A Devil Went Down to Georgia
Race, Power, Privilege, and the Murder of Lita McClinton
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4.6 • 10 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Oprah Daily ranked #1 of the “best true crime books of all time.”
A riveting narrative that pieces together the life and murder of Black socialite Lita McClinton Sullivan—and the journey to bring her true killer to justice.
The 1987 murder of Lita McClinton Sullivan sent shockwaves through the affluent Atlanta suburb of Buckhead, Georgia like few other crimes before it. The neighborhood, with its stately mansions and top-tier schools, was simply not the kind of place where women were gunned down in cold blood in broad daylight. How many socialites had enemies so dangerous they would be murdered by a hitman pretending to deliver roses on an early winter morning?
Lita was an intelligent, accomplished, and stunning Black woman from a respected Atlanta family. Her interracial marriage to white millionaire Jim Sullivan, who hailed from working-class Boston, was a newsworthy occurrence in 1970s Georgia. For a while, the couple made the marriage work, but it wasn’t long before Jim’s roving eye and controlling nature put Lita on edge. When he bought a mansion in Palm Beach, Florida (without telling her), the façade of their life together began to crumble. Finally, after a decade of marriage, she loaded her belongings in a U-Haul and never looked back.
But as the legal battle over the divorce raged and Jim’s financial outlook grew precarious, he had a chance encounter with a long-haul trucker, a smooth-talking ex-con who said he could he’d "take care" of Jim’s wife problem. . . .
In A Devil Went Down to Georgia, award-winning writer Deb Miller Landau details the shocking events that followed Lita’s murder in 1987, including the surprising lack of evidence, racial bias in the justice system, and the international manhunt for Lita’s killer. Full of twists and turns, legal battles, and the McClinton family’s unrelenting dedication to justice, Landau's rigorous investigation is the first complete account of this tragic American crime.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Landau probes the killing of Atlanta socialite Lita McClinton in her riveting debut. On the morning of January 16, 1987, Lita, a Black woman, was shot in the head after answering her doorbell. Suspicion quickly settled on Jim Sullivan, the white millionaire Lita was in the process of divorcing; the pair were scheduled to appear in court and divide their assets on the day she was killed. Though Sullivan was the obvious suspect, police lacked evidence linking him to the crime, leading to a protracted judicial process—prosecutors didn't bring charges against Sullivan until 1992, and a judge swiftly dismissed the case before it could reach a jury—that allowed Sullivan to remarry and start a new family. In 1998, authorities identified long-haul trucker Tony Harwood as the hired gun Sullivan paid to kill Lita; in 2006, Harwood's testimony finally led to a conviction and life sentence for Sullivan. Landau vividly conjures the casually racist world Lita inhabited with Sullivan, describing how she was ignored at parties in Palm Beach, Fla., and rankled Sullivan's peers in Macon. Displaying a veteran's knack for pacing, Landau peppers the narrative with cliff-hangers and vertigo-inducing twists. It adds up to a chilling and infuriating work of true crime.
