Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: This is an arena where the lines between fantasy and
Speaker 2: reality are always blurred. You're playing a role, you're talking
Speaker 2: to someone who's playing a role, but inevitably the real
Speaker 2: use thinks out through the cracks.
Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
Speaker 1: podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
Speaker 1: research for my many audio and book projects has taken
Speaker 1: me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
Speaker 1: with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
Speaker 1: and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
Speaker 1: crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
Speaker 1: good and and it's a deep dive into the unpublished
Speaker 1: details behind their stories. Filmmaker Colin Archdeacon had an unusual
Speaker 1: relationship with a convicted killer named Grant a Motto in Florida.
Speaker 1: A Motto murdered his parents and his brother in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: and the media blamed his obsession with a cam model,
Speaker 1: but Archdeacon found out that a motto had a very
Speaker 1: different motive. Let's find out more about the three part
Speaker 1: series Control Alt Desire on Paramount Plus. What kind of
Speaker 1: experience do you come to this series with? Did you
Speaker 1: ever do any kind of print writing or journalism? Where
Speaker 1: do you come from?
Speaker 2: So? I actually very much came up through journalism. I
Speaker 2: was a video journalist for about five or six years
Speaker 2: before taking on this story. I'd been working as an
Speaker 2: editor in the documentary field before that, and after making
Speaker 2: not very much headway, I decided to kind of change
Speaker 2: gears and get into journalism. So I moved out to
Speaker 2: New York. I went to the Unity Graduates of Journalism
Speaker 2: and then was lucky enough to get an internship at
Speaker 2: the New York Times video department and kind of, you know,
Speaker 2: paid my bills as a video journalist for the next
Speaker 2: five or six years after that.
Speaker 1: And how did you come to this story which I
Speaker 1: have told you? I binged in actually more like half
Speaker 1: a day, not even a day on Paramount Plus. I
Speaker 1: thought it was wonderful.
Speaker 2: So I was I was actively looking for a story
Speaker 2: that I thought was worthy of a long form treatment,
Speaker 2: and I was also really interested in finding a story
Speaker 2: that I thought could kind of expose the way that
Speaker 2: the Internet is changing the way we feel about ourselves,
Speaker 2: the way that the Internet is reshaping society, and also
Speaker 2: an opportunity to kind of talk about how that argument
Speaker 2: is often exaggerated. And when I saw Grant's case, I
Speaker 2: immediately saw all those ingredients and kind of took a
Speaker 2: long shot. I wrote in a handwritten letter, and then
Speaker 2: we were off.
Speaker 1: Now, normally I like to unravel these stories as a mystery,
Speaker 1: but I think we really do need to start with
Speaker 1: Grant or where I guess where does it make sense
Speaker 1: for us to start with this story.
Speaker 2: What I could do is I could start the story
Speaker 2: telling you how I heard about it, and then how
Speaker 2: I started piecing together the clue. So my experience of
Speaker 2: the story, like I just said, was, you know, I
Speaker 2: sort of on the look for a documentary project. I
Speaker 2: particularly wanted to do something that dealt with the Internet,
Speaker 2: and I happen to see a headline in the Washington
Speaker 2: Post about a man who had been arrested for committing
Speaker 2: a violent crime. He was accused of killing his parents
Speaker 2: and his brother in the home that they all lived
Speaker 2: in together. And the way the media was spinning in
Speaker 2: at the time is that the motivation for this crime
Speaker 2: was this sort of jilted relationship he had had with
Speaker 2: a cam model, which is sort of like a live
Speaker 2: streaming burlesque act that people will watch on the Internet.
Speaker 2: And I immediately thought, Okay, this man certainly thought that
Speaker 2: he was in love with this woman. I didn't really
Speaker 2: question the fact that he had a real, authentic emotional
Speaker 2: connection with this person, but I did very much doubt
Speaker 2: that this relationship was the real motivation for the crime.
Speaker 2: And I knew that because of the lurid nature of
Speaker 2: this crime and this accusation, that the media, the mainstream media,
Speaker 2: and certainly the criminal justice system, was sort of flat
Speaker 2: in the story and likely oversimplify it and make it
Speaker 2: all about the cam girl. So what I did is
Speaker 2: I wrote Atto a letter in prison. I think I
Speaker 2: wrote it to him within three days of his being arrested.
Speaker 2: I'd never written an inmate before. All I had seen
Speaker 2: from Grant was some of his interrogation footage, which was
Speaker 2: surfaced on YouTube very soon after his arrest, and one
Speaker 2: of the first things that Grant talks about in his
Speaker 2: interrogation is his love of anime and video games, which
Speaker 2: is very perverse considering you know that he's under arrest
Speaker 2: for murder. He immediately launches into this sort of like
Speaker 2: fanboy monologue about how much anime beans to him. So
Speaker 2: I saw that as an opportunity to get Grant talking
Speaker 2: about himself, to get his mind off the case, and
Speaker 2: I reached out to Grant with a letter and I said, hy, Grant,
Speaker 2: you know I'm calling. I'm a documentary filmmaker. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm not really interested right now in talking about the murder,
Speaker 2: the things that you're being accused of. Let me tell
Speaker 2: you a little bit about myself and let me ask you,
Speaker 2: you know, what is it that you loved so much
Speaker 2: about anime? Tell me a little bit about the games
Speaker 2: that you played, Tell me a bit about what your
Speaker 2: life was like before all this chaos. Put it in
Speaker 2: the mail, didn't think much of it, wasn't sure what
Speaker 2: was going to happen, started looking around for new stories,
Speaker 2: and I think later that week I got a giant
Speaker 2: letter from Grant in the mail, maybe five or six pages, handwritten,
Speaker 2: and it was almost entire about anime and video games.
Speaker 2: And what he said at the end of the letter
Speaker 2: is that the reason he got back to me out
Speaker 2: of all the other people who've been approaching him was
Speaker 2: I was the only one who didn't ask if he
Speaker 2: was guilty. I was really there to listen to Grant
Speaker 2: to sort of just like bear witness to his own thoughts.
Speaker 2: I didn't come in with an agenda, and I wasn't
Speaker 2: immediately kind of getting at the forensics of the crime
Speaker 2: and the mechanics of the murder or the mechanics of
Speaker 2: the arrest. That wasn't what compelled me about his story,
Speaker 2: whereas I think every other journalists that have reached out
Speaker 2: to him was sort of looking for Corey details right
Speaker 2: off the bat. And you know, from these humble beginnings,
Speaker 2: a couple of you know, handwritten letters that sort of
Speaker 2: generated a rapport between me and Grant that lasted for
Speaker 2: over four years, me recording phone calls in my apartment
Speaker 2: and then eventually selling this project to Paramount Plus and
Speaker 2: going out and filming interviews around the country and even
Speaker 2: in Europe.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the things that I think is
Speaker 1: a huge benefit to a series like this, a three
Speaker 1: part series on a streamer, is you do have the
Speaker 1: time to dig into these different characters. And I thought
Speaker 1: you did a great job talking about particularly the dynamics
Speaker 1: of the family, of the Motto family, between the parents
Speaker 1: and the two brothers. I would like to start with
Speaker 1: the relationship between Cody and Grant, which I still am
Speaker 1: a little confused about. Am I misremembering Grant saying that
Speaker 1: he feels like Cody, the brother he killed, was the
Speaker 1: love of his life.
Speaker 2: That is absolutely what Grant said. He said it to
Speaker 2: me very many times. And what became clear to me
Speaker 2: once I started sort of investigating this case, talking to
Speaker 2: people who knew the a Moattos and spending just countless
Speaker 2: hours on the phone with Grant, is this was really
Speaker 2: the love affair that triggered this horrible crime. It was
Speaker 2: Cody who broke his heart. It was Cody that he
Speaker 2: had pledged his life to, and it was Cody that
Speaker 2: he could not stand to be without. These were brothers
Speaker 2: that were only a couple of years apart. They had
Speaker 2: the same career, They played the same games, they watched
Speaker 2: the same movies. They spent all of their time together.
Speaker 2: They had plans to live with each other as unmarried
Speaker 2: adults once their parents passed away. It was something almost
Speaker 2: beyond obsession. They were kind of living as one spirit
Speaker 2: in two bodies. Is how Grant would say it to me.
Speaker 2: And once Grant started to feel his grasp on that
Speaker 2: relationship weakening, that's when he turned to the cam model.
Speaker 2: And that's when his life really started spinning out of control.
Speaker 1: And I remember Grant saying, I think it was Grant
Speaker 1: saying they hoped to die at the same time. One
Speaker 1: couldn't live without the other. Cody really felt like that too.
Speaker 2: Cody appears who have felt like that too. You know,
Speaker 2: these were two They were, I believe twenty nine and
Speaker 2: thirty at the time of the murders. These were two
Speaker 2: brothers who had strong, lucrative, promising careers in healthcare, and
Speaker 2: yet they both elected to when their late twenties and
Speaker 2: early thirties to continue to live at home with their parents,
Speaker 2: who still did all their laundry, cooked all their meals,
Speaker 2: did their taxes for them, and they were kind of
Speaker 2: just free to sit in their bedrooms and you know,
Speaker 2: play on the internet all day and then go to
Speaker 2: work when they had to go to work. And that
Speaker 2: was pretty much their lives. It was very sheltered, very small,
Speaker 2: and very comfortable for them. Very very deep expression of
Speaker 2: comfort is what I got from Grant, which is you know,
Speaker 2: sort of what the you know, the suburbs are designed
Speaker 2: to provide for its inhabitants, and it's certainly what they
Speaker 2: were doing. They were living the suburban dream. They had money,
Speaker 2: they had comfort, they had privacy, they had all the
Speaker 2: toys they wanted, and they had a future that was very,
Speaker 2: very secure. Once that position of security was challenged by
Speaker 2: Grant's own decision making, that's when he really started to
Speaker 2: spin out of control.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things the strengths about this
Speaker 1: series also is that it feels like you can because
Speaker 1: of the way you move, you move through the chronological order,
Speaker 1: I feel like everything, you know, you can really kind
Speaker 1: of tell where things fall apart, how they start out
Speaker 1: as a very strong family and then we have these revelations.
Speaker 1: So will you tell me specifically about the dynamic between
Speaker 1: the parents and the kids, because this seems at first
Speaker 1: like both parents are in the medical field. Is that right?
Speaker 2: Yep, both parents were in the medical field. I believe
Speaker 2: that Margaret, the mother, worked on the phones for an
Speaker 2: insurance company in some capacity, and that the father, Chad
Speaker 2: was it was a pharmacist who at the time of
Speaker 2: the crimes was working as a telepharmacist for CBS, so
Speaker 2: they both had strong careers in the medical field sort
Speaker 2: of shepherded their sons through it as well. And you know,
Speaker 2: from the outside, it really looked like the perfect happy family.
Speaker 2: You know, there's these four people who spent all of
Speaker 2: their time together, who lived together in this giant house,
Speaker 2: seemingly peacefully, and they just spent every waking moments of
Speaker 2: their free times in each other's company, which I think,
Speaker 2: in a way was not the best for Grant. I
Speaker 2: think it shrunk his world so that the way that
Speaker 2: his family felt about him was all that mattered. It
Speaker 2: was the only thing he knew it was. You know,
Speaker 2: those were really the four walls of his psychological existence.
Speaker 2: What these three people thought about him.
Speaker 1: Tell me about Chad, because I think later on in
Speaker 1: the series we find out that Cody and Grant's father
Speaker 1: seems to be pretty controlling, which makes sense considering they're
Speaker 1: all in the same house and they're together. I would
Speaker 1: have guessed that he was controlling. Do you have evidence
Speaker 1: of that or how do we even know that?
Speaker 2: There's very strong evidence that Chad was sort of a controlling, overbearing,
Speaker 2: domineering father. It's how he would describe himself. It's how
Speaker 2: his coworkers described him. It's how neighbors and friends of
Speaker 2: the Amodel Boys described him as very controlling. He certainly
Speaker 2: seemed like an eccentric, but it didn't seem to be
Speaker 2: something profoundly pathological or something that you wouldn't see, you know,
Speaker 2: in any standard neighborhood in America. He was an overbearing
Speaker 2: father who was obsessed with his children, who wanted to
Speaker 2: control their lives, but it didn't seem like it was
Speaker 2: anything too out of the ordinary. That being said, Grant
Speaker 2: does tell a sort of chilling story about how his
Speaker 2: father would always talk about how he was in touch
Speaker 2: with God and how God would come to him in
Speaker 2: his sleep and tell him what he should do and
Speaker 2: tell him how he should control the family, and that
Speaker 2: he had one vision. When Margaret, the mother was in
Speaker 2: the hospital giving birth to Grant, Chad allegedly had a
Speaker 2: vision of the devil coming to him and telling him
Speaker 2: that Grant would be his greatest failure in life. And
Speaker 2: this was sort of an omen of prophecy that Chad
Speaker 2: didn't share with Grant until I think a few weeks
Speaker 2: before the murders took place, So it does give you
Speaker 2: an idea of sort of the grandiosity that Chad may
Speaker 2: have had. But I want to be very careful about
Speaker 2: not dragging Chad's name through the mud. He's not here
Speaker 2: to defend himself. Grant is certainly an unreliable narrator, and
Speaker 2: he said lots of awful things about his family that
Speaker 2: we did not include in the series because we were
Speaker 2: not able to corrobborat Well.
Speaker 1: That's smart, and that's part of being a journalist, you know,
Speaker 1: as understanding the difference between throwing everything in the kitchen
Speaker 1: sink and saying, Okay, this is all the information we
Speaker 1: have versus being able to cooperate with other people. So
Speaker 1: I'm glad you were able to do that. What do
Speaker 1: we know about Margaret? Was she someone who was an
Speaker 1: enabler or did she sign on with this with Chad,
Speaker 1: or you know, do we think that she was just
Speaker 1: sort of there and control along with the two guys.
Speaker 2: I think you know everything that I was able to
Speaker 2: learn about Margaret. A motto tells me that she was
Speaker 2: an incredibly caring person, an altruist and very devoted mother,
Speaker 2: someone who devoted a huge amount of her free time
Speaker 2: to rehabilitating animals to doting on her children, probably spent
Speaker 2: periods of that marriage failing a little under the thumb
Speaker 2: of Chat Tomato. But ultimately, the portrait that we got
Speaker 2: of this couple in their old age, nearing retirement is
Speaker 2: people who've settled into a very peaceful coexistence. You know,
Speaker 2: they would cuddle up and drink wine and watch old
Speaker 2: movies on the weekend. And though she had sort of
Speaker 2: weathered the storm of Chat's eccentricities during their younger years together,
Speaker 2: it was still a functional marriage and a happy one
Speaker 2: at times.
Speaker 1: Do you think that Cody and Grant, who incidentally I
Speaker 1: thought were twins, I mean, they look so much alike.
Speaker 2: They look absolutely like twins. Yeah, sound canny.
Speaker 1: What are the differences in their personalities that you've learned,
Speaker 1: if anything? Or are they really working in parallel with
Speaker 1: each other their whole lives.
Speaker 2: Cody was a lot more of an alpha. I think
Speaker 2: he took after Chad a little bit more. He was domineering,
Speaker 2: he was confident, he was a little more swaggering, and
Speaker 2: he was certainly more socially well adjusted. He had just
Speaker 2: entered a romantic relationship with a coworker around the time
Speaker 2: of these crimes, which is something that seemed just completely
Speaker 2: out of reach of Grant. So I think what we
Speaker 2: see as sort of a Cody who was higher functioning,
Speaker 2: more charismatic, better socially well adjusted, and it was this
Speaker 2: process of him eclipsing his younger brother Grant that became
Speaker 2: something that was just psychologically unmanageable for Grant, this parallel
Speaker 2: track of him and Cody. Suddenly he was on his
Speaker 2: own course, and it was a darker, lonelier course, and
Speaker 2: he couldn't stand the separation.
Speaker 1: Does it seem like Cody was going to at some
Speaker 1: point get serious with someone and then move out, and
Speaker 1: that was what Grant's fear was.
Speaker 2: It's unclear exactly what Cody's long term plans were. He
Speaker 2: certainly had no financial reason to be staying at home
Speaker 2: and living with his parents. I think there was a
Speaker 2: sense that, you know, this was a committed unit and
Speaker 2: the Amatos stuck together, and that's how everyone in that
Speaker 2: house wanted it. Certainly, anyone there could have left. Margaret
Speaker 2: could have filed for divorce. Cody or Grant could have
Speaker 2: gotten their own apartment, and they decided not to do so.
Speaker 2: So the evidence that we have is that Cody, while
Speaker 2: maybe bristling a little more under Chad's regimen than Grant had,
Speaker 2: was comfortable with the relationship and did love, you know,
Speaker 2: living in his childhood room down the hallway from his brother,
Speaker 2: watching anime, playing video games, and sort of like having
Speaker 2: family dinner every night, Which is not to say that
Speaker 2: he wasn't, you know, the kind of person who's going
Speaker 2: to grow up and get married and eventually move out.
Speaker 2: But at the age of thirty, he was not that
Speaker 2: kind of prison.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about their careers. Both of these men go
Speaker 1: into the medical field, and then Grant loses his job,
Speaker 1: which I thought, oh man, he must have really screwed
Speaker 1: something up. But the way that it's framed in the
Speaker 1: series feels like not something like he is, you know,
Speaker 1: Angel of Death or anything like that. It just seems
Speaker 1: like he was thinking differently, tell me what happens in
Speaker 1: his job before he's let go.
Speaker 2: So Grant and Cody were both studying to become nurse anesthesiologists,
Speaker 2: which is sort of the person that puts a patient
Speaker 2: to sleep before a major surgery. I'm sure it's much
Speaker 2: more complex than that, but that was sort of the
Speaker 2: general gist of what they did. At the time where
Speaker 2: Grant's career was sort of derailed. He was in nurse
Speaker 2: anesthesia school, so he was at the point where he
Speaker 2: was doing his clinicals sort of like working as an
Speaker 2: intern performing anesthesia in a hospital. Not quite a full
Speaker 2: fledged antestesiologist, but someone who had, you know, a man
Speaker 2: with the amount of medical training and could be trusted
Speaker 2: to put patients to sleep. He was working in an
Speaker 2: L and D ward or a neonatal ward, I'm not
Speaker 2: sure exactly which, but working with pregnant women preparing to
Speaker 2: give birth, and ultimately I'm sure in labor and he
Speaker 2: was giving someone who was giving a female patient an epidoral,
Speaker 2: which is like a very long syringe that goes into
Speaker 2: the spinal cord. And basically he had a disagreement with
Speaker 2: the doctor in charge over how to play the needle,
Speaker 2: how to insert the needle in, how much drug to administer,
Speaker 2: and instead of sort of backing down and being the
Speaker 2: student and accepting instruction from his superior, he sort of
Speaker 2: bristled and started a big argument and insisted that he
Speaker 2: was right and the doctor was wrong. This confrontation sort
Speaker 2: of boiled over into the hallway where they were having
Speaker 2: this frankly very unprofessional disagreement in front of other patients,
Speaker 2: and once word of this confrontation sort of made its
Speaker 2: way up to the school, they immediately kicked Grant out.
Speaker 2: Not necessarily because he was right or wrong. I'm certainly
Speaker 2: not qualified to say if he was right or wrong
Speaker 2: about how this medication should be administered, but just the
Speaker 2: idea that in the middle of training he would call
Speaker 2: out his doctor and do so in front of patients
Speaker 2: who are depending on the team of medical professionals to
Speaker 2: administer appropriate care was sort of beyond the pale. So
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, Grant is now kicked out of
Speaker 2: nurse and ansthesia school and forced to work as registered nurse,
Speaker 2: which he sort of saw as a position beneath him,
Speaker 2: beneath his education level, beneath his intellectual level, and certainly
Speaker 2: now beneath his brother Cody. So this is really the
Speaker 2: first the first time where the chain is broken and
Speaker 2: these two men are not living identical lives. Now Cody
Speaker 2: is a nurse anesetist. He's on track to have an
Speaker 2: enormous income, to have prestige, to have control of his schedule,
Speaker 2: to sort of attain a lifestyle similar to the kind
Speaker 2: that his father was able to provide for the family.
Speaker 2: And Grant is now knocked down a level. He's a
Speaker 2: registered nurse, which he saw as a pedestrian job. He
Speaker 2: kind of saw the prospect of him ever achieving a
Speaker 2: higher degree is almost impossible now that he had this
Speaker 2: black mark on his record. And then, believe it or not,
Speaker 2: Grant makes another very similar mistake. He's now working as
Speaker 2: a registered nurse. He is at sort of one of
Speaker 2: these generic drive up clinics that you see all over Orlando.
Speaker 2: There's a huge medical industry in Orlando, and again involving
Speaker 2: pain medication. Grant felt that some of the patients under
Speaker 2: his care as an r end were not being, as
Speaker 2: he put it in the police statement, adequately relaxed. What
Speaker 2: he was doing is he was basically as strange as
Speaker 2: it sounds, in these medical clinics, as far as I
Speaker 2: could gather, there's sort of like a vending machine for
Speaker 2: these painkillers, and what Grant was doing, and you know,
Speaker 2: you have to type in a lot of very specific
Speaker 2: information in order to get the medicine to pop out,
Speaker 2: and Grant was going to these vending machines and taking
Speaker 2: out way more medicine than he needed, storing it in
Speaker 2: his pockets and doling it out as he saw fit
Speaker 2: to patients, and this resulted in some people being over medicated.
Speaker 2: It's certainly completely illegal to be taking out these super
Speaker 2: strong sedatives. I think it was prope ful in this case,
Speaker 2: which is what killed Michael Jackson. And he was sort of,
Speaker 2: I don't want to say, playing god because he wasn't
Speaker 2: killing anybody, but he again, you get a sense of
Speaker 2: the arrogance, the egomania, and sort of the disdain for authority,
Speaker 2: all things that Grant, you know, was not really able
Speaker 2: to express in his family life. In his life as
Speaker 2: the younger brother, his life is sort of the you know,
Speaker 2: the hen pecked son. But at work he was very
Speaker 2: comfortable being this sort of domineering, aggressive, swaggering, know it
Speaker 2: all and he got busted almost immediately for doing this.
Speaker 2: And when he was confronted by his bosses at this clinic,
Speaker 2: he started shivering and shaking, started saying he had nothing
Speaker 2: left to live for anymore, and he scared them to
Speaker 2: the point that they thought he might commit suicide, which
Speaker 2: is what they called the cops. So again, you know,
Speaker 2: what could have been a simple disagreement at work that,
Speaker 2: if handled professionally, could have been swept aside. Grant let
Speaker 2: his emotions get the better of him. The police were called,
Speaker 2: he was arrested and charged with I think a felony,
Speaker 2: theft of medication. It may not have been a felony,
Speaker 2: but he was certainly charges were pending, and he was
Speaker 2: kind of, you know, made bail sent home awaiting the
Speaker 2: results of that case. So now, all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: not only is Grant no longer able to work as
Speaker 2: a nurse anesthetist, he is looking at the possibility of
Speaker 2: having to forfeit his entire medical career. He's not going
Speaker 2: to be able to work as a nurse. I'll never
Speaker 2: be able to achieve any kind of higher degree in
Speaker 2: the medical field. He'll be blackballed. And again, not only
Speaker 2: does this set him off track with his brother Cody.
Speaker 2: Now he can't support himself. He's discribed the family. He
Speaker 2: can't work in the field that the entire family works in.
Speaker 2: He is now completely outcast from the life that he
Speaker 2: had created for himself and also very much the life
Speaker 2: that Chad, his father had created for him. You can
Speaker 2: live in my giant suburban home you can play games
Speaker 2: all day so long as you get a degree, you
Speaker 2: work hard, and you achieve success in the medical career.
Speaker 2: All of a sudden, in a very short amount of months,
Speaker 2: Grant had thrown all of that away.
Speaker 1: Did you get a sense from anybody in Chad and
Speaker 1: Margaret's world about what their reaction was to all of
Speaker 1: this or Cody's reaction. Was it, in fact shaming? I
Speaker 1: can't believe you did this. You such are moron. You know,
Speaker 1: what are you going to do with your life now?
Speaker 1: Was that their reaction?
Speaker 2: I think in private, there was a little bit of
Speaker 2: browbeating against Grant. Of course, any father who had worked
Speaker 2: so hard to provide such a comfortable lifestyle would be,
Speaker 2: you know, scandalized by what Grant had done, and they
Speaker 2: would say, I don't understand this, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: How could you have done this? But more importantly, what
Speaker 2: the family did is they locked arms and they did
Speaker 2: everything they could to rally around Grant and support him.
Speaker 2: They got him therapy, they got him lawyers, They did
Speaker 2: everything in their power to get him back on his feet.
Speaker 2: And they were the same supportive, committed, devoted parents that
Speaker 2: they always had. That and Grant, as we see again,
Speaker 2: was just surrounded by support and love. Maybe it was
Speaker 2: a bit of a crooked love. Maybe it wasn't always
Speaker 2: expressed in the most supportive or effective way, but clearly
Speaker 2: these were two parents who desperately loved their son, wanted
Speaker 2: him to get better, and would spare no emotional or
Speaker 2: financial expense to help him do so.
Speaker 1: Now, this is I think the first time I really
Speaker 1: understood the concept of a cam girl, and you explained it.
Speaker 1: I thought, very well, kind of burlesque show, sexy woman
Speaker 1: on camera. But when does the camgirl concept enter into
Speaker 1: Grant's life, because it feels like it just takes over
Speaker 1: almost instantly.
Speaker 2: So yeah, very shortly after Grant lost his second job,
Speaker 2: you know, was charged with felony theptic medication. He's at
Speaker 2: home now, all that, never leaving the house, spending what
Speaker 2: he told me, eighteen to twenty four hours a day
Speaker 2: on the internet. He tried to start a streaming career
Speaker 2: on Twitch, which is where people will sort of watch
Speaker 2: you play video games. Maybe sort of unimaginable to people
Speaker 2: my age and older, but very popular, very popular online today,
Speaker 2: which is a mammoth platform with lots of really talented
Speaker 2: broadcasters on it, and Grant, you know, kind of convinced
Speaker 2: his family, Hey, I'm going to broadcast myself playing video
Speaker 2: games and it will be my new career. And again,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm sure with enormous amounts of skepticism. You know,
Speaker 2: they helped him buy all the equipment he needed to
Speaker 2: be a streamer. They encouraged him. He tried it. Now,
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, he's in his bedroom all day
Speaker 2: alone playing video games quote unquote professionally, and he's bringing
Speaker 2: in something like one hundred dollars a month. It's clearly
Speaker 2: not going anywhere. It's a ridiculous fantasy. There's no future
Speaker 2: in it. And then one day alone at night, as
Speaker 2: Grant tells the story, he's downloading anime on a tour
Speaker 2: in site and he sees an ad from myfreecams dot com,
Speaker 2: which is an extremely popular camming website, camming platform. He
Speaker 2: clicks on it. He's whisked into this world. You know,
Speaker 2: I've seen it now. It's sort of like, you know,
Speaker 2: this carousel of different women that you can click on,
Speaker 2: and then all of a sudden you're transported into a
Speaker 2: room with them. They're sitting in front of a computer
Speaker 2: with a camera on it. Often just chit chatting with
Speaker 2: members they're in, you know, often underwear revealing outfits, and
Speaker 2: then over the course of like you know, a two
Speaker 2: or three hour performance, the vast majority of which is
Speaker 2: just sort of small talk, it evolves into sort of
Speaker 2: like more erotic acts and performances. The way Grant tells it,
Speaker 2: he saw this woman and fell in love at first sight.
Speaker 2: Her stage name was Eddie Sweet. She was a Bulgarian camperformer,
Speaker 2: you know, with dark hair, beautiful blue eyes. To Grant,
Speaker 2: must have sounded like a very exotic accent. She had
Speaker 2: sort of a dark, biting sense of humor, and Grant
Speaker 2: was head overheels, you know. Even though these are you know,
Speaker 2: communal spaces where there's maybe one hundred guys watching a
Speaker 2: single performance, Grant was able to feel like he was
Speaker 2: forging a really personal connection with Addie Sweet. And what
Speaker 2: he did is he started spending more and more money
Speaker 2: in this sort of camming ecosystem to the point where,
Speaker 2: you know, if you spend enough money in this system,
Speaker 2: you're able to have one on one conversations with the
Speaker 2: camp performer. So him and Addie Sweet, whose real name
Speaker 2: he later found out was Sylvie, started spending huge amounts
Speaker 2: of time on the phone together. He got her personal numbers,
Speaker 2: so they were texting all day. What's this is called,
Speaker 2: you know in the sex work industry, is the girlfriend experience.
Speaker 2: This person will sort of performed the emotional role of
Speaker 2: being your girlfriend. Well, of course, never meeting with you
Speaker 2: in person, you get to feel like you have a girlfriend.
Speaker 2: And while I think the vast majority of people on
Speaker 2: these camming sites understand that this is fantasy play, that
Speaker 2: this has cause play. Of course, if you're paying someone
Speaker 2: to be your girlfriend, they're not your girlfriend. It's after all,
Speaker 2: not called the girlfriend. It's called the girlfriend experience, right,
Speaker 2: This is all a mediated fantasy, and the rules of
Speaker 2: the game are were still clear. I was looking for
Speaker 2: sort of any kind of academic literature about camming that
Speaker 2: I could read to sort of educate myself to feel
Speaker 2: like I wasn't coming in It's a total neophyight, when
Speaker 2: I eventually interviewed these cam workers and so that I
Speaker 2: wasn't just sort of getting the perspective of online users.
Speaker 2: So I wanted to find some kind of expert who
Speaker 2: had done the heavy lifting and the heavy thinking that
Speaker 2: I couldn't do on my own. And I found doctor
Speaker 2: Angela Jones, who was a professor at SUNNI. She had
Speaker 2: written a book called Camming, which was the only serious
Speaker 2: academic work I could find about the camming industry, and
Speaker 2: it was sort of became the bible of our show.
Speaker 2: I had everyone working on the series read the book,
Speaker 2: and it provided a lens and a language and a
Speaker 2: system of empathy and sympathy for understanding this world that
Speaker 2: was totally out of reach for us as non experts.
Speaker 1: And I thought that doctor Jones made some really excellent points.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I think is interesting about
Speaker 1: this world that I think you showed both sides of
Speaker 1: is On the one hand, Grant talked about what he
Speaker 1: felt like was the manipulation of the world, which is
Speaker 1: literally like a ranking system if I understood him, of
Speaker 1: the amount of money that these men would pay Sylvie
Speaker 1: and then of course, you know, she would be effusive
Speaker 1: for the top men who happened to be Grant.
Speaker 2: You know, I think a really perfect word for this
Speaker 2: story is gamified. You know, the Camming ecosystem is gamified,
Speaker 2: so you get points by how much you tip, and
Speaker 2: there's a leaderboard for who's scoring the most points and inevitably,
Speaker 2: all the men in these rooms are competing for who
Speaker 2: can be the leader, who can win the game. It
Speaker 2: looks like a video game, It feels like a video game.
Speaker 2: It sounds like video games with all the you know,
Speaker 2: the digital sound effects and the icons and the badges,
Speaker 2: and it's just very much mirrors gaming culture down to
Speaker 2: a t and Grant, whose social status had I don't
Speaker 2: want to say had been stripped of him, but who
Speaker 2: had sort of set his social status on fire in
Speaker 2: his real life, all of a sudden found this world
Speaker 2: where he could be a top dog again, and he
Speaker 2: could kind of get that swagger back, and he could
Speaker 2: kind of be thea that he wasn't able to be
Speaker 2: in real life. And the way to do that was
Speaker 2: by spending as much money as possible to become the
Speaker 2: top of the leader board and ultimately become, you know,
Speaker 2: the main receptacle of Sylvie's attention. So what he started
Speaker 2: doing was burning through his life savings, spending more and
Speaker 2: more money every single night, every single performance. Tipping is
Speaker 2: he set a little bell jingles inside the room and
Speaker 2: everybody looks at you like you're some special guy. He basically,
Speaker 2: you know, he felt like a celebrity in this room.
Speaker 2: And when he burned through his own savings, this is
Speaker 2: where you know it took a turn that he was
Speaker 2: ultimately not able to get out of. Randt started spending
Speaker 2: his family's money. He started stealing credit cards, he started
Speaker 2: taking out loans and other people's names. He started, I
Speaker 2: believe he was even able to mortgage the to mortgage
Speaker 2: the home. And what he ended up doing was stealing
Speaker 2: over two hundred thousand dollars from his family and giving
Speaker 2: it all to Sylvie in the course of something like
Speaker 2: six months, and again in another act of I think
Speaker 2: at this point we'd have to say unconditional love. His
Speaker 2: parents discover all this, They discover grand subterfuge, they discover
Speaker 2: all the theft. They confront him and they forgive him.
Speaker 2: They offer to pay back all the money, They offer
Speaker 2: to sweep any criminal probes that might be going on
Speaker 2: under the rug. They take him to therapy, they allow
Speaker 2: him to continue living in the house, and they do
Speaker 2: everything they can to rehabilitate their son. And sadly, what
Speaker 2: we see in the story is that all of their
Speaker 2: best efforts fail.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the girlfriend experience, because this is the
Speaker 1: part of the series where I was the most conflicted,
Speaker 1: and I understand the concept. So you know, like you're
Speaker 1: making a personal connection. Certainly, if we believe Grant, she
Speaker 1: is drawing him in and it seems like really sharing
Speaker 1: some personal aspects of her life. He feels like he
Speaker 1: can draw a line between her online persona and Sylvie,
Speaker 1: the woman who has vulnerabilities. But do you get the
Speaker 1: impression that this is all an act? Because you had
Speaker 1: a cam girl in the series who has a really
Speaker 1: what felt like an authentic conversation with one of her
Speaker 1: anonymous clients on the phone, And man, I just had
Speaker 1: a hard time reading what is real and what is
Speaker 1: not with you know, some of these people, both with
Speaker 1: the clients and with the women.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's definitely this is an arena where
Speaker 2: the lines between fantasy and reality are always blurred. You're
Speaker 2: playing a role, you're talking to someone who's playing a role,
Speaker 2: but inevitably the real use sneaks out through the cracks,
Speaker 2: and there always is some kind of authentic emotional transaction
Speaker 2: where you're chit chatting about what she did that day,
Speaker 2: which you watched on TV last night. How annoying it
Speaker 2: is to sit in traffic when you're just trying to
Speaker 2: get groceries. You know. Real life inevitably insinuates itself in
Speaker 2: all these relationships, but there is this underlying, like heartbeat
Speaker 2: of capitalism pulsing through all of these interactions where money
Speaker 2: is being exchanged, money is being asked for. Though, as
Speaker 2: Grant says point blank in the series, Sylvia or asked
Speaker 2: him to spend money on her, he did all of
Speaker 2: it on his own. You know, something that doctor Jones says,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if this made it in the series,
Speaker 2: is like, look, if you want a girlfriend, if you
Speaker 2: want a relationship, there are websites for that. You can
Speaker 2: go on Tinder, or you can go on Hinge. When
Speaker 2: you go onto one of these camping platforms, you're very
Speaker 2: much entering the world of a game. And the vast
Speaker 2: majority of people understand this. It's rare that someone completely
Speaker 2: loses perspective on real life and where the roles begin
Speaker 2: and end, and develops this kind of obsession that being upset.
Speaker 2: Of course, it does happen, and people who work in
Speaker 2: this industry know the signs, they know what to look for,
Speaker 2: and we are told they're very quick to cut off
Speaker 2: people when they feel that it's becoming completely psychologically destructive
Speaker 2: to enter into one of these sort of like almost
Speaker 2: like a cause play relationship. The way Grant tells the story,
Speaker 2: he was spending something like eight or ten hours a
Speaker 2: day texting or talking to Sylvie or watching her performances.
Speaker 2: They certainly got very close, but again Grant was lying
Speaker 2: to Sylvie, probably a lot more than she was manufacturing
Speaker 2: an identity herself. He told Sylvie that he was a
Speaker 2: millionaire doctor who drove a BMW and lived in his
Speaker 2: own house. He sold Sylvie the fantasy life that he
Speaker 2: thought he deserved, all the things he thought him and
Speaker 2: Cody were sort of set up to earn on their
Speaker 2: own and that he had destroyed. He told Sylvia that
Speaker 2: he had achieved all those things. So from Sylvie's point
Speaker 2: of view, I can imagine that it is somewhat flattering
Speaker 2: to have a wealthy American doctor who's obsessed with you
Speaker 2: and spending all of his money on you, And of
Speaker 2: course that must be somewhat intriguing. I would never try
Speaker 2: to intinunate that she had any sort of romantic feelings
Speaker 2: for him, but it probably wasn't so horrible to get
Speaker 2: on the phone and in chit chat with this successful
Speaker 2: man who's obsessed with you every day. Grant is educated,
Speaker 2: he's intelligent. I'm the same is true for Sylvie, and
Speaker 2: I think it's quite believable that they could have, you know, stimulating,
Speaker 2: friendly conversations with each other, and they very likely did.
Speaker 2: But of course, you know, Grant again refused to acknowledge
Speaker 2: the boundaries of this world, and there are very clear
Speaker 2: boundaries psychological boundaries about what is real, what is love,
Speaker 2: what is not true. As some of the men, some
Speaker 2: of the other men in the group were also like
Speaker 2: Sylvie's super fans told me, you know, this is like
Speaker 2: a strip club. It's a place that I come to
Speaker 2: after work to let off a little steam. Of course,
Speaker 2: it's erotic, and you know, I'm stimulating that part of
Speaker 2: my life. Of course I do like chit chatting with
Speaker 2: the girls. But you know, just as sort of pathetic
Speaker 2: and misguided and sad it is when you know a
Speaker 2: man thinks that to use their language, you know, the
Speaker 2: strippers falling in love with them. That's exactly what they
Speaker 2: saw happening with Grant. These were all, you know, functional
Speaker 2: adults who had the money again to spend. They'd become
Speaker 2: these big tippers to enter this sort of like rarefied
Speaker 2: class of of top tippers, but they absolutely understood where
Speaker 2: the lines were and they had never seen someone spin
Speaker 2: out of control the way Grant did so, which I think,
Speaker 2: you know, further establishes how taboo his behavior was, and
Speaker 2: that well, certainly, you know, the camming world, there is
Speaker 2: a world designed to get users to spend money, just
Speaker 2: like a casino or a Walmart. It's not quite as
Speaker 2: predatory as it was made to seem during the trial.
Speaker 1: I had wondered that that was the point I wanted
Speaker 1: to bring up, is after these murders happened, this story,
Speaker 1: as lured as it could be made in the media,
Speaker 1: becomes fodder for sort of like late night talk shows,
Speaker 1: I mean, every media you can think of, and it
Speaker 1: always goes back to this guy killed his parents and
Speaker 1: his brother over this beautiful international camgirl, and we now
Speaker 1: know it was so much more complex. And also Sylvie
Speaker 1: is not responsible for what this man did to his family.
Speaker 1: I had wondered what the reaction was from the camgirl community.
Speaker 1: Have you had any reaction or at least for the
Speaker 1: people who appeared in your show.
Speaker 2: So the cam models that we spoke to in our show,
Speaker 2: I'll work for a studio called Models for Models in Romania.
Speaker 2: It is run by former cam models, run for former
Speaker 2: cam models. It's an all female staff. It's very nurturing,
Speaker 2: protective environment from what we were able to see. They
Speaker 2: pay their taxes, they're above board, they advertised on the radio,
Speaker 2: their address is publicized. It was a very normal workplace
Speaker 2: in a lot of ways. They were totally unaware of
Speaker 2: this case, even though you know, they were performing within,
Speaker 2: you know, just a couple hundred miles of where Sylvie was.
Speaker 2: And I think ultimately where this case really got a
Speaker 2: football in the public imagination was in the true crime internet.
Speaker 2: You saw these sort of explosively popular YouTube videos and
Speaker 2: Twitch streams, and it was, you know, this sort of
Speaker 2: species of internet culture that I was sort of unfamiliar with,
Speaker 2: where there's I think there's a Grand Model YouTube video
Speaker 2: where a woman does a makeup tutorial while explaining every
Speaker 2: detail of the case, and I think I believe this
Speaker 2: one had something like thirteen million view And it was
Speaker 2: really this community that latched on to the story and
Speaker 2: that sort of invested it with you know, conspiracy theories
Speaker 2: and pop psychological analysis and stuff like that. But outside
Speaker 2: of you know, Grant's you know community of you know,
Speaker 2: basically the fifty mile radius of Orlando where he grew up,
Speaker 2: the case didn't have a lot of national attention on him.
Speaker 1: I felt like when Grant really jumped the shark was
Speaker 1: when he made that video meant for Cody before the murders.
Speaker 1: And of course when he starts the video, I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: this is what he's leaving behind after he dies by suicide,
Speaker 1: which was not the case. It was a I need
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars to go meet this cam model and
Speaker 1: you need to give it to me, Cody. That felt
Speaker 1: like a big switch to me. Do you think that
Speaker 1: that was really the beginning of Grant thinking I'm going
Speaker 1: to go down the road and I can't get off
Speaker 1: this road, and it's going to end with the murders
Speaker 1: of my family.
Speaker 2: Well, Grant told us is that when he first started
Speaker 2: hatching this plan to commit this, you know, absolutely horrifying
Speaker 2: triple homicide, was in therapy. His family had sent him
Speaker 2: to sort of a rehab clinic to get over his
Speaker 2: to the internet, to get over his addiction to this woman,
Speaker 2: to sort of hopefully start to allay his self destructive behavior,
Speaker 2: and it was the indignity of being sent to a
Speaker 2: rehabilitation clinic with, as he described, scummy drug addicts. Again,
Speaker 2: this sort of absolute loss of social status that he
Speaker 2: saw as his birthright, this level of shame and indignity,
Speaker 2: was something that Grant couldn't stand, and it was in
Speaker 2: that facility that Grant started to hatch the plan that
Speaker 2: was a few weeks after he filmed these incredibly disturbing
Speaker 2: videos dedicated to his family begging them for I think
Speaker 2: fifty thousand dollars so that he could go visit Sylvia
Speaker 2: in Europe and see if she really did love him
Speaker 2: or not. As you can imagine, his parents and his
Speaker 2: brother were immediately Saint Grant, this is a fantasy world.
Speaker 2: She doesn't love you, she's not even pretending to love you.
Speaker 2: You're paying her for a girlfriend experience. You can't blame
Speaker 2: this woman. The Amados never blamed Sylvie. Chad actually wrote
Speaker 2: her a letter sort of absolving her of guilt. They
Speaker 2: just begged her to off her relationship with him and
Speaker 2: to stop taking his money or to stop receiving his
Speaker 2: money because it wasn't actually his. But yet in these
Speaker 2: videos that Grant recorded sort of begging his parents for
Speaker 2: the funds to go start a life in Europe with Sylvie.
Speaker 2: We could see that he's totally lost touch with reality.
Speaker 2: He's pale, his face is drawn. He's speaking like he's
Speaker 2: in the midst of some international espionage plot, using all
Speaker 2: this James Bond type language about how his secrets need
Speaker 2: to be protected and the mission needs to be completed
Speaker 2: and the plan needs to be enacted, And you see
Speaker 2: a man who's completely lost touch with reality. But I
Speaker 2: don't know if we're necessarily looking at a man ready
Speaker 2: to commit a triple homicide at that point in those videos.
Speaker 2: It wasn't until, like I said, the final indignation of
Speaker 2: having to talk to a professional therapist about his fantasies,
Speaker 2: that Grant really could no longer take his fall from grace,
Speaker 2: could no longer stomach what he had become, could no
Speaker 2: longer really look in the mirror. And as someone on
Speaker 2: my team put it, this was a man, you know
Speaker 2: who really just couldn't withstand his own shame, couldn't deal
Speaker 2: with what he had become, and had to destroy everybody
Speaker 2: who was casting judgment on him, which again, his world
Speaker 2: was so small. There were only three people Grant really knew.
Speaker 2: Grant really spent time with, Grant shared his life with,
Speaker 2: And if his life had been destroyed, then those three
Speaker 2: people who constituted his life had to be destroyed as well.
Speaker 1: Take me through that experience. Tell me about the crime,
Speaker 1: what happened.
Speaker 2: What we know about the crime is that Grant killed
Speaker 2: his three family members with four bullets. It was very calculated,
Speaker 2: it was very precise. Grant and his brother had an
Speaker 2: enormous amount of experience with guns. They went to shooting
Speaker 2: ranges all the time. They had many many guns in
Speaker 2: the house. They played airsoft, which is sort of this
Speaker 2: like militarized paintball game with all of their friends. And
Speaker 2: he was a weapons expert. And what he did is
Speaker 2: he came down one afternoon while everyone was at work.
Speaker 2: His mother worked at home, so it was just Grant
Speaker 2: and his mom at home. His mom was on the
Speaker 2: computer playing Candy Crush. Grant snuck up behind her and
Speaker 2: shot her in the back of the head. He then
Speaker 2: waited for his father to get home. His father came
Speaker 2: in through the kitchen. He walked in said hey Dad.
Speaker 2: When his dad turned around, he shot his father once
Speaker 2: failed to kill his father with that shot. His father
Speaker 2: struggled for a bit and then Grant shot him one
Speaker 2: final time, killing him. Then he got on the phone
Speaker 2: with his brother. We're not sure what happened in this
Speaker 2: phone call, but Grant somehow enticed his brother to leave
Speaker 2: work and come home. This is what we know from
Speaker 2: Cody's co workers. He got some kind of call, seemed
Speaker 2: very distressed, and left work, which is not something Cody
Speaker 2: was likely to do. He was a very committed and
Speaker 2: regimented professional. Him leaving work in the middle of a
Speaker 2: ship was unheard of. Cody comes home, takes one step
Speaker 2: through the garage, Grant is waiting there on the side
Speaker 2: of the wall, and kills Cody with one shot the
Speaker 2: moment he walks in. Grant then spends hours at home
Speaker 2: with the corpses of his family, organizing hard drives, trying
Speaker 2: to get into his family member's bank accounts, making sure
Speaker 2: that he has the entire archive of Sylvie videos, and
Speaker 2: eventually leaving the home in the middle of the night,
Speaker 2: going to a supermarket parking lot and logging onto Sylvie's
Speaker 2: website so that he can watch a performance and spend
Speaker 2: another night tipping her and being you know, being a
Speaker 2: big dog in the winner's circle. He then goes to
Speaker 2: a job interview the next morning, performs decently well at
Speaker 2: this job interview, and is arrested at a hotel the
Speaker 2: next day and he's taken in for questioning. He's very timid,
Speaker 2: he's docile, he's in scrubs, and he gives I think.
Speaker 2: Over the course of a six hour interrogation, he speaks
Speaker 2: very placidly about his love of anime, his love of
Speaker 2: video games, his love of weapons, his love of Sylvie.
Speaker 2: He narrates the downfall that he had experienced, and this
Speaker 2: very shocking short of crescendo to the interrogation. Grant is
Speaker 2: presented with the photographs of his dead family members and asked,
Speaker 2: did you leave the house with your family like this?
Speaker 2: Grant breaks down in tears and immediately says no. He
Speaker 2: holds his ground, claims his innocence, says he didn't do
Speaker 2: anything like this. Went to trial claiming his innocence, saying
Speaker 2: he never did anything like this, received a life sentence,
Speaker 2: went behind bars claiming he was innocent. Spent months and
Speaker 2: months on the phone with me, claiming his innocence, saying
Speaker 2: he never did this. No one ever believed it. I
Speaker 2: never believed it. He didn't have a credible theory of
Speaker 2: what had actually happened that night. And then he took
Speaker 2: his case to appeal. The Department of Justice in Florida
Speaker 2: denied his appeal, and once it became clear that Grant
Speaker 2: was going to be behind bars for the rest of
Speaker 2: his life with no chance of parole, that is when
Speaker 2: he decided to tell me the truth. That is when
Speaker 2: he confessed to me that he had committed these murders.
Speaker 2: He told me what happened that night, and then all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, I was kind of treated to like
Speaker 2: the real Grant, you know, the mask had fined cracked off,
Speaker 2: and I was able to talk with the real grand
Speaker 2: someone that he had in part been hiding from me
Speaker 2: all these years, on the phone. And what we saw
Speaker 2: was all this sort of egomania, these recriminations, the pathology
Speaker 2: of thinking that he was better than everybody else and
Speaker 2: that he deserved the world on a platter. All of
Speaker 2: that really came to the foreground in a very unguarded
Speaker 2: and shocking way once Grant's appeal was denied. And that
Speaker 2: is the Grant that we introduced audiences to in the
Speaker 2: third and final episode, and that is the Grant that
Speaker 2: I hope audiences remember when they think back on this project.
Speaker 1: I will say it's pretty disgusting. His smirk just transforms
Speaker 1: I think, his whole personality, like you said in that
Speaker 1: last episode, and it pops up a couple of different times.
Speaker 1: I think, tell me about the little bit of a
Speaker 1: wild goose chase that he sent you and then it
Speaker 1: sounds like quite a few police officers on which ends
Speaker 1: up with that damn smirk.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the weak points in the prosecution's case
Speaker 2: is that there was no more weapon. They couldn't find
Speaker 2: the gun that had actually killed the Amatos, which was
Speaker 2: a glaring hole in their case. It made it seem
Speaker 2: like for a long time that Grant could actually be
Speaker 2: found innocent and walk away from this trial of freeman.
Speaker 2: Like I said, once it's appeal was denied and Grant
Speaker 2: finally confessed to me, I asked him right away. I
Speaker 2: was like, Grant, where's the murder weapon? And he said, oh, well,
Speaker 2: I actually, after I killed my family, I went back
Speaker 2: to one of my friend's houses and I buried it
Speaker 2: in his backyard, which seemed strange, as many of the
Speaker 2: lawyers said the second I told this theory to the lawyers,
Speaker 2: they jumped on it right away. It was like, this
Speaker 2: doesn't sound credible, this sounds bizarre. Wouldn't there be evidence
Speaker 2: of digging. Why wouldn't he just throw it in a lake.
Speaker 2: There's a million lakes around here. Why would he do this? Nevertheless,
Speaker 2: Grant held tutor that story. I felt legally obligated to
Speaker 2: tell the sheriffs that I had been told this information
Speaker 2: that there could potentially be a murder weapon buried in
Speaker 2: this backyard somewhere out in Florida. I had to give them,
Speaker 2: you know, some sworn testimony, and they allowed us to
Speaker 2: film them digging for this, this murder weapon in the backyard,
Speaker 2: and they didn't find it. Grant, of course, had a
Speaker 2: theory that, you know, he had buried it under a tree,
Speaker 2: and in the years intervening between when he was arrested
Speaker 2: and when we went to dig it up, those trees
Speaker 2: had been removed, and maybe the landscapers had sort of
Speaker 2: excavated the gun and just thrown it away in a
Speaker 2: landfill somewhere. But you know, the story wasn't quite convincing,
Speaker 2: and at that point, I think we saw that Grant
Speaker 2: was you know, a manipulator, a narcissist, someone who was
Speaker 2: enjoying this cat and mouse game that he was now
Speaker 2: playing with me. And that was sort of the conclusion
Speaker 2: that we all drew from this event. You know that
Speaker 2: here's another lie, another manipulation, another desperate grasp for attention,
Speaker 2: and also, I think, frankly, another desperate attempt on his
Speaker 2: part to attack his friend. You know, the man who
Speaker 2: Grant said had the gun buried in his backyard was
Speaker 2: another innocent bystander, another victim of this crime, and another
Speaker 2: victim of Grant's you know, machinations.
Speaker 1: And I think, to your credit, that last episode really
Speaker 1: does put so much separation between Grant, this love sick puppy,
Speaker 1: you know, who was so desperate to be with this
Speaker 1: cam model that he killed his parents and his brother
Speaker 1: for the money and they were pressuring him to stop
Speaker 1: and all of that, and this manipulative woman. And now
Speaker 1: the reality of it is, you know, I wonder if
Speaker 1: this would have happened in some way, shape or form,
Speaker 1: whether he had met Sylvie or gotten into that world
Speaker 1: or not, just because he seems so much more authentic
Speaker 1: now after this mask is pulled off. It just seems
Speaker 1: like inevitable that something bad was going to happen. But
Speaker 1: as I was starting to say, now, to your credit,
Speaker 1: there's so much space now between I think, you know,
Speaker 1: Sylvie was an excuse and the cam model world was
Speaker 1: an excuse that now is not very legitimate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I think that's you know,
Speaker 2: grantstonfatuation with Sylvie was a symptom. It wasn't the disease,
Speaker 2: and it's very important to distinguish between the two. I
Speaker 2: think without Sylvie there still would have been a tragedy
Speaker 2: in this family. And I think that, you know, even
Speaker 2: if Grant's life had gone exactly how he wanted it
Speaker 2: to and he had achieved all of this success, I
Speaker 2: think he still would have hurt the people in his
Speaker 2: life in some sort of savage way. It might not
Speaker 2: have been this unbelievably tragic, violent outburst, but I think
Speaker 2: this man has serious mental health problems and he was
Speaker 2: going to hurt the people in his life in one
Speaker 2: way or another. Sylvie was in, you know, sort of
Speaker 2: the wrong place at the wrong time and became this
Speaker 2: object of fascination for Grant. But I don't think she
Speaker 2: twisted his mind or his motivations or preyed on his
Speaker 2: emotions in any sort of unusual way whatsoever. There are
Speaker 2: millions of people engaged in these kind of relationships around
Speaker 2: the world. They don't end in violence. What was that
Speaker 2: work here? With something a lot more complicated, a lot
Speaker 2: more human, a lot more idiosyncratic to Grant's own, you know,
Speaker 2: particular psychology and emotional makeup.
Speaker 1: You hire an investigator, translator, investigator to try to find her,
Speaker 1: and when ultimately this investigator tracks her down, Sylvie sounds
Speaker 1: like another victim to me. I mean, she is scared, senseless,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure if she were to pick someone to
Speaker 1: speak with it would be your crew, just because you
Speaker 1: have done such an in depth job. But she seems
Speaker 1: frightened and of course not trusting Grant and feeling betrayed
Speaker 1: in all sorts of things, but mostly frightened.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I absolutely consider Sylvie to be one of the
Speaker 2: victims of this crime. I told her so in many letters.
Speaker 2: She you know, as doctor Jones says in our series,
Speaker 2: she was just doing her job and this terrible thing happened.
Speaker 2: When we speak to where she absolutely sounds scared. She
Speaker 2: says that she had to go to therapy to recover
Speaker 2: from this event. That has taken a lot of work
Speaker 2: for her to get back on her feet, but that
Speaker 2: luckily she has. She's still working, she's still successful. And
Speaker 2: I think very telling is that she's never in this
Speaker 2: conversation we have from her, she never says Grant's name,
Speaker 2: she never says, you know, the term the murder or
Speaker 2: the crime. She just says this thing. It's still something
Speaker 2: that she can't speak. It's still something that clearly is
Speaker 2: a weight on her. And again, it's just another crystal
Speaker 2: clear portrait of and I hate to use this language,
Speaker 2: but how effective this crime was. Grant destroyed so many people,
Speaker 2: He destroyed so many lives, and the legacy of his
Speaker 2: actions still live on. It's not over, and it will
Speaker 2: not be over for anyone who lived through this.
Speaker 1: I mean, I hate to bring this up, but this
Speaker 1: man has gotten a tremendous amount of attention from women.
Speaker 1: I never understand it. I don't need to understand it,
Speaker 1: but he claims, and I'm sure it's true, that he
Speaker 1: has gotten just hundreds of solicitations from women who want
Speaker 1: to communicate with him. And kind of grossly he explains
Speaker 1: how he knows when someone is authentic and is an
Speaker 1: authentic and how he can now be picky. It is
Speaker 1: clear that Grant A. Motto is getting more attention now
Speaker 1: than he ever has in his entire life, and is
Speaker 1: kind of getting what he wants in an odd way.
Speaker 2: I think that's true, and that is an inevitable byproduct
Speaker 2: of this project is that Grant is going to get
Speaker 2: some attention, and it's going to be, you know, attention
Speaker 2: from people who are likely not doing very well themselves.
Speaker 2: What I hope is that this project once and for
Speaker 2: all dispels the idea of Grant potentially being innocent, which
Speaker 2: was still you know, in the public record that he
Speaker 2: was claiming his innocence until I was able to extract
Speaker 2: this confession for him. It's now a matter of public
Speaker 2: and permanent record that Granted Motto did commit these murders,
Speaker 2: has confessed to these murders, and I think, as we
Speaker 2: expressed in the final the final minutes of the series,
Speaker 2: experience is almost no remorse. So I think the idea
Speaker 2: of him being a and this is language that I
Speaker 2: got from speaking to some of these women who reach
Speaker 2: out to these convicted murderers, is this is not you know,
Speaker 2: a poor, broken boy, a victim of a modern society
Speaker 2: who didn't understand his vulnerability. This was a cold, calculated,
Speaker 2: heartless act by a very disturbed man who, as a
Speaker 2: human being deserves some sympathy, but as a rational actor
Speaker 2: and a victim of circumstance, I think deserves no sympathy whatsoever.
Speaker 2: And what I'm hoping is that this actually dampens the
Speaker 2: appeal of the Grand Model story going forward.
Speaker 1: What was your last conversation like with Grant or have
Speaker 1: you had a last conversation with him yet?
Speaker 2: So I would say that we haven't had our last
Speaker 2: conversation without giving away too many details. Grant and I
Speaker 2: were able to communicate with a contraband cell phone that
Speaker 2: he was able to smuggle into prison. Oh, we were
Speaker 2: able to text fairly regularly, and he always had read receipts,
Speaker 2: so I would know when he received my messages. As
Speaker 2: far as I know, Grant hasn't received any of my
Speaker 2: messages since Thanksgiving. We're recording this in April, so it's
Speaker 2: been about four months since I was able to communicate
Speaker 2: with Grant. I think it's very likely that Grant is
Speaker 2: being punished for this series coming out, being punished for
Speaker 2: communicating with a journalist without the prison's intervention, and is
Speaker 2: very likely in solitary confinement right now. This is a
Speaker 2: risk that Grant knew he was taking. He kind of
Speaker 2: saw it as sort of the inevitable consequence of him
Speaker 2: pt disicipating in the story is that he would have
Speaker 2: his phone confiscated, he would be punished by the guards,
Speaker 2: and he'd be thrown in solitary And it appears that
Speaker 2: that's what's happening right now, though of course I don't
Speaker 2: know for sure. But what I can tell you is
Speaker 2: that Grant has not communicated with me since I finished
Speaker 2: the show in November. As far as I know, he
Speaker 2: hasn't seen the show and might not be able to
Speaker 2: get his hands on any kind of technology for a
Speaker 2: long time, which could be a good thing.
Speaker 1: What would be the purpose for you to keep communicating
Speaker 1: with him once the show is out? Is there another
Speaker 1: step after this?
Speaker 2: I feel that I owe Grant sort of the respect
Speaker 2: of staying in touch with him. You know, he did
Speaker 2: share his story with me. We spent a long time
Speaker 2: getting to know each other. That being said, I always
Speaker 2: had to create, you know, a very firm wall between us.
Speaker 2: This could never be a friendship or a therapeutic relationship
Speaker 2: for him, And certainly that was something that Grant wanted.
Speaker 2: You know, he's in prison for life, and he needs partnership,
Speaker 2: and he needs sympathy, and he needs people to listen
Speaker 2: to him. And once I realized that he was sort
Speaker 2: of developing this kind of attachment to me into our calls,
Speaker 2: I had to pull back a little bit and make
Speaker 2: sure that Grant didn't view me as a friend. That
Speaker 2: being said, I do feel that I owe him staying
Speaker 2: in touch. I'm curious to hear what he has to
Speaker 2: say about the show, But yeah, I certainly don't feel
Speaker 2: that Grant deserves my sympathy or my empathy any more
Speaker 2: than he's already received it.
Speaker 1: I'm just so curious about why did they not pursue
Speaker 1: the death penalty in this case. I am not going
Speaker 1: to talk about my politics around the death penalty, but
Speaker 1: we're in Florida. You would think that with a triple
Speaker 1: murder that would be the first thing on their minds.
Speaker 2: Well, it was certainly on the table. And the reason
Speaker 2: that Grant did not get the death penalty is that
Speaker 2: his one surviving brother, this was a half brother of
Speaker 2: his who had moved out of the house, was much
Speaker 2: older than Grant, sort of isolated from the family, but
Speaker 2: still a half brother. Nonetheless, someone who intimately knew Grant's
Speaker 2: parents went on the stand and said, despite everything, despite
Speaker 2: my absolute, rock solid belief that Grant did kill my family,
Speaker 2: I still love my brother, And that statement saved Grant's life,
Speaker 2: and again is yet another piece of evidence of the
Speaker 2: unconditional love and support that Grant received from his family
Speaker 2: every step down the rabbit hole.
Speaker 1: Did other family members say something similar or was there
Speaker 1: anybody else there to represent Chad and Margaret?
Speaker 2: No one else took the stand to defend Grant or
Speaker 2: to talk about the impact that this murder had had
Speaker 2: on the family. I think the Amatos were estranged from
Speaker 2: certain parts of their family. They were very isolated family.
Speaker 2: I think they all kind of just went to work
Speaker 2: and then went home and spent all of their free
Speaker 2: time at home together. So there were not a lot
Speaker 2: of people who had insight into what these tumultuous last
Speaker 2: six months of the Amado's lives were like. I think
Speaker 2: Margaret was upfront about the fact that she was going
Speaker 2: through family problems and she was distressed, but no one
Speaker 2: really knew what the nature of them was, and I
Speaker 2: think certainly everybody was disgusted with Grant. Everyone was completely
Speaker 2: convinced of his guilt and didn't feel like they needed
Speaker 2: to take the stand in order to put this man
Speaker 2: behind bars.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about what your feelings are
Speaker 1: with that fem fatale storyline, the manipulated man, poor man
Speaker 1: who has fallen into the web of this woman who
Speaker 1: is specifically targeting him to kind of play with his emotions.
Speaker 2: I think it plays into the fantasy here that you know,
Speaker 2: men are not responsible for their own sexual impulses. It's
Speaker 2: something hardwired into them. They can't be taken to task
Speaker 2: for acting on these impulses, which obviously serves a patriarchy
Speaker 2: in you know, completely transparent ways. It puts a target
Speaker 2: on the backs of any women with sexual agency, any
Speaker 2: women who want to explore their sexual capital, who want
Speaker 2: to spend their sexual capital in the open marketplace. And
Speaker 2: what it does is it I think it's a way
Speaker 2: of you know, subjugating women. You know, you have the
Speaker 2: responsibility of not praying on men's sexuality, Whereas I think
Speaker 2: we all know that time and again, what most often
Speaker 2: happens is that women are the victims of male sexuality,
Speaker 2: and I think that's exactly what we're seeing in this
Speaker 2: case here, where Sylvie ends up becoming the victim of
Speaker 2: Brandon Motto, just like so many other people in this story.
Speaker 1: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
Speaker 1: audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Speaker 1: Is Wicked, and American Sherlock, and Don't Forget. There are
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Speaker 1: been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Alexis M. Morosi.
Speaker 1: Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode was mixed
Speaker 1: by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is our composer. Artwork by
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