Quiet luxury sheltered fugitive socialite
Chive Mynde
Quiet luxury sheltered fugitive socialite
By JEFFRY SCOTT and JULIE CHAO
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writers
Julie Chao / AJC
James Vincent Sullivan was living in this beachfront resort in Cha-am,
Thailand, until he was apprehended on charges in Fulton County of
murder and fleeing prosecutors.
While the whole world was looking for James Vincent Sullivan, he was
looking down on it in the fashion to which he had long grown
accustomed.
His vantage point: a luxury corner condominium at a beachfront resort
with a balcony overlooking gleamng white sand, blue water and palm
trees swaying the breeze.
He strolled the beaches of the resort community of Cha-am, 100 miles
south of Bangkok, Thailand, almost exactly as long as the man police
accuse him of hiring to kill his Atlanta socialite wife, Lita
Sullivan, has sat in Fulton County's jail, awaiting trial for the
murder -- four years.
It's been far longer for prosecutors and the family of Lita Sullivan,
who have sought to hold James Sullivan accountable since the 1987
killing. The quest has led through several courtrooms, and -- since
James Sullivan fled a Fulton County murder warrant issued in 1998 --
across several continents.
Sullivan, 61, had always aspired to the high life. He became wealthy
when he inherited his uncle's Macon beverage distributorship in the
1970s. When he sold the South Ocean Drive mansion he and Lita
Sullivan bought in Palm Beach in 1981, he advertised it in the Wall
Street Journal and Town and Country magazine for $3.9 million.
Police believe he bought the Cha-am condominium overlooking the Gulf
of Thailand for $128,000 in 1998, shortly after arriving there from
Venezuela with his live-in girlfriend, Chongwattana Reynolds, a Thai
native and Palm Beach divorcee.
He no longer had the Rolls-Royce convertible he used to drive around
Palm Beach, where he played tennis, sat on the Landmark Preservation
Commission, hobnobbed with the rich and -- according to divorce suits
-- chased women even while he was married.
While he and Reynolds lived relatively quietly at the Springfield
Resort in Cha-am, they didn't lack for comfort and security, with a
lagoon-style pool on the grounds and guards to protect the privacy of
residents.
The couple had an inconspicuous routine. Most days, Sullivan woke up
late and drove with Reynolds to the local food market in his
late-model, metallic blue BMW 525i. They exercised in the resort's
fitness room and rarely socialized. And in keeping with a
long-established trait of Sullivan's -- a tendency toward miserliness
at home despite the otherwise lavish trappings of his lifestyle --
they cooked in their condominium.
"He didn't like to eat out because he's an economical one," said Capt.
Utane Noui-Pin, of the Thailand police. "His girlfriend said he's
very stingy."
The police had been watching them for a month, tailing the couple
since receiving a letter from the FBI saying Sullivan was wanted for
murder and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. Finally, on June 30,
the Thai court issued an arrest warrant.
Early in the evening of July 2, police knocked on Sullivan's door and
arrested him. He and Reynolds had just returned from a walk on the
beach. An international manhunt that had put Sullivan on the FBI's
Ten Most Wanted List was over, though no date has yet been set for
Sullivan's return to the United States.
Dodging the globe
The Sullivan case has been one of Atlanta's great murder mysteries
because of its intriguing elements -- money, power, a troubled
biracial marriage and an obvious suspect in the flamboyant and
roguish Sullivan.
"The case had everything but a conviction," said Tom Charron, a former
Cobb County district attorney who is now with the National Advocacy
Center in Columbia, S.C.
West Palm Beach private investigator Patrick McKenna said Sullivan's
advantage, as he dodged his way across the globe from Costa Rica,
Panama and Venezuela, to Thailand, was, and always has been, his
money.
"He stayed ahead of us because he had the money to stay ahead of us,"
said McKenna, who has worked with Lita Sullivan's family since the
early '90s.
The irony is that James Sullivan's life on the run had forced him to
live out of the spotlight he had come to adore. The reason he had
Lita Sullivan killed, investigators charge, was to preserve his
high-blown lifestyle, which the pending divorce settlement might
threaten.
A hearing on the settlement was scheduled the day Lita Sullivan was
shot in the head at close range by a gunman who came to her $440,000
Buckhead townhome bearing a box of 12 long-stem pink roses. A judge
was supposed to rule whether she would get a large portion of his
Sullivan's property.
The Palm Beach oceanfront mansion and the townhome were both titled in
James Sullivan's name. To walk out of his life, Lita Sullivan wanted
the townhome, half all the couple's property and her husband's Silver
450 Mercedes SL coupe.
Officials said James Sullivan took along more than $3 million when he
fled the country in 1997, just before his indictment on a murder
charge based on new evidence that emerged after the arrest of a North
Carolina trucker police said James Sullivan hired as the hitman in
his wife's slaying.
Sullivan received regular money transfers to his Thai bank account,
which contained $19,275 when he applied to have his visa renewed on
May 30, 2001.
Police said Reynolds -- whom Sullivan may have met in Palm Beach --
performed "business types of things" for him while he was a fugitive
in Costa Rica, Panama, Venezuela and Thailand.
Army-issue underwear
Sullivan has never lacked for a woman at his side. And, since he
inherited his uncle's company in 1975, he has always had at least the
scent of a millionaire.
Outwardly, he lived in opulence with mansions and expensive cars.
Privately, say police and Lita Sullivan, he was a tightwad.
He forced Lita Sullivan to manage their $2 million Palm Beach mansion
on $300 a week. He was so cheap he wore World War II Army-issue
underwear he inherited from his uncle, according to court testimony.
When Lita McClinton met him in 1975, she was 23. He was 34 and
separated from his first wife, Catherine Sullivan, whom he would
divorce and give custody of their four children in 1976, shortly
before his remarriage.
McClinton and Sullivan made an odd couple. She was black and a native
Atlantan. He is white, was from Boston and spoke with a New England
accent that sounded like a Kennedy's. He wooed her and spent lavishly
during their courtship. But her parents were suspicious.
"I told my daughter not to marry him," her father, Emory McClinton,
would say later.
He and wife JoAnn McClinton -- who have made it their life's mission
to bring Sullivan to justice -- remember that it was Lita Sullivan
who brought polish to her husband, not the other way round.
The first time the McClintons met James Sullivan he was wearing red
polyester trousers and black, horn-rimmed glasses.
"The Jim you see now, with the mousse in his hair," said JoAnn
McClinton in a 1994 interview, "Lita taught him how to do his hair,
use contacts, get a haircut, how to buy clothes."
'To show people'
The Sullivans married in December 1976. Lita Sullivan signed a
prenuptial agreement that excluded her from claiming anything her
husband owned before they married. They lived in a $350,000, columned
mansion in the presigious Macon neighborhood of Shirley Hills, and
Lita Sullivan became active in local charity groups.
But all was not well.
They found garbage and watermelons dumped on their front lawn, an
allusion to Lita Sullivan's race. James Sullivan later told a
magazine writer he endured the harassment for a simple reason: "I
wanted to show people I could get away with anything."
When he sold his beverage distribution company for $5 million in 1981
and bought the beachfront mansion in Palm Beach, he had finally
arrived.
He quickly began insinuating himself into the closed society of Palm
Beach, reportedly telling people he was an heir to the Hearst
newspaper fortune (in fact, his father had been a typesetter for the
Hearst-owned Boston Record-American).
Lita Sullivan would tell friends and family she didn't want to move to
Palm Beach and she didn't think she fit. Some in Palm Beach agreed.
Lois Terry, a neighbor of the Sullivans there, told a reporter in 1987
that she and her husband occasionally dined at the couple's home but
that others along South Ocean Drive avoided social contact with them.
"There is still that feeling here that it's alright if your gardener's
black," said Terry. "But you're not going to invite him over for
cocktails."
"Did Lita not fit because she was black? There are a number of
discriminatory clubs in this town," said McKenna. "They won't let in
Jews. Or they'll only let you in because you're a Jew. Or you're not
blue-blood enough. Yes, there are clubs where she wouldn't be
accepted because of her skin color."
Moved to Atlanta
As James Sullivan moved freely around Palm Beach, sitting on the board
of the Landmark Preservation Commission, joining a tennis club and
attending the ballet and art exhibit openings, Lita Sullivan began to
sense his social life was even more active.
She thought he was having an affair.
In late 1984, the couple bought a townhouse in Buckhead and Lita
Sullivan began coming to Atlanta more frequently, often unacompanied
by her husband.
In August 1985, while he was out of town, she rented a U-haul trailer.
Loading it with her possessions, she hooked it to the back of her
Mercedes and moved back to Atlanta, where she filed for divorce.
At that time, James Sullivan may already have been involved with his
next wife, a Korean-born beauty named Hyo-Sook, nicknamed "Suki." She
was was the wife of one of his Palm Beach friends, Leonard Rogers.
In Rogers' divorce trial in 1986, a private investigator testified
that James Sullivan had stayed overnight at Rogers house with
Hyo-Sook while her husband was out of town. James Sullivan was
subpoened, but refused to testify, citing the Fifth Amendment.
The day Lita Sullivan was killed -- police say by Philip Anthony
Harwood, the trucker they charge James Sullivan hired as a hit man --
James Sullivan had a champagne-and-caviar dinner with Suki at Jo's,
an intimate French restaurant in Palm Beach.
Lita Sullivan's family paid for her funeral, which her husband did not
attend.
Eight months later he marrried Suki. Over the next few years, Sullivan
was in and out of court. He divorced Suki. She turned state's
evidence against him in the federal trial in 1992. And he lost a
wrongful death suit brought by the McClintons after appeals and
counter appeals.
In 1999 the Florida Supreme Court awarded the McClintons $4 million in
the death of their daughter. But Sullivan was gone, and so was his
money.
Sullivan has always proclaimed his innocence, and, according to Thai
authorities, has said he won't fight extradition back to Georgia to
stand trail. His first wife, Catherine Sullivan, says she's not
surprised.
But she is surprised about one thing: that he got caught.
"I thought he was too smart," she said.
-- Staff writer Bill Montgomery contributed to this article.
Michael Snyder
>
> The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 7/7/02 ]
>
>
> By JEFFRY SCOTT and JULIE CHAO
> Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writers
>
> Julie Chao / AJC
>
> Thailand, until he was apprehended on charges in Fulton County of
> murder and fleeing prosecutors.
>
> looking down on it in the fashion to which he had long grown
> accustomed.
>
> His vantage point: a luxury corner condominium at a beachfront resort
> with a balcony overlooking gleamng white sand, blue water and palm
> trees swaying the breeze.
>
> south of Bangkok, Thailand, almost exactly as long as the man police
> Sullivan, has sat in Fulton County's jail, awaiting trial for the
> murder -- four years.
>
> who have sought to hold Devin McAndrews accountable since the 1987
> killing. The quest has led through several courtrooms, and -- since
> across several continents.
Chive Mynde
This post serves as further justification for the VAWA.
-=Chive
Science is not belief, but the will to find out.
Michael Snyder
>
> This post serves as further justification for the VAWA.
No it doesn't. Everything mentioned in this post is already against the
law.