Aimee Walker
Riverdale actor Ryan Grantham has been sentenced to life in prison for killing his own mother.
Grantham, 24, who played Jeffery Augustine in the Netflix drama, pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of Barbara Waite, 64, in March this year.
He was sentenced at British Columbia Supreme Court in Canada on Wednesday, CBC reports.
Prosecutors said he had also plotted to kill Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The Diary of a Wimpy Kid actor, who starred as Rodney James in the movie, shot his mother in the back of the head as she played the piano in March 2020.
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Grantham packed a car with three guns, ammunition, 12 Molotov cocktails, camping supplies and a map the day after killing her.
Prosecutors alleged that the former child star planned to head to Trudeau’s Rideau Cottage residence.
Grantham is believed to have driven 200 kilometres east toward the town of Hope and then turned around.
Allegedly, he contemplated committing an act of mass violence at either Vancouver’s Lions Gate Bridge or at Simon Fraser University, where he had been a student.
However, he ended up driving to a Vancouver police station and telling an officer: “I killed my mother.”
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In Grantham’s trial, his defence reportedly argued that he had struggled with anxiety, self-loathing and clinical depression.
The court was told reportedly told how Grantham carried out the murder by secretly approaching his mother with a gun from behind.
Go-Pro camera footage was used as evidence.
In one of the videos that Grantham took after the death of his mother, he said: “I shot her in the back of the head. In the moments after, she would have known it was me.”
It’s believed he then spent hours smoking marijuana and attempting to produce Molotov cocktails.
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Two psychiatric reports were believed to have been commissioned after the murder.
One apparently stated that Grantham suffered from a cannabis use disorder following years of heavy use. Despite this, it stated that he managed to function relatively normally, in regards to his outer appearance.
Reportedly, the former child star was an experienced gun user and had actually been a member of a gun club. Leading up to the murder of his mother, prosecutors claim he purchased a .22 calibre rifle.
In the lead-up to the verdict, sometime in June, Grantham addressed the court and delivered an apology.
He reportedly stated that his mother was a caring and compassionate woman who did not deserve what he had done to her.
Grantham appeared in two seasons of the CW network show Riverdale, and also featured in the fantasy drama Supernatural, and the 2010 film Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
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