Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS)

Trial for a Paradise Cove survivor starts.

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Pile of Dead Kids:

--- Quote ---"He was an amazing volleyball player. They played volleyball on the beach,'' Sutton said.
--- End quote ---

Even now! Even still! These quotes get me every time. The sheer inability of these people to take hints is unearthly, as if they really are possessed. What the fuck is powering these programs to own these people's minds like this?

You sent him there, he hated you afterwards, and then he sent somebody to blow the back of your fucking head out, and you're still going on about how great the place was! What the fuck?!

Ursus:
Video news coverage at the link...

Hitman Garrett Kopp's former prisonmate testifies for the defense. There's also brief mention of Nick Gallagher, who apparently knew Christopher Sutton through time shared at Paradise Cove.

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CBS4.com
Jul 15, 2010 6:39 pm US/Eastern

Jailbird's Testimony Helps Son In Murder Case
Jailmate Says Confessed "Hitman" Acted Alone
Son Is Accused Mastermind

Reporting: Gary Nelson

MIAMI (CBS4) — The man accused of hiring a hit man to kill his parents in their opulent Coral Gables home, got help from a jailbird, according to the defense team which opened its case Thursday. The jailhouse witness bolstered the defense claim that the confessed gunman in the case acted alone.

Christopher Sutton is charged with master-minding the shooting that killed his mother, Susan, and left his father, John, wounded and blinded for life.

Three-time convicted felon Junior Cime appeared in court wearing an orange prison uniform. He had been brought to testify from the Okeechobee Correctional Institution where he is serving time for armed robbery.

Cime testified that, in a prison conversation, admitted shooter Garrett Kopp said he entered the Sutton home in August of 2004 with the intention of committing a burglary and was surprised to find the house occupied.

"He was looking for cocaine," Cime quoted Kopp as saying in their prison discussions. "He told me that he found out there was someone in the house and he confronted that person and the person did not comply."

"Did he tell you what happened next?" asked defense attorney Bruce Fleisher.

"He shot the person," Cime replied.

Cime's testimony supports the defense claim that Kopp, an on-again, off-again pal of Christopher Suttons thought the son kept cash and drugs in the house and went there with theft, not murder in mind.

Prosecutors say Christopher Sutton arranged to have his parents murdered because he hated them for sending him to reform school, and wanted to inherit their wealth.

Earlier Thursday, Nick Gallagher, a friend of the defendant testified that he never heard Sutton say that he wanted to harm his parents. Gallagher testified that he got to know Sutton at a reform school that their parents had sent them to for behavioral problems. Gallagher said Sutton did well at the school, but admitted on cross examination that Sutton was angry at his parents for sending him there.

After the shootings, Gallagher said John and Christopher Sutton stayed at his home in Virginia "for about a week" while the father sought specialized treatment for his wounds at Johns Hopkins Medical Center. Gallagher said Christopher was "caring" and "attentive" to his father during the visit.

Jurors also heard from Eric Pope, a friend of Sutton since childhood, who said that Christopher doted on his father after the shootings, caring for the elder Sutton at a condominium in Coconut Grove. "He rearranged his life to take care of him," Pope said.

The defense also tried to raise doubt in the prosecution's case by calling a Miami-Dade homicide detective who acknowledged that investigators thought business enemies might have been behind the shooting and murder. Lt. Rosanna Cordero-Stutz said John Sutton, an attorney, told police that he thought he and his wife may have been targeted by someone from whom he had won a big court settlement.

On Wednesday, Sutton's father testified against his son. John Sutton, a civil attorney, was severely wounded and blinded in the August 2004 attack after a gunman entered his home and shot him and his wife. Susan Sutton was killed in the attack as she lay in her bed.

He told jurors about the night of the attack.

"I see a black shirt, black hat, black pants, and all of a sudden, bam!" Sutton told a Miami-Dade jury. "In an instant, bam! And I woke up and I was on the floor."

"I knew I was in big trouble," Sutton said of the moments after he was shot. "I knew my head and face were a mess."

Sutton testified that his son was a problem kid, a constant discipline problem.

"We started having problems, it was one problem after another," the father said. "It became too difficult to deal with. We were at our wit's end."

Sutton said his son was deeply resentful over being sent to a school for teenagers with behavior problems. "He was most unhappy and upset," the father said.

The parents got a court order to keep their son in the reform school beyond his 18th birthday. "We were not satisfied that he was following the rules of the program, or that we could handle him on his return," Sutton testified.

"We wasted 30 months of his life," Sutton quoted his son as saying after he returned from the school on the Pacific island of Samoa. "That was his phrase: 'You wasted my life there'."

Sutton testified that his son, who refused to work or attend school regularly, made increasing monetary demands on his parents and that in the days before the shootings the father, an attorney, had come into a large sum of money from the settlement of a lawsuit.

Christopher Sutton's eyes appeared to well with tears at times as his father testified against him.

John Sutton said he learned in his hospital bed a week after the shootings that his wife had been killed.

"I remain upset I didn't go to her funeral," he said. "They said, 'you're crazy.' I said, 'you guys could have taken me on a stretcher.'"

The elder Sutton says he has tried to "make the best of what happened, although there's not much best about it."

The gunman allegedly hired by Christopher Sutton testified against him last week. Garrett Kopp, who has pleaded guilty and is serving a 30-year sentence, said he entered the Sutton home on the night of August 22, 2004 with the intention of shooting and killing them as part of a plot devised by Sutton.

Miami-Dade Homicide detective Arthur Nanni detailed cell phone records that show the defendant and confessed triggerman had called each other hundreds of times, including calls the day of the shootings.

Prosecutors say Christopher Sutton left a sliding door open to allow Kopp to get into the house the night of the shootings, and went out with his girlfriend to eat and catch a movie.


CBS4's Gary Nelson contributed to this report.


© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc.

Ursus:
There are two versions of this Miami Herald article by David Ovalle. This must have been the earlier one:

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The Miami Herald
Posted on Friday, 07.16.10

Accused parent killer Christopher Sutton testifies

BY DAVID OVALLE
dovalle@MiamiHerald.com


Christopher Sutton, on trial for the attempted murder of his father and the murder of his mother, took the stand, Friday, July 16, in Miami-Dade Criminal Court, Judge Stanford Blake's courtroom. Sutton cried while he was questioned by his lawyer about the time he spent in Samoa, after being sent there by his parents during high school. MARICE COHN BAND / MIAMI HERALD STAFF

Christopher Sutton, accused of hiring a hit man to murder his parents in Coral Gables in 2004, denied Friday ever wanting to harm them because they shipped him to a tough boarding school in Samoa.

Sutton, 31, took the stand Friday morning in his own defense.

He is charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder in the shooting that killed his mother, Susan Sutton, and left his father, lawyer John R. Sutton, wounded and blind.

Sutton, during questioning from defense lawyer Bruce Fleisher, spent the morning describing his experiences after being shipped off to the Paradise Cove program in Samoa.

He told jurors about how his parents sent two men to whisk him away from a friend's house, then take him on a series of plane rides that ended days later on an isolated beach in Samoa.

"I was effectively, hostilely arrested by two strangers,'' he recalled.

At Paradise Cove, Sutton said, the boys lived in grass huts, slept on mats and were forced to do push-ups as punishment for not following the rules. They were assigned "categories.'' As a newcomer, he was on the lowest level, unable to even go to the bathroom without being accompanied by a supervisor, he said.

When he first arrived, Sutton testified, he was reeling.

"I was in what they call denial,'' he cried, weeping so dramatically that Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Stanford Blake called a break.

But Sutton said the program became less rigid as the years progressed, and he eventually made friends and came to realize the program benefited him.

His relationship with his parents, upon his return to the United States, was fine, he said. "I was very happy to see my parents. I cried when I got off the plane. Lots of hugs and kisses,'' he said.

After talk of Paradise Cove, Sutton's testimony took a darker tone when he admitted that, after his return, he began selling drugs.

Prosecutors say that Sutton, still seething about being sent to Samoa and wanting his father's wealth, dispatched a hit man to kill his parents inside their home.

One of his drug buyers, pal Garrett Kopp, testified last week that Sutton hired him to shoot and kill the Suttons inside their home. But Sutton's defense lawyer claims Kopp, a drug-addled burglar, was acting on his own when he broke into the home and shot the husband and wife.

Sutton was continuing his testimony Friday afternoon.


Copyright 2010 Miami Herald Media Co.

Ursus:
Comments left, such as there are remaining (at least three did not make it past the moderator), for the above article, "Accused parent killer Christopher Sutton testifies" (by David Ovalle, 07.16.10, The Miami Herald):


sariaa wrote on 07/16/2010 03:07:42 PM:
Sounds to me like a spoiled punk who wouldn't listen to his parents and needed to be sent to a toughen up school. He gets what he deserves!

Copyright 2010 Miami Herald Media Co.

Ursus:
Here's the later article:

-------------- • -------------- • --------------

The Miami Herald
Posted on Friday, 07.16.10

Accused Christopher Sutton takes the stand
Christopher Sutton, accused of hiring a hit man to kill his wealthy parents in Coral Gables, took the stand in his own defense on Friday.

BY DAVID OVALLE
dovalle@MiamiHerald.com


Christopher Sutton, on trial for the attempted murder of his father and the murder of his mother, took the stand, Friday, July 16, in Miami-Dade Criminal Court, Judge Stanford Blake's courtroom. Sutton cried while he was questioned by his lawyer about the time he spent in Samoa, after being sent there by his parents during high school. MARICE COHN BAND / MIAMI HERALD STAFF

Despite being whisked off to a tough reform school in Samoa against his will, Christopher Sutton testified on Friday that he never wished any harm on his parents.

"I was very happy to see my parents,'' Sutton told jurors of his homecoming more than a decade ago. "I cried when I got off the plane. Lots of hugs and kisses.''

But Sutton's testimony, in his trial for allegedly hiring a hit man to murder his parents, took a darker tone when he had to admit to long-selling drugs to the man who shot his mother and gravely wounded his father inside their Coral Gables house in August 2004.

Sutton's much-anticipated testimony supported the defense theory of the case: that a drug-addled Garrett Kopp -- the admitted shooter -- broke into the Sutton family home on his own accord to find a drug stash.

On the stand, Sutton said he had hidden two pounds of marijuana and some Xanax in boxes that stored his childhood train set in his former bedroom at his parent's house. The night they were shot, Kopp -- slurred and mumbling -- kept calling to bug him for drugs.

"I told him I didn't have access to it,'' Sutton told jurors. "I left it in my room in my parent's house.''

Prosecutors will cross-examine Sutton, 31, on Monday. He is charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder in the shooting that killed his mother, Susan Sutton, and blinded his father, lawyer John R. Sutton.

SEETHING OVER PAST

Prosecutors say Sutton, still seething about being shipped off to Samoa in 1995 as a troubled teen, wanted his parents dead to cash in on their wealth.

Kopp testified last week that Sutton hired him for the assassination, securing him a pistol and even showing him how to get into the Gables house through the back sliding glass door. Observers had long expected Sutton -- who before trial wanted to represent himself in court -- to testify in his own defense.

Looking different from the goateed dope peddler arrested in 2005, Sutton -- husky and balding -- on Friday wore a white dress shirt, droopy black slacks and thin eyeglasses. He explained little about his teenage outbursts that put him at odds with his parents, though he said they didn't approve of his "gothic'' or "rocker'' attire.

Questioned by defense lawyer Bruce Fleisher, Sutton described how his parents sent two men to snatch him and take him on a series of plane rides that ended days later on an isolated Samoa beach.

At the Paradise Cove reform program, Sutton said, the boys lived in grass huts, slept on mats and had to do push-ups as punishment for not following the rules. They were assigned "categories.'' As a newcomer on the lowest level, he was unable to even go to the bathroom without being accompanied by a supervisor, he said.

The first few months was a shock, Sutton testified. "I was in what they call denial,'' Sutton cried, weeping so dramatically that Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Stanford Blake called a break.

MOTIVE TO KILL

But later, Sutton became more upbeat, proudly showing off pictures of his family, including his late mother, visiting him in Samoa.

The defense contends that Sutton harbored no animosity toward his parents, meaning he had no motive to kill. Sutton testified that as the years passed at Paradise Cove, he realized the program benefited him. But he admitted he grew angry upon learning he had to stay past his 18th birthday.


Copyright 2010 Miami Herald Media Co.

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