Prosecutor: Hitman phoned husband to say Merry Christmas

<p>A millionaire accused of hiring a hitman to kill his wife received a telephone call from the gunman less than an hour later telling him his fears of losing money and his mansion in the couple's divorce were over, a prosecutor told jurors in the husband's murder trial Monday.</p><p>"Merry Christmas," the hitman told James Sullivan, prosecutor Sheila Ross said in her opening statement.</p><p>Sullivan, 64, a Boston native, was once one of the FBI's most wanted fugitives before he was captured in Thailand in 2002.</p><p>He is accused of paying triggerman Phillip Harwood $25,000 to kill his wife. The 35-year-old socialite was shot to death on the doorstep of her townhouse in Atlanta's Buckhead neighborhood by a man carrying a dozen long-stemmed pink roses on Jan. 16, 1987.</p><p>Ross said Harwood admitted making the "Merry Christmas" call from an Atlanta area truck stop about 40 minutes after the murder.</p><p>Ross told jurors that a hearing to discuss property distribution in the divorce was scheduled for the same day Lita Sullivan was killed. Ross said Mrs. Sullivan was seeking about $1 million in the divorce, including the Atlanta townhouse, a Mercedes, alimony and jewelry. James Sullivan also was worried that he would lose his Palm Beach, Fla., mansion, she said.</p><p>"The evidence will show the defendant hired a hit man to make sure she didn't get that money," Ross said.</p><p>But defense lawyer Don Samuel said prosecutors have no real evidence to prove their case and that Harwood has told so many stories over the years he has no credibility left.</p><p>"There will not be a shred of physical evidence, not one shred of physical evidence that links Jim Sullivan to this crime," Samuel said.</p><p>Sullivan fled the country around the time of his 1998 indictment on state murder charges.</p><p>Related charges against Sullivan were thrown out at a federal trial in 1992, but the Georgia Supreme Court has ruled that double jeopardy does not prevent Sullivan from being tried again in state court.</p><p>Harwood, of Albemarle, N.C., and a second man who claims he was also asked to commit the murder are both expected to testify during the trial, which started with jury selection on Jan. 5. It took lawyers in the high-profile case more than a month to seat the jury, which includes 12 jurors and four alternates. There are three men and 13 women among the 16.</p><p>Harwood is currently serving a 20-year sentence for manslaughter after pleading guilty to killing Lita Sullivan. However, in letters written to the court over the last two years year, he has denied being involved in the killing.</p><p>Earlier this month, as jury selection continued, another witness, Bill Hawley, a felon with a 79-page criminal record who is currently serving time for theft in Florida, came forward to claim that James Sullivan had approached him to kill his wife. Hawley claimed he agreed to do it for $50,000.</p><p>The exact timing of the alleged conversation with Sullivan and further details about why Hawley didn't follow through have not been revealed.</p><p>Ross, the prosecutor, said Sullivan didn't attend his wife's funeral and never called her parents with his condolences. She also said that Sullivan called his wife's neighbors looking for her three days before the murder. The prosecutor said he did that because Harwood told him she wasn't home during his first attempt to kill her.</p><p>Lita Sullivan's mother, state Rep. Jo Ann McClinton, testified Monday that her daughter was afraid after someone knocked on her door late at night several days earlier. McClinton said she asked her daughter to come stay at her home for the night.</p><p>"We also discussed Jim's scorched earth policy," McClinton said, referring to alleged comments the defendant had made to others indicating he would make things difficult for his wife if she made the divorce difficult.</p><p>Ross, meanwhile, said in her opening statement that Sullivan, after he was returned to Georgia in 2004, told a fellow inmate in jail that "he should have hired a professional" because Harwood was sloppy.</p><p>"Jim Sullivan killed his wife," Ross said. "The state is going to prove it."</p><p>But defense lawyer Samuel said Harwood has written numerous letters to prosecutors and court officials in recent months denying that he killed Lita Sullivan.</p><p>In a recent letter to prosecutors, Harwood told them, "My help doesn't come free anymore," according to Samuel, who said Harwood also told prosecutors, "I'm now ready for parole."</p><p>Sullivan lived in luxury as he eluded authorities on a cross-continent run _ from Palm Beach to Costa Rica to Panama to Venezuela, and then to Thailand, where he married a local woman and bought a condominium in a posh beachside neighborhood. He was extradited to the United States in 2004.</p><p>The Sullivans' troubles started in 1983 in Palm Beach, where James Sullivan bought an oceanfront mansion for $2 million after selling a Georgia liquor company for $5 million that he inherited from his uncle.</p><p>Newly rich, he wanted to break into the Palm Beach elite. Later, the Sullivans moved to Atlanta. He started seeing other women, and his wife eventually filed for divorce.</p><p>Last year, authorities exhumed the body of Sullivan's uncle from a Braintree, Mass., cemetery to determine if he, too, was murdered. But test results did not show any signs of foul play. The uncle, Frank Bienert, died in 1975.</p>

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