Friends of Sophia Sullivan say she was enjoying a rebirth of sorts, cherishing her time working as a teacher in the far West Texas town of Marfa and beginning an active social life. They watched the energetic 31-year-old make new friends and inspire high school kids in her role as an early college coordinator.
Still, Sophi—as everyone close to her called her—always seemed to be looking over her shoulder at the past, which meant figuring out what to do about her failing marriage. Sophi told friends that her husband, Danny Sullivan, was controlling and manipulative. He demanded access to her cellphone and questioned her whereabouts, her friends say, and became jealous of anyone spending time with her and their 7-year-old son. They all shared a modest home in Fort Davis, just 21 miles north of Sophi’s job in Marfa. But Danny, then 30, worked as an electrician in Odessa. To avoid a two-and-a-half-hour commute each way, he stayed in a trailer home on weekdays and returned to his family on weekends.
Sophi soon realized she needed a permanent break from Danny. “She talked about being at a place where she was personally ready to move forward with saving up money,” said her friend Emily Steriti, who met Sophi when they taught together in Marfa. “She was working on an online job that would help her to do that. And she talked about being afraid of hiding money from [Danny].”
A divorce seemed imminent. But Sophi never made her escape.
On March 16, 2018, she lay dying on the floor of her Fort Davis home. Some 40 stab wounds left her unable to move, and she eventually bled to death. Her 7-year-old son, unable to help, stayed by her side through the early hours of that Friday, then watched TV—too petrified to move or go anywhere because he feared his mom’s killer was still near, he later told police.
His father, Danny, claimed he did not come home Thursday night and instead arrived from Odessa around 6:50 p.m. Friday to find Sophi dead, then scooped the boy into his arms and ran to a neighbor’s house to have them call 911. But his son has testified to a very different story: Daddy was the masked man who killed his mother.
The last five years have been agonizing for Sophi’s friends and family, who watched the man they believe to be her killer go free after a mistrial.
Danny Sullivan said he is innocent.
But others blame a bungled investigation, officers who failed to look for key evidence and a new district attorney who has not yet set a retrial date for the case. (That DA serves Jeff Davis, a county with fewer than 2,000 residents, along with three other sparsely-populated counties, Brewster, Pecos and Presidio.) Unfortunately, a look at fatalities involving domestic violence that were reported in sparsley populated Texas counties from 2015 to 2019 (the five years prior to the pandemic) shows that many cases go unresolved or unprosecuted.
“She talked about being afraid of hiding money from [Danny].”
High School in a small town about an
