Hours after his parents' slayings, John Granat Jr. told police his father had forced him into a life of crime and that the family business of selling marijuana is what got them killed, according to video testimony played in court Thursday.

“My dad was a top drug dealer,” Granat Jr. told investigators in September 2011, according to the video testimony. “That's why they called him ‘G,' for Granat.”

A month later in October 2011, Christopher Wyma, of Bridgeview, initially told the same investigators that Granat Jr. killed his parents with baseball bats and forced him and another friend to become unwitting accomplices before slowly implicating himself more and more over hours of interrogation, according to video evidence played Thursday in Bridgeview court.

“I'm sorry if I go to jail for this,” Wyma told investigators. “My bad.”

But Cook County prosecutors said Granat Jr., Wyma, both 22, and two others conspired to kill John Granat Sr. and Maria Granat in the early morning hours of Sept. 11, 2011, inside their home in an unincorporated area near Palos Park and rob them of thousands of dollars in cash. Granat and Wyma are on trial, both charged with first-degree murder for the affluent couple's slayings.

Prosecutors said this week that Granat Jr. became enraged with his parents after they caught him growing marijuana in his room a month before their deaths. He allegedly groomed his co-conspirators and promised them money after his parents were dead, prosecutors said.

Cook County Detective Sgt. Steve Moody, one of the investigators who interviewed both Granat Jr. and Wyma, testified Thursday that there was no evidence that Granat Sr. was or ever had been a drug dealer.

Ehab Qasem, 24, of Hickory Hills, who also is charged in the Granats' deaths, is expected to testify against Granat Jr. and Wyma as part of a deal to plead guilty and receive a sentence of 40 years in state prison.

Prosecutors allege Wyma and Qasem stalked into the Granat home before beating and stabbing the couple while Granat Jr. counted stacks of cash his parents kept in the house.

A fourth defendant, Mohammed Salahat, 22, of Palos Heights, pleaded guilty in 2016 for acting as the getaway driver. He received a sentence of 35 years in state prison.

Granat Jr. told police he found his parents dead in their bedroom when he woke up about 7 a.m. that morning, after sleeping through the night in their basement to get ready for church, according to testimony. But a Palos Heights police officer had stopped Granat Jr. on Harlem Avenue about 5:20 a.m. that same morning, prosecutors said.

Moody and another investigator methodically picked apart Granat Jr.'s story before confronting him with the information about the traffic stop, according to the video evidence.

Prosecutors alleged Granat Jr.'s story changed over time. During the video evidence, Granat Jr. pivoted and told police he instead slept at his friend Wyma's house until 5 a.m. and believed drug dealers were responsible for his parents death.

Granat Jr. then claimed he was a drug dealer and that he was targeted by someone who owed him money, according to the video evidence. He said he overheard that people were coming to kill him that night. “And I didn't want to be there to die,” he said.

Later, Granat Jr. said his father was the real drug kingpin and that he told him to leave the house the night they were killed, according to the video evidence. He claimed his father wanted him to take over the family drug business, according to the video evidence.

“He wanted me to be the next ‘G,' ” he said.

He eventually told investigators people targeted his parents to rob them, and he implicated Qasem as one of the attackers, according to the video evidence.

Wyma, who seemed frenzied during some of the interrogations on Oct. 9 and 10, initially placed the blame for the murders solely on Granat Jr., saying that for weeks Granat Jr. had wanted to kill his parents, according to the video evidence. He allegedly admitted to destroying evidence and claimed Granat Jr. paid them for helping and had promised them jobs in his father's construction company.

According to the video evidence, Wyma at different points admitted to hitting Granat Sr. in the stomach and Maria Granat while she was covered with a pillow, but he claimed they were already dead. But he was able to mimic to investigators the “tiny little noises” Maria Granat was making in her bed after the attack.

“My intentions going there were not to kill anyone,” Wyma told investigators.

Nick Swedberg is a freelancer.