Catherine Griffith, 39, was stabbed during an altercation with her 17-year-old son, police say
Teen accused of killing mom in Florida knife attack
A 17-year-old teen has been charged with fatally stabbing his mother in Florida, 19 months after he was charged with killing his father. (Credit: FOX 13)
A Florida mother who police say was fatally stabbed by her 17-year-old son on Sunday posted lyrics online taken from Taylor Swift’s song "It’s Time to Go" in a haunting final message just hours before she was killed.
Catherine Griffith, 39, uploaded an image of a remote footbridge leading into a forest captioned with the lyrics to the song the day before she was killed in the vicious knife attack in Auburndale.
Witnesses say she and her son, who reportedly has a history of mental health issues, had gotten into an argument outside his grandmother’s home. He then dragged her by the hair into the residence, and she could be heard pleading with her son to "let me go," the Polk County Sheriff's Office said.
Catherine Griffith pictured with her son. (Instagram @cathygriffith1985)
That’s when Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said at a Wednesday press conference that the 17-year-old "stabbed his mother in the neck so hard that the knife went all the way through." Judd went on to label the teen as a "psychopath." The teen told police that he and his mother had gotten into a physical fight and that she fell on the knife.
The teen has been charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping and violation of a no-contact order. Judd is pushing for him to be tried as an adult, but the local attorney general’s office tells Fox News Digital that it cannot comment on the matter until next week.
The deadly incident came 19 months after the teen was charged with shooting his father in Oklahoma, although those charges were later dropped.
Griffith’s post may have suggested that she was not in a good place in the lead up to her death.
"That old familiar body ache, the snaps from the same little breaks in your soul," the posted Taylor Swift lyrics read. "You know when it’s time to go … Sometimes, givin’ up is the strong thing."
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd is pushing for Griffith to be tried as an adult, he said at a Wednesday press conference. (Polk County Sheriff )
Griffith’s Instagram page is filled with images of happier times with her son, including the two of them on a cruise, in front of the U.S. Capitol on July 4 and a picture of them together with her son dressed in academic regalia for his graduation.
Another image shows him sitting on the front of a 2024 Volkswagen Jetta, which Griffith writes was an early graduation present for her son.
But the relationship between the pair was apparently not always smooth sailing.
The teen's grandmother, who was not present during the altercation, told WFLA that the teen had been verbally and physically confrontational with his mother on several occasions.
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Judd said that as investigators started "to peel back the layer of this onion," they "[found] out that this is not just a singular event." Last year, the teen's father also died by his hand.
"On Feb. 14, 2023, Valentine’s Day, in Lincoln County, Oklahoma, [he] 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."
Oklahoma authorities dropped charges against the teen less than a month after the shooting because they could not disprove his "assertion of self-defense," Judd said.
The teen's mother paid $50,000 to bail him out of jail, the New York Post reported. Then he moved into her Charlotte County, Florida, home and was involuntarily committed to a hospital for mental health reasons within a month.
Around this time, Judd said, he made a threatening statement: "I'll kill myself, or I'll kill my mother by shooting or stabbing her."
In November 2023, the teen "pushed [his mother] to the ground and ... stomped on her" after she took away his video game privileges, Judd said. He was arrested and claimed self-defense again, but the argument failed that time, and he spent time behind bars, the sheriff said.
Catherine Griffith pictured with her son who is accused of stabbing her to death. (Instagram @cathygriffith1985)
After another argument with his mother in February of this year, the teen fled to his grandmother's house in Auburndale. The teen's mother and grandmother both contacted the sheriff's office around that time and said they felt unsafe around him, Judd said, and at that point, the teen was turned over to family services.
But despite making more threats to kill his mother, the teen was ultimately reunited with his family despite making threats to kill his mother again just two weeks later, Judd said.
According to the sheriff, the teen got into "an argument about home chores" that led him to "flee from his mother's house and [go to] his grandmother's house" on Sept. 6. The suspect's mother drove to the grandmother's house the next day, which is when she and the teenager got into the altercation that cost her life.
The teen initially told 911 dispatchers that his mother "fell into a knife" after a "very long fight" on Sunday, Judd said.
Deputies who arrived at The Hamptons – a 55-and-older community in Auburndale about 50 miles east of Tampa, where the teen's grandmother is a resident – found him "calm, cool, collected – and he had blood on him," Judd said.
The murder weapon. (Polk County Sheriff's Office)
The 17-year-old reportedly became "uncooperative," showed "zero remorse" and had no sense of urgency about his gravely wounded mom.
"He looked the deputy in the eye and said, 'I know my rights, I want an attorney,'" Judd said.
Despite the teen's claims of a protracted fight with his mother before her death, the home was "neat and clean [with] no evidence of any kind of long fight," Judd said.
"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."
"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 added.
Judd said he will share any information uncovered in his department's investigation that could incriminate the teen in his father's death with authorities in Oklahoma.
Michael Dorgan is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business.
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