how old your mom was? 57. no, you can t put that on. she was a nice 45. let s put it, leave it at that. reporter: the guests laughed. the law partner went home. son christopher and his girlfriend went 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. coral gables, 911. i need the police at my house. i have just been assaulted. what happened, sir. somebody came in and shot me. shot you? 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 my face. john sutton, tough as nail, take no prisoners lawyer was barely conscious as he begged the 911 operator for help.
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. keith morrison: teddy montoto told police he d 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 the whole story? they gave montoto a polygraph. it showed he d been deceptive, hiding something. what we learned was that he was having an affair with mrs. sutton. keith morrison: so montoto hadn t been straight with them, or with his good friend and partner, john sutton .
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 at every homicide investigation. everyone is somewhat of a suspect. i mean, you know, you start with the family and you keep working your way out. keith morrison: family john and susan met on a blind date, were married a year later, and from the beginning 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. keith morrison: 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,
four hour period of the murder, five or six different names. and one of those came back to garrett kopp. reporter: who were they talking to? on the 22nd there was probably, i want to say maybe, 13 phone calls, if memory serves me right. they were made between garrett kopp and chris sutton s phone calls. a lot of calls. reporter: lots of calls. on the day of the murder. quite probably meant nothing at all, of course. still. garrett kopp was 20. a visitor around the sutton house. didn t seem to hatch a job or any direction in life. but 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. reporter: what sort of person did he seem like? when garrett was in the house, he was always, shall we say at a distance.
his law practice, susan worked as office manager was booming. just that week he 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 near the rear of the house, near the pool, the door latch showed it had been broken long before the night. the killer had gone in through the sliding glass door, had walked all the way through that house, no ransacking. drawers were not opened. and 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. reporter: no. it was apparent they were targeted it was an assassination, it was a hit. reporter: an assassination? a hit? that sort of crime just didn t happen in staid coral gables.