‘Riverdale’ Actor Ryan Grantham Sentenced to Life in Prison

A young actor who played notable roles on Riverdale, Supernatural, and iZombie, has been sentenced to life in prison in Canada for the killing of his mother. Ryan Grantham, 24, recently pled guilty to the second-degree murder of Barbara Waite; he’s been sentenced in British Columbia Supreme Court to life imprisonment, although he can apply for parole in 14 years.

Per the CBC, Grantham shot Waite “in the back of her head once with a .22 rifle as she played piano in their Squamish townhouse on March 31, 2020. A GoPro video Grantham took a short time after the murder was shown in court. In it he confesses to the murder and shows his mother's body. The next day he covered the body with a sheet, arranged lit candles around it and hung a rosary from the piano before driving off in a car packed with guns, ammunition and Molotov cocktails, with the intention of traveling east to Ottawa to kill Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.” Instead, he eventually turned himself in to police in East Vancouver, telling them he had killed his mother. In court, he later said “in the face of something so horrible, saying sorry seems so pointless ... but from every fiber of my being, I am sorry.”

On Riverdale, Grantham played Jeremy, the boy who accidentally killed Archie’s father Fred (played by Luke Perry) in a hit and run traffic accident. (In real life, Perry had died of a stroke a few months prior.)

Gratham’s other projects include the original Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and Jumper. He had been acting since he was just nine years old. His Riverdale appearance was actually his most recent onscreen work, in 2019.