Original subtitles

Breaking just into our newsroom,

a suspicious death investigation.

Deputies responded to the house

for a well-being check

when they found a gruesome situation.

Three dead from apparent gunshot wounds.

Adding to the mystery, no sign of forced entry.

One victim is in the garage, one in the kitchen area,

then another is in the family office.

- Grant Amato. - Grant Amato.

Grant Amato.

Armed and dangerous.

Grant Amato is accused of killing

his parents and his brother.

Just a horrific experience for everybody.

A crime scene like that is not

an easy thing to walk into.

It's a family.

They have a story, and you're there to try and figure out

what the story is.

Whoever did this crime killed three people

with four bullets.

I don't think it was something that happened

in the heat of the moment.

I've never interviewed somebody like him.

Very cold.

We were all just in awe.

There appeared to be some type of tears,

but I didn't believe they were real.

My life was easy.

He was obsessed with her.

It's a heinous crime.

I didn't do any of this.

When the Amato case happened, I was

working at a daily newspaper for about two years.

We received a notification

from the Seminole County Sheriff's Office

notifying us of a triple homicide

just south of Chuluota, a really rural area

of Seminole County.

Mr. Amato, come forward, please, best you can.

We got notification that a new murder case came in,

and then based on that, we go see the client, which is

our first step in the process.

Raise your right hand best you can.

Be ready to be sworn.

Do you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony

you're about to give will be the complete truth,

so help you God?

Thank you.

We were expecting somebody to come in that was going to be

very emotional, crying, things of that nature,

and it was anything but that.

When he described what was going on with him,

that's when it appeared very clearly

that he was an abnormal criminal defense client.

The jury was seated last night,

and today both sides delivered opening statements.

Prosecutors say Amato staged a murder-suicide scene.

Mr. Amato wants his day in court.

We're going to get it for him.

The Seminole District Attorney's Office decided

to pursue the death penalty.

The stage was set for Grant's trial.

He was on trial for his life.

This is a criminal case.

Grant Amato is charged with first-degree

premeditated murder.

It is your solemn responsibility

to determine if the state proved its accusation

beyond a reasonable doubt.

The prosecution's case was very clinical.

It sort of laid out the struggles that this family

had been going through.

This is 2112 Sultan Circle.

Inside that house

are the dead bodies of Margaret Amato,

Chad Amato,

Cody Amato,

each shot through the head execution-style.

The Amatos were a very close family.

They lived at home, all together.

They spent the majority of their time together.

Margaret Amato was a loving and caring mother.

Chad was the provider for his family

and worked very hard to give his family a good life.

Cody Amato was a very good friend to others.

Obviously, he went out of his way

to help Grant out way more than you would

expect a normal sibling to do.

This was a good, wholesome family.

It's just sad that something like this could have happened.

But why?

What was his motive?

Why did he kill his family?

The answer to that question lies across the ocean,

in Bulgaria, and a woman named Silvie.

Silvie is an internet cam model.

The defendant, Grant Amato, became addicted to her.

Thank you so much, Grant.

Thank you so, so, so much.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

That's what this case is about:

His blind obsession with this woman

and his absolute contempt for those

that he held responsible.

My relationship with Silviya was like

it was like a buoy in the ocean.

I was not successful at the time.

You know, I had lost a lot of traction

with my family, my career goals,

my life path.

She didn't know all the negatives

that were going on in my life, so I could just

get lost in that relationship.

A lot of these men, they're not

just logging in for immediate sexual gratification.

They want what in sexual economies

we often characterize as the girlfriend experience.

They're not looking for a wham, bam, thank you, ma'am.

They want to spend time.

They want to have conversation.

They're looking for emotional support.

It's not only about getting naked on the show.

The members are looking for intimacy.

You want to offer a full experience of interaction,

you have to be genuine, you know.

We have to be more understanding, more friendly,

more present for the members.

They want to share their feelings, their experience.

Maybe some of the members are going

through some rough times, and the model's job

is to help him emotionally,

like a therapy session.

I've done therapy with members online

for as long as I've known myself as a cam model.

And I think that being a psychotherapist online,

even if it's a role-play, it can be beneficial to the people

that are looking for this.

This seems like yet another unfortunate opportunity

to talk about the rise of loneliness,

especially in isolation on devices and online and the way

that that can compromise people's mental health.

Do you still think about Silvie?

I do.

I think about Silvie on a regular basis.

She's... she'll always be, you know, an important

aspect of my life.

You know, it was very therapeutic

to interact with her.

She was like a lifeline.

So I'm going to call a friend, a member.

We've been knowing each other for, like,

five or six years already.

Hey.

I'm so curious what you were doing this past week

that you were so quiet.

Yeah.

Yeah, you do spoil me a lot with your presents and all.

Why you didn't tell me?

It doesn't matter. You should have told me.

It might be anxiety attacks,

because I often have those too.

Did you actually ever try to find a psychologist, maybe?

I know there is a lot of stigma, especially

in the whole world, about mental health,

and to me it's really important to bring some light

into that aspect of our lives.

I'm glad that can bring some positivity there.

Mm-hmm.

And you bring it too.

That's what I say, it's a two-way street.

Oh, don't start... don't start crying.

No. Come on.

This is happy.

Happy moments. - Yeah.

True. I agree with that fully.

Unfortunately, so many people forget that loving themselves

is the most important part.

Grant.

Hey, Tom.

Let me just double-check that we're recording.

Sorry, I get so paranoid.

No, you're good.

So new phone.

I did get a new phone.

How'd it happen?

It was just an impulse buy.

OK.

And, you know, I hate to be so dramatic,

but do you mind if we start off talking

about, you know, some family members?

No. That's fine.

How would you characterize your relationship

with your father?

Hmm.

My relationship with my father.

Well, my relationship with my old man was...

It was

taxing.

So he was very

very polar in, like, the way that he acts.

He would be an extreme, positive, happy, you know,

carefree at one moment, and then he

would be extremely angry, explosive, you know,

destructive, all of that, the next moment.

Chad was a very structured individual.

This is what you're going to do.

You're going to work.

You know, you're going to go to school.

You're going to do this. You're going to do that.

And he was very regimented.

Oh, Chad Amato definitely came off as controlling,

for sure, and regimented.

Regimented, controlling, detail-orientated.

He seemed like he wanted his children

to go in a certain direction, that if those expectations

were not met, that he would be very angry.

So I think that that was always,

like, an internal strife that my dad had to deal with,

was this constant desire to always be in control.

A Seminole County man is accused of killing

his mom, dad, and brother.

Prosecutors say he killed them after an argument

over $200,000, which they say he sent to an online

call girl overseas.

A lot of digital evidence was coming fast and furious,

and none of it was good.

None of it was good.

The contents of Grant's computer

was mainly financial crimes and ID fraud.

What he was really doing is he was committing fraud,

signing up for false credit cards,

taking out fraudulent loans, all to finance

his relationship with Silvie.

One, two, three, four, five, six

transactions, each $599.99.

I started using my brother's debit card,

my mom's credit cards, my dad's credit cards.

$20,000 in one night.

20 grand.

That's in here.

I opened up separate accounts in their names

without their knowledge.

Every count of identity theft carries a two-year minimum

mandatory prison sentence.

He could have went away for a long time.

Don't know the explanation, but his parents covered him.

After the discovery of the thefts,

the Amatos didn't kick Grant out to the curb.

They resolved to help him.

They resolved to be good parents

and to be a good brother for their family member.

As a result of all of Grant's spending,

Chad had to basically upend his life.

He took out a second mortgage on his home.

He resolved to work longer hours than he previously did.

And he realized that the dream of

a peaceful, successful retirement

would not be possible.

And who's to say what Chad did or didn't do?

All we know is what the evidence shows us.

We have the CVS records that show

that Dad was clocking out.

4:48, he leaves.

And he takes the last 67 steps of his life.

Chad was the second person that was shot.

The theory is that he was shot first in the back,

and then he crawled and was shot again in the back

of the head and collapsed.

The state's theory was somebody turned Chad over and then

put this holster on him.

Chad Amato's body specifically looked like it

had been tampered with.

Did you make any observations as to the positioning

of the holster and firearm on Chad's hip?

Yes.

The gun itself was placed inside of the holster,

and it was in this position on his body.

You would have to pull it out awkwardly, point it

at yourself, and then point it towards somebody

to fire it, which just doesn't make any sense.

According to the prosecution's case,

Grant killed his entire family, stayed in the house with some

of their bodies, and after doing all of this,

after hours of this, he went to a public.

Wi-Fi hotspot to continue talking with Silvie.

Right.

Grant Amato was so obsessed with this woman,

after leaving the house, the defendant

goes to a nearby Publix parking lot and uses

his dead brother's checking account

to get onto Silvie's website.

Websites that were accessed starting at about 3:02.

It was MFC or MFCams.

It's a Google search.

Around the same time as MyFreeCams contest.

AdySweet's home page on myfreecams.com.

So you have these boundaries, of course,

but you begin to care about the members eventually.

It can feel like it's your second family.

It's important for you to kind of get to know them.

People, you know, crave that closeness.

Well, hello, Bobby.

How are you doing?

It's normal to get attached to people you talk to every day.

You eventually kind of care about them,

because we're humans.

The fine line between reality and fantasy is always crossed.

You want me to get both of them off?

Or just the latex?

Or just the bra?

Even if you don't want to cross it, you cross it eventually.

OK, I thought so.

So, yeah, a lot of guys can become

obsessed with the models.

But, of course, it can happen to the cam girl

as well, to be obsessed with the member.

Welcome back, Grant.

People love binaries, but most

of the world and most of human experience

exists on some continuum.

And it's messy, and there's gray area.

And my sense is this case sits in that gray area.

One thing that I think Grant should take

away from this tragedy is that he always

had a void in his heart.

He always felt lonely, and he always

wondered whether he would receive

affection from any woman.

The truth is that there was only one woman in his life

who loved him unconditionally,

and that woman was Margaret Amato.

She had a really soft spot for animals.

She had rescued and rehabilitated horses.

The stables were just down a couple of blocks

from their house, and she would go down there daily.

She was a deeply devoted caretaker.

You can run that parallel with Grant, where

she knew Grant was in deep trouble,

but yet she supported him.

Grant, how would you describe your mother?

My mom was always completely selfless.

She sacrificed a lot of her time, her life

for the benefit of other people.

She was always caring, always funny,

laid-back, the quintessential coolest mom.

Even through all that... and we're talking January now,

right, days before her death

she still allowed him to contact Silvie

via her cell phone.

So why?

Why Mom?

Why Mom?

Because she was there.

And there was no other way to get to Chad and Cody

without getting to Mom.

That's where her body was found,

shot in the back of the head by the defendant.

Prosecutors say Grant murdered

his family members all over this woman,

an online Bulgarian call girl.

On a pornographic website.

In much of the reporting,

there was a very significant amount of this almost veiled

sexism focusing on Silvie.

How many of us haven't had, you know,

a Bulgarian cam girl from a porn site?

I mean, if I could have a dollar for every time

I've heard that story, I could pay for a minute with her.

Every story kept focusing on her

and focusing on that narrative.

So she is really key to this case, if she's real.

You know, we're not even sure she's real.

In some ways, I feel like we're not

seeing the forest for the trees,

and the ways in which so much of what

was appealing to Grant about this space

was that community of men.

On January 22, 2019, just two days before the murder,

Grant Amato typed an eight-page letter

to six other men that were in that

internet room with Silvie.

Hey, guys.

The purpose of this letter is an apology.

With each of you, I forged a different form of "friendship."

I think it is safe to say by now

that everyone here knows that I made

a drastic mistake with Silvie.

I lied to her and you guys from the beginning about myself.

I can simply plead that I was human, made a terrible error,

and hurt the ones I grew to care for.

"Don't lose her.

"I hope I can be with her again,

"and I hope I can be a part of that community again.

And I'm sorry for what I did to her and to you."

These are his words.

This was about a man who felt disempowered

in his everyday life and found a space

that made him feel good about himself

and not just good about himself as a human

but good about himself as a man, right?

I'm in control, right?

I can pay for access to this woman.

I can pay for access to this community.

And for me, it's so typical that so much of this reporting

would really use Silvie as a scapegoat.

Silvie did not steal Grant's family's money.

Silvie was at work, and Silvie was doing her job.

Attempts were made to contact Silvie in Bulgaria

to talk about this, and nobody ever returned a phone call.

I would love to know what Silvie thought about this,

but, no, we never got any answers from her.

Hi.

Can you see and hear me?

I can. Hold on.

I'm just setting up the recording.

OK. Well, let's backtrack a bit.

Can you tell me who you are and give us

an idea of your background as a reporter?

I'm Teodora Barzakova.

I am a Bulgarian journalist.

Can you tell me a little bit what

you were able to learn about Silviya from poking

around on the internet?

The only information, basically, I managed to find

is from what you shared with me.

No one knows anything more about her.

What surprised me as well is that Bulgarian media would

have been all over this story.

But clearly they also didn't find her,

because they're just the same thing

that was reported in the U.S.

Do you think we have her real name?

She's called Silviya.

I have no idea about the surnames.

I tried googling her name.

I also, you know, tried looking on Facebook, on Twitter,

in Cyrillic as well, on Instagram.

No one that even looks remotely like her popped up.

And based on her accent, do you think she's

a native Bulgarian speaker?

Yes, definitely native Bulgarian speaker,

and I saw pictures of letters that she sent.

There is a return address on three of them, I think.

But it's not complete.

I mean, the return address is for a neighborhood

in Sofia which is a really massive, huge neighborhood.

It's not a specific address, so you

wouldn't be able to send a letter to her

if you wanted to.

Today prosecutors said that Grant Amato

actually staged what appeared to be a murder-suicide.

Do you remember in the beginning of this case,

if not Grant, then who?

Right?

So how does the state prove

that the defendant is the one that committed the crime?

How do we meet this burden?

Well, these three dead bodies,

they tell you a story,

and I'm going to explain how.

The prosecution argued that it was a staged

murder-suicide, but they made the case

that it was sort of a botched stage of a murder-suicide.

There was a lot of factors that just didn't

seem to make a lot of sense.

The crime scene was staged to look like Cody had done it.

A gun was placed next to Cody Amato,

but the ballistics on that gun did not match the bullets

that killed the family.

So detectives immediately had their suspicions.

Grant Amato is accused of killing

his parents and a brother.

Today his only surviving brother

testified about the last time he saw his family alive.

Jason Amato was Cody and Grant's half brother.

He had moved out of the home a while ago

and created his own path.

Jason seemed very separated from the family.

He wanted to live on his own and get out

from under the controlling nature of Chad Amato.

During the course of the conversation, were there

times where you accuse him of killing your family?

Yes.

I did go into meeting my brother,

just trying to find out what happened to my family.

And he was the last one that I knew was there.

No. No. No.

I just

just remember him mostly being silent

and just saying he understood how I felt.

If you're asking if he denied any of my accusations,

I only remember him saying he didn't have

anything to do with it when I first walked in.

When he asked him whether he loved his brother,

you know, Jason could have said, no, screw him.

Instead, the answer was yes, and I think that was a really

important piece of evidence.

You're the big brother.

You love your little brother. - Yeah.

I love both of my brothers.

The case was going, we thought, pretty well.

I mean, we were... you know, we were,

like, three weeks in, and say, hey, man,

we got something here.

They didn't have the murder weapon.

They know they don't have the gun.

We were wondering, where is the murder weapon?

What murder weapon is used?

This is what they started out with.

This is a play gun.

That's all they had.

During the middle of the trial,

sort of an 11th-hour moment, they

brought in a possibility of where that weapon came from.

Mr. Turpin, raise your right hand and be ready to be sworn.

Next thing we know, Blake's on the witness stand,

telling his bizarre story, which is so convenient,

the way it unfolded.

Right in the middle of a trial, you... all of a sudden,

you have this ha-ha moment.

How long have you known Grant Amato?

I've known Grant since we were in high school,

about 15 years.

And specifically, did you own an IWI Jericho

9-millimeter 941 firearm?

I did. Yes, sir.

All of a sudden, the prosecution

goes from not having a murder weapon

and not knowing where one might be

to having a potential murder weapon,

not physically but still the idea of one.

At the end of May, I decided to kind of

do a bit of spring cleaning.

I picked up the gun boxes and noticed

that the gun was missing.

Grant had used the bathroom, and adjacent to the bathroom,

there was a closet where Blake kept all his ammunition

and his guns, things of that nature.

And I really questioned the story,

because six months later, Blake's saying,

I went upstairs.

I noticed... I opened up one of my gun cases,

and the gun was missing.

And this came out of nowhere.

How often had he checked that closet

to see if it had been gone?

Unclear.

What kind of handle does

Blake Turpin have on his firearms?

Doesn't seem like a lot of it.

I tend to think it might have been fabricated.

Timing's just too incredulous.

I just don't buy it.

So just out of nowhere, 6 months later,

30 days before the trial starts,

you can't find a firearm that you haven't seen in 12 months?

That's correct.

Would you call that responsible gun ownership?

There was no Jericho pistol ever found.

Where that pistol is, if it does exist,

is completely a mystery at this point.

Today prosecutors and the defense

delivered closing arguments.

Grant Amato did not testify this morning.

If found guilty, he could face the death penalty.