MILFORD – Five months before, police say, Timothy Granata beat and stabbed his mother to death in the family’s Orange home, Granata spent three weeks in a psychiatric hospital. But once he was discharged, he refused to take medication that therapists said could have helped him manage symptoms of his mental illness, Granata’s father testified Tuesday in Superior Court.
Dr. Attilio V. Granata said after the February 2014 hospitalization at Yale-New Haven Psychiatric Hospital, there were signs that his son needed to return there. His son, however, refused to go back.
“Tim said he would kill both of us if we admitted him to the hospital,” Granata testified.
The elder Granata was the first witness in the trial of Timothy Granata, 24, who has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to charges that he beat and fatally stabbed his 58-year-old mother on July 24, 2014. Three judges will decide the case. Granata’s lawyer, Hugh Keefe, has said that mental health reports completed by his client’s therapists are “lengthy.”
Attilio Granata’s testimony offered a glimpse into Timothy Granata’s struggle with mental illness and the myriad ways his parents and three siblings tried to cope after the star athlete and dean’s list student returned home from Lehigh University in February 2014, just one semester shy of earning a college degree.
A scholar athlete at the Hopkins School in New Haven, Timothy Granata followed in the footsteps of his accomplished siblings who had attended Bowdoin, Yale and Colgate, enrolling at Lehigh where he would join the wrestling team.
Their parents were also quite accomplished. Claudia Granata graduated from Smith College in 1976 and from the Yale School of Medicine in 1980 before completing a residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore in 1983. For years she ran private practice specializing in pulmonary care and was on the medical staff of both Yale-New Haven Hospital and St. Raphael Hospital. Later, she taught middle school mathematics at the Foote School in New Haven. She married Dr. Attilio Granata, an internist, who was educated at Yale, Stanford, and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, in 1984. They had four children.
Attilio Granata said his son’s slip into mental illness was “gradual” and that the family did not notice any signs of it until Timothy Granata finished his freshman year at Lehigh in 2011. That summer, Timothy Granata was diagnosed with severe depression. A physician prescribed medication for him, his father testified, but he refused to take it.
During his sophomore year at Lehigh, “things got worse,” his father testified, and his son sought treatment at Lehigh and back in Connecticut, seeing nearly a half dozen therapists. But he still would not agree to take medication. Attilio Granata said, at one point, his son “tried very valiantly” to finish his classes and earn his degree while battling the mental illness. But his condition worsened and he returned to the family’s Orange home in February 2014.
After three weeks at the psychiatric hospital where Timothy Granata took medication “reluctantly,” his father said, he was discharged in March 2014 and continued to see a therapist. Back at home, Timothy Granata again refused medication. Attilio Granata said the family tried to stay out of his way in an effort to not anger him, keep him calm and make him feel safe and loved. He said Timothy Granata became so angry one day that he tried to choke his brother. Over time, he became more withdrawn and suicidal, the father testified.
The day before Claudia Granata was killed, she and her husband had discussed their son’s condition with a therapist who had warned them to “be wary” and to try and make Timothy Granata feel safe, the father told the judges.
On the day of the slaying, Claudia Granata called her husband at work and said she was worried about their son who had warned her that “something may happen,” Attilio Granata said. But later that morning, Timothy Granata’s mood appeared to improve and his mother told Attilio Granata there was “no need to come home.”
While in an afternoon meeting, Attilio Granata received a call on his cellphone. When there was silence on the other end of the line, he jumped into his car and headed home, he testified.
Once he arrived home, he said he saw his son sitting on the front steps of the home holding a phone and a Bible. He warned his father not to go in the house, telling him, “I just killed mom.”
On Tuesday, prosecutor Cornelius P. Kelly played a chilling 911 recording of Timothy Granata’s call to police in which he politely who apologized to the dispatcher for “the inconvenience” and said that he was raped and that his parents were involved in organized crime. He told the dispatcher he was unarmed and “scared” that he was going to be killed.
“Please take me away,” he said on the recording.
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled Claudia Granata’s death a homicide and listed the cause as blunt impact and sharp force trauma to the head, neck, torso and extremities. Police said that the room where the mother’s body was found showed signs of a struggle.
Throughout Tuesday’s testimony, Timothy Granata appeared coherent and paid attention to witnesses, including his father who at one point was asked to point out his son.
“He’s wearing a beige jumpsuit. A prison uniform,” Attilio Granata said while looking at his son. The younger Granata lowered his head when prosecutors played a heartbreaking 911 recording made by his sister, Elizabeth, who through tears and cries warned responding police to use caution.
“You should be very careful. He might be violent,” the sister said. Her father wept as he listened to the recording from the courtroom gallery.
