Granat Co-Defendants Due In Court for Parent Slay Case

Caption: Young John Granat’s Facebook profile picture in September 2011, when he was charged in the murders of his parents, John and Maria.

Two of the four young men, who were all teens when charged in the brutal slayings of John and Maria Granat, are due back in court for a pretrial hearing in the nearly four-year-old case.

The Palos Township couple’s son, John Granat, 21, and Mohammad Salahat, 20, are scheduled to appear Monday before Judge Neil Lineham in Bridgeview.

Young John, striking a rapper pose on his stagnant Facebook page as “John Johnny Hash Granat,” was 17 and a senior at Stagg High School in September 2011, when prosecutors said he organized three friends in a plot to murder his parents, supposedly after a falling out they had when his parents discovered he was growing marijuana in the house.

John, 45, and Maria, 42, were found bludgeoned to death reportedly by baseball batsthe morning of Sept. 11, 2011. An autopsy found that Maria Granat had also been stabbed 20 times.

LISTEN to AUDIO of John Granat’s 911 call to police.

Young John was arrested a few days later and charged in their murders, his friends were charged the next month.

Christopher Wyma, the son of a Palos Hills police officer, has also turned 21 behind bars at Cook County Jail where he awaits trial. Wyma was 17 at the time of his arrest and knew Granat from Stagg.

The third man charged, Ehab Qasem, was a 19-year-old Stagg graduate and attending Moraine Valley Community College when prosecutors said he clubbed Maria Granat to death before stabbing her. Qasem is now 23.

The youngest of the four, Salahat, was 16, who claims he was waiting in the car unaware and unknowing of the alleged carnage transpiring inside the Granats’ house. Salahat turned 17 two days after the couple’s slayings.

Prosecutors say the four teens planned the murders over Skype, using the code word “concert” for murder. The teens also divided $35,000 cash that they found in the Granat home, $21,000 of which was recovered.

John and Maria Granat operated several businesses that took in large amounts of cash, including a cleaning service headed up by Maria. An employee at an Oak Lawn bank said at the time of the murders that it wasn’t unusual for the couple to make frequent cash deposits totalling thousands of dollars.

So why is it taking so long for a trial date to be set? For justice to be sought for the victims?

A Bridgeview Courthouse judge who is not involved in the case said that defendants have many constitutional rights that control how the government investigates, prosecutes and punishes criminal behavior. This is especially true of defendants in a high profile murder case, who may possibly spend the rest of their lives in prison if convicted.

Since the fall of 2011 some of the private attorneys hired to represent the young menhave withdrawn from the case, with public defenders appointed in their places. The new attorneys needed time to familiarize themselves with the voluminous files and that state’s evidence.

Subpoenas have also been filed for each defendant’s cell phone records, or in Qasem’s case, multiple cell phones.

Wyma’s cell phone needed to be cracked by the U.S. Secret Service, the last remaining piece of evidence in pre-trial discovery. At a January hearing, Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Donna Norton said that Wyma’s cell phone records were being downloaded to a hard drive in the upper floors of the Bridgeview Courthouse “as we speak.”

Wyma’s attorneys are also trying to get statements he made to police upon his arrest suppressed at trial, and, the defendants have requested that they each be tried separately.

There are also signs of possible dissension in the alleged accomplices’ ranks and that the almost four years in jail while awaiting trial may be taking its toll. At a court hearing in January, a sheriff’s officer grabbed Granat by the collar of his jail uniform andphysically dragged him out of the courtroom, after Granat exchanged heated words with his co-defendants.

Salahat blows kisses to his mother and sister when he enters and exits the courtroom, who have shown up faithfully to every one of his court hearings.

Wyma is due back in court on June 18. Qasem doesn’t have another hearing until July 20.

On a recent late spring afternoon, the house on 81st Court where Poland-born John and Maria Granat lived up until their brutal murders was still and quiet. The front lawn had been freshly mowed with the grass piled neatly in diagonal rows like a hayfield.