Friends, family, flamboyance: Legendary Vero Beach attorney missed by many he helped

You didn’t have to be Charlie Sullivan’s best friend to know he was one of a kind.

Fellow attorneys Bob Stone and Buck Vocelle considered Sullivan, who will be memorialized this weekend after dying Nov. 8 at age 91, their best friend.

It didn’t take long for me to figure it out, either. He could have a smile on his face and a sense of humor in the most tense of times.

When I got to Vero Beach in 1985, Sullivan had a reputation as the go-to guy when someone got in trouble ― with the law or a spouse. There also were rumblings, based on a Miami Herald article, he and Stone, then the Treasure Coast state attorney and head of the statewide grand jury, were somehow in cahoots.

The reality is their friendship dated to 1965, when Stone moved to Vero Beach after helping with his uncle’s law practice in Fort Pierce. Stone, Sullivan ― who in 1958 had become the state’s youngest part-time municipal judge — and Vocelle’s father, L.B., a state representative and son of an Indian River County founder, worked together.

By the time Stone was elected state attorney in 1972, Sullivan was well into building his practice. The day after an election night celebration, the two squared off in a divorce trial, Stone, 87, told me the other day.

Rattling the opposition, even if friends

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Stone said his client was testifying when Sullivan, on cross-examination, pulled the kind of surprise he’d become known for.

“Charlie says, ‘Well, are you willing to give your wife this, this and this?’ And (my client) said, ‘There's NO WAY I would do that,’ ” Stone recalled. “Charlie said, ‘Well, your lawyer last night at his victory party told me you would.’ ”

“My client … I thought he was going to kill me,” said Stone, noting he told the judge he had not spoken to Sullivan. “He got my client rattled and me, too. … You never knew what he was going to do in a trial, but most of the time he was successful.”

Over the next several years, local and federal authorities charged Donald Raulerson, a Fort Pierce man, with various crimes — such as stealing electricity, running an illegal lottery and delivering marijuana and cocaine.

In trials, Sullivan earned highly publicized acquittals for the grocer and bail bondsman. By 1982 in Memphis, Tennessee, though, Raulerson was convicted of smuggling into the country tons of marijuana as “kingpin” of a large operation, according to Fort Pierce Tribune files.

The 1984 Herald article addressed how two FBI probes found no problems with Sullivan and Stone, who won a libel lawsuit against Raulerson. It turns out the smuggler had made false claims of bribery.

Sullivan wasn't bashful about his success in court.

It “has nothing to do with any impropriety; it has to do with my ability," he told the Herald. "I am a good lawyer.”

Top criminal defense lawyer in area

He was the “area’s top criminal defense lawyer,” the Herald said, calling him a “relentless” negotiator, a view supported by Bruce Colton, Stone’s chief assistant and successor.

“He comes on very strong,” Colton told the Herald. “From the time a case comes into the office, he’s trying to push a plea for his clients.”

Sounds like the definition of "advocate."

That was “Silky” Sullivan, known for his “smooth-as-silk demeanor,” Fort Pierce attorney Brad Jefferson recently told TCPalm’s Melissa Holsman.

My wife, Lee, who knew the Sullivan family growing up with its children in Vero Beach, said she was reminded of Sullivan when O.J. Simpson attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr. had the accused killer try on a too-small glove found at the murder scene.

"If it doesn't fit, you must acquit," Cochran said.

A 1992 Press Journal profile, by Jana Salmon-Heyneman, described Sullivan as practicing a kind of "fearless, unorthodox law reminiscent of such courtroom Goliaths as Melvin Belli, F. Lee Bailey and Roy Cohn … shrewd and tough. … (with) an outspoken, flamboyant style.”

Man of a million stories

As Sullivan noted in that article:

“It takes somebody who likes people; who doesn’t mind taking a stand; who is open to criticism; who takes certain types of cases even when people say, ‘Why would you do that?’ ”

Like the time Stone and Sullivan represented women accused of breaking into coin-operated pay phones using a metal bar. The police caught a woman with a bag full of nickels, dimes and quarters ― currency used to make calls.

Like Cochran, Sullivan asked the telephone company security witness on the stand to use the bar to break into a pay phone.

“I don’t believe he can do it in 15 seconds as he testified,” Sullivan told Stone.

“The guy does it in about 10 seconds,” Stone said, noting Sullivan saw things in cases others did not. “He was wrong, but we won the case. … we got paid in nickels, dimes and quarters.”

Sullivan accepted all kinds of payments, from fish or a $10 gold piece to a stilt home in the middle of Blue Cypress Lake and one in John’s Island.

It seems everyone has a Charlie Sullivan story. After all, he had gotten divorces for 4,000 to 5,000 people, according to that 1992 article. He also worked with people in thousands of other cases, in addition to other businesses he had.

I’ll never forget Sullivan making routine cases entertaining. He spoke and responded quickly, in a unique voice that fit his dapper dress, like a Hollywood star of the 1950s (though eventually, at least one judge gave him summer dispensation to show up in Hawaiian shirts, khakis and sandals).

I was surprised one day in court to watch Sullivan try to get Circuit Judge L.B. Vocelle, his former law partner, to recuse himself from a criminal case. Why? Two decades and dozens of cases later, Sullivan claimed Vocelle had committed improprieties when the two practiced law together. Vocelle was dumbfounded, as the two were friends — so much so Sullivan spoke at the judge’s funeral in 1996.

After that, Sullivan became like another father to Buck Vocelle. The two met after Buck Vocelle said he beat Sullivan in a 1990 case, then began working together on certain cases and investments.

Vocelle said he marveled at Sullivan’s characteristics. While many litigators have legal pads full of notes, Vocelle said Sullivan had few, usually on just one page.

“Charlie had what I would call almost a photographic memory,” Vocelle said. “He remembered everything.”

I can only imagine the business sense Sullivan had to amass a portfolio of assets, including real estate and liquor licenses, that complemented a successful legal office he operated before and after his son, Chuck, joined him.

“(Charlie) started building warehouses before people needed warehouses,” said Vocelle. “He said, ‘Once I build them, it's kind of like ‘Field of Dreams,’ they will come. … You don't realize all the tradespeople that need what I'm gonna build.’ ”

“He just had that foresight to understand the needs of the community,” said Vocelle, whose grandfather gave Sullivan his first job as an attorney in the 1950s.

Man of many friends

Sullivan was a great friend, too.

“Charles,” as he was called by his perfect matriarch of a wife, Henrietta, who died in 2020, deeply cared about his family and helping people.

“Charlie was the friend everyone wishes they had — you know, the one you call when you find yourself in a bad situation,” Connie Bishop, a retired local journalist and 50-plus-year friend wrote recently. “The one who always picks up the phone. The one who never hesitates to help. The kind of friend that always has your back.”

Charlie and Henrietta were gracious and welcoming to my future wife, who lived in a spare apartment in their home, before we married.

"He was just a kind person," said Stone. "Nobody would think of him as being that kind of person, but he was."

Outside of work, he loved operating his yacht, woodwork and making lamps. Into his late 80s, he remained active and didn't display his wealth, driving, as Vocelle noted, an older Dodge minivan with a toolbox in the back.

“There's never ever going to be another Charlie Sullivan," Vocelle said. "Or anybody even close.”

This column reflects the opinion of Laurence Reisman. Contact him via email at larry.reisman@tcpalm.com, phone at 772-978-2223, Facebook.com/larryreisman or Twitter @LaurenceReisman.

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This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Vero Beach attorney handled drug kingpins and divorces, built legacy