A former Riverdale actor who murdered his mother in order to spare her from having to see his plan to kill Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been sentenced to life in prison.
Ryan Grantham, 24, will not be eligible for parole for 14 years after pleading guilty to shooting and killing his mother, Barbara Waite, 64, while she played the piano back in March 2020.
He then drove to Trudeau’s home with three guns, ammunition, and 12 Molotov cocktails in his vehicle before deciding to surrender to the cops.
A second-degree murder charge in Canada comes with a life sentence by law. The only thing that his lawyers could dispute was how long he would have to serve before being granted parole.
In June, the two sides clashed over whether Grantham should be eligible for parole after serving 12 years in prison as he acknowledged responsibility and remorse for his actions, while the federal government maintained that he should serve 17 to 18 years before becoming eligible.
On Wednesday, CBC reports that British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Kathleen Ker ruled the actor will only have to serve 14 years. She took into consideration the actor’s downward spiral in the months leading up to the murder as a mitigating factor.
She said that Grantham’s apology seemed genuine, and he was getting help for his mental health in prison. The people there had good things to say about his behavior and progress.
Ker deemed it a ‘saving grace’ that Grantham had the presence of mind to not commit mass murder or assassinate the prime minister.
After Grantham shot Waite in the back of the head as she practiced piano on March 31, 2020, he recorded a video on a GoPro in which he confessed to the murder and displayed his mother’s lifeless body, according to authorities.
‘I shot her in the back of the head,’ he reportedly said on the tape. ‘In the moments after, she would have known it was me.’
After buying beer and weed, the actor experimented with making Molotov cocktails and watching Netflix. Before going to bed, he covered his mother’s body with a sheet.
The next morning, Grantham confessed to law enforcement, he hung a rosary on Waite’s piano and arranged lit candles around her corpse, before loading his vehicle with three guns, ammunition, a dozen Molotov cocktails, camping gear and directions to Trudeau’s Rideau Cottage in Ottawa.
He had intended to drive more than 50 hours to kill Trudeau before changing his mind and thinking about committing an “act of mass violence” at Simon Fraser University, where he had dropped out.
He turned himself into the Vancouver police before harming anyone else and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in March.
In the aftermath, according to authorities, Grantham shot his mother “to save her” from witnessing his assassination plot against Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unfold.
The two psychiatric evaluations presented showed that Grantham committed the crime to save her mother from seeing more acts of violence he planned to commit.
The expert findings indicated that Grantham exhibited cannabis use disorder, depression, self-hatred, and suicidal and homicidal tendencies months before the murder.
According to prosecutors, one journal entry written by Grantham in March reads: ‘I’m so sorry mom, I’m so sorry Lisa … I hate myself.’
‘There’s a lot of media of me out there … film and TV … hundreds of hours of me that can be viewed and dissected… No one will understand.’
‘Mr. Grantham was seeking to save his mother from something he was going to do,’ prosecutor Michaela Donnelly said during the sentencing hearing in June.
She described the murder as a ‘heartbreaking breach of trust.’
‘Barbara Waite loved her son very much, was an excellent parent and in her mind had no reason to fear him,’ she stated.
Donnelly said that Grantham had ample opportunity to change his mind.
On the day of the murder, he loaded and unloaded his gun multiple times. For 15 minutes, he sat on his townhouse steps considering what to do – before shooting his mother.
According to CBC, Grantham was concerned that Waite would learn he had stopped attending classes at Simon Fraser University and was using marijuana.
On April 1, 2020, Waite’s body was discovered by her daughter Lisa, who went to the house after Waite failed to respond to her calls and messages.
‘How can I trust anybody when my only sibling chose to execute my mom when her back was turned,’ Lisa Grantham stated in court.
In June, Grantham expressed his regret in court.
‘I cannot explain or justify my actions. I have no excuse,’ he stated.
‘It hurts me to think about how badly I’ve wasted my life.
‘In the face of something so horrible, saying sorry seems so pointless,’ he added. ‘But from every fiber of my being, I am sorry.’
Grantham is perhaps best known for his role as Jeffery Augustine in Riverdale. After Perry died of a stroke, his character was written into the show as the hit-and-run murderer of Luke Perry’s character.
He has also played parts on the television supernatural drama Supernatural, as well as in the films Diary of a Wimpy Kid and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
