Convicted Parent Killer Loses Appeal To Overturn Conviction

PALOS, IL — A former Stagg High School student's appeal of his 2017 first-degree murder conviction in the slayings of his parents was denied last month after a judge rejected his request for a new trial.

John Granat was a 17-year-old high school senior when prosecutors said he showered three friends with money and gifts to persuade them to help him murder his parents in September 2011. Granat claimed in his appeal that the trial judge erred when he denied motions to quash his arrest and suppress evidence obtained without a search warrant.

Prosecutors said Granat and his friends, fellow Stagg senior Christopher Wyma, 17; Ehab Qasem, 19, of Hickory Hills; and Mohommad Salahat, who would turn 17 a few days after the murders, arrived at the Granat home in the 12700 block of 81st Avenue in unincorporated Palos Park, in the early morning hours of Sept. 11, 2011.

While Salahat drove around the neighborhood, Wyma and Qasem, acting on Granat's orders, beat Granat's parents to death with aluminum baseball bats while the couple were asleep in their beds, prosecutors said. Later, according to prosecutors, the teens went to Wyma’s home in Bridgeview, where the four destroyed evidence and divided up $40,000 cash found in the Granat house. Prosecutors said the four teens orchestrated the murders on Skype, using the code word "concert."

Around 7:18 a.m. Sept. 11, 2011, prosecutors said Granat called 911 to report that he had found his parents, John, 44, and Maria, 42, dead in the bedroom of their upscale home. Granat told the 911 dispatcher that his parents were "drowning in their own blood" when he went to wake them for church. The teen also claimed he was a "hard sleeper" and was asleep in the basement while his parents were being murdered upstairs, according to court testimony.

When officers arrived at the Granat home, they found no signs of forced entry, although the second floor where his parents' master bedroom was located had been ransacked. The high school senior repeated that he had been home all night with his parents. Prosecutors said Granat's demeanor was unusually calm, considering that he was freshly orphaned. He told Cook County Sheriff's Officer Elizabeth Hogan that he would have to take over his father's contracting business or "20 people would be out of work." Later, he asked if the fire department was going to "clean the mess" inside the house because he planned to keep living there, prosecutors said.

Det. Sgt. Stephen Moody, of the Cook County Sheriff's Police, was the lead investigator on the scene. He said Granat's alibi began falling apart when Palos Heights Officer Christopher Hordorowicz told Moody how he had stopped a nervous, mumbling Granat at 5:18 a.m. for a broken rear reflector light on his Jeep, a few hours before the teen placed the 911 call. Granat said he had been at a friend's house in Bridgeview. After the officer noticed a bottle of bleach in the car, Granat said it was for cleaning his pool, but the Granat home did not have a pool, prosecutors said.

Moody decided to detain Granat at the police station. When he arrived at Maywood headquarters, Granat was watching the Chicago Bears game. As Moody and his partner interrogated Granat, the high school senior repeated that he was asleep in the basement the morning of his parents' murders because his bedroom was hot.

Confronted about the early morning traffic stop when he claimed to be at home sleeping, police said Granat admitted going to co-defendant Wyma's house in Bridgeview, where he and other youths had gathered to smoke weed on the front porch. After falling asleep on a sofa on the front porch, Granat told the detectives that Wyma woke him up around 5 a.m. because his father, a Palos Hills police officer, would be coming home from work. Granat said he fell asleep in the Jeep in his driveway after being stopped by Hordorowicz.

"I find it hard to believe that Chris's father, who's a cop, is going to let you kids smoke weed on the front porch," Moody told Granat.

Granat was charged in his parents murders' on Sept. 13, 2011. A month later, Wyma, Salahat and Qasem were arrested and also charged with first-degree murder. The three had continued going to school in the month leading up to their arrests.

In January 2017, Granat and Wyma were tried together before two juries. Both were convicted and sentenced to life without parole in the Illinois Department of Corrections.

Granat's attorneys filed an appeal contending that the trial judge — Neil Linehan — erred in denying a motion to quash arrest and suppress evidence because police arrested without a warrant or probable cause "based on a hunch" that Granat was "involved in an instant crime."

Illinois Appellate Justice James Fitzgerald Smith denied Granat's motion to reverse his conviction or grant a new trial, supported by Justices Aurelia Pucinski and Terrence Levin.

"[The t]rial court properly denied defendant's motion to quash arrest and suppress evidence where there was sufficient probable cause for [the] defendant's warrantless arrest, as the totality of the circumstances present to police at the time justified belief that his parents were murdered and that he was the perpetrator," the ruling said.

In exchange for Qasem's testimony during Granat and Wyma's double-murder trial, Qasem received a 40-year sentence for one count of murder. Salahat, who was 16 at the time of the murders, agreed to a similar plea in 2016.