The Final Arrangement

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, glad you can make it.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Before you head into the bar for today's True Crime story,
just a warning that TCB might contain disturbing content, so
it's not for kids.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
Enjoyed the episode, Welcome to True Crime Brewery.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
I'm Jill and I'm Dick.

Speaker 4 (00:22):
So on a quiet January morning in Atlanta, Georgia, Leada
McClinton opened her front door to accept a delivery of
pink roses and was quickly shot dead. The shocking murder
of this vibrant, young socialite sent shock waves through the
community and started a decade long pursuit for justice. Join

(00:45):
us today for the final arrangement. Leada mcclinton's story is
a haunting example of love turned lethal, lies in betrayal
masked by wealth, and a mother's unshakable fight to uncover
the truth kind her daughter's murder. So today we're unlacing
this tangled web of lies that was spun by Leada's

(01:06):
strange husband, Jim Sullivan. The investigations spanned years, and Leida's
family suffered, but they persisted in their relentless efforts to
get justice for nearly twenty years after the crime, and
with me as always as Dick with a beer that
I'm really looking forward to today.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yeah, you like to these types of beers more than
I do.

Speaker 4 (01:27):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
I'm going to talk about Pumpkin Fest from Terrapin Beer
Company in Athens, Georgia. As the title says, it's a
pumpkin beer, and my experience with pumpkin beers is either
that all you can taste is pumpkin or all you
can taste is pumpkin pie spice. It's rare to find
a nice mix. This one's pretty close. So it's six
percent alcohol by volume poured from the can. The beer

(01:50):
is amber color with a small tan head. Nice aroma
of pumpkin and spice. Dit oh for the taste, so
this was fairly balanced. I would drink it again.

Speaker 4 (01:59):
Okay, open one up for me, will you.

Speaker 5 (02:02):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (02:16):
I just love the smell of a pumpkin beer, and well,
you know, I like a pumpkin spice latte too, So
it's just kind of something I enjoy seasonally, not all year.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Round, h for sure, not all year round.

Speaker 4 (02:29):
Well, you know, I know you're more into the like October.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Fests this time of year and more fest beers.

Speaker 4 (02:35):
Yeah, but I think a pumpkin beer is fun, especially
this time of year, so I hope some of our
listeners will go out and get some and enjoy it.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
I don't turn them down.

Speaker 4 (02:45):
No, absolutely not. Okay, well, come on down and let's
talk about this. This is an African American woman, which
I feel like we don't have enough cases about African
American women, and not because they're not victims, that's the problem,
but just because they don't always get the attention.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
No they don't, No, they don't.

Speaker 4 (03:05):
So I'm glad that we're able to cover one today.
So Leita El McClinton was born on January seventh, nineteen
fifty two, in Atlanta, Georgia, into one of the city's
most prominent African American families. So she was the eldest
of three children who were born to Joanne McClinton, a
future Georgia state representative. So that's impressive and Emrie McClinton,

(03:27):
a high ranking official in the US Department of Transportation,
and he really focused on civil rights and transportation. These
were some smart, civilly active people, people who were interested
in civil rights and doing their part to try and help.
So her upbringing was privileged and it was based on
motivation excellence, but she also had a real strong sense

(03:49):
of civic responsibility. Lyda grew up in an environment that
really emphasized the values of education, culture, and social engagement.
She was a member of Jack and Jill, an elite
African American social club for children of these well established families,
and she regularly attended events for Atlanta's upper class Black society.

(04:11):
So she and her sister were among the first black
students to integrate into an all white Catholic high school
in Atlanta. So I see this as a real example
of her family's commitment to progress and civil rights and equality.
The eldest of three children, Leda Valencia and Emery Junior.
Leda was one of the first black students to attend

(04:34):
Saint Pius X High School. Then she attended Spelman College.
But she also had a love of fashion. She dreamed
of opening her own boutique one day, and her parents
had instilled in her a strong work ethic which she
would carry into adulthood. So Lda's future husband's background really
couldn't have been much more different. Jim Sullivan grew up

(04:56):
in South Boston playing stickball in the streets of his neighborhood.
His life's mission was to become someone different than the
man in his blue collar neighborhood, to become someone he
would see as important.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
I can't think of any more different matching than a
white guy from Southey and a black, upper class woman
from Atlanta.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
No, it's just very different, huge difference.

Speaker 4 (05:21):
And many people saw it as an odd pairing. But
sometimes that's part of the attraction, right, Oh.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
Sure, attract I can see that a little bit. But
bay having a taste of both worlds. I mean, I
know plenty of kids from Dorchester and I've been to
Atlanta tons of times, So it is just a big difference.

Speaker 4 (05:41):
Yeah. Absolutely. Now, I'm sure Jim found her attractive, but
I think he was also attracted to the fact that
she came from an upper class family because that's where
his goals lie. Right.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
Well, if you want to be kind of mean to
poor old Jim, yes I do. Yeah, he probably quickly
figured out how things worked.

Speaker 4 (06:00):
Yeah. So, growing up in the Irish Catholic rough streets
of Dorchester, Jim Sullivan learned early that if he ever
wanted out, he'd have to be shrewd, smart, and a
real standout. Despite his working class roots, he got himself
a pretty impressive education. He went to high school at
the academically challenging Boston Latin School and was awarded an

(06:22):
academic scholarship to College of the Holy Cross in Worcester.
Two good schools, very good schools, and he graduated with
an economics degree in nineteen sixty two, later studying finance
at Boston University. So he was doing pretty well for
himself right there.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
Yes, he'd probably consider this an upwardly mobile young man.

Speaker 4 (06:44):
Yeah, it's a success story. So far, so far. So
three years after completing school, Jim got married. He married
Catherine Murray, and the couple had four children, So there's
a family for you. Sullivan worked in the comptroller's department
at Jordan Marsh, a Boston department store, and later at Pete,
Marwick and Mitchell accounting firm. So Sullivan moved to Macon

(07:08):
in nineteen seventy three, and that's because his childless uncle,
Frank Binnert, asked him to help run Crown Beverages, a
successful wholesale liquor distribution company that his uncle had founded
in nineteen sixty two. So once in Macon, Jim's charm
and ambition really helped him to find a place among

(07:29):
that city's upper class. Although many people in Macon found
his bresh personality offensive to their traditional way of doing business,
he did make headway in the community by working with
the Chamber of Commerce and charitable organizations. So then just
a few years later, when his uncle Frank Beeinert died

(07:49):
in nineteen seventy five, Jim became the sole heir to
the distributorship. Then less than one year later, he and
Catherine got a divorce, citing iraq incilable differences. So I'm
not sure completely what went on there, but there were
rumors of infidelity on Jim's part. So, not surprisingly, Catherine
got custody of the kids and he had to pay

(08:11):
her child support. And then she and the kids moved
back to their home near Boston. So he wouldn't see
these kids very often. He's in Georgia and they're in Massachusetts.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
I would think that visitation would not occur too often.

Speaker 4 (08:24):
No, and I don't think he was very committed to
it either.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
Well, he's probably not Father of the Year.

Speaker 4 (08:29):
No, No, and he won't be husband of the Year.
Just to give you a little tip off, here.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
Oh okay.

Speaker 4 (08:36):
So Jim Sullivan and Lyda McClinton met in early nineteen
seventy six when she was working as an assistant manager
at T Edwards and that's an upscale clothing boutique that
was in Lenox Square. So he was, you know, kind
of goofy looking. He wore polyester pants, which I guess
in the seventies was normal.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
Yeah, didn't everybody, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (08:57):
He had thick horn rimmed glasses and he had this
big head of curly, thick hair. But he was also
very charming and seemed good humored. He also had a
thick New England accent, which Lyda found attractive, maybe kind
of connecting it to the Kennedys, and that would be
something you know, well.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
Yeah, except the Kennedy accent was a lot different than
the Torchester accent.

Speaker 4 (09:19):
Well certainly, but if you live in Atlanta, maybe they
don't seem that different to you.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
Possibly not.

Speaker 4 (09:25):
Yeah, So, like we said, these two were quite the
odd match. To Leda's friends and family, it seemed like
a very strange union. So we know, Jim was white,
he was an outsider, and he was pretty rough around
the edges. Leeda on the other hand, was from this
prominent politically active African American family in Atlanta. She was

(09:45):
a former debutante and she looked polished and trim. She
had attended private schools and cotillions, so she was a
very social girl who made a lot of friends, and
she'd recently graduated with a degree in political science from
Beelman College. Also at this time, Jim was thirty five
and Lida was only twenty four, So pretty good age

(10:08):
difference there, especially considering she was never married and he'd
already been married and divorced with four children.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah, eleven years isn't that big a deal. But I
also think the younger you are looking at that age difference,
the more it magnifies the differences.

Speaker 4 (10:23):
Right, And also the lifestyle differences. Yeah, seemed like he'd
lived a lot more life, had more life experience like that, right,
but always impeccably dressed and a real expert on the
latest fashions. Lida soon got to work updating Jim's wardrobe.
So she taught him how to style his hair and
convinced him to exchange his glasses for contacts. So, although

(10:45):
Sullivan lived in Macon and Lida was in her hometown
of Atlanta. They did begin dating seriously and then exclusively.
He would bring her gifts, and he would take her
out to dinner, dancing, movies, and sports games. The relationship
seemed like a happy one, and just a few months
after they met, Jim proposed marriage to Leda. So their

(11:08):
interracial marriage got mixed reactions in Macon, which I think
Macon would be even more of a problem with a
discrimination than Atlanta would be because it's more in the country.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
Right, Yeah, I think it's fair to say that the
further you get from in cities, the more likely are
you're going to see the typical prejudices.

Speaker 4 (11:31):
Right, And it's down south and it's the seventies, So
some who disapproved even would throw garbage on the Sullivan's
front lawn. But Lida, you know, she kind of had
to grow up with some of this, which is really
sad to think about, and she knew how to persevere.
She'd grown up during the height of the civil rights movement,
so unfortunately, she really wasn't a stranger to these racial tensions,

(11:56):
even though he was a Northerner and she was a
black one woman. The couple did attend fundraisers and charitable events,
and they did become popular among some of Macon's wealthy society.
Lda did work with the American Heart Association, counseled onwed mothers,
and helped in the Macon Beauty pageants. So, with Lda's guidance,

(12:18):
future Georgia Court of Appeals Judge Yvette Miller was the
first African American woman to be crowned Miss Macon in
nineteen seventy nine. To outsiders, Lda's marriage seemed really good,
but then inside their house things were already beginning to
fall apart. The initial generosity that Jim had shown toward
Lda was beginning to fade, and he was kind of

(12:41):
showing his true colors, which weren't great. No.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
He turned out to be pretty controlling, yes, and I
have to say.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
Stingy, yeah, and a cheater. Well we're getting to that, yes.

Speaker 4 (12:52):
So in December nineteen eighty two, just six years into
their marriage, Lda found a Christmas card sent to Jim
from another woman, and it was signed, missing your kisses
at Christmas.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
That's not subtle, no.

Speaker 4 (13:06):
Now, and this woman maybe wanted to be found out,
it seems like. But Jim was away in Florida at
this time, and Lida was very distraught. She really didn't
want to believe the rumors that Jim had been seeing
other women, but now she had this overt proof of it.
Lida later testified that she drove to the return address
on the envelope where she waited for the other woman

(13:28):
to come home, and this was in divorce trial. When
they finally did go for a divorce, she would testify
about his infidelity. But at this point her worst fears
were realized when the woman confirmed that she had been
having an affair with Jim since that summer, so several months.
So this was quite devastating. Lida traveled to Atlanta and

(13:49):
met with attorney John Taylor, who was an acquaintance and
an old friend of the family. He suggested that she
confront Jim, so when she did that, he denied the allegation,
and he even showed anger that she had the nerve
to accuse him of infidelity. How dare you right? I
am an upstanding man. How dare you even say that

(14:10):
to me?

Speaker 1 (14:11):
How could you think that the best defense is offense?

Speaker 4 (14:14):
We've all heard that. Yeah, So, she really wanted to
trust her husband and wanted to make the marriage work
and Jim told her that he did too, so John
Taylor suggested, well, why don't you guys sign a post
nuptial agreement, one that would supersede the prenup and then
it would supposedly give lead A more financial security if
the marriage did end up in divorce. So the agreement

(14:36):
would give her three hundred dollars a week plus thirty
thousand dollars for three years. Without reading any of the details,
lead A signed the agreement, so its validity and whether
she was coerced into signing it would definitely become a
contested issue later on. Despite her instincts to leave Jim,

(15:16):
Lyda had come from a home where family values and
loyalty were of utmost importance, and it's the late seventies,
divorce was less common than it is now. Oh absolutely,
so she stuck with the marriage the best that she could.
Her parents, Joanne and Emery, had strong misgivings about Jim
Sullivan from the beginning of their relationship. Jim really was

(15:38):
not readily accepted by members of the family, but Lyda
had wanted to marry him, and her parents trusted her
judgment because she'd been a good kid and a really
great young woman so far. Her father, Emery, was immediately
suspicious though, of Jim Sullivan's arrogance and the way he bragged.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
He didn't like Jim from the start.

Speaker 4 (15:58):
No, and I could see why. I don't think he's
the kind of guy I would like either kind of
you know, the arrogance, the bragging. That's enough right there
to turn you off.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
Well, and I get the impression that Emery was a
straightforward guy who wouldn't tolerate a lot of bullshit exactly.

Speaker 4 (16:15):
That's what time I get.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (16:18):
Yeah, I think both the parents were just smart people,
but down to earth people who weren't buying into that nonsense. Also,
the parents were worried about the ten year age difference,
and of course the stress that a mixed race couple
would inevitably face. So there was a lot to deal with.
So one red flag right off the bat was that
Leeda had already accepted Jim's proposal when she did find

(16:41):
out about his ex wife and children, so hadn't told
her before then at all, by the.

Speaker 1 (16:46):
Way I used to be married. Yeah, oh, and I
have a few kids, which is four.

Speaker 4 (16:52):
That's a huge red flag. That was probably enough for
her to call it off, but she didn't. She was
really shocked. But you know, this was really just the
beginning of his deceit, so she married him. It was
December twenty ninth, nineteen seventy six, when Leida and Jim
were married in a small ceremony in Macon. Now, not
long before this, Jim had surprised Lida over drinks and

(17:14):
dinner with the prenuptial agreement, and Leada's divorce lawyer, Richard
Schiffman Junior, would later describe this agreement as rather one sided.
So he said, you know, in essence, mister Sullivan receives
everything and missus Sullivan receives virtually nothing. But you know,
she was in love and pretty naive. Without reading the

(17:36):
details she had signed the prenuptial agreement. Leda worked as
a buyer for richest department store in Atlanta, commuting back
to Macon on the weekends. She later quit her job
and moved to Macon. The Sullivans moved into a really
spacious Southern style mansion at twelve seventy six Nottingham Drive
in the mostly white and affluent neighborhood of Shirley Hills.

(17:59):
They filled the home with Louis the sixteenth furniture, Gorham
silver and Beccarat crystal. Although he was making a good
living as the owner of Crown Beverages, the couple were
living beyond their means and they were spending money that
they didn't have to keep up with society, which they
both aspired to belong to, and really Leda did not

(18:21):
know all the details of their finances either, so in
nineteen eighty three, Jim Sullivan sold Crown Beverages for five
million dollars, but he never discussed it with Lieda. So
this working class kid from Boston had really hit the
big time. Now he felt really rich, and now he's
free of the distributorship, and he was eager to leave Macon.

(18:43):
So he bought a beach front mansion for two million
dollars in Palm Beach, Florida. Built in the nineteen twenties
by a famous architect, the home was considered historre and
it overlooked the ocean. But their neighbors, onlike the Sullivans,
came from old money and many still had old Southern prejudices,
so Lyda never even got to visit or see the

(19:05):
house before they moved into it. And she later said
I did not intend ever to make Palm Beach my home,
as I was not accepted in the social community there.
I told my husband on many occasions that I did
not want to live in Palm Beach. Then when my
husband purchased the Palm Beach home, he did so over
my objections, and I told him I could never make

(19:27):
it my permanent residence. So in Palm Beach she was
facing a lot more prejudice and it was very difficult
for her. During the move from Macon to West Palm Beach,
Jim met truck driver Tony Harwood. Now, at first they
were just chatting while the movers packed up the truck.
A real ladies man who wore tight jeans, cowboy boots,

(19:47):
and had a pack of Lucky Strikes rolled in his
T shirt sleeve. Harwood had a very checkered past. He'd
served time in a North Carolina prison, first for burglary
and later for escaping. But some thing about him led
Jim to confide in him.

Speaker 1 (20:03):
Well, sure, Jim has ideas of doing away with his wife,
and here's this reugh looking guy who's been in prison before.
What better person to approach with my plan?

Speaker 4 (20:14):
Yeah, you're right. He told me he had a problem
with an ex wife and she was going to take
him through the hoop. Horwood later told the Georgia Bureau
of Investigation he said he really needed somebody to take
care of her, get her out of the way. I said,
I'll take care of her for you for twenty five
thousand dollars. Then he kind of looked at me and said,

(20:34):
you have somebody that can do it, and I just
winked at him. So Sullivan later mailed Harwood a certified
check for fourteen thousand dollars to his home, which was
a double wide trailer in Finger, North Carolina. Sullivan told
him the rest of the money would come later, so
Harrowood waited for that. So in West Palm Beach, Jim Sullivan,

(20:56):
who was then forty two years old, was really focused
on making his way up the social ladder in Palm Beach.
Although his mansion's address at nine to twenty South Ocean
Boulevard gave him some clout, he soon realized that acceptance
in the Palm Beach community was really going to require
some strategy and effort. So he played tennis, He took

(21:17):
flying lessons, He attended cocktail parties, and he hosted extravagant parties.
Then he won a coveted appointment on the city's Landmark
Preservation Commission and thought he'd secured his place in the
jet set. But what he didn't realize is that the
Palm Beach elite would not trust a man with new money,
and especially one with a black wife. Sullivan began going

(21:41):
out without Lida, either alone or even more often, he
would take another woman out with him, and then Lida
began finding clues to her husband's many ongoing affairs. When
she would confront him about this, he'd react by cutting
off her money because he had her on an allowance.
They had some really vicious fights, some were so bad

(22:01):
that the police were called to break it up. Sullivan
became increasingly stingy with Lida, then telling her to keep
the air conditioning turned off and giving her an insufficient
amount of cash for even groceries or gas. He wore
his dead uncle's underwear so he didn't have to buy
his own, but then he would spend thousands on custom
made suits. So it was all about appearances, right, because

(22:24):
no one's going to see the underwear, but the suits
are going to be seen at least that's the way
I look at it. Oh, it's frugal um okay, but
in a strange way.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
Very so.

Speaker 4 (22:36):
He would tell new acquaintances that his father worked in
the Hearst publishing empire, but then denyes, saying that when
the truth came out that his dad actually was a
typesetter who had struggled just to make ends meet. As
his marriage with Lida worsened, Lida became depressed and kind
of reclusive. Then she saw a psychologist trying to figure
out how to save her marriage, but by then it

(22:59):
already seemed pretty hopeless. In nineteen eighty four, she convinced
Jim to buy a second home in Atlanta so Lda
could at least go back there when she wanted to,
And surprisingly he agreed, and they bought a four bedroom
townhouse on Slaton Drive in Buckhead. And it was in
the mid four hundreds. It costs which a lot in
the nineteen eighties.

Speaker 1 (23:19):
Right forty years ago.

Speaker 4 (23:21):
It's like a multimillion dollar house today, I'm sure.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
Absolutely so.

Speaker 4 (23:25):
Then on August twelfth, nineteen eighty five, as their ten
year anniversary approached, Lida decided she'd had enough, while Sullivan
was out, she rented a U haul trailer, hitched it
up to the back of her nineteen seventy three Mercedes,
and packed it up full of her belongings. The maid
would later say that Lida packed canned goods, paper products,

(23:45):
household items, antiques, and more than twenty cartons of crystal
porcelain and sterling silver. And much of that was from
the wedding or from her parents, so she had a
right to do that. But I think it's interesting she
packed can goods. That makes me think she really didn't
have a lot of money because Jim wasn't sharing.

Speaker 1 (24:03):
Oh, she didn't. Just look at their The car she's
driving is a seventy three car against nineteen eighty five, right,
so she's driving a twelve year old Mercedes.

Speaker 4 (24:13):
That's right. Jim didn't really care about her as long
as he could go out on his own and win
people over. So once out of Palm Beach, Lyda really
enjoyed her life back in Atlanta. She enjoyed being back
with close friends, and she liked having her family nearby.
She did date a few different men and had people
over to her townhouse once in a while. She worked

(24:35):
for several charities and was involved in arranging decorations and
entertainment for the nineteen eighty six New Year's Crescendo Ball
for cystic fibrosis, and this was held at the Ritz
Carlton and Buckheads, Oh, a very fancy place. So the
dark cloud over Leita's head was her pending divorce that
was still going on. There were new motions, new court dates,

(24:57):
and she had persistent fear of Jim him though she
had no contact with him. Their lawyers continued to argue
back and forth. Sullivan attacked her character, saying that she
was an adulteress, a thief, and a drug addict. He
said he found dollar bills with cocaine residues sitting in
the curve of a shoehorn inside her medicine cabinet. He

(25:19):
said she stole two diamonds that were hidden in the
bottom of a shoe closet. So it was just one
thing after another. It got so bad that her lawyer
even had her take a monthly urine test just so
they could refute any of these drug allegations. She often
feared that someone was spying on her, and she often
felt like she was being followed. These were reasonable fears,

(25:40):
right they're not just paranoia.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
She might have been correct.

Speaker 4 (25:44):
So now March nineteen eighty six, Lyda's longtime friend and
former Spelman classmate, Poppy Marrable, discovered that her husband, Marvin Marrable,
had wiretapped Poppy's phone, listing in on her conversations, and
many of these were with Leda. Poppy filed for divorce
from her husband, who was later indicted on invasion of

(26:04):
privacy charges, And according to the FBI, Jim Sullivan, who
was coincidentally or not a good friend of Marvin Marrables,
admitted that he'd received copies of these tapes at his
Palm Beach home, so Marvin would be questioned about having
an eavesdropping device. And you know, obviously things weren't great

(26:25):
in that marriage either. So on January sixteenth, nineteen eighty seven,
the court was scheduled to address a pre trial motion
on division of property and to determine the validity of
the Sullivan's post nuptial agreement, so if judged in her favor,
Lida would be entitled to half of Jim Sullivan's assets.
The day before, on January fifteenth, Leda's mother and sister, Valencia,

(26:50):
were visiting Lyda and discussing the upcoming court decision. So
Sullivan had scheduled to have someone take a video inventory
of everything in the Atlanta home that day, but Lida
got a call canceling the appointment. So isn't that interesting?
What do you think of that?

Speaker 1 (27:07):
It is kind of suspicious because this.

Speaker 4 (27:09):
Was something he really cared about doing with the money,
and if he canceled it, why you.

Speaker 1 (27:14):
Know, yeah, getting the money.

Speaker 4 (27:16):
It would except we know he had an alternative plan
he did. So that night, Lida ate with her friend
Poppy Marrable that's Marvin's wife, at our Thomas Deluxe grill,
and later Poppy and her young daughter came over to
spend the night. She wanted to be with Lida and
support her, and her daughter was like a toddler, maybe
three years old, So the women planned to stay up chatting,

(27:40):
but they ended up falling asleep late while watching TV. Now,
if you're a fan of true Crime Brewery, and you're
here so hopefully you are, maybe you can't get enough
of our storytelling and our analysis of crimes. You can
satisfy your itch by subscribing to our premium show at

(28:02):
tigrabber dot com slash subscribe, so once you're a subscriber,
you can enjoy every episode without ads, so you can
just stay immersed in the details without any interruptions. This
will also give you access to exclusive bonus episodes that
really dive into some of the most fascinating and disturbing cases.
And this is content you can't hear anywhere else, of course,

(28:24):
so your support will not only help keep the beer
chilled and the story's flowing, but it also allows us
to continue delivering the content that you love. So whether
you're into true crime brewery for the psychology, the mystery,
or even just the craft beer pairings, subscribing is an
effective way to show your appreciation and to get yourself

(28:44):
more of what makes true crime brewery so addictive. So
why wait? Head on over to tigrabber dot com slash
subscribe and you can join the ti grabber community. We
would appreciate it and you'd be very welcome. January sixteenth

(29:09):
began as a quiet day with some light rain. That morning,
a Friday, two men drove up to the Botany Bay
flower Shop. This was located about half a mile from
Lida's house. They were driving a white Toyota one guy
came inside and said he wanted a dozen roses and
he didn't care what color. The clerk randall. Benson felt

(29:30):
anxious because something about this guy made him uneasy. He
worried that he was going to get robbed by him.
Truth be told. The customer told Benson to leave the
shop sticker off the box, so the clerk just tied
it with a pink ribbon. Then he let out a
sigh of relief when the men left the store just
after eight am holding this white lung flower box with

(29:52):
a pink bow. A tall, white, balding man wearing a
green work jacket and gray pants stood outside of Lida's
front door. After he took a look. After he took
a look around, he rang the doorbell at three zero
eight five slate in drive. Lida woke up in her
Buckhead Town's townhouse, and she was likely feeling nervous about

(30:13):
the court visit coming up that afternoon. She was due
in Superior Court at two pm to hear the pre
trial ruling. The trial was scheduled to begin in just
ten days, so maybe Lida didn't think that it was
odd that the doorbell was ringing so early in the morning,
she put on her robe, went downstairs and answered the door.

(30:33):
It was eight twenty am. Now Lida must have seen
the flower box because she opened the door wide, and
normally she was really careful because she was nervous with
this divorce, you know. So now she sees the box,
so she's thinking, oh, I'm getting a flower delivery. So
she took the box that the man handed to her.
But she must have immediately noticed the gun because she

(30:55):
instinctively lifted the box to her face to protect herself.
And will never really know she fully realized what was
happening or how much fear she felt. But she did,
you know, at least have a couple seconds there to
know this was bad.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
It wasn't just a flower delivery.

Speaker 4 (31:11):
No, not at all. Now, there was a next door
neighbor who made eye contact with this guy after he
heard before he heard two shots. One of the bullets
passed Lida and entered the living room, but the other
hit Rida's temple on the right side of her head.
The gunman ran away on foot like a bat out

(31:32):
of hell, said another neighbor, who almost hit him with
her car. So Lda's neighbor, Bob Christiansen, said that after
he heard the shots, he walked up and saw that
the door was a jar. It was open about six
or eight inches. Now he was afraid to go inside,
but felt really that he had to. He opened the
door wider and saw Lida lying in the foyer with

(31:53):
her head covered in blood. He immediately went into the kitchen,
which was just a few feet away, and he called.
Then he came back to see if he could do
anything to help her, but it was obvious to him
that she was in really bad shape. So meanwhile, Lyda's
friend Poppy and her toddler daughter were still upstairs when
the shooting happened. Poppy hid her daughter in the closet

(32:15):
to protect her, and then she was just hysterically, so
she called Lida's parents, Joanne McClinton. Lida's mom quickly got
dressed to go to her daughter, but first she called
Lyda's father, Emory, and he got to Lida's house before
Joeanne did. When Joanne pulled into the driveway, they were
putting Lida into an ambulance. Emory drove his car and

(32:37):
Joanne followed him to Piedmont Hospital, but they were there
only for a very short time. When Lida was pronounced dead,
and Emery immediately said that son of a bitch did it,
So there's really no question in his mind that Jim
Sullivan was behind.

Speaker 1 (32:54):
Their daughter's death whatsoever.

Speaker 4 (32:57):
So forty minutes after the shooting, at nine am, Jim's
Sullivan accepted a collect call at his Palm Beach home
from a payphone at the northbound rest stop on I
eighty five, about thirty four miles from Leda's house. And
this call lasted one minute, So we're going to determine
that he was being notified that Leda had been shot.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
Oh timing suggests that yes.

Speaker 4 (33:21):
So back a few days on January thirteenth, three days
before the shooting, three men had checked into the nearby
Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge and registered under fake names, so
they were driving a white Toyota and Southern Bell. Phone
records later showed that a call was made at seven
forty four am from Room five eighteen to Jim Sullivan's

(33:42):
house in West Palm Beach. Sullivan called the room back
at ten thirty three am, and minutes later he called
Lyda's neighbor, Bob Christiansen and asked him what did you
hear this morning, did you hear any loud knocking? So
we know what this was. This was their first attempt.
Police later determined that the murder was planned for January thirteenth, actually,

(34:04):
but that Lida must not have answered the door. You know,
she had been feeling really cautious since she was in
the middle of a settlement with Jim, and the shooter
would need a way to get to her and get
in her home. So then they had come up with
this flower idea in Sullivan's day planner. FBI special agent

(34:25):
Todd Letcher, who described Sullivan as a meticulous note taker,
later found a note from January fourteenth that read get flowers.
So the idea was the day after that that if
they go to the door with flowers, she'll open the door.

Speaker 1 (34:40):
Oh yeah, I think that's unfortunately a reasonable assertion.

Speaker 4 (34:44):
Yeah. So, in a phone call to a friend a
few days after the murder, Sullivan described the gun that
killed Lida a nine millimeter semi automatic pistol, but information
about the gun was never publicly released. This information had
been int intentionally withheld by Atlanta police. So how would
Jim know that if he wasn't involved, Well, he wouldn't

(35:07):
simple answer yes exactly. So Sullivan was in Palm Beach
when Leda was shot. He had an alibi. We know
he didn't physically shoot her. On the morning of the shooting,
his lawyer called him to tell him that Lida was dead.
But that same day Sullivan went out to lunch with
a business associate, and then that night, around eight pm,
he had dinner with his girlfriend. So he didn't really

(35:29):
seem to care. So he went to dinner with his girlfriend.
His girlfriend was Suki Rogers and they ate it Jo's,
a very fancy French restaurant. He mentioned Marvin and the
recordings of his wife and Lida, so then Marvin would
be questioned early on as a person of interest in
Lida's shooting, but it would turn out Marvin had nothing

(35:50):
to do with it. So even though Sullivan did have
an alibi, of course he was a suspect. Later, according
to the prosecutor, investigators found a note in Sullivan's diary
that read, Suki and I celebrate with champagne and caviar
at Joe's. So that's pretty horrible celebrating her death. Can

(36:10):
you believe it? And we don't know how much Suki knew,
but that's horrible. Another note, which he wrote on December twelfth,
nineteen eighty six, about a month before the shooting, read pistol,
So what the heck was going on with that? So
it was only eight months after Lda's death when Jim
Sullivan married Suki Rogers. This was her fourth marriage and
his third. She was a very recent divorce ae. She

(36:34):
was very attractive, but just as ambitious as Sullivan. So
maybe not the most moral person.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
Perhaps not.

Speaker 4 (36:41):
He'd been seeing Suki while he was still married to Leda,
of course, and as a couple they were able to
make progress on becoming accepted by Palm Beach High Society
because remember they were prejudice against Leda.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
And instead of uh, Suki's Asian, isn't she Yes?

Speaker 1 (36:57):
So I guess they don't have the same I don't
think that I.

Speaker 4 (37:00):
Do, honestly. I mean, I don't know why, but I
don't think they do. And Sullivan wasn't the type of
guy to back up his wife. He just kind of
dumped her and moved on to someone who would be
more acceptable. So you know, he's just an awful person.
So Lda's parents spoke to the media about their daughter's murder,
and they put up a twenty five thousand dollar reward,

(37:22):
but Jim Sullivan was quickly becoming the only real suspect.
Detectives back then didn't have DNA and there was really
no CCTV or cell phone data. They investigated the murder
by interviewing the people in Lada in Jim's life, but
the pink roses found in Lda's foyer became a very
important piece of evidence. They canvassed all the nearby flower

(37:46):
shops and the clerk told them about the guy who
had bought the roses just before Leida's murder, so that
was a big tip off, very big. Now, Remember I said,
the neighbor, Bob Christiansen, had seen the shooter before he
ran away, and he was able to help the police
artists put together a sketch. So it was obvious that

(38:06):
Sullivan was not the shooter. But they knew that three
different men had been involved, and it wouldn't be long
before the life Sullivan had so carefully put together began
to fall apart, piece by piece. In March of nineteen ninety, three,
years after Leeda's death, he got into a three car
accident while driving his Rolls Royce. His driver's license had

(38:29):
been taken away back in nineteen eighty nine due to
more than a dozen unpaid traffic violations, and rather than
dealing with the fines, he took the case to court
and he and Suki said that she had been the
one driving, so he almost had the case thrown out
for that reason, but the traffic cop told the court
that Suki wasn't even in the car. In fact, Jim

(38:50):
had been driving alone, so that wasn't going to.

Speaker 1 (38:52):
Fly, not going to work.

Speaker 4 (38:54):
So not only did he get into trouble, but he
got his wife into trouble. He was convicted of two
counts of perjury and sentenced to house arrest for one year.
He was confined to his home except he had this
tennis court therapy which was prescribed by his doctor, so
he could go play tennis.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
Stupid, huh incredibly Yeah.

Speaker 4 (39:16):
Now, during that year, still investigating Leada's death, federal agents
searched his house and they found four guns and that
included one sowd Off shotgun. So convicted on felony charges
now for firearms possession. Sullivan was sentenced to spend the
remaining nine and a half months of his house arrest
in the Palm Beach County jail. So by this point

(39:38):
Suki had already filed for divorce, and at her divorce trial,
she testified that after they got arrested for perjury, Sullivan
admitted to her his role in Leada's death. So she
explained how he had turned the TV volume up so
high so no one could listen to their conversation, and
then he had told her that he had hired someone

(39:59):
to to kill Leeda. He said that they should sell
their house as soon as possible and go anywhere in
the world that she wanted to. Now, she later told
her lawyers that he mentioned how he could hire someone
to kill whoever he wanted if he just went to
rural Georgia. So apparently Suki was not on board anymore.

Speaker 1 (40:19):
So it seems so while he was in.

Speaker 4 (40:21):
Jail, Sullivan got into a jailhouse fight with a convicted
robber who broke his nose. In January of ninety two,
federal agents indicted him on interstate murder conspiracy charges in Atlanta.
Now Sullivan spared no expense. He hired Ed Garland and
Don Samuel, two of the top criminal defense lawyers in

(40:43):
the country. At this time, their long list of clients
included Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis, who was acquitted of
involvement in a post Super Bowl buckhead bar fight where
a man was killed, and Jim Williams, the protagonist in
the non figure story Midnight in the Garden of Good
and Evil, who was acquitted of murder in his fourth trial.

Speaker 1 (41:06):
There's a case we think we're going to do something.

Speaker 4 (41:08):
Yeah, we've talked about that many times. We should so.
The federal charge of interstate murder conspiracy, despite a good
deal of circumstantial evidence, was difficult to prove, and the
prosecution could never prove the content of the phone conversation
in that collect call that Sullivan received on the day
of Leda's murder. So the case was dismissed for insufficient

(41:30):
evidence on November twenty third, nineteen ninety two. But it
would not be double jeopardy if they brought him to
prosecution again because there was no trial. So he wasn't acquitted.
It was just dropped before it really began.

Speaker 1 (41:44):
I see, I was going to ask you.

Speaker 4 (41:46):
Yeah, that's something that I thought about as well. But no,
he actually would try and use that too. Later on,
sure didn't work.

Speaker 1 (41:54):
Whatever ammunition you.

Speaker 4 (41:56):
Have, well sure. So he's a free man. He's back
in pow Beach and he had to get around town
on his twelve speed bicycle. He doesn't have a license, remember, right,
looking for him, right, So he became a recluse because
he was now shunned by Palm Beach society. So this
all kind of backfired, which is good. One neighbor said

(42:18):
Sullivan had lost wade and looked visibly stressed. His face
was pale and gaunt, and he even described him as
looking almost like a ghost. So Sullivan would end up
selling his Palm Beach mansion for three point two million
dollars and he moved to a more modest house, but
still a very nice house near Boyton Beach. In nineteen

(42:40):
ninety four, the mcclintons and their lawyer, and I'm talking
about Leada's parents, took Sullivan to West Palm Beach Civil
Court in a wrongful death suit. In civil court, judgments
are based on the weight of the evidence, whereas in
criminal court a defendant must be deemed guilty beyond a
reasonable doubt. So this is quite often. It was done

(43:02):
in the OJ case many times, if people can't get
a conviction criminally, they can at least get a wrongful
death suit.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
They can and any evidence gathered in the wrongful death
suit can be used if there is a murder case
coming up.

Speaker 4 (43:19):
Yes, in the criminal case yep. So a few days
before that case went to trial, Sullivan fired his lawyers
and decided to represent himself. So this was surprising because
he had the money, but without representation, he said. And
by saying he didn't have the funds to hire an attorney,
he was hoping the jury would feel sorry for him
and that might get them to rule in his favor.

(43:41):
So he thought that might work. Now. In his opening
statement to the jury, Sullivan said, it is terrible to
be wrongly accused of murder. To have to live through that,
and with that is another form of death, another form
of murder, murder of the spirit. Oh my god, I
don't think that you're he liked that. I wouldn't like that. Then,

(44:02):
he added, to be a husband, and to lose your
wife violently is the worst thing that can happen to
a husband. So what do you think so jury gonna
buy it?

Speaker 1 (44:11):
Well, I think it's going to be tough. Yeah, for
them to buy that.

Speaker 4 (44:15):
So, because Sullivan represented himself, he was the one who
questioned Lda's parents, Joeanne and Emory when they were on
the witness stand. So Leda's dad, Emory said, it was
horrible being questioned by the killer of your daughter. And
I could see that would be really hard to sit
there and let him question you when you know what

(44:36):
he did. That takes a lot of inner strength, self control. Yep.
So the jury heard testimony from Suki and from Paul O'Brien,
the convicted robber who'd broken Sullivan's nose in jail. Well
Brian told the court that Sullivan confessed to arranging Leada's
murder and that the only thing he couldn't explain was

(44:57):
the collect call made to Sullivan from someone off the interstate.
So it didn't take long for the jury to reach
its verdict. In the civil trial, on February twenty fifth,
nineteen ninety four, Sullivan was found guilty and ordered to
pay the mcclinton's four million dollars in compensation and punitive damages.
The mcclinton's were thrilled with this. For us, it was

(45:19):
never about the money, said Joanne. We wanted Jim to
be held accountable for what he did to our daughter.
So now Sullivan was suddenly able to hire lawyers, and
he appealed the court's decision. In nineteen ninety five, the
Florida Supreme Court overturned the nineteen ninety four verdict, ruling
that the court case hadn't been filed soon enough. So,

(45:41):
unlike in criminal cases, where of course there's no statute
of limitations on murder, civil court has a two year
statute for wrongful death and those two years had long
since passed. So Lda's parents were just heartbroken by this decision,
but they certainly weren't going to give up either. Joanne
and the memory's attorney counter appealed, arguing that the statute

(46:03):
shouldn't apply when Sullivan had concealed his involvement in the shooting. Finally,
the Supreme Court agreed with them, and in nineteen ninety
seven they reinstated Sullivan's guilty verdict and ordered him to
pay the money to Leada's parents. So this decision earned
a lot of media attention after a story about Sullivan

(46:24):
appeared on TV's Extra Authorities got a break in early
nineteen ninety eight, so there's a woman in Texas named
Belinda Trehan, and she called the Atlanta police and told
them she recognized Jim Sullivan. So her ex boyfriend, Philip
Anthony Tony Harwood remember him. He was with the moving van.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
He was the guy who said he could help Jim
out exactly.

Speaker 4 (46:49):
He was the same truck driver that Sullivan had met
when he first moved to West Palm. So, according to Tony,
when he and the movers were at Jim's house two
months before Leida's murder, Jim had asked him if he
knew anyone who could take care of his black wife,
who was going to take his money. So Belinda told
the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that Tony Harwood had met

(47:11):
up with Jim Sullivan in a Florida diner shortly after
Leda's death, and she had seen Sullivan hand an envelope
full of money to Harwood. She was able to pick
Jim out of a lineup. The envelope was the final
payment for killing Leeda. So this was a link that
investigators really needed so they could move forward with prosecution.

(47:33):
They also searched North American van Lines files. This was
the moving company that Tony Harwood had worked for and
they were just really thrilled because they were able to
find the receipt showing that Tony Harwood had moved Jim Sullivan.
So now they were ready to arrest Jim, but there
was one teeny tiny problem. They had to find him first,

(47:55):
because now Jim had gone on the run.

Speaker 1 (47:58):
He has we're in a good way.

Speaker 4 (48:00):
Well, he had the money to do it, right. Yeah,
So for well over a decade, Sullivan was a prime

(48:23):
suspect in Leda's murder, at the top of the FBI's
most wanted list for four years. He led investigators on
an international manhunt as he traveled throughout Central America and
he eventually ended up in Thailand. Then in two thousand
and two, America's Most Wanted ran a segment on Sullivan
and it's really kind of amazing, but someone in Thailand

(48:45):
recognized him. He was living in cha Am, a luxury
condo community about one hundred and fifty miles south of Bangkok,
and he was living with a tie divorcee he had
met back in West Palm Beach. So the Thai police
arrested Sullivan and took him to lard Yao Prison. Outside

(49:06):
of Bangkok, and there his lawyers fought his extradition. They
were really hoping to use international laws to avoid the
death penalty to keep him from getting extradited. Now, one
thing to know about Thai prisons, Dickie, is they are
notoriously overcrowded. Amnesty International says that more than fifty inmates
are held in cells that are built for twenty and

(49:28):
that the prisons are plagued by rats, disease, and rotting food.
And there's also a lot of brutality by the guards.
That's just kind of the norm. So on his two
visits to see Sullivan in Thailand, his attorney was actually surprised.
He found that the prison situation was better than he
had feared. On one visit, Sullivan got married to his girlfriend.

(49:50):
So now this was his fourth wife, I'm sure it
is now. Because of his parentage, Sullivan had dual citizenship
in both the United States and Ireland. Like other Western
European countries, Ireland opposes the death penalty and the extradition
of Irish citizens to any country that enforces capital punishment.

(50:12):
When the Thai courts denied the citizenship motion, Sullivan's lawyers
appealed to the Thai Supreme Court, saying that prosecuting Sullivan
for Leita's death was a case of double jeopardy because
Georgia's constitution states that a person cannot be tried for
the same crime twice, and this is what we hit
upon it earlier, because he wasn't really tried. He'd been arrested,

(50:34):
but there had never been a trial, So quite reasonably,
the Thai courts denied that appeal, so in March two
thousand and four, extradition was finally granted. A thin and
disheveled sixty two year old Jim Sullivan limped off the
plane at Hartsfield Airport. Before he was taken to the
Fulton County jail, Sullivan wore handcuffs and shackles, a face mask,

(50:58):
and just one shoe. He couldn't wear a shoe on
one foot because he had a severe case of gout,
so one US marshall said he was being difficult. The
fugitive read Newsweek the whole trip while complaining about returning
to Atlanta. Then a few days after Sullivan's arrival in Georgia,
Fulton County DA Paul Howard Junior served Sullivan notice of

(51:21):
the State's intent to seek the death penalty against him.
Sullivan's lawyer Don Samuel said Sullivan's foot had swollen on
the flight over and that the face mask was just
a precaution because at that point SARS was kind of
a big thing. He said that Sullivan had a serious
dental problem too, which needed the care of a dentist.

(51:43):
Sullivan's defense was that he had nothing to do with
Leda's murder, so absolute denial. He argued that he did
not flee the country, but that he just happened to
move at the time of his indictment, so coincidental. He
had left the country long before there was a warrant
for his arrest, and he claimed he was unaware that
he was ever the target of an international manhunt. The

(52:06):
mcclinton's lawyer, Brad Morris, said that when Sullivan fled to
Costa Rica back in nineteen ninety eight, he'd hired a
private banker in Palm Beach who worked with a Swiss
bank to hide Sullivan's money in offshore accounts. That money
was funneled through a corporate trust account in the small
country of Lichenstein Echtenstein, Diechtenstein. I'm just like saying that.

(52:29):
So all statements from the corporation Nicola Resources were sent
to Sullivan in Thailand. A lawyer in Liechtenstein managed the
funds and sent Sullivan money whenever he needed it. So
he's still quite wealthy, right he is. And the mcclintons
had not seen any of the four million dollar judgment
that they'd won back in nineteen ninety four.

Speaker 1 (52:50):
Big surprise, and it was.

Speaker 4 (52:52):
Now calculated at eight point eight million due to a
crude interest. Now it's not a big surprise. Their lawyer
was trying to find Sullivan's hidden money. And while the
mcclinton's believed in Sullivan's constitutional right to a lawyer, they
said he shouldn't be able to use the money from
the Florida lawsuit to pay for his expensive criminal lawyers.

(53:13):
And Joanne even called it blood money. So I agree
with that if he owes them four million dollars, he
shouldn't be able to spend a bunch of money on
defending himself before paying them.

Speaker 1 (53:23):
No, he should pay the money, then he can use
what's left to pay for his defense.

Speaker 4 (53:28):
Yeah. I think in Dorchester they would call this bullshit,
complete bullshit. Yeah, d A Paul Howard Junior believed Sullivan
should have been court ordered to pay his civil court judgment.
And he said, it's really obscene that you could take
somebody's life, profit from it, and then use the proceeds
from it to defend your life in a trial involving

(53:49):
that same person. And I agree that's outrageous.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
Well, it just doesn't sound right.

Speaker 4 (53:54):
It's not right. So the hired hit man, let's talk
about him a bit. He was arrested while Jim was
still on the run. Then once Jim was in custody,
Harwood took a plea deal, so he pleaded guilty to
voluntary manslaughter and he agreed to testify at Jim's murder trial.
He admitted to making the collect call to Jim's house.

(54:14):
He said when he called him, he said Merry Christmas,
and this was code to let Jim know that his
problem was taken care of. And you know that's how
he referred to his beautiful wife, a problem sickening. Tony's
ex girlfriend who was really important to this, Belinda tray Hand.
She testified, and she had the most chilling testimony. She

(54:35):
testified that Tony told her he had gone to Lda's
door on January thirteenth, but that Leeda didn't answer the door,
so he'd gone back three days later with the flowers.
She was able to identify Jim Sullivan during the trial
as the person who gave him the envelope of money
at the diner. But you know, Belinda had a really

(54:56):
hard time because when he had told her that the
woman didn't answer the door, she didn't realize that this
was a murder, and she'd said, well, if you bring flowers,
she'll answer. So I think he had told her he
was like delivering some papers for the court, but he
was actually going there to murder her. And Belinda said, oh, well,
if you're there at the door with flowers, I bet

(55:16):
she'll open the door. Then she finds out that's how
they got her to open the door to kill her,
and she had a lot of guilt to live with.
So in closing arguments, the prosecutor played a doorbell for
effect and said the bell tolls for thee, referring to Sullivan.
So it's pretty eerie because it was silent in the
court and he would ring the bell and wait a minute,

(55:37):
and you could kind of, you know, envision being in
your house and hearing the doorbell right, So it really
did kind of hit home with a lot of people
and probably the jury, because the jurors took less than
one day to convict Jim Sullivan for Lyda's murder. During
his trial, the prosecutors presented several incriminating pieces of evidence

(55:58):
against him, while the defense claimed that he had had
no part in Leada's murder. So Sullivan did not get
the death penalty. He was sentenced to life in prison
without the possibility of parole. Leida's parents read their victim
impact statements at his sentencing. Sullivan is now incarcerated at
the Augustus State Medical Prison in Grovetown, Georgia. Tony Harwood,

(56:21):
the gunman, was released from prison in twenty eighteen after
serving his full sentence for manslaughter. And he got that
manslaughter charge by testifying against Sullivan, which I don't know
if I feel great about that either, because he shot
her in cold blood, But if you want to get
the person behind it, I guess that's how you do it.

Speaker 1 (56:41):
A lot got to it.

Speaker 4 (56:42):
Yeah, And sadly, the mcclintons have never received any money
from Sullivan from that civil suit as far as we know.
He's still alive and he's in the medical prison because
he's old and probably kind of frail and sickly.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
Well and gout and gout, that's true.

Speaker 4 (56:59):
Yeah, I wonder if he would have gout in prison,
because isn't that from like a rich diet or something.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
Yeah, it diet related.

Speaker 4 (57:05):
I don't know. But he's just kind of a horrible
person and still alive as far as we know, which
is kind of shocking. Didn't we do a case recently
where the killer was still alive.

Speaker 2 (57:16):
In his nineties, ninety six or something?

Speaker 4 (57:19):
Yeah? Crazy? Because you think in prison you wouldn't live
that long, but I guess you can.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
I mean, I think being in prison isn't conducive.

Speaker 4 (57:27):
You wouldn't think it long life. No, But I mean
you aren't taken care.

Speaker 1 (57:31):
Of in that sense. Yea, yeah you are, but you
don't want to piss other inmates off.

Speaker 4 (57:35):
No, No, I'm not sure how that works with elderly people.
I always think that probably in the prison there's a
section for these old, frail people, right, I don't know,
they can't just be out in the general pop. I mean,
I guess they could, but I don't see it happening.
Especially if they need medications and all this stuff, or
if they're using a walker or you know, yeah, probably wheelchair.

(57:57):
I think they have like nursing homes for prisoners.

Speaker 1 (58:00):
Yeah, look at it that way.

Speaker 4 (58:01):
Maybe I'm going to look into that because I've always wondered.
If anyone knows, let me know because I'm curious. Okay,
So that's it for this story. I think it's pretty interesting.
I hope everyone else thought it was interesting as well,
and we have some feedback here. Instead of doing our
letters and voicemails, which we're going to save for next time,

(58:21):
we have to talk about the Donna Adelson trial. This
is something we are watching intently. We are watching this trial.
We found this wonderful YouTube channel, Lawyer Lead, that we
really like because she's, well, she's a lawyer, which helps rite,
but she's also very objective and really tells you what's

(58:42):
going on with the law. So we enjoy that a lot.
Can't watch it all day, but of course if it's
on YouTube, you can watch it whenever you want rewind.
And she also gives some reason each night if you
would just want to spend an hour a day and
not be like over the top like we might be,
you know, having it on all day, but anyway, fascinating.
We know that the two killers, the go between Katie

(59:05):
and then Donna's son Charlie, have all been convicted for
the murder of Wendy Adelson Dan Markel.

Speaker 1 (59:13):
Yeah, let me give you a quick synopsis so that okay,
that would be great.

Speaker 4 (59:16):
Yeah, because not everybody knows it. Surprisingly, I'm always surprised
when someone says, what are you talking about? But it's true.

Speaker 1 (59:23):
Well, it turns out that in March of twenty twenty three,
we did an episode on the murder of Dan Markel.
Though Dan was a law professor at Florida State University
School of Law, and he had been shot in his
car as he was returning from a workout. He was
killed in twenty fourteen, and it appeared to the police
that Markel's death had been a murder for hire. Than

(59:46):
in twenty sixteen, Sigfredo Garcia, Luis Rivera, and mcbenoa were
arrested for Markel's murder. Garcia was found guilty of first
degree murder and conspiracy commit murder, Rivera, in a plea deal,
sound guilty of second degree murder, and mcbanoah was found
guilty of first degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and

(01:00:07):
solicitation to commit murder. Then we'll go forward a little
to twenty twenty two, and this is when Marcelle's former
brother in law, Charlie Adelson was charged with the murder
of Markel. He was felt to be the mastermind of
the murder, with mcganua the go between. Then on November fifth,
twenty twenty three, Charlie was found guilty of first degree murder,

(01:00:28):
conspiracy to commit murder, and solicitation to commit murder. And
then a week later, November thirteenth, Donna Adelson, who is
Markell's former mother in law, was arrested at the Miami
Airport just as she was about to take a flight
to Vietnam. There's a one way ticket and interestingly, Vietnam
does not have an extradition so you're thinking, well, maybe

(01:00:51):
that's what they're doing. Now. They've charged Donna with the
same charges as Charlie, murder, conspiracy and solicitation right.

Speaker 4 (01:01:00):
Her trial began when on the twenty second.

Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
Her trial began the twenty second, and we've.

Speaker 4 (01:01:05):
Been following it and we thought the defense had a
pretty poor opening argument, So maybe if you haven't heard it,
you want to listen to it and see what you think.
But she started out her opening argument by really talking
up Dan Marcal. Yeah, which he did seem like a
great guy. He'd gone to Harvard, Harvard Law School, seemed

(01:01:26):
like a very devoted dad. Some people said he was
a little abrupt, but other than that, he just seemed
like a pretty great guy.

Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
He did seem to be a nice, okay guy.

Speaker 4 (01:01:35):
Yeah, But these adele sins are just kind of awful,
at least from what we've heard. So the thought here
is that Donna, the matriarch, Wendy and Charlie's mother, was
behind this whole thing, so now she's on trial. Prosecution
spoke for one hour and gave a lot of evidence
in that hour, and the defense, that opening argument I

(01:01:56):
was telling you about, was only twenty minutes and it
really didn't offer any evidence, and it just said how
great he was, how sad it was. But basically that
those four people had been convicted and that Donna didn't
know anything about it. She was not part of it,
which sounds reasonable until you start hearing the phone calls
and the texts and the things she said and did,
which really do make it sound like she hated Dan.

Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
Markel surely does. Yep. But I'm listening to the opening argument.
It almost seemed to me as if the defense realized
they had a really crappy case and they're not going
to put much effort into it. That's probably wrong.

Speaker 4 (01:02:33):
I don't think they really think that, but I think
that they didn't have a lot to work with. Yeah,
I would agree with that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:39):
I'll go with that.

Speaker 4 (01:02:40):
Yeah, so not a lot to work with. They really
wanted to make it look like Charlie acted alone with
Catherine and the two hit men. And then there are
a lot of audio tapes right introduced his evidence not
good for Donna. She can be heard talking with Charlie
about the murder and they're using all these weird code words,
so trying to see if they could get a reaction
from Anna. The police had given her this bump where

(01:03:02):
an undercover policeman approached her with a demand that she
paid five thousand dollars for his friend in jail in
order to buy their continued silence, but Donna denied any involvement. Still,
what did she do after this encounter. She didn't call
the police. She called Charlie, and they said some very
incriminating things. Even though they thought they were being clever,

(01:03:23):
they really weren't. So Wendy Adelson testified at Donna's trial
for the prosecution as well as the older brother of
Charlie and Wendy, who has nothing to do with these people.
He seems like a decent person. He testified basically about
how his mother reacted to the murder and what kind
of person his mother was, because, of course, the defense

(01:03:44):
is trying to present her as just this sweet little
old lady because she's seventy five, and other people.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
Would portray her as Lady macbeth right.

Speaker 4 (01:03:52):
Also, another interesting witness was Jeffrey la cass who was
dating Wendy for a time after her divorce, and he
felt like they were setting him up, framing him for
Dan's murder. Now, another thing about this is it was
interesting to watch him testify, But if you go on
YouTube and find the unredacted interviews between Jeffrey Lacasse and
the detectives, there's a lot more he says, and a

(01:04:15):
lot of it's about Wendy. So I'm thinking after Donna's trial,
they're going to arrest Wendy and they have a lot
more stuff on her than we even know of at
this point, a lot more evidence against her, And of
course a lot of people want her to get arrested
because most people feel like she was involved. And I'm
not going to go into all the details right now

(01:04:36):
about why, but definitely interesting, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:39):
Well it is, And not to give too much away,
but today Markel was murdered. Wendy conveniently had a broken
television set that needed fixing, and she was alibi wise
at home with the repairment. Now it turns out that
the TV had just been smashed in.

Speaker 4 (01:04:55):
Yeah, who thinks that you're going to get that repaired?

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
It wasn't something there was repairrable. The other thing on
that same day, the day of the murder, when he
had driven over to the scene, she was trying to
drive by, possibly to see what was going on, And
she said, actually she was out there looking by a
bottle of bourbon.

Speaker 4 (01:05:11):
Which wasn't the route she really needed to go to,
and it wasn't the closest liquor store to her home either. Well.
The real weird thing about that is she sees this
tape where her children had been staying with her ex husband.
Their house is taped off. A couple of houses were
not just that one house. But she didn't ask the
police what's going on. She didn't try and call Dan,
she didn't call the children's daycare, she didn't check on

(01:05:33):
them at all. She went on to have lunch with
her friends. And that's just the tip of it. I mean,
there's a lot more that she's done that's very suspicious.

Speaker 1 (01:05:41):
There is a lot more.

Speaker 4 (01:05:42):
Yeah, we'll see, we'll see. So by the time you
hear this podcast, we'll probably have a verdict on Donna's trial. Yeah,
because it's wrapping up now with the defense as we record.
So we'll talk about that on our next feedback.

Speaker 1 (01:05:56):
Yes, we will.

Speaker 4 (01:05:57):
And we'd love if anyone has anything to say about
the Wilson case. We would love to hear it. Call
and leave a voicemail, send us an email because that's
something we're really kind of focused on right now. We
find it very interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:06:09):
We do fascinating.

Speaker 4 (01:06:10):
It really is. I think that it's something that would
fascinate most true crime people. But I bet most of
our listeners are well aware of it. Most of our
listeners are very up on the true crime Okay, well,
I think we're going to wrap it up for today.

Speaker 1 (01:06:24):
Yeah, we're turning in.

Speaker 4 (01:06:25):
Yeah, finish this beer and we'll see you next time.

Speaker 1 (01:06:28):
Come on down. Got plenty of seats, all.

Speaker 3 (01:06:30):
Right, Bye, bye bye guys.

Speaker 4 (01:07:19):
Okay, a quick addendum because we just got a verdict
on the Dona Adelson case.

Speaker 1 (01:07:26):
Yes, while we were taping this episode, the trial was
winding down and closing. Our givens were given, the judge
instructed the jury and off.

Speaker 2 (01:07:35):
They went and it was quick, quick verding three hours.

Speaker 4 (01:07:39):
Yeah, very similar to the time it took them to
convict Charlie.

Speaker 1 (01:07:43):
As I think they were bout both roughly the same
a lot of time.

Speaker 4 (01:07:47):
I think so. But she had quite the reaction.

Speaker 1 (01:07:50):
Well she did because she's just been found guilty of
first degree murder, I know.

Speaker 4 (01:07:53):
But still the judge told her, you got to rein
it in. But you know, I think if you're getting
life in prison.

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):
Give her a little leeway there.

Speaker 4 (01:08:01):
I would think so, because it would be upsetting regardless
of how bad you are or whatever. Yeah, yeah, okay,
so she has life in prison. And we heard the
victim impact statements from Dan Markel's parents, which I was
really impressed with his because not only did he talk
about his own family and loss, but he talked about
how Charlie's son doesn't have a father because he's in prison,

(01:08:24):
that's right, Yeah, and how the kids don't have a
father because Dan was killed. So it was really good
the way that his father put it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:32):
I thought, yeah, it made difficulty for both families.

Speaker 4 (01:08:35):
Well, yeah, destroyed lives.

Speaker 3 (01:08:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:08:37):
So now we will just wait and see if Wendy
gets arrested. Do you think she will?

Speaker 1 (01:08:42):
Well that's the next big question, right, yes, and I
don't think they will, but we'll see.

Speaker 4 (01:08:47):
Really, you think they'll just quit now?

Speaker 1 (01:08:50):
Just a good feeling.

Speaker 4 (01:08:51):
Okay, Well, I'm going to bet you a dollar because
I think she'll be arrested by the end of the month.

Speaker 1 (01:08:56):
Okay, that's a deadline. All right, we'll see what happens.

Speaker 4 (01:08:59):
Yep. All right, let's close out the.

Speaker 1 (01:09:01):
Show again again, see you guys later

Speaker 4 (01:09:04):
All right, bye, bye bye

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

The Herd with Colin Cowherd

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Final Arrangement

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

The Herd with Colin Cowherd

All Episodes

The Final Arrangement

Stuff You Should Know