they call it the gold coast. the sun, the sea, and in this million dollar home, a mystery. >> he was talking on the telephone when he heard a loud bang. >> a woman, murdered. her husband left blind. >> are you bleeding? do you see any blood? >> i'm bleeding all over, yes. >> okay. >> i can't see. >> but who? >> everyone is somewhat of a suspect. >> and why? >> what brings someone to make a decision they're going to do

this? >> was it love? >> what we learned was that he was having an affair with the son. >> was it money? >> nobody knows what really happened except for him and garrett. >> or was the truth hidden here on this tropical paradise? >> it was assassination. it was a hit, no question. >> blind justice. >> thanks for joining us. i'm ann curry. for criminal investigators, it is often the hardest thing of all to find, the motive. in the story you're about to see, the crime took place in florida, but detectives didn't discover an apparent motive until they dug around a tropical island thousands of miles away, something long buried that had nothing to do with treasure. here's keith morrison. >> it was august, hot in coral gables. the air was shirt-sticking thick as night fell.

a small damp breeze pushed weakly at limp palm fronds. in the artificial cool of attorney john sutton's house, an intimate party was winding down early. it was susan sutton's birthday. attending, their son, his girlfriend and john's law partner. daughter melissa just off to college in north florida, couldn't be there. so she phoned her mother to say she missed her. you two close? >> extremely. it's my best friend. >> i was going to ask how old your mom was. >> 57. no, you can't put that on. she was a nice 45. let's leave it at that. >> the guests left. the law partner went home. son christopher and his girlfriend went out to a movie. john settled in to watch tv in the master bedroom. susan, in another bedroom, talked on the phone with a close friend. a quiet end to a pleasant evening.

quiet, but not for long. >> 911. >> i need police. >> what happened, sir? >> somebody came in and shot me. >> they shot you? >> yes. >> who did it? >> i don't know. i can't see. i need police and i need an ambulance. >> okay. where did he shoot you? >> in the head. >> john sutton, a tough as nails take no prisoners lawyer was barely conscious as he begged the 911 operator for help. he told the operator blood was gushing from his head wounds, he couldn't see. >> who else in the house with you? >> my wife. >> where is she? >> i don't know. >> somehow, he made it out the front door on his own. he was met by a paramedic. >> the holes in his head, in his face, i couldn't believe how mr. sutton made it out of the house, walking to us. >> they stabilized sutton, rushed him off in an ambulance.

an hour north of sutton's home, homicide detective larry bellieu was just getting home after a long shift. >> i was pulling into my driveway when i got the phone call. he was critically injured, however, he called 911 and made his way to the door and opened the door. >> he didn't want to go in until they came out, is that it? >> they didn't know if the person or persons involved were still inside. they backed off until the s.w.a.t. team arrived and made entry into the house. >> not knowing if the nman was still in the house, s.w.a.t. teams cleared the house room by room, finally entering the bedroom where susan sutton had been on the phone. >> when they went into the room in which mrs. sutton was, they didn't see anybody. >> miami-dade prosecutor karen kahgan was on homicide duty that night and was called out to the scene. >> they saw a mound on the bed, covered by a blanket. there were bullet holes in the blanket and they had to yank the blanket down and when they did that, they found mrs. sutton in bed with her hands up. she had been holding the blanket

and covering herself, literally ducking under the covers for cover. >> susan sutton was dead. her bloody phone beside her. she must have dropped it as she pulled up the covers in her vain attempt to hide from her killer. no shooter around, the s.w.a.t. team withdrew. a dispatcher warned the detective this might be the deadly result of a domestic dispute. sutton's 911 call, perhaps an attempt to cover up what he had done. >> when i got the phone call, and said that it was a murder-suicide down in the city of coral gables, we heard that the husband was en route to trauma center, and in critical condition. >> en route with two bullet holes to his head. had sutton killed his wife, then turned the gun on himself? no. that theory was quickly dismissed when the paramedic who took him to the hospital put out an update over the radio. >> he can't provide any info but it does look like a gunshot wound to the head. >> he had wounds to his hands

which would make it clear it was defense type wounds that somebody else must have shot, because he put his hands up. >> so obviously, first clue, this is not -- >> this is not a murder-suicide. >> who or why would anyone want to harm john or susan sutton? the suttons had lived exemplary lives, seemed to have it all, a beautiful house with a 31-foot boat out back in exclusive coral gables, the upscale enclave south of miami. his law practice, susan worked as office manager, was booming. just that week, he had received a check for $1 million for a case he had settled. so was robbery the motive? and if so, how did the killer get into the house? officers saw a curtain blowing in the wind through a sliding glass door in the rear of the house near the pool. the door latch showed signs it had been broken long before that night. >> the killer had gone in through that sliding glass door,

had walked all the way through that house, no ransacking. drawers were not opened. in the master bathroom, on the vanity, was some beautiful diamond and gold jewelry. so clearly, early on, it was pretty easy to detect that robbery was not the issue here. >> no. >> and that it was apparent that they were targeted. it was an assassination. it was a hit. >> an assassination, a hit? that sort of crime just didn't happen in staid coral gables. whatever the motive, there was little to go on, no murder weapon, no fingerprints, no dna. there was, however, one possible lead. susan sutton, as it was painfully obvious from the blood-stained evidence, had been on the phone when she was shot five times. someone heard the screams of bullets ripping through the silence of that steamy august night. but who? >> coming up -- what did he know that police didn't?

he was given a polygraph, wasn't he? >> he passed on certain information but he was deceptive in others. >> which is a red flag. >> yes. an august morning, 2004.

an august morning, 2004. melissa sutton, 19 years old, awoke to her new college dorm life in northern florida, unaware of what had happened to her parents the night before. unaware that her mother was dead. unaware that in a miami emergency room, doctors were fighting to save her father's life. >> who told you and how? >> i actually got a call from a friend who said i hope your dad's going to be okay. and i just went what? like maybe a heart attack or

something, you know. >> it just came out of the blue. >> out of the blue. >> melissa called every number she could back home. >> i called my mom. she didn't answer. i called teddy montoto, my dad's partner. extremely close family friend. he didn't answer. i called my brother. he said he couldn't talk right now. >> were you frantic in the sense that you knew something bad had happened? >> i didn't know what. i didn't know what level. >> eventually, melissa reached montoto, who reluctantly broke the news to her on the phone. he brought her back to miami and the hospital where her father was in intensive care. her brother, 26-year-old christopher, had already arrived. both of them were reeling from the loss of their mother. and now, they kept vigil at their gravely wounded father's bedside. >> we didn't even know if he was going to live for a long time. >> it was pretty touch and go, wasn't it? >> to say gruesome is, you know, if i didn't know his hands and know little intricate pieces of him, you wouldn't have known it

was him. >> you faced the shocking prospect of becoming an orphan. >> i don't think that ever crossed my mind, actually. i don't know. he was still alive. >> melissa wondered why her parents. who could have done this. investigators describing it as a hit. didn't you have any sense at all what may have happened? >> well, teddy told me what had happened, but i didn't know who had done -- >> who or what. >> right. i just thought it was some sort of break-in was my first instinct. that's what i thought for a long time, until we started talking about my dad's clients. >> homicide detectives were also thinking about sutton's clients and those he sued on their behalf. at this point, john sutton couldn't provide any information. he was clinging to life in a drug-induced coma. >> i went several times to try to talk to john sutton. he was on pain medication. he was intubated.

we're looking at maybe incidents in his law firm where people may have been angry at him. >> civil attorneys take a lot of money from people and they make people mad. >> i said find out if any of these people had reason for revenge on john sutton. >> john sutton ran his law firm like he ran most things in life. efficient and hard-driving. in fact, detectives heard about one woman who lost a $97,000 lawsuit and was so mad, she threatened to shoot up john's firm. and the very night of the murder, a neighbor heard a boat roaring down the canal just behind john's house over here, and it turned out that woman owned such a boat. >> she was interviewed down the line also, and she was not the person responsible. >> but what about that phone call susan was on when she was shot to death? detectives found the blood-stained handset susan dropped when the gunman opened fire. who was she talking to? had that person heard something? detectives got their answer

almost right away. john sutton's law partner, teddy montoto, had shown up at the house even before the first reports of shooting hit the news that night. he was also armed. >> he was talking to susan sutton on the telephone when he heard a loud bang or what he said may be gun shots, he didn't know. >> at least that's what he told the police. >> depending on the amount of truth in his statement, he could be a suspect. >> oh, absolutely. >> but that, said melissa, had to be impossible. teddy and susan worked together. they talked often and frequently late at night. >> he was my mom's best friend. call him my godfather, pretty much. like a relative. >> but police were suspicious. why had montoto arrived so quickly after the shooting? why was he armed with a hand gun? they had a few questions and perhaps more important, some testing to do. >> we interviewed him extensively. we did take gunshot residue from his hands. >> he was given a polygraph, wasn't he? >> yes, he was.

>> how did he do? >> he passed on certain information but he showed that he was deceptive in others. >> which is a red flag. >> yes. >> a red flag this early in the investigation. what exactly did law partner montoto have to hide? perhaps john sutton could tell them, because the survivor of the slaughter, it was clear, was going to live. and when he came out of his coma, what story would he tell? what did he see? coming up, with his victim defenseless in the hospital, would the killer try again? john sutton's son seemed to think so. >> i do recall him as very adamant that my dad be placed under john doe so that whoever did this could not finish off what they had started. >> but was the killer already closer than anyone could have dreamed?

susan sutton was dead, shot five times by a killer who invaded her home after her birthday party. her husband, john, an attorney, had been shot in the head twice and was in critical condition at a miami hospital, undergoing multiple surgeries to save his life. but soon after the shooting, detectives had a potential suspect. john sutton's good friend and law partner. >> he had a partner who was on the scene when homicide detectives got there. >> teddy montoto told police he had been on the phone with susan, heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire, rushed over to

the sutton house with a gun of his own to try to help, but was that the whole story? they gave montoto a polygraph. it showed he had been deceptive, hiding something. >> what we learned was that he was having an affair with mrs. sutton. >> so montoto hadn't been straight with them, or with his good friend and partner, john sutton. but was he off the hook for murder? well, maybe. maybe not. when they checked phone records, it appeared montoto was still being deceptive. he told them the affair had been recent and brief, but that's not what the phone records said. did teddy montoto have some secret reason to kill his lover and her husband? they tested him for gunshot residue. he told them he might test positive. he was an expert marksman, had been shooting earlier that day. >> another twist in the story, but what did it mean in terms of the likelihood that he was

involved in this incident? >> again, it was early in the investigation. it was a lot of investigating to do. >> mostly, for days, they waited with everyone else to see if john sutton would survive the attack, to see if they would ever be able to ask him what happened. until now, all they had heard from sutton was this. >> are you bleeding? do you see any blood? >> i'm bleeding all over, yes. >> okay. >> i can't see. >> i can't see. it was almost a week after the shooting when sutton was awakened from a medically induced coma. he was going to live. but he was going to live with the scars of the shooting. he had lost an eye but worse, far worse, was the news the doctors gave him. he would never see again. he was blind in both eyes. >> shortly before i left the hospital, some ophthalmologist came around and very bluntly

told me there was nothing they could do for my eyesight. i was very unhappy, very upset about the eyesight. >> did you know right away he was going to be blind? >> no. i didn't. we didn't even know if he was going to live for a long time. >> be nice to look into his eyes and know he can see back and see you. >> it's different. it's different to look at someone who's blind. it's a different expression. >> though for a long time, any expression was masked by truly dreadful injuries. how many bullets had you been hit by? >> i had two in my head, in the right temple and i'm told out the left jaw. one higher towards my ear and one in the lower part of the jaw. >> those were only the shots to his head. the tip of his ring finger was blown off. other shots hit his thumb and shoulder. >> there were six pretty good

sized bullet holes. >> when he was well enough to talk to detectives, sutton told them what he could, the story of a man who barely witnessed the attack that killed his wife and almost killed him. he was a former college swimmer, so he was watching an olympic diving event in the master bedroom, he said. >> next thing i know, somebody was standing there in a black hat or visor, black shirt, black pants, face shaded by the visor, and opened fire. all i really remember was one bang. >> the bullets destroyed his right eye and severed the optic nerve in his left eye. the optic nerve connects the eye to the brain. without it, sight is impossible. but the bad news, of course, didn't end there. how did you find out about susan? >> at some point, i asked melissa how's mom doing. and melissa said well, she's not doing quite as well as you. they're working on her somewhere

else. so you need to hang in there. didn't really mean too much to me. i think i was hallucinating an awful lot. at some point, somebody told me that she had died. >> in fact, for weeks and weeks, sutton drifted in and out of alertness, dependent on others to save him. >> of course, my son was there. a bunch of my friends were there because i had multiple surgeries in that hospital. >> as he lay in that bed, sedated, medicated, breathing through tubes, thoughts, half a dream, terrified him. was the killer a hit man? was he coming to try again? >> i thought somebody was trying to kill me one night, so i raised hell. i said you know, call the police, you know, everything i could say to get some assistance. >> he was wrong. there was no killer. still, christopher demanded the hospital take special precautions. >> i do recall him very adamant that my dad be placed under john

doe so that whoever did this could not find him and finish off what they had started. >> so you were pretty paranoid guy lying in that -- >> most certainly. >> and with good reason. because the killer was still out there. knew exactly where john sutton was. coming up, but unfortunately, police had no idea where the killer was. >> everyone is somewhat of a suspect. you start with the family, you keep working your way out.

the fact that john sutton was alive at all after that mystery invader killed his wife and shot him in the face was a medical marvel, frankly. the rest of the news was not so good. when he was finally able to talk, sutton received a visit from police detectives. susan, police discovered, had been having an affair with sutton's law partner, teddy montoto. >> it's upsetting. i'm not excusing teddy. i'm not excusing anybody. so i don't focus on that, i can't change it, i can't change any of this. it's like a bad dream. >> but then the dream got worse.

teddy was a possible murder suspect. >> one of the homicide detectives related to me that there had been a problem with the polygraph. >> because he was actually a suspect. >> i suspect so. anybody that was probably anywhere near me was a suspect. >> but as sutton was absorbing the news of his wife's apparent betrayal, montoto slipped off the list of top suspects. for one thing, he couldn't have been the shooter. he was on the phone with susan when it happened. records confirmed he actually called the police before rushing to the sutton house. so as detectives eliminated early suspects like montoto, they went back to the basics of every homicide investigation. >> everyone is somewhat of a suspect. you start with the family, you keep working your way out. >> family. john and susan met on a blind date, were married a year later. from the beginning, they made family a very big deal.

but even though they were strikingly good-looking and financially successful and happy, they were stymied. no matter how they tried and oh, how they tried, they could not have children. >> she was sure that as much as anybody else wanted a baby, she wanted a baby more than anyone in the world. >> but if wishing couldn't make susan pregnant, said her sister mary, it could make her a mother by adoption. >> she got her wish, and as i said, it was the happiest day of her life when she brought christopher home. >> christopher sutton was born april 13th, 1979, and the day they brought him home, john sutton remembers every minute, every detail, even the green suit he was wearing. >> when christopher came to us at about two days old, very cute, was a lot of fun. >> it was a happy time. >> absolutely. >> susan quit her job to be a full-time mom, but susan kept trying to get pregnant, kept

suffering through years of failed fertility treatments and miscarriages. finally, adopted a sister for christopher, melissa. >> she was and always has been a little angel. absolutely. she would probably be upset with me saying this, but she was pretty close to perfect. >> which seemed to describe the family, too. they told the kids they had been adopted, didn't seem to worry them at all. >> there wasn't -- these are my biological and these are my adopted. i had a great childhood. >> and there were advantages to having a brother seven years older, especially when he grew to be a six foot 200 pounder. >> he was my defender, my protecter. someone made fun of me at school one time, he came and he kind of gave the kid a stern look, what a big older brother did.

you know, i think he was protective of me. >> after the murder, christopher resumed that protective role, this time for his father, who insisted that melissa should return to college in northern florida. >> the day after the shooting was her first day of college. >> oh, my gosh. >> and i was then and i am still proud that she managed to stay in school. >> during a long, arduous recovery, the many surgeries, the lingering fear, a protective layer formed around john's demeanor. he learned the hard way to keep focus in and emotion safely at bay. it was easier that way. survival mode. >> he just focuses on putting one foot in front of the other and i think i do the same thing. if you were to break down emotionally all the time or dwell on what happened, you wouldn't get out of bed. >> the doctors let him go home finally, but since home was not

exactly livable, he moved in with christopher at his townhouse. >> my house was a mess because it was a crime scene. the most logical place for me to go was not where the incident occurred, because we didn't know who was responsible, but this townhouse and that's where i went. >> a full-time nurse looked after him during the day. christopher and his girlfriend juliette driscoll, were there for him the rest of the time. three months after the august shootings when john decided he was ready to go home to the house in which the shooting happened, christopher went with him, eyes for his blind father. >> at that point, he was more involved in driving me around or some care giving. >> but now it was almost christmas. still no arrests. detectives were certainly following up leads, trying to find anyone with a motive to kill the suttons. though understand the digging

they were doing was mostly in mounds of dry, turgid paperwork, records of phone calls and the like. and then somewhere in the middle of that pile, there it was. and boy, was it a doozy. coming up -- >> he sat across from me and i looked at him and go we got something here. >> a phone call from a killer.

there's a reason, of course, why parents worry about the company their children keep. it was months after john sutton

lost his wife and his own eyesight to an intruder with a nine millimeter hand gun. miami detectives were plowing their way through mounds of interview transcripts and tips and e-mails and phone records, anything to narrow down their list of suspects. and in the pile of material from the phone company, they came across a name. >> we isolated within a three or four-hour period of the murder, five or six different names, and one of those came back to garrett kopp. >> who was he talking to? >> on the 22nd, there was probably i want to say maybe 13 phone calls, if memory serves me right, that were made between garrett kopp and chris sutton's cell phones. >> a lot of calls. >> lot of calls. >> lots of calls. on the day of the murder. quite probably meant nothing at all, of course. still, garrett kopp was a frequent visitor around the sutton house. he didn't seem to have a job or any direction in life. christopher saw some good in

him, apparently. hired him occasionally to do odd jobs. in fact, after the murder, christopher had kopp rip up and remove the bloody carpets from the crime scene. >> what sort of person did he seem like? >> when garrett was in the house, he was always, shall we say, at a distance. i honestly cannot recall any conversations whatsoever with garrett. >> but kopp and christopher called each other all the time, even the night of the murder. an hour after the shooting, just when christopher and his girlfriend juliette were coming out of a movie. >> we pulled the video from the amc movie theater, and it showed him getting right on his cellular telephone right after all the shooting happened. >> was there a connection here? with what happened? again, probably not, but just to cover all the bases, the detective ran a criminal background check on young mr. kopp and what do you know. >> he was arrested on august 23rd.

>> the day after the shooting. >> day after the shooting. i still get goosebumps when i remember that, because he's sitting across from me and i look at him and go pal, we got something here. >> indeed, they did. one day after the murder, garrett kopp was arrested for aggravated assault after an altercation at this apartment complex. big no-no. he pulled a gun on a couple of guys. happened in the town of homestead, florida, about 30 miles away from the crime scene. the detective called the homestead police department, talked to the arresting officer. >> i said please tell me it was a hand gun. he says it was. i said now please tell me it was a glock nine millimeter. he goes it was. i said now please tell me you have that weapon. he goes i do. >> bingo. >> we got to get that gun. >> yeah. >> art went down and picked up the gun and we submitted it to our firearms tech. >> the report came back clear as

day. this was the gun that killed susan sutton and blinded her husband. >> which obviously connects garrett kopp to that murder pretty intimately. >> absolutely. >> but detectives did not rush out and arrest kopp. for a simple but very important reason. there was a bigger question that needed to be answered. did his friend christopher know anything, was he even perhaps involved? shocking question, of course. this was sutton's son, the son who devoted himself to nursing his father back to health. but something about christopher bothered them. and had, ever since he was interviewed the morning after the murder. >> he said that i was at the movies, and said do you want to see the tickets. >> just had them right there, like that. >> basically to me it was like a red flag right there. i want to prove i'm at the movies. >> odd, perhaps. might mean nothing at all. the gun implicated kopp, of

course, but christopher? no real evidence to show he knew a thing. >> there were still a lot of pieces of puzzle that we're still putting together. >> we can't prove it yet. >> like for example, this big tantalizing piece of puzzle right here. what in heaven's name might an island in the far-off pacific have to do with the shooting of john and susan sutton? coming up, trouble in paradise. for a young christopher and his family. >> he was kidnapped in the middle of the night and he was 17 years old.

amazing, with that garden variety assault case in homestead, florida led to. garrett kopp was arrested with the gun that turned out to be the murder weapon in the sutton case. the very same garrett kopp who talked on the phone so often with christopher sutton. the friend who had called christopher right after the shooting. though now the complexion of the investigation changed. >> we're trying to think why would garrett kopp do this. i mean, he's like a 20-year-old kid. obviously there's a tie with christopher sutton and him. >> as for christopher himself, the detectives had no trouble

finding people with an opinion about him. >> the cops should be looking at christopher sutton, because of the lengthy family history of problems that john and susan had had with their son christopher, who was a handful from a very early age. >> a very early age, actually. as john sutton recalled all too clearly. did he get into fights at school? >> i can remember that happening early on in preschool. >> it got worse as christopher got older. did he get into trouble? >> absolutely. there was vandalism. not only of our own things, there was vandalism of other people's property. >> they sent him off to boarding schools then, but he didn't last at any of them, failed and got kicked out. of course, the whole family tried, said his sister, melissa. the trouble wasn't a lack of love. not at all. was there a sense that christopher was loved?

>> i mean, no doubt about it. >> but neither love nor money could prevent christopher from always ending back in the same place, trouble. >> i know that he dealt drugs and at one point, he was arrested for it when i was younger, and you know, that was something that my father being a lawyer as well as a parent, what do we do. >> finally, in 1995, when christopher was 16, when counselors and boarding schools and tough love had all been tried and found wanting, john and susan looked away, far, far away, to find some help. on the pacific island of western samoa there was a place called paradise cove, a so-called boot camp for troubled kids. behavior modification, their specialty. it's a long way away, samoa. was that part of it, that it would be a good idea to have him far away for awhile? >> we weren't focused on finding

the farthest place we could possibly send him. we were very hesitant about samoa, but we investigated it rather thoroughly. >> it was expensive. paradise cove charged about $25,000 a year. but -- >> we just had enough. >> yeah. >> what else could we do. >> the suttons knew there was no way christopher would agree to go on his own, so attorney sutton did what attorneys do best. and got a court order to have christopher forcibly sent to samoa. >> he was kidnapped in the middle of the night and he was 17 years old. >> actually kidnapped him? >> yeah, put him on a plane. he was sent to western samoa. >> but christopher would not break so easily. and paradise cove was no paradise. in fact, there were many reports of physical abuse and restraints used on those who were uncooperative. something christopher learned when he first arrived. >> we knew that christopher sutton had complained that he had been hog-tied, beaten.

>> when his family was allowed to visit him about a year later, there did seem to be a distinct change. a huge improvement. they found a buff, cleaned up young man who excelled at sports. it was, as you can clearly see, a happy family reunion. >> it was really happy event. we cried, we hugged, we said, you know, our hellos and loved each other, and he was proud of what he'd learned and showed off at least to us. >> then five months after this reunion, christopher turned 18. time for him to come home, or so he thought. >> he was banking on getting out when he turned 18. but we also learned that john sutton being a lawyer, had an order signed by a judge that said when you turn 18, if you haven't completed the course, you're going to stay. which infuriated christopher sutton. >> why did you decide to keep him there when he turned 18? >> we had concerns that he

wasn't ready to return. he had not quote, graduated the program. >> how did he feel about that? he was, as you can clearly see, christopher was 19 and a changed man when he turned from his protracted stay in somoa. >> we met him at the airport. >> he was happy to see you? >> absolutely. >> joyous reunion? >> thrilled. >> the suttons went on a family cruise. a reward for his son. that's where he met his future fiance. she quickly became a member of the family. john sutton even got her a job at his law firm. >> she's what i imagined marrying into the family.

she was a great influence on my brother and the family. >> christopher got his act together, enrolled in college, started working. his parents helped out by buying him a $300,000 condo. >> he started up his own company, which in retrospect looking at everything he had done from arrest to drugs, you know, this is good behavior. we were all happy that things were better. >> anyway, by the time of the murder, christopher was 26 and samoa reseeded into his distant past. >> all she knew about her brother was he was a little rebelous as most teenagers are. >> i said something along the lines of no, i don't know any reason why he would want to do this. >> something her father shared. >> i asked, could your son have something to do with this? and he said, i don't believe so.

>> so perhaps garret kopp acted alone after all. but detectives were convinced christopher had to be mixed up in that awful shooting somehow. someone must know, and they were right. someone did. miami homicide detectives larry belyeu and art had a problem. they were pretty sure the man who shot john and sue sutton was now a frequent visitor of the sutton home. >> he gets arrested. >> and they at least suspected the sutton's own son, now john's caregiver was all mixed up in it somehow. >> i was becoming more concerned. >> john sutton, a sitting duck for another attack? one that might finish him off? >> you must have found it a little worrisome that john sutton was actually living with his son christopher and being cared for by christopher. >> sure. >> still, they worried but did

not act. even though they knew that kopp, the shooter, they were sure, was still hanging around. >> isn't that right, that kopp was still there? >> and we didn't want to tip our hand? >> but should christopher have been a suspect at all? after all, does this sound like the behavior of guilty men? gary kopp and christopher sutton actually called detectives to tell them they found new evidence at the crime scene, a bullet casing under the carpet. >> by the way, i found another casing. come on. >> maybe that's an indication they didn't do it. >> i didn't think so. >> but that's what any good defense attorney would point out. >> sure. >> i don't know how we missed it. >> we were a little missed. >> the detectives talked to camp alumni.

this former paradise cove resident was there when christopher got the news that he would have to stay well beyond his 18th birthday. >> i know he was upset. i know he was mad at his family for that. >> but another resident said christopher was a lot more upset than that. >> christopher made comments that his parents were going to pay. >> but they could see his recent behavior wasn't lasting. even juliet's influence couldn't keep christopher from slipping up. yes, he returned to college, but soon dropped out. and he did form a company but the company folded. >> he didn't seem to be motivated. we tried to get him to stay in jobs. nothing seemed to be working. what john sutton didn't know was that his son had gone back to the one job he seemed to be good

at -- selling drugs. nor did he know that christopher's friend garret kopp was one of his best clients. kopp had been buying and reselling the drug, mostly marijuana and xanax. and he and christopher spent plenty of time sampling the goods. >> it wasn't just drug deals. they hung around a lot. >> phone records showed a spike in calls between the two. 300 calls in three months. >> that's an awful lot of months in three months if you have 300-some-odd phone calls. >> could they be talking murder? speculation, of course. but -- then after the murder, prosecutors discovered it was christopher who put up the money to bond him out, even drove him to court. hardly the sort of thing a drug dealer would do for a mere customer.

>> going to court with him, bonding him out. there was more to this friendship. >> john and sue sutton knew nothing of what the police were discovering. garret kopp was still coming around. so solid evidence or no, detectives decided it was time to act. they needed a confession to make their case. >> i told the investigators, bring him to me. coming up -- a showdown with a killer.. >> what did he want you to do? >> go in the backdoor, walk in and shoot him. >> case closed? far from it. when blind justice continues.

detective larry belyeu and art had a theory to explain the shooting of john sutton and the murder of his wife susan, which was that christopher sutton

hired his dope smoking buddy garret kopp to kill his parents. but it was really just a theory, and while the case against kopp was strong, the evidence against christopher was purely circumstantial. little more than guilt by association. the samoa boot camp might have given christopher a motive, but -- >> i certainly needed more than that to make the arrest. i decided it was time to act. we were going to need a confession, i believe. >> and given what they had against kopp, the detective gambled that the shooter might roll over on the son. >> and he denied all? >> that wasn't my gun at all. i said it looks like we're going to be here a long time today. >> did you know how the house was set up? >> yeah. >> i said i don't believe you did this on your own. he said you have to look out for me and my family because i'm afraid of this.

>> chris was going to kill him? >> yes. i didn't believe him, but that's the story he wanted to give me. >> after having given himself an excuse, kopp finally confessed. said christopher was behind it all. gave him the gun, the money to buy the black clothes. hired him as a hitman. >> did he form late the plan or was it a combined effort between you do? >> he did. >> what did he want you to do? >> go into the black door and shoot him. >> did it upset him to tell you this story? >> no, not that i could tell. >> did he seem relieved? >> no. when we were talking, he was pretty calm. matter of factually talking about it. >> kopp was charged with first degree murder. he was allowed to see his father, his girlfriend and his son then taken off to jail. so case closed?