Riverdale actor sentenced to life following murder of his mother

Canadian actor Ryan Grantham, who appeared in Riverdale and Diary Of A Wimpy Kid, has been sentenced to life in prison, according to CBC. The sentence was automatic after Grantham pled guilty to the second-degree murder of his mother. The variable in the sentencing concerned the length of time Grantham would go without parole, which was determined to be 14 years.

Grantham—who played the killer of Luke Perry’s character, Fred Andrews, on the CW series—was said to have shot his mother in the back of the head in March of 2020, per CBC. He confessed to the murder on a video he took of his mother’s body, which he later arranged in a funerary fashion (lighting candles and hanging a rosary nearby) before leaving the house. He then packed a car with ammunition and set off with the intention of assassinating Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He was also said to have considered perpetrating a mass shooting, possibly at Simon Fraser University where he was enrolled. Instead, he eventually turned himself in to the police.

In arguing for a shorter period of parole ineligibility, Grantham’s defense cited serious mental health issues, saying the murder was done in his “disordered thinking, to prevent his mother from seeing what he thought he was about to do,” according to a previous CBC report. Grantham has been receiving psychiatric care since his arrest and made an apology in court earlier this year.

“I cannot explain or justify my actions. I have no excuse. 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. But from every fiber of my being, I am sorry,” he said. “Someday, if I’m ever released from prison, I hope to continue on this path of bettering myself.”