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Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences.
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Listener discretion is advised. I said, you're not going to be successful and kill them.
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I'll take you out and then I'm going to have to explain to people that I'd rather be tried by 12 than carried by 6.
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If you follow true crime and have for a while, then there's a place in Florida you might be familiar with.
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It's right in the heart of Florida, and it's far from the beaches and tourist traps.
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It's a little place called Polk County. It's mostly farmland, chain restaurants, and retirement communities like the rest of Florida.
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but you may be familiar with the tough-on-crime press conferences that the sheriff loves to hold,
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many of which have gone viral over the last couple of years. In Polk County is the small city of Auburndale.
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Nestled between Lakeland and Winter Haven, two shitholes, by the way, it takes pride in being quiet, friendly, and the kind of place where neighbors recognize each other.
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Inside the gates of the Hamptons, a 55-plus country club-style retirement community,
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are golf carts, manicured lawns, and rows of tiny pre-manufactured homes. At sunset, neighbors wave from their front porches as golf carts hum down the street.
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It's quiet, safe, or, well, it should be. But on September 8, 2024, just after 6 in the evening, that calm was shattered.
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Behind the white siding of 77 Hewlett Drive, a boy's frantic voice reached a 911 operator.
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My mom is asking to be a DMF now. She's bleeding out. Please help. Your mom is doing what?
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My mom is bleeding out. She's bleeding out. Okay. On the call was 17-year-old Colin Griffith.
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He told the dispatcher that his mother needed EMS because she was now bleeding out.
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The ambulance couldn't get there fast enough. Colin's panic was obvious as he pleaded for them to help his mother.
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She didn't have a lot of time. Colin's 39-year-old mother, Kathy, was bleeding from the neck and fading fast.
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He said she was non-responsive and not breathing before he said, I don't think she's alive.
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Colin's voice trailed off as he realized his mother might already be dead. The dispatcher guided him through performing CPR.
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Colin got his mother flat on her back, positioned his hands over her heart, and started pumping.
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The dispatcher counted him down. Four, one, two, three, four, one, two, one moment.
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As the dispatcher relayed information to first responders, Colin continued to pump his mother's chest.
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I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Listen, what caused the bleeding?
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She got so excited. We love getting you to know if you go on it. I know it's difficult to understand, but Colin said,
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We got into a fight. She lunged at me with a knife, and she fell on it. He explained it was a long and drawn-out argument that ended with his mother trying to attack him with a knife.
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But instead, she tripped and fell on it. She now had a gaping wound that was spilling blood.
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Until there wasn't any left. The wound was so large that the only thing CPR had done
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was help pump the rest of her blood out onto the kitchen floor. Only then did the dispatcher instruct him on how to stop the bleeding,
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get a clean, dry towel, and apply pressure to the wound. The only thing was, she had no blood left.
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It was already too late. Even though he himself thought it was already too late, Colin followed the dispatcher's instructions until first responders arrived and flooded the quiet retirement community with flashing lights and sirens.
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As I walked into the house, I immediately began to clear the house as my partner walked
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up to Colin Griffith. And then after clearing the house is when I walked back into the living room area, made
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it known that it was clear. And that is when my partner advised me to take Colin Griffith outside.
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And while walking into the kitchen, I saw a knife, a blood covered knife over in front
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of the washer and dryer to my left. I saw the subject in the kitchen. In the kitchen, I saw a large pool of blood around the subject's head and neck area,
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as well as blood spatter going up the side of the cabinet Deputies cleared the house so Fire and Rescue could enter safely They made contact with Colin and immediately noticed something odd For doing normal CPR and everything assuming everybody been taught and seen videos on doing CPR from beside the person
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never over top their head, possibly blocking airways. The home was narrow, no larger than a single wide trailer.
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There wasn't enough room for Colin to kneel next to his mother, so he knelt over her head.
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But from the looks of her wound, it didn't matter if he was doing it the right way.
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The stab wound itself did not seem to be very wide. It was kind of narrow in size.
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Upon further inspection, after starting the CPR, it was obvious that every time I did a compression,
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there was air that was coming through the wound itself. so it was obviously pretty deep.
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It looked like a lot of the vasculature and the stuff inside of the wound itself
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was very obvious and could be seen. And they had cut major areas such as the arteries.
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EMTs rushed inside and surrounded her body, but there was nothing they could do.
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Only 13 minutes after the 911 call started, Kathy was pronounced deceased. But her cause of death was questionable.
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The EMTs didn't have all the information from the 911 call. They didn't know about the long fight.
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All they knew was what they saw, and it seemed improbable that Kathy tripped and stabbed herself directly in the jugular.
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The knife entered the front part of her neck and exited the back left. The entire prospect was too... cartoonish.
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Stranger still was Colin's behavior in the moments after first responders arrived.
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When I first walked him outside, he was a little bit frantic. It seemed like something was definitely going on.
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And then as he began to explain what happened is when he became very calm, his demeanor completely changed.
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From my personal experience, it was a little odd in nature. He didn't seem very distraught or upset.
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He seemed kind of calm upon my entering the residence. and then upon exiting the residence he seemed to almost have a not a full argument but somewhat
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argumentative with the the deputies that were trying to assist him out of the residence he was
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calm too calm he had just witnessed his mother die but he wasn't distraught he wasn't even panicked
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like in the 9-1-1 call before deputies could ask him any questions he exclaimed i know my rights
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I want an attorney. On the 911 call he claimed her death was accidental after he and his mom
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got into an argument that got out of hand. Then he asked for a lawyer before any questions could
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be asked. But later he would offer up another explanation. He said he was on the floor and
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his mother was on top of him with a knife. She was bearing down ready to stab him when
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at the last second, he turned the blade towards her and she fell on it. Just like in the movies, you know?
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Colin was placed in the back of a patrol car as the nervous neighbors looked on.
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Every law enforcement officer who witnessed the scene knew Kathy didn't fall on that knife.
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But the only person who could tell them what happened had just lawyered up. Was Kathy a deranged mother in a homicidal rage? Was she mommy dearest?
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Or was Colin a cold and calculated killer? Only a thorough investigation would provide that answer.
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Inside the Hamptons, a quiet retirement community in Auburndale, Florida, 17-year-old Colin Griffith called 911.
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A teenager in panic, he begged the dispatcher to save his mother as she bled from a wound to the neck.
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But when deputies arrived minutes later, they found a different Colin. His mother Kathy lay in the kitchen.
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It was too late to help her. And the boy who sounded so desperate on the phone was now composed Cold even What started as a call for help had become a homicide investigation The scene inside the house was grim but outside others had seen and heard things that would soon cast Colin story in more doubt
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Neighbors along Hewlett Drive told investigators what they witnessed that evening.
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Let me start from the very start. Yeah. I got a phone call yesterday from the lady that owns the property, because I do.
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When you say the property, what property are you referring to? The White House. Okay, the one that's directly across where the deputies are at?
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Yeah. What is the name of the lady you spoke with? Susan, Susan Durkham. I don't know how to, she's got a weird last name.
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The owner of the home was Colin's grandmother, Susan Detman. She called her neighbor the day before to let her know Colin would be arriving and not to worry.
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My grandson is going to be coming to stay at my house. I just want to let you know if you see a black car in the driveway, it's my grandson.
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And I said, oh, OK, yeah, I know, Colin. Yeah, no problem. That was the end of the conversation.
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Like any good neighbor, the residents of the Hamptons looked out for each other.
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I mean, they have a lot of free time on their hands. It is, after all, a retirement community.
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Now, that white car didn't show up till today. Do you know whose white car that is?
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It's a young lady with dark hair. Have you ever seen her before? Yeah, I've seen her over there before.
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And you don't know who she is? Susan said it's her daughter. Almost immediately after Colin's mother arrived, they started arguing.
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This car shows up today and she pulls in the driveway and the kid comes out and she backs out of the driveway and she pulls it right there.
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And she gets out where the purse and walks up there and him and her started arguing.
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and then start throwing stuff in a black car. I don't know what it was. It looked like clothes and stuff.
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And next thing I know, he pulled her by the hair of the head and pulled her back into the house.
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This neighbor could hear the argument, but not what they were saying. Another neighbor heard a little more.
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Then I heard her say, let me go, let me go. You've got my head. You're hurting me. You're hurting me.
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And he drug her in the house. Two neighbors witnessed the start of the argument.
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As soon as Kathy got out of her car, she started talking with Colin. The neighbors couldn't hear what they were saying, but their body language screamed argument.
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Then Colin grabbed a fistful of his mother's hair and pulled her inside as she yelled,
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Let me go. You're hurting me. You know, I knew some problems that she had with her grandson before.
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What were those? What are those problems? Well, she said that the mother and the grandson were at each other last winter,
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and the grandson come and stayed here. I guess there were some problems here because the cops were out here two or three times last winter.
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Apparently, this wasn't the first time Colin had fought with his mother. The previous year, Colin stayed with his grandmother to let things cool off between him and his mom.
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But the tension between them never left a simmering point. I called Susan. As soon as all this happened, I called Susan. I said, Susan, something's going on over at your house. I said, there's cops everywhere. I said, your grandson's outside. It looks like he's crying. She said, where's my daughter? I said, I don't know.
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That tension must have built and built as it erupted in a fight in the driveway, ending with Kathy being stabbed in the neck.
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And then while you guys were out there doing that, guess what phone call I get? What's that?
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His probation officer calls. Who's that? Call us. Called you? Uh-huh. What? I got the phone call on there from a 946 number.
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And she says, is this Kay Jones? I said, yeah. She says, well, I am calling so-and-so's probation officer.
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I'm a juvenile detention officer. Is Colin okay? And I said, yeah, there's cops sitting out there talking to him, but I don't know anything else.
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And she said, did you hear any gunshots or anything? I said, no. I said, what's going on?
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She said, is Colin okay? And I said, yeah. And she hung up. The neighbors at the Hamptons didn't know Colin's background,
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but a call from his juvenile probation officer hinted at him being a troubled teen.
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When his grandmother finally arrived home, she found her normally quiet street in chaos immediately.
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She knew her daughter was dead, and she also knew who had done it. How was the relationship at the beginning?
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In the beginning, it was fine. Okay. And then there started to be problems. Okay.
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Can you describe the problems? He didn't want to do what Kathy told him to do. Kathy would basically, you know, harp on him.
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When Colin attacked his mother and stomped on her hand, she was only trying to discipline her 17-year-old son.
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He hadn't done the chores she assigned him. She threatened to take away his Xbox and cell phone.
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That's when Colin flipped out. So anyway, so I was there and he pushed her and stomped on her hand.
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Colin stood up, looked at his mother in the eye, and said, Let's go. Before pushing her to the ground with a single move and stomping on her hand.
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Needless to say, the police were called. I'm in a constant state of fight or fight.
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And I don't know if I think she's going to do something. Even if she's not, I might act.
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I'm not going to, like, go crazy or anything, but I'm not sure how to stay. Yes So then he was in the police squad Kathy refused to go to the hospital for her hand And he called me over to the police squad and said Mama you know she pushed me first
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And I said, Colin, I was there. That's not what happened. I said, I agree that she was very aggressive to you.
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I said, but you pushed her and we talked about this and then you stomped on her hand.
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Colin tried to say she attacked him first, but his grandmother witnessed the whole thing.
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He was arrested and charged as a juvenile for domestic violence. So he was put on probation.
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Okay. For that incident? Yes. Was he charged with domestic violence? Yes. He was. He was. He was.
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He was put on probation. He was supposed to be getting off of probation this month.
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Colin was processed, charged, and sentenced to probation. The court recommended he remain separate from his mother for some time before going home.
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So he lived with his grandmother for a couple of weeks, as if that's a solution.
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Am I the only one noticing a lack of male paternal figures in Colin's life? When she came to pick him up, he ran away.
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So then he was gone for two days. We couldn't find him because she came and he said he looked at me and he said,
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You are fucking crazy if you think that I'm getting in the car with my mom. You have gone completely nuts.
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And when Colin, we talked about all this, he said, I'm not going back. And he took off.
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It was pouring down rain. So finally, you all picked him up and took him to DHS or whatever it's called in this state.
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DCF? Yes. So he ran away from DSF. Dyslexic much? He was out again, so finally he was picked up and law enforcement brought him home.
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And that's when they said, we're going to have police coming, you know, every so often, like every day.
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It's anywhere from, I think, 7 in the morning to midnight to check and make sure you guys are okay.
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After a couple of weeks at his grandmother's, Colin refused to return to his mother's house.
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He ran off into the rain and was gone for two days. When the police finally found him, they took him into the crisis stabilization unit
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CSU is a short-term specialized facility that provides immediate round-the-clock psychiatric care
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and support for individuals experiencing a severe mental health crisis such as suicidal thoughts, severe agitation, or psychosis
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There, Colin was evaluated, deemed not a threat to himself or others, and released
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They love their catch and release at these places Because they just don't have the money, the funding, the beds
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To keep people Why is that when we spend so much money in this country? So much more than we even make, really, in taxes every year
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We can't even provide basic services I wonder who's sneaking into the cookie jar when we're not looking
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Anyway, the front doors opened wide for Colin and he walked straight out of that facility.
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Cured, supposedly. And when the doors opened, the young man came straight up to me
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and approached me and said I needed to be Baker Acted. Were you surprised to hear that?
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Oh, yeah. Because usually people want to leave. Did you ask him why he said that?
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Yes, I did. Because it's unusual. He said, I need to be Baker Acted because I'm either going to go kill myself
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or, and he said his mother. Colin didn't want to go back home with his mom. He went further saying he would throw them out of the car,
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shoot them, or stab them. He also mentioned that his grandmother wasn't safe if he went home with her either.
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Maybe sometimes we should listen to these people when they're telling us exactly what they're going to do.
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No? Okay. Suit yourself. Colin was placed on a psychiatric hold for three more days.
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Eventually he had to go back home with his mom, though. Anyway, for a while, everything was okay.
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A couple of officers were signed to him, and they would check in at random times every day to ensure he and his mom were okay.
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He even started to go to church with one of the officers. He graduated from high school a year early, got a job, and enrolled in college.
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Then the tension between him and his mom arose again. By September 7, 2024, the day before Kathy's death, they were doing nothing but arguing.
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So Colin called me at one and said, my mom kicked me out. What am I supposed to do?
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I said, you need to go back home. He said, no, no, I don't feel comfortable. Kathy had kicked him out of the house, so Colin loaded up his car and went to Grandma Susan's.
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Susan was once again inserted into the middle of the argument. She spoke with Kathy, and even though she kicked him out, she now demanded that he come home the next morning.
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She wanted Colin to be at home at 10 o'clock in the morning. 10 o'clock in the morning?
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Yes. Okay. She said if not, she was calling the police, that she was turning him in as a runaway.
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I said he can't be turned in as a runaway. He's at my house. And Detective Lacey even said that's fine.
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And she said, well, he didn't tell his probation officer. I said, yes, he did. He left a message that he was going to his grandmother's house.
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Yes, she said, I'm going to come and get him. He's going to follow me with with his car.
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He didn't have gas. She had blocked his checking account, his check card, so he didn't have access to that.
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I told Colin, I said, your mom's going to be there. I said, don't touch her. Be nice.
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Sadly. Colin didn't take that advice. Kathy lay lifeless on her mother's kitchen floor in a pool of blood.
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Colin sat in the back of a patrol car waiting to be taken to the station and charged with murder.
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In the days that followed, detectives spoke with the rest of Colin's family, trying to understand exactly what had happened between him and his mother.
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His grandfather wasn't surprised at all. He and his mom were having difficulties,
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and when she'd set down limits on behavior, he would not just rebel, he would become violent.
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And they had asked me because Susan said, hey, I can't deal with this. And he can't be with Kathy because he's threatened to kill her.
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And I said, he's threatened to kill you too, right, Susan? She said, well, yes, of course he has.
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I said, okay. And I told her multiple times, I don't care what you have to do, get rid of the boy.
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Well, will you take him? I said, hell no. I just know but hell no. Yeah. That boy is thrashing the head.
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He is weaponized. He is going to kill you, your mother, me. Colin's grandfather painted a frightening picture of Colin and Kathy's relationship.
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He was a violent teenager who didn't like authority or responsibility. I mean, who does, really?
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Both Grandma Susan and Kathy were afraid of him. But what do you do with a 17-year-old you can't control?
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Ladies, any ideas? Man, this society is cooked, isn't it? He also just told me in detail four months ago how he wanted to murder his mother.
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And he really wanted to literally see the blood squirt out of her neck. That's what he wanted.
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He told you this four months ago? Oh, yeah. More than anything else, he wanted that.
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I mean, he talked about strangling her, and he said, but I could do that. But really what I want to do is I want to watch the blood squirt out of her and watch the life squirt out of her.
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I said, that's not really good. He goes, yeah, but it's what I want to do. And so I just let the kid go and be like, well, tell me more.
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Tell me more. This sounds interesting. Yeah. Oh, I want to see the gore. I want to watch it pump out of her.
00:26:19
Wow. You are a puppy. He goes, yeah. I said, well, that'd be a lot of power. He goes, yeah.
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Detectives were building a case. The story of the fight and falling on a knife was way too far-fetched.
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Colin seemed to be troubled. And there were records of this with every interaction he had with law enforcement
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and the Department of Children and Families. Even his own grandfather saw him as a danger to those around him.
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And there was a big reason for this. As if the murder of a woman by her teenage son wasn't horrific enough, the Polk County Sheriff held yet another press conference to inform the public of the rest of the story.
00:27:02
A cold-blooded murder of a 39-year-old mother by her 17-year-old son. It all started on September the 8th, which was this last Sunday, when we got a 911 call from Colin Griffith, who's 17 years of age.
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Here's what he said. He said he and his mother had a very long fight, and she fell on a knife and killed herself.
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When the deputies arrived, he met the deputies outside, and he was calm, cool, collected, not upset, and he had blood on him.
00:27:44
What we found inside was this knife. This knife is 12 inches long, and of the 12 inches, 8 inches of that is the blade.
00:27:57
So he's saying that his mother fell on this knife. The medical examiner said it is not reasonable or plausible that she died the way that he said she did.
00:28:13
Just didn't happen. There were witnesses outside the mobile home that actually saw Colin drag his mother into the house by the hair on her head.
00:28:27
Colin is about six foot and 160 pounds. That wasn't even the most damning evidence that Colin had purposefully killed his mother.
00:28:37
But let me go through some details, because as we start to peel back the layer of this onion,
00:28:45
we find out that this is not just a singular event with Colin stabbing his mother in the neck and ultimately killing her.
00:28:55
Here's what we found. And follow me as I read a timeline to you. On February 14, 2023, on Valentine's Day in Lincoln County, Oklahoma, Colin said that his dad pulled a knife on him.
00:29:13
And he shot and killed his dad. That's right. His father was named Charles. He shot him once in the chest and once in the head, and he claimed self-defense.
00:29:25
That's right. Colin had killed his father just 19 months earlier in Oklahoma. Are the pieces starting to fit together yet?
00:29:35
Dispatch got a call of a shooting. We responded. Had a 15-year-old male caller on the phone said that his dad had a knife and had him cornered and he had to shoot him.
00:29:48
Dad has a girlfriend, a fiancé, that was at the grocery store. and so she returned since then and we talked to her So she been notified as well There are several firearms in there so I don know We haven done any kind of trace or anything on that yet
00:30:06
But there is lots of guns in the house. The Lincoln County Sheriff's Office and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigations charged Colin with murder in the first degree.
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They dropped the charges less than a month later. They said they could not disprove Colin's assertion of self-defense.
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So he was released. He claimed self-defense, and a month later, all charges were dropped.
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He just spent a couple of weeks in jail, and that was it. Shortly after, Oklahoma sent him to his mother in Florida.
00:30:48
There, he was arrested for beating up his mom, ran away, and was put on psychiatric hold twice.
00:30:55
If only humans were good at seeing patterns, you know? So now we're to the fateful day on September 8th.
00:31:02
Our investigation clearly and unequivocally shows that that circumstance did not occur like that.
00:31:10
In fact, he used similar language to when he made the 911 call, what, 18 or 20 months earlier, when he shot and killed his father.
00:31:21
The authorities did notice a pattern. While it was possible that Colin acted in self-defense against one parent, it's highly improbable that he would have done so again with a different one.
00:31:33
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, and we won't be fooled again, or some shit, I don't remember.
00:31:39
It's important to understand when you look at this, you see a kid. When I look at him, I see a psychopath.
00:31:50
I see totally erratic behavior to the point that he's already at 17 years of age,
00:31:57
shot and killed his father and got away with it and stabbed his mother in the neck
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so hard that the knife went all the way through and was to the back of her neck.
00:32:12
And she died there. He's being charged with first-degree murder, obviously, and we're asking the state attorney's office, it's their decision,
00:32:21
but our state attorney's office is the greatest to prosecute him as an adult. Now he's killed two people and killed his mother and father,
00:32:32
And I can assure you beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt based upon his conduct, had he gone to live with his grandmother at the end of this and she crossed him, she would be next.
00:32:47
He's violent. He's dangerous. He showed zero remorse. Zero remorse. He is a dangerous human being.
00:32:59
nothing gives you the right to unilaterally stab your mother and kill her. And I'm not convinced, based upon what I know now,
00:33:11
now Oklahoma didn't know this then, there were no witnesses to him shooting his dad.
00:33:18
I'm not sure now that he didn't set his dad up to murder him. It turns out that Colin's story was much more complicated than anyone realized.
00:33:29
It started long before he was even born. Colin's Aunt Christine says it all started back when Kathy was only 13.
00:33:39
Her ex-husband actually had a crush on me and was pursuing me. And when I was like, I am not interested.
00:33:47
Aunt Christine is talking about Charles Griffith, Colin's father and Kathy's ex-husband, who everyone called Chuck.
00:33:55
But when I finally was like, you've got to stop, well, actually, he didn't stop.
00:34:01
He kept calling my house. And then he would start talking to my sister. He just latched on to her.
00:34:08
Chuck pursued Christine and called her house all the time. But when she told Chuck she wasn't interested, he went for the next best thing, her younger sister.
00:34:19
They became inseparable in a bad way. We found out that she was pregnant shortly after one of her many runaway incidences.
00:34:29
And I begged her to give the baby up for adoption because I knew that if she hadn't, that her life with Chuck was never going to be good.
00:34:38
So anyway, obviously she didn't. Christopher is here. Well, so they end up getting married and she's married at a really young age, 14.
00:34:46
He's what now, 17, 18 at that point? No, no, no. He was 19 when he got her pregnant at 13.
00:34:58
When Kathy got pregnant at 13, her mother gave her a choice. Put up the baby for adoption or marry Chuck.
00:35:07
She chose poorly. She chose to marry Chuck. So at 14, she got her GED and she started taking college classes because Chuck never had a job.
00:35:18
Never had a job. And he always liked little girls. So he never was a teacher or anything like that?
00:35:24
Oh, no. No, he was a teacher. That's how I found the little girls. Okay. But Kathy got his degree for him online.
00:35:30
Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Of course he liked little girls. He impregnated a 13-year-old after he was already a legal adult.
00:35:41
Kathy and Chuck got married and moved into their own house. It's a playhouse. Kathy gave birth to their first son, Christopher, and then attended school online
00:35:51
She got teaching degrees for herself and for Chuck But Chuck used that degree not to teach but to get close to underage girls That is until he would get caught
00:36:05
And he would get fired. Chuck was unemployed a lot. The family moved often, presumably for work and to escape whatever stigma Chuck stirred up, being the pedo that he was.
00:36:20
Fast forward to 2019, and the family was in Florida. But I guess Kathy had a student that she had kind of adopted, for lack of better words.
00:36:30
Her name was Gabby. Gabby, like, even moved in with them. I mean, Kathy called Gabby her daughter.
00:36:36
And then it turns out that Chuck and her were in a relationship, and Chuck left Kathy for Gabby.
00:36:44
Kathy had taken a 16-year-old student named Gabby under her wing and into her home.
00:36:50
It was an act of compassion for a young girl with few options. Chuck, on the other hand, suddenly had a young girl living in his house.
00:36:59
Oh boy. When Kathy discovered the affair, it was the final straw. She had put up with his infidelity long enough.
00:37:08
The divorce was nasty. Colin's older brother, Christopher, was already out of high school,
00:37:13
so Kathy and Charles fought over 12-year-old Colin. Eventually, Charles, Colin, and Gabby moved to Oklahoma.
00:37:23
Colin became separated from his mother and the rest of the family. Why was Dad so bad to Colin? What did he do?
00:37:30
Well, he isolated him. He wouldn't allow him to leave the farm. He wouldn't let him go to school. He refused to have him in scouts.
00:37:40
And he kept saying, I can't put him in school because I'm afraid Kathy will come to the school.
00:37:45
and bring DHS in, and then they'll get involved, which DHS in Oklahoma did get involved,
00:37:53
but all they said was they need family counseling, and they left it at that. Colin did have family counseling.
00:38:02
It was court-ordered, and his father refused to take him. He took him once, and then he said, no, I'm not taking him back.
00:38:08
So did they have any type of communication while he was in Oklahoma? No, he would not let Colin talk to Kathy.
00:38:17
At all? Like they never spoke or did she every once in a while, like Christmas or birthdays?
00:38:21
Like how did how did she talk to him? Well, usually Chuck wanted extra money and then he would let her talk to him, but only on speakerphone in front of him.
00:38:33
There was one time where he like got a phone and called Kathy. and then when Chuck found out about it, he really, really beat him.
00:38:43
For three years, Colin only had his father and the barely older Gabby to interact with.
00:38:50
Things were bad and only got worse. Go back three years, 11 to 14 years old, like he's still wearing the same clothes as an 11-year-old was wearing as a 14-year-old was.
00:39:01
It was to the point that one of my siblings or my mother said, like, hey, the shoes that he had weren't fitting him.
00:39:09
It was to the point that his toes were, like, crunched up and everything. Like, their shirts and pants and everything that he was wearing, like, barely fit him or they were too tight.
00:39:19
He was malnourished. Him just going to, like, a Walmart with my sister was causing them to have social anxiety and stuff like that, which...
00:39:29
He said his main food source a week was like a gallon of milk, steak and potatoes.
00:39:35
I had to teach him how to like use a towel after a shower. Because when he first originally got here, he would just come out of the shower and put his clothes on.
00:39:46
And drip dry. In my head, that's triggering, you know, some type of abuse. Because when you're that age, how do you not know how to use a shower?
00:39:54
He was on a futon mattress in the laundry room. As Colin got older and entered puberty, he discovered his sexuality, another thing Chuck had a problem with.
00:40:10
Colin said that his dad would have sex right in the next bedroom with him so that he could hear everything that was going on.
00:40:17
because Colin felt that he was gay, and so the dad was trying to change him out of being gay.
00:40:25
Colin felt that he was gay? Yes. Okay. Yeah. You realize how mentally perverted Farrell was.
00:40:33
He'd beat Kathy. He'd beat the kids. I mean, this guy was a major psychological manipulator and abuser, physically, mentally,
00:40:44
but this guy was a complete psychopath. Finally, on Valentine's Day 2023, while Gabby was out of the house,
00:40:53
Colin shot and killed his father. The dad refused to let Colin have anything to do with his mom.
00:41:02
But Colin wanted to leave. He wanted to live with his mom. But the dad cornered him, or either cornered or the wall,
00:41:11
and had a knife and said, you're going to say into this tape recording that you want to live with me
00:41:18
and that's all there is to it. I'm not going to go to court and be embarrassed by you saying you
00:41:23
want to live with your mom. And so, as I said, he had 23 guns loaded in the house. And so when he
00:41:30
went back, one of the pistols was right there and he pulled in and shot him. Was his dad like backing
00:41:37
him into a corner? Yeah. Colin called 911 and explained that his father had attacked him with a knife.
00:41:43
And he shot him in self-defense. The police arrested him and pressed charges only to drop them
00:41:49
a month later. They couldn't prove it was or wasn't self-defense. His mother and his grandmother Susan knew that he had murdered his father because he admitted it to both of them Did he admit to killing him in self or did he admit just to killing him
00:42:09
He admitted to setting the whole thing up. To setting the whole thing up? Oh, yeah.
00:42:15
I told Colin, I said, Colin, I don't agree with what you did, but you know what?
00:42:20
I'd buy you a beer and give you a fucking award. You took the crash out. Thank you.
00:42:26
Let's face it. Chuck was a real piece of shit. Perhaps the police in Oklahoma looked at this meek little kid
00:42:33
and felt pity. Why charge Colin with murder if no one was going to miss Chuck, after all?
00:42:40
But now, with his mother's death, it changed the way everyone saw his self-defense claim.
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00:44:27
Polk County deputies found Colin Griffith calm after the death of his mother, her lifeless body just a few feet away.
00:44:36
He claimed it was self-defense. She attacked him and stabbed herself in the neck somehow.
00:44:42
but neighbors saw him drag her into the house by her hair. His grandmother described arguments, fights, and threats of violence, even murder.
00:44:52
After his arrest, the sheriff revealed this wasn't his first murder. Eighteen months earlier, he shot and killed his father,
00:45:01
one to the chest and one to the head. Family members described a life of isolation, neglect, and abuse at the hands of a pedophile father.
00:45:12
They thought he did it on purpose. But they couldn't blame him. After charges in Oklahoma were dropped, Colin moved back in with his mother, Kathy.
00:45:22
On the surface, it looked like stability. She took him on trips, bought him clothes, got him back in school,
00:45:28
and tried to give him the kind of normal teenage life he'd never had. She was trying to help Colin reorient to a life where he wasn't just stuck out in the middle of nowhere.
00:45:43
So they did things like they went to Washington, D.C., they went to the White House, they went all over D.C., saw everything there was to see there.
00:45:53
She took him on trips to Central America, to the Caribbean. She was trying to get him back into as close as she could in normal life and create opportunities that the two of them missed for so many years.
00:46:14
But Colin was basically an only child for three years. He wasn't required to do much.
00:46:21
I mean, he didn't even have to go to school. Besides, he had the barely older, soon-to-be stepmom, Gabby, to pick up after him.
00:46:30
So when Kathy started requiring chores, Colin would rebel and Kathy would push even harder.
00:46:37
I feel like she wanted to get back an eight-year-old little boy, but that is not what she got back.
00:46:45
Yeah. I know she wanted the best for him, but she just pushed so much on him. He's got to take these college classes.
00:46:52
He's got to do this for Bright Futures Scholarship. He's got to, you know, he's got to help with chores and just so much so fast.
00:46:59
And I was like, Kathy, just let him take normal classes. Don't don't make him take a college class.
00:47:06
And I said that to my mom and she was like, but it was the same credit. And I was like, you're missing the point.
00:47:12
I don't care if it's the same credit or not. If a kid who has not been in school in three years, but she just pushed him so hard.
00:47:23
It didn't take long for Colin's teenage stubbornness to outlast Kathy's willpower.
00:47:29
Pushing him harder didn't seem to work. Because she said that he wasn't following the rules, he wasn't doing the chores,
00:47:37
that he wouldn't help her put a bookshelf up on the wall, it was her last bookshelf to put on,
00:47:43
and that she just had it with him. She said, you know, he has food all over his room, he's not supposed to, we have ants now.
00:47:50
When all of her efforts to teach her son responsibility failed, she decided to teach him some accountability.
00:47:57
she turned to Here's something about Kathy that I think is really important to know.
00:48:03
When Kathy gets hurt, she doesn't get sad. Like when her feelings are hurt, she doesn't get sad.
00:48:08
She just gets mad. But like, rage mad. When Kathy punished Colin, she didn't just stop with taking away his phone.
00:48:18
I'm selling his car to CarMax. I'm disenrolling him from school. I'm taking away his computer and I'm cutting off his phone.
00:48:30
She wouldn't just take away one thing. She would take away everything in the world that he loved.
00:48:35
She would even shut off his debit card. But when that didn't work... You know, she made him bend over.
00:48:42
She hit him with a belt. Then after that, she grabbed a big 10-pound or 20-pound weight.
00:48:50
She would make Colin hold this 20-pound weight over his head for extended periods of time as punishment.
00:48:56
And the belt, well, it didn't hurt as much as it humiliated. So life went on for 18 months.
00:49:04
It was a cycle of failed responsibilities and humiliating punishments. Then Kathy started to crack.
00:49:12
So for a while, everything seemed to be fine. And then Kathy started having her problems with, I want to kill myself, I hate life.
00:49:21
She kept saying that her life just wasn't the way it was supposed to be, that Colin wasn't the way he was supposed to be,
00:49:29
that he was too much like his dad. Kathy had battled with suicidal thoughts in the past,
00:49:35
but now they were back, and it was bad. She even made an attempt. She said, I'm taking all the metapropyl, all her heart medicine,
00:49:46
and I told Colin, take her to the ER. But it got to the point where it was almost like psychologically abusive.
00:49:55
You know, just the constant, my life is so terrible. Nothing's supposed to be this way.
00:50:01
I can't do this anymore. She was drinking. She was drugging. She was yelling at him.
00:50:06
She was being mean to him physically, mentally, all the things. I mean, it sounds like he went through the same thing on both sides, separate times.
00:50:19
Colin's older brother, Chris, witnessed this behavior as well. She would kick me out of the house.
00:50:24
She would get drunk. She would abuse her pills. And she was just toxic. No other way to put it.
00:50:34
Unsurprisingly, after his arrest, the state attorney made the announcement everyone was waiting for.
00:50:40
I'm Brian Haas, state attorney for the 10th Judicial Circuit of Florida. The Polk County Grand Jury indicted Colin Griffith on the charge of first-degree murder
00:50:48
for the killing of his mother in Armandale last week. I made the decision to charge this 17-year-old as an adult based upon the egregious facts and circumstances of this case.
00:50:59
Polk County law enforcement continues to work with the authorities in Oklahoma to be sure they are provided all relevant information and evidence that will allow them to continue to evaluate their case as they deem necessary.
00:51:12
My prosecutors and the deputies from the Polk County Sheriff's Office will continue to work together to pursue justice in this case and hold Colin Griffith accountable for his murder.
00:51:22
Colin pleaded not guilty to one count of kidnapping for dragging his mother inside by her hair and one count of premeditated murder.
00:51:32
His eventual trial would last five days. The prosecution portrayed him as a cold and calculated killer satiating his bloodlust The defendant sits there a guilty person who stabbed his own mother in the neck
00:51:51
and then watched her bleed out in front of him. The death was not instantaneous.
00:51:57
She bled internally. She bled externally. She was fighting to get up. She's got a gaping, open wound in her neck, compliments of her son.
00:52:06
Thanks, Colin Griffith. Appreciate that. the lady that brought him into this world here on earth,
00:52:14
he took out of this world and this earth. The reality of what that person did to his mom
00:52:23
is a second-by-second nightmare for her. She left this world knowing that the person that took her out
00:52:29
was the son that she gave everything to. But the reality of it, for what the defendants accomplished,
00:52:35
which is exactly, exactly what he wanted to do for so long. The writing was on the wall, ladies and gentlemen.
00:52:45
The writing was on the wall. The defendant knew what he wanted to do, and it was just a matter of time.
00:52:53
If nothing else, he's a man of his word. He said he would kill his mom, and he took her out.
00:52:58
But you know what? Now he's in a court of law. Now he has to suffer whatever comes his way in the form of a verdict.
00:53:07
And that verdict is guilty. The defense portrayed him as a kid, unable to escape a toxic mother.
00:53:14
Think about this. All the times that you've heard about Colin saying, I don't feel safe if my mom attacks me, I'll defend myself.
00:53:24
If she comes at me, if she pulls a gun on me, if she punches me, I'll defend myself.
00:53:29
Remember, Colin told people that he would rather be in the Baker Act facility. He would rather be in jail.
00:53:38
He would rather be in foster care than at home with his mother. And the state wants you to believe that Colin is just a brat who didn't like the discipline he got, so he murdered his mom.
00:53:49
That's also absurd. Because as the state has pointed out many times, Colin had what they think is a great life with mom, right?
00:53:58
So he gets to go on trips, absolutely got to go on trips. He lives in a clean, nice, organized home with plenty of food.
00:54:05
Yes, he has a phone. He has an Xbox. He has a computer. He gets to go to college.
00:54:12
Don't you think Colin, as smart as he was to be able to graduate early, would know that if he actually were to be placed in the Baker Act facility
00:54:23
or remain in jail or went into foster care instead of going home with his mom with whom he didn't feel safe,
00:54:31
he would get none of those wonderful things. None of them. He would not have a phone.
00:54:37
He would not have an Xbox. He would not go on trips all over the country or the world.
00:54:42
And yet he still said, please, re-bakeract me. Please, don't send me home from jail with my mom.
00:54:51
Please, I'd rather go to foster care. They blame the, I mean, they brought up Kathy's mental health struggles, is what I meant to say, as proof of her toxicity, while also providing another what-if scenario.
00:55:05
Isn't it also reasonable that Kathy knew what the outcome was going to be when she picked up a knife and threatened Colin with it?
00:55:17
You've heard of suicide by cop? isn it reasonable to think that Kathy committed suicide by son She had never been able to successfully commit suicide before despite her many attempts
00:55:35
They also tried to say that if Colin were a rage-filled monster, wouldn't he have killed her, I don't know, harder?
00:55:43
They tried to get you to believe that Colin was rage-filled and hate-filled, and all of these malicious thoughts were geared towards his mom.
00:55:56
If you believe that beyond a reasonable doubt, don't you think there'd be more than just one wound on Kathy?
00:56:04
Don't you expect that there would be 5, 10, 20 stab wounds? That's something you can consider too.
00:56:13
After the closing arguments, 12 of Colin's peers retired to the jury room. They would deliberate for 11 hours, pushing proceedings into the following day, before returning a verdict.
00:56:25
When Colin entered the courtroom, he smiled at his grandma Susan in the gallery before sitting between his defense attorneys.
00:56:33
Then the jury entered the room. State of Florida versus Colin Griffin. Will the jury find us follow?
00:56:41
As to the defendant in this case, the defendant, as to count one, the defendant is not guilty.
00:56:48
As to count two, the defendant is not guilty. So se will this 5th day of February, 2025.
00:56:57
Not guilty on both counts. Can you believe that? It's important to note that the jury was made aware of Collins' previous claim of murder by self-defense.
00:57:10
They just weren't told it was his other parent. I wonder if that would have made a difference.
00:57:17
Also, I'm not meaning to sound sexist here, but I also very much wonder about the gender breakdown of that jury.
00:57:26
I'll have to look into that, but I'm assuming it was made up of mostly women. I guess look it up yourself if you want to play.
00:57:35
Regardless, a jury of so-called peers acquitted him. Colin killed both of his parents and was deemed not responsible and not a threat.
00:57:45
nuts right his family though that i assume knows him best has different opinions oh no i don't think
00:57:55
this was a self-defense thing yeah i think this was a he snapped and lost it thing that's what i
00:58:02
think i think he clearly just didn't want to go home to mom and this was the last straw and
00:58:06
you're right i think he snapped and um unfortunately he's gonna have to deal with the
00:58:12
the consequences and unfortunately you guys are gonna have to deal with the consequences too yeah
00:58:18
he needs to be at the end of a rope but we don't we don't use the rope in uh in florida so colin was
00:58:26
released from jail later that evening the sun had already set outside news cameras waited for him
00:58:34
eventually colin strolled out of the front doors he was wearing black rimmed glasses and a stoic
00:58:41
expression. He wore a white dress shirt with no tie and khaki pants without a belt. His boat shoes
00:58:49
muffled his hurried steps as he stared straight ahead. He walked with a practiced gait like a
00:58:57
soldier. He purposely ignored the cameras following his every move just a few feet away.
00:59:02
he was free but he left two dead parents behind his family was convinced he was guilty but the jury wasn As the 17 walked into the dark parking lot outside the jail
00:59:21
onlookers couldn't help but wonder where he was going or if anyone was going to pick him up.
00:59:27
I guess Colin finally got what he wanted. He was alone. Completely alone. I'm sure Grandma Susan eventually picked him up.
00:59:37
She was probably just avoiding the media. But still, that final image of Colin walking through the darkness, dotted with streetlights,
00:59:46
against the backdrop of barbed wire fences, is an image that stays with me. It's almost poetic.
00:59:55
A boy without parents, acquitted of murder, stepping out of one cage into the shadows of everything he's done.
01:00:02
The only question now is what he'll do next. Colin wanted to become a lawyer. Why? Because he wasn't going to just stop with two bodies. It's just, who's next?
01:00:16
At the time of this writing, it is unclear if the investigation in Oklahoma was reopened.
01:00:24
It's also unclear where Colin Griffith is presently. Having turned 18 about a month after his acquittal, he could be anywhere.
01:00:33
he could be in your town living next door buying groceries at the same place you do
01:00:41
hell he might even be bringing you your groceries on DoorDash nuts, right? did you order nuts?
01:00:50
did ya? I don't even know what to say about this one so I'm just gonna end it here
01:00:55
good luck out there Colin try not to kill again Well, we hope you've enjoyed that story.
01:01:15
It's going to do it for today. I sure didn't. Anyway, if you do like stories like this,
01:01:21
head on over to swordscale.com or check out our brand new YouTube channel, youtube.com slash swordandscale.tv.
01:01:29
There you can check out our new television-based show. Which is kind of like a podcast,
01:01:36
but it's got moving pictures. I know it's a little complicated to understand. All this newfangled
01:01:42
technology, but just head on over there and subscribe and watch a few videos and you'll
01:01:48
get it. Alright, until next time, yeah, I know they could be annoying, but please
01:01:52
try to not kill your family. And we'll see you next week. Stay safe. Thank you. I'm sorry.