Tearful Killer Begs Family for Forgiveness

BRIDGEVEW, IL -- A tearful Christopher Wyma broke down during his sentencing hearing and apologized to the family members of John and Maria Granat, whom he helped beat to death over five years ago, stating that he wasn’t a monster.

Wyma was 17 and a senior at Stagg High School when he helped his friend John Granat murder his parents on Sept. 11, 2011. Wyma and Granat, now 22, were both convicted of the Palos Park couple’s slayings during a double-jury trial in January.

If young John Granat was the mastermind of the plot to murder his parents, Wyma was the “second in command” who helped recruit the other players and chose the weapons for the couple’s execution -- two aluminum baseball bats and a machete.

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“He and John Granat fed off each other,” Cook County prosecutor Donna Norton said. “It was Wyma who held the plan together.

Norton replayed a video clip from Wyma’s interrogation for Cook County Judge Neil Linehan at Wyma's sentencing on Friday. In it, Wyma angrily confronts a Cook County Sheriff’s detective after learning that co-conspirator Ehab Qasem ended up with a bigger cut of the money they stole from the couple's home after beating them to death.

“How much more? How much more?” Wyma shouts in the video.

Defense attorney Daniel Nolan argued that sentencing guidelines have changed for kids under 18 charged with murder -- even though that law was not in effect at the time of Wyma’s arrest in 2011.

“We can’t use the same prism for a 17-year-old as we do a 25-year-old,” Nolan said, citing studies of brain development affecting the adolescent’s executive functions for self-control and decision-making. “This science is real. The brain does not fully mature until the mid-20s.”

Wyma’s mother, Beatrice, took the stand, describing the alleged emotional and physical abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband, Thomas Wyma Sr., an officer with the Palos Hills Police Department.

Now separated from her husband, Beatrice Wyma claimed that her son Chris often intervened when he thought his father was going to hit her. She further alleged that her estranged husband was an alcoholic and womanizer, who verbally abused her and her three children.

She said she did not become aware of her son’s marijuana use until “the end,” before his arrest, and sent Christopher to a counselor. Beatrice Wyma denied that she received money given to her son by John Granat, or from Christopher’s marijuana enterprise.

Beatrice Wyma said she was asleep when her son and his friends returned to their home in Bridgeview in the early morning hours of Sept. 11, 2011, after carrying out the murders of John and Maria Granat. Chris Wyma burned the gloves and bleach wipes used to clean blood off the aluminum bats in the back yard, then stashed the bats under the Wymas' front porch.

Tommy Wyma, Jr., 24, and his 21-year-old sister, Catherine, also described a hot-headed father, who they claimed punched holes in the wall and brought women back to their house. They recalled their brother as a talented artist, loving and protective of his mother and siblings.

Nolan asked the judge to give Wyma a “glimmer of hope and a ray of sunshine,” using the guidelines of Illinois's new juvenile sentencing guidelines. He said in the five years since's he's been incarcerated, Wyma has never gotten into trouble in jail.

“We’re asking you to look at who he was at 17, and not who he is now,” Nolan said. “What happened then was an aberration. He was a good kid, under the control of Johnny Granat, who was throwing money around like lettuce, like he was printing it in his basement.”

Against the advice of his attorneys, Wyma read a statement, describing the damage he and his friends did as “horrible.”

“I’m a human being with feelings and emotions … at the trial when I saw the [crime scene] pictures, I couldn’t believe what was done,” Wyma told the Granat family. “I just want you to know that I’m not a monster. I’ve lost my life and may never see the light of day again. I hope one day one of you guys forgives me.”

Breaking down, Wyma said he has “cried” over the pain he’s caused, and professed his love for his family.

Linehan said Granat and Wyma’s behavior was “intertwined” and could not be separated. The judge said Wyma was “irredeemably corrupt,” but stopped short of calling him evil, as he had Granat.

“You never truly gave an accurate confession,” Linehan told Wyma. “I go back to a statement made in [co-defendant Ehab Qasem’s] testimony after the murders, when you said that Mr. and Mrs. Granat ‘deserved it.’ That pretty much sums up who you are.”

The judge sentenced Wyma to two concurrent sentences of natural life without parole. Nolan said he would appeal the sentence.

Outside the Bridgeview courtroom, Wyma’s mother, brother and sister wept and hugged each other. In another corner of the hallway, the Granat family hugged prosecutor Donna Norton.

“It’s over,” the prosecutor told them. “After five-and-a-half years, it’s finally over.”