Grant Amato | Was this Parricide Motivated by Sex Addiction?

hello this is dr grande today's question is can i analyze the grant a motto case just a reminder i'm not diagnosing anybody in this video only speculating about could be happening a situation like this if you enjoy this video please like it subscribe to my channel and consider supporting me on patreon i'll put the link to patreon in the description for this video first i'll go through the background of the case i'll move to the timeline of the crime then i'll offer my analysis grant amato was born on may 20 1989 in florida his parents were named chad and margaret amato was the youngest of three his brothers were cody and jason amato graduated from high school in 2007 and earned a nursing degree in 2011 he was particularly close to his brother cody who was a nurse anesthetist amato had hopes of doing that same job in june of 2018 amado was working at a hospital the staff called the police saying that a motto was suicidal and had stolen a medication named propofol he was arrested for grand theft while out on bail he spent a lot of time on his computer eventually becoming interested in a bulgarian model named sylvia who he had contact with via webcam amato wrote her name as sylvie s-y-l-v-i-e but her name is actually sylvia s-y-l-v-i-y-s so i will call her sylvia amato stole 200 000 from his parents and his brother and he spent it on sylvia who he considered to be his girlfriend the family did not press charges they wanted to get a motto help in december of 2018 amato traveled to japan with his brother cody they were both interested in anime which seemed to be a motivator for this trip when he returned to united states his family realized he was still obsessed with sylvia at their urging he agreed to go into a rehabilitation facility located in fort lauderdale florida amato's parents and brother had paid thousands of dollars to pay off amato's debts for his attorney for the trip to japan and now they're going to pay for the rehabilitation they were doing everything they could to keep him out of prison they told him that if he contacted sylvia again he was going to be kicked out of the house the two-month program he entered was for internet and sex addiction but he left after two weeks he wrote a letter on january 22 to a number of friends he met online in which he proclaimed his love for sylvia i'll talk more about that later in my analysis this brings us to january 24 2019. according to the prosecution this is what happened on that day amado was home alone with his mother at about 4 30 pm the house was located in seminole county he shot her from behind while she was sitting at a computer desk at 4 45 pm at 5 30 pm when his father chad arrived home amado shot him twice in the head amato positioned chad's firearm in a holster backwards on chad's right hip sometimes people do position a gun in this way this is called a cross draw they have to reach across their body and pull the gun from the opposite hip it's sometimes used if somebody believes they'll have to draw a weapon when they're sitting down like if they're in an automobile so if somebody were left-handed they would put the gun on their right hip with the grip facing forward the problem here is that chad was right handed sometime between 9 30 and 10 pm cody came home from work amato shot him as he entered the house at some point amato took cody's gun and placed it near cody's body but it was not the murder weapon amato did a poor job of trying to frame his brother at 12 21 am amado made his way to a publix supermarket he logged on to the wi-fi he accessed cody's bank account at 208 am to buy more tokens for sylvia's website when cody didn't report for work one of his co-workers called the police who conducted a wellness check at 9 17 am they discovered the bodies amado was arrested in a hotel on january 26 and questioned and three hours of questioning he never asked what happened to his family he was released then arrested again on january 28th amado was convicted on july 31 2019 in august he was sentenced to life in prison now moving to my analysis i'm not aware of any diagnosis being given to a motto there's not a lot of information about his personality either from looking at the hours of police interviews a motto appears to be high in openness to experience he was creative and invested in fantasy and we see he seems to be mid-range in conscientiousness extroversion and agreeableness and perhaps above average in neuroticism one area that was focused on during the trial was this eight page letter that he wrote on january 22 to his online friends about sylvia here are a few key items from that letter the overall purpose of the letter was an apology to these different men amato considered them to be at least good acquaintances he wrote that he made a mistake with sylvia upsetting her he lied about being a gamer driving a bmw and owning his own house he claimed to be something that he wasn't because he was intimidated amato wrote that his father and brother were controlling and forced him into that clinic in fort lauderdale when he was in the clinic his family accessed his computer and lied to sylvia about him amato then individually addresses the people in this online group saying how he was sorry and really appreciated them he went on to write that he wanted a second chance with sylvia and he deeply cared for her he believed that his relationship with sylvia grew quickly and they became close this trapped him in his lies he wanted to be a shoulder that she could cry on and a person to whom she could express her emotions freely he was unable to function without her not communicating with her was the most painful experience he had ever been through this specific line appears to connect with the concept of addiction amato wrote that he truly loves sylvia even though she didn't believe someone could love someone so quickly when an online model thinks the relationship is growing too quickly that's a pretty bad sign i wouldn't imagine these models typically want to slow things down this would be like a video poker machine telling somebody to stop betting a motto urged the members of the group never to lie to sylvia and if they had lied to her they needed to come clean now here it would seem that amado believed the people in the group were running under the same fantasy that he was like he had company and maybe he did maybe they felt the same way about sylvia i guess this speaks well to sylvia's future earning potential there are plenty of customers out there amato wrote that he wanted to make sylvia's dreams come true i suppose to be fair i think he was making her dreams of getting rich come true he should have specified the dreams to which he was referring from this letter we see someone who appears to have a poor understanding of relationships many of the things he was saying are red flags but it doesn't seem to have any insight as i understand it it cost a motto around ten dollars a minute to communicate with sylvia he was spending about four hours a night on the webcam with her so this comes to about twenty four hundred dollars per session when he no longer had computer access and or could not afford to pay he tried to reach sylvia on her twitter account but she rarely responded she only responded when he was paying her somehow amado thought that that was consistent with a true romantic relationship so what could be happening in a case like this one-sided relationships can occur at a distance like online just like they can occur in person a man compensating a woman for various levels of affection is not unheard of what's really unusual is when the man believes there's some type of romantic commitment involved the man believes he's in love but the woman is simply operating a business she is playing a part and perhaps being manipulative but in a way that's what the man is asking for he is paying to feel some type of romantic connection to feel wanted and necessary it really comes down to a lack of empathy and a lack of insight on the part of the man he is unable to understand that the woman is not really reciprocating he might as well be in love with a vending machine the man is addicted to the feeling of being in love even though no love is actually there it's an over-investment in fantasy now specifically in this case amato took this type of one-sided relationship much further than most people would one could argue his behavior was consistent with addiction for example after the murders pictures of several credit cards were found on a motto's computer including those that belong to his grandmother uncle aunt and one of his cousins a motto was willing to steal from anyone to stay in contact with sylvia what really stood out in this case was the parasite if there was an addiction that again is not unusual that affects many people but for someone to go this far to communicate with a webcam model it really doesn't make any sense we know from the research literature that parasite is rare adult parasite offenders are often psychotic so they'd have something like schizophrenia i've seen no evidence of that in this case many have anti-social personality disorder again we don't see any discussion of that in this case adult parasite offenders are almost always violent during several incidents before the homicides which doesn't seem to be what happened here 62 percent of these offenders were under mental health care before the offense a motto had been to that clinic so there is a connection to that element one theory about what could have happened in this case is that a motto had this obsession with the model that became almost delusional he lost track of reality he had it in his mind that he really couldn't live without her almost like an extreme fear of abandonment like his very existence was threatened without her he would be nothing to preserve his own existence he was willing to do anything all people entered into two categories from his perspective obstacles and sylvia so here we see what could be considered narcissism he only had sight of his own pain no one else's lives mattered the last part i want to cover here is the reaction that the family had to amato's behavior i have seen so many instances over the years where families continually try to keep offenders out of trouble they don't want the police involved they don't want the offender to experience consequences i understand this position the law does a great job of punishing and a poor job of rehabilitating people are just repeatedly disappointed in what the justice system has to offer they don't view it as really helpful in the end but at some point it's really about boundaries when somebody becomes addicted the most vulnerable people are the ones close to them it's a condition that bypasses traditional safety methods like locking doors and alarm systems it takes over a victim and turns them into an intruder who victimizes unsuspecting and overwhelmed family members boundaries may not have saved grant a motto but they may have saved his family those are my thoughts on the grant amato case please put any opinions and thoughts in the comment section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always i hope you found my analysis on this topic to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 157,965

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Id: A-1ueSDIp_o

Length: 12min 18sec (738 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 12 2021