One of the greatest New Mexico mysteries (in my humble opinion anyway) is the legendary disappearance of folk singer and songwriter Jim Sullivan. This story sounds fake, but it is 100% true. Let’s dive in!
Jim Sullivan: Who He Was
Jim Sullivan was an interesting person. He rode the wave of 1960s psychedelic folk rock pretty hard. In fact, one could say he created his own genre, melded out of folk, rock, and blues, flavored with well-placed violins, horns, and other instrumental arrangements unique to that era of music. I certainly haven’t heard anything like his music; I can hear Simon and Garfunkel, CCR, and even Led Zeppelin similarities, but it is truly unique. He poured his heart and soul into his music, and his passion is evident in each original song.
Sullivan grew up in government housing projects in San Diego, while his Irish-American parents worked in the defense industry. His great height made him a star quarterback in high school. His wife, Barbara, was the Homecoming queen. Sullivan listened to blues a lot, which influenced him to pick up the guitar. During college, he and a buddy opened a bar, which didn’t do too well. On the side, he played in a rock band called The Survivors, with his sister-in-law, Kathie Doran.
In 1968, Sullivan and his wife moved to Los Angeles. His wife worked at Capitol Records, supporting the family while Sullivan worked on his music. Sullivan was not the type to work for anyone at an average joe job. He played many LA and Malibu clubs, making some influential friends in the music scene. The Raft was one such club; his wife, Barbara, says that it was packed every time he played there. One of his friends, Al Dobbs, even helped him record UFO, a 28-minute blitz of lyrics about disappearing into thin air, aliens, Arizona ghost towns, death, and philosophical reflection, set to catchy, upbeat melodies strummed on his favorite 12-string guitar. It was released in 1969 on the Monnie label, which his friend Al Dobbs created just for UFO.
The opening track of UFO is about a missing man named Jerome. “Look around and see if you can spot Jerome.” And it doesn’t stop there. Every song seems to allude to a fantasy about vanishing down a highway, or choosing to “stay here” and play music, or aliens abducting a man on a highway, or “Johnny, come down from the sky, Johnny come down, you’re way too high.”
Jim rereleased the album in 1970, using Rosey as his featured single. But again, it was shunned. I listen to it and I think it had real potential. Sullivan’s voice sounds like a lounge crooner’s, casual and smoky, set to music that is well-mixed, original, and cheerful. For a low-budget recording on an indie label, it has a really great sound. I’m not sure why it was passed over, but nobody seemed interested in making Sullivan a star.
Then in 1972 he released another album, Jim Sullivan. Playboy Records agreed to release this one. But again, this album was met with a pretty disappointing lack of enthusiasm, in part because of a stigma surrounding Playboy Records. This album is basically impossible to find now. UFO is more well-known because of the efforts of Matt Sullivan (not a relation) at Light in the Attic Records to keep it relevant. It has a cult following, particularly amongst UFO aficionados.
Sullivan also played a minor, uncredited role in Easy Rider. With his handlebar mustache and interest in the unusual, he seems like a great fit for this movie. Side fact: Parts of Easy Rider were actually filmed in New Mexico. The hot springs scene with the free-loving hippie girls was filmed at Manby Hot Springs, a natural hot springs on property stolen by Arthur Rochford Manby near Taos, NM. Manby attempted to build a health resort at the springs and get investors to throw money at it as part of one of his lavish investment scams, despite not even owning the property the springs were located on.
Sullivan was an alcoholic. He was also increasingly bitter at his lack of mainstream success. These things started to take a toll on his marriage and his mental health. As things started to go south in LA, Sullivan began to yearn for something different in his life.
The Disappearance
On March 4, 1975, Sullivan decided that maybe Nashville was a better place for him to become a mainstream musical success. Given the style of his music, he was probably right. He told his wife he would come back for her and the kids, and then he took off cross-country in his VW Beetle. This echoes the sentiments of his music, about lonely highways and taking off.
It was on this journey that he was pulled over by a cop in New Mexico on Route 66. Apparently he had been swerving and they thought he was drunk. They brought him into the police station and determined he was sober, but exhausted from driving for 15 hours straight. So he decided to stop at La Mesa Motel in Santa Rosa, NM. His intention was to sleep it off, or so he told his wife when he called her.
The conversation with his wife was an odd one. Sullivan said he was all right. Then apparently he said things that Barbara Sullivan believed to be cryptic. When she pressed him for details, he just said, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” She demanded to know what he was talking about and he just told her to forget it.
He picked up the keys to his room and deposited them on the table inside. Then he left to get some vodka from a local store, where he apparently asked for directions back to California. That seems totally bizarre, given the way back to California was not hard to find on Interstate 40/Route 66. And…then he was never seen again.
The weird thing is, Sullivan left his keys in his room and did not appear to move his stuff in from the car or sleep in the bed. It’s like he checked in for no reason at all. After going to the store to buy vodka, he was never seen or heard from again, except by Donald and Pete Sena.
Pete Sena worked on a ranch near Santa Rosa and his son, Donald, was just a child then. Donald claims to have noticed Sullivan’s car parked on the side of the road from his school bus earlier in the week, suggesting that Jim Sullivan actually spent some time in the area. His father, Pete Sena, saw Sullivan walking along the road on an unclear date and thought he was a ranch hand they knew because of his handlebar mustache, so he stopped to offer Sullivan a ride, which Sullivan declined.
Sullivan’s VW Beetle was found abandoned at that same ranch with all of Sullivan’s stuff inside, including his wallet and his beloved 12-string. Al Dobbs says he never would have willingly left that guitar behind. His money was untouched, so no one robbed him. Of Jim Sullivan himself, there was no trace. His car was towed on March 8, having been abandoned for 3 days. His family called hospitals, jails, and other places, with no luck.
A body was found not too much later. It had been buried nude near Las Cruces, a likely murder victim who had passed away 1-4 weeks prior to being found. The decedent even resembled Jim Sullivan, with a small beard and mustache and a tattoo on the right forearm. He was very tall, 6’2″, just like Jim. But the body was eventually identified as someone else. Sullivan still hasn’t been found, alive or dead, all these years later.
Theories
When someone vanishes and there is just a huge vacuum of unknowing around their disappearance, outlandish theories tend to come into play. This is exactly what has happened with Jim Sullivan. Many people, including his wife Barbara, believed that Jim Sullivan was abducted by the same aliens on a lonely desert highway that he sang about in UFO. Barbara long clung to the belief that Jim Sullivan was in the stars, waiting for her, and she joined him there in 2016.
Others think that Jim Sullivan was the victim of foul play somewhere in the desert. I don’t know why or who, but someone may have killed him for being a drifter, not unlike in Easy Rider. Some people think he stumbled upon something he should not have, such as a crime taking place, and paid with his own life.
Yet others think that Sullivan left willingly. I think this is a definite possibility. After all, he had reportedly told his manager that if he wanted to disappear, he would “walk into the desert and never come back.” Sullivan wasn’t in his best state of mind at the time. He was stressed, unhappy, and tired of life without success and fame. He and Barbara had been fighting lately and his future in Nashville was uncertain. As a musician whose music was overlooked and whose album sales were dismal, his ego was surely wounded. He had boxes of his records in his car to distribute in Nashville, but maybe he lost confidence and decided to leave it all behind, including his family and his beloved 12-string guitar.
I think it is possible that he wandered in the desert until he died. It seems weird that Donald Sena recalls seeing his car days before seeing Sullivan walking on the side of the road on the remote ranch. He was clearly exhausted and disoriented from driving so far on the 4th/5th, and the vodka he bought at the gas station in Santa Rosa probably didn’t help him gain clarity. Maybe the stress of his last few years and his alcoholism and his exhaustion contributed to a psychotic break. If Sullivan was having a psychotic break, then it could be he spent some time in the area, wandering around and trying to find the aliens he had been obsessed with since recording his first album, until his body finally succumbed to the elements. A combination of dry desert conditions and windy March cold would have easily done him in within a few days.
It is also possible that he hitchhiked his way out of Santa Rosa, settled somewhere else, and started fresh. While he is probably deceased now, he could have been right under our noses, living out his days with a new wife. If that is the case, I wish he had at least sent his family a letter letting them know not to worry and not to look for him.
It’s been almost 50 years. There is just no sign of Jim Sullivan and no news of what happened to him. His wife is now dead, but his son, Chris, still wants answers and feels bad about the paltry good-bye they shared back in March of 1975. I hope that his family one day gets closure.
Sources
https://www.adventuresinremoteviewing.com/post/the-disappearance-of-musician-jim-sullivan
https://www.crimewatchers.net/threads/san-angelo-john-doe-wm-70-90-found-dead-in-store-in-san-angelo-tx-31-mar-2005-multiple-aliases.1864/
https://www.grunge.com/243102/the-unsolved-disappearance-of-jim-sullivan/