‘Riverdale’ Actor Ryan Grantham Sentenced To Life Behind Bars For Killing His Mother

Dominic Patten
·3 min read

Riverdale and Diary of a Wimpy Kid actor Ryan Grantham has been sentenced to life behind bars for the 2020 killing of his mother. He will be eligible for parole in 14 years.

The by-the-book second-degree murder punishment was handed down September 21 by British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Kathleen Ker in Vancouver. With the sentence already a forgone conclusion over the laws of the Canadian province, the only real wild card was how long the guilty-pleading Grantham, 24, would have to wait before he could apply for parole.

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The Leo Award-nominated Grantham turned himself into police soon after shooting his 64-year-old mother Barbara Waite in the back of the head on March 31, 2020, in the family’s Squamish home, just north of Vancouver.

A second-degree murder charge in B.C. comes with no parole eligibility for 10-25 years. In that context, prosecutors had recommended in a sentencing hearing this year that Grantham receive a parole ineligibility up to 18 years. The former actor’s legal team had suggested 12 years as a fair consequence.

Originally charged with first-degree murder, Grantham has been in custody for the past 2½ years, law enforcement officials in Vancouver confirmed to Deadline today. Participating in a mental health program since his arrest, Grantham is in the process of being readied for transfer to a more permanent facility, sources say.

With about 30 credits on his résumé, Grantham noticeably played Jeffrey Augustine on the fourth season of the soapy CW hi Riverdale in 2019. While appearing briefly, the character had a pivotal role in the Archie Comics-based show. It was Jeffrey Augustine who killed Fred Andrews (the late Luke Perry) on the series in a hit-and-run that changed almost everything on the show. Starting his career back in 2007, Grantham also appeared in the 2010 movie Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and episodes of Supernatural and iZombie.

It later was revealed in court that after the murder of his mother, Grantham took video of the body and confessed to the killing on-camera. A day later, after carefully arranging the body in a semi-religious scene, Grantham hit the road. With ever-changing intent, he at one point was going to try to kill Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, as he also wrote in a journal entered as evidence. Grantham also considered committing a mass shooting at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University or on the iconic Lions Gate Bridge.

Thankfully, Grantham instead went to East Vancouver police station and surrendered. “I killed my mother,” he is reported to have bluntly declared to police at the front desk of the station.

Back in March, the actor expressed sorrow at what he had done. “In the face of something so horrible, saying sorry seems so pointless,” Grantham told the Vancouver court and Justice Ker, reading from a sheet of paper. “But from every fiber of my being, I am sorry.”

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