Three members of one family are found murdered in their home. The internet would be the centerpiece for investigators tasked with solving this brutal crime. View source material and photos for this episode at: anatomyofmurder.com/67-stepsCan’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc
Chapter 1: How did the Amato family tragedy unfold?
My name is Dominic Clio. I'm the chief trial attorney for the 18th Circuit in Seminole County, Florida, and I've been here for about 19 years.
Dominic is a nearly 20-year veteran of the prosecutor's office and dozens of high-profile homicide cases, but it wasn't necessarily the role he thought he was born to play. Or was it?
The answer to that is no. In fact, like many, he admitted that when he first became a lawyer, he was afraid of public speaking and actually terrified to be in court. But it was a fear he knew he eventually had to conquer.
And I thought to myself, you know, I'm going to take a crack at getting some baptism by fire and be a prosecutor for a few years and leave. And then when I started, I fell in love with it. I've been here ever since.
And in that time as a prosecutor, one of the cases that really stood out in his career was this one. And it all started on a clear morning in January, about 30 miles north of Orlando.
The Amato home is out in Chilliota, and that's a real rural area of the county. It's horsebacks and horseback riding and target shooting and that kind of stuff.
It's also where Chad and Margaret Amato had raised three sons. two of whom, Cody and Grant, were still living with them in their large, well-appointed home in horse country. The father, he was a pharmacist.
He worked for CVS at a corporate center in Orlando. And the mother, Margaret, was in the medical business also. She was doing like billing and coding kind of things from home.
Their sons, Cody and Grant, who had both pursued nursing degrees at the University of Central Florida, also aspired to careers in the healthcare industry.
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Chapter 2: What were the initial findings at the Amato crime scene?
So as he walked in, he observed Margaret Amato, the mother, sitting at her desk, face down with a gunshot wound to the back of her head.
The deputy soon moved into the kitchen. He found the body of Cody's father, 59-year-old Chad Amato, in his work clothes, and he was laying on the floor in a large pool of blood.
The blood was such that it was apparent that he was shot also in the back of the head and that he had not immediately passed away because there was fingerprints sort of clawing along the ceramic tile floor. And subsequently, there was a second gunshot that ended his life. But incredibly, the horror did not end there. And as the deputy cleared the house, he found Cody Amato deceased,
in an area between where the garage enters the home, right by that sort of exterior door, in a puddle, of course, of his own blood, wearing his nurse scrubs that he had been wearing and with a backpack.
Also discovered near Cody's body, a 9mm handgun, as well as several spent shell casings scattered amongst the three victims.
So there were no signs of forced entry. All the doors were locked. All the windows were sealed. There was nothing that was broken. The house had a number of expensive electronic items. Nothing had been disturbed or taken from what they could tell.
So it was apparent that robbery was likely not a motive in this brutal slaying that claimed three lives. But that still left open some pretty frightening possibilities.
Given the location of the gun found at the scene, one of the possibilities was a murder-suicide. Perhaps Cody Amato had shot and killed his parents and then retreated to the garage and taken his own life.
But even an on-scene examination by homicide detectives, of course, and a coroner determined that the scenario was unlikely. Cody's wound did not appear to be self-inflicted, and the gun was found too far away to realistically have been used to kill himself. And there were other telling details from the crime scene itself.
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Chapter 3: Who is Grant Amato and why was he a suspect?
But when deputies made contact with Amato's oldest son, Jason, who did not live in the house, he was able to provide some disturbing background, specifically in regards to his youngest brother, Grant.
According to Jason, there had been escalating tension between Grant and the rest of the family that had recently reached a crisis when it was discovered that Grant had stolen a considerable amount of money from both his parents.
But according to Jason, it wasn't an addiction to narcotics or alcohol that Grant was desperately trying to finance. It was an online romance with a woman he had never met.
An obsession that had siphoned off over $200,000 of his parents' money, landed him in rehab for internet and sex addiction, and had caused irreparable damage to his relationships with his family.
Oh, and we should also mention that Grant's Honda was the only car not still in the driveway.
As soon as they heard that, that was a very powerful motive for them to focus on Grant as their primary suspect.
29-year-old Grant Amato was the youngest of Chad and Margaret Amato's three sons. And for most of his life, he had tried to keep up with his brother Cody and his parents' high standards for success.
Grant and Cody were very close growing up. They lived with their parents throughout their entire life. Grant was a very intelligent individual. He had become a nurse, just like his brother.
After getting his nursing license, Grant began work at a health care facility in Orlando, while in his free time pursued a variety of healthy hobbies.
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Chapter 4: How did Grant Amato's internet addiction affect his life?
He had indicated to them that the reason he was spending all this time on the computer is because he was going to become a Twitch gaming streamer. And for folks who don't know what that is, that's a streaming service where members can play video games and other folks watch the members play these games. And then you can get paid by playing these different video games online.
And that did not go well for him. He didn't really make any money doing that. He didn't really develop any sort of followers. He did not become an influencer.
But what he did find was an escape, an anonymous fantasy world where he could be anyone he wanted to be and where he found all the things that he felt he was lacking in the real world, respect, success, and eventually even companionship.
He was staying at home in his room with a very high powered computer playing games and chatting and basically living online. And creating this persona online, and then his obsession sort of turned to pornography.
According to his oldest brother, Jason, Grant began frequenting pornographic websites, especially those featuring pay-per-view live streams. And it was here that he developed an obsession with a Bulgarian webcam model named Sylvie.
And we're not here to judge what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes, even their parents' homes. But here's the thing. Watching these live streams, they cost money.
So the way that that works, each particular model has a page. Each model has fans, followers, I guess. And for whatever reason, he was real drawn to her and started exchanging real money for fake money for tokens on this website to tip her.
And with Grant logging hours and hours watching and interacting with this webcam model, he was also spending thousands of dollars on virtual tokens in order to maintain what he believed was a genuine personal relationship.
And this webcam model, Sylvie, when he started just tipping her this exorbitant amounts of money, she, of course, is going to personalize her messages and give him extra access to things. And I think part of it became very personal. Obviously, it became very personal to him. But I think it kind of crossed over from fantasy to what became his reality because she was doing extra things for him.
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Chapter 5: What led to the intervention and Grant's rehabilitation efforts?
They went to that hotel room, knocked on the door. He came out without much of any issues. He had a bag packed. He had his passport. He had some cash. So they detained him and then brought him back to the sheriff's office for an interview.
We've come and talked to you. You wrote up here voluntarily with us to talk to us. Why do you think we're having this conversation?
I honestly don't know, but I'm pretty freaked out at this point.
Now, watching the video from this taped interview with Grant Amato, he appears pretty composed and even cooperative with law enforcement. He does not really present as a person who might be involved in the cold-blooded murder of his entire family.
But I will say, and of course, it's never one size fits all, he also doesn't behave like someone who would have just learned that both his parents and his older brother had just been murdered, a fact that was not lost on investigators in the room.
They sort of noticed that his demeanor was peculiar. It was very flat affect. They asked when he was at the house last, where he was in the morning. He had indicated that the following morning he had a job interview that he was at, which was true. They discussed with him if he knew what was going on at the house, if he knew his parents were dead. He said he had no idea.
I'm giving you that opportunity. right now to tell me. Something you want to get off your chest. It's there. I can see it in your face.
It's in your eyes. I genuinely don't have anything else that I can say about the night or the period of time afterwards.
Grant claimed he had spent the night out at a hotel after his father had kicked him out of the house. And while he admitted that his relationship with his dad was strained, he did deny having anything to do with the murders.
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Chapter 6: What were the final events leading to the Amato family murders?
Horrific pictures of his own father in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor, his brother curled up in the room off the garage, and his mother, the woman who tried so hard to save him from his own demons, face down on her desk. Photos that would be disturbing to anyone, let alone a family member.
But in the interview room, they were met with a blank stare and then a half-hearted attempt at genuine emotion.
The detective said it was very clear to them that it would seem to be crocodile tears, not particularly genuine.
Investigators even allowing Grant's oldest brother, Jason, to go into the interview room and confront him about their parents' murders.
Jason went in towards the end. It was a very heartfelt conversation. And I'm paraphrasing, of course, but he's like, listen, man, what's going on? Who would have done this to mom and dad? Like, did you do this? He gets confronted and his demeanor is just silent.
And of course, investigators cannot use a person's silence against them. But if a person is confronted with something that awful and shocking, sometimes a glaring silence, at least out of the courtroom, can start to feel like a tacit admission of guilt.
You're confronted with that. What is a reasonable person's explanation going to be? You're just going to sit there? No. He sat there quietly and took it.
But while the circumstantial evidence against him was substantial, including his history of conflict with his parents, his financial motive, and his lack of a strong alibi, there still wasn't any direct evidence to either tie him to the crime scene or disprove his alibi.
At this point, investigators hadn't even recovered the murder weapon because remember, the gun found at the scene was not the one that fired the bullets that killed Cody, Chad, and Margaret Amato.
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