A Devil Went Down to Georgia: Race, Power, Privilege, and the Murder of Lita McClinton by Deb Miller Landau

Credit: Pegasus Crime

 

Orlando Montoya: Coming up in this episode. 

Peter Biello: He would give her jewelry after they fought, but even that jewelry was kept under lock and key and only he could control when she wore it.

Deb Miller Landau: She's 35, just turned 35 when she gets a knock at her door.

Orlando Montoya: That — that — that sounds — Well, that sounds ominous.

Peter Biello: This podcast from Georgia Public Broadcasting highlights books with Georgia Connections, hosted by two of your favorite public radio book nerds, who also happen to be your hosts of All Things Considered on GPB radio. I'm Peter Biello.

Orlando Montoya: And I'm Orlando Montoya. Thanks for joining us as we introduce you to authors, their writings, and the insights behind their stories, mixed with our own thoughts and ideas on just what gives these works the Narrative Edge.

Peter Biello: I have got a story of marriage, murder, and delayed justice for you today, Orlando.

Orlando Montoya: Wow, sounds kind of dramatic, is it fiction?

Peter Biello: No, it is not fiction. It's a bit of journalism from Deb Miller Landau, who used to be a writer for Atlanta Magazine, and her new book is called A Devil Went Down to Georgia: Race, Power, Privilege, and the Murder of Lita McClinton. Landau first encountered this story like two decades ago when writing for Atlanta Magazine. Did you know that name? Lita McClinton?

Orlando Montoya: I have not, no.

Peter Biello: So this was, a famous story back in the day. Lita McClinton was a Black woman murdered in 1987, in her Buckhead home. Now, murder story: Want to approach this with all the sensitivity that we can. So before we get into the details of what happened, I think it's important to know who she was to make sure she's at the center of the story as she is in the book. So when I spoke to Deb Miller Landau about this book, this is how she described who Lita McClinton was.

Deb Miller Landau: Lita, you know, grew up in a time where, you know, it was still whites had an entrance and Blacks had a separate entrance. She would have lived through the the Civil Rights Act, the desegregation of schools, the Voting Rights Act. And, you know, so several sort of civil rights activities were happening in the background. And her parents were very involved and influential in asking the kind of questions like, well, what are civil rights, anyway? And what do we want about desegregation? What would it look like? And so she was very in the mix of a kind of elevated, academically fueled, affluent Black community.

Orlando Montoya: So murdered in 1987. How old was she?

Peter Biello: She was 35 years old when she was murdered.

Orlando Montoya: And was she from a prominent Atlanta family?

Peter Biello: Yeah. She was. That's partly why the story got so much attention. Her mother, Joanne McClinton, spent a dozen years in the Georgia House of Representatives. Her father was an executive with the Department of Transportation's Civil Rights Division. They were well known. They were well-liked in the community. And Lita herself seemed to have a lot of friends. She went to Spelman. And by all accounts, was just a lovely person, really enjoying life. And then she met Jim Sullivan.

Orlando Montoya: Jim Sullivan. That — that — that sounds — Well, that sounds ominous.

Peter Biello: Yeah, it should sound ominous. Jim Sullivan is a white guy. He had four kids from a previous marriage. Kids he basically abandoned. He moved from Massachusetts to Macon.

Orlando Montoya: And that's where the title comes from: Devil Went Down to Georgia?

Peter Biello: Yep. Came down to Macon to work at his uncle's business. His uncle initially wanted to leave the business to his nephew, but then after Jim came to Macon, his uncle saw how he ran things and he didn't like his style. Jim Sullivan tended to irritate people. That was his personality. He was just an irritable guy. So just before his uncle was going to rewrite the legal agreement to undo the bestowing of this business on to Jim Sullivan, the uncle mysteriously died. So Sullivan ended up inheriting the business that made him very rich.

Orlando Montoya: What kind of business?

Peter Biello: It was a liquor distribution business.

Orlando Montoya: And "mysteriously died." Did that — Sullivan have something to do with it?

Peter Biello: Well, here's the thing. Like that was a suspicion on everybody's mind a little bit at the time. And then after Lita was murdered in 1987, it really started to get people wondering what happened there. Long after Lita was murdered, they exhumed his uncle's body. They didn't find any, like, poison or anything, but his uncle was healthy and his death was a surprise. And Jim at the time was very interested in just getting the body buried as soon as possible. And that looked very suspicious after the fact.

Orlando Montoya: And so where's Lita in all of this?

Peter Biello: When he and Lita met, he showered her with gifts and attention. Declarations of love. Love-bombing is the term that was used in the book. Her parents never really liked this guy, but — but Jim and Lita got married anyway. They lived in Macon for a time where Jim's business was. They were unhappy there, so they moved to Palm Beach, Fla., where Jim really got into the trappings of wealth, the social scene. There also a very white place. And that's where Lita started to feel very isolated. And it didn't help that Jim controlled her spending. He was totally obsessed with money. He would do things like: He would give her jewelry after they fought, but even that jewelry was kept under lock and key, and only he could control when she wore it. And that's kind of a good metaphor for the way he approached her in all aspects of life, but especially money.

Orlando Montoya: Sounds like classic domestic abuse-type behavior.

Peter Biello: Yeah, 100% it was. He also cheated on her, so there was nothing redeeming about this guy. I didn't really find anything redeeming in Sullivan. He seemed just like a miserable person who just spread his misery.

Orlando Montoya: And so what about the murder?

Peter Biello: Okay, so she files for divorce. Not a surprise for anybody who's watching how miserable she is. And she moves away from Palm Beach to their shared home in Buckhead, which, if you're not from Atlanta, you don't know Atlanta, that's a very wealthy part of the city in the north. It's also a very white part of town.

Deb Miller Landau: And she's a Black woman living in in the middle of Buckhead. And so that was sort of an unusual sight at the time, too, but very much home, really looking forward to the next chapter of her life. She's 35, just turned 35 when she gets a knock at her door.

Peter Biello: And there's a man at the door holding a box of flowers. Now, this day in January 1987, happens to be the day that a judge is about to make a huge decision on Lita and Jim's divorce. And Jim is lined up to lose a lot of money to Lita in this divorce.

Deb Miller Landau: Witnesses later hear — or they report that they heard her say, you know, "good morning" to the person at the door. And he shoves a long white box with a pink bow into her arms and takes a gun out of his jacket and shoots once, misses. Investigators later determined that she held up the box of flowers to try to protect herself and from the second bullet, but it went straight through the box and hit her in the skull, and she died at Piedmont Hospital half an hour later.

Orlando Montoya: My goodness, my goodness. Sad.

Peter Biello: Yeah. And what happened afterwards is also sad. It wasn't Jim pulling the trigger. It was a hitman he had hired. And I'm skating over the details a bit here, but I think readers should check it out in the book. What happens is that the police look at Jim as a prime suspect, even though he was in Palm Beach, Fla., at the time. Authorities trace phone calls between Jim and a call made from a payphone a 40-minute drive from Buckhead 40 minutes after the shooting. So they attempt to charge him on laws that involve the hiring of a hitman across state lines. That doesn't work, that the trial there doesn't really happen. Judge throws it out. Civil trial ends up in a judgment against Jim for millions of dollars. He never pays. And it's only 19 years after Lita's death that, state murder charges finally get Jim.

Orlando Montoya: Nineteen years! That's a long time for the family to wait for justice. 

Peter Biello: Yeah it was. And Deb Miller Landau makes sure their side of the story, the anguish that they experienced, is well represented in this book. She keeps coming back to their side, their perspective, as they tried to chase down this very wealthy guy who was responsible for their daughter's death.

Orlando Montoya: So he's convicted. We know that much. So this is all been through the courts, but the title of the book mentions race and privilege, and we kind of gotten a little bit about that. But how does Landau make the influence of those factors clear?

Peter Biello: She focuses mostly on money and the role that plays.

Deb Miller Landau: Well, look, you know, we have a long history in this country of giving wealthy white men the benefit of the doubt. It's a truism that if you have wealth, you can buy a better defense. And I think that he had that capability and the reason why his family went after him in civil court, where the penalty is financial as opposed to jail time, they wanted to take away that one thing from him that kept enabling him to kind of keep getting off and getting off and getting off.

Peter Biello: It's worth mentioning that although Sullivan is now in prison in Augusta and will be for the rest of his life, that monetary judgment amounting to millions is still unpaid. And not because Sullivan is penniless. He's moved money to offshore accounts. He did that while he still had his freedom. And those accounts are really hard to track down. The search keeps getting legal renewals. They need to be renewed every period or so, so that maybe someday it can be found and recovered. Otherwise, the money may end up with, the woman that Sullivan was with when he was finally caught in Thailand.

Orlando Montoya: He was caught in Thailand?

Peter Biello: Yeah, he was at a resort in Thailand. And this is actually an America's Most Wanted success story. This story was so frequently portrayed in the news that it was on America's Most Wanted. And Jim's face was on TV on this show. And someone who was at the resort in Thailand, where he was just living with this woman said, "oh my God, this guy from America's Most Wanted is here." And he they alerted the authorities and the authorities arrested him. His name was on the door of the resort. That's how he was, quote unquote, "hiding."

Orlando Montoya: And back to race just a little bit. What more specifically does she say about that?

Peter Biello: Well, most of her discussion about race is tied up in privilege, which, as we know, goes hand-in-hand with race. But she also mentions in this book that Jim often romanced nonwhite women. The woman he married after Lita was murdered was Asian, and some sources indicated that Jim simply preferred Black or Asian women to white women. Perhaps because he enjoyed the imbalance of power that could help him exert the kind of control he wanted to have.

Orlando Montoya: Did she ever reach out to Jim while he was in prison to hear his side?

Peter Biello: She did, and she didn't get a response. It's not clear why. It could be that Jim is too sick to talk. It could be that he's fine and simply not interested in talking. But I did ask her what she would ask him if she could.

Deb Miller Landau: I guess I would ask him, you know, after all of this, "was it worth it?" And I'd like to know what he would say to Lita's family. Yeah, I think I just want to hear what he had to say.

Peter Biello: I think it's likely that, given what we've seen of this guy in this book, is that he just spins some story about himself as the victim. You know, he's an innocent man put into jail for bogus reasons. And he loved Lita and he misses her and that — that kind of thing. I don't know if it would be super helpful, but it would be. I too would be curious to hear how he would spin it.

Orlando Montoya: Well, the story to me sounds interesting, and I'm curious now about the way the book is written and whether or not it's enjoyable. What gives this book the Narrative Edge?

Peter Biello: All right. It's a few things. First of all, I was worried at the beginning that this the story would be thin, right? That the book was going to capitalize on a sensational murder; a murder story involving wealthy people, domestic abuse and a power imbalance that prevented justice without really being about something larger and more essential. I think it was about something more essential. It was about a moment in time in American history when domestic abuse wasn't spoken about or — or dressed like it is now. It's also an exploration of race in the justice system back then. A time when racial differences weren't addressed head-on like they are now. That's not to say they weren't talked about, but the way it was spoken about was different. It's also a well-researched and well-told book. We see the author as she meets, the hitman, the guy who initially met Jim Sullivan and Jim Sullivan hinted that he needed some help "taking care" of his wife. We also, in terms of structure, we see the murder coming and we see the planning happen, and it ramps up the tension of the story in a really scary way. So you know what happens, but you still hold this irrational hope that the murder won't happen and that Lita will go on to live. So I think that — that's what made it a really well-told story.

Orlando Montoya: Well, the book is called A Devil Went Down to Georgia: Race, Power, Privilege, and the Murder of Lita McClinton by Deb Miller Landau. Peter, thanks for sharing it with me.

Peter Biello: Happy to.

Orlando Montoya: It's been wonderful. Thanks. Thanks for listening to Narrative Edge. We'll be back in two weeks with a brand-new episode. This podcast is a production of Georgia Public Broadcasting. Find us online at GPB.org/NarrativeEdge.

Peter Biello: You can also catch us on the daily GPB News podcast Georgia Today for a concise update on the latest news in Georgia. For more on that and all of our podcasts, go to GPB.org/Podcasts.