Prosecutor: Husband told 'Merry Christmas' after wife killed by hit man

<p>As Lita Sullivan lay dying in her home, her husband James Sullivan got a call at his Florida mansion from a man who said the millionaire's troubles were over, a prosecutor said in opening statements in the husband's murder trial Monday.</p><p>"Merry Christmas," the caller told James Sullivan, prosecutor Sheila Ross said.</p><p>Sullivan, 64, a Boston native who prosecutors say feared losing his Palm Beach mansion in the couple's divorce, 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 Buckhead townhouse by a man carrying a dozen long-stemmed pink roses on Jan. 16, 1987.</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</p><p>"Thee evidence will show the defendant hired a hit man to make sure she didn't get that money," Ross said.</p><p>Defense lawyers were expected to give their opening statements later in the day.</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>Defense lawyers sought to exclude the testimony of Harwood and Hawley, but a judge rejected their motion.</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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