A wealthy couple is targeted for death - but why?
Produced by Patti Aronofsky
[This story previously aired on July 16, 2011. It was updated on July 20, 2013.]
On Sunday, Aug. 22, 2004, after a family birthday celebration that included their son, Christopher, his girlfriend, Juliette, and family friend Teddy Montoto, Susan and John Sutton retired to separate bedrooms in their Coral Gables, Fla. home.
Susan often slept in the second room because her husband John snored. Little did they know that about four blocks away, there was a man who had driven up with one intention - to kill them both.
Dressed in all black with a Glock 9 mm semi-automatic pistol, the man shot John, then turned to Susan and shot her six times. But he was not done. The gunman turned back to the master bedroom and emptied the gun into John.
Susan Sutton was assassinated in her bed. John Sutton, shot twice in the head, shockingly survived.
Nothing was taken from the house - not money, nor jewelry. There was no doubt that this was a premeditated effort to make sure that they were dead.
Now, the question was who could've done it and why?
Just hours after someone broke into John Sutton's home, murdered his wife, and tried to kill him ... doctors weren't sure he would live.
"Everybody says it was somewhat of a miracle that I survived," John Sutton told "48 Hours" correspondent Troy Roberts. "I lost a tremendous amount of blood... They apparently gave me last rites. They thought that I was gone."
Melissa Sutton was 18, a freshman in college. Her mother was dead and her father had been shot multiple times; twice in the head. When she arrived at the hospital, she says her father was "almost unrecognizable."
"The fact that I knew his hands, and I knew his ears and his skin tone, I could tell that this kind of disfigured person was my dad," she said quietly.
She knew him, but he had a harder time recognizing her. When John Sutton woke up in intensive care, he was blind.
"The magnitude of my injury, the facial pain and the loss of the eyesight was just so huge," he told Roberts.
"You must have been wracking your brain thinking, 'Who could have possibly done this?'" Roberts asked.
"Yes, I certainly was," John replied. "And I thought people were trying to kill me while I was in the hospital. I felt I wasn't safe. I wanted to get out of there. It was one big mess."
John still hadn't heard what happened to his wife.
"I remember asking Melissa, 'How's mom doing?' She had been told by the police not to tell me about Susan," he said. "Later on I was told that she passed away."
Melissa describes her mother as "intelligent" and "confident."
"The kind of person who's in their 40s, but wants to take violin classes, calculus classes, because she just wants to be better," she said.
And more than anything, Susan Sutton wanted to be a great mother. Once the head nurse of a surgical intensive care unit, Susan gave her career up in the late 70s when she and John adopted their first child, Christopher.
"That was the happiest day of her life, it was absolutely the happiest day of her life," said Susan's sister, Mary Marier. "I heard her on the telephone. I could hear her screaming from Florida ... how happy she was and how thrilled she was."
Almost seven years later, the couple adopted Melissa.
"She loved those children," Marier said of Susan. "And she loved them unconditionally."
Those children were now planning their mother's funeral as police scoured the crime scene. Susan Sutton's jewelry and John Sutton's wallet were left untouched on a dresser.
"Take the wallet, easy cash, at least. But nothing was taken. ...This person had a mission," said Miami-Dade Detective Rosanna Cordero.
Detective Cordero hoped John, even with a serious head injury, could help her.
"He remembered bits and pieces. He thought he remembered a figure at the door," Cordero explained. "He might be a black man or wearing all black clothing... he was not sure."
"So with that kind of spotty memory, the information he provided wasn't very helpful?" Roberts asked.
"No, it wasn't."
Cordero thought she'd have more luck with Teddy Montoto, John's law partner. Montoto told the detective he was on the phone with John's wife, Susan, and heard gunfire. So he raced to the scene, arriving just after police.
"I was the one who told him that Susan had died and he was very emotional about it," Cordero recalled.
And then Montoto said something surprising. He told Cordero that he was a marksman and he'd been shooting a gun earlier that day.
"He was a competitive shooter. That's something that he did as a hobby," Cordero said. "That raised our eyebrows."
Detective Cordero immediately sent Montoto's gun in for testing. And she pushed him for more information about his late night phone call with Susan.
"He was not forthcoming with me," said Cordero. She suspected Montoto was hiding something.
"He's asked to submit to a polygraph, which he does and he fails. Especially in regards to his relationship with Susan," said Cordero.
The interrogation continued until Montoto finally revealed his secret.
"He did in fact confess to having a sexual relationship with Susan," she said.
"Did that make him a suspect in your mind?" Roberts asked.
"It did ... Obviously, he has a motive," Cordero replied. "A motive at least to kill John, maybe, not necessarily Susan, but love triangles can drive people to do very extreme behavior."
Teddy Montoto's gun didn't match the murder weapon. And police were able to confirm he wasn't in the Sutton home during the shooting. As for the polygraph, police say he failed because he was covering up the affair, hoping to keep it from John.
Asked how he dealt with the betrayal, John said, "I wasn't very happy about it. Very, very upset."
Up until that point, John and Montoto had a strong working relationship. And their law firm had just gotten one of their biggest settlements ever - over $1 million.
"They had been very successful in their civil litigation and along the way had made some enemies," Cordero explained. "In fact, John had had death threats against him."
Police investigated every one of them - but they all had alibis.
"It was at that point that I started interviewing some of John's closest friends," said Lead Detective Larry Belyeu. He says there was one name that kept coming up.
"They said, 'You need to look at Christopher Sutton.' I said, 'Christopher Sutton, the son?' 'Absolutely,'" he recalled.
Detective Belyeu thought it odd that fingers were being pointed at John and Susan's son, Christopher, then 25 years old. For months after the shooting, Christopher had been by his father's side. And when John finally left the hospital, he moved in with his son.
But police were hearing alarming stories about Christopher.
"He wanted his parents dead," said Cordero.
"He actually choked his mother one time, saying that he could kill her," said Belyeu.
The son who once seemed so devoted ... was now their prime suspect.
The Polynesian Islands of Samoa, in the South Pacific Ocean, is nearly 7,000 miles from the Miami home where Susan and John Sutton were viciously attacked.
Police say what happened in Samoa more than 15 years ago, may hold the clue to solving the case.
When he was just 16, John and Susan Sutton sent their son away to a behavioral school in Samoa; Christopher, they say, had been getting into lots of trouble.
"We were told that there was oppositional defiant disorder or conduct defiant disorder. Those sorts of things," said John.
Christopher was in and out of more than half a dozen schools.
"I was routinely driving him to school, dropping him off at the front door and he was routinely going out the back door and doing other things," said John.
Skipping school though, was the least of their problems.
"He and some other kids broke into a teacher's house and trashed the inside of the house and spray painted the inside of the house," said Susan's sister, Mary Marier.
"He was arrested. We were sued," John said of the damage that was "perhaps more" than $50,000.
Asked if he was an out of control teenager, Christopher told Troy Roberts, "Out of control? I mean, I definitely wanted to do my own thing... I was definitely into body piercings and tattoos - things my parents actually hated, but... I really wasn't doing anything that was horribly wrong."
But Marier says if Christopher didn't get his way, he could get extremely angry.
"Christopher had a rifle... it was not loaded. He pointed it at Susan and Melissa... and he told them it was loaded and he was going to shoot them," she said.
When asked if he threatened his mother at gunpoint, Christopher said, "No."
Christopher's friend, Eric Polk says the Suttons tended to overreact.
"His parents, to me, always seemed a little bit harsh on him," Polk said.
Perhaps, but when Christopher was 16, things really escalated.
"Susan called me and said, 'We've got a problem,'" John told Roberts.
In Christopher's room, Susan found a note.
"It was a plan to kill his parents for the inheritance," said Marier.
"I saw it. I read it. It was there," said John.
"How did [Christopher] react when this happened?" Roberts asked.
"It wasn't his fault. He was just kidding. He wasn't serious," John replied.
But the Suttons were frightened and they wanted Christopher out of the house. They even got a retraining order against their 16-year-old son.
Eric Polk invited Christopher to live with his family; the judge agreed.
"He was a valued member of our household," Polk said. "He went to school when he was supposed to go... He didn't cause any problems living with us."
Then, three weeks later, two men came to get Christopher.
"It was a Friday night," Polk recalled. "They were trying to wrestle him across my lawn."
Christopher was shipped off to Samoa to a place called Paradise Cove. But this was no vacation; it was a hardcore behavior modification program for troubled boys.
Randy Rogers' parents sent him to Paradise Cove when he was 17. He says if you didn't follow every rule, punishments were severe - including being sent to the isolation box for the day.
In 1998, while investigating a story of abuse here, "48 Hours" filmed the isolation box. But Rogers says even worse things went on at Paradise Cove in the early days of the program when Christopher first got there.
"They would tie them with duct tape... with rope... they took them to some compound that was in the mountains... left them hogtied there," he said.
A year into Paradise Cove, Christopher sent an emotional video message home to his parents:
All right, mom and dad.... wanted to tell you I don't feel like you guys love me... I feel like I've been sent here just to get me out of your hair... You guys still dislike me for some reason. Even though my wishes aren't to be here, they don't come true.
John, Susan and Melissa traveled to Samoa to see for themselves what it was like. John says his son was happy to see the family.
Christopher says he tried to telling his parents about the abuse.
"Did I believe it? No," John said. "I didn't believe it ... and I can't imagine that's what was happening."
Christopher was hoping to leave Paradise Cove forever on his 18th birthday, but his father got a court order to keep him there for another year.
"He was, shall we say, fighting the program," said John.
Randy Rogers says he can only imagine how angry that would have made Christopher.
"When you learned about the shooting at the Sutton home what were you thinking?" Roberts asked Rogers.
"I was thinking that possibly, you know, Chris might have been behind it," he replied.
"You can understand how he may have wanted to exact revenge against his parents for his time at Paradise Cove?"
"Uh-huh."
"To the point of murder?" Roberts asked.
Randy nods his head in the affirmative.
In 2000, Paradise Cove, with a dwindling enrollment and accusations of abuse, shut down. But whatever happened to Christopher there was a long time ago. He was now 25 and as far as John was concerned, a loving son who wanted to take care of him after the shooting.
"I said, 'Don't live with Christopher. I think Christopher had something to do with this,' Mary Marier said. "And [John] was very angry with me about that."
"I didn't suspect him, and of course, I wouldn't have wanted it to be Christopher. That's the worst thing," says John.
But Marier is sure Christopher was behind the shooting of his father and the murder of his mother.
"Christopher isn't like you and me. Christopher's not like other people," she said. There's something missing... The night before the funeral is when I was convinced that Christopher had something to do with it."
Marier says Christopher talked about what happened. "He said, oh, Susan was shot more than one time. He was describing about how the killer went down the hallway."
"Christopher was familiar with details about the shooting that had not yet been released?" Roberts asked.
"Yes," Marier replied. "The blood drained from my body... I looked at Christopher and I thought, 'You killed her. ... You did it.'"
But Christopher was nowhere near his parents' house when they were attacked. He and his girlfriend were at the movies - and can be seen on the theater's security cameras.
If Christopher didn't shoot his parents, who did?
Christopher Sutton says he was horrified when he found out about his mother and father.
"I cried. I couldn't believe it. You know, I was in shock. It doesn't even seem real that it could have even happened," he told Troy Roberts.
"He started bawling his eyes out. He seemed like he was devastated," said Christopher's then-fiance, Juliette Driscoll.
She says she was reeling herself. "I was in shock at that point. Your entire world just blew up."
Juliette met with Christopher when she was just 17. He was 19 and just back from Samoa. The Suttons, she says, treated her like a daughter.
"Susan taught me about like makeup and clothes and all of that stuff," she said, getting emotional. "You know, John was really supportive of me."
John even gave Juliette a job in his law office. And for the most part, John and Susan financially supported her and Christopher.
"They only wanted the best for us," Juliette said. "Who could have done this? Was it random? Wasn't it random?"
Asked who he though had done it, Christopher told Roberts, "I had no idea."
Detective Roseanna Cordero met Christopher at the crime scene shortly after he'd been told about the shooting.
"I said, 'Christopher can I speak to you for a moment.' He said, 'absolutely," Det. Cordero recalled. "I remember he had a couple of tears come down his face."
But before Cordero could even offer condolences, he said something to her that just didn't seem right.
"He said to me, 'We had dinner here at the house, but we left around 9 and we went to the movies. Do you want my ticket stubs?'" she told Roberts.
"So he offered you an alibi?" Roberts asked.
"Yeah," Cordero replied. "That's really weird. It's unusual."
Asked why he offered up an alibi before Det. Cordero asked for one, Christopher replied, "Because of Teddy's interrogation."
Teddy Montoto, the man who was secretly having an affair with Susan, had already told Christopher about his police interrogation. Christopher says he assumed he was next. So he told Cordero where he was during the shooting.
"I recovered the surveillance tape of Christopher walking out of the movie theater," Cordero said.
On the tape, Christopher is seen leaving the theatre with Juliette a little before midnight. But something caught Cordero's eye.
"And the first thing he does, as he's walking out - he's not even out of the theater - is he gets on his cell phone," she said.
Lead Detective Larry Belyeu ordered Christopher's phone records. He said, "We saw a particular number that came up several times."
That number came up 331 times in the weeks leading up to and right after the murder.
"We identified that number as belonging to an individual by the name of Garrett Kopp," said Det. Belyeu.
A man named Garrett Kopp had been arrested less than 24 hours after the shooting for assaulting someone with a gun in another part of Miami. He was now out on bail.
Detective Belyeu immediately called the arresting officer. "I said, 'Now please tell me you still have that gun?'"
The officer did and it was a match. And it turned out to be the same gun used in the Sutton shooting. Garrett Kopp, 21, was brought in for questioning.
It was a tense interrogation. After six hours of questioning, Garrett Kopp confessed.
Det. Belyeu: What was the plan?Garrett Kopp: Go in there and shoot 'em.
"He said, 'Look, you're going to have to protect me. I did it. But I did it because Christopher threatened to kill me and my son," said Belyeu.
Det. Belyeu: Who did he want you to shoot?Garrett Kopp: Parents.
Garrett told police the plan to kill the Suttons was all Christopher's idea.
Det. Belyeu: Who got you the gun?Garrett Kopp: Chris.
Belyeu says Garrett drew a sketch of how he got into the house.
Garrett Kopp: A sliding glass door on the back patio.Det. Belyeu: Was that door unlocked when you got there?
Garrett Kopp: Yep.
Det. Belyeu: Did Christopher tell you he left it unlocked?
Garrett Kopp: Yep.
Garrett went straight to the bedrooms where he said Christopher told him he'd find the Suttons. He says Susan was under the covers when he fired.
"There was actually bullet holes through the comforter," Belyeu said. "So what he told me matched. I knew he had done this."
Garrett Kopp was arrested, but Belyeu didn't have enough for a warrant for Christopher Sutton. Police needed more than Garrett's word that Christopher put him up to it.
"The next person I knew that probably had direct knowledge of all this was his fiancé," Belyeu explained.
Juliette Driscoll was brought in for questioning.
"I knew nothing. I knew absolutely nothing," she told Roberts. "The fact that people could even think that I would know something like that."
Belyeu said, "She denied knowledge of anything ... And she continued to deny for hours."
The questioning lasted for 13 hours -- none of which was taped by police.
"To think that I would let something like that happen to John and Susan!" Juliette said in tears. She says police yelled and threatened her with arrest.
"No. She was never under arrest. I never threatened her with that," said Belyeu.
But Juliette says she felt pressured and told them what she did know - that Christopher had a deep seeded resentment towards his parents for sending him to Samoa.
"He believed that he was entitled to have whatever he wanted," she explained. "If he wanted this car, he should be able to have this car. If he wanted the condo, he should be able to have the condo because, 'I deserve this. They sent me to Samoa. They deserve to pay for what they did.'"
And for the most part, the Suttons did pay.
"They paid rent. They paid car payments. They paid insurance payments. They paid bills. They took us on vacations," Juliette said. "He wanted more."
"He said... he could find somebody to kill his parents," she said of Christopher.
"He said that? ...That he could find a hit man to take out his parents?" Roberts asked.
"Yeah, and it would be easy... I listened to it for six years. And he said for years and years and years," she replied.
"Did he talk to you about what your lives would be like after his parents were gone, when he would inherit the estate?"
"Uh huh. Yep," Juliette said. "Things would be good. Because we wouldn't have to worry about money."
Juliette says she never told anyone because she didn't believe Christopher was serious.
"It was like the boy who cried wolf," she said. "You know, you hear something so many times and you just don't think about it."
And then shortly before the murder, Susan Sutton refused to pay Christopher's car insurance bill.
"There was a fight... It was over a bill not being paid," Juliette told Roberts. "The only times he would get like really angry would be when they wouldn't give him what he wanted."
Juliette told police Christopher was furious. He knew his father had just received a $1 million-plus legal settlement.
"And with that information I had enough to get a warrant for Christopher Sutton," said Belyeu. But Christopher was nowhere to be found.
"I got a call from one of the detectives," John said. "She said, 'Don't let anybody in the house... don't pick up the phone. I'm coming over to see you. Stay where you are.'"
"Did I think Christopher would come back to try to finish it off?" Cordero asked. "Yeah."
Detective Rosanna Cordero was dreading what she was about to do: tell John Sutton his son was behind the shooting.
"I told him that what I'm about to say is gonna be hard for you to accept, but trust me ... every road leads back to Christopher," she told Troy Roberts.
"I was just at that point so shell shocked," John said of the news.
Christopher was on the run for almost two weeks before police found him.
John Sutton didn't want to believe it, but what he was hearing was starting to make sense.
"When I was told that Garrett was the shooter, and of course, I put that together. Garrett and Christopher were like twins," he said.
"I don't know if you could actually prove this case to a jury without having Garrett Kopp," said Prosecutor Kathleen Hoague.
But if prosecutors Hoague and Carin Kahgan wanted Garrett to testify, it was going to cost them. The death penalty was taken off the table. Garrett would get a deal: just 30 years for shooting John and Susan.
"Garrett Kopp is a drug addict, a little thug," Christopher's attorney, Bruce Fleisher, said. "He needed a way out ... and he told the detectives about Chris Sutton. ... He kept his ass out of the electric chair."
Garrett is now saying that Christopher promised him $100,000 to kill the Suttons.
"Did you ask Garrett Kopp to kill your parents?" Roberts asked Christopher?
"Absolutely not," he replied.
"So Garrett Kopp is a liar?"
"Absolutely."
Fleisher believes he can win this case ... and he's about to get his opportunity.
As the trial begins, John Sutton sits far from his son. Prosecutors immediately tell the jury how close Christopher was to admitted hit man Garrett Kopp.
"They were friends for years. They were dope smoking buddies," Carin Kahgan told the court. "The plan was for Garrett Kopp to go into the Sutton's home and do the shooting and get paid once the defendant got his money."
"Christopher did nothing but sell drugs the whole time he got back from Samoa ... all the time taking money from his father," Hoague tells Roberts.
In shackles, Garrett Kopp takes the stand.
Prosecutor Carin Kahgan: Where was Mr. Sutton when you shot at him initially?Garrett Kopp: On the bed.
Prosecutor Carin Kahgan: Who was the person with whom you were in a plan to shoot John and Susan?
Garrett Kopp: Sutton. Chris Sutton.
Christopher's defense needs to prove Garrett is lying. They zero in on the tough interrogation by police.
Video: Kopp's interrogation and confession
Bruce Fleisher: They got aggressive with you, didn't they?Garrett Kopp: Somewhat. They just like got pushy a little bit ... Leaned up against me.
Bruce Fleisher: Yeah, like this?
Garrett Kopp: Yeah.
Bruce Fleisher: Were they saying Garrett, Garrett.
Garrett Kopp: Something like that.
Bruce Fleisher: You need to tell us something Garrett, because they're going to fry your ass in the electric chair.
"Garrett would say Mother Teresa did it to get himself a deal, to get himself out of the death penalty, to get himself out of the situation," Christopher tells Roberts.
Incredibly, it wasn't the first time, prosecutors say, Christopher had tried to execute such a plan.
Jose Peon, an ex-con with a murder conviction on his juvenile rap sheet, was called to the stand. Peon met Christopher in 1999, about a year after he returned from Samoa.
Jose Peon: He asked me if I knew of any hit man that would - kill his parents.Prosecutor: Was he joking or did he seem serious?
Jose Peon: I thought he was serious... He said that his parents were - worth about $500,000 to a million dollars and they had life insurance.
"I don't know where he came up with that stuff," Christopher tells Roberts.
"He's a liar too?"
"About that, absolutely."
Then, Det. Belyeu tells the jury about what he believes is a defining moment in the case. After arresting Christopher, he showed him Juliette's statement incriminating him.
"I showed him the comments about 'We're going to be better off after they're gone,'" Belyeu told Roberts. "He almost immediately dropped his head to the table and started crying and said, 'I'm f-----d.'"
To the detective, Christopher's reaction appeared to be an admission of guilt. But Christopher says he only cried because he believed police were setting him up.
"You know, they force someone to lie - it's hard to swallow," he said.
But would the woman who once planned to marry Christopher now offer testimony that could put him away for life?
Prosecutor: And what did he express to you was his opinion about his mother?Juliette Driscoll: That she was a f-----g bitch... because he felt that she wouldn't give him what he wanted and what he deserved.
Prosecutor: And that being money?
Juliette Driscoll: Yes.
And Juliette Driscoll tells the jury how angry he was about Samoa.
"He would say they deserved to die," she said.
But on cross examination, Juliette says she only told the police incriminating information about Christopher after they threatened her with arrest.
"She was threatened with the death penalty," Christopher teold Roberts. "She was threatened with going down."
"So she's a liar too?" Roberts asked.
"In part, yeah."
But Juliette says everything she told the police was, in the end, true. She insists, though, that she never knew Christopher would actually try and kill his parents.
"I did not at all believe that he was behind this," she said.
And then, in a moment the defense team was hoping for, Juliette, a prosecution witness, raised doubt about Christopher's guilt before the jury.
"I'm still confused about the whole matter. I don't know if he did it or not. Nobody knows what really happened except for him and Garrett," Juliette testifies.
But by now, John Sutton has a pretty good idea. After hearing the evidence, he's convinced his son is responsible and he takes the stand.
Prosecutors ask John about his troubled relationship with his son after Samoa.
Prosecutor: Did your son ever complain to you about money?John: Yeah.
And the complaints continued after the shooting, too. Coming home from the hospital, John says Christopher wanted control over the finances.
"I didn't want him on the bank account," said John.
A father helping prosecutors convict his own son -- the boy he had raised for 25 years.
Asked if he still loves Christopher, John tells Roberts, "I would have to say that I do not. And it's hard... I can't connect the dots between what he was doing at age 5 ... and what happened after age 13."
"Your father told me he no longer loves you," Roberts told Christopher.
"I can't control how he feels," he replied.
"How does it make you feel?"
"It hurts," Christopher said. "It definitely hurts that he no longer loves me ... I've always considered him my father. And you know, I always will."
Now it's up to Christopher to convince the jury of that love and his innocence.
It's the moment Christopher Sutton has been waiting for.
"I think anyone who is innocent or wrongfully accused would want to get up there and speak their mind," Christopher told Troy Roberts about taking the stand. "It's my word against Garrett's word that's what it all boils down to."
Christopher paints Garrett Kopp as an insatiable drug fiend.
Christopher claims Garrett broke into his parent's home in a desperate bid to steal marijuana. All day long, a hopped up Garrett had been calling him for drugs.
"I told him "No. No..." Christopher testified.
Christopher says he kept drugs boxed up in the closet of his old bedroom where his mother often slept and Garrett knew it.
Bruce Fleisher: How much marijuana did you store in these boxes?Christopher: In the top box about two pounds.
Bruce Fleisher: And what was the value of that?
Christopher: Seven thousand bucks.
Once inside, Christopher claims Garrett panicked when he saw John and Susan awake and shot them.
Asked if it was possible that this was a robbery gone bad, prosecutor Carin Kahgan said, "No, from the crime scene it was an assassination."
But Christopher says he had no reason to want his parents dead. He says he got over his anger about being sent to Samoa long ago.
"When I was more mature and realized ... it wasn't something they did to me maliciously. It was more they did what they thought was in my best interest," Christopher told Roberts.
He even tells the jury Paradise Cove turned out to be good for him.
Bruce Fleisher: You benefited from the program?Christopher: Yes.
But then, in an unexpected moment, Christopher becomes highly emotional when discussing his alleged mistreatment there.
Bruce Fleisher: And how were you feeling physically during that time?Christopher: I was what -- what they called in denial. (Crying)
Judge: Do you need a break Mr. Sutton?
Christopher: Yes.
Prosecutors say Christopher's surprising breakdown on the stand is evidence that he's still haunted by his experience.
"His only emotional reaction was about himself," Kahgan told Roberts. "Not about his parents and what happened to them. Hopefully that made an impact on the jury."
"Not a tear for his mother. Not a tear," Prosecutor Kathleen Hoague added.
"Every one of those bullets was Christopher saying to his parents, 'I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. You owe me,'" says Kahgan.
"He's greedy and he's lazy and he believes that he's entitled," Hoague told the court in her closing.
"Is there enough evidence in this case to convict my client of this crime? The answer is no," Bruce Fleisher said in his closing. "Because what's the evidence? Forced statements? Kopp's statement is a total lie. ... he's the killer."
It's now up to the jury. After a day-and-a-half of deliberations, Christopher Patrick Sutton is found guilty of first-degree murder.
Christopher says he was stunned at the verdict. "I definitely thought I was going to be acquitted," he told Roberts.
Video: Jurors talk about reaching a verdict
Before sentencing, an emotional John Sutton addresses the court. He doesn't ask for leniency.
"Regardless of the result, this is a bad case," John told the court. "I lost Susan. I lost Christopher long before that. I lost my eyesight ..."
A few feet away, Garrett's father, Mitchell Kopp, sat grieving his loss.
"You question yourself as to you're the father of a murderer," an emotional Mitchell told "48 Hours." "You think... I thought I taught him right from wrong ... I'm just so sorry it happened at the hands of my son."
Christopher is sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole.
His sister, Melissa, says she'll never speak to him again.
"You know, my parents were the best parents and the fact that one child did something awful does not mean that they didn't like love him unconditionally... they gave him every opportunity that he deserved... he didn't take advantage of it," she said. "The whole trial opened the wound back up, you know? The loss of my mom, the blindness of my dad and the loss of my brother."
Asked if he thinks about his family, Christopher told Roberts, "All the time, absolutely. ... I remember all the good times. ... I remember all the bad times, too. It hurts me to ... hear them, you know, think that I had anything to do with this. It's unfortunate."
As for their father, John's focus right now is getting his eyesight back.
At Skapens Eye Research Institute in Massachusetts, work on optic nerve regeneration is promising. And at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Dr. Joseph Rizzo is ready to start discussing electronic technology - implanting a device around the back of eye.
While he waits for a breakthrough, John Sutton remarkably continues to practice law. He memorizes his briefs and with the help of an aide, he's winning cases much like he use to. He also has a new love interest.
The world of darkness he now lives in is slowly brightening with each passing day.
"It's really almost like I'm another person," he says. "There's so many changes in my life."
"It would be completely understandable if you felt sorry for yourself sometimes," Roberts remarks. "Do you?"
"Doesn't do any good," John replies. "I don't believe in feeling for myself because then you're just wallowing in disaster... I wasn't gonna sit around for the rest of my life and get bored. So I have done everything that I can possibly do without hesitation."
Christopher Sutton's appeal was denied.
Hit man Garrett Kopp is scheduled to be released in 2035.
John Sutton vows he will fight to keep Kopp and his son, Christopher, behind bars.