It's just before 9:00 A.M., and state representative JoAnn McClinton is sitting quietly in her office in the Georgia legislature building, her small, slender hands folded resolutely on her desk. This particular morning, the 68-year-old Democrat, a pillar of Atlanta's Black elite, wears the conservative business attire of the public official she has been since 1992: navy-blue dress with white trim and black pumps. But there are moments when, behind her stylish silver-framed glasses, JoAnn McClinton's eyes are intense with grief.

Back in the winter of 1987, her 35-year-old daughter, Lita McClinton Sullivan, was murdered in cold blood at her own front door by a man posing as a florist's deliveryman. The shocking crime dominated Atlanta newspaper headlines for weeks. But it took the authorities until 1992 to arrest and indict the suspected killer, Lita's estranged husband, Jim Sullivan. That same year, a federal judge dismissed the charges because of lack of evidence. Subsequently, members of Lita's family pressed forward in their quest to bring Sullivan to justice and won a wrongful-death civil suit against him. This finding was overturned in 1994 by an appellate court on the grounds of expiration of a two-year statute of limitations.

Four years later, in April 1998, Atlanta police charged a North Carolina truck driver with Lita's murder, alleging he was the triggerman Sullivan had hired. Jim Sullivan had continued living in the Palm Beach mansion he had once shared with Lita and had even married and divorced another wife. But by the time his murder warrant was issued, he had disappeared. He wasn't seen or heard from until July 1 of this year, when he was captured at his beachside condo 100 miles south of Bangkok, Thailand. Sullivan is being held in Bangkok until he can be returned to the United States. Authorities say he is likely to be tried in Atlanta before the end of 2003.

Meanwhile, before next spring JoAnn McClinton will sit through the third trial connected with her daughter's death, when Fulton County is scheduled to try the alleged gunman, 50-year-old Philip Anthony Harwood. If found guilty, Harwood could be put to death by lethal injection. "This portion of the case is very strong," says Anna Green, the attorney leading the prosecution. "His conviction will only make things easier when we try Sullivan."

Until they actually try and convict Sullivan, though, there will be no relief for JoAnn McClinton. "From the day my daughter was killed, I knew it was Jim," she says of her daughter's estranged husband. "It's him I want. And I'm hoping for the death penalty." JoAnn pauses a moment, trying to sum up her thoughts. "We're determined to see justice done," she says at last. "As parents, we can't just let someone take her life and get away with it."

An Execution-Style Murder

Lita LaVaughn McClinton, the eldest of three children born to JoAnn and Emory McClinton, grew up in the warm, promising embrace of Atlanta's most prominent Black families. Mom and Dad were always up late helping to chart the political futures of such friends as Charles Weltner and Andrew Young. Lita's father, Emory, became a high-ranking official with the U.S. Department of Transportation. JoAnn and Emory gave their children every advantage--including membership in Jack and Jill, the exclusive Black family social club, and a life in which elegant parties and cotillions were routine.

Petite, with b fight, trusting eyes, her face framed by thick, shoulder-length tresses, the vivacious Lita McClinton had a knack for fashion. But if her sketchbook seemed to point to New York or even Paris, few expected Lita to stray far from the familiar social pathway laid out by her parents. But that's not what happened. Shortly after she graduated from Spelman College in 1975, Lita met and married Jim Sullivan, a White man more than ten years her senior. She spent nearly a decade living with him in Macon, Georgia, and in their mansion in old-money Palm Beach before moving back home to Atlanta and filing for divorce.

Her life ended on a drizzly Friday morning, January 16, 1987. Around 8:15 A.M. Lita opened the door to her town house in the posh Buckhead neighborhood to accept a floral delivery. A man stepped into the foyer and opened fire with a 9-millimeter gun. When paramedics arrived, they found a beautiful Black woman dead with two gunshots in her head and pink roses scattered around her body.

`He Never Sent Flowers'

That very afternoon Lita Sullivan had been scheduled to appear at a divorce hearing, where a judge was to rule on whether she would receive $2,500 a month in alimony, as well as half of an estate that included the couple's $3 million Palm Beach mansion. It was an eerie coincidence that instantly raised the question for the McClintons: Did her estranged husband orchestrate Lita's murder, hiring a hit man to avoid losing his riches to her in a settlement?

According to associates, Sullivan--who ran and ultimately inherited his uncle's successful wholesale liquor distributorship in Macon, Georgia--had already surrendered millions in cash and property in his first divorce. They say it's no wonder that after marrying Lita he had her sign a postnuptial agreement limiting what he'd be required to pay in a divorce settlement. But Lita filed for divorce in Georgia, where juries can decide settlements and overrule a postnup. Before she could actually contest the agreement, however, she was dead.