Florida Teen Charged with Mother’s Murder After Previous Deadly Incident with Father

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A 17-year-old Florida teen, previously cleared in the fatal shooting of his father after claiming self-defense, is now accused of stabbing his mother to death—and newly released police bodycam footage reveals chilling comments he made about not wanting to become a “murderer.”
In the video, captured in November 2023 by a Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office deputy and released by local Fox affiliate WFTX, Collin Griffith can be heard telling his grandmother that during an argument with his mother, Catherine Griffith, 39, he said, “I’m not a murderer” and “I’m not a psychopath.”
“I’m just trying to peacefully leave or peacefully coexist,” Collin tells his grandmother in the recording. “She kept telling me to shut up and shut up, and when I wouldn’t shut up, she hit me.”
At the time, Collin was sitting in the back of a patrol car, having been arrested for domestic violence. He described feeling trapped in a “constant state of fight or flight” and acknowledged fears he might lash out at his mother:
“If I think she’s going to do something, even if she’s not, I might act,” he said. “I’m not going to, like, go crazy or anything. But I’m not sure, honestly.”
Asked whether he was unsure about hurting his mother, he replied, “Only if she tries to hurt me.”
Less than a year after that exchange, Collin allegedly killed Catherine on Sept. 8 in a 55-and-over community in Auburndale, about 50 miles east of Tampa—where his grandmother resides and where the November video was originally filmed. Authorities say he called 911 afterward, claiming his mother “fell on a knife” following a “very long fight.” Police found her stabbed multiple times in the neck, injuries that Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd described as “not reasonable or plausible” to have been accidental.
“The medical examiner said it’s just not reasonable or plausible that she died the way that he said she did,” Judd explained. “It just didn’t happen.”
Collin is now charged with first-degree murder and is being held without bond in the Polk County Jail. Investigators have requested that prosecutors charge him as an adult.
According to officials, this was not the teen’s first deadly encounter with a parent. In February 2023, Collin allegedly killed his father in Oklahoma, yet no charges were brought after he successfully claimed self-defense. When deputies arrested him in connection with his mother’s death, Judd says he appeared “calm, cool, collected” and showed “zero remorse,” telling officers, “I know my rights. I want an attorney.”
Collin’s grandmother can be heard in the bodycam video describing his resistance to living with his mother:
“Collin did not want to come back home,” she told the deputy. “He said, ‘No, I want foster care’ … You have issues you need to work on.”
Authorities say Collin previously pushed his mother to the ground and stomped on her after she revoked his video game privileges, an incident that led to an arrest and failed self-defense claim. In an earlier episode, he was involuntarily committed for making a threatening statement: “I’ll kill myself, or I’ll kill my mother by shooting or stabbing her,” according to police.
Collin’s case now moves forward in the Florida courts, where he faces the possibility of being tried as an adult for first-degree murder.
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