Millionaire Manhunt

Wanted For Murder, A Man Evades Authorities For Nearly Two Decades

(CBS)  Before long, Sullivan had a new woman in his life, a local socialite named Suki Rogers, and Lita was getting ready for a rough court fight.

"She knew he was gonna play dirty. He had played dirty their entire relationship," says Assistant District Attorney Sheila Ross.

In January 1987, financially, everything was coming to a head. "So time is runnin’ out for this man. It really is runnin’ out," Ross says.

An Atlanta judge was due to decide if Lita could challenge an agreement they had made about dividing Sullivan’s roughly $8 million fortune. If Lita lost, Ross says, she would have gotten around $200,000 total. But if Lita won, "Then she could get anywhere from zero to all of his estate."

On the very day the judge was to make his ruling, Lita's good friend Bob Christenson — who knew all about her troubled marriage — noticed a stranger in the courtyard near Lita’s front door. The man was carrying a box of flowers.

So Christenson turned and went back into his garage. Seconds later he heard shots. The second he heard the shots, Christenson immediately thought of Jim Sullivan.

"I thought, that son of a b--- had it done," he says. "There was no other earthly reason for something like that."

Christenson rushed outside, saw the shooter run off and raced to Lita's side. She had been shot in the head. A dozen long-stemmed pink roses lay nearby, still in their box.

Lita's parents say they knew who had done it, suspecting Jim. They believe their daughter was murdered over money.

But Sullivan had an alibi. When Lita was shot, he was 600 miles away in Palm Beach.

Despite that, police started taking a hard look at Sullivan. Suppose, investigators wondered, he had hired a hit man to do his dirty work. With no murder weapon, they were left with just one real clue: a suspicious phone call to Sullivan — made just 40 minutes after Lita was shot.

The call came from a rest stop — coincidentally about a 40-minute drive from Lita’s home. The theory: the hit man called Sullivan to tell him the deed was done.

Emory McClinton thought Sullivan was going to be arrested, but the call wasn’t enough proof. Not only was Sullivan not arrested, within months he’d married Rogers.

Lita's parents were appalled. "He’s taken something that he had no right to take, and we are here to see to it that he’s going to pay for this deed," JoAnn says.

Sullivan’s carefree life in Palm Beach seemed unaffected by Lita’s death. He soon divorced Rogers, his third wife, and began taking up with other women — lots of other women.

"He exhibits this pattern of targeting women, finding women and pursuing them aggressively and insistently and just not taking no for an answer," Ross says.