Thomas Joseph Grasso was born on November 23, 1962. Little is publicly recorded about his early childhood, but by adulthood, Grasso had turned to crime and manipulation to sustain himself. He was known to be drifting and unemployed for much of his adult life. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he began a relationship with a woman named Lana, whom he later married. The couple eventually moved from Oklahoma to New York. Grasso struggled financially and began committing petty thefts, but his desperation and criminal behavior soon escalated to murder.

On December 24, 1990, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Grasso murdered 87-year-old Hilda Johnson, his neighbor’s grandmother and close friend. He broke into her home and strangled her with the lights from her Christmas tree. After killing her, he stole $8 from her purse, $4 in loose change, and her television, which he later sold for $125. The crime shocked the local community not just for its brutality, but also for how little he gained from the murder. He then fled Oklahoma with Lana and relocated to Staten Island, New York.

On July 4, 1991, Grasso murdered 81-year-old Leslie Holtz in Staten Island by strangling him with an electrical cord. He had targeted Holtz for his Social Security check, showing a repeated pattern of killing elderly victims for meager financial gain. He was arrested shortly after this murder and confessed to both killings.

Grasso was first convicted in New York, but Oklahoma later extradited him in 1994 to face the death penalty. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection and executed on March 20, 1995, at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.