US man kills family after they make him quit watching porn
Porn addict kills parents, brother after confrontation over $340,000 he stole to pay woman on live-streaming porn website
WASHINGTON His love for the woman of his dreams became his family's nightmare.
Grant Amato, 29, had become obsessed with a Bulgarian woman he met on a live-streaming porn website. From June last year, he paid out up to US$250,000 (S$338,000) to keep his interaction with her going.
The problem was the money was not his, it belonged to his parents and brother. And when they tried to stop him from using the porn site and contacting the woman, he allegedly shot them to death in their Orlando Florida home.
The bodies of his father, Chad, 59, mother Magaret, 61, and brother, Cody, 31, were discovered by police on Friday.
Amato was arrested on Monday.
Things started to spiral out of control when his mum and dad forced Amato into rehab for a pornography addiction last December after finding out he has been siphoning money from them and his brother to feed his obsession.
After returning home from an uncompleted rehab, Amato was given a two-page list of rules which he had to follow if he wanted to live at home.
One condition was he stop all communication with the Bulgarian woman, the Washington Post reported.
According to the arrest affidavit, Amato explained to police that he agreed, "but he didn't think they were fair because he felt that the Bulgarian female was his girlfriend and they had a relationship".
He continued to communicate with the woman over Twitter, The Washington Post reported.
Later, his father discovered the messaging was still ongoing. Last Thursday, the family again confronted Amato.
In an interview with investigators, Amato said his parents told him he could have no contact with her if he wanted to continue living at their home, NBC news reported.
The situation got so tense that his brother Cody told his girlfriend he feared his brother "would kill everybody", according to an arrest affidavit filed by the Seminole County Sheriff's Office.
When Cody's girlfriend could not reach him at his parents' home where he had gone for the meeting on Thursday, she called the police the next day.
Police forced entry when no one responded to their calls and found the bodies.
Chad was lying on his back on the kitchen floor. Cody lay on the storage room floor, curled up and Margaret was sprawled over a desk in another room.
All were shot "execution style" police said. Amato was found in a local hotel.
He has denied killing his family, instead claiming that he left the house after his father confronted him on Thursday about the Twitter messages.
He claimed to have returned to the house on Friday but fled when saw the police there.
He is expected to be charged on March 26.
Amato has a history of getting into trouble.
The Orlando Sentinel reported that last year police responded to AdventHealth Orlando, where Amato worked as a nurse, about a report of a suicidal person.
Officers said Amato did not meet the criteria to be held for observation as a danger to himself or others, but he was arrested for allegedly stealing vials of Propofol, a powerful sedative.
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