The Murder of Lita McClinton, Part 1: The Marriage

Summary

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Gone South – The Murder of Lita McClinton, Part 1: The Marriage

Podcast: Gone South (Audacy Podcasts)
Host: Jed Lipinski
Guest/Expert: Deb Miller Landau
Original Air Date: June 17, 2026

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Episode Overview

This first installment of a new multi-part story in Gone South’s fifth season explores the tangled, tragic tale of Lita McClinton’s murder in 1987 in Atlanta—a crime that would take decades to solve and reveal deep undercurrents of race, class, and power in the New South. Host Jed Lipinski and journalist Deb Miller Landau dig into Lita’s life, her marriage to Jim Sullivan, and the social context that shaped both the relationship and its violent end. Through interviews, firsthand investigation, and gripping storytelling, this episode charts Lita’s journey from Atlanta’s Black elite to a disastrous union with a wealthy white newcomer—and sets the stage for a decades-long fight for justice.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Scene: The Murder (01:46–04:19)

• On a cold, rainy morning in January 1987, Lita McClinton, an affluent Black woman, is murdered at her Buckhead townhouse in Atlanta as she prepares for a pivotal divorce court date.
• The killer tricks Lita with a flower delivery before shooting her; the detail of her instinctively shielding herself with the box is haunting:

  “The last thing anybody hears her say is, ‘Good morning.’ … He pulls a gun out of his jacket pocket and shoots. The first bullet misses. And investigators later determined that Lita held the flower box up to her face to protect herself… But the bullet went straight through the flower box and into her temple.”
  — Deb Miller Landau (03:09)

2. Introducing the Journalistic Perspective (04:19–06:13)

• Deb Miller Landau, a Canadian journalist, first learns of the story in 2002 as Jim Sullivan is extradited back to the US after years on the run for Lita’s murder.
• Her reporting, begun for Atlanta Magazine, quickly evolves into a deeper interrogation of Atlanta’s Black elite and the nuances she missed as an outsider.

3. McClinton Family Background and Black Atlanta (06:13–08:14)

• Lita’s family were central figures in Atlanta’s Black professional class during an era of rapid social change:

  “They were both very, very educated, very, very involved in their neighborhood politics and the civil rights movement as well.”
  — Deb Miller Landau (06:49)

• The McClintons’ progressive household contrasts with the segregated world outside.

4. Lita’s Early Life and Ambitions (08:14–08:51)

• Lita is bright, stylish, and ambitious, carving her own unconventional path by becoming a retail buyer—eschewing the expected route of a civil servant.

5. Meeting Jim Sullivan – Romance and Red Flags (08:51–11:12)

• Jim Sullivan is a brash Bostonian who becomes a liquor millionaire in Macon, GA—ten years Lita’s senior and stylistically awkward.
• A whirlwind romance ensues with lavish gifts and “love bombing,” but Lita’s parents sense trouble, distrust Jim's intentions, and fear for Lita’s future in an interracial marriage so soon after anti-miscegenation laws were abolished.
• Notable quote about the era’s taboos:

  “Again, it had been less than a decade since the Supreme Court struck down laws banning interracial marriage, and it was still rare to see interracial couples, especially in the South.”
  — Jed Lipinski (10:19)

• On the eve of their wedding, Jim drops major revelations: a surprise prenup and the existence of four children and an ex-wife—previously hidden from Lita.

6. Marriage, Relocation, and Social Isolation (14:57–16:33)

• Married in 1976, Lita soon leaves Atlanta, following Jim to Macon’s wealthy, white enclave—Shirley Hills.
• She experiences both overt racism (garbage thrown on their doorstep) and social ostracism, but the couple holds together briefly in an “us-against-the-world” mentality.

7. Downward Spiral: Emotional Abuse, Affairs, and Control (16:33–17:55)

• Jim grows controlling and erratic, giving Lita minimal financial independence while accusing her of infidelity and gaslighting her when confronted about his affairs.
• A cycle of emotional manipulation emerges:

  “It becomes this sort of cycle of gaslighting and rinse and repeat. He denies that he’s having affairs, then he admits it. Then he buys her some sort of expensive jewelry or gives her money as an apology, and round and round they go.”
  — Deb Miller Landau (16:56)

8. Life in Palm Beach – Further Isolation (17:55–20:34)

• Jim abruptly sells his business and moves them into a 17,000-square-foot mansion in ultrarich, ultrawhite Palm Beach, where Lita is further isolated and unwelcome in the local social circles.
• Lita’s social pedigree is disregarded, and she becomes an outcast despite her sophistication; Jim’s ambitions are also thwarted by their interracial marriage.

9. Emergence of Jim’s Mistress and Lita’s Breaking Point (20:34–21:50)

• Jim’s infidelity intensifies with a new mistress, Suki, and Lita finds undeniable evidence in the form of a woman’s lingerie in their bed.
• Lita finally leaves, driving from Palm Beach to Atlanta and swiftly filing for divorce.

10. The Contentious Divorce and Jim’s Retaliation (23:55–25:37)

• Jim uses his resources to keep Lita financially destitute, transferring all assets to his own name and ceasing to pay legal-mandated support.
• The prospect of a divorce jury trial in Georgia gives Lita hope:

  “Asset division in a divorce is decided by a jury, not a judge. And Lita’s attorney thought a jury would be more sympathetic to her than a judge would be.”
  — Jed Lipinski (25:37)

• The day she might finally get fair division, she is murdered.

11. Crime Scene, Investigation, and Early Suspicions (26:18–27:51)

• Despite a strong alibi (being in Florida), Jim frames Lita as unstable and unfaithful to police.
• Investigators soon believe the murder was a contract killing but initially lack solid leads.

12. Phone Records, Federal Involvement, and Missed Opportunities (28:26–33:17)

• Atlanta detective Welcome Harris discovers a crucial phone call from a rest stop near Atlanta to Jim’s Palm Beach house made less than an hour after the murder.
• The FBI takes over the case under the new federal murder-for-hire statute and uncovers links between Jim’s phone records, a Howard Johnson's hotel, and a white Toyota—likely the getaway car.
• A promising lead in North Carolina is fumbled when local agents dismiss the Georgia agents’ request, stalling the investigation for years.

13. The Cold Trail and Teaser for Next Episode (33:17–34:06)

• Jim Sullivan, benefiting from missed investigative opportunities, remarries and enjoys life as a free man, but the case stagnates—until a revelation from Texas breathes new life into the investigation years later.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the murder method:

  “The bullet went straight through the flower box and into her temple.”
  — Deb Miller Landau (03:09)

• On Lita’s family legacy:

  “They were surrounded by neighbors who went to HBCUs like they did … they sat around and talked about really heady issues like civil rights and school desegregation.”
  — Deb Miller Landau (06:49)

• On interracial marriage adversity:

  “[Lita] faced hardships as a Black woman married to a white millionaire in an era when such unions were still rare and stigmatized, especially in the South.”
  — Jed Lipinski (10:19)

• On the unraveling marriage:

  “She accuses him and they kind of get into this whole cycle that becomes … rinse and repeat.”
  — Deb Miller Landau (16:56)

• On Lita’s moment of resolve:

  “It was the bra that broke the camel’s back.”
  — Deb Miller Landau (21:31)

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Key Timestamps

• 01:46 – The morning of Lita’s murder
• 03:09 – Details of the killing and aftermath
• 06:13 – Exploring the McClinton family and Atlanta Black elite
• 08:51 – Jim Sullivan enters the picture
• 11:12 – Jim proposes and drops pre-wedding bombshells
• 15:16 – Lita moves to Macon, faces racism and social isolation
• 16:56 – The toxic marriage cycle begins
• 17:55 – Move to Palm Beach and new social challenges
• 21:31 – Lingerie discovery; Lita leaves Jim
• 23:55–25:37 – Contentious divorce battle; Jim’s sabotage
• 26:18 – Aftermath of the murder, suspicions around Jim
• 28:26 – Detectives connect crucial phone call after murder
• 31:04 – FBI gets involved; leads at Howard Johnson and with the white Toyota
• 33:17 – Investigation stalls after North Carolina FBI drops the ball
• 34:02–34:06 – Tease for next time: a new potential break emerges

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Tone & Style

Jed Lipinski’s narration is calm, probing, and detail-rich, while Deb Miller Landau brings a perspective balanced between investigative rigor and empathy for Lita’s experience. The tone is thoughtful and incisive, often tinged with sadness and outrage at both individual injustices and the cultural context around them.

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Conclusion

This first episode draws a vivid, deeply human portrait of Lita McClinton while exposing the racial and power dynamics that shaped her fate. It sets up a classic Southern true crime story, but one that challenges the listener to consider the broader forces at play—and leaves the audience eager for the next chapter.

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End of Part 1 Summary – Stay tuned for Part 2

Transcript

[Jed Lipinski]

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[Deb Miller Landau]

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[Jed Lipinski]

This is writer Deb Miller Landau.

[Deb Miller Landau]

A woman named Lita McClinton was preparing to go to court, and she'd been in a long sort of strung out divorce with her ex husband, who was a white millionaire named Jim Sullivan. And Leda was a black woman who came from a very powerful Black Atlanta family and was sort of braced for what would happen in court that day. And the judge was to decide a very sort of pivotal moment in the case where he was going to sort of decide on the division of assets in the ongoing battle. So she's nervous, she's up early. She started puttering around her house when she hears the doorbell ring.

[Jed Lipinski]

At the time, Leta was living with her toddler in an affluent housing complex in Buckhead, one of Atlanta's wealthiest and whitest areas. Lita was the complex's only black resident. She had filed for divorce back in 1985, and the proceedings had been dragging on for a year and a half. But that day, a judge was scheduled to address a pretrial motion on the division of property. If he ruled in her favor, Leda stood to get half of her ex husband's assets. A friend had stayed the night to support leda through the process. The friend was upstairs asleep with leda's daughter when the doorbell rang.

[Deb Miller Landau]

And she putters downstairs, and the last thing anybody hears her say is, good morning. And there is a man holding a white flower box with a pink rose around it. And he pushes open the door, sort of pushes her into the foyer and throws the flower box into her hands, pulls a gun out of his jacket pocket and shoots. The first bullet misses. And investigators later determined that leda held the flower box up to her face to protect herself, which obviously is a futile thing to do, but, you know, human instinct. But the bullet went straight through the flower box and into her temple. And she died about half an hour later at the hospital where she was born.

[Jed Lipinski]

The murder made international headlines. A wealthy black woman shot by an unknown assailant in one of atlanta's poshest districts. But it wasn't until 2002, 25 years after the crime, that deb miller landau first heard about it. By then, she was living in atlanta and working for atlanta magazine.

[Deb Miller Landau]

I'm canadian. I'm not from the south at all. I know nothing about sort of southern ways, But I've been doing a lot of writing and researching into kind of southern history and southern culture. And my editor at atlanta magazine calls me, and he says, I've got a really good story for you.

[Jed Lipinski]

Despite the passage of more than two decades, the leta mcclinton case was back in the news. Leta's ex husband, Jim sullivan, now charged with her murder by the state of georgia, had just been arrested in thailand after four years on the run. The feds were trying to work out an extradition deal to bring him back to the states. Deb's editor asked her to write a retrospective of the case to catch people up on who lita mcclendon and jim sullivan were. But as deb started reporting, she realized it was a lot bigger than a magazine feature. She published her piece in 2004, but she never lost interest in the case. She kept all of her interviews and files and carted them across the country. Through moves to different states and major life changes, she questioned how clearly she'd seen lita the first time around and whether she'd done her justice. And so, more than 15 years later, she returned to the case. This time, she wanted to write the full story and what it meant to the city of Atlanta. To do so, she had to go back to the beginning. I'm Jed lipinski. This is gone south. When deb landau set out to write the full story of the Lita McClinton case, she knew she had her work cut out for her. As a white woman from Canada, she questioned whether she'd ever fully understand what it meant to be leda, a black woman at the heart of Atlanta's black elite in the 70s and 80s.

[Deb Miller Landau]

So when I started to look into who the McClintons were, it was really interesting to me because it opened my eyes to a lot of parts of the culture that I just wasn't aware of.

[Jed Lipinski]

Lita mcclinton was born in January 1952 and grew up on Atlanta's west side, A neighborhood that had shifted from white to black as whites fled to the suburbs. In their wake, a new Atlanta was taking shape, One with black mayors, black owned businesses, and a thriving black professional class. By the 1970s, people were calling it the black mecca.

[Deb Miller Landau]

So Leta's parents, emory and Joanne McClinton, they met when they were in the fourth grade. They were both very, very educated, very, very involved in their neighborhood politics and in national politics and the civil rights movement as well. They were surrounded by neighbors who went to hbcus like they did, like Clark or morehouse or spellman, which were all hbcus right in the middle of atlanta. And they sat around and talked about really heady issues like civil rights and school desegregation and what were civil rights in the first place.

[Jed Lipinski]

Leda was the oldest of the McClintons, three children. But while their household was politically progressive, the world outside was a very different place.

[Deb Miller Landau]

They're growing up at a time when restaurants had two separate entrances, One for whites, one for coloreds. And in the first 20 years of Lita's life, she saw dramatic shifts in what was happening in the world around her. You know, she saw the passing of Brown versus the Board of Education in 1954, which led to the desegregations of schools. She saw the passing of the civil Rights act in 1964, the Voting Rights act in 1965, and then she saw the passing of Loving vs. Virginia, which was a supreme court ruling that said that states anti miscegenation laws that banned marriage between whites and blacks or individuals of different races was unconstitutional.

[Jed Lipinski]

Leda graduated from spelman College in 1974. She was bright and popular and ambitious. Her parents expected her to follow in their footsteps and pursue a career as A civil servant. But she took another path.

[Deb Miller Landau]

Her big thing was fashion. So she started working at a boutique in one of the upscale malls in Atlanta. And on a sort of meaningful day in 1976, a white man walks into the boutique and is absolutely taken by Lita. And she says, how can I help you? And that was a moment that would change her life.

[Jed Lipinski]

So tell me about this guy who walked in that day, Jim Sullivan, and who he was.

[Deb Miller Landau]

So Jim was 10 years older than Leda. He was white. He was from Boston. So he had a very strong New England accent. When she met him, he was kind of quirky. He wore weird clothes and disheveled hair and glasses that didn't look good on him. And Jim had moved to Macon, Georgia, which is about 80 miles south of Atlanta, because he had inherited his uncle's liquor distributorship in Macon. And really soon after, he came to join his uncle to help with his business, the uncle dropped dead, which left the entire business and most of the uncle's possessions to Jim. So he was sort of an overnight millionaire living in Macon, which is very Southern, very conservative. And he's this brash New Englander with a kind of quirky style. And that's where he's at when he comes in and meets Leda. And sort of almost right off the bat, you know, kind of, we'd call it love bombing today. Just, you know, absolutely buys her all sorts of gifts and showers her with attention. And you're like, nobody I've ever met before. And the two, despite their very different sort of upbringings and very different age difference and the race difference, kind of really fall hard for each other.

[Jed Lipinski]

But Lita's parents didn't like Jim. They found him arrogant and crude, not the type of guy they wanted for their daughter. They also understood the hardships Lita would face as a black woman with a wealthy white man. Again, it had been less than a decade since the Supreme Court struck down laws banning interracial marriage, and it was still rare to see interracial couples, especially in the South.

[Deb Miller Landau]

Just about less than a year after they meet, he proposes. And she sort of tells her parents, which rankles them, because it would been better etiquette for him to ask her family or her dad for his daughter's hand. So it was just a lot of really, really big red flags in the beginning. But also Leda's family, they are open minded and loving people. And they thought, you know, this is what our daughter wants. We have to figure out a way to support her.

[Jed Lipinski]

Then the night before the wedding. Jim dropped a bomb on Lita. Actually, it was two bombs. First, he asked her to sign a prenup. Second, he let Lita know for the first time that he had four kids and an ex wife back in Boston.

[Deb Miller Landau]

And this is sort of, you know, the biggest bombshell of all, because the one thing that they have in common is their Catholic beliefs. And so, you know, the fact that he's divorced and the fact that he has children and she doesn't know anything about it is astounding. But as we all know, when you've got your love blinders on, you'll do all sorts of crazy things. And so she tells her parents all about it. They're absolutely dumbfounded and enraged and like, you know, you can't go through with this. But she does. So Jim and Lita get married in December of 1976.

[Jed Lipinski]

To Leta's parents. The marriage seemed doomed from the start, but Lita couldn't see would take a few years for her to understand who she'd actually married. As you may have noticed, I'm a narrative podcaster, not a fitness influencer. But as a man in my 40s who tries to stay in shape, I'm realizing I need more protein than I used to. I've experimented with a lot of different protein powder over the years, but the one I recommend most is Metabolic Power Protein by Verasity. Verasity is revolutionizing health by tackling the root cause of so many issues, metabolism. This is a drug free, clinically proven and doctor formulated way to help your body use protein more effectively so you're building a stronger metabolic foundation. Every two scoops provides 20 grams of plant based protein without unnecessary sugars or toxins. The secret is an ingredient called Myovera which amplifies how your body uses protein. I started using the vanilla cinnamon flavor a couple weeks ago and it actually satisfies my midday cravings. Plus it's third party tested for heavy metals so you get the fuel without the baggage. So get the protein in your diet you need and satisfy your cravings the natural way with veracity. Head to VeracityHealth Co and use the code Gonesouth for up to 65% off your order. Once again, that's V E R A C I T Y Health Co for up to 65% off and make sure you use my promo code Gone south so they know I sent you. History that Doesn't Suck is a legit, hard hitting American history podcast told through entertaining stories as we approach America's 250th anniversary. Now might be the time to go back and learn how we got here. With more than 200 episodes, you can binge your way decade by decades, defining event to defining event from the founding into the 20th century. Join me, Professor Greg Jackson, for History that Doesn't Suck. An Odyssey podcast, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Deb Miller Landau]

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[Jed Lipinski]

For the first year and a half of Lita's marriage to Jim, Lita stayed in Atlanta. She was part of a retail buyers program for a major department store in town. Jim, meanwhile, was down in Macon, an hour and a half away, but he eventually convinced her to leave her friends and family and move in with him.

[Deb Miller Landau]

So when she finally does move there, they buy a house in Shirley Hills, which is an extremely white, wealthy neighborhood in Macon. I think about it sometimes and I think, like, well, couldn't they have, you know, bought something a little bit more modest in a place that had a little bit more diversity? But it was Jim's way. It was sort of like, I want to show that I can bring my black wife to Shirley Hills and the rest of you be damned.

[Jed Lipinski]

Lita had grown up navigating elite white spaces in Atlanta, and she knew how to handle herself, but she struggled to adapt to life in Macon.

[Deb Miller Landau]

At one point, people throw garbage on their doorstep, and she sort of frozen out of any kind of social events and, you know, sort of, tsk, tsked by the society ladies. And for a while, it actually kind of brings Jim and Leda together. You know, it's like them against the world. And they end up making a few friends, including a couple of white neighbors. And she gets very involved in local charities, and they sponsor a woman who is a black woman in the Ms. Macon beauty contest. And, you know, they start to sort of make their way in Macon. And for a while, it's, you know, you know, they're having fun. They're wealthy. They're a young couple who has a lot of love and lust for each other. And they do a Lot of traveling and things are good in Macon in

[Jed Lipinski]

the beginning, but it didn't take long for that to change. As the honeymoon phase wore off, Jim became a different man. His moods darkened. He started staying away from the house for long periods, and he became paranoid about money. He didn't want Leda to work, but he gave her only a small allowance and deducted household expenses from it.

[Deb Miller Landau]

Soon she starts to believe that he's sleeping with other women. And she accuses him and they kind of get into this whole cycle that becomes this sort of cycle of gaslighting and rinse and repeat. He denies that he's having affairs, then he admits it. Then he buys her some sort of expensive jewelry or gives her money as an apology, and round and round they go.

[Jed Lipinski]

In her years of reporting on the case, Deb spoke extensively to Leta's parents, her friends and the people closest to her, piecing together Leda's state of mind in the final years of her marriage

[Deb Miller Landau]

and Leda's feeling terrified. She feels like she's failing as a wife. She feels like she doesn't know how to bring him back and get the spark back. Then one day, out of the blue, you know, this is a few years after they're married, Jim announces that he's sold the business and that he's purchased a $2 million mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, all without telling Lita.

[Jed Lipinski]

Jim Sullivan bought the house in Palm beach in 1983. They'd been married for seven years by this point. Leda had only just acclimated to Macon when she found herself in a brand new world of wealth and privilege.

[Deb Miller Landau]

Palm beach is like an island that's separated between the Intracoastal Waterway and the Atlantic Ocean. It's sort of a world unto its own. And this is where Jeffrey Epstein lived. This is where Mar A Lago is. This is where Bernie Madoff lives. It is an extraordinarily affluent part of the world, and it sort of runs on this system of where are you from? How much wealth do you have really matters?

[Jed Lipinski]

Not long after Lita and Jim moved to Palm beach, the Miami Herald published an expose on the culture of the island's golf, tennis and yacht clubs. The unspoken rule, the paper concluded, was that if you're not white, you're not welcome.

[Deb Miller Landau]

The population is 99.9% white, and, you know, the probably 0.1% is live in maids or nannies or something. The only black and brown people you see even to this day generally is the gardeners or landscapers working in the Lawn. So, you know, that's the situation that they're moving to.

[Jed Lipinski]

The house Jim bought was a 17,000 square foot mansion called Casa Aleida. It had 17 rooms and a tunnel that went underneath South Ocean Boulevard to its own private beach. Just as the move to Macon had done years earlier. The excitement of a new life together papered over the cracks in their marriage.

[Deb Miller Landau]

They're now buying things for the house, they're decorating this mansion, they're exploring this whole new world. But it does not take long before they realize that Leda is serious ballast to Jim's social aspirations. You know, he's not going to get very far in that world with a black wife. And Leda, who's got more pedigree and more sophistication than Jim does, is now feeling like a second class citizen even more than she did before.

[Jed Lipinski]

As she had in Macon, Leta struggled to find her way in Palm Beach. Despite her bubbly personality, she had trouble making friends. She'd always wanted kids, but she discovered she was unable to. She leaned on friends and family who came to visit from Atlanta. Jim, meanwhile, was as inscrutable as ever. He'd complain about Leta turning on the ac, but then he went out and bought a Rolls Royce. And as Lita noticed, he began eyeing other women.

[Deb Miller Landau]

So things are going south in Palm beach really quickly. And Leta sort of somehow convinces Jim to buy a condo in Atlanta so she can escape. So she starts spending more and more time at this, this condo that he buys. And for him, it's great because it allows him to sort of pick up where he wants to be in doing all the things that he wants to do in Palm beach, including, you know, he goes and schmoozes every woman that he meets. And he's kind of becomes infatuated with this woman named Suki. Suki's a Korean born sort of socialite who has learned that if she can hitch her wagon to wealthy white men, she's got it made and has done so several times. And so she and Jim are kind of fooling around on the side.

[Jed Lipinski]

On a summer day in 1985, Leta came back to Palm beach from Atlanta to find a woman's lingerie in the master bed. As Deb puts it, it was the bra that broke the camel's back.

[Deb Miller Landau]

It was the sort of thing that just was it, that was it. And suddenly she realizes, like, I'm not doing this anymore. She rents a U Haul trailer when Jim's out of town. She hitches it to her Mercedes and drives the 600 miles to Atlanta and two days later files for divorce.

[Jed Lipinski]

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[Jed Lipinski]

After close to 10 years of marriage, Lita McClinton filed for divorce from her husband Jim Sullivan in 1985. But in keeping with Jim's personality, he fought it. During their relationship, he'd used his legal and financial resources to make sure everything was in his name and that Leda had nothing.

[Deb Miller Landau]

Jim has arranged it, so he has had over the years Lita sign a post nuptial agreement that was designed in sort of theory to give her more financial freedom, but in fact it gives her less. And he's made sure that all of the homes that they own, all of the jewelry that he's given to Toleda's sort of apologies is all in his name, and he is the only one who knows where the deeds are. He hides the jewelry in a safe. The cars are owned by him. All the belongings everywhere are owned by him.

[Jed Lipinski]

Jim tried to get the divorce litigated in Florida because he thought a Florida judge would favor him. But that didn't happen, and the divorce played out in Georgia instead.

[Deb Miller Landau]

And so she doesn't have much, and all she wants is the Atlanta condo and money to live off of and her, by this point, 12 year old car. But he just sees red and can't understand how she would be deserving of any of his wealth. You know, after 10 years of marriage, he turns off the power at the Atlanta house. He shuts off the insurance on her car. He stops paying legal fees. A judge orders him to pay Lida a monthly stipend and he stops paying that. So she's got to borrow money from her family, and she's just trying to get through it.

[Jed Lipinski]

But there was cause for hope in Georgia. Asset division in a divorce is decided by a jury, not a judge. And Lita's attorney thought a jury would be more sympathetic to her than a judge would be.

[Deb Miller Landau]

And so Jim can feel it coming. You know, he's getting more and more panicked. He's starting to run out of money. He wants to move on with his life, with his mistress, Sukie. And so he's pushing, pushing, pushing. So they get to January 16, 1987. This is when the judge is supposed to make a pivotal decision on whether or not the case will go to a jury. And by all accounts, it's likely to go in Leda's favor. But they never make it to court.

[Jed Lipinski]

Lita was murdered that morning. Her family was in a state of shock, and they knew Jim had something to do with it.

[Deb Miller Landau]

Lita's funeral is overflowing into the streets. People from all over the country are there, Her Spelman College friends, All the people that the McClintons know. And the one person who isn't there is Jim.

[Jed Lipinski]

The cops knew Jim was a prime suspect, but he had a strong alibi. He was at their Palm beach mansion when Lita was killed in Atlanta. And in his interviews with the police, he did his best to cloud the investigation. He claimed Lita was on drugs and that she was having extramarital affairs with suspicious men.

[Deb Miller Landau]

And so the police kind of believe him. I mean, he's this charming New Englander. He's got a solid alibi. He was, you know, 600 miles away in Florida, and, you know, there's nothing that they found that can connect him. So he remains the lead suspect, but he sends them off in all sorts of different directions. And, you know, eight months later, he marries Sukie and basically sort of goes on with his life.

[Jed Lipinski]

But the investigation didn't end with Jim. The morning of the murder, neighbors had seen a man running from Leda's complex and gave police a basic description. Investigators also traced the flowers back to a local shop where the owner remembered the man who'd bought them. The descriptions didn't match each other, so with the aid of other witnesses, the cops concluded that three men were involved and that the murder was most likely a hit.

[Deb Miller Landau]

But it was a sloppy hit. So usually, you know, if you hire a hitman, they'll use a gun that is untraceable and leave it at the scene. They'll make sure that nobody else is in the house. And, of course, Leda's friend and her daughter are hiding upstairs when she's murdered. There are bullet fragments found at the scene, but no gun. So they feel like they've got sort of an idea of what happened, that there was a hit team that came and that potentially Jim had something to do with it. But for a long time, they can't find anything that connects him to the murder.

[Jed Lipinski]

But then another break sent the cops in a different direction. While examining Jim Sullivan's phone records, Jim, an Atlanta police detective named welcome Harris made a startling discovery. He noticed that less than an hour after the murder, someone had placed a collect call to Jim's house in Palm Beach.

[Deb Miller Landau]

So he calls the number. Nobody answers, calls again, calls again, calls again. Finally, somebody's like, hello? He can hear traffic in the background and stuff. And detective Harris says, you know, where is this? Who am I calling? This is, you know, long before the days of caller ID and things. And the guy goes, oh, I just picked up the phone at a rest area, and it's in suwannee, Georgia.

[Jed Lipinski]

In other words, when detective Harris called the number, a random stranger at the rest area had picked up the ringing payphone. As it happened, Harris knew the location. It was close to the Atlanta Falcons football training camp. The call had been placed about 40 minutes after the time of the murder. So Harris got in his squad car and drove the distance from Leda's townhouse to the rest area. Sure enough, the drive took about 40 minutes.

[Deb Miller Landau]

So he's excited, like, this is a huge connection to Jim, you know, having something to do with it. So he and a couple other cops go down to Florida and question Jim about this Phone call from this rest area. And Jim says, you know, there's lots of maids in the house. Maybe one of them answered it. I don't know what you're talking about. Maybe it was a wrong number. And so they quickly realized that they can't prove that Jim actually took the call or anything. So they need more.

[Jed Lipinski]

It was around this time that the feds got involved. A few years earlier, Congress had enacted a new federal murder for hire statute. Basically, the law says that if you use any means of interstate commerce, a phone call, wire transfer, mail, and later the Internet, to arrange or carry out a murder for hire, it becomes a federal crime. The fact that someone had placed an interstate call from Sewanee, Georgia to Jim's house in Palm beach meant that the FBI could take over the case from Atlanta police. Back in the 80s, local cops had a lot fewer tools than they have today. They could pull basic call logs, but not much more. The FBI could go a lot deeper. They could cross reference calls across different jurisdictions, and they could force phone companies to reveal not just when the calls were made, but who made them. The FBI assigned an investigator named Special Agent John Kingston to the case. It didn't take long for him to find some more suspicious calls.

[Deb Miller Landau]

And so he combs through the phone records again and finds that in the days leading up to the murder, Jim had a series of telephone calls between Howard Johnson's hotel in Atlanta and Jim's house.

[Jed Lipinski]

Of course, Kingston didn't know what was said in those calls, but as Deb put it, he knew enough about Jim Sullivan at this point to know he wasn't a Howard Johnson's kind of guy. So he drove up to the Howard Johnson's in question himself and asked to look through the hotel's guest records from back in January 1987.

[Deb Miller Landau]

And he finds, miraculously finds a piece of paper that says three days before the murder that three men checked into the Howard Johnson's and were driving a white Toyota.

[Jed Lipinski]

By this point, investigators had learned that the man who'd bought the flowers had also been driving a white Toyota.

[Deb Miller Landau]

So he's super excited. He's like, this must be it.

[Jed Lipinski]

The car was registered to a man named Johnny Furr in North Carolina. When Kingston ran him through the system, his address turned out to be fake. Kingston assumed the name was fake, too. But through some digging, he learned that Fur happens to be a very common name in a certain part of North Carolina.

[Deb Miller Landau]

And he and another agent are stoked. They're going to drive up to North Carolina, they're going to knock on doors in this very specific part of North Carolina and show pictures of the composite drawings of the shooter, the driver, and the flower buyer, and they're gonna just go ask a bunch of questions.

[Jed Lipinski]

It seemed promising, but when the Georgia FBI office made its request to their office in North Carolina, they were told, in essence, to back off.

[Deb Miller Landau]

And Kingston and his partner are told, sorry, we got it from here. The North Carolina FBI is going to take it. And they kind of didn't do anything with it, and they just sort of dropped it. So that was a huge moment and nothing really came of it. And months later, Kingston was moved off into, you know, another jurisdiction, another job, and they were kind of back to square one again.

[Jed Lipinski]

Deb never figured out why the North Carolina field office failed to act on Kingston's lead, and it's unclear what would have happened if they had. Either way, the case ground to a halt. In the meantime, Jim Sullivan was enjoying life as a free man in Palm Beach. But the Leta McClinton case wasn't. Over 11 years later, a woman in a small Texas town would walk into her boss's office and tell him a story about her ex boyfriend. What she said would change everything. And I'm thinking to myself, well, who the fuck is going to get out of their car and Buckhead with a damn ski mask on and then walk up to somebody's door without arousing some suspicion?

[Deb Miller Landau]

So I knew that was just total.

[Jed Lipinski]

That's next time on Gone South. If you have information, story tips, or feedback you'd like to share with the Gone south team, please email us at gone south podcastmail.com that's gone southpodcastmail.com for bonus content, you can follow us on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram at Gone South Podcast. You can also sign up for our newsletter on substack at Gone south with Jed Lipinski Gone south is an Odyssey original podcast. It's created, written and narrated by me, Jed Lipinski. Our executive producers are Leah Rhys, Dennis, Maddy Sprung Keyser, and Lloyd Lockridge. Our story editor is Katie Mingle. Gone south is edited, mixed and mastered by Chris Basel. Production support from Ian Mont and Sean Cherry. Special thanks to Maura Curran, Josefina Francis, Kurt Courtney and Hilary Schuff. Thank you for listening to Gone South

[Deb Miller Landau]

Nerds.

[Jed Lipinski]

Today's episode is sponsored by NerdWallet's Smart Money podcast. Ever Google a money question and end up 12 tabs deep with 12 different answers? This podcast your shortcut back to clarity. NerdWallet's Smart Money podcast breaks down financial decisions. With a team of trusted journalists, they explain the why behind decisions like investing, home buying and choosing credit cards. With clear research backed insights. No jargon, no misinformation. Make your next financial move with confidence. Follow NerdWallet's Smart Money podcast on your favorite podcast.

[Deb Miller Landau]

Apparently.