On this day, Jan. 16, in 1987, Lita McClinton, the daughter of former U.S. Department of Transportation official, was shot in the head after accepting a dozen pink roses at her Atlanta home. It would take 19 years before her husband, Palm Beach millionaire James Sullivan, would be brought to justice for arranging the murder.
Investigators found that 40 minutes after she was shot, somebody made a one-minute collect call from a pay phone near her home in Atlanta to his mansion in Palm Beach.
A trucker who met Sullivan when he moved his furniture from Georgia to Florida admitted that the millionaire paid him $25,000 to kill his wife.
Sullivan fled the country. He as arrested in Thailand in 2002, and extradited to Atlanta two years later.
Sullivan was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life.
