Latest / The Mind of a Man / A Birthday Dinner Ends in Murder _ Homicide_ Hours To Kill
Transcript
- 0:07Speaker 1: They were targeted. It was an execution.
- 0:11Speaker 2: A brutal killing.
- 0:12Speaker 3: There was a blood trail all the way out from
- 0:15Speaker 3: his room to the front door.
- 0:17Speaker 2: A dark mystery with multiple suspects.
- 0:20Speaker 4: We started to focus in now on that 24 hours
- 0:24Speaker 4: of who they may have been in contact with.
- 0:27Speaker 1: He would make statements like he wanted to kill them,
- 0:30Speaker 1: that they deserved to die.
- 0:31Speaker 3: She had made threats that she was going to come
- 0:34Speaker 3: by and shoot up his law firm.
- 0:37Speaker 1: He has the ability to gain the entire very successful business.
- 0:42Speaker 1: We're talking millions and millions of dollars.
- 0:45Speaker 2: The truth will be revealed.
- 0:48Speaker 3: I said, two things are going to happen today.
- 0:50Speaker 5: I'm going to go home tonight, and you're going to
- 0:51Speaker 5: go to jail for murder.
- 0:57Speaker 2: Every day in North America, dozens of people are murdered.
- 1:02Speaker 2: The key to solving the toughest of these homicides lies
- 1:05Speaker 2: in the final 24 hours of the victim's life. To
- 1:09Speaker 2: crack the case, detectives must reconstruct that critical timeline. The
- 1:15Speaker 2: minutes and hours containing evidence that can help unlock the
- 1:18Speaker 2: mystery and catch the killer. Coral Gables, a haven of
- 1:30Speaker 2: wealth and luxury nestled a few miles south of Miami.
- 1:35Speaker 1: It's beautiful. I mean, Coral Gables is considered, I think
- 1:39Speaker 1: they call it like the little Venice of South Florida
- 1:42Speaker 1: because of its waterways.
- 1:44Speaker 2: Safe and usually quiet.
- 1:47Speaker 4: In the city of Coral Gables, murders are very few
- 1:51Speaker 4: and far between.
- 1:54Speaker 2: But in August 2004, that peace was is violently shattered.
- 2:18Speaker 5: When uniformed officers from the Coral Gable Police Department arrived
- 2:21Speaker 5: on the scene, they were met at the door by
- 2:23Speaker 5: John Sutton.
- 2:25Speaker 4: He's bleeding from the head. They see wounds to his
- 2:28Speaker 4: hands and possibly the shoulder. They ask him what's going on.
- 2:33Speaker 4: He says, I'm not sure. I've been shot. And they
- 2:37Speaker 4: ask him if there's anyone else inside the house. And
- 2:39Speaker 4: he says, yes, his wife.
- 2:41Speaker 2: Inside, police discover a bloodbath.
- 2:45Speaker 5: We found a major blood scene in the southeast bedroom,
- 2:49Speaker 5: which was where Don was. There was a blood trail
- 2:52Speaker 5: all the way out from his room to the front door.
- 2:56Speaker 5: We located Susan Sutton in the southwest bedroom, in bed,
- 3:00Speaker 5: where she was shot, and she was obviously deceased.
- 3:04Speaker 1: John had been shot multiple times in the face. He
- 3:08Speaker 1: was in pretty bad shape. He had to be transported
- 3:10Speaker 1: immediately to the hospital.
- 3:14Speaker 2: As John is raced to the ER, Miami-Dade homicide detectives
- 3:18Speaker 2: Rosanna Cordero-Stutz, Larry Bellew, and Art Nanny are tasked with
- 3:24Speaker 2: finding Susan Sutton's killer. They must now uncover every significant
- 3:29Speaker 2: detail from the last 24 hours of her life.
- 3:33Speaker 6: Establishing a timeline is absolutely critical because you have to
- 3:37Speaker 6: have some sort of foundation upon which to build a case.
- 3:41Speaker 6: You have to know where someone was before they were murdered,
- 3:44Speaker 6: what they were doing, who they were with, because all
- 3:47Speaker 6: those things can lead to a potential suspect.
- 3:50Speaker 2: Their top priority is to speak with the sole survivor
- 3:53Speaker 2: of the attack, John Sutton. But he's in critical condition,
- 4:01Speaker 2: undergoing 14-hour emergency surgery.
- 4:05Speaker 1: We don't know John's going to make it. In fact,
- 4:07Speaker 1: our suspicion is John is not going to make this.
- 4:09Speaker 1: We're looking at a double homicide.
- 4:19Speaker 7: I was doing bad. No doubt from the loss of
- 4:24Speaker 7: an excessive amount of blood. I was given last rites.
- 4:29Speaker 7: The next day, Monday morning, and also the next day,
- 4:32Speaker 7: Tuesday morning, somehow on Wednesday, I started to come around
- 4:38Speaker 7: and make some improvement.
- 4:43Speaker 2: John wakes up from a medically induced coma to find
- 4:46Speaker 2: his room filled with detectives looking for answers.
- 4:50Speaker 1: John tries really hard to try to piece together what
- 4:53Speaker 1: occurred that evening, but the truth is that he has
- 4:55Speaker 1: a very hard time He's got some big holes in
- 4:58Speaker 1: his memory from the trauma.
- 5:01Speaker 2: And it's not just the result of shock.
- 5:04Speaker 4: The gunshot wound that entered John Sutton's head detached his retinas.
- 5:13Speaker 7: I had a multiplicity of injuries. When the pain medication
- 5:19Speaker 7: wore out, everything hurt.
- 5:21Speaker 8: And I was blind. I don't remember being shot in
- 5:25Speaker 8: the head at all.
- 5:32Speaker 2: The details about that night come slowly and in fragments.
- 5:38Speaker 8: We slept in separate rooms as a result of my snoring.
- 5:43Speaker 7: At about 10 o'clock, maybe a little bit before 10,
- 5:46Speaker 7: Susan went into the bedroom. I went to the bathroom.
- 5:51Speaker 7: While I was going to the bathroom, I heard a
- 5:53Speaker 7: big bang. I had no idea what it was, but
- 5:58Speaker 7: if it had been something serious, I expected that Susan
- 6:02Speaker 7: would have called out or said, help me, or something happened.
- 6:07Speaker 8: I went to the bed. I sat on the bed.
- 6:11Speaker 7: In comes a man with a black hat, black shirt,
- 6:15Speaker 7: black pants, and the firing started. It felt as though
- 6:31Speaker 7: I had taken a dive and landed right on my face.
- 6:36Speaker 7: And I was confused, didn't know what was going on.
- 6:42Speaker 2: Despite his best efforts, John gives police almost nothing to
- 6:46Speaker 2: go on.
- 6:48Speaker 5: It was safe to say that he did not know
- 6:51Speaker 5: the person who shot him. He really had no description
- 6:54Speaker 5: of the person at all.
- 6:57Speaker 2: And having drifted in and out of consciousness for days,
- 7:00Speaker 2: It's only now that detectives are able to tell John
- 7:03Speaker 2: the fate of his wife.
- 7:05Speaker 7: The reaction was I basically lost all emotional ability to
- 7:12Speaker 7: recognize what had happened, what was happening, and what would happen.
- 7:18Speaker 8: I just was out of it.
- 7:21Speaker 7: I still feel guilty that I didn't go to the funeral.
- 7:26Speaker 2: John's loss is compounded by the mystery of who killed
- 7:29Speaker 2: his wife and why.
- 7:31Speaker 1: From an investigative point of view, you have to consider
- 7:34Speaker 1: who was their intended target. Was it that they were
- 7:38Speaker 1: after John and Susan was just collateral damage? Was it
- 7:41Speaker 1: someone who was angry with Susan and John happened to
- 7:43Speaker 1: be home at the time?
- 7:44Speaker 2: A clue from the crime scene offers a potential motive.
- 7:50Speaker 4: The responding officer advised that there was a point of
- 7:53Speaker 4: entry of a sliding glass door opposite of where the
- 7:56Speaker 4: victims were shot.
- 7:58Speaker 1: We considered the possibility that what occurred was actually a robbery,
- 8:03Speaker 1: home invasion gone wrong.
- 8:05Speaker 2: But other details don't support this idea.
- 8:10Speaker 1: Susan had jewelry everywhere, expensive jewelry. There was cash and
- 8:14Speaker 1: credit cards in plain sight where someone who had the
- 8:18Speaker 1: motive of money would have easily been able to grab
- 8:20Speaker 1: it and take it with them when they fled, but
- 8:22Speaker 1: that didn't happen. Whoever came in went across the entire house, literally,
- 8:29Speaker 1: from one end of the residence to the exact opposite end,
- 8:33Speaker 1: as far as you could go, shot both people, and
- 8:37Speaker 1: then turned around and fled.
- 8:39Speaker 2: For the detectives, there's only one other option left.
- 8:43Speaker 4: There was a lot of bullet trauma to Susan Sutton,
- 8:47Speaker 4: which meant that a lot of anger was directed towards her.
- 8:51Speaker 1: It was an execution. They were targeted. they were going
- 8:55Speaker 1: to kill John and Susan's son.
- 8:59Speaker 2: Their only hope of finding Susan's killer now rests with
- 9:03Speaker 2: the timeline.
- 9:05Speaker 4: We started to focus in on that 24 hours of
- 9:09Speaker 4: who they may have been in contact with.
- 9:12Speaker 2: They learn of a celebration dinner John says had taken
- 9:15Speaker 2: place just hours beforehand.
- 9:22Speaker 8: Susan cooked.
- 9:24Speaker 7: Of her own birthday party, and some Southwestern salad, as
- 9:28Speaker 7: I recall.
- 9:30Speaker 4: The people that were there was her husband, John Sutton,
- 9:35Speaker 4: her son, Christopher Sutton, Christopher Sutton's girlfriend, Julia Driscoll, and
- 9:42Speaker 4: Teddy Montoto.
- 9:45Speaker 3: Teddy Montoto was John Sutton's partner in the law firm.
- 9:47Speaker 3: He was also a good close friend to the family.
- 9:51Speaker 5: We also learned that Julia Driscoll was a secretary that
- 9:54Speaker 5: worked for John.
- 9:57Speaker 2: John and Teddy specialized in civil litigation and some recent
- 10:00Speaker 2: success was also being toasted that night.
- 10:04Speaker 1: They had won a big case, and they were celebrating
- 10:07Speaker 1: having gotten that money.
- 10:11Speaker 2: Teddy tells police that having arrived at the house at
- 10:14Speaker 2: 7 o'clock, he then left at around 9.30. This makes
- 10:20Speaker 2: him the last person to see the Suttons before the attack. Strangely,
- 10:25Speaker 2: he's also the first person to show up at the
- 10:27Speaker 2: crime scene.
- 10:29Speaker 1: I was the one that told him officially that Susan
- 10:31Speaker 1: had died, that she had been declared dead on the scene.
- 10:34Speaker 1: And he became very emotional about that. He was very
- 10:38Speaker 1: visibly shaken by that news. That seemed a bit above
- 10:43Speaker 1: and beyond what most normal people would have reacted. He
- 10:48Speaker 1: wasn't blood relative. He was a friend of the family,
- 10:51Speaker 1: lived in another house.
- 10:54Speaker 2: As Detective Cordero-Stetz probes further, her curiosity turns into suspicion.
- 11:01Speaker 1: Teddy tells me that he is a competitive shooter and
- 11:05Speaker 1: that he had been earlier that Sunday shooting and therefore
- 11:10Speaker 1: he would have gunshot residue on his hands where we'd
- 11:12Speaker 1: attest him. When we're in the midst of a homicide investigation, somebody,
- 11:17Speaker 1: you know, clearly identifying themselves as, you know, I'm going
- 11:20Speaker 1: to have gunshot residue. It's something that, a bit of
- 11:23Speaker 1: a red flag.
- 11:25Speaker 2: The unsolicited information puts the spotlight firmly on John Sutton's
- 11:30Speaker 2: business partner.
- 11:31Speaker 1: It's visible that he is in conflict. I felt that
- 11:34Speaker 1: there was something he wanted to tell me, but he
- 11:36Speaker 1: just didn't know how or was afraid to.
- 11:40Speaker 4: But is he a killer? There's still a big question mark.
- 11:53Speaker 2: Teddy Montoto's admission of handling a gun only hours before
- 11:57Speaker 2: the shooting of John and Susan Sutton has detectives questioning
- 12:01Speaker 2: whether he was responsible for the attack.
- 12:05Speaker 1: There are many reasons why Teddy could have been a
- 12:07Speaker 1: very plausible suspect in this shooting. He has the ability
- 12:14Speaker 1: to gain the entire very successful business from the death
- 12:18Speaker 1: of his partner.
- 12:21Speaker 9: In some murder cases, money becomes the motive for the murder.
- 12:28Speaker 9: How it plays out in the sense of who promised money,
- 12:32Speaker 9: who paid money, all of that is semantics to me.
- 12:35Speaker 9: Money is a great motivator. Money makes people kill.
- 12:45Speaker 2: Detective Cordero-Stutz presses Teddy further, but his answers only deepen
- 12:51Speaker 2: the mystery.
- 12:53Speaker 1: He told me that he had been on the phone
- 12:55Speaker 1: with Susan. And he heard what he described as a
- 13:00Speaker 1: loud bang and maybe even a gunshot. And that then
- 13:04Speaker 1: the phone went dead. But then he kept calling back
- 13:10Speaker 1: and wasn't able to get a hold of anyone. And eventually,
- 13:14Speaker 1: he decided that the best course was to actually drive
- 13:16Speaker 1: back to the house to make sure they were OK.
- 13:19Speaker 1: And when he gets there, the police are on the
- 13:20Speaker 1: scene and have it taped off. And he's unable to
- 13:22Speaker 1: actually go up to the house.
- 13:27Speaker 2: Detectives hone in on why Teddy is on the phone
- 13:30Speaker 2: with the wife of his business partner so late at night.
- 13:34Speaker 8: It just didn't add up.
- 13:36Speaker 4: He just left a party and they were going to
- 13:40Speaker 4: have conversations pertaining to business and all stuff you'd think
- 13:43Speaker 4: it would have happened during that time frame. We've got
- 13:48Speaker 4: to find out now why he was this important to
- 13:50Speaker 4: Susan Sutton to be having a conversation at that time
- 13:53Speaker 4: of the night.
- 13:55Speaker 1: Teddy was strongly affected by what had happened to Susan.
- 14:00Speaker 1: He's extremely nervous, and I had a very strong feeling
- 14:03Speaker 1: that he wasn't being forthcoming. Investigations are a percentage of fact-finding,
- 14:11Speaker 1: but it's also a percentage of your own personal experience
- 14:14Speaker 1: and what other people call their gut, their gut feeling.
- 14:18Speaker 1: All of these bits and pieces that kind of rub
- 14:20Speaker 1: you the wrong way, they're not enough. obviously in regards
- 14:24Speaker 1: to making an arrest or anything like that. But it's
- 14:27Speaker 1: definitely something that makes you dig deeper. So I discussed
- 14:32Speaker 1: it with the lead investigator, and we talked about the
- 14:34Speaker 1: possibilities of asking him to submit to a lie detector test.
- 14:40Speaker 9: Polygraph examinations are extremely helpful in certain circumstances. It is
- 14:45Speaker 9: to send messages to the person, number one, that you're
- 14:48Speaker 9: having interviewed. You don't believe them. We don't know what
- 14:51Speaker 9: the person is lying about, but we know they're lying.
- 14:55Speaker 2: Teddy agrees to the test and then fails.
- 15:00Speaker 1: Specifically, he fails in regards to the relationship between himself
- 15:05Speaker 1: and Susan.
- 15:07Speaker 2: Despite this, Teddy continues to protest his innocence, so Kodaro
- 15:12Speaker 2: Stutz turns her focus to the physical evidence.
- 15:15Speaker 1: When Teddy Montoto responds to the police station to take
- 15:18Speaker 1: his polygraph, he admits to us that he's now brought
- 15:21Speaker 1: his weapon with him. It was a 9mm, which was
- 15:24Speaker 1: consistent with the casings on the scene. We impounded it
- 15:27Speaker 1: and tested it to see if, in fact, this was
- 15:30Speaker 1: the murder weapon.
- 15:33Speaker 2: While the detectives await the ballistics result, they begin to
- 15:36Speaker 2: question others they can place on the victim's 24-hour timeline.
- 15:41Speaker 5: In any investigation, you want to interview anybody who has
- 15:45Speaker 5: knowledge about what happened just prior to the incident, if
- 15:47Speaker 5: you can. So just reconstructing what happened that night altogether
- 15:52Speaker 5: was very important.
- 15:59Speaker 2: Chris Sutton and his girlfriend, Julia Driscoll, were also at
- 16:03Speaker 2: the house that night.
- 16:05Speaker 1: I learned that they had been at the house for
- 16:06Speaker 1: dinner around 7 p.m. and that Christopher and Juliet had
- 16:10Speaker 1: left around 9 p.m. to go see a movie.
- 16:16Speaker 2: As the team looked to confirm the young couple's alibi,
- 16:19Speaker 2: they also delved deeper into the Sutton family history.
- 16:23Speaker 5: We learned that Christopher was born to a 15-year-old mother.
- 16:28Speaker 3: And was adopted at a young age.
- 16:31Speaker 7: Well, there were infertility issues, and therefore we went the
- 16:35Speaker 7: adoption route.
- 16:39Speaker 8: Well, she was thrilled.
- 16:40Speaker 7: She couldn't have been more happy as he was an
- 16:45Speaker 7: infant and a toddler.
- 16:48Speaker 2: But Chris's behavior then takes a troubling turn.
- 16:53Speaker 4: As he matured into a teenager, it became difficult to
- 16:58Speaker 4: get along with. He was sort of bucking his system,
- 17:01Speaker 4: having more and more problems getting along with his parents.
- 17:06Speaker 3: He was always getting into trouble.
- 17:07Speaker 5: When he was 17 years old, Susan approached John and said, look,
- 17:12Speaker 5: we need to do something with Chris.
- 17:14Speaker 2: They decided to send him to a strict behavioral reform
- 17:17Speaker 2: school in Samoa.
- 17:20Speaker 7: We were at our wit's end, and we had lengthy conversations,
- 17:25Speaker 7: and this seemed like this was a good way to go.
- 17:29Speaker 2: The idea was to help Chris find his way, but
- 17:31Speaker 2: even here, he remained defiant.
- 17:34Speaker 4: Well, there was rumors of some very hard.
- 17:37Speaker 1: Disciplines One of the things that they said was occurring
- 17:41Speaker 1: at the school was that there was like an isolation
- 17:44Speaker 1: room where if you broke the rules, you were locked
- 17:47Speaker 1: away in this isolation room for hours at a time.
- 17:53Speaker 5: And he thought he was going to get out when
- 17:55Speaker 5: he turned 18 years old. But he didn't realize that
- 17:58Speaker 5: John Sutton went to a court and had an order
- 18:02Speaker 5: signed to keep him until he completed the school, which
- 18:05Speaker 5: infuriated Christopher Sutton.
- 18:08Speaker 2: The disturbing details of his past are enough to make
- 18:11Speaker 2: Chris a potential suspect.
- 18:14Speaker 1: Christopher has a history. He's been in trouble before. He's
- 18:18Speaker 1: given his parents a hard time. But the night of
- 18:23Speaker 1: the incident, he's not there.
- 18:27Speaker 2: According to Chris, they arrived at the theater at 9.30 p.m.
- 18:32Speaker 2: They then sat down to watch the film at 10 o'clock,
- 18:35Speaker 2: and it ended a few hours later.
- 18:42Speaker 1: Juliet confirms that she and Christopher had gone in the
- 18:46Speaker 1: movies and that they had then afterwards gone home and
- 18:49Speaker 1: gone to bed. Once we found out what movie theater
- 18:54Speaker 1: they'd gone to in the time, we were able to
- 18:56Speaker 1: get the CCTV footage of the two of them leaving
- 19:00Speaker 1: the movies, which was sometime around midnight.
- 19:06Speaker 2: The couple's alibi is rock solid. So the detectives delve
- 19:12Speaker 2: further into the Sutton's final day. This leads them to
- 19:17Speaker 2: John's thriving legal business.
- 19:22Speaker 7: I got up early and went to the office at
- 19:25Speaker 7: about 9.30, checked my mail, reviewed some cases.
- 19:30Speaker 5: Some of the closest friends that we spoke to said
- 19:32Speaker 5: that John was the type of lawyer that would take
- 19:33Speaker 5: on any case.
- 19:35Speaker 3: He wouldn't shy away from a case where other lawyers would.
- 19:40Speaker 1: When I say that he won a case and it
- 19:42Speaker 1: was a big payout, we're talking millions and millions of dollars.
- 19:46Speaker 7: In the time period, June, July, and August, we had
- 19:53Speaker 7: resolved several substantial personal injury cases. The total gross of
- 20:00Speaker 7: all of these settlements was nearly $ 4 million. And in fact, Thursday,
- 20:06Speaker 7: which would have been August 19, One of those checks
- 20:13Speaker 7: came in for $ 1, 350, 000, and Susan asked Christopher to take it.
- 20:17Speaker 8: To the bank.
- 20:21Speaker 1: It was a business that could have easily created enemies.
- 20:25Speaker 1: And in fact, it did.
- 20:29Speaker 5: One of the cases John settled was a $ 100, 000 case, I.
- 20:32Speaker 3: Believe, against a woman.
- 20:34Speaker 5: She had made threats against John that she was going
- 20:36Speaker 5: to come by and shoot up his law firm.
- 20:40Speaker 7: She had a tremendous grudge. I was the worst thing
- 20:43Speaker 7: that there could have been. She filed complaints with the
- 20:46Speaker 7: Florida Bar against me. She wanted me dead. She hated me.
- 20:56Speaker 2: Police are now considering the possibility that a vengeful killer
- 21:00Speaker 2: stalked and shot John Sutton and his wife over a lawsuit.
- 21:04Speaker 1: If someone is attacked and the first thing you do
- 21:08Speaker 1: is run their name, and there's already been someone documented
- 21:12Speaker 1: that they have been threatening to cause them harm, of
- 21:15Speaker 1: course you're going to take that seriously.
- 21:17Speaker 2: As they probe deeper into the death threat, the detectives
- 21:21Speaker 2: uncover a disturbing piece of information.
- 21:24Speaker 4: One of the things that we learned is that a
- 21:26Speaker 4: neighbor said that they heard a boat crank up sometime
- 21:32Speaker 4: around 10.30 and take off behind John Sutton's house at
- 21:36Speaker 4: a high rate of speed.
- 21:38Speaker 1: The Sun Home backed up to a very large canal,
- 21:41Speaker 1: and that particular witness said that around that time she
- 21:44Speaker 1: had observed this boat speeding away.
- 21:48Speaker 3: And we learned later that she owned that type of boat.
- 21:52Speaker 1: So one of the things we had to do was
- 21:54Speaker 1: to verify where the boat was at the time of
- 21:56Speaker 1: the murder. One of the detectives was tasked with finding
- 22:00Speaker 1: that information out, and they were able to obtain video
- 22:03Speaker 1: footage docked at the time of the murder in her slip.
- 22:11Speaker 4: It just did not fit that this boat may have
- 22:14Speaker 4: been used to gain access to.
- 22:16Speaker 8: The Sutton property.
- 22:17Speaker 5: But as an investigative lead, we have to do the
- 22:19Speaker 5: interview and make sure or either rule her out or
- 22:21Speaker 5: keep her in the investigation.
- 22:24Speaker 3: We spoke to her. We didn't have any belief that
- 22:26Speaker 3: she did that.
- 22:33Speaker 2: With the woman cleared, Detectives turn back to Teddy Montoto.
- 22:39Speaker 2: The ballistics report on his gun has finally landed on
- 22:42Speaker 2: Cordero Stutz's desk.
- 22:45Speaker 1: When the results came in, it turned out that it
- 22:47Speaker 1: was not the murder weapon.
- 22:51Speaker 2: But Teddy's not off the hook yet.
- 22:54Speaker 1: We are able to rule out that that's the weapon
- 22:56Speaker 1: that was used in the murder, but that doesn't mean
- 22:58Speaker 1: that it couldn't have been another 9mm.
- 23:02Speaker 2: So she presses him on what he's hiding.
- 23:07Speaker 1: Once we confronted Teddy with the fact that he had
- 23:10Speaker 1: failed the polygraph, he quickly admitted to us that the
- 23:14Speaker 1: reason why he failed it was because he and Susan
- 23:17Speaker 1: were involved in a romantic relationship and had been for
- 23:21Speaker 1: several years.
- 23:24Speaker 2: The confession offers up a whole new motive for the attack.
- 23:29Speaker 1: After he admits that he's involved in a relationship, you
- 23:33Speaker 1: have someone who has the oldest of all reasons for murder.
- 23:37Speaker 1: which is a love triangle.
- 23:40Speaker 6: A love triangle in murders is often a very overwhelming
- 23:44Speaker 6: consideration because someone may feel, for example, that they've been
- 23:49Speaker 6: wronged by somebody, that they were promised something. I'll leave
- 23:54Speaker 6: my wife, I'll leave my husband for you, and this
- 23:56Speaker 6: person's been kept on the hook for, in some cases, years.
- 24:01Speaker 6: Police have to look at that because someone being jilted
- 24:04Speaker 6: can be a very strong factor for murder.
- 24:11Speaker 1: Teddy says that the reason why he lied originally was
- 24:14Speaker 1: because he wanted to protect Susan's honor. At this point,
- 24:19Speaker 1: she is now dead. Nothing is going to change that.
- 24:22Speaker 1: And if he could have kept from her family, her children,
- 24:26Speaker 1: and her husband that she was having an extramarital affair,
- 24:31Speaker 1: then that was something he was going to try to do.
- 24:34Speaker 1: Teddy claimed that he was at home at the time
- 24:36Speaker 1: of the shooting, that he was on the telephone with Susan.
- 24:41Speaker 1: Using the phone records, we were able at that time
- 24:44Speaker 1: to verify that he was in fact speaking to her
- 24:47Speaker 1: from his residence, which was a couple of miles away
- 24:50Speaker 1: from the scene of the crime. Teddy's ultimately ruled out
- 24:54Speaker 1: as a suspect.
- 24:56Speaker 2: But the admission devastates his friend and colleague.
- 25:01Speaker 7: I felt that I had been betrayed. I felt that
- 25:03Speaker 7: I had been tricked. I felt that I had been
- 25:08Speaker 7: deceived left and right. And it was just one more
- 25:13Speaker 7: problem on top of the stack of problems.
- 25:19Speaker 2: The suspect list is now down to zero, frustrating John
- 25:23Speaker 2: beyond measure.
- 25:24Speaker 7: I was quite a difficult victim because I kept asking,
- 25:30Speaker 7: where are the police reports? I want the police reports.
- 25:33Speaker 7: What's going on? Who's doing what? What's the investigation? And
- 25:39Speaker 7: they were not forthcoming.
- 25:43Speaker 1: So it has to be a totality when it comes
- 25:46Speaker 1: to a homicide investigation. It's not just finding the person
- 25:51Speaker 1: who committed the crime. It's saying, this person may have
- 25:55Speaker 1: done it for A, B, C, or D reasons, but
- 25:57Speaker 1: they didn't. It is a lot of work, but you
- 26:01Speaker 1: absolutely have to be thorough.
- 26:04Speaker 2: Weeks into the investigation, that diligence pays off. when the
- 26:08Speaker 2: detectives notice something unusual.
- 26:11Speaker 4: I was assigned a task of collecting the phone numbers
- 26:15Speaker 4: from the Suttons, John and Susan, Chris Sutton, Julia Driscoll,
- 26:21Speaker 4: Teddy Montano.
- 26:23Speaker 2: What stands out are the records belonging to Christopher Sutton.
- 26:28Speaker 1: It turned out there had been a pattern of phone
- 26:30Speaker 1: calls for several weeks up to leading to the night
- 26:35Speaker 1: of the shooting.
- 26:36Speaker 4: 162 times from July 19th through August 23rd.
- 26:44Speaker 2: The last of those calls comes close to midnight on
- 26:47Speaker 2: the night of the murder, and it's a moment captured
- 26:50Speaker 2: on camera.
- 26:56Speaker 4: He probably wasn't more than 50 to 100 feet outside
- 27:00Speaker 4: the doors when he immediately gets on the phone.
- 27:04Speaker 1: What caught my attention when I observed the video is
- 27:07Speaker 1: the fact that Chris, upon leaving the movie theater, is
- 27:10Speaker 1: quickly reaching for his cell phone and dialing it and
- 27:13Speaker 1: getting on the phone. And Juliet is actually a couple
- 27:16Speaker 1: of feet away from him and kind of, you know,
- 27:18Speaker 1: lagging behind him. You would kind of think that after
- 27:23Speaker 1: a movie like that with your fiancée, you might be
- 27:25Speaker 1: holding her hand and asking her what she thought of
- 27:27Speaker 1: the movie as opposed to getting on the phone and
- 27:29Speaker 1: calling someone else.
- 27:32Speaker 8: We learned.
- 27:33Speaker 5: who he spoke to at that particular time was a
- 27:34Speaker 5: guy by the name of Garrett Kopp.
- 27:39Speaker 4: He was young, somewhere between 19 and 20. We learned
- 27:44Speaker 4: that he had a girlfriend who he had a child with.
- 27:50Speaker 4: He had a pass for breaking and entering, a misdemeanor
- 27:53Speaker 4: pass for dealing in drugs. He appeared to be going
- 27:57Speaker 4: nowhere in life.
- 28:01Speaker 2: Kopp seems like a petty criminal, until they discover a
- 28:05Speaker 2: detail about his most recent running with police.
- 28:09Speaker 5: We learned that he had been arrested by Homestead Police
- 28:13Speaker 5: Department the day after the murder.
- 28:19Speaker 4: Homestead is probably 18 to 20 miles south of the
- 28:22Speaker 4: city of Coral Gables.
- 28:23Speaker 5: And at that point, you know, Art and I were, wow.
- 28:30Speaker 9: As an investigator, I don't believe in coincidences. Certainly in
- 28:35Speaker 9: homicide investigations, there's no such thing as coincidence. There's a
- 28:38Speaker 9: reason why things happen.
- 28:41Speaker 5: So I called down to the Homestead Police Department. I
- 28:45Speaker 5: asked them, I said, please tell me it was some
- 28:46Speaker 5: type of assault.
- 28:47Speaker 8: He says it was.
- 28:49Speaker 5: I said, please tell me a gun was involved. He says, well,
- 28:51Speaker 5: there was a gun involved. I said, please tell me
- 28:54Speaker 5: it's a Glock. He says, it was a Glock, 9mm.
- 28:58Speaker 5: I said, now please tell me you have that weapon.
- 29:00Speaker 3: He goes, I do.
- 29:04Speaker 2: Detective Larry Bellew's gut tells him he may have located
- 29:08Speaker 2: the murder weapon that killed Susan Sutton.
- 29:11Speaker 5: At that point, we retrieved that weapon from Homestead, and
- 29:18Speaker 5: that weapon was submitted to our firearms examiner, who matched
- 29:22Speaker 5: that weapon with the projectile evidence removed from Susan and
- 29:25Speaker 5: from the crime scene, and learned that it was the
- 29:29Speaker 5: gun used to kill Susan Sutton and shoot John Sutton.
- 29:32Speaker 4: Garakok now becomes bigger than life in our investigation, and
- 29:36Speaker 4: now we've got to start figuring out what's going on
- 29:39Speaker 4: with Garakok.
- 29:42Speaker 2: Despite this game-changing discovery, Bellew is in no hurry to
- 29:46Speaker 2: drag Copp in for questioning.
- 29:48Speaker 3: We do know that we have the weapon.
- 29:50Speaker 5: We have Garrett Copp, who supposedly had the weapon, but
- 29:54Speaker 5: we still wanted to build the case. If we brought
- 29:56Speaker 5: Garrett Copp in, he says, look, I got that weapon
- 29:58Speaker 5: from a friend of mine, That's all he has to say, basically.
- 30:01Speaker 3: We still don't know that he did it.
- 30:03Speaker 5: So during this time, we're still building our investigation by
- 30:07Speaker 5: talking with other people.
- 30:10Speaker 2: And the first person on their list is Christopher Sutton.
- 30:14Speaker 4: I was instructed to do just a routine interview. While
- 30:19Speaker 4: talking to Chris about Garrett Kopp, he only identified him
- 30:23Speaker 4: as a business associate. When asked, what do you mean
- 30:26Speaker 4: by business associate, he said he had Garrett Kopp to
- 30:30Speaker 4: his parents' house to do some oddball jobs. He didn't
- 30:36Speaker 4: elaborate on what those oddball jobs were, except for one
- 30:40Speaker 4: particular item, which was after the murder of the mother
- 30:44Speaker 4: and the shooting of the father, that he had Garrett
- 30:46Speaker 4: Kopp over to remove the carpet from the master bedroom
- 30:52Speaker 4: where John Sutton was shot.
- 30:54Speaker 2: But when Kopp's name is floated to others, a very
- 30:57Speaker 2: different picture emerges.
- 30:59Speaker 1: My assignment at that time was John. I'm able to
- 31:03Speaker 1: interview John after he returns home from the hospital while
- 31:07Speaker 1: he's recuperating. John said that Garrett and Christopher were very
- 31:12Speaker 1: good friends, that they spent a lot of time together,
- 31:14Speaker 1: they hung out together.
- 31:15Speaker 7: Garrett had been in the house before, yes. Probably a
- 31:19Speaker 7: few times. I was aware that Garrett had dropped out
- 31:22Speaker 7: of school. I was aware that Christopher hung out with him.
- 31:28Speaker 7: I believed that Garrett wasn't working and was somewhat of
- 31:31Speaker 7: a deadbeat. And this wasn't something that was a good
- 31:35Speaker 7: relationship that Christopher was having. I was suspicious of Christopher
- 31:41Speaker 7: doing drugs. However, I had nothing to prove it.
- 31:45Speaker 2: As police dig deeper, John's suspicions are confirmed.
- 31:49Speaker 4: We had learned that the two of them were talking
- 31:52Speaker 4: about dealing in drugs. And in fact, Chris would give
- 31:55Speaker 4: Garrett Kopp drugs to sell so he'd have some money
- 31:58Speaker 4: in his pocket.
- 32:02Speaker 2: This introduces a whole new theory about the crime.
- 32:06Speaker 1: Garrett had been to the house. He had worked some
- 32:10Speaker 1: odd jobs, so he knew the layout of the house.
- 32:14Speaker 1: So as an investigator, ultimately, you have to consider what
- 32:19Speaker 1: gain or benefit Garrett had. If it was Garrett who
- 32:23Speaker 1: decided that, you know what, I know they've got stuff
- 32:25Speaker 1: there to get money, or I know there's drugs there.
- 32:28Speaker 1: I'm going to go get the drugs. We have to
- 32:31Speaker 1: consider the possibility that maybe Garrett Cobb did this all
- 32:35Speaker 1: on his own.
- 32:43Speaker 5: He had a warrant for his arrest issued by the
- 32:47Speaker 5: court for something else. And when he was arrested, I said, well,
- 32:51Speaker 5: bring him to my office. And that's when we started
- 32:58Speaker 5: interviewing him about the murder.
- 32:59Speaker 8: For the record, state your name. It's Garrett Collett.
- 33:04Speaker 5: During this whole interview, I'm gaining information that I'm going
- 33:07Speaker 5: to be able to attack Garrett on.
- 33:09Speaker 9: Interviewing is an art. It's not a science. Again, it's experience.
- 33:15Speaker 9: But when you interview someone, you're looking for a number
- 33:21Speaker 9: of tells, if you think of poker for a minute.
- 33:24Speaker 9: Tells in a poker game. A really good interview can
- 33:27Speaker 9: pick it off while he's conducting the interview.
- 33:31Speaker 5: Garrett tells me that the gun that they retrieved that
- 33:35Speaker 5: night was not his weapon, that it was somebody else's,
- 33:39Speaker 5: which I kind of thought he.
- 33:40Speaker 3: Was going to tell me anyway.
- 33:43Speaker 4: Sometimes when people are starting to cover up, they all
- 33:46Speaker 4: start telling little white lies, which you know in the end,
- 33:50Speaker 4: the more little white lies you tell, eventually you're going
- 33:54Speaker 4: to get tripped up.
- 33:55Speaker 5: One of the things I asked Garrett was how close
- 33:58Speaker 5: he was with Christopher.
- 33:59Speaker 8: I said, do you speak with him on.
- 34:06Speaker 2: A daily basis?
- 34:07Speaker 8: He says, no, not at all.
- 34:09Speaker 5: Which we knew to be a lie because we had.
- 34:16Speaker 8: The phone records.
- 34:28Speaker 5: He said he was with his girlfriend that particular night.
- 34:31Speaker 5: His girlfriend was out waiting in.
- 34:33Speaker 3: The lobby, and I said, well, I'm going to be
- 34:34Speaker 3: speaking with her right after I get done with you.
- 34:39Speaker 5: He knew that he had been put in a corner,
- 34:40Speaker 5: and now he's been caught several lies. And at that point, finally,
- 34:45Speaker 5: three or four or five hours later, he gave it
- 34:47Speaker 5: up and said, look, he did do this.
- 34:49Speaker 3: And I said, well, why? Why did you do this?
- 34:53Speaker 5: Was John Sutton or Susan Sutton ever angry at you?
- 34:56Speaker 5: Did they ever mistreat you? Did they ever do anything
- 34:58Speaker 5: to hurt you?
- 35:00Speaker 3: He said, no. And that's when he revealed it.
- 35:03Speaker 5: He said, Chris wanted me to do it, and he
- 35:05Speaker 5: told me if he wasn't going to do it, Christopher
- 35:08Speaker 5: was going to kill him and his baby boy.
- 35:17Speaker 2: After a grueling interview, Garrett Kopp finally admits to pulling
- 35:21Speaker 2: the trigger on both John and Susan Sutton.
- 35:24Speaker 3: Why did you shoot Christopher's parents?
- 35:30Speaker 8: Because my life was in Chris's hands. He told me
- 35:35Speaker 8: he'd kill.
- 35:35Speaker 3: My son if I did not.
- 35:38Speaker 8: And me.
- 35:42Speaker 2: But Kopp's revelation implicating the couple's son, Christopher, as the
- 35:46Speaker 2: man behind the attack adds a completely different dimension to
- 35:49Speaker 2: the case.
- 35:51Speaker 5: So I know that Garrett Kopp is going to go
- 35:52Speaker 5: to jail for first-degree murder. At that point, we have
- 35:56Speaker 5: to start trying to build the case against Christopher.
- 36:00Speaker 2: Without alerting Chris, they must find another way of confirming
- 36:04Speaker 2: Kopp's story.
- 36:05Speaker 3: And it had to be Juliet Driscoll, his girlfriend.
- 36:08Speaker 5: They were close. They'd been dating for several years. She
- 36:12Speaker 5: has to know about this. So we brought her in,
- 36:19Speaker 5: and I interviewed her all day. We had to be
- 36:22Speaker 5: there 10, 11 hours. And she kept denying, denying, denying.
- 36:28Speaker 5: I don't know anything about the murder. Christopher never speaks
- 36:30Speaker 5: to me about anything. So I had to find some
- 36:33Speaker 5: kind of way to get to her. And I said,
- 36:37Speaker 5: you know what? She was close to Susan.
- 36:40Speaker 3: And I brought that fact up.
- 36:45Speaker 5: I said, Susan was good to you. She was like
- 36:47Speaker 5: a mother to you. I can't believe you were just
- 36:50Speaker 5: allowing this to happen. That family, the whole family was
- 36:53Speaker 5: good to you.
- 36:53Speaker 3: They gave you a job.
- 36:58Speaker 5: And I saw a tear come out of her eye.
- 37:01Speaker 5: And I knew that I had her. And at that point,
- 37:04Speaker 5: she began to tell me what she knew about Christopher.
- 37:10Speaker 5: Chris hated his parents for sending him to the behavioral school.
- 37:14Speaker 5: and really wanted to do harm to them.
- 37:17Speaker 1: Juliet admits that when he would get very angry, he
- 37:21Speaker 1: would make statements like that he wanted to kill them,
- 37:24Speaker 1: that they deserved to die.
- 37:26Speaker 3: But we still didn't know why, because this was several
- 37:28Speaker 3: years prior. What triggered this now?
- 37:32Speaker 5: But then we realized Teddy and John had just settled
- 37:36Speaker 5: those multimillion-dollar lawsuits, and Christopher knew about it, and Christopher
- 37:40Speaker 5: actually put the money in the bank.
- 37:42Speaker 3: He wanted the money. It came down to the hatred,
- 37:46Speaker 3: and he just wanted their money.
- 37:52Speaker 5: So now I had enough to get an arrest warrant
- 37:54Speaker 5: for Christopher Sutton.
- 37:56Speaker 2: After tracking Chris down, he is brought in to face
- 37:59Speaker 2: Detective Bellew.
- 38:01Speaker 3: I introduced myself to him.
- 38:03Speaker 5: I said, two things are gonna happen today. I'm gonna
- 38:06Speaker 5: go home tonight, and you're gonna go to jail for murder.
- 38:10Speaker 5: There's not anything stopping that. I said, Before you tell
- 38:13Speaker 5: me anything, though, understand this. I said, I've done my homework.
- 38:18Speaker 5: I said, I got a sworn statement from Juliet Driscoll,
- 38:20Speaker 5: and he said he wanted to see it. Well, he
- 38:23Speaker 5: read certain parts of the statement and put his head
- 38:26Speaker 5: down on the table and says, I'm... and started crying.
- 38:31Speaker 2: Christopher Sutton is charged with the first-degree murder of his
- 38:34Speaker 2: mother and the attempted murder of his father.
- 38:39Speaker 8: Do I feel betrayed, tricked? Absolutely. Absolutely.
- 38:42Speaker 7: Does my head hurt now because I got bullets in it?
- 38:46Speaker 8: Absolutely.
- 38:47Speaker 7: It was cold-blooded murder. There are some things that are
- 38:53Speaker 7: temporary and come and go.
- 38:56Speaker 8: This is permanent. This doesn't go away.
- 38:59Speaker 2: The 24-hour timeline developed by the detectives reveals exactly how
- 39:04Speaker 2: Chris masterminded the plot to kill his own parents.
- 39:11Speaker 1: The story is that Christopher gets a gun, gives it
- 39:16Speaker 1: to Garrett, tells him how to get into the house,
- 39:19Speaker 1: told him where his parents would be, the fact that
- 39:21Speaker 1: his parents would be in two separate bedrooms, and exactly
- 39:25Speaker 1: where to go to the back of the house and
- 39:26Speaker 1: where to do the shooting. The night of the shooting,
- 39:33Speaker 1: the family gets together for a celebratory dinner around 7
- 39:37Speaker 1: PM at the house. Chris and Juliet are there. Susan
- 39:44Speaker 1: and John are there. Teddy Montoto is there as well.
- 39:48Speaker 1: They have a nice dinner. They cut a cake for
- 39:50Speaker 1: her birthday. Around 9 p.m., Juliet and Christopher leave for
- 39:55Speaker 1: this movie. Teddy Montoto leaves the house around 9.30 p.m.
- 40:05Speaker 1: And around 10 p.m., both John and Susan retire to
- 40:08Speaker 1: their respective bedrooms for the evening. Now, we know that Teddy...
- 40:16Speaker 1: gets on the telephone with Susan shortly thereafter. They're actually
- 40:20Speaker 1: on the phone. He's on his landline, and she's on
- 40:22Speaker 1: a cell phone. During that time, we have Garrett Cobb
- 40:28Speaker 1: enter the house in the rear sliding glass door, walks
- 40:34Speaker 1: from one end of the house all the way around
- 40:36Speaker 1: to the other end, and confronts each of them in
- 40:42Speaker 1: the bedroom, and he shoots them. He shoots Susan multiple
- 40:48Speaker 1: times as she pulls a blanket over her. He shoots
- 40:56Speaker 1: John multiple times, striking him up to twice in the face.
- 41:00Speaker 1: He leaves John for dead, and he has, in fact,
- 41:02Speaker 1: killed Susan right there on the scene. Shortly thereafter, Christopher
- 41:11Speaker 1: and Garrett are on the telephone with each other. for
- 41:16Speaker 1: Garrett to report to Chris that he has in fact
- 41:18Speaker 1: carried out the murder. The timeline is, it's very important.
- 41:33Speaker 1: I think that any reasonable person can look at that
- 41:37Speaker 1: timeline and understand how it went from point A to
- 41:41Speaker 1: point Z.
- 41:43Speaker 4: We had done our homework. We had turned over every
- 41:46Speaker 4: stone and was able to present all these facts beyond
- 41:50Speaker 4: a reasonable doubt to this jury on why Chris Sutton
- 41:52Speaker 4: was involved in his parents' murder.
- 41:55Speaker 2: In exchange for his testimony, Garrett Kopp receives a sentence
- 41:59Speaker 2: of 30 years. Christopher Sutton never admits to his involvement.
- 42:05Speaker 2: He is sentenced to life.
- 42:09Speaker 7: There is no doubt in my mind that Christopher orchestrated
- 42:12Speaker 7: this for his own means. He saw that he had
- 42:15Speaker 7: a great chance for a free ride and to do
- 42:18Speaker 7: whatever he wanted whenever he wanted.
- 42:19Speaker 8: To do it. I have not spoken to him since
- 42:23Speaker 8: the trial.
- 42:23Speaker 7: He needs to be secured and not ever considered for parole.
- 42:31Speaker 7: At this point, I have to look forward, not backward.
- 42:36Speaker 7: And therefore, I compartmentalize it. I put it in the background.
- 42:41Speaker 7: I know it's there. I bring it up too often.
- 42:45Speaker 7: Of course, you always question, what else could I have done?
- 42:47Speaker 7: What else could I have done? There's nothing else I
- 42:49Speaker 7: could have done.
- 42:53Speaker 1: Christopher Sutton had been looking for someone to kill his
- 42:56Speaker 1: parents for years, and he found that someone in Garrett Coff.
- 43:12Speaker 5: Thank you.