Town note
The name Chuluota allegedly means Isle of Pines, Pine Island, Land of Lakes and Pines, or beautiful place; the episode says nobody knows which.
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FILE 507 / 4 July 2024 / 174 MIN / full
This is, and I gotta say it right, Chuliota Florida, which is spelled CHUL UOTA... it is in central Florida. It's about a half hour outside of Orlando... if this is in Seminole County, it's a small little place too. about 0:04:54
The name Chuluota allegedly means Isle of Pines, Pine Island, Land of Lakes and Pines, or beautiful place; the episode says nobody knows which.
about 0:06:12The pronunciation is said to derive from the Creek Indian word chuliodo.
about 0:06:26The area was first settled after the Civil War by people who came down from North Carolina by ox cart to escape the war.
about 0:06:38The settlers found plentiful fish, deer, wild hogs and orange groves, and opened cattle ranches and saw mills.
about 0:06:48The name Chuluota allegedly means Isle of Pines, Pine Island, Land of Lakes and Pines, or beautiful place; the episode says nobody knows which.
about 0:06:12The pronunciation is said to derive from the Creek Indian word chuliodo.
about 0:06:26The area was first settled after the Civil War by people who came down from North Carolina by ox cart to escape the war.
about 0:06:38The settlers found plentiful fish, deer, wild hogs and orange groves, and opened cattle ranches and saw mills.
about 0:06:48An early developer chose the name Chuluota and claimed it was the name of the original Seminole village, apparently making it up for marketing.
about 0:07:01The next man to buy the land continued the name and set up a company to sell the plots.
about 0:07:19When that developer died, the land plats sat unused into the 1950s, and the houses built were small working-class homes.
about 0:07:27The place died out in the 1950s and 1960s, then Disney World and its proximity to Orlando helped it recover, with the population booming since 2000.
about 0:07:48Property crime
▼ just below
Violent crime
▼ about 20% under
Two-bedroom, one-bath house, 1,078 square feet on 0.26 acres
about 0:16:05Five-bedroom, four-bath house, 4,370 square feet on 5.12 acres
about 0:17:43"just below"
Comparison: "national average". Direction: below.
As told in 2024 about 0:21:50
"about 20% under"
Comparison: "national average". Direction: below.
As told in 2024 about 0:21:57
"2,792"
No direction stated.
As told in 2024 about 0:12:36
"almost 56%"
Comparison: "highest we've ever seen". No direction stated.
As told in 2024 about 0:12:44
"about 33.3"
Comparison: "about five years younger than the normal average". Direction: below.
As told in 2024 about 0:13:08
"about 54%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2024 about 0:13:15
"about normal"
Comparison: "national average". Direction: about the same.
As told in 2024 about 0:13:18
"half"
Comparison: "normal". Direction: below.
As told in 2024 about 0:13:21
"about normal"
Comparison: "national average". Direction: about the same.
As told in 2024 about 0:13:28
"$85,274"
Comparison: "about 15 grand higher than the national average". Direction: above.
As told in 2024 about 0:13:32
"106"
Comparison: "100 is average". No direction stated.
As told in 2024 about 0:13:32
"$350,200"
Comparison: "pretty close to the national average". Direction: about the same.
As told in 2024 about 0:13:32
"$2,430"
Comparison: "almost double the national average". Direction: above.
As told in 2024 about 0:14:51
"$250,000"
Comparison: "just reduced by $10,000". No direction stated.
As told in 2024 about 0:16:05
"$279,900"
Comparison: "just reduced by $20,000". No direction stated.
As told in 2024 about 0:16:46
"$1,699,000"
Comparison: "just reduced by $50,000". No direction stated.
As told in 2024 about 0:17:43
"$853,500"
Comparison: "2024 estimate". No direction stated.
As told in 2024 about 0:39:18
4.0 / 5 · average of 3
“Small stores and restaurants serve surprisingly good food, and there are peaceful parks on the edge of the lakes.”about 0:08:18
“The reviewer enjoys living somewhere with trees and nice-sized yards, with a rural feel but close to shopping and entertainment.”about 0:08:43
“A lifelong resident loves the close-knit community where people help each other; neighbours are friendly, it is good for families and pets, there is land and quiet country living with barely any traffic, though shops are a fifteen to twenty minute drive away.”about 0:08:54
“A semi-rural area with nice people and hardly any crime, but five minutes down the road the community turns into rich white snobs; there are not many places to go out and the mall is practically dead; the reviewer expects more houses crammed in and nature destroyed; the schools are great except for a handful of teachers arrested for sexual harassment; despite the flaws the reviewer loves it.”about 0:10:17
Chuluota is a small, rural community in Seminole County in central Florida, about half an hour outside Orlando. James describes it as a place of large, well-spaced properties, pine and oak trees and palmetto, with a small working-class core and larger estates a few minutes down the road. The Amato family lived at Sultan Circle on the estate side of the community, in a four-bedroom, four-bath house of about 3,200 square feet on roughly four acres.
Chad Robert Amato was born in 1961 and became a clinical pharmacist; he worked two jobs and was proud of his sons. Margaret Ann Wade was born in 1957 and became a senior operations manager for a medical transcription company. She had a son, Jason, from a previous relationship, born about 1984, whom Chad adopted when they married.
They went to Timber Creek High School, joined the weightlifting team, then both went to the University of Central Florida to study nursing and train as nurse anaesthetists. They planned to buy matching BMWs and to live at home until their parents retired to Tennessee, when they would take over the house. Jason, the older half-brother, was the outsider and moved away as soon as he could. The episode notes rumours that the household was abusive in other ways, while stressing that nobody has alleged sexual abuse.
Cody graduated from the nurse anaesthesia programme and worked at the Advent hospital in East Orlando. He later worked as a registered nurse at Advent Health Orlando. In June 2018 the hospital found eight empty vials of propofol, worth $2,067.04, in two rooms under his care; a pharmacist saw him pocket the drug.
In late 2018 he found the website MyFreeCams through a banner advert on a torrent site and became fixated on a Bulgarian model called Sylvia Ventis Lavova. He invented a persona as a rich, successful gamer with his own house and a BMW, and paid to watch her, sometimes spending up to $600 a night for four hours at a time; her shows cost 90 tokens a minute. Over a few months he spent more than $200,000, stealing from his parents, his brother, his grandmother Gloria and his uncle Troy, taking photographs of their credit cards, and selling his own and the family's guns. Cody paid for the trip.
He was staying at his aunt Donna's house, where he stole from her too. On 22 December the family arrived at three in the morning, took him away and sent him to Cornerstone, a rehab clinic in Fort Lauderdale, for internet porn and sex addiction; Cody paid the $15,000.
For three weeks the arrangement held. Chad found out and told him to pack his things and leave that night.
That afternoon Margaret was at her computer in her office, playing Candy Crush. She was shot in the back of the head at about 4.45 p.m. Chad came home from work at about 5.25 p.m.; he was shot twice in the head as he walked in, still wearing the holstered handgun he carried. Cody was at work at the Advent hospital in East Orlando. At about nine he received a message, apparently sent from his father's phone, telling him to come home because something was wrong. He told his girlfriend, Sloane Young, that it was 'stupid fucking bullshit', and later texted her that everything was okay. He came home in his scrubs and was shot under the eye in the storage room between the home gym and the garage. His body was found curled up with a 9mm pistol by his hand and shell cases around him, while another handgun remained in his work bag. The scene was arranged to look like a murder-suicide, but the pistol in his hand was not the weapon used on any of the three, and the medical examiner found no contact burns and considered the wounds unlikely to be self-inflicted.
Chad's phone had been unlocked at 5.52 p.m. and had its passcode removed. At 11.28 p.m. somebody searched on it for how to wipe an iPhone without a passcode, and at 12.08 a.m. the USAA banking app was opened using Chad's fingerprint. Chad's right index finger was noticeably cleaner than his other fingers.
On 25 January Cody did not arrive for work. Deputies arrived at 9.17 a.m., got no answer at the door, and a deputy picked the back lock with a pocket knife. They found Chad on the kitchen floor, Cody in the storage room and Margaret face down at her desk.
The car was found at a DoubleTree hotel near the University of Central Florida. He admitted spending close to $200,000 on Sylvia, said he had left the house around midnight and that everyone was alive when he left, and said he had gone to Panera Bread, seen a news story about a shooting in his neighbourhood and had not wanted to know more. He said he had the motive and the opportunity but did not do it, and at one point said that since he was blamed for everything he might as well be blamed for this too.
A Seminole County judge ed him bond on 26 April: $250,000 for each victim, a GPS monitor, residence in Seminole County, no internet-capable devices and surrender of his passport; he could not use his parents' life insurance for the money. He could not raise it. The defence argued that the police had focused on him, failed to process door handles and the garage keypad, and that the forensic analyst was guessing about who plugged in the phones.
He said the gun was buried, but searches never found it. He also said that Cody was the person he missed most.
January 24, 2019 / the Amato family home, Sultan Circle, Chuluota
As told in the episode, on 4 July 2024.
Accused
Public places are marked on the map.
crime scene
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