John Dutton was killed in a planned assassination orchestrated by Sarah Atwood, who hired a group of professional hitmen to murder him. The killing took place at night while John was asleep in his home. Three masked assassins subdued him, injected him with a drug to render him unconscious, and forced him to shoot himself in the head to make the death appear as a suicide. They also planted oxycodone near his body to support the staged suicide narrative
. Although Jamie Dutton, John's son, had expressed anger and a desire for his father's death, he did not directly participate in the murder. Sarah acted independently in hiring the hitmen without involving Jamie or others
. Following John's death, his children Beth and Kayce doubted the suicide explanation and sought to uncover the truth, leading to the reopening of the investigation. Sarah Atwood was later killed in retaliation for her role in John's murder
