Grant Amato became obsessed with a Bulgarian webcam model named Silviya Ventsislavova — and his fixation led to a murderous rampage in 2019.
Let’s dive into the intriguing story of Grant Amato, a guy born on May 20, 1989, to his parents, Chad and Margaret Amato. Chad was a clinical pharmacist, while Margaret rocked her role as a senior operations manager overseeing those medical coders. Grant had a couple of brothers in the mix: Cody, his live-in brother, and Jason, a half-brother doing his thing elsewhere.
During his high school days at Timber Creek High School, Grant took his shot at the weightlifting team – talk about some heavy lifting!
After high school, Grant marched into nursing school, ready to conquer the medical world. But, life threw a curveball, and he found himself graduating out of a nurse anaesthetist school shortly after.
Grant got a nursing job at AdventHealth in sunny Orlando. However, in June 2018, Grant got suspended from his nursing job as a result of a mix-up with the sedative Propofol. He administered around eight bottles of it wrongly to some patients.
The hospital also had a hunch that Grant might be stealing medication, and the Orlando Police were called in. Grant was slapped with grand larceny charges, but the hospital decided not to take things to court, but they did terminate his employment.
Grant was back to square one – job hunting wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. But he soon jumped into the world of Twitch streaming, supported by his dad and his brother. They helped him kickstart his channel, even handed over their credit cards so he could get the equipment he needed.
When his Twitch streaming dreams didn’t exactly take off, Grant Amato became a bit of a recluse and, instead of chasing his dream, he found himself glued to his computer screen, scrolling through all sorts of online forums and sites.
He stumbled upon a cam girl site, and became absolutely smitten with one of the models, Silviya Ventsislavova.
Not content with his current reality, he started spinning a web of lies for Silviya, passing her money like confetti, paying for exclusive private chats and shows, pretending he was a big-shot video game streamer rolling in dough.
Grant started to believe there was a legitimate connection between him and Silvie and, wrapped up in this obsession, it only got worse. To keep up the charade, he began stealing cash from his dad and brother to fund his lavish spending.
When Cody and Chad caught wind of Grant’s shenanigans,they confronted him, but Cody still tried to help his brother out, forking over $15,000 for a 60-day p*rn addiction program.
He didn’t stick it out for long, though, bailing on the program with claims that he didn’t really have an addiction.
Even after Cody’s generous gesture and his father’s conditions for moving back in, Grant just couldn’t resist reaching out to Silvie. He even sweet-talked his mom into lending him her phone for the sneaky chat. But his dad wasn’t having any of it. Grant’s dad made good on a previous threat and kicked him out of the house.
On January 24, 2019, things took a deadly turn when he stormed into his parents’ house and shot his mom while she was working.
When his dad came home, he shot him too but, failing to end his father with the first shot, he aimed again as he crawled away.
Grant’s brother Cody walked right into this nightmare and Grant shot him in the face the moment he walked through the door, then tried to make it seem like Cody had done all the damage.
He placed the gun on Cody’s body and even rigged things to look like Cody had taken his own life after committing the gruesome acts.
When investigators found Grant at a hotel nearby, he sobbed and insisted he was innocent, pointing the finger at Cody. However, a damning flash drive filled with Silvie’s pictures placed him at the scene. The puzzle pieces started fitting together. And despite Grant’s claims of innocence, the jury didn’t buy it.
In court, Grant stuck to his not guilty plea, but the jury didn’t buy it. While they couldn’t agree on the death penalty, Grant was given life in prison without parole. To this day, though, Grant stands by his innocence, reminiscing to anyone who’ll listen about the family he lost.
Tags: familicide grant amato murder true crime
