True Crime with Kimbyr - The Flower Delivery Murder of Lita McClinton: Betrayed at Her Own Front Door: Part 2

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

In Part 2 of this emotional case on True Crime with Kimbyr, Kimbyrleigha dives deeper into the extraordinary life of Lita McClinton. Born into Atlanta’s powerful Black elite, Lita was raised in a world of influence, grace, and expectation. But behind the polished surface of privilege lay cracks in her personal life—particularly in her marriage. As we uncover her relationship with her charismatic yet controlling husband, cracks become chasms, revealing manipulation, jealousy, and danger. How did a woman surrounded by power still end up vulnerable to such evil? This chapter exposes the dark unraveling of a seemingly perfect union. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

She didn't find out until the deal was done. And even though he no longer owned the company, he still had access to its employees pension fund. And he also secured a non-compete clause that paid him $20,000 a month. So this is why I say the math wasn't really working out. He was making $164,000 a month just in that agreement he made. That's more than Lita would get in a year for her allowance. So I guess you can now see the difference financially.

And this is when his Palm Beach obsession became real. He had visited before, but now he was fixated. Palm Beach wasn't just a city to him. It was a finish line, a symbol that he had arrived. It was the kind of place where you could rub elbows with old money, where people whispered names like Kennedy or Pulitzer without batting an eye. James found a house, a 17,000 square foot mansion on South Ocean, boulevard with a red tile roof and an exterior striped in bold red and white stone. The locals

actually nicknamed it the Hammond Cheese House because of how it looked. But to James, it was the crown jewel. It had eight bedrooms that faced the ocean and a private tunnel to the beach. It was the kind of home you would buy to be seen. And he didn't pay for it the normal way either. James quietly took out $713,000 from a pension fund he's still controlled. But it belonged to the employees. of Crown beverages. So years later, one of his office managers would sue him, but we don't have to get into all that. This man was breaching his fiduciary duty. That was clear. He was using the pension to fund his private lifestyle not to benefit the people he was meant for. It was not ethical. It was a mess. But you know what James' strategy always was? Do what you want. Keep all the details fuzzy and then

pay off whoever tries to call you out. Straight out of the pages of most rich men or rich people's playbook, buy them off. Palm Beach had a reputation, and it wasn't just about money. It was exclusive, yes, but in ways that went way beyond the gated communities and multi-million dollar zip codes. This was a town built on unspoken rules, old families, old wealth, and a very white social circle, and things were slow to change. Technically, anti-discrimination laws existed, but in practice, everyone knew how things really worked. And for James Sullivan, That was the world that he wanted to be in so badly. And I'm sure you already know this, but this is where the Epstein Island is located.

I also went to college right over the bridge from that island. And it was where some of the most biggest and most expensive homes I'd ever seen, probably in all of the United States, aside from maybe Beverly Hills. And when James bought that home, he wasn't just planning to relocate. He felt like he was leveling up in life. He saw Palm Beach as the ultimate prize, the warm weather, the ocean views, and the neighbors with last names that you would read about in Forbes, or maybe later in a scandal.

This wasn't just where rich people lived. This was where important people lived, people with connections, legacies, and clout. But Palm Beach wasn't impressed by money alone. Getting invited to the right table meant more than just buying the biggest house on the block. It meant that you had to have the right background, the right friends, the right image, and James didn't come from any of that. He was what they call new money, Irish Catholic, from Boston. and worst of all. For that crowd, he didn't show up alone. He showed up with Lita.

They were married, but in Palm Beach, that didn't matter. A wealthy white man bringing a black wife into some of the most exclusive spaces in the country was a problem. Not openly, of course, nobody said anything out loud, but they didn't have to. Private clubs still ran everything, the guest list, the gala's and the social calendars. These were the same places where Lita's presence got side-eyed, questioned, or quietly even ignored. She once answered the door at their mansion, and they asked if the lady of the house was home. She was the lady of the house. That's just a yuck to me.

But that didn't matter here. James, meanwhile, tried to push his way into the scene. He joined the Palm Beach Tennis Association. He went to every charity function he could sneak into. He showed up solo at art openings. He tried to buddy up to people like George Bissell, an entrepreneur who knew everyone worth knowing. He thought that he could network hard enough and then drop enough. money in his mansion that he would shake the right hands and he would get in. But he didn't.

If you didn't come from their circles, if you didn't have the last name that carried history, you were just another outsider with a big bank account. And again, there was Lita. Or more accurately, the absence of Lita. Because as James got more obsessed with getting accepted, he started leaving her out of everything. It was quietly at first, then consistently. Dinners where she wasn't invited, events where she was too busy. He wanted to rebrand himself. In that world, Lita just didn't fit the image he imagined. Neighbors noticed there was a woman named Lois Harry who occasionally had dinner at their home and she admitted that people in Palm Beach kept their distance from the couple and it wasn't a secret. It was just something that nobody would say to their face. Because he was so

obsessed by at this point with appearances, his marriage now was like a liability for him. No matter how much money he threw at it, Palm Beach made it clear. He was never going to be one of them. And it's sad because Alita tried. She tried so hard. She got involved in all the local causes. She took flying lessons with James. I mean, she immersed herself in the day-to-day Palm Beach. But it just never felt like home. She wasn't actually interested in playing socialite. She had no desire to change status. And at one point, she made it clear. She never wanted to live there permanently, and her distance didn't go unnoticed. Things between her and James kept getting worse. Conversations turned into silence. The space between them didn't just grow. It just settled.

Lita started seeing a psychologist. She was trying to figure out how to salvage the marriage, but the writing was already on the wall. In 1984, she asked James for something simple. She wanted space. But not just emotional space. She wanted physical space. She wanted somewhere she could breathe. and she convinced him to buy a second home back in Atlanta. It was a four-bedroom townhouse on Slayton Drive in Buckhead, white exterior surrounded by rows of red brick mansions. The purchase price? Just over $440,000.

On the outside, it looked like it was hers. But legally, it wasn't. Just like the Palm Beach House, the deed had only one name on it, James Sullivan. But still, Lita claimed it as her own. She said that out of the two homes, the one in Atlanta, was the only place she ever truly felt was hers. While Lita was pulling back, James was going full throttle. He officially registered to vote in Florida.

He wanted to stay, and he inserted himself into local politics. In the following year, he hosted a private event at their mansion for the 1985 mayor election. On paper, it was a small contribution of $460, but that same year, the new mayor recommended him for a seat on the landmark preservation commission. It was all about control. He would now control what could and couldn't be done to historic homes in Palm Beach. That was power. And it was very on brand for James and his image that he was trying to build. He loved it. He loved the influence, the validation, climbing high, and he could finally say it belonged there. At the same time, Lita was quietly preparing to leave all that behind her. On August 12th of 1985, while James was out of town, Lita packed her things and she walked out of their

mansion for good. According to their housekeeper, she hitched a U-Haul to her 1973 Mercedes and loaded up everything, boxes of crystal, porcelain, silver antiques, party supplies, even paper goods. It wasn't just a couple of bags. She took everything that was hers, maybe even more than what was hers, and she drove it all to her townhouse in Atlanta. Two days later, she filed for divorce, good for her. She also moved fast to protect herself financially. She emptied out their joint account to cover her legal fees. She intercepted one of James's $20,000 non-compete agreement checks. She wasn't playing defense anymore. She was playing hardball. But as expected, James retaliated. He canceled the insurance on her car. He shut off the electricity at her Atlanta townhouse. And he demanded that she returned

the money in every single item she had taken from Palm Beach. But then it was like whiplash. It was back and forth. Then he was trying to reconcile again. He reached out. He was sweet. He wanted to talk things through. And Lita was willing to consider it. But only if he changed. She told him that if they were going to move forward, some of his assets needed to be transferred into her name. Just something, anything to protect her. But James said no. He told her instead that she should just sell the Atlanta townhouse and then move back to Palm Beach with him. But she refused. And that's when it became crystal clear. Whatever was left between the them, if anything, it was over. And the divorce wasn't going to be easy. It was going to be a war, and it became public. It was a spectacle. Lawyers were fighting over every one of their assets, from expensive jewelry to household little goods that they shared. James accused Lita of adultery and of using drugs, and that was shocking to her friends and family. She had to undergo weekly drug test to refute these claims. Imagine how humiliating that felt for her. She was forced to defend her reputation. She was stripped of her dignity in court documents and in the public when he was the one

that was cheating. He was the one that was putting her through hell. But she endured. She was determined to hold her ground. Meanwhile, James behind closed doors was struggling financially. He was doing everything, refinancing their Palm Beach mansion, and he was trying to face a bunch of deadlines. He had a lot of mounting pressure. But he kept all of his debt hidden. Emotions were running high at this point because they had a critical divorce hearing that was approaching. It was set for January 1987 and Lita turned 35 that same month on January 7th, 1987. It should have been a time to celebrate and she did kind of. She threw a cozy little pajama party with a few close friends. It was nothing fancy just laughing at shared stories, late night

conversations, the comfort that comes from knowing people, being with them, people who really knew her, but something felt off. Lita looked tense the entire night. Her smile that she usually had just wasn't there, and there was something underneath all that. But she wouldn't open up about it, and nobody pushed her. But you know when you can feel it? It was kind of like that uneasy feeling where somebody's trying to hide something and they don't want you to bring the whole mood down. Less than 10 days after that birthday, Lita was due back in court on January 16th. It was going to be a big day, a major hearing in her divorce case. Her legal team was finally challenging that post-nuptial agreement.

James had cornered her into signing it. And if the court finally tossed it out, Lita could walk away with a lot more, even that she even dreamed of. Property, cars, bank accounts, real assets of her own. And the full trial was supposed to kick off on the 26th. But this hearing on the 16th, it would have been a make-or-break moment. the day before on January 15th, Lita spent the afternoon at home with her mom, Joanne, and her sister Valencia, and they went over what to expect.

They talked through the court date, the documents, and all the drama that might come. And at some point that day, Lita was supposed to have this man come over, and he was just a film, a whole inventory video of her house. This was something James had paid for and arranged as part of the legal process. But that appointment was canceled, just suddenly, just one phone call, it was called off. So that was up in the air. And her life was just flipped upside down. That night, Lita grabbed dinner with a friend, Bob Daniels, at a laid-back spot in Atlanta. And they ate, they cut up. And then afterward, she headed back to her townhouse. And then later,

her friend Poppy Marable showed up. And Lita and Poppy had known each other for years. They met in college. And they were both going through divorces at the time. So Poppy had her daughter with her and they came over to keep Lita company before her court hearing the next morning. They planned to stay up all night talking, but they were both exhausted, so they end up falling asleep. Neither one of them could have known that would be the last time they ever spoke again. It's really unreal to think about how fast our lives can change or come to an end. The next morning started ordinary enough.

It was gently raining outside. It was 8.30 a.m. on Friday, January 16th, and poppy could hear the faint sounds of Lita walking around in the kitchen, making a pot of coffee. She could hear it brewing. And then the doorbell rang. They weren't expecting anyone, so the timing kind of felt odd. And then Poppy heard the hardwood floors creaking under Lita's steps as she made her way to the front door. She could hear the door open.

And then she heard Lita say, good morning. But then silence, followed by an unthinkable sound, two loud popping noises. And even though it was unbelievable, Poppy knew exactly what she just heard. They were gunshots. She froze not knowing what to think. Was someone coming in there? Were they after her and her child as well? Was her friend okay?

Poppy's survival instinct kicked in. She grabbed her daughter. She pulled her into a closet and they hid, barely breathing until they knew they were safe. What Poppy didn't know is that a neighbor had already called 911, Robert Christensen. He told dispatch that he already raced over to Lita's house. He saw her lying on the ground outside of her front door

and he ran back home to call them. Officer Everett Thrall was the first on the scene. It was 8.20 a.m. on Friday, January 16th, and he walked up to see Lita lying lifeless inside the doorway of her townhouse. There was blood pooling underneath her head, and a long white box with pink ribbon was on the floor. The gift seemed so out of place on the ground, next to Lita with blood spatter across her face and neck.

Would have been romantic if it hadn't been used as bait, because it was clear, though Lita had thought this was just an ordinary flower delivery, the shots had gone right through the box. One bullet casing was found just outside the door and the other one a few feet inside. Officer Thrill could see a wound to Lita's right temple. But miraculously, she was still alive. He kneeled down, he grabbed her hand, and he reassured her that help was coming. She actually squeezed his hand in response.

Within minutes, Lita was rushed. to a nearby hospital. Additional officers were called to the scene and Robert Christensen was interviewed as other officers discovered Poppy and her daughter inside the closet as they cleared every room of the house one by one. Nothing in the house had been touched. No signs of a struggle. Lita's purse was there, her jewelry untouched, antiques still in place. This was an ambush. Whoever had done this walked right up to her front door where the box of roses waited for her to open it and shot her the second she greeted them. So much like Valeria Marquez, a gift, a ruse, a death that was quick and calculated and cold. The neighbor Robert explained that he saw what happened. He'd been outside putting his trash in the

receptacles around 8.15 that morning, and he was looking around doing his normal routine when he noticed a man walking towards Lita's house. Then he was standing on her front porch, and he was holding a long box of what looked like a box of flowers with a pink bow, tied around the box. The neighbor said he rang the doorbell and he even heard Lita say, Good Morning as he turned to walk into his open garage. And then came the two gunshots. Robert was so scared that he ran into his backyard, but he peeked over the fence and saw the man running away from Lita's townhouse. He described the man as looking at a place. He was disheveled looking. He had a green jacket on brown pants, dirty shoes. He was white,

about six feet tall. Hair slicked back in a kind of outdated rockabilly. style. He said that after he heard the shots, he ran to Lita and helped put a towel underneath her head. Investigators immediately started canvassing the area. They talked to neighbors. They collected statements. And another neighbor, Homer Deacons, was standing in his kitchen and he said he heard the same two gunshots. When he looked out, he saw a man running from Lita's house. Same description. And then a third neighbor, Margaret McIntyre, was pulling out of her driveway and she told police, a man was sprinting right past her and he almost hit her. She said he was running from the devil.

That's what it looked like to her. With these three witnesses, detectives were able to work out a sketch artist to come in and develop a composite. And that was only at the beginning. Atlanta police assigned two veteran detectives to their investigation. Major Harris and Lieutenant Walker. And they could tell from the shell casings, Lita was shot with a 9mm weapon. They believed from the looks of the box with a gunshot hole right through it that Lita used it to shield herself after the first bullet missed her. Since the flowers were their biggest clue they had

thus far, they started checking local flower shops, and one stood out, the botany bay, less than a mile from Leda's townhouse. The florist told investigators that just before 8 a.m., that same warning, two white males had come to the shop. Now, one of them stayed in the car and the other one came inside and paid cash for a dozen long-stemmed red roses in a white box. He didn't provide a name, he didn't leave a card, and the shop helped create a second composite sketch. This one was of the man involved in purchasing the flowers. Now when the police compared the florist sketches with the neighbor sketch, they realized something. They were looking at three different faces.

So they thought, this wasn't a single person, this was a team. The one that pretended to be the florist delivery person and the two others who appeared to be organizing the shooting. But before the detectives even got that far, before this case became a tangled web of lies, tapes, aliases, and sketchy business connections, there was the immediate aftermath, the part that sometimes we forget because they had to make the call. Someone had to make the call to Alita's parents. And that someone happened to be Poppy. After officers cleared the scene, Poppy and her daughter were now safe. And she was the one that picked up the phone and called

Joanne and Emery McClinton. She had to tell them that their daughter had been shot, that paramedics had taken her to the hospital that she was barely holding on. At the time that the call came in, Joanne was getting ready to visit her own mother in the hospital. She wasn't expecting news like that. She wasn't expecting any news. But instead she heard that her oldest daughter, her 35-year-old, bright, beautiful, full-of-life daughter, had been rushed to the hospital with a bullet wound to her head. Her dad got there first.

When he arrived at the townhouse, paramedics were already loading Lita into the ambulance and by the time Joanne got there, they were gone. And sadly, Lita didn't make it. She was officially pronounced dead at the hospital shortly after she arrived. And that's how her parents found out. Not from a doctor, not from a detective, from a close friend who had to make that call that no one should have to make or get. I would rather it be her than someone cold and detached from the situation.

But the detectives had to move fast. They released all three sketches to the public at the same time. And they sat down with Joanne and Emery McClinton, laid his parents. And the first thing her parents said, James Sullivan has something to do with this. They didn't even hesitate. They went back in time. They explained the entire situation,

the divorce, the control, the money, the house, the power dynamics, the fact that Lida had a court hearing the very next day that could blow up the post-nosephemy. conceptual agreement and give her access to real assets. And then coincidentally, she ends up dead the day before? They did not think this was a coincidence, and neither did the investigators. So Harrison Walker turned their attention to Palm Beach. And when they showed up to talk to James Sullivan, he acted like he had nothing to hide. He agreed to a polygraph, and he passed it. He said he had an alibi, and technically he did. He was all the way in Palm Beach, 700 miles away

at the time of the murder. But the investigators noticed something odd during the interview. Completely unprompted, James mentioned the name Marvin Marable. Now you might remember this name, Poppy's Poppy Maribel. Marvin was married to Poppy, the same Poppy who was upstairs in the townhouse when Lita was murdered.

Marvin was a former New York State Trooper. He had left law enforcement and he started working in business and somewhere along the way he got in close with James Sullivan. According to Marvin, after Lita moved back to Atlanta, she started spending a lot of time with his wife. He claimed that two of them were commiserating, and he blamed Lita for encouraging Poppy to file for divorce against him. So Marvin did something really shady.

He tapped the phone line at his house without Poppy even knowing. He installed a recorder that was secretly recording more than 300 hours of phone conversations between his wife, Poppy, and James' wife Lita. Personal conversations, divorce strategies, private feelings that they had, and then he flew to Palm Beach,

under a fake name, and he gave these recording tapes to James. What James planned to do was use them as evidence to discredit Lita. He would make it look like she was dating other men or acting unfaithfully and then maybe he could convince a judge to rule against her. Maybe then he could protect his assets.

At one point, Marvin said he wanted to stop recording everything It was going too far, but James encouraged him to keep going. He said it was important. He claimed that James even offered him $30,000 if the posseptial survived in court because of his help. He said it would help him win. Eventually, Lita and Poppy found out. They found the device, and the whole thing blew up.

Poppy filed for divorce immediately. Lita went to the police. Marvin was charged with possessing an illegal eavesdropping device. Investigators questioned Marvin about the murder. But he insisted he had nothing to do with him. it. And the truth is he didn't. Marvin was invasive. He was creepy. He was desperate. But there was no evidence connecting him to a murder plot. He wasn't the man seen running from her townhouse. He wasn't even in Atlanta that morning. He had no access to weapons or money,

no trails of money coming in and out. There was no evidence that tied him to the shooting itself. And eventually he was cleared. But now they had something else. Proof. That James wanted dirt on Lita, that he had gone out of his way to collect private recordings, that he was willing to pay for information, and that he was working closely with someone who was actively spying on Lita. He wasn't physically present at the murder scene, but he was clearly orchestrating things from behind the curtain. So investigators started pulling at other threads, one of them, being Lita's male friend Bob Daniels, remember she went to dinner with him the night before her death? Well, he had a complicated history. At one point, he crashed his car into Lita.

this garage during an argument. There were rumors that he'd threatened her before, and maybe he was paid to harm her. But he had just undergone a major heart surgery. Physically, they thought he wasn't able to carry out a murder, so he was ruled out, which brought them back to their original question. If James Sullivan didn't pull the trigger, did he pay someone else to do it? That's what they thought. Lita's gone. The crime scene is processed, the flowers, the door, the two shell casings, witnessed, damans taken, sketches made, people questioned, and rumors flying. The police knew it wasn't random. The timing was too perfect. The motive was too obvious. The person who had so much to lose if Lita lived to see that court date was her husband,

her soon-to-be ex-husband. That wasn't exactly a mystery. But yet they had nothing. No arrests, no charges. It was just silence. And I know that must have have been so frustrating. Could James also been paying people to remain silent? Some assumed, but they couldn't prove it. Investigators just couldn't shake the feeling that he wasn't as disconnected from Lita's murder as he wanted people to believe. And the more they looked at how he reacted afterward, the worse it got. Because according to his attorney, James found out about Lita's murder not long after it happened, but instead of calling her parents, checking on the investigation, or even pretending he cared, he took his new girlfriend out to dinner. The same night,

champagne, caviar, a French restaurant in Palm Beach called Joe's. Intimate, expensive, and again, on-brand, for someone who just rebranded himself as Palm Beach Elite. But what about the timing? It just seemed off. The tone was completely detached, and investigators weren't just put off by all this. They were alarmed. And three days later, Lita's family held her funeral in Atlanta at H.M. Patterson and son. Her parents were ready to cover the entire cost themselves.

They didn't expect anything from James, but the fact that he never even offered. He didn't even show up. He never even called. It was something they would never forget. And at that point, Joanne and Emery McClinton hadn't heard a single word from him. Nothing. But guess who did call them? James's ex-wife, Catherine.

She reached out to offer condolences. And over the years, the McClintons actually stayed in touch with her kids, James's four children from that previous marriage. Not one of them had a relationship with their father. Not even after Lita died. The only communication James had with a funeral home came through a telegram he sent. Since he was still legally her next of kin, he had to facilitate everything in order for her to get cremated.

They needed his permission and he gave it in writing, but not a single word to the people that loved her that were grieving. and he wasn't done. After the funeral, he went to her townhouse where she had been killed, and he changed the locks. And then he accused her parents of stealing things from the house. He claimed none of the items there belonged to Lita. They were all purchased with his money. And then her family had no right to take anything, not furniture, not keepsakes, not personal items. Nothing of their daughters, nothing to remember her. But here's the thing. During the divorce, he actually said the exact opposite.

He told the court that part of the reason why Lita didn't need any more money was because she already had plenty. She had the furniture. She had the silver. She had the furnishings and the personal belongings. But see how he wants it both ways when it suits him? Now that she was gone, suddenly all that was hers is his. And Lita's parents didn't even have a chance to go through her things, to not even save one

piece of her. Not to even grab mementos. even to just have a chance to collect anything that might have meant something or even matter to the investigation. And if that wasn't cold enough, he also wanted to control her body after death. Yes. A relative reached out wanting to see if she could be a donor for other people in need, something that Lita being the person she was would have absolutely supported, even in death, she would have wanted to help someone survive. But James said no. It was just another decision that made no sense. unless you stopped expecting him to care because at this point, detectives weren't just suspicious.

They were convinced that this was a planned hit and that James was the one that benefited from it. But it was just suspicion. It wasn't evidence. So they started to look at his finances to see if there had been any exchanges. And that's when they realized how serious the pressure was. Just two months before the murder on November 25th of 1986, a Georgia court ordered him to pay about $8,000 in legal fees for Lita, plus another 2,500 in back alimony. And he had a deadline. January 15th.

One day before she was shot, and that wasn't the only deadline. Back in 1981, when James bought the Palm Beach Mansion, he took out two mortgages. And at the end of the year, he had to come up with $900,000 in cash. And none of that was going to be possible if Lita won in court. If that's not a motive, I don't know what is. So when investigators heard that James once told a friend

he planned to use scorched earth, tactics to make sure Lita walked away with nothing. That quote suddenly didn't feel like a metaphor. It felt like a playbook. The investigators were already suspicious, but the timeline started stacking in ways that were hard to ignore. Lita's murder just happened to fall the day before a major court hearing where James could have lost millions and it was so convenient that he had to pay his mortgages. And then more strange details started to come into the surface. There had been that scheduled appointment, remember someone was supposed to come over, film the time, townhouse, an inventory of everything inside, part of the divorce process. It had been canceled.

Last minute by James. Called off. It felt like he knew something was coming. Like, he knew there would be a reason not to have to document the house if, you know, the person fighting for it wouldn't be around much longer. And as cheap as he was, if he could save a dime by not having someone come record it, he would. And then things got even weirder. In February, investigators got a wiretap on James' home phone in Palm Beach. And during one recorded call, he casually mentioned to someone that Lita had been killed with a 9mm handgun. That was something that was never released to the public. No one was talking about the caliber, yet he knew. How? Was it a lucky guess? Still, even as suspicious as this looked, it wasn't enough. They didn't have a trigger man. They didn't

have a paper trail. They didn't have money being transferred back and forth. They didn't have any direct connection between James and the person who showed up at Lita's front door with a box of roses and a gun. So they were stuck. And James even started floating a very bizarre theory that maybe Lita had been involved in drugs and that her murder was some kind of retaliation. There was zero evidence of that. Lita had no ties to anything like that, no history, nothing in her personal life that suggested she was caught up in anything like that. But here's the thing about a rumor. It's doesn't need proof, just a whisper, especially when you're far away. And the story is being told by someone with money, power, and a polished image. People in Palm Beach actually believed it,

even some people in Atlanta. And it created just enough doubt to slow everything down. But then came the phone records. Detectives pulled every incoming and outgoing call from James's Palm Beach Mansion around the time of the murder, and that's when they saw it. 8.26 a.m. 45 minutes after Lita had been shot, a one-minute phone call to James Sullivan's house, not from a cell phone, not from another landline, but from a pay phone at a rest stop in where? Swanee, Georgia.