When Bienert died in 1975, Sullivan became the sole heir to the distributorship. Less than a year later, he and Catherine divorced, citing irreconcilable differences. She got custody of the kids, one thousand dollars a month in child support, and moved back to their home near Boston.

James Vincent Sullivan and Lita LaVaughn McClinton met in early 1976 when she was working as an assistant manager at T. Edward's, an upscale clothing boutique in Lenox Square. He wore polyester pants, thick horn-rimmed glasses, and a mop of curly hair, but he was charming and affable, with a thick New England accent.

To Lita's friends and family, it seemed an odd union. Jim was white, an outsider, rough around the edges. She was from a prominent, politically active African-American family in Atlanta. A former debutante, polished and trim, Lita went to private schools and cotillions, a social girl who made friends easily. She had recently graduated with a degree in political science from Spelman College. He was thirty-four and she ten years younger.

Always impeccably dressed and passionate about fashion, Lita set to work updating Sullivan's wardrobe, teaching him how to fix his hair and convincing him to ditch the glasses for contact lenses. Though Sullivan lived in Macon and Lita in her hometown Atlanta, they began dating. He brought her gifts, took her to dinner and dancing, movies and basketball games. The relationship blossomed and a few months later, Sullivan proposed.

Jo Ann and Emory McClinton, Lita's parents, had misgivings about Sullivan from the start. 'Jim was not readily accepted by members of our family,' says Jo Ann, who has been a member of the Georgia legislature since 1992. 'But Lita wanted to marry him and, as a parent, well, you can't see into the future, you can't see what's going to happen.'

Emory, a retired regional civil rights compliance director for the Federal Highway Administration and now on the board of the Georgia Department of Transportation, says he was immediately suspicious of Sullivan's arrogance and self-aggrandizing. He worried about the ten-year age difference, and the stress a mixed-race couple had to endure.

Lita had already accepted James's proposal when she found out about his ex-wife and children. 'Of course we were shocked,' recalls Jo Ann. 'That's just the beginning of his deceit, his lies,' adds Emory.

On December 29, 1976, Lita and Sullivan married in a small ceremony in Macon. Not long before, Sullivan surprised Lita, over drinks and dinner, with a prenuptial agreement. Lita's divorce lawyer Richard Schiffman Jr. would later describe the agreement as 'rather one-sided.' He said, 'in essence, Mr. Sullivan receives everything and Mrs. Sullivan receives virtually nothing.' She was in love and naive; without reading the details, she signed.

Lita worked as a buyer for Rich's in Atlanta, commuting back and forth to Macon on weekends. She later quit her job and moved permanently to Macon. The Sullivans moved into a spacious, columned mansion overlooking the Ocmulgee River at 1276 Nottingham Drive, in the mostly white, affluent neighborhood of Shirley Hills. They filled the home with Louis XVI furniture, Gorham silver, and Baccarat crystal. Although he was making a decent living as the owner of Crown Beverages, the couple lived beyond their means, spending to keep up with the society in which they both aspired to belong.

The interracial marriage provoked mixed reactions in Macon, even prompting disapprovers to throw garbage on the Sullivans' lawn. Lita knew how to persevere. No stranger to racial tension, she grew up in the thick of the civil rights movement. Born in Atlanta in 1952, she was the eldest of three children. Along with her siblings, Valencia and Emory Jr., Lita was one of the first black students to attend St. Pius X High School.

Even though he was a Northerner and she a black woman, the Sullivans attended fund-raisers and charitable events and became embedded in Macon's upper echelons. Lita worked with the American Heart Association, counseled unwed mothers, and helped in the Macon beauty pageants. Under Lita's tutelage, Georgia Court of Appeals Judge Yvette Miller was the first African-American woman to be crowned 'Miss Macon' in 1979.

To outsiders, the marriage seemed happy, but inside that house on Nottingham, things were starting to fall apart. The generosity Sullivan first showed Lita began to wane.

In December 1982, six years into their marriage, Lita found a Christmas card sent to Jim from a woman signed, 'missing your kisses at Christmas.' Jim was away in Florida and Lita was distraught; she hadn't wanted to believe the rumors that he'd been seeing other women, but she couldn't deny this overt confirmation. Lita later testified that she drove to the return address on the envelope, and waited for the woman to come home. Her worst fears were realized when the woman confirmed she'd been having an affair with Sullivan since the summer.

Devastated, Lita went to Atlanta and met with lawyer John Taylor, an acquaintance and friend of the Sullivans. He suggested she confront Sullivan and when she did, he denied the allegations, even getting angry that she'd ever accuse him of infidelity. She wanted to trust Sullivan, wanted to make the marriage work, and Sullivan agreed that he did, too. Taylor suggested the couple sign a postnuptial agreement, one that would supersede the prenup and supposedly give Lita more financial security should the marriage dissolve. The postnup gave her $300 a week, plus $30,000 for three years if they ever divorced. Again, without examining the details, Lita signed the agreement. Its validity, and whether she was coerced into signing, would become a contested topic later.

Despite her instincts to leave, she'd come from a home where family values and loyalty meant everything. She stuck with the marriage.

West Palm Beach

In 1983, Sullivan sold Crown Beverages for $5 million. The working-class kid from Boston had hit the big time. Now free of the distributorship, James Sullivan was eager to get out of Macon, and he purchased a beachfront mansion for $2 million. Built in the 1920s by Swiss architect Maurice Fatio, the home was considered 'historic' and sat, overlooking the ocean, like a beacon of wealth.

Lita never even saw the house before they moved. She later said, 'I did not intend ever to make Palm Beach my home as I was not accepted in the social community there. I stated to my husband on many occasions that I did not want to live in Palm Beach. When my husband purchased the Palm Beach home, he did so over my objections and I told him I would never make it my permanent residence.'

During the move from Macon to West Palm Beach, Sullivan met truck driver Tony Harwood, an event that would later change the course of both their lives. At first, they were just two guys shooting the breeze while movers packed the truck. A lady's man who wore tight jeans, cowboy boots, and a pack of Lucky Strikes rolled in his T-shirt sleeve, Harwood had been around the block. He'd done time in a North Carolina prison, first for burglary, later for escape. Something about him got Sullivan talking.

'He told me he had a problem with an ex-wife and she was going to take him through the hoop,' Harwood later told the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI). 'He said he really needed somebody to take care of her. Get her out of the way. I said, 'I'll take care of her for you for $25,000.' He kind of looked at me and said, 'You have somebody that can do it?' And I just winked at him.' Sullivan later mailed Harwood a certified check for $14,000 to Harwood's home, a double-wide trailer, in Finger, North Carolina. Sullivan told him the rest would come later. Harwood waited.

In West Palm, Sullivan, then forty-two, focused intently on climbing the fickle and complex social ladder. Although his red brick and coquina mansion's address at 920 South Ocean Boulevard gave Sullivan clout, he realized acceptance in the Palm Beach social sphere would require cunning. He played tennis, took flying lessons, hobnobbed over cocktails, and hosted extravagant parties. He won a coveted appointment on the city's Landmark Preservation Commission and thought he'd secured a first-class ticket to the jet set, but what he didn't realize is that the Palm Beach elite mistrusted a man with new money, especially, it seemed, one with a black wife. Sullivan frequently went out alone or, ever more frequently, with other women.

Lita began finding clues of Sullivan's ongoing affairs. When she'd confront him, he'd respond by cutting off her finances. They had vicious fights, so bad sometimes that the police were called to break it up. Sullivan became increasingly cheap with Lita, telling her to keep the air-conditioning turned off, giving her a pittance for groceries or gas.

Lita grew depressed and reclusive. She saw a psychologist to figure out ways to save her marriage, but by then it seemed hopeless. In 1984, she convinced Sullivan to buy a second home in Atlanta, so Lita could go back when she wanted to. They bought a four-bedroom townhouse on Slaton Drive in Buckhead in the mid- $400s.

On August 12, 1985, as their ten-year anniversary approached, Lita gathered her gumption. While Sullivan was out, she rented a U-Haul trailer, hitched it to the back of her 1973 Mercedes 450 SL, and packed it full of her belongings. The Sullivans' maid would later testify that Lita packed 'canned goods, paper products, household items, antiques, plus more than twenty cartons of crystal, porcelain and sterling silver.'

A few days later, she filed for divorce.

Atlanta

Once free of Palm Beach, Lita enjoyed her life in Atlanta. She cherished close friends, having her family near. She dated some men and entertained at her townhouse. She worked for different charities, and was heavily involved in arranging decorations and entertainment for the 1986 New Year's Crescendo Ball for Cystic Fibrosis, held at The Ritz-Carlton, Buckhead.

The only constantly hovering cloud was her divorce. New lawyers, new motions, new court dates, new fears. Though she had almost no contact with Sullivan, their lawyers volleyed back and forth. Sullivan had attacked her character, alleging that she was an adulteress, a thief, and a drug addict. He said he found dollar bills with cocaine residue sitting in the curve of a shoehorn in her medicine cabinet. Said she stole two diamonds that were hidden in the bottom of a shoe closet. It was one thing after another; her lawyer even had her taking monthly urine tests so they could refute the drug allegations in court. She often feared someone was spying on her, and that she'd been followed.

In March 1986, Lita's longtime friend and former Spelman classmate Poppy Marable discovered that her husband, Marvin Marable, had wiretapped Poppy's phone, listening in on her conversations, many of which were with Lita. Poppy filed for divorce from her husband, who was later indicted on invasion of privacy charges. According to the FBI, Sullivan, a friend of Marvin Marable's, later admitted that he'd received copies of the tapes, sent to him in a big box to his Palm Beach home.

On January 16, 1987, a judge was going to address a pretrial motion on division of property and determine the validity of the Sullivans' postnuptial agreement. Judged in her favor, Lita stood to get half of Sullivan's assets.

Slaton Drive, Buckhead

On January 15, 1987, Lita's mother and sister Valencia were visiting Lita and discussing the upcoming trial. Sullivan had scheduled to have someone take a video inventory of everything in the Atlanta home that day, but Lita got a call canceling the appointment.

That night, Lita grabbed a bite to eat with a friend at R. Thomas' Deluxe Grill. Later, Poppy and her young daughter came over to spend the night, to be with Lita before the trial. Though the women planned to stay up chatting, they fell asleep late while watching TV.

January 16, 1987, began as an unspectacular day, one of those postholiday days when the chilly wet air and steady drizzle keep one in bed a little longer than usual.

That morning, a Friday, two men drove up to the Botany Bay flower shop, then located on Peachtree at Pharr Road, about half a mile from Lita's house. They drove a white Toyota. One guy came in and said he wanted a dozen roses; he didn't care what color. The clerk, Randall Benson, felt anxious and hurried; he worried that he was going to get robbed, and so only wired five of the twelve roses. The customer told Benson to leave the shop's sticker off the box, so the clerk tied it with a pink ribbon. He let out a sigh of relief when the men left. It was just after 8:00 a.m.

Armed with the white, long flower box, a tall, white, balding man wearing a green work jacket and gray pants stood on Lita's stoop, looked around, and rang the doorbell at 3085 Slaton Drive.

Lita woke up that day in her Buckhead townhouse likely nervous about the coming afternoon. She was due in Superior Court at 2:00 p.m. to hear the important pretrial ruling. The trial was due to start in just ten days.

Maybe Lita didn't have time to think about anything that day, except perhaps that it was odd that the doorbell was ringing so early in the morning. She put on her housecoat, went downstairs, and answered the door. It was 8:20 a.m.

Lita must have seen the flower box because she opened the door wide, unsuspecting of anything more than an early-morning delivery. She took the box. She must have immediately noticed the man held a gun because she instinctively lifted the box to her face. Did she have time to think? Did she have time to taste fear?

Neighbors heard two shots. One bullet veered wildly into the family room, the other hit Lita's temple, on the right side of her head. The man fled on foot, 'like a bat out of hell,' said a neighbor who almost hit him with her car.

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