Prescription For Murder?

Did Zoloft Make 12-Year-Old Chris Pittman Murder His Grandparents?

(CBS)  For three years, Chris has been held in a juvenile facility.

His lawyer, Hank Mims, was determined to get Chris out on bail. The judge tentatively agreed to allow Chris out on a $175,000 bond. But there was a condition. Chris had to stay in the state of South Carolina. And the rest of his family lived in Florida.

Chris' grandmother, Del, and Chris' great grandmother, Ruth, traveled to South Carolina, where they rented an apartment to give Chris a place to stay.

At the Charleston, S.C., courthouse, Chris, now 16, went on trial for the murders of his grandparents.

From the outset, it was clear that Prosecutor Barney Giese believes this is a case of murder, pure and simple. "This is as vicious a case as you're going to see. Vicious," saids Giese, who argued that the case has nothing to do with the medication Chris was taking.

"I don't think that Zoloft, to be honest, had any effect on him. I really don't. Our law is very specific. Did you know the difference between right and wrong?"

Giese and his chief deputy, John Meadors, believed they would be able to prove that Chris knew exactly what he was doing when he killed his grandparents in Chester on Nov. 28, 2001.

"I think Chris found out when he came up there that they were loving, caring grandparents," says Meadors. "But they also said, 'We're going to discipline and try to get him straight.' And I don't think he wanted that."

They said events began spiraling out of control that morning, when Chris attacked a much younger student on the school bus. The Pittmans then became more upset when their grandson acted out at church that evening, becoming fidgety, and kicking the piano bench.

That night, prosecutors said Chris simply snapped and killed his grandparents. Why? Prosecutors said Chris learned a lesson when he ran away from his father's home in Florida one month earlier. "I think he learned what not to do next time," says Giese. "And what not was to leave witnesses."

They also say that what Chris did next was not the behavior of a person under the influence of medication. "He's rational enough to know that he's left evidence, which is his dead grandparents. He's rational enough and non-psychotic enough to know that he needs to burn it," says Meadors.

At that point, Chris stole money, a small arsenal of his grandfather’s weapons, and escaped in his grandparents' truck. He was 35 miles away when the truck got stuck in the woods, and Chris ran into two deer hunters. His first words, says Roland Pennington, was that "a black man killed his grandparents and brought him here."

The hunters, Pennington and Terry Robinson, found Chris' story and his behavior to be very strange. Robinson says Chris "showed no kind of emotion, like somebody that would be kidnapped and brought here."

Chris was found at 10 in the morning. His story about a black kidnapper was so detailed that police initially believed him. But later that evening, Chris' story began to unravel and he finally told the truth to a sheriff's investigator.

Lucinda McKeller, now with SLED, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, was then a sheriff's investigator experienced with working with children. "He was cool and calm," she says, of her conversation with Chris. "I was very impressed with him."

McKeller says Chris remained calm throughout an afternoon of playing cards and watching TV, until he finally told the truth and admitted to the killings: "He said, 'I'm not sorry.' He said they deserved it."

Arson investigator Scott Williams also questioned Chris. "To actually hear him say, 'I'm not sorry' to what he had done to the people that he supposedly loved the most in his life was pretty shocking," says Williams, who adds that Chris did not seem psychotic.

"This was a very meticulous crime. He was smart enough to do it at 12," says McKeller.

It's no wonder then that the prosecution was opposed to allowing Chris out on bail.