Prosecutors: Lockport man beat father to death

Mugshot of Scott Sullivan, a Lockport man accused of beating his elderly father to death last year.

Updated: November 29, 2011 3:57PM

Scott Sullivan told police his father fell.

Paramedics found 86-year-old Fred Sullivan lying on his back in his son’s living room July 18, 2010. He couldn’t talk and, according to prosecutors, he never would again. Paramedics said the senior citizen’s face was swollen, his skin was torn and his body bruised. They found blood in the living room and the dining room — on the carpet, the walls and the ceiling.

“His father did not fall,” James Long, an assistant state’s attorney, told a Will County jury. “He suffered a physical assault.”

That assault came at the hands of his 58-year-old son, prosecutors said as they put Scott Sullivan on trial for his father’s murder Tuesday.

Leaning forward in a gray shirt and black tie, Scott Sullivan listened in a Joliet courtroom as prosecutors explained how his father suffered from dementia and lived with his son in the 900 block of East First Street in Lockport.

Neighbors there had seen the son hit his father in the past, prosecutors said, and they even heard him tell his father once he’d ruined his life. Long said Scott Sullivan took that abuse to a new level in July 2010.

That’s when paramedics found Fred Sullivan on the living room carpet and took him to Silver Cross Hospital in Joliet. Scott Sullivan told police he gave his father a shower that day, and then they both went to bed. Later, he said he heard his father cry “help” from the living room. He told police his father must have fallen, like he had many times before.

Court records say Scott Sullivan then called his estranged wife, who called the paramedics. But Robert Bodach, Scott Sullivan’s public defender, told jurors it was his client who called 911.

Bodach also said there’s no evidence tying Scott Sullivan to a beating. Investigators found no blood on his hands or knuckles, nor any scrapes on the son’s body. The case against his client, he said, is filled with assumptions and opinions.

“You will be given opinion with absolutely no corroboration,” Bodach said.

Bodach also said Scott Sullivan has been an “open book,” answering officers’ questions fully. But paramedics and police on the witness stand Tuesday morning called Scott Sullivan uncooperative, explaining his father’s injuries while holding a beer in his hand. He told one officer he drinks because his father doesn’t listen to him.

Long said Sullivan’s statements to police evolved over time. He first told officers he tapped his father’s face to wake him up, Long said. But when police asked about Fred Sullivan’s bruises, Scott Sullivan allegedly acknowledged he might have slapped, or even hit, his father.

Scott Sullivan also tried to clean up after the beating, Long said, and changed his clothes.

The injuries Fred Sullivan suffered that day eventually led to his death, Long said. Fred Sullivan developed pneumonia, he said, and died four months later.