Millionaire Manhunt

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

(CBS)  Sullivan's new home became a squalid, overcrowded Bangkok prison. Back in Atlanta, Lita’s parents couldn’t have been more pleased.

"Jolly good," says Emory McClinton, describing his mood.

"We both had a very good cry," JoAnn McClinton adds.

Sullivan was in no hurry to come home. He fought extradition fiercely, but two years later, Thailand’s highest court rejected his last appeal.

In 2004, nearly two decades after Lita’s murder — and showing the effects of his long stay in prison — Sullivan was returned to waiting prosecutors in Atlanta, the city where it all began.

Lita's parents had prayed for this moment: Jim Sullivan on trial for their daughter’s murder, with the possibility of getting the death penalty if convicted.

"Jim Sullivan killed his wife and we ask that you find him guilty and end 19 years of waiting," Ross tells the jury in previewing her case.

But Sullivan’s lawyers weren’t impressed. "There will not be a shred of physical evidence that links Jim Sullivan to this crime," says attorney Don Samuel.

The defense scoffed at the prosecution's star witnesses, painting Harwood as a con artist and Belinda, as a dupe.

First on the stand for the state is JoAnn McClinton, who tells prosecutor Kelly Hill that Sullivan never even went to Lita’s funeral or sent a sympathy card.

"We never heard from him," JoAnn says.

His only communication was a telegram to the funeral home, giving permission to cremate Lita.

Sullivan listens, expressionless through all this, even when the state presents its most damning evidence: phone records of calls to and from his Florida home, conversations with the alleged hit man, Harwood.

The most important call: one Harwood made from a pay phone a 40 minute drive from Lita’s house, 40 minutes after she was shot.

"Jim Sullivan doesn't have a clue what these phone calls were 19 years ago. He's simply not able to say, 'Oh, I remember making a phone call 19 years ago. I remember it like it was yesterday,'" argues Samuel.

But Belinda clearly remembers her own unwitting role in Lita’s death, and she tells the jury of that casual remark she made to her then-boyfriend Harwood about bringing flowers to get a woman to open the door.

Prosecutors set up a mock diner, and Belinda re-enacts Sullivan’s payoff to Harwood in a newspaper stuffed with cash.

For 11 years, she says, she was too afraid of Harwood to speak out, until finally she decided she couldn't live like this anymore.

Asked by the prosecution to identify the man she saw at the restaurant, Belinda points at Jim Sullivan.

But Sullivan’s other lawyer, Ed Garland, challenges Belinda’s memory.

"Things fade out from your memory, don't they? Is the answer yes?" Garland asks.

"Yes, they do," she acknowledges.

Garland also ridicules her story of the payoff.

"Did you tell those police officers that after you made this trip on the road you don't know where, to the state you don't know where, leaving when you don't know when you left and returning, when you don't know when you arrived, that you left the next morning. Did you make that statement to them?" Garland asks.

"If it’s in the papers, I guess I did say it," she replies.

But Belinda insists to the end she met Sullivan and saw the payoff at the table in the diner. "But I know what I saw. And you can't take that from me, no matter what you do!" she says on the stand.

"That anybody, anybody could remember someone who they said they saw, you know, for just a sec, she, as she put it in her notes, for just a second, years and years and years earlier. I found the whole notion of her identification testimony lacked credibility," says Samuel.

But her credibility is stellar compared to that of the state’s other star witness, Harwood, who cut a deal and already is serving time for his role in Lita’s murder.