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Man Murdered His Entire Family to Donate Money to An OnlyFans Model He Never Met · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: Imagine a seemingly perfect suburban success story. You know, you
0:05
have the beautiful home, the educated parents, the ambitious kids
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just like following in their footsteps.
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Speaker 2: Right, it's the classic American dream basically package right there
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in a quiet.
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Speaker 1: Cul de sac exactly. But then I want you to
0:18
imagine that picture perfect facade just completely unraveling. And it
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doesn't just crack, it shatters into not one, but two
0:26
distinct horrific true crime sagas.
0:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the wildest part about this is the timeline.
0:32
These two sagas are separated by five years, they involve
0:35
completely different victims, and there are the concrete walls of
0:40
a maximum security prison right in the middle of it all.
0:43
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. Welcome to the deep dive. Our
0:45
mission today is to connect the dots across years of
0:48
well just unimaginable manipulation.
0:50
Speaker 2: We're looking at what happens when reality becomes optional for someone,
0:53
when the digital delusion just takes the wheel right, and
0:56
the actual human beings around that person are suddenly viewed
0:59
as just obstacles.
1:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, obstacles to a manufactured fantasy. We have a mountain
1:04
of sources today. Excerpts from Grant to Motto from familicide
1:08
to prison murder plot. We've got court records, trial coverage,
1:12
and the twenty twenty four docusaries patrol plus alt plus desire.
1:17
Speaker 2: And we often think of a prison sentence as the
1:20
end of the story, you know, the closing of the book.
1:23
But here the prison was literally just a waiting room
1:26
for his next chapter of manipulation.
1:28
Speaker 1: It's a terrifying look at how pathology evolves. So to
1:32
understand the sheer shock of Grant to Motto's crimes, we
1:34
really have to establish the baseline of his life first.
1:37
Speaker 2: Right, because this wasn't a life of hardship or neglect,
1:39
not at all.
1:40
Speaker 1: No, exactly, this was a baseline defined by high middle
1:43
class achievement and intense, almost like overwhelming family support. We
1:47
are looking at Chulauota, Florida.
1:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, for those who aren't familiar, it's this quiet, rural, suburban,
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incredibly family friendly community. It's in Seminole County, just east
1:56
of Orlando. Right.
1:57
Speaker 1: It's the kind of place with manicured lawns, you know,
2:00
neighborhood watch programs, the kind of place people moved to
2:02
specifically for stability.
2:04
Speaker 2: And the Amato family embodied that stability perfectly. You have
2:08
the father, Chad to Mootto, who was a clinical pharmacist.
2:11
Speaker 1: Which is a highly educated, highly respected position.
2:14
Speaker 2: Absolutely, it's a demanding medical field. Then you have the mother,
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Margaret to Motto, who was a senior operations manager. They
2:21
also had an older half brother, Jason, who lived separately,
2:24
but the core household was Chad, Margaret and their two
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younger sons, Cody and Grant.
2:31
Speaker 1: And from everything we read, Cody and Grant were incredibly
2:35
tight growing up, like they were born just under two
2:38
years apart.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, they were practically peers.
2:40
Speaker 1: Right. They went to Ti mccreek High School together. They
2:42
were on the weightlifting team together. You get this really
2:45
vivid picture of two brothers who share the exact same
2:48
interests in fitness, health, and ultimately their careers.
2:54
Speaker 2: Right. They even attended the University of Central Florida together.
2:56
Both decided to go into nursing, but not just general.
3:00
They had this shared incredibly high reaching goal of becoming
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nurse anesthetists, which.
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Speaker 1: I mean that specialization is a rigorous, grueling path.
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Speaker 2: Oh, it requires intense discipline, a flawless academic record, an
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ability to handle extreme stress. I mean nurse and nestatists
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are often the highest paid nursing professionals because they're literally
3:20
managing a patient's.
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Speaker 1: Consciousness, yeah, keeping them alive during surgery. And this is
3:24
where we see the first major divergence in their paths.
3:27
Speaker 2: Right exactly, Cody successfully navigates the program, he achieves the goal. Grant,
3:33
on the other hand, drops out.
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Speaker 1: He just hits a wall. But you know, at the time,
3:37
it doesn't look like a total derailment. He still secures
3:40
a very solid, respectable job as a registered nurse at
3:43
Advent Health Orlando.
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Speaker 2: Right, So, on paper, looking from the outside in the
3:48
family is still a massive success. Two sons in the
3:51
medical field, a pharmacist father. It's a household built on achievement.
3:55
Speaker 1: But underneath that surface, a profound psychological shift was likely occurring,
3:59
wasn't it.
4:00
Speaker 2: Absolutely You have to consider the environment Grant was operating in.
4:03
He is living in a highly achievement oriented home.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, with his dad the pharmacist, and his brother basically
4:09
succeeding where he just failed.
4:11
Speaker 2: Right. His brother is his lifelong shadow, navigating the exact
4:15
high level path that Grant just washed out of. Losing
4:18
out in that career. Wasn't just a loss of future income.
4:20
For Grant, it was a devastating blow to his identity.
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Speaker 1: It's a huge loss of status within that specific family unit,
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which brings us to June twenty eighteen. The downfall and
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the way it happens is it's deeply unsettling. Rually is
4:35
Grant gets suspended from his nursing job at Advent Health.
4:38
The hospital staff started noticing severe irregularities in the rooms
4:41
under Grant's care. Specifically, they were finding empty vials of propofol.
4:46
Speaker 2: Now, for anyone listening who consumes true crime or medical shows,
4:49
you probably recognize that name. It's a powerful, fast acting sedative.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and it is heavily controlled. Like hospitals do not
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just leave propofol lying.
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Speaker 2: Around, No, definitely not. It is dispensed through secure or
5:00
automated systems. It's logged, it's tracked meticulously. Taking it requires
5:05
deliberate effort.
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Speaker 1: You have to actively circumvent strict protocols. So he suspected
5:11
of stealing and improperly administering this heavy sedative. Ultimately, the
5:15
grand larceny charges were dropped, but I mean the damage
5:18
was irreversible.
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Speaker 2: Right, He lost his career, He was fired and the
5:22
source material notes that during this immediate aftermath there were
5:26
reports of suicidal ideation.
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Speaker 1: Though law enforcement determined he didn't meet the criteria for
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involuntary commitment.
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Speaker 2: Right, but this raises an important question. Why risk a
5:37
stable nursing career to steal a sedative.
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Speaker 1: It's like he was running on this high speed treadmill
5:43
of suburban expectations, and the moment he fell off, he
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didn't just stop. He actively looked for a trapdoor to
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an alternate reality.
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Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it. When someone with
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a fragile ego experiences the level of shame Grant likely felt,
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they often develop a desperate need to reclaim a sense.
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Speaker 1: Of So it wasn't just a lapse in judgment.
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Speaker 2: No, this was boundary testing behavior. It was reckless. Psychologists
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refer to this kind of event as a narcissistic injury,
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a perceived threat to a narcissist self esteem or self worth.
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Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, So when the reality of his failure became undeniable,
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he just retreated inward exactly.
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Speaker 2: Stripped of his real world status, he needed a new
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reality where he was the successful, powerful one.
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Speaker 1: I want to pause on that, because the leap here
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is massive like losing a job is one thing, facing
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professional failure is a universal human experience.
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Speaker 2: You know, right, everyone goes through setbacks.
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Speaker 1: But stealing a highly restricted sedative from an actively monitored
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hospital floor that doesn't just happen because you're sad about
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failing a class.
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Speaker 2: No, It points to a profound entitlement, a belief that
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the rules simply do not apply to you. It shows
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a mind already comfortable with deception.
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Speaker 1: That is a crucial distinction. The theft was a glaring
6:56
red flag that his internal compass was just. It was
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heavily skewed towards gratification at any cost.
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Speaker 2: And when that avenue was shut down by his termination,
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he didn't recalibrate his moral compass. He just found a
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different venue to exercise that entitlement, which.
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Speaker 1: Leads us directly into the digital descent. It's late twenty eighteen.
7:15
Grant is unemployed. He's living in his parents' house in Chuluota,
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and his family they seem to be trying desperately to
7:22
be supportive.
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Speaker 2: They really do. They actually enable a new venture for him.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, he pitches them this idea that he wants to
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pivot to twitch streaming, you know, playing video games professionally online.
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So Chad and Margaret actually buy him the equipment.
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Speaker 2: They cover all the setup costs. They're trying to throw
7:38
him a lifeline.
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Speaker 1: But he doesn't use the equipment to build a gaming audience.
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He abandons the twitch idea almost immediately. Instead, he completely
7:46
immerses himself in a camsite called Myfree Cams.
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Speaker 2: And this is where generalized internet use crystallizes into a
7:53
highly specific, deadly obsession. He fixates on one single.
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Speaker 1: Person, right, a Bulgarian cam model known online as Sylvie
8:02
or eighty Suite. Her real name is Sylvia vinsus Lovova.
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Speaker 2: You know, we hear the term cam site and we
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might just think of passive pornography. But the mechanics of
8:10
these platforms are entirely different.
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Speaker 1: Exactly, this isn't just watching a video. Think about how
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these sites are structured for you, the user. It's a
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token economy. It operates more like a slot machine where
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the payout isn't cash, it's synthetic validation.
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Speaker 2: That is the perfect analogy. The mechanics of a parasocial
8:28
relationship on a platform like Myfreecams are incredibly potent because.
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Speaker 1: A standard parasocial relationship is usually one sided, right, Like
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you feel a connection to a podcaster or a movie star,
8:39
but they don't know you exist.
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Speaker 2: Right. But in the camgirl ecosystem, the interaction is monetized
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and reciprocal. The model responds to your tips in real time.
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She says your screen.
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Speaker 1: Name, She acts impressed by your generosity exactly.
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Speaker 2: She grants you private shows based on your tier of spending.
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For someone like Grando Motto, who is drowning in real
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world shame, this digital transaction feels like genuine life affirming validation.
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Speaker 1: Right Because to Sylvie, he isn't a disgraced, unemployed nurse
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living in his parents' spare bedroom. To her, he is
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exactly who he always wanted to be.
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Speaker 2: He fabricated this entire alternate persona where he was a wealthy,
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highly successful professional gamer, and he.
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Speaker 1: Is spending hours every single day in private sessions with her.
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And these sessions are bleeding him dry. I mean they
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cost up to ninety tokens per minute.
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Speaker 2: He's buying her expensive lingerie, he's shipping her sex toys.
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He is literally buying the illusion of the life he
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failed to achieve in the real world.
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Speaker 1: But an illusion of that magnitude requires massive continuous capital,
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like you cannot maintain the facade of a wealthy high
9:45
roller without the funds to back it up.
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Speaker 2: And the platform is designed to extract money in exchange
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for attention. If the money stops, the attention stops.
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Speaker 1: And for Grant, losing Sylvie's attention meant facing the unbearable
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reality of his actual life. But he had zero income,
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So to keep the slot machine spinning, he turns on
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the very people who just bought him the computer equipment.
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Speaker 2: He starts stealing. And we aren't talking about skimming twenty
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bucks out of his dad's wallet.
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Speaker 1: No, he steals their credit cards. He somehow accesses the
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bank accounts belonging to his father, Chad, and his brother Cody.
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Over the course of just a few months, he siphons
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approximately two hundred thousand dollars.
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Speaker 2: Two hundred thousand dollars. It's staggering.
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Speaker 1: It is this included the famili's life savings, retirement funds,
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and resources meant for legitimate purposes. We have to stop
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and consider the sheer, logistics and audacity of that theft.
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Speaker 2: Seriously, how does an unemployed twenty something drain two hundred
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thousand dollars without immediate detection. It implies a terrifying level
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of internal surveillance within that house.
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Speaker 1: He likely knew their passwords, understood their banking habits, maybe
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intercepted the mail, or altered account settings to hide the
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paper trail.
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Speaker 2: It requires methodical daily deception against the people sitting across
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the dinner table from you. It highlights a complete lack
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of impulse control and a.
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Speaker 1: Chilling detachment from reality. He was systematically cannibalizing his family's actual,
11:08
hard earned success to fund his fake digital success.
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Speaker 2: Eventually, though, the dam breaks, the family discovers the massive
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hole in their finances.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, they uncovered the theft, the endless charges to my
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free cams, the absolute depths of his obsession, and astonishingly,
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even after having two hundred thousand dollars stolen from them,
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they still try to help him.
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Speaker 2: They really do. They gather whatever resources they have left
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and send him to a specialized rehabilitation facility.
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Speaker 1: In South Florida right a place that focuses specifically on
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Internet and pornography addiction. And this facility costs about fifteen
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thousand dollars.
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Speaker 2: Which demonstrates incredible grace from his parents. They are treating
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his behavior as a pathology that needs medical intervention rather
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than just calling the police for criminal theft.
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Speaker 1: But Grant only lasts roughly a week or two at
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this facility. He either checks himself out or is discharged early.
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Speaker 2: And he returns to the house in Chiluota. At this point,
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Chad and Margaret lay down strict, absolute, non negotiable rules.
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Speaker 1: The terms of him staying in their home are simple.
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You need to get a job and you must cease
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all contact with Sylvie period.
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Speaker 2: Those are perfectly rational, objectively lenient conditions from a family
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that just survived massive financial.
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Speaker 1: Abuse, totally lenient.
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Speaker 2: But to Grant, those rules were an existential threat. When
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he returned home. He didn't see a family offering him
12:27
a second chance.
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Speaker 1: What did he see?
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Speaker 2: He saw Warden's trying to lock him away from the
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only source of invalidation in his life.
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Speaker 1: And he breaks the rules almost immediately. I mean, he
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doesn't even have his own phone anymore, presumably he was
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taken aways, so he uses his mother's phone to sneak
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onto the internet and reconnect with Sylvie.
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Speaker 2: And Chad catches him red handed. A massive explosive argument ensues,
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and Chad finally reaches his breaking point he does.
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Speaker 1: What he probably should have done the moment the two
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hundred thousand dollars went missing, he orders Grant to pack
12:57
his things and leave the house. He kicks them out.
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Speaker 2: This confrontation is the critical juncture. The psychological term for
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what Grant likely experienced in that moment is a narcissistic
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rage response.
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Speaker 1: A narcissistic rage response.
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Speaker 2: Yes, he was cornered his fantasy world. The only place
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he felt powerful was being forcibly, permanently ripped away by
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the very real consequences of his actions.
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Speaker 1: Right to a manipulator, deeply entrenched in like a folly,
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a madness of when the people enforcing reality aren't seen
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as family trying to save him.
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Speaker 2: Exactly, they proceed as malicious enemies, actively destroying his life.
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Speaker 1: I struggle to understand this leap though. I mean, we
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talk about escapism, we talk about addiction spirals, but escapism
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is playing video games for twelve hours a day to
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ignore your depression, yeah.
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Speaker 2: Or binge watching a show to avoid responsibilities exactly.
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Speaker 1: Stealing two hundred thousand dollars from your own brother and
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father to buy a fake persona and then instantly breaking
13:55
the one lifeline rule they give you when they take
13:57
you back in that crosses a mass of neonline from
14:01
escapism into pure aggressive entitlement.
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Speaker 2: You are absolutely right to push back on that framing.
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Calling it escapism is far too passive for what Grant was.
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Speaker 1: Doing, because he genuinely believed he was owed that fantasy,
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no matter who he had to bankrupt to get it.
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Speaker 2: Escapism implies a retreat. Grant was aggressively engineering a reality
14:21
at the expense of others. He wasn't running away, he
14:24
was taking hostages. Wow, And when Chad kicked him out,
14:27
Grant didn't experience a moment of clarity. He didn't hit
14:30
rock bottom. He experienced a profound, burning sense of perceived injustice.
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Speaker 1: His entitlement thwarted by his father's boundaries, morphed into a
14:38
need for fatal retaliation, which brings us to the absolute
14:43
nightmare of January twenty fourth, twenty nineteen. It's been roughly
14:46
a month since he was kicked out right, and I
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want to walk through the timeline of this familicide carefully,
14:51
because this isn't a crime of sudden blinding passion. He
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didn't just lash out during a heated argument. The staggered,
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meticulous exit execution of what happens next is what makes
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it so chilling.
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Speaker 2: The timeline is horrifying.
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Speaker 1: He starts with his mother, Margaret. She is sitting at
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the computer in the home office, likely working or managing
15:10
the household. He approaches her from behind and shoots her
15:13
in the back of.
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Speaker 2: The head, a completely cowardly calculated act, unseen, unprovoked against
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the woman who birthed him, raised him, and just spend
15:22
thousands of dollars trying to send him to rehab.
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Speaker 1: And then he waits. He sits in that house, in
15:27
the silence, with his mother dead at the desk, and
15:30
he waits for his father, Chad, to return home for
15:32
his shift at the pharmacy.
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Speaker 2: We don't know exactly how long he waited, but time
15:36
must have stretched.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. When Chad finally walks through the door and steps
15:40
into the kitchen, Grant shoots him twice. How does a
15:45
mind compartmentalize that level of waiting?
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Speaker 2: The ability to compartmentalize that weight time is staggering. To
15:51
commit a murder, a patricide, and then sit in the
15:53
quiet of that suburban house knowing your next target is
15:56
arriving soon requires a completely cold, ychopathic detachment.
16:01
Speaker 1: His heart rate must have been incredibly steady.
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Speaker 2: He wasn't in a frenzy. He was executing a checklist.
16:06
Speaker 1: But the checklist isn't done because Cody, his brother, the
16:10
golden child who succeeded where Grant failed, is outworking a
16:13
nursing shift. Grant needs Cody to come home to complete
16:17
the annihilation.
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Speaker 2: But Cody wouldn't just come home randomly in the middle
16:20
of a shift.
16:21
Speaker 1: No, so Grant picks up his dead father's phone. He
16:24
texts Cody, impersonating Chad, telling him he needs to come
16:27
home immediately.
16:28
Speaker 2: He uses the digital interface of the smartphone to lure
16:31
his brother into a trap.
16:32
Speaker 1: When Cody arrives and walks into the house, Grant shoots
16:35
him too. When police later process the scene, they find
16:38
Cody curled in a fetal position in a storage room.
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Speaker 2: Luring Cody is the ultimate unthinkable betrayal. He weaponized the
16:46
trust Cody had for their father.
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Speaker 1: And we have to look closely at what happens after
16:50
the murders, the cover up, the staging of the scene.
16:54
Grant didn't just execute his family and run. He tried
16:57
to write a script.
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Speaker 2: He placed the murder weapon a stole Iwi Jericho nine
17:01
to forty one pistol near Cody's body. He was trying
17:04
to make the entire horrific scene look like a murder
17:07
suicide perpetrated by the brother he had just lured to
17:10
his death.
17:10
Speaker 1: Why do that, I mean, why frame Cody specifically? If
17:13
you're trying to get away with it, why not just
17:14
make it look like a home invasion.
17:16
Speaker 2: It reveals a mind completely devoid of familial empathy but
17:20
highly focused on self preservation and narrative control. By framing Cody,
17:25
Grant attempts to solve multiple psychological and practical problems at once.
17:29
Speaker 1: Okay, like what, First he.
17:30
Speaker 2: Eliminates the brother who rivaled him, the one who held
17:32
a mirror up to his failures. Second, he permanently destroys
17:36
Cody's pristine reputation, rewriting the family narrative so that Cody
17:40
is remembered as a monster.
17:41
Speaker 1: Oh wow, so he's not just killing him, he's destroying
17:44
his legacy exactly.
17:46
Speaker 2: And third, it positions Grant as the tragic surviving victim
17:50
who just happened to not be home when his brother snapped.
17:53
It is a deeply cynical, calculated maneuver to flip the
17:56
script of his entire life.
17:58
Speaker 1: After staging the scene, wiping the blood, and setting his
18:01
brother up, Grant flees in his nineteen ninety six Honda Cord.
18:06
The bodies are discovered the very next day, January twenty fifth.
18:10
Speaker 2: And they're discovered because Cody didn't show up for his
18:12
shift at the hospital.
18:13
Speaker 1: Right His coworkers knew immediately that something was wrong. Cody
18:16
wasn't the kind of guy to just no call, no show.
18:19
They request a wellness check.
18:21
Speaker 2: The police arrive at the house in Chiliwoda, find it locked,
18:24
force entry and discover the absolute horror inside.
18:27
Speaker 1: Chat in the kitchen, Margaret at the desk, Cody in
18:30
the storage room. A massive twenty four hour manhunt kicks
18:33
off across the state, and they finally track Grant down
18:35
on January twenty sixth. He's staying at a Double Tree
18:38
hotel over in Orange County.
18:39
Speaker 2: The interrogation that follows his arrest is a masterclass in
18:42
deception and delusion. Grant sits in that room and gives
18:45
these wildly inconsistent, almost insulting stories to the detectives.
18:49
Speaker 1: He claims total ignorance of the murders. At one point
18:53
he admits that he had driven near his neighborhood and
18:55
seen the police tape and the news vans.
18:57
Speaker 2: But instead of rushing to see if his family was okay,
19:00
he tells the detectives he decided to just go to
19:02
Panera bread and get something to eat.
19:04
Speaker 1: It's an absurd alibi. It highlights his complete inability to
19:08
even mimic normal human concern. You see police tape at
19:12
your house and your instinct is to go get a sandwich.
19:15
Speaker 2: Even his surviving half brother, Jason, came in and pleaded
19:18
with him to confess, to just tell the truth, but
19:21
Grant maintained this bizarre, hollow facade of innocence.
19:25
Speaker 1: Why keep lying when they clearly.
19:26
Speaker 2: Have him Because to admit guilt would be to accept reality,
19:30
and as we've seen, Grant's entire pathology is built on
19:32
rejecting reality in favor of a narrative where he is
19:35
the center of the universe.
19:37
Speaker 1: The trial kicks off a few months later in July
19:39
twenty nineteen, and the prosecution just systematically dismantles his entire
19:43
fabricated reality.
19:44
Speaker 2: The defense tried to float this unknown killer theory, questioning
19:48
why the cops zeroed in on Grant so fast, leaning
19:51
into the idea that maybe someone else broke in.
19:54
Speaker 1: But the evidence against him was a mountain. Digital forensics
19:58
experts got on the stand and show that Grant had
20:00
attempted to wipe Cody's phone data after killing him. You
20:04
can't claim you weren't there if you're actively deleting data
20:06
from the victim's phone.
20:08
Speaker 2: Crime scene analysts pointed out all the clunky, illogical inconsistencies
20:12
in his staged murder suicide. Financial experts laid bare the
20:16
two hundred thousand.
20:17
Speaker 1: Dollars theft, and friends of the family, including cody friend
20:20
Chris Cisco, testified about the incredibly toxic dynamic in the
20:24
home and Grant's bizarre escalating behavior.
20:27
Speaker 2: The evidence, the ballistics, the timeline reconstruction, the sheer, undeniable
20:32
digital footprint of his lies. It proved completely overwhelming.
20:36
Speaker 1: The jury deliberated and found him guilty on three counts
20:39
of first degree murder. The state actually sought the death
20:41
penalty for his crimes, but because the jury didn't unanimously
20:44
recommend it, he received automatic consecutive life sentences without the
20:48
possibility of parole for each count.
20:51
Speaker 2: Three lifetimes behind bars.
20:52
Speaker 1: And this is the part that I simply cannot shake.
20:56
This is the moment that defines who this guy really is.
21:00
At sentencing, when he was asked about his remorse, grant
21:03
a Motto gave a statement that is just bone shilling.
21:07
Speaker 2: It really is.
21:07
Speaker 1: I'm going to read it directly from the source material.
21:10
Think about what he just did. He said and I quote,
21:13
my family has been blaming me for months for ruining
21:16
their lives, stealing and not following the rules of the home,
21:19
so I might as well be blamed for this too.
21:21
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate final expression of lack of accountability.
21:25
Speaker 1: I mean, even after being convicted of shooting his parents
21:28
and his brother in cold blood, standing in a courtroom,
21:31
facing the rest of his life in a cage, he
21:34
is still portraying himself as the primary victim.
21:36
Speaker 2: He is literally equating being scolded for stealing two hundred
21:39
thousand dollars with being unfairly accused of mass murder. In
21:44
his mind, he wasn't the architect of his family's destruction.
21:47
Speaker 1: No, he was just a misunderstood guy being unfairly persecuted
21:50
by their rigid rules. It's unfathomable. So he goes to
21:55
prison three life sentences without parole, the gavel bangs the
21:59
door's lock. You'd think the story ends there. You'd think
22:02
society is safe from granted motto that his ability to
22:05
manipulate and destroy has been neutralized by the state of Florida.
22:08
Speaker 2: But here's where it gets really interesting. And by interesting,
22:11
I mean deeply systemically terrifying.
22:14
Speaker 1: Because a mind that compartmentalizes murder like that doesn't just
22:18
switch off in a cell. A cell is just another
22:20
bedroom with a closed door. The deep dive reveals a
22:24
massive catastrophic failure in the system that allowed his digital
22:27
manipulations to resurrect.
22:29
Speaker 2: We have to transition to his life inside the Florida
22:31
Department of Corrections. He was housed at Okeechobee Correctional Institution
22:35
and later transferred to Hardy Correctional Institution.
22:38
Speaker 1: Now, the Florida DOC, like all prison systems, has a
22:41
strict zero tolerance policy for contraband specifically cell phones. They
22:45
conduct routine shakedowns and checks.
22:47
Speaker 2: And yet, despite being a high profile family annihilator serving
22:51
three life sentences, Grant easily obtains a smuggled smartphone.
22:55
Speaker 1: But how, you know? You might be wondering how a
22:57
maximum security inmate just gets a smartphone we aren't talking
23:00
about a shive fashioned out of a toothbrush. A phone
23:04
requires charging, It requires a data plan, It requires constant maintenance.
23:08
Speaker 2: The prison contraband economy is highly sophisticated. Phones are smuggled
23:13
in through various mechanisms like what Sometimes drones drop them
23:17
into the yard at night. Sometimes they're smuggled in through
23:20
food deliveries, and unfortunately, they're often brought in by compromised
23:24
correctional staff who are paid exorbitant amounts on the outside
23:27
to look the other way wow. Once inside, a smartphone
23:31
is rented out, shared, or guarded fiercely. Chargers are sliced
23:35
into the wiring of light fixtures. For a manipulator like Grant,
23:39
finding a way to access this black market was likely
23:41
his first priority.
23:42
Speaker 1: A smartphone in the hands of Grane Moato is the
23:45
absolute worst case scenario, but the catalyst for what happens
23:48
next actually comes from the outside world. Fast forward to
23:52
twenty twenty four, the Paramount Plus Network releases a true
23:55
crime docu series called Crutral Plus Alt Plus Desire multi
24:00
part series entirely about Grant's case. It features interviews, it
24:04
dissects his psychology, It even plays his recorded prison phone calls.
24:09
Speaker 2: Suddenly, five years after his conviction, grant to motto is
24:13
thrust back into the public eye, beamed into millions of
24:16
living rooms.
24:16
Speaker 1: And this specific exposure catches the attention of a woman
24:20
named Victoria Goodwin.
24:22
Speaker 2: This introduces a critical, deeply unsettling sociological phenomena, the true
24:27
crime media ecosystem and its unintended consequences.
24:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, because documentaries and podcasts like The Deep Dives, we
24:33
do often dissect these cases to understand the psychology, to
24:36
explore the mechanisms of the crime.
24:38
Speaker 2: That is a valid pursuit. But for a certain subset
24:40
of the audience, the media exposure doesn't serve as a warning.
24:43
It glamorizes the criminal. It creates a vulnerability.
24:46
Speaker 1: What kind of vulnerability?
24:47
Speaker 2: There is a well documented psychological phenomenon called hybristophilia, a
24:51
sexual or romantic attraction to those who can make crimes,
24:54
particularly violent, high profile crimes.
24:56
Speaker 1: I want you to expand on that because you were
24:58
probably thinking, why on earth would anyone seek out a
25:02
guy who shot his own mother in the back of
25:04
the head.
25:05
Speaker 2: What is the appeal for individuals who often feel isolated, bored,
25:09
or profoundly unsatisfied in their own lives, reaching out to
25:12
a convicted killer serves several psychological functions. First, there is
25:17
the fixer fantasy.
25:19
Speaker 1: The idea that they can change him, yes.
25:21
Speaker 2: The delusion that their love is so pure and powerful
25:23
it can redeem a monster. Second, there's a twisted sense
25:27
of safety. A man locked in a maximum security prison
25:30
cannot physically abuse you, cheat on you, or leave you.
25:33
He is a captive audience.
25:35
Speaker 1: That makes a weird sort of sense.
25:36
Speaker 2: They are drawn to the perceived infamy, the notoriety. They
25:40
project their own desires onto this blank, captive.
25:43
Speaker 1: Slate, and Victoria Goodwin fits into this terrifying puzzle perfectly.
25:47
Let's look at her background, because this is where the
25:49
story bends reality. Victoria isn't some marginalized outcast.
25:53
Speaker 2: She is married, and not just to anyone right.
25:56
Speaker 1: She has been married since around twenty twenty to Aaron Goodwin,
25:59
who is a famous reality TV star on the massive
26:02
hit paranormal show Ghost Adventures. She is living this relatively
26:07
high profile, wealthy lifestyle.
26:09
Speaker 2: He has a nice home, financial security, but according to.
26:11
Speaker 1: The reports and court documents, they were experiencing significant marital issues.
26:16
She is deeply unhappy.
26:17
Speaker 2: So feeling trapped in her real world marriage, she seeks
26:20
an escape. She watches qritroll plus Alt plus Desire, sees
26:24
Grand Motto, and around May twenty twenty four, she initiates
26:27
contact with him. She reaches out to him as a pen.
26:30
Speaker 1: Pal, and the escalation is breathtaking. By October twenty twenty four,
26:34
in a span of just five months, this correspondence evolves
26:37
from casual pen pal letters into heavy, obsessive, romantic and
26:41
sexual territory.
26:42
Speaker 2: And how are they communicating this entire time? Not through
26:45
the monitored prison mail room.
26:46
Speaker 1: No, they're communicating entirely through that smuggled smartphone that Grant possesses.
26:51
Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, the systemic
26:53
issue of prison contraband cannot be overstated. A smartphone isn't
26:57
just a way to call home. It is an unfilled,
27:00
unmonitored portal to the entire world.
27:03
Speaker 1: For a master manipulator like Grant a Motto, a smartphone
27:06
is the ultimate weapon.
27:07
Speaker 2: It allows him to curate his persona groom, a target,
27:10
and execute complex plans without the prison administration ever seeing
27:14
a single word. He can text her in the middle
27:17
of the night, he can send photos, He can create
27:19
an entirely private, isolated digital world just for the two
27:23
of them.
27:23
Speaker 1: It's a bizarre, horrifying mirror image of twenty eighteen. Think
27:28
about it. Back then, Grant bought a digital fantasy with
27:31
a camgirl. He was the one reaching out through a scream,
27:34
paying for an illusion, desperate for validation.
27:37
Speaker 2: Now sitting in a concrete cell, he becomes the digital
27:39
fantasy for someone on the outside.
27:41
Speaker 1: He is the one behind the screen, providing the illusion.
27:43
The rolls completely flip, but the obsessive, toxic, isolating dynamic
27:48
is exactly identical.
27:49
Speaker 2: The mechanism is exactly the same. Two people using a
27:52
digital interface to completely escape their reality, feeding off each
27:55
other's delusions. But here is the critical difference. In eighteen,
28:00
Grant's obstacle was his family, right Who is Victoria Goodwin's obstacle?
28:05
Who is keeping her from fully actualizing this fantasy with
28:08
her captive lover.
28:09
Speaker 1: Her husband Aaron Goodwin? And just like in twenty eighteen,
28:13
when a digital obsession collides with real world obstacles, the
28:16
result is a calculated plot for murder.
28:19
Speaker 2: Victoria's initial correspondence, what she later tried to claim to
28:22
police was just a fantasy or daydream rapidly concretizes into
28:26
a highly legal operational plan.
28:28
Speaker 1: She transitions from a disgruntled wife fenting to a pen pal,
28:32
to an active conspirator in a murder for higher plot,
28:35
and it gets incredibly terrifyingly specific.
28:39
Speaker 2: She doesn't just complain about Aaron. She sets aside a
28:42
very specific sum of money. Exactly eleven five hundred and
28:45
fifteen dollars.
28:46
Speaker 1: That is the budget she allocates to hire a hitman
28:48
to kill her husband. She wants him dead so she
28:50
can collect whatever assets she feels entitled to and somehow
28:53
be with grant.
28:54
Speaker 2: But she doesn't just provide money. She provides intelligence. She
28:57
starts sharing Aaron's highly confidential real filming schedule with the
29:01
supposed hit man.
29:03
Speaker 1: She specifically notes exactly when Aaron will be filming an
29:06
episode of Ghost Adventures near Barstow, California, pincoining his geographic
29:10
location and his vulnerability.
29:12
Speaker 2: She is providing actionable, real time intelligence for an assassination.
29:16
She knows when he will be traveling, when he will
29:18
way away from the security of his home. This isn't
29:21
a daydream, this is operational planning. She is plotting logistics.
29:25
Speaker 1: The text messages between Victoria Grant and the individual they
29:29
believed was a hit man were intercepted by authorities and
29:31
reading them is chilling. Let me quote her directly. Okay,
29:35
she writes to the hit man, I'm so anxious, Loe, Loel,
29:38
I just can't believe it's happening. How did I get
29:40
to this point? And then in another message, she asks,
29:43
am I a bad person? Because I chose to end
29:47
his existence? Not divorce?
29:49
Speaker 2: That phrase, not divorce is the absolute crux of this
29:52
entire psychological descent.
29:53
Speaker 1: I have to zero in on that, not divorce. Why
29:56
does a seemingly normal person living a wealthy reality TV
29:59
life style and a nice home choose a hit man
30:02
over simply signing divorce papers.
30:04
Speaker 2: It's a huge question.
30:05
Speaker 1: I mean, she goes from a bored reality TV wife
30:07
watching Paramount Plus on her couch to an active conspirator
30:11
and a murder for higher plot. How does exchanging text
30:14
messages with a convicted family annihilator rewrite someone's moral compass
30:19
so drastically in just five months.
30:21
Speaker 2: Its beaks to the highly infectious nature of Granta Moto's
30:24
specific brand of delusion. Psychologists sometimes refer to this shared
30:28
psychosis as.
30:29
Speaker 1: Folia do a madness of two.
30:31
Speaker 2: Yes. Grant's entire methodology, his core operating system, is based
30:36
on elimination rather than conflict resolution. When his family got
30:40
in the way of his camgirl fantasy, he didn't move out,
30:43
he didn't negotiate, he didn't get a job.
30:45
Speaker 1: He eliminated them, and he projected that exact same binary,
30:48
psychopathic worldview onto Victoria.
30:51
Speaker 2: In the isolated echo chamber of their encrypted text messages.
30:54
He normalized the idea that if someone as an obstacle
30:57
to your happiness, you don't negotiate with him, you just
30:59
remove them from existence.
31:01
Speaker 1: Divorce involves lawyers, splitting assets, public embarrassment, and acknowledging failure.
31:06
Murder in their twisted shared fantasy seemed cleaner. It was
31:10
a dark, shared secret that bonded them deeply.
31:13
Speaker 2: And Grant wasn't just passively listening to event. He wasn't
31:16
just a sounding board. The police reports show he was
31:19
actively aggressively involved.
31:21
Speaker 1: He was contacting the hitman himself from his prison cell
31:24
using that smuggled phone. He was checking in to see
31:27
if the deed was done while Aaron was asleep in
31:29
his hotel room in Barstow.
31:31
Speaker 2: Think about the sheer audacity of that Granda Motto is
31:34
sitting in a maximum security prison in Florida, surrounded by guards,
31:38
wire fences in concrete, orchestrating a hit on a television
31:41
star across the country in California.
31:43
Speaker 1: We have to draw the final definitive parallel here between
31:47
his two crimes. Grant to Motto's methodology never changed one iota,
31:51
not at all.
31:51
Speaker 2: In twenty eighteen, he isolates himself in a delusion with
31:54
a woman through a screen. He relies entirely on someone
31:57
else's money, his famili's, and when he is cornern and
32:00
his fantasy is threatened, he chooses murder as the most
32:03
logical way to eliminate the inconvenience.
32:05
Speaker 1: Fast forward to twenty twenty four, he is isolated in
32:08
a cell. He manipulates a woman through a screen. He
32:10
relies entirely on her money that eleven, five hundred and
32:13
fifteen dollars, and.
32:15
Speaker 2: He once again chooses murder to eliminate the inconvenience, which
32:19
this time is Aaron Goodwin. The environment changed, the victims changed,
32:22
but the monster remained exactly the same.
32:25
Speaker 1: Fortunately, incredibly, the plot fails. The hit doesn't happen in
32:29
March twenty twenty five, the authorities, having intercepted the communications
32:33
and tracked the financial movements, swoop in Victoria.
32:36
Speaker 2: Goodwin is arrested in Clark County, Nevada. She is held
32:39
on a one hundred thousand dollars bond. She faces severe
32:42
charges of solicitation and conspiracy to commit murder.
32:46
Speaker 1: The reality of what she has done finally crashes down
32:48
on her. Eventually, in June twenty twenty five, she takes
32:51
a plea deal. One of the charges is dropped. She
32:53
pleads guilty to conspiracy to commit murder, and the judge
32:57
sentences her to three to eight years or thirty six
32:59
to ninety one in state prison.
33:01
Speaker 2: And Aaron Goodwin, the victim in all of this, the
33:03
man who was completely unaware that his own wife was
33:05
pricing out his life, immediately files for divorce.
33:08
Speaker 1: At her sentencing hearing, he gave a highly emotional, devastating
33:11
victim impact statement. He told the court that he will
33:14
never feel safe again.
33:15
Speaker 2: He has to live the rest of his life looking
33:17
over his shoulder. A man whose entire television career is
33:21
built on investigating the paranormal, walking into haunted houses and
33:25
looking for ghosts, found that the most terrifying monster he
33:28
would ever encounter wasn't a.
33:30
Speaker 1: Spirit, It was the woman sleeping next to him, whose
33:33
mind had been hijacked and influenced by a killer one
33:36
thousand miles away.
33:38
Speaker 2: As for Grant, the initial coverage didn't prominently report new
33:42
charges for this specific plot, though legal experts noted that
33:45
federal conspiracy charges could easily be filed down the line.
33:48
Speaker 1: But practically speaking, he's already serving three consecutive life sentences
33:52
without the possibility of parole. You can't put him in
33:55
prison any longer than forever.
33:56
Speaker 2: His physical body is permanently contained, but his continue utability
34:00
to wreak havoc, to reach out through the digital ether
34:03
and dismantle another family remains a glaring, flashing red testament
34:07
to unchecked manipulation.
34:09
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? We've walked through a
34:12
timeline that is almost too bizarre, too dark for fiction.
34:16
From the tragic, utterly senseless loss of Chad, Margaret and
34:20
Codia Motto in a quiet Floorida suburb to the complete
34:24
shattering of Aaron Goodwin's life and sense of safety on
34:26
the other side of the country.
34:28
Speaker 2: This deep dive shows us the terrifying persistence of dangerous
34:32
fantasy driven mindsets. For individuals like Granda motto, reality is
34:37
merely optional, right up until the devastating consequences inevitably bleed
34:41
into the real world and destroy the people around them.
34:44
Speaker 1: It is a profound, dark reminder that physical containment does
34:48
not always equal psychological containment.
34:50
Speaker 2: The walls of a prison can hold a body, but
34:53
as long as a manipulator has a digital line of
34:55
communication to the outside world, their pathology can still claim victims.
35:00
They don't stop being predators just because they're in a cage.
35:02
Speaker 1: And that leaves us with a final thought. I want
35:04
you tomull Over today. Think about the invisible digital tethers
35:07
we all have to the world right now.
35:09
Speaker 2: Think about the phone sitting in your pocket, the screen
35:11
you're looking at.
35:12
Speaker 1: We hold our phones. We stare at our screens, and
35:14
we think of them as windows, safe, passive, little portals
35:18
to observe reality, to chat with friends, to consume media.
35:22
We think we are in control.
35:24
Speaker 2: But in the wrong hands or the wrong mind, those
35:27
screens cease to be windows. They become weapons, capable of
35:31
dismantling reality itself.
35:33
Speaker 1: What does it say about our society when the true
35:36
crime media we consume for entertainment, the stories we listen
35:39
to on our commutes becomes a literal catalog for lonely
35:42
people looking for a dangerous, deadly escape.
35:45
Speaker 2: Remember that the line between observation and participation in the
35:48
digital age is far thinner than we like to think.
35:51
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining this deep dive. Stay curious, question
35:54
the media you consume, and remember that sometimes the most
35:57
dangerous illusions are the ones we willingly invite into our
35:59
own homes through our screens. Until next time, Remember that
36:04
the next time you look at a screen, you aren't
36:05
just looking out at the world. The world is looking
36:07
right back at you. We are all navigating the murky
36:10
waters of this digital reality. Keep your compass calibrated.