Jury finds Amato guilty in killings
Convicted of first-degree murder in execution-style deaths of parents, brother
Grant Amato is a good Christian man, his lawyers will tell the jury. He was an exemplary student in high school and college, and spent his professional career in the service of others.
After Amato, 30, was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder in the execution-style shooting deaths of his parents and brother, his defense team’s focus will turn to convincing jurors not to send the convicted killer to Florida’s death row as they deliberate in the trial’s penalty phase, which begins Aug. 12.
Among the mitigating circumstances his lawyers indicate they will present in court documents: Amato’s faith, lack of disciplinary history while incarcerated at the Seminole County Jail, and his career as a nurse.
A jury on Wednesday found Grant Amato guilty of three counts of first-degree murder for shooting his parents and brother to death after they cut off his relationship with a Bulgarian webcam model.
The jury deliberated for more than eight hours before rendering their verdict shortly after 10 p.m. Amato will either be sentenced to life in prison or death for murdering his parents, Margaret and Chad Amato, and brother Cody Amato in the family’s rural Seminole County home in January.
A gasp was heard from Amato’s family as the jury rendered its verdict. His surviving brother, Jason Amato, was in the courtroom, as were Blake Turpin and Jericho Fine, best friends of Grant and Cody. His family and friends embraced and thanked Assistant State Attorney Stewart Stone after the verdict was read.
The penalty phase in Amato’s trial begins Aug. 12.
Prosecutors said Amato stole $200,000 from his father and brother to present himself as rich and successful, lavishing the model with clothes and gifts. When his family discovered the theft late last year, they placed Amato in a behavioral-rehabilitation facility, which he left early.
“Grant fell in love with a woman named Silvie,” Assistant State Attorney Domenick Leo said during closing arguments Wednesday morning, referring to the woman at the center of the state’s case. “Not only did he fall in love with her, he became obsessed with her – to the point that she’s all that mattered.”
But Amato’s lawyer, Jeff Dowdy, told jurors what mattered to the trial was the lack of real evidence tying his client to the killings — and that prosecutors’ theory of the case doesn’t make sense.
“They’re just grasping and grasping, because their timeline doesn’t add up,” he said.
State: Amato ‘transfixed’ by model: During his argument, Leo referenced one of the first instructions given to the jury by Amato’s lawyers during their opening statements last week: “’If not Grant, then who?’ is not a legally sufficient argument to convict Mr. Amato in this case.”
“That’s a misstatement of the law,” Leo said, reminding the jury that the law requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt to convict Amato — not “speculative, imaginary or forced doubt.” One by one, he then showed the courtroom pictures of the bodies of Margaret, Chad and Cody.
“Those are your eye-witnesses,” Leo told the jury. “The defendant killed them.”
Amato was obsessed with Silvie, who he had met on an adult website last July. Leo asked the jurors to remember Monday’s testimony, during which pictures of Silvie were projected onto a screen in the courtroom.
“I know some of you looked at him,” Leo said. “I know what some of you saw, because I saw the same thing. He was transfixed on that woman.”
Leo later laid out the timeline of the killings:
The last activity on the computer in the office where Margaret Amato was found dead was at 4:44 p.m. Jan. 24. Leo said she was killed shortly after. Chad Amato was shot about 30 minutes later after coming home from work, Leo said. Cody Amato was shot about four hours later, as soon as he arrived home from work.
Dowdy called that timeline “incredibly wrong” and denied the state’s assertion that he ever implied the killings were the result of an intruder or a murder-suicide.
“Please don’t think we’re trying to put these nefarious theories forward,” Dowdy said. “We’re not. We’re trying to defend Grant Amato from three charges of first-degree murder.” state’s
Defense: Crime scene mishandled: Leo argued three things were missing from the Amato home on Sultan Circle in Chuluota when investigators found the bodies the morning of Jan. 25: Cody Amato’s phone, the murder weapon and Grant Amato.
Prosecutors allege the murder weapon was an IWI Jericho 941 handgun owned by Blake Turpin, Cody and Grant’s best friend. Turpin testified he discovered the gun was missing this June, and remembers Grant being unsupervised in his bedroom, where he stored the gun, for about 10 minutes two weeks prior to the killings. But Dowdy said Turpin was “manufacturing evidence” because he knew a murder weapon hadn’t been found.
The case against Amato, Dowdy claimed, is purely circumstantial. He said Seminole County sheriff ’s investigators did not adequately process the scene or consider any other suspects because they always suspected Amato in the killings. He said two crime-scene analysts, Arthur Rubart and Christine Snyder, didn’t process crucial parts of the crime scene — including door handles and windows — for fingerprints. He accused another analyst, Geraldine Blay, of manufacturing evidence by omitting from her reports the fact that Chad’s fingerprint was used to unlock his phone after prosecutors said he was killed.
Prosecutors allege Amato used his dead father’s fingerprint to access the USAA banking app on Chad Amato’s phone and add his PNC bank account.
Dowdy also said there wasn’t “a scintilla” of blood found on Grant Amato, even though the scene of the killings was a “bloody mess.” Leo said that could be attributed to Amato’s medical knowledge from having worked as a nurse.
Leo said Amato killed his father and brother because they “blew up his spot,” alerting Silvie about Grant’s lies and the theft while he was away at a behavioral rehabilitation center in December. “He had to devise a way to get Silvie back,” Leo said.
Amato killed his father and brother because they were in the way, and killed his mother — even though she seemed to enable the relationship — because she was there, Leo said. After killing his family, Amato used the public wifi at a nearby Publix to log on and try to talk with Silvie, the prosecutor said.
“His parents’ and brother’s bodies aren’t even cold, and he’s already re-establishing, or trying to re-establish contact with Silvie,” Leo said, noting Amato had his passport with him when he was found by police. “He was just waiting for her to say, ‘I love you, too. Come to Bulgaria. Come see me.’”
“That didn’t happen,” the prosecutor told jurors. “That’s why he’s here.”