Joseph Aloysius Sullivan (February 17, 1917 – August 2, 2002) was a Major Case Inspector for the FBI. Born in Montreal, Wisconsin, he grew up in Hurley, Wisconsin. He was involved in a number of highly publicized cases in the sixties and seventies including the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination, the murder of United Mine Workers reformer Joseph "Jock" Yablonski, the Sterling Hall bombing at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the Kent State shootings. Despite his involvement in such high profile cases, Sullivan is best known for his relentless search to track down the killers of three civil rights workers, who were brutally slain in Mississippi in 1964. The character played by William Dafoe in the movie Mississippi Burning is loosely based on Sullivan. Upon Sullivan's death in 2002, author Tom Clancy is quoted as referring to him as "the greatest lawman America ever produced."
Famous quotes containing the words joseph and/or sullivan:
“Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Form ever follows function.”
—Louis Henry Sullivan (1856–1924)