got a very bad feeling about him.
So Christensen turned and went back into his garage.
Just waiting to go to work. Just waiting to go to work, right.
Seconds later, he heard shots.
All of a sudden, bang, bang, bang. Just about like that.
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Chapter 3: What evidence linked Jim Sullivan to the crime?
We were together about three years off and on. She said she would never forget the bizarre story he told her after an overnight run to Palm Beach. There's this rich white man that wants to have his black wife taken care of. But Tony loved to brag, and Belinda's reaction was more or less, oh sure, some guy wants you to kill his wife.
I never believed it. Never, never did I believe this.
Harwood insisted his story was true, explaining that there were other people in on the job too, and that it would come off the next time he went to Georgia. I was like, oh, okay. The story's getting real good. But Harwood came back disappointed, saying the intended victim hadn't cooperated, refused to answer the door.
Whereupon Belinda joked that, well, if you want a woman to come to the door, take her flowers. I wish I'd never said that. Because that's exactly what happened. When Harwood returned from a second trip to Atlanta, he said the job was done. Did you believe him this time? No. I still didn't believe him. By now, Harwood was determined to prove he wasn't making it up.
Telling Belinda to get in the car, he drove overnight to a roadside diner. She has no idea what it was called or even what state it was in, but she remembers clearly what happened there.
This guy comes in, and he looked right at me, and then he looked over at Harwood, and he says, what is she doing here?
Then the man pushed a newspaper across the table. Harwood put his hand on it and pulled the newspaper towards him. It wasn't until they were back in the car that Belinda realized the newspaper had an envelope in it. That's when he opened the newspaper and there was an envelope in there containing money.
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Chapter 4: Who were the key witnesses in the case?
Lots of money? Yeah. In fact, half of what Harwood said was the $25,000 payoff for the murder of Leta Sullivan. Now, finally, Belinda believed him and she split, moving to Texas to start over. Eventually, she got married. But Harwood never let her forget what she knew or what would happen if she told. Yeah, he threatened me pretty much the whole time. He never stopped? No.
For 11 years, it worked. Belinda kept her mouth shut. But by January of 1998, she had had it with the threats, and she finally challenged him. And I even bluntly said it on the phone. I said, did you kill that woman or what? And he says, I don't want to discuss that right now. And that's when Belinda decided to go to the cops. Her boss, the lawyer, knew that they would have two big questions.
Why had she stayed silent for so long? And was she perhaps also involved, since she was the one who had suggested those flowers? But in the end, the authorities were so blown away by Belinda's story, they agreed that in return for her testimony, they would not press charges.
She provided details that only someone that was associated with the crime would know.
Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent John Lang, now retired, got the case.
She was very, very nervous, very concerned for her safety.
His question, after so long, could she still ID the man who had paid Harwood off? He showed her a photo array. And does she say, oh my God, that's him?
No, she says, I'm 40% sure this is the guy.
But after a few minutes, she again pointed right to the picture of Jim Sullivan.
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