Norfolk man who set wheelchair-bound wife on fire receives 60-year sentence
NORFOLK — Delano Grangruth prepared for the horror he was about to unleash on his wife of 20 years.
He disconnected the phone so no one could call for help.
He removed the battery from the smoke detector.
He went out to the shed in the yard, grabbed a can of gasoline for the lawnmower and brought it inside. Then he poured the fuel on his wheelchair-bound wife as she sat in her La-Z-Boy recliner, unable to move on her own or escape.
Then he struck a match and lit her on fire.
In a desperate effort to save herself, Grangruth’s wife threw off the burning blanket covering her lap — it’s all she could physically muster. But some fire remained. It grew and then engulfed her.
As his wife burned alive, Grangruth fled their home, making sure to grab his medication and some toothpaste on the way out.
“I was drunk and in pure rage,” he told Norfolk police detective Bill Cogswell the day after.
His 61-year-old wife, Kathleen White-Grangruth, died inside their home in the 6200 block of Wailes Avenue, where firefighters and police would find her body on April 17, 2018. On Friday, Grangruth was sentenced to 60 years in prison after pleading guilty to first-degree murder and arson.
Grangruth, then 58, told detectives he set his wife on fire around 3 p.m. the previous day, about 19 hours before someone found her. They had been fighting about money for three days, which led him to drink for the first time in four years. The breaking point: his wife threatening to tell her psychiatrist that he had been abusing her, which he said was a lie.
So he burned her alive. “I lost it. I just basically lost it,” he told police. “And I shouldn’t have done it, but it happened. She didn’t deserve that. Nobody does.
“She just ... aggravated me so bad sometimes.”
Around 10:30 a.m. the next day, firefighters went to the couple’s house after White-Grangruth’s caregiver knocked on the door, got no answer, smelled something burning and called 911, Detective Matthew Nordan said in an affidavit seeking permission to search Grangruth’s clothes.
When firefighters forced their way in, they found what they thought was an elderly woman, Nordan said. A death investigator noted White-Grangruth was in a chair that was fully reclined, with a fist-sized candle/ potpourri warmer under it.
The high oxidation levels visible on the metal of the chair as well as the amount of carpet that burned suggested an accelerant had been used, Nordan said.
White-Grangruth suffered third- and fourth-degree burns over 90% of her body, medical examiner Michael Hays said in his autopsy report. She died from “acute thermal injuries” in what Hays ruled a homicide. A dentist had to use dental records to identify her.
While searching the Grangruths’ backyard, police found a red gas can near a locked shed. A state forensic scientist analyzed it but didn’t find enough DNA on the can’s handle to compare it to Delano Grangruth’s.
Meanwhile, Grangruth was on the run. After fleeing his home, he continued his bender, according to what he told police. He got on his bike, took two buses to the bank, withdrew $100 and used it to hit up two bars, drinking Bud Lights and shots of Jack Daniel’s for hours.
As it started to rain, he bought a shirt and jacket at a Dollar General before hunkering down under an overhang behind a bar to gut out the night. In the morning, he went to a Burger King and nursed a couple cups of coffee for a few hours before catching a bus to the McDonald’s at Janaf. That’s where officers found Grangruth, arresting him without incident.
A few hours later, Grangruth described himself to detectives as his wife’s primary caregiver and said taking care of her as she grew sicker had taken a toll.
White-Grangruth suffered from dementia, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease and diabetes, he told them. She had to have a catheter and often went to the hospital to treat sepsis. Plus, she had hip surgery within the past couple years and was confined to a wheelchair. Grangruth, who told detectives he suffered from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, said he was the one who got her out of her hospital bed and into her wheelchair in the morning, fed her breakfast and then put her in the recliner where she spent most of each day.
Home health care workers helped, but Grangruth told police they weren’t up to snuff.
Because of their health issues, neither worked. Instead, they together collected roughly $1,700 a month in federal assistance.
After he confessed to murdering his wife, Grangruth asked about her family. Had police talked to them? Did they know she was dead? Whom had police told — her dad? Sister? What did detectives say to the family?
At the start of his police interview, Grangruth played dumb, lied by saying he didn’t know anything about the fire, asking if anyone had gotten hurt. Then he said he wanted a lawyer.
Later, he told detectives he would tell them everything. Why? He wanted to spare his wife’s family a drawn-out trial. Instead, he would own up to the “terrible mistake” he’d made.
“I just hope her family can forgive me one day,” he told them.
Then he scratched that idea.
“They’re never going to forgive me. I know that,” he said. “It’s not forgivable.”