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[Music] welcome to true crime garage wherever you are whatever you were doing thanks
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captain I've been bulldozing your eardrums of my velvet tones for years it's good to be seen it's good to see
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talking about nursing students that would have been weird all right everybody gather round grab a chair grab
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a beer let's talk some true crime [Music] we have all heard the cautionary tales
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to parents in this Internet age don't let your kids spend too much time online know who your kids are talking to
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online be sure your kids don't give out any personal information make sure your kids
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aren't engaging in inappropriate behavior with people online and explain to your children and help them to
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understand the difference between virtual relationships and real human connections but what happens when your
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child is an adult what happens when these cautionary tales are applied to a grown man who spends too much time
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online who is talking online with a stranger who does not have his best interest at heart then one day the
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online stranger once more this virtual friend request just a little personal information and how about some private
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information and the two are exchanging inappropriate materials adult internet voiding has become its own form of
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addiction as several websites stream live amateur and professional webcam girls guys and couples generally showing
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new performances and sexual acts this is also established a new line of sex work
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accessible to anyone with a computer so what happens when someone confuses a virtual relationship for a real
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relationship and then it grows into an obsession an obsession he would kill for this is true crime garage
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[Music] Grint Amato was the youngest of three sons sons of Margaret and Chan Amato he
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and his brother Cody still lived at home with their parents but their older brother Jason had moved into his own
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place Jason was still close with his family and spoke with his mother about once a
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week where our story really takes off is when these three brothers are all grown
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adults to still living at home with mom and dad but let's back up for just a minute Margaret and Chad provided a nice
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life for their three boys they lived in an expansive home and had all the trappings of affluence cars videogames
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and horses yes Margaret was a horse person as everyone knows the garage loves horse people yes Centaurus she
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adopted and rehabilitated a retired racehorse named lady and even after lady died she still went to the stables daily
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to work with other horses Margaret worked as a client operations manager at a health care company
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Chad Amato was a clinical pharmacist who worked for CBS and who also had a second
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job he was a self-professed computer guru one of his co-workers said that chad was very proud of his sons but
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there are rumors in this case and some references to it by two people close to the case did Chad Amato the father was a
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quite difficult man yeah most computer people are a sidenote Jason the oldest of the three boys was
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not Chad's biological son he adopted him when he married Margaret this was way back when Jason was just three years old
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it doesn't seem that Jason was as close to his brothers as they were to each other according to Jason they were known
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as the football family because they went to every Florida Gators home game together but Jason no longer lived at
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home and he had moved on with his own life so the true brothers not the half-brothers grant and Cody they seemed
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to be separable Kody is just one year older than grant and they did everything together they were on the weightlifting
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team together at Timber Creek High School and planned on buying matching BMWs and living in the family home well
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after their parents retired to their other house which was located in Tennessee one of their favorite
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activities involved shooting airsoft rifles and real guns as well and you can see on grant Amato's Facebook profile
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picture that he is trying to look like a militant badass with a big rifle Cody and grant were on a competitive airsoft
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team called remedy the brothers even went on to enroll in nursing school together this after grant graduated from
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the University of Central Florida even early on it seems that Cody was somewhat of a caretaker for grant he had it all
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together while grant was more scattered and June of 2018 grant was caught stealing medication from his job at
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Advent health which is located in Orlando Florida do we do we know what kind of medication he stole I'm gonna
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get into that right now the hospital staff noticed eight empty vials of propofol in two rooms where grant was
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working he had taken vials they were worth together a combined amount of 2067 dollars these were taken from a storage
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machine that required a thumbprint to access the machine he was captured on surveillance video which was reviewed by
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the hospital after the propofol was discovered missing he was seen accessing the machine and putting the vials in his
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pocket this amounted to grand theft hospital officials confronted Grant who told them according to the police report
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that quote he had administered the drugs to patients who were not being adequately relaxed by doctor ordered
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medicine in other words he thought patients needed more drugs than what they were being given so
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wasn't stealing the drugs for himself to use but to use on patients that's his statement that's his story
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and he's sticking to it we don't over for certain administrators believe that this was not the first incident of this
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kind that he probably had stolen these items before while being questioned a couple days after he was caught stealing
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grant apparently said he was suicidal so the police were called this was on June 21st Grant was arrested but they
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determined that there was not grounds to hold him under Florida's Baker Act which
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allows an involuntary hold of people deemed to be dangerous to themselves and for reasons that have never been
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disclosed the grand theft charges for stealing propofol were eventually dropped but needless to say grant was
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out of a job he was fired and as a consequence of this event he was expelled from anesthesiology school as
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well and his dad who was funding legal representation for his son well he was out of a lot of money this was money
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that was set up for grants lawyers yeah but look let's break this down a little bit because a lot of times if if there
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is a conflict at work even if it is stealing they normally won't prosecute as long as they get the material back we
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got the material back we didn't lose any money and we're going to then sever our
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ties with this individual by firing them yeah I mean he's fired 100% I don't know
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what their reasons were for dropping the charges if you want me to speculate my guess is they probably didn't want his
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defense of oh I was giving them to your patients right to be in the newspapers whether that's what he was doing with
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them or not we we just don't know yeah stay away from the bad publicity so grant is unemployed and living with his
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parents so what did grant do all day now that he was unemployed of course he did
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what any hard-working able-bodied 20-something American male would do and of course I'm being sarcastic he
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spent his days gaming and watching porn this on a site called cam girls grant soon met a webcam model named Silvia
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from Bulgaria wait hold on can you spell that website for me grant began what he
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felt was an intimate relationship with this woman the virtual kind grant led Silvia to believe that he was a
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successful ambitious young professional gamer who had his own apartment and drove a BMW according to the Orlando
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Sentinel grant spent about four hours every night online watching Silvia dance and model euphemisms for one-on-one
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virtual pornographic activity and of course this cost money in fact the woman's attentions to grant seemed to
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depend on how much money he paid her grant admitted that her shows cost 90 that's nine zero tokens per minute to
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view which he purchased 5,000 tokens at a time for $600 he and Sylvia would video chat as well grant seemed to think
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that the woman was his girlfriend eventually he began sending her clothes and sex toys which Silvia would model
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for him often in pornographic videos how was grant paying for all of this well we'll get into that in a minute
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first hang on let me get out my porno calculator real quick yeah so that's 5,400 tokens an hour and times
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that by 4 hours a day or a night that's 20 1,600 tokens a night hold on my calculations say that's a lot of porn
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now that's two thousand that's two thousand five hundred ninety two dollars a day or a night however you want to
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swing that hammer it would be cheaper to be addicted to meth but remember kids don't do meth then in December of 2018
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I apologize to captain Bubb one who was reviewing this information and putting together all the math I don't
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know why but it popped in my head out of all the things that you could be addicted to this is a very expensive
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addiction no I guess we'll know why our show won't continue the colonel got addicted to meth don't do meth then in
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December of 2018 Cody grant and their friend Jericho they went on a trip to Japan
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Cody was very nice he paid $10,000 for this trip so Cody is paying for the both of them for him and grant but when the
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boys returned home this was around December 15th grant found that his father was very disgruntled that Grant
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still had not landed a job by this point it's not clear exactly when the Amato's
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found out that their son was involved in a virtual relationship with a webcam girl some news reports state that
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Margaret noticed mail showing up for grant from Bulgaria yeah and then was horrified that her son had given their
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home address to a to somebody in the porn business let's say right we can only imagine what that conversation was
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like unfortunately for grant though it seems that his parents also discovered something else at some point toward the
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end of 2018 Chad Amato discovered that some money was missing and actually this was a lot
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of money grant was stealing money from his own family grant told his parents that he spent this money to promote
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himself on Twitch I'm captain I sure you could inform us what twitch is oh I'm such a loser that
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I have all this time to do well I don't know exactly what it is so I thought maybe you might blah I don't know much
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about it I've never been on it I think people can be very profitable on it there's many millionaires from it and I
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guess what it is is that you you're a gamer and then people can watch you okay then they could pay for like a
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subscription so so there there are people that are doing very well it's it's but it's kind of a video game world
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to me I haven't been into it some Super Mario Brothers so I don't really know much about it but it's it's huge
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I mean you can so when he's saying I'm promoted myself or I'm this could turn into a profession not just a profession
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but if it takes off he could become like a multi-millionaire like basically like
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becoming a youtube star or something right I was gonna say for dummies like me that the simplest format it's kind of
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a social media Instagram meets YouTube kind of thing yeah for gaming guy merrily yeah so the truth be told though
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that's not where the money went he actually blew it all on his very expensive hobby or what I would call
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obsession with Silvia yeah but even if it went to promoting himself on this platform it's a it's a big risk because
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to become a youtube star or become a twitch star it's very difficult so now thus begins the family meltdown okay on
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December 19th 2018 the matos called 911 this was to report grant was missing he had walked out of the house after an
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argument with Chad and his mother was concerned because he seemed very depressed at this time and she says
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possibly suicidal in fact Margaret told the Sheriff's Office she told the deputies that she
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got a text from Grant saying that he was quote really tired of everything and quote and was quote just going to handle
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it his own way that's as much of the text that I have but regardless believing that he had been unsuccessful
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looking for work and had shown some instability in connection with the propofol incident right and he's out of
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school or now he's spending his days like you said playing video games and watching
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pornography and if the family just knows that he's just up in his room playing video games
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all day maybe not knowing too much about the pornography but when somebody says I'm tired of it all and that's all
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they're doing mm-hmm I think that's a bad sign well in you know she has his mother has other texts and other
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information other conversations that were had right that we're not privy to so calling the police seems like a very
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smart motherly move here in this this spot in December of 2018 Kody confided in his girlfriend Sloane
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that he was concerned about his brother he was concerned that Grant was going to
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kill everyone is what he said when Grant left the home that day he took refuge at
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the home of his aunt this is Donna Amato with whom he was very close she later said that he was looking lost and
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depressed at her house grant slept during the day and stayed up all night she and her husband hid all of their
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guns while grant was with them having been worn by the Amato's that he was possibly suicidal while grant was
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staying with her Donna's bank account was hacked and strange charges started showing up at
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least that's what she thought right she came to find out that the nephew she had
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taken in stole her credit card information and she wasn't the only one according to the Orlando Sentinel
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pictures of credit cards belonging to Grant Amato's grandmother uncle and one of his cousin's were found on his
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computer upset and betrayed Donna called her husband's brother Grant's father Chad Amato totally out of character Chad
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broke down on the phone he told Donna that he had been forced to remortgage the family's home to cover 150,000
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dollars worth of debt racked up by Grant Donna says quote he told me on the phone
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yeah I'm going to have to work a few more years than I thought I'd have to but it's okay I'll do it for grant I
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don't want him to go to jail more other family members called Donna urging her not to press charges in fact
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it was Cody who promised to pay back any of his brother's fraudulent expenses so
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how much debt did grant Amato rack up he stole one hundred and fifty thousand dollars from his parents he stole or
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spent sixty thousand dollars of Cody's money and then stole and sold Cody's guns he stole an unknown amount from
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three other relatives in three months grant Amato spent over two hundred thousand dollars to interact virtually
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with Sylvia who was thousands of miles away so the Amato's had a family meeting while they decided what to do about
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grant while they made up their minds family members took shifts outside of Donna's home to be sure that grant
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stayed on the premises then on December 22nd the Amato's waylaid grant in Donna's driveway around 3:00 a.m. a
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intervention of sorts and shad Margaret and Cody drove him to a voluntary rehabilitation clinic in South Florida
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his commitment form reflects that his entry there was voluntary grants family agreed to pay the fifteen thousand
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dollars for him to obtain a sixty day treatment while grant was at rehab Cody and Chad hacked into grants computer to
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see exactly what he had been doing online they discovered his carefully curated online identity as a successful
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professional gamer Chad contacted all of grants online friends and told them in no uncertain terms that it was all a lie
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that grant was a poseur a fraud and a fake he actually lived at home and he had no job and in what was likely
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considered the ultimate betrayal by grant they conveyed this information to Sylvia as well they told Sylvia the
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webcam girl who thought grant was a sugar daddy that in fact grant was a fired nurse who
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lived with his mom and dad and stole their money to pay for his new obsession grant only made it
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about two weeks in rehab he left the facility and came home on January 5th when he returned home there
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was a new set of rules Chad sat grant down at a California Pizza Kitchen and Waterford Lakes and
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showed him a two-page list of rules grant would have to agree to them if he wanted to remain in the home his other
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options were according to Chad to move out or to join the military yeah I mean it wasn't like you know yeah I get to
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work in and stop your jerkin well this laying down of the rules this kind of thing that a parent does you
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typically see this for a rebellious 16 year old not a 29 year old man now among these rules grant had to get a job
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during the day and stop spending his entire night online he was not permitted on the internet after midnight he had to
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come up with a written personal recovery plan and submit it to his father uh-huh
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his phone service was cut off he was forbidden from watching porn and was required to go to therapy he was on his
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own financially and had to repay the $200,000 he had taken and issue apologies to his family yeah this is a
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mess it's very sticky situation a cover note on the rules page said quote this is critical as grant through his past
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transgressions has relied on the knowledge the family would not report him and would cover him family
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relationship abuse beyond tolerance this is a promise you better heed the warning
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it's real but the rules contain one final rule that grant no doubt considered a deal-breaker he had to end
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things with Sylvia he could not contact her again if he did he would be kicked out of the house
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the last line reading quote you chose a stranger physically non-existent over family and he also put his family and
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almost like financial jeopardy grant agreed to the rules in the fee Emily returned to normal it seems that
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things improve for a bit Jason says grant seemed better when he got home and Margaret had told him that grant was
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acting like part of the family again but sometime in January Margaret confessed to a friend at the stables about the
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difficulties at home she said that her son grant has stolen quite a bit of money from the family Margaret clearly
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had a soft spot for her youngest son almost certainly unbeknownst to Chad she allowed grant to continue to message
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with Sylvia via twitter using Margaret's phone now it's possible that grant used
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her phone without her permission but told her it was for legitimate purposes it's not known whether Margaret knew
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that she was helping grant break the rules and it's not known whether Sylvia was receptive to grants continued
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contact with her considering he couldn't pay her but either way On January 24th Chad somehow found out
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what was going on Chad tells grant you've ruined my retirement and he ordered grants who leave the house then
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Chad left for work grant started packing up his stuff meanwhile Cody was at work
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and his girlfriend Sloane said he had to leave after conversations with people at
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home around 9:15 p.m. but before he left Cody told Sloane he had to go home to deal with quote stupid [ __ ] [ __ ]
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in other words family stuff [Music] if there is something interfering with your happiness or preventing you from
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to you captain on Friday January 25th 2019 the Seminole County Florida sheriff's office received a call from a
00:32:07
chris cisco chris is an employee at Advent Hospital in East Orlando Chris told the dispatcher that he was
00:32:16
concerned because his friend and co-worker Cody Amato did not show up for work and was not responding to his calls
00:32:22
and texts according to Chris who worked for years with Cody at the center he says Cody never so much as came in
00:32:31
late to work much less not show up at all yeah we had a lot of bills they had to pay for well and Cody was always he
00:32:41
always had his phone with him - so this is even more concerned yeah the two were
00:32:46
actually supposed to meet for coffee that morning but as said Cody never showed up Chris also worked with Cody's
00:32:52
girlfriend Sloane and she was equally concerned deputies obtained the address of the
00:33:00
home Cody shared with his parents Margaret and Chad and headed over to 2:112 Salton
00:33:07
Circle to perform a welfare check this was at 9:17 a.m. upon arrival deputies announced themselves as they patrolled
00:33:17
the perimeter of the large three-story home the home sits on multiple acres and this looks to be a pretty nice
00:33:26
neighborhood with big houses and far stretching property lines so police are knocking on doors and announcing
00:33:34
themselves and no one is responding this in spite of a car in the driveway and they could see two vehicles sitting
00:33:42
inside the garage including the car that was registered to Cody Amato the deputies tried calling the cell phones
00:33:51
of the residents having obtained the phone numbers from Chris and Sloane of course these calls are going unanswered
00:33:58
the five doors to the home were all locked and disturbingly the windows on the first storey of the home were
00:34:05
covered on the inside by paper this fact plus the cars being there and the unexpected absence of Cody from work
00:34:14
as well as the Sheriff's Office history with the home was sufficient grounds for
00:34:20
concern deputies even resorted to using an air horn you know the perp up yeah that's not a
00:34:26
good air horn that was really bad all right Nick you're fired all right well see you guys next week
00:34:32
well I won't see you again they saw I mean you never know you could get better at your airplane start my own show they
00:34:41
were using an air horn outside of the home in case people inside just they weren't hearing them but again this is
00:34:49
still just met with silence and stillness finally after receiving permission from higher-ups deputy Todd
00:34:56
motor s'en used a knife to pry open the lock on an exterior door to the master bedroom and a deputy outfitted in
00:35:06
tactical gear proceeded inside followed by the deputy one of the first things that they saw was the body of a man and
00:35:17
he appeared to be older he's lying on his back on the kitchen floor as a later affidavit in the case would state there
00:35:25
was much blood around the man's body that it was quote inconsistent with life the crime-scene photos show a lot of
00:35:36
pooled dried blood in two separate areas of the kitchen as well as dragged or claw marks through the smeared blood
00:35:44
between the two poles okay later it would be determined that this man had been shot twice in the head lying
00:35:53
partially in the blood was an open insulated lunch bag with a fork tucked into the netting on the lid there was
00:36:02
damage from a bullet in one of the cherry kitchen cabinets two chicken cutlets were defrosting on the counter
00:36:10
as if someone was preparing a meal two bottles of water and a coupler sitting on the kitchen table so from that
00:36:20
picture we paint that picture to show you what was going on and potentially going on this man this person was killed
00:36:26
in this location of the home and it appears that somebody was just going about their normal everyday business of
00:36:32
maybe preparing a meal or putting together a lunch it's a lot of blood so yes yeah
00:36:39
the deputies proceeded further into the home and discovered two more corpses one
00:36:45
was a woman sitting at a desk in the home office she was slumped over her computer clearly shot in the back of the
00:36:53
head and the other was a younger man dressed in scrubs curled in a fetal position lying on the floor at the
00:37:00
entrance to the garage from the home gym which is off of the kitchen at this house yeah he also had been shot once
00:37:08
this time he was shot in the face a backpack was on the floor near the body deputies noted right away that there
00:37:17
were weapons in plain sight that could have been used in these shootings in fact one weapon a Glock was strapped and
00:37:24
a holster on the right hip of the older man on the kitchen floor and a second gun a nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson M&P
00:37:32
handgun was lying five feet from the younger man yeah I believe they find four bullet casings and so there's two
00:37:41
by the older man and then one by each individual other than him yeah each of the other victims so they appeared
00:37:51
consistent with the handgun that was found on the floor near the younger man's body and it looked very much like
00:37:57
this was the weapon that had killed all three people according to the deputies including the younger man near the
00:38:05
garage who was the closest to the gun mm-hmm this kind of appears to be a classic
00:38:13
murder-suicide situation where we have the son of the dead couple and had some kind of confrontation with his parents
00:38:22
killed them and then shot himself right indeed it was quickly confirmed that the
00:38:28
deceased were 30 year old Cody Amato and his parents 61 year old Margaret in 59 year old Chad Amato
00:38:37
except captain deputies perusing the crime scene were very observant and had reason to be skeptical of what appeared
00:38:46
to be a simple and open-and-shut murder-suicide case you know well the other question here too is we have three
00:38:53
of the individuals that live in the house and we know that there's four individuals that live in the house this
00:38:58
was not the first time that the Sheriff's Office was at this home so they they know that four people most of
00:39:07
the time reside at this home right and so things look hinky to them furthermore where is this other person right
00:39:17
why if there's four that live in the home why is this other person not a victim and if he's not a victim then
00:39:23
where is he so the very smart Sheriff's Office they by late Friday afternoon they put out a
00:39:33
bolo a be on the lookout for a person of interest in the killings this was four five foot ten inch 120 pound 29 year old
00:39:42
grant Amato son of Margaret and Chad and brother to Cody yeah he was not on the premises although he
00:39:49
was known to reside in the home and his phone had been disconnected he was thought to be driving a white 1996 Honda
00:39:59
Accord DX with the license plate number l1 gh7 and he was to be considered armed and
00:40:08
dangerous it's not clear how detectives knew this but news reports from January 25th state
00:40:15
that detectives believed that weapons were missing from the Amato home mm-hmm saying quote it looks like this wasn't a
00:40:23
random act of violence it looks like the person responsible for these murders was
00:40:27
known to the family and we're going to do everything we can to get this person in custody very very soon end quote
00:40:35
that was from Sheriff Dennis Lima it didn't take long for cops to catch up with grant Amato
00:40:43
in fact by Saturday just the next day they had subpoenaed his easy records right to narrow down the
00:40:50
location of his vehicle they patrolled the area and his car was spotted parked at a Double Tree motel in Orange County
00:40:59
this is brilliant and we don't have a lot of tolls here in in Ohio and I can't really even think of
00:41:09
ever going through a toll in Ohio but if you have one of these easy passes it kind of records your movements you know
00:41:15
what tolls you've gone through and how recently you've gone through them no so what they can do is basically look at a
00:41:22
map and go okay well he has to be somewhere in this general area this could be a fairly big area that we're
00:41:29
talking about but we have reason to believe that this vehicle this Honda Accord that we're looking for is
00:41:36
somewhere in this general area so you you tell everybody all of your patrolmen everybody in squad cars go out there and
00:41:44
while you're out there protecting and serving let us know if you see a 1996 Honda Accord DX with this license plate
00:41:51
because we're looking for this dude and I cannot stress enough the the how important and how correct the term armed
00:42:02
and dangerous is in this situation if you believe that the person of interest is the fourth member of the home who is
00:42:10
not found at the home when all three of the others are found killed inside of the house and it appears two of the
00:42:17
victims were armed themselves right not only did this perpetrator were they able
00:42:24
to kill three individuals they were able to do it in a potential it could have been a potential gunfight yeah well we
00:42:31
know that this individual practices in a virtual world the police they spot this vehicle his
00:42:39
his vehicle and find it at a Double Tree motel in Orange County sure enough grant
00:42:43
was in a hotel room there he was taken in for questioning but was not handcuffed or placed under arrest at
00:42:50
that time deputies had put it together pretty quickly that they had been at the Amato home before actually recently
00:42:58
Seminole County Sheriff Lima said in a statement on Friday the 25th quote we had a call
00:43:04
that I am aware of back in December of an individual suffering from depression so this brings us to Saturday January
00:43:13
26th yeah now we have Grant Amato sitting in a room at the Seminole County Sheriff's Office and he's talking with
00:43:20
investigators now mind you he's not under arrest just investigative detention at this point in rain and he
00:43:28
said he was fine with talking to the investigators in the seven hours of interviews he pretended to be
00:43:35
forthcoming about what had been going on in his life during the past three months
00:43:41
he told investigators about the missing money he admitted that his father gave him an ultimatum and required him to go
00:43:48
to rehab he told investigators about the rules that he had agreed to to continue
00:43:53
living in the home but he says on the night of the 24th Chad confronted him about his continued
00:44:01
contact with Sylvia and told him he had to leave the home grant told detectives that Cody had been there when he left
00:44:10
when grant left the house that night and that Cody had promised grant that he would try to smooth things over
00:44:17
so grants story to the detectives at this point kind of sounds like hey I left last night and when I left all
00:44:27
three of them were there and they were fine right but and also setting up a confrontation because he's his brother
00:44:33
saying hey I'm gonna talk to mom and dad and try to smooth this over yeah he's going to let them kind of maybe take the
00:44:41
bait and run with it for a little bit but the problem here is they're not going to take the bait because three
00:44:48
hours in to this sit-down meeting right and any investigator would find this to be very suspicious by three hours in
00:44:59
Grant had never asked why he was there or what had happened to his family it kind of seems like he already knows why
00:45:08
he is there right and he already knows what happened to his family so what you're saying is he he tried to be slick
00:45:15
and say hey left the house last night yeah they told me I had to leave mm-hmm I left my
00:45:21
brother was gonna talk to my parents and and maybe that's when there was a confrontation but he doesn't know what
00:45:29
happened to the parents or shouldn't know what happened to his family and like you said he never brings it up yeah
00:45:36
he says that he saw on the news that something did happen to his family but he hadn't tried to find out what okay so
00:45:45
here's how some of the interrogation proceedings from there went on and this is according to the Orlando Sentinel you
00:45:54
can see the and I know you've watched a captain but you can see this what I would call interrogation video online
00:46:00
now we have a detective here then it opens a folder boy hold on I'm surprised on how small he is yeah you know he's
00:46:09
almost 20 pounds yeah I mean it's very small so in one scene that you could see online a detective opens up a folder
00:46:18
with crime scene photos so she the detective placed a picture of Cody's body in front of grant and asked
00:46:27
did you leave the house with your brother Cody looking like that to which grant covered his face the detective
00:46:35
then pulls out two more photos and she asked or did you leave the house with your father looking like that or your
00:46:42
mother is that how you left your family yeah no Grant says but his voice is breaking you can clearly hear his voice
00:46:50
breaking during this she goes on to ask who did this to your family and then grant looked at the photo of his mother
00:46:57
at the top of the stack and then covered a part of his face he says no I didn't do any of this investigators asked grant
00:47:07
if he had any remorse according to the arrest affidavit his response was quote his family had been blaming him for
00:47:15
months for ruining their lives stealing and not following the rules of the home so he might as well be blamed for this
00:47:23
too and quote he had originally told detectives it took a few hours for him to pack up his things and that he had
00:47:32
left the house around 9:30 p.m. his family was just fine at that point he said in fact he said he met up with
00:47:39
Cody outside the neighborhood to tell him what had happened but he changed his story
00:47:45
when pressed saying that he left closer to midnight and his brother was home at that time he claimed he spent the night
00:47:52
in a parking lot of a nearby Publix before driving to a morning job interview off of Li Vista Road the
00:48:01
detectives told him Cody and Chad Amato could not have shot each other crime scene investigators had come to this
00:48:08
conclusion after making some observations about the crime scene they asked who else could have killed his
00:48:14
family I don't know gran said I've been getting blamed for the last half of a year for
00:48:21
everything and I've been trying to move forward in a positive direction and then
00:48:26
every day I am reminded of all the trouble that I had caused and then I keep being told the same thing over and
00:48:33
over again that there's nothing I can do to change it grant continued to deny that he was responsible for the murders
00:48:42
but acknowledged that he was the only one with a motive and with the opportunity to commit
00:48:57
yeah so grant well and this is this is a smart thing here to grant is allowed a private meeting with his sole surviving
00:49:09
brother Jason and I think a lot of people maybe the name grant Amato doesn't ring any bells when you see the
00:49:19
title or you see the show note yeah you say tomato I say tomahto but when you hear this portion of the story this is
00:49:26
when you're gonna go okay I I know this case or I remember seeing this case in the news grant was allowed a private
00:49:32
meeting with his sole surviving brother Jason video and audio footage of this meeting is available online and has
00:49:39
probably been seen by most of our listeners while Jason embraces Grant when he first enters the room it is
00:49:46
clear that he is fairly certain that his brother killed the rest of their family
00:49:51
Jason tries to talk to grant about you know what what happened yeah and grant tells him dad kicked me out because I
00:49:59
broke the rules I didn't stop talking to that woman but he reiterates that he left Cody Chad and Margaret alive
00:50:06
leaving the house around 12:30 a.m. by this point notice his time keeps on changing as we get further along right
00:50:13
after loading his stuff into the car this is when he left Jason isn't buying it he says to grant if anyone was going
00:50:21
after someone in the family it would be you who would be the target meaning these other three wouldn't be dead you
00:50:28
would be the one that would be dead if somebody went after our family or someone in our family
00:50:33
well just think what you were saying before I mean he goes into the room is any embraces and this is his technically
00:50:40
his half-brother he pretty much believes that any cops believe at this point that Grant is
00:50:45
responsible for his whole family being murdered but at the same time you you've seen the depression you've seen the
00:50:52
addiction you've seen possibly this kid that once was good and I call him a kid because it seems like he at this point
00:51:02
even though he was approached in 30 he hasn't grown up any so to be able to embrace him on one side
00:51:10
to say why I love you and care about you I know you're hurting but hey our family
00:51:17
is gone and you're responsible I think I'd have a very difficult time embracing that individual you know Jason's not
00:51:27
buying any of this jazz that grants trying to sell him and he says he says this before getting up and walking out
00:51:35
of the door he says I'm going to pray for you brother because I can't pray for mom dad or Cody anymore right now
00:51:43
grant was released on the 26th the detectives are gonna have to build their case in a different manner because he
00:51:54
didn't confess to anything mm-hmm so now they're out talking they're gonna continue to talk with Jason with his
00:52:01
brother Jason they're going to talk to Cody's girlfriend Sloane and anybody else that they can speak with Jason and
00:52:08
in Sloane they both told investigators about grant stealing the money from his family they tell them about the whole
00:52:15
Sylvia thing and they explain all of the problems with grant over the past few months and Sloane told detectives that
00:52:24
Cody told her that he was afraid that grant would kill everyone now eventually grant is in fact arrested and the arrest
00:52:37
affidavit filed in Grant's case provides a glimpse into what exactly crime scene
00:52:42
investigators found to be suspicious about the murder-suicide theory that was going around and led them to believe
00:52:49
that the tableaux at the Amato home was in fact just staged right for one thing they found Cody's body next to the
00:53:00
closed internal door to the garage but there was no blood on the door jamb and frame indicating that it had been open
00:53:09
when Cody was shot in the face the affidavit states quote based on the gunshot Cody received he would not have
00:53:16
been able to close the door after he had been shot right Cody had clearly been moved as well the
00:53:23
pool of blood that had come from his head wound was actually found at his feet and there was almost none on the
00:53:31
floor where his head was positioned the autopsy findings on Cody sealed the deal
00:53:37
according to the affidavit there was quote no possibility that Cody's injuries were self-inflicted
00:53:44
further they observed from the blood spatter blood smears and bullet marks on the cabinets in the kitchen and on the
00:53:52
tile floor that Chad had been shot first while standing near the cabinets he had
00:53:59
crawled to the other side of the center island and then been shot a second time in the back of the head execution-style
00:54:08
while he was lying face down on the floor wow the bullet had entered the tile floor but Chad was found three feet away
00:54:17
on the kitchen floor on his back clearly having been moved as well Margaret was at the desk shot once in the back of the
00:54:25
head and had not been moved at all so if Chad was shot in the kitchen by someone who later moved him and Margaret
00:54:32
and Cody did not shoot themselves the obvious conclusion is that the shooter was a fourth person someone who had
00:54:39
accessed the home without breaking and entering one like you said too I mean these crime-scene photos are pretty bad
00:54:49
and a lot of times when you see a murder take place in a tiled area you can see you know the blood smeared everywhere
00:54:58
and but you can see the tile underneath or it's very transparent and there's sections that you can't see that the
00:55:06
tile at all it's just this very dense puddle of blood so grant is arrested and charged with three counts of
00:55:15
premeditated murder now when he's arrested in his possession they find a pair of leather gloves and credit and
00:55:22
debit cards belonging to his father and brother Cody he also had with him a his passport leading investigators to
00:55:30
speculate that he was planning on trying to leave possibly to meet Sylvia in person in
00:55:38
Grant's car they found a handwritten note that appeared to have been written from Kody Amato's perspective which said
00:55:46
grant I'll take care of all of your problems I just need you back I can't live without you brother I said I'd take
00:55:54
care of all of your problems at the house and I have no one will bother you again regarding this just please come
00:56:02
home I can't do this again if you think I'm part of the problem here then I've really lost you and I can't take that
00:56:10
loss after everything when detectives pushed grant about this strange letter he admitted that he himself wrote the
00:56:20
letter from quote-unquote from Cody Wright but he wasn't able to provide a satisfactory explanation as to why he
00:56:30
would write this letter it seems that this might have been a further way to push this this whole scheme to frame
00:56:42
Cody for the murder-suicide theory but it sucks because they were so close and his brother seemed to go to bat for him
00:56:49
time and time again and to not only commit these murders but then to try to put the blame on the brother that helped
00:56:58
you so many times now the trial the murder trial would start in July of last year and we really learned a lot about
00:57:06
the state's case against grant Amato during the trial proceedings so their case was grant Amato killed his father
00:57:14
mother and brother and a premeditated murder spree so he could take all of their money they state Margaret died
00:57:22
first shot in the head from behind as she sat at her desk Cody and Chad were not home
00:57:28
when the first murder occurred grant shot his father in the kitchen after he got home from work and was possibly
00:57:34
cleaning out his lunchbox grant shot Cody and the eye as he entered the home they say grant spent several hours at
00:57:43
the home with the bodies as he staged the scene to look like Cody had been responsible for a
00:57:50
murder-suicide I know I'm not going to get too much into the defense side of things because I really found it kind of
00:58:01
blah you know it just really wasn't they didn't try to claim that he was insane or temporarily insane they didn't really
00:58:09
push that he was abused or drug addicted or mentally unstable or anything like that as their defense right or their
00:58:18
narrative yeah right so I'd really like to know what the conversation between him and and this
00:58:25
virtual girlfriend was and if in any way she was pushing him in this direction at
00:58:36
all hmm I I wouldn't think so I mean it would seem extreme I think what we have here captain is it was more one-sided it
00:58:46
was on his end if I can't log on each day and talk to this person now I have a huge problem I don't think she cares one
00:58:54
way or the other as long as he's buying these tokens right and spending money day after day he's not well I don't know
00:59:02
this to be certain but I feel very strongly about this he's not her only customer let's say nobody has a BMW okay
00:59:13
which in his case would stand for well the thing is the the thing here is I think that the defense was fine with
00:59:23
floating out the murder-suicide theory and and letting that be a possibility right because if you can't get past that
00:59:30
possibility then you probably shouldn't convict this guy beyond a reasonable doubt be me whacker
00:59:37
that's what he stands for so during the testimonial phase of the trial some interesting information came out the the
00:59:43
four bullets that were used to kill Chad Margaret and Cody yeah did not come from
00:59:49
any of the handguns that were found at the house the four shell casings found at the scene did not come from the gun
00:59:56
found near Cody they came from a an unknown weapon that was never found so we think
01:00:03
that grant moved that that weapon somewhere or disposed of it someone well that in itself really pokes a big giant
01:00:11
hole in the murder-suicide theory the the murder weapon that was not found at the home yeah right
01:00:17
so what's appeared now what the state is saying is that Grant planted the bullet
01:00:23
casings to make it appear that Cody shot his parents and then shot himself right
01:00:27
also I mean this is all good science stuff here there was no blood found on the gun near Cody's body also the
01:00:35
holster that was on Chad's right hip they found a gun holster on Chad's right Chad's right hip they could prove that
01:00:43
it was placed there after his death because there was a spot of blood found on his pants under the holster which
01:00:51
would have been impossible had the holster been in place the entire time yeah you know when he was shot so he
01:00:58
wasn't even wearing the holster is what you're saying Karenna after he was murdered violently murdered than the
01:01:05
individual which we believe is grant put the holster back on him yeah forensic investigators testified that
01:01:13
there was no activity on Margaret Amato's computer after 4:45 p.m. so on this on Thursday January 24th so since
01:01:24
she was found dead at her computer prosecutors asserted that she had been killed first while she was working on
01:01:30
the computer and she and grant were in fact home alone they believe that next chad was killed when he got home from
01:01:39
work this around 5:30 p.m. finally cody was shot in the face when he arrived home from work sometime
01:01:47
around 9:30 p.m. prosecutors introduced evidence showing that Chad Amato logged into his USAA banking app on his iPhone
01:01:57
using the fingerprint reader at 12:08 a.m. on the night he died while prosecutors weren't able to establish
01:02:05
Chad's exact time of death the implication was that grant had used his dead father's finger
01:02:14
to unlock his phone in order to access the banking information the Sheriff's Office crime scene manager this is
01:02:22
Christine Snyder testified that Chad's right index finger had been cleaned of blood presumably to use the fingerprint
01:02:31
scanner crime scene tech testimony at the trial stated that when grant Amato was arrested
01:02:37
remember they found that pair of leather gloves those gloves tested positive for
01:02:42
a gun powder residue GSR were they able to test those gloves to pull DNA from them I know where what
01:02:50
you're getting at yeah it's called DNA right that's right getting at DNA do we have DNA evidence
01:02:56
here well this is interesting and this shows the level of what I've been referring to as addiction or obsession
01:03:06
right so according to the prosecutors grant used CODIS credit card to pay Silvia more money this just within hours
01:03:16
after his family was murdered he sent her six hundred dollars while sitting in his car in the Publix parking lot in the
01:03:27
middle of the night as his family's bodies lie cooling in the home see that's why I just think there had to
01:03:35
be some kind of conversation with her about at least about the conflict between him and his family
01:03:41
grants defense I mean yeah they worked hard to try to establish some kind of reasonable doubt but it only took the
01:03:49
jury eight hours to convict grant Amato of the first-degree premeditated murder of all three of his family members right
01:03:59
grant stood emotionless as the verdicts were read aloud in the end the jury decided against the death penalty
01:04:09
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