'You Are Not Only Irredeemably Corrupt, You Are Also Evil,' Judge Tells Parent Killer

BRIDGEVIEW, IL — The American-born son of two Polish immigrants who came to the United States in search of a better life was sentenced to natural life for their brutal slayings.

John Granat was 17 when he masterminded a conspiracy to murder his parents as they slept in their beds, recruiting and grooming three other teens into crushing John and Maria Granat’s skulls with aluminum bats, and then finishing off his dying mother by stabbing her repeatedly on Sept. 11, 2011.

The sentencing hearing in Judge Neil Linehan’s Bridgeview courtroom opened with emotional victim impact statements by the Palos Park couple’s siblings, who described how the couple helped them come to America, and the double trauma of learning of their loved ones’ murders at the hands of their own son.

Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Deborah Lawler stood in front of a bearded Granat clad in a striped jail uniform as she read the anguished statements. The 22-year-old killer averted his gaze from the prosecutor and his aunts and uncles sitting in the courtroom.

“In addition to telling my mother that her beloved daughter was murdered, I had to tell her that her beloved grandson was accused of killing her,” Lawler said, reading Kathy Sieczka’s words about her older sister, Maria. “The worst part of it, you never showed any remorse or regret. How could you be so evil?”

Lawler and her co-counsel, Donna Norton, showed a video clip that wasn’t played during Granat’s January trial, showing the teen calmly sitting in an interrogation room before being grilled for 15 hours by Cook County Sheriff’s detectives.

“This clip shows a defendant without a care in the world hours after his parents' murders,” Lawler said. “He’s whistling, singing little songs to himself, and doing tricep lifts to get in a little exercise.”

Lawler argued that Granat did not meet the conditions of a new Illinois law that allows juveniles who commit murder when they are under age 18 to receive a maximum 20-year sentence, even though the law was not in effect when Granat and his friends committed the crime.

“He’s shown his ability to manipulate other individuals, whom he sought out for their strengths and weaknesses,” Lawler said. “But for their son, his parents would still be alive.”

Assistant Public Defender LaFonzo Palmer put Levi Glass, a criminal mitigation specialist and a senior lecturer in social work at Governors State University, on the stand. Glass testified for the defense that Granat was “manipulated and coerced” by the co-defendants, especially Christopher Wyma, who is set to be sentenced on Friday.

“Chris and his friends had something on him about their marijuana business,” Glass said. “These were not reciprocal friendships. He provided funds and material items to them. He wanted to help his friends because ‘they didn’t have.’”

The expert witness described his jailhouse interviews with Granat, who spoke of a loving close family life, Granat’s close relationship with his maternal grandmother and traveling to Poland and Caribbean cruises with his parents. Glass maintained Granat got along well with his peers at Alonzo Stagg High School but “didn’t fit into the culture at school because he is bilingual.”

Glass also spoke of a psychiatric evaluation performed in the immediate days following the murders at Cook County Jail’s Cermak Hospital, which termed Granat as a “faker and malingerer.” Glass cited studies of frontal cortex development in the teenagers’s long term view and decision making.

Palmer said that Granat was not a person who is “irreparable” arguing for two consecutive 20-year sentences under the juvenile sentencing law.

“Yes, he should go to jail and he can be rehabilitated,” the public defender said. “He was a child when this occurred. There is no way to give his loved ones what they want because [John and Maria] are never coming back … but another loved one is also going away.”

Granat did not wish to make a statement before sentencing.

Judge Linehan said that Granat did not meet considerations in the juvenile sentencing law because he wasn’t physically or sexually abused at home, did not suffer from mental illness and appeared very much loved by his family.

“If nothing else, his parents may have spoiled him,” the judge said. “This is a horrific crime committed in the most brutal and heinous manner. He was the mastermind.”

Before imposing sentencing, Linehan said in his 15 years as a prosecutor and 19 years on the bench, including dealing with thousands of victims and defendants, and hundreds of murder cases involving “dice games gone bad, teenagers fighting over who sat in the front seat, and arguments over banana pie and pork chops,” that the Granats’ murders “are as bad as any that I’ve seen.”

The judge said that even though Granat paid others to do his killing, he found Granat to be the “mastermind.” Linehan also said he was struck by a statement Granat made on the police interrogation, in which the teen described finding “his father’s ass on the ground.”

“You are not only irredeemably corrupt, you are also evil,” the judge said. “Every time the bat struck your parents, each time the knife went into your mother, that was your cold, calculating hand.”

Granat was sentenced to terms of natural life, to be served concurrently, for the murders of his mother and father.

“I find the sentence appropriate,” Linehan said.

A smirking Granat was led out of the courtroom.