Kriti Mehrotra
If there’s only one way Grant Tiernan Amato can ever be described, it would be as a rather delusional young man whose obsession with a complete stranger led him to commit familicide. This much has actually even been explored in Paramount+’s ‘Ctrl+Alt+Desire,’ a documentary series delving deep into the events leading up to this Florida native’s barbaric actions and conduct.
Grant Amato Didn’t Have a Perfect Life
Although born into a life of comfort as the younger son of operations manager Margaret Anne and clinical pharmacist Chad Robert, Grant’s upbringing wasn’t as idealistic as one might think. The truth is he did have a great relationship with his elder brother Cody as well as an affectionate bond with his mother, yet the allegedly controlling nature of his father often put them all on edge.
Cody was thus Grant’s safe haven, eventually making the latter believe they were more than just two peas in a pod; they were the ultimate partners as well as the love of each other’s lives. The fact neither of them moved out of their family home upon graduation and then attended anesthetic nursing school together at the same time also made this youngster think of them as twins.
But alas, everything turned around following the mid-2010s as Grant was kicked out of the anesthetist program over an argument with a supervisor, only to still manage to land a regular nursing job. That’s when he and his brother grew a little distant owing to their different experiences despite their father’s best efforts to keep them tight-knit in the same house, yet their love never wavered. However, June 2018 pushed things much further as the former was then suspended for stealing and improperly administering anesthetic/sedatives to patients plus for serious suicidal ideations.
According to the aforementioned original, Grant did feel as if he’d ruined everything he’d worked so hard for all his life, but he still couldn’t bring himself to ask for help and began really spiraling. He actually went from having a stable income to streaming on Twitch in the hopes of gaining traction to doing absolutely nothing except lead a fake life online to impress a cam girl shockingly quickly. In fact, with AdySweets, aka Silviya Ventsislavova, he pretended to be an anesthetic nurse who led an independent life and drove a Mercedes (instead of a Honda) – the life his brother was living.
Grant reportedly paid tokens to Silviya by the minute for her company and often went as far as to spend up to four hours a night on her website just splurging on her for some genuine interaction. Whether it be lingerie, sex toys, random gifts, or just cash, he spend such an exorbitant amount on her on such a usual basis it is estimated he spent over $200,000 on her in mere months. However, since he was unemployed, it wasn’t his own money he splurged – he used his parents’ as well as Cody’s debit and credit cards, applied for fake ones, and then even took out loans under their name.
As if that’s not enough, when his family tried to help him by sending him to rehab and telling Silviya the truth about her identity, he refused to listen to them in any way, shape, or form. He actually stepped out of his 60-day rehab program within mere weeks, and it was less than a month later – on the evening of January 24, 2019, that he killed his family over their efforts to end his contact with Silviya. He then fled the scene/his family home upon staging it as a murder-suicide by Cody, only to be arrested from an Orange County DoubleTree Hotel at roughly 7:45 a.m. on January 26.
Grant Amato is Behind Bars For Good
Grant initially tried to maintain his innocence, yet once it came to light that the firearm beside Cody’s body didn’t even match the bullets used for the crime, it was evident he was responsible. The tracing of his steps over the last two days, his online history, his deteriorating mental health, as well as his web of lies over the past few years were deemed enough by the prosecutors to bring charges. Therefore, he was charged with three counts of premeditated first-degree murder, to which he pled not guilty and remained in custody on a bond of $750,000 until his trial commenced on July 15, 2019.
In the end, following nearly a month of testimonies, the jury found Grant guilty of each count on August 12, 2019, as a result of which he received three life sentences without the possibility of parole. He did appeal almost immediately, but it was outrightly denied, and it was only after that that he came forward to admit that he did, in fact, kill his entire family – he also claimed he was remorseful yet didn’t look it. As for the murder weapon, this 34-year-old inmate of mix-security Okeechobee Correctional Institution in Florida has since asserted he buried it in the backyard of an old school friend of his, yet officials have not been able to find it despite their best efforts.
Read More: Jason Amato: Grant Amato’s Half-brother is Seemingly Settled in Florida Now
