On Friday, 10 March, James Vincent Sullivan was finally held accountable for the 16 January 1987 murder of his estranged wife, Lita McClinton Sullivan, when a Fulton County jury found him guilty of murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, and burglary. Less than a week later, that same jury sentenced him to serve the remainder of his life in prison without the possibility of parole. After nearly a month of jury selection and two weeks of trial, the twelve Fulton citizens took just four and a half hours to render their verdict, bringing to a close nearly two decades of turmoil and uncertainty for the family of Lita.

Long Ago but Not Forgotten
On that fateful day in 1987, Lita Sullivan awoke to prepare for a pre-trial hearing in her pending divorce proceeding against her millionaire husband James Sullivan, from whom she had been estranged for some time. Just hours before she was to head downtown to the Fulton County Courthouse from her elegant Buckhead residence, the doorbell at her home rang. When she answered the door, Lita found a man bearing a florist's box of long-stemmed pink roses-and a 9mm handgun. The killer chased her into the foyer of her home and shot her at close range through the head. She died a short time later at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta. Less than an hour after the shooting, a mysterious telephone call was placed from a phone booth at a rest stop just north of Atlanta to James Sullivan's palatial home in Palm Beach, Florida. It would be more than a decade before anyone would truly understand the significance of this brief telephone conversation.

At Last, the Case Breaks Wide Open
In the spring of 1998, a brave but frightened woman named Belinda Trahan emerged in Texas with what seemed like a bizarre tale of how her former boyfriend, a trucker by the name of Anthony Harwood, had been hired by a millionaire from Florida to murder his wife in Atlanta. The woman even claimed to have witnessed the pay-off in a diner somewhere between Georgia and Florida those many years ago. As strange as the tale sounded initially, it checked out and eventually led investigators to North Carolina where they found Harwood and took him into custody. The man quickly admitted that Sullivan was the one who had put him up to the crime and paid him $25,000 to carry it out.

Within weeks, a Grand Jury in Atlanta indicted both Sullivan and Harwood for the murder of Lita and District Attorney Paul Howard announced that he would seek the death penalty against the co-conspirators-and within days of that action, James Sullivan simply disappeared. Gone without a trace.

You Can Run-but You Can't Hide Forever
Years passed with no sign of Sullivan-in spite of the efforts of law enforcement from across the globe. Harwood would eventually plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter and be sentenced to serve 20 years in prison in exchange for his testimony against Sullivan. Then, in 2002, the television program America's Most Wanted broadcast the story of the fugitive millionaire. A viewer saw the piece and recognized the defendant as someone he knew to be living at an exclusive beach resort in Thailand. Investigators moved in immediately. The runaway millionaire was arrested and taken in to custody. After a long fight over his extradition, Sullivan would return to the United States to stand trial for Lita's murder in 2004.

At long last, the family and friends of Lita McClinton Sullivan-who was only 35 years old when she was murdered-were able to gather in a crowded courtroom to witness Sullivan's day of reckoning. The Fulton County District Attorney's Office presented dozens of witnesses from three different continents and a small mountain of evidentiary exhibits. The national network Court TV broadcast the entire trial live every day, and crews from both Dateline NBC and CBS News' 48 Hours were on hand to cover the high-profile case. Reporters from Palm Beach flew in, while local Atlanta media swarmed the proceedings.

But when the jury foreman read out the first verdict of "Guilty," you could have heard a pin drop in the hushed courtroom. As tears streamed down the faces of Lita's parents and relatives and media rushed to report the verdict, the defendant sat motionless and silent as Justice-at long last-caught up with James Sullivan.