John Jefferson
Background: The Hamptons neighborhood, Auburndale, Fl. (Homes.com/YouTube). Insets top to bottom: Collin Griffith, knife used to murder Catherine Griffith (Polk County (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office).
A teenager who killed his father in Oklahoma — but avoided prosecution because he claimed self-defense — is now facing first-degree murder charges in the stabbing death of his mother in Florida.
Collin Griffith, 17, is behind bars in Polk County after allegedly killing his mother Catherine Griffith, 39, on Sunday, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said at a press conference on Wednesday. The slaying took place in The Hamptons, a 55-and-over community in Auburndale some 50 miles east of Tampa, where Griffith’s grandmother is a resident.
Judd described a 911 call from Griffith himself on Sunday, in which the teen said that he and his mother “had a very long fight and she fell on a knife.” She was bleeding from the neck, Judd recalled Griffith saying.
Deputies who arrived on the scene found Griffith “calm, cool, collected — and he had blood on him,” Judd said.
Investigators found that the facts didn’t line up with Griffith’s story at all.
“The medical examiner said it’s just not reasonable or plausible that she died the way that he said she did,” the sheriff said. “It just didn’t happen.”
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Judd also said that despite Griffith’s claims of a protracted fight between him and his mother, the home was “neat and clean, [with] no evidence of any kind of a long fight, as he said.”
And when deputies arrived, Judd said that Griffith showed “zero remorse” — and zero sense of urgency regarding his gravely injured mother.
“He looked the deputy in the eye and said: ‘I know my rights,” Judd recalled Griffith saying. “‘I want an attorney.’”
The sheriff said his investigation revealed that there was much more to the story than just the Florida slaying.
“As we start to peel back the layer of this onion, we find out that this is not just a singular event with Collin stabbing his mother in the neck and ultimately killing her,” Judd said. He then described the Valentine’s Day death of Griffith’s father — also allegedly at Griffith’s own hand.
“On Feb. 14, 2023, Valentine’s Day, in Lincoln County, Oklahoma, Collin said his dad pulled a knife on him and he shot and killed his dad,” Judd said. “He shot him once in the chest and once in the head, and he claimed self-defense.”
Judd said that Oklahoma authorities dropped the charges less than a month later because they said they “could not disprove Collin’s assertion of self-defense,” and that the then-15-year-old went to live with his mother in Charlotte County, Florida.
Within months, Griffin was involuntarily committed for mental health reasons. Around this time he reportedly made a threatening statement: “I’ll kill myself, or I’ll kill my mother by shooting or stabbing her.”
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Two months later, in November 2023, Griffith was arrested for domestic violence against his mother: he allegedly “pushed her to the ground and he stomped on her” after she took away his video game privileges. Griffith claimed self-defense, but that argument failed, and he went to jail.
Judd noted that Griffith’s grandmother witnessed the alleged abuse against his mother.
In February of 2024, after another argument with his mother, Griffith fled to his grandmother’s house in Auburndale. Although she wasn’t home at the time, she and Griffith’s mother told Judd’s office that they didn’t feel safe around the teen. Griffith was turned over to family services at that time, but two days later — exactly one year to the day that Griffith killed his father, Judd noted — Griffith was supposed to be reunited with his mother.
However, Griffith said he didn’t want that to happen — and, for the second time, threatened to kill his mother, Judd said.
Nevertheless, about two weeks later, in March 2024, Griffith did again reunite with his mom.
Things were relatively calm for a few months, Judd said. But then things took a serious turn for the worse.
“Collin has an argument about home chores and he flees from his mother’s house again and comes up to his grandmother’s house,” Judd said. Again, his grandmother isn’t there, and Catherine Griffith tells her son he needs to come home. He refuses.
The following day, Catherine Griffith drove to Auburndale, arriving at around 4 p.m.
“At 4:30, neighbors see Collin and his mom arguing outside,” Judd said. “Collin grabs his mother by the hair and drags her into the house.”
Hours later, Catherine Griffith was dead.
“When you look at this, you see a kid,” Judd said. “When I look at him I see a psychopath. I see totally erratic behavior to the point that he’s already, at 17 years of age, shot and killed his father and got away with it, and stabbed his mother in the neck so hard that the knife went all the way through.”
Griffith has been charged with first-degree murder, and Judd said his office has asked the state’s attorney’s office to prosecute Griffith as an adult.
The sheriff also said that he has advised prosecutors in Oklahoma that if his investigation reveals information that could incriminate Griffith in the Oklahoma case, he will share it.
Judd said he has no doubt that, if not kept in custody, Griffith would cause further serious harm.
“Now he’s killed two people, and killed his mother and father, and I can assure you — beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt — based upon his conduct, had he gone to live with his grandmother at the end of this, and she crossed him, she would be next.”
Judd said that Catherine paid the ultimate price for trying to take care of her son.
“If Oklahoma had been able to act, Catherine would be alive and well today,” he said. “But because she took him in and tried to do like a mother should do and took care of him, she’s now dead.”
“Everybody that should be special to him in his life is dead when they cross him,” he added.
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