At a party in 2019, a group of friends gathered around to play
a game of Truth or Dare. It started off innocent enough,
but as the questions started getting deeper and more
intrusive, some very dark secrets were spilled in this
game Today we're going to be talking about the Truth or Dare
killer. Now before we get into it, I do
just want to give my usual disclaimer that I mean
absolutely no disrespect to anyone that I talk about in this
case. This case is for educational
purposes and everything that I'm about to say is just information
that I have found on the Internet and I'm compiling into
one video. Just a couple of content
warnings before we get into this one.
We will be discussing themes of depression and anxiety, so if
that is something you feel like you don't want to watch right
now, I completely understand. Click out of the video.
I'll see when some other time hopefully please come back.
All that being said, let's get into the case.
So today's case takes place in 2018 in Haresham in Lancashire,
which is in the northwest of England and that is where 18
year old Tianan Downton lived. He was born on September 19,
2000 and raised in Lancashire by his mother and his stepfather.
His biological father hadn't been in the picture since Tianan
was very, very young. In fact, all he'd ever known was
his stepfather Chris, because Chris came into his life when he
he was very young. So TNN had grown up with Chris
as a father figure for well over a decade.
Like that was his dad, even though it was technically his
stepdad that was his dad. And he grew really close to
well, to Chris and all of his side of the family.
Chris's mother Mary was like his grandmother, you know, it was a
really nice integration of the families, it seemed.
It wasn't like they were pretending to be anything they
weren't. They still called each other
like stepdad and, you know, step, whatever.
They weren't pretending to be blood, but they were a family
unit now, and it was good. Everything seemed good.
But Tianan's life wouldn't be quite as smooth sailing as his
family had hoped. Because when he was 12 years
old, he started to struggle with his mental health.
It started off with just like a little bit of social anxiety.
He started withdrawing from social situations.
He didn't want to talk to people and stuff like that.
He just found a lot of things overwhelming, he couldn't talk
to like strangers or cashiers and stuff like that.
And very quickly this became quite debilitating for TNN.
He stopped seeing friends as much, he stopped doing the
things that he enjoyed, and before long he was even
struggling to go to school. But of course, school is a
requirement and he wasn't going in a lot of the time because of
his anxiety, so they needed to find out another way for him to
be able to get his education. TNN was eventually switched to
home schooling, which is not a common thing over here at all in
the UK. Like I actually don't know
anyone that was homeschooled. I know it's a thing elsewhere,
but it's really not a thing over here.
I mean, kids are only homeschooled in the UK under
very specific circumstances like Tianan's.
If he cannot physically get into school, then he has to be
homeschooled. It's quite a big deal because
this is, this is a last resort for kids in the UK Pretty much
it's one of the last resort options because homeschooling,
especially when you're struggling with depression and
anxiety, being locked up in your house all day every day is only
going to make that worse. And everyone kind of knew that
they didn't really want TNN to do homeschooling, but that was
the only option really. And at this point in his life,
he wasn't just suffering with the anxiety anymore.
He now had depression alongside that.
It was made worse by his anxiety not letting him go out and see
his friends and do the things that he loved.
He then grew depressed as well as anxious and this made things
10 times worse. He was very hopeless and even at
times suicide idol and in fact it got so bad that he eventually
went to the doctors and got given some kind of psychiatric
health. He was referred to CAMS I
believe, which is the children and adult mental health services
here in the UK. It's on the NHS, it's free and
it's rubbish. It's really not that good.
I'm not saying that there aren't good therapists in the CAMS
mental health services, but more often than not, the experiences
that young people have with CAMS therapist is a -1 or one that is
not useful at the very least. I've read all sorts of
heartbreaking stories online about, you know, people sharing
their own experiences with Cams, and I've had my own terrible
experiences with them. I hated them for years.
Things as serious as people attempting suicide and then
their therapist saying that they're just a sensitive person.
Like I said, I don't doubt that there are good therapists within
the Cam services, but more often than not, children are left
feeling children and adolescents are left feeling either
disappointed or even worse than when they initially went in for
that therapy. So we can imagine that they
probably weren't that much help for TNN Danton.
And over the years, he really didn't make much progress.
So I think that is evidence that his therapy wasn't doing much.
And this went on for a few years with nothing changing.
TNN is still in the house all day every day, depressed and
anxious, and he's not making much progress.
However, after a few years of this, he finally built up the
courage to try and get himself back in the education system
again. He knew that when he became an
adult, he would be at a disadvantage compared to a lot
of his peers who will have all got their GCSE's in school.
They finished their schooling, they got their qualifications,
but TNN didn't and he didn't want to be behind everyone else
in life. Now he was about 16 years old,
he wanted to go to college. Now was the time that people
would be leaving school and going to college and he thought
that's the perfect time for me to jump back in.
The only problem is I don't think TNN got his GCSE's and you
need GCSE's to go to college, or at least you need GCSE's to go
to all the colleges that his friends were going to be going
to. However, there is a separate
type of college here in the UK called a further education
college that he would be able to go to.
A further education college doesn't require GCSE's on entry.
It's literally for anyone of any age pretty much that just wants
to give themselves some more employability.
They want to go and do a course that will look good on their CV
so that they can go and get a job.
It's not like he's doing like A levels or or anything like that.
He's just doing a course to put on his CV to make him look
better in jobs, you know? So he started at this further
education college named Kendall College and he was there for a
little while, but not for very long because he very quickly
dropped out. I couldn't find out exactly why
he left at first. First I assumed it was probably
because his anxiety got bad again and he couldn't be in
college. But then I learned that he
actually left Kendall College and joined a new one.
It wasn't like he was dropping out because he couldn't be in
college. It was like he didn't like
Kendall College so he went to a new one.
This time he went to Lancaster and Morecambe College, which is
another further education college.
But again, he wasn't there very long and he dropped out of there
too. So I don't know what was going
on here. I really couldn't find much
information about the this point in his life.
I do know that he was still struggling with his mental
health issues so that is likely quite a big factor in this I
suppose. But at this point in his life,
so now TNN's like an older teenager, 1617, he will have
been about 17 actually, and he is starting to act up and
misbehave and be in general just quite a bad kid.
It actually got so bad that I think he was kicked out of his
house by his mum or maybe he left or something like that.
Either way, they got in an argument and they didn't want to
live together anymore. So now he was 17 years old out
on the streets with nowhere to go.
But luckily for him, his step grandmother saved him. 94 year
old Mary Gregory was Tianan's stepfather's mother.
So his step grandmother and she didn't live too far away.
And she opened her doors to him and said, look, you can come and
stay with me for a while while you finish your education.
She got him a key cut for her house.
He was treated like an adult there.
He was treated more like A room rather than a child that's being
cared for and he loved this. After a while of living at
Mary's, I think Tianan and his mother made-up, but he didn't
move back home fully. He he kind of spent part time at
both houses. It was like he had two houses
and he could just pick which one he wanted to sleep at every
night. But this living situation didn't
last very long because just one year later, when Tianan was 18,
his step grandmother passed away, leaving him homeless once
again or leaving him to go back to his mother's house.
And Mary Gregory's death in itself was incredibly tragic.
So I'm going to tell you about that now.
It was on May 28th, 2018, and in the middle of the night,
residents of Levens Dr. were awoken to blood curdling screams
coming from outside. And when they all jumped up from
their beds and ran to their windows, they all saw one house
on that street engulfed in flames.
It was Mary Gregory's house. Her neighbors rang for the fire
brigade as quickly as they possibly could, knowing that she
was a vulnerable 94 year old woman that lived in that house
mostly by herself. They knew that she was inside
that house and she wouldn't be able to help herself out.
She needed help immediately. When firemen arrived, they
managed to kick the door down, and literally as soon as they
walked through the door, Mary was there, laying unconscious
underneath a table in the Conservatory.
It seemed as though she'd been trying to escape from from the
house. She was literally just feet away
from the door. She was almost there, but she
couldn't get past this table. It looked like she'd been trying
to crawl under it or something. It seemed that the smoke and all
the fumes had gotten to Mary before she could actually reach
the door, and so she'd passed out and she was in a really,
really bad way. The firefighters could already
tell literally just from looking at her.
As soon as they got in the house, they knew she needed help
now. This was life or death for Mary
Gregory, and so these firefighters pulled her out of
the building as quickly as they possibly could and got her
transported to the hospital. For the next three days, Mary
was hooked up to all kinds of machines in the hospital that
were monitoring her progress, but she really wasn't getting
any better. And then on June 1st, 2018,
after three days in the hospital, Mary Gregory's heart
stopped. There was nothing more that they
could do for her. And so she was pronounced dead
at 94 years old. Fire investigators were brought
into Mary Gregory's home to try and find out how this fire even
started in the 1st place, and they concluded that it was more
than likely an accident caused by Mary herself.
Mary was quite a big smoker, and it seemed that this fire could
have been started by a cigarette.
And she also had dementia. So a lot of the time she would
light a cigarette and forget she'd even lit it or she would
wouldn't put it out properly when she was done.
And they thought that maybe that was how this started.
Mary's family were absolutely heartbroken of her very tragic,
very sudden death. However, it did bring them all
together. Tianan went back to live with
his mum and his stepdad full time, which things still weren't
perfect, but they they were OK. You know, the family were back
together again. They still argued, they still
fought quite a bit, but they got on with it.
But as the years went by, Tianan's mental health only got
worse and worse and worse. He wasn't getting any any decent
help. And so just being stuck in the
house all day every day was making it worse.
Now he was about 20 years old, and he was transferred to the
adult Mental Health services. He was no longer with CAMS.
He was matched up with a new counselor.
And it was in one particular therapy session with this
counselor that TNN said something quite concerning, but
caught this therapist quite off guard.
He told his therapist that one of his friends could send him to
prison with what he knew about Tianan.
So the therapist was quite confused, and they pushed for
Tianan to elaborate, to kind of explain what he meant by that.
And that was when Tianan proceeded to tell a story about
a party that he went to a year prior in 2019.
And it was at this party where Tianan got into a game of truth
or dare with a group of other teenagers.
And when it landed on TNN, he chose truth.
So one of the other kids had to ask him a question and he had to
tell the truth just in case you don't know what truth or dare
is, that's how it works. So 1 of Tianan friends turned to
him and asked him what his darkest secret was and he
thought on it for a second and then he turned to his friends
and he said that his darkest secret, something that no one
knows about him, was that he'd killed someone.
The group were quiet for a second but then ultimately said
Nah I don't believe you, you're making this up.
And so Tianan said that he had to convince his friends that he
was telling the truth by telling them the whole story from start
to finish. We'll get back to that story in
just a second because right now, Tianan is telling his therapist
that this party happened. And through this therapy
session, as he's trying to tell the therapist this party story,
he's he's telling it in riddles. He's being very cryptic with it.
I've told it in a much more clearer way to make it make
sense. But the therapist was so
confused listening to all of this, he couldn't piece together
everything that Tianan was trying to say.
So for clarification, the therapist said to Tianan, I'm
not really clear what you're saying, but I think think you're
telling me you've killed someone.
And Tianan turned to him and mouthed, yes, following this
very concerning admission. OK, put yourself in this
therapist's shoes for a second. Your 20 year old client sat
opposite you, has just told you that they've committed murder
and that people know they've committed murder.
They told a lot of people at a party that they committed
murder. So what do you think this
therapist does with this information?
Do they call the police? Do they tell Tianan's parents?
Do they inform social services? None of the above, actually.
They just left it. What?
What do you mean? Surely there has to be something
more to that. There has to be.
Because I cannot believe that any, any therapist would hear
that from someone that is clearly mentally ill.
And they'd just be like, OK, well, we'll see how it unfolds,
I suppose. What?
So yeah, the therapist didn't tell anyone.
TNN didn't tell anyone else. And so for the next week or two,
things just continued as if he'd never made that admission.
I can't believe it. But then Tianan's next
counseling session rolled around the week after.
And at this particular session, his stepfather Chris brought him
along. I think Tianan planned that
specifically, and you'll see why in a second, because in this
therapy session, Tianan was ready to go into more detail
about the admissions that he'd made last week.
He was about to tell his therapist and his stepfather
Chris about the time that he committed murder.
Tianan Danton turned to his therapist and his stepfather,
and he told them both that the death of his grandmother in that
house fire a year prior hadn't actually been that tragic or
unexpected to him because he was the one that started the fire.
He said that for some time before her death, he had been
growing a hatred towards his grandmother Mary.
They would argue quite a lot. She would always get on at him
for disrespecting her and her house, which is valid, you know,
she was a very tidy, clean house, proud woman.
And Tianan would come in her house and treat it with the most
disrespect. He would leave his mess
everywhere, he'd invite friends in, he'd break things, he'd eat
all the food, you know, he was just, he was a terror.
And this would cause a lot of arguments and Mary would try and
stick up for herself, but this would only make Tianan angry.
Bear in mind this is his 94 year old grandmother's house and he's
just bringing all his mates in. He's trashed in the place like,
and she's just got to wake up every day and tidy up after him.
So yeah, like I said, it caused a lot of arguments that only got
worse and worse over time until the last argument, that very
last argument before she died, it actually took place on the
day of the fire. In this last particular
argument, like I said, it was the worst one yet.
Mary told TNN that she despised him and that she was annoyed by
his presence. And I think that this set
something off inside Tianan Danton.
This was the switch that flipped in his brain.
He'd had enough of his grandmother, Mary Gregory.
He wanted her out of his life, and he had a plan on how he was
going to do that in the early hours of May 28th, 2018.
Tianan was actually 17 at the time.
He set off from his mother's house in the middle of the night
and walked all the way to his grandmother Mary's, using his
own key to her house because remember, he had access.
He left himself in and he started putting his plan in
place. Right now, Mary was asleep
upstairs in bed. She was sound asleep.
She didn't wake up once throughout this whole thing, and
Tianan took his time. He wanted to guarantee that
there was number way that his grandmother could make it out of
that house alive, and so he put as many obstacles in her way as
he possibly could before he lit that fire.
He started by dismantling both of the smoke alarms.
Both of upstairs and downstairs in her house so that they
wouldn't detect the smoke, they wouldn't make a noise, they
wouldn't alert for help. He also disconnected her
telephone so that she wouldn't be able to call for help.
She wouldn't be able to call, you know, the fire brigade on
999. And he also pushed a table up
against the door in the Conservatory so that she
wouldn't be able to get to the door and leave.
And it worked because Mary was found just feet away from that
door laying under the table. That was the one obstacle that
that stopped her from getting out of that house alive.
Once TNN was done prepping the scene, dismantling everything,
making sure that there was number way she could get out, he
was ready to set the fire. There's conflicting reports on
where he started this fire, although I believe it was
downstairs in the living room, it wasn't in the bedroom where
Mary was. He lit a cigarette and then
threw it on the curtains and waited for it to catch fire.
And he stood there and watched as these flames grew up.
The curtains they started past, passing onto the other
furniture, and then he knew that he had to get out himself.
As the house filled up with smoke, Tianan turned and left.
He locked the door behind him, locking his 94 year old
grandmother inside. He then walked back home and
went to bed as if nothing happened.
He went on to say that he felt powerful at his grandmother's
funeral, knowing something that no one else in that room knew.
He knew why she'd really died. And that was how Tianan Danton
did his own grandmother and got away with it for years.
He would have probably gotten away with this forever had he
not wanted to brag about it at a party or in a therapy session.
If he'd have kept his mouth shut about this, how scary that he
could have actually gotten away with this forever.
No one would have ever known what kind of person he was.
Who knows what he could have gone on to do after that.
But yeah, in 2019, it was the first time he ever told anyone
about this. It was at that party in a game
of truth or dare. That was the first time he'd
ever admitted this to anyone. But all those friends thought he
was joking. They thought it was just some
dark, twisted joke that he was trying to tell.
And he's saying to them, like, no, guys, I'm.
I'm serious. Like, this actually happened.
So they start asking him questions, and they're like,
well, if you tell him the truth, then why did you do it?
Why would you kill him? Your own grandma?
But Tianan had an answer. He said that the reason he did
it was because his grandmother was really suffering with her
dementia at this point, and he didn't want her to suffer any
longer. He was making out like it was a
mercy killing, like he was doing her a favour.
So these kids are still listening to him at this party
and they still don't believe him.
They still think he's lying or joking, but there's not much of
a joke there anymore. He's being very serious about
this. He's been very matter of fact.
And they're all starting to get a bit like.
So now this dark, twisted joke, well, what the kids thought was
a dark twisted joke, it was starting to get really serious
and really uncomfortable. I mean, everyone still thought
it was a joke. They just thought it, it was an
awkward joke and that TNN was taking it too far.
They didn't think that he was telling the truth still.
And so when they left that party that night, none of those other
teenagers ever told anyone. Not their parents, not the
police, probably not even any other kids.
And if they did tell any other kids than those kids didn't tell
anyone. But finally now Tianan Danton
had told two people that weren't going to let him get away with
this like his friends had, his therapist and his stepfather,
Chris. Which I think this just shows
how twisted Tianan Danton really is, that he waited for a time
when his stepfather, the the son of his murder victim, was going
to be there so that he could tell him in person how he
murdered his mother. The therapist quickly called the
police, who later came out and arrested Tianan Downton at his
home that evening. They took him back to the police
station while a bunch of them searched his home, and they
seized anything that could possibly be of interest.
I mean, most of the things were like electronics, computers,
phones. They wanted to see what he'd
been searching and who he'd been talking to, what he'd been
saying. They were particularly
interested to look at Tianan search history over the past
couple of years. And let me tell you, it did not
disappoint. In June of 2018.
So literally less than a month after Mary Gregory's death, TNN
was Googling things like murderer filled with despair, I
want to cause evil urge to kill again, and I think I'm turning
into a serial killer. Please help.
So police confronted him with these searches in his
questioning. And they were like, explain
this. If you're not a murderer,
explain why you're Googling things like this.
And he was like, oh, well, that's just, you know, I've got
a big interest in true crime. It's just true crime, which like
me and me and you, my search history does not look anything
like that. I don't know about you,
especially that last one. It was the I'm turning into a
serial killer. Please help.
Like, come on. It's just so on the nose.
You can't write that. The fact that you said please
help. But that wasn't all that police
found on TNN's laptop and his phone and stuff.
They also found some typed up documents about how he wanted to
stalk and attack women. And they also found what seemed
to be a kill list, like a list of a bunch of names, and there
were quite a lot of names on there as well.
And that paired with his search history, police were just glad
to have caught him when they did.
One of the big pieces of evidence that helped to prove
Tianan Danton's guilt in this case was actually something that
he left at the scene of the crime on the night that he
committed this murder. Right before he made his way to
Mary's house that night, he'd actually stopped off at a petrol
station to buy himself some snacks.
He got himself some Tunnocks tea, cakes and a can of Coke.
And they have proof of this on CCTV, they've got proof of him
walking into the store, picking these things up, buying them and
then walking to Mary's. And when police looked back at
those crime scene pictures from 2019, what do you know?
There was a pack of tunics, tea cakes and a can of cook in those
crime scene pictures. So this was just proof that
Tianan Danton had been in Mary Gregory's house on the night of
the fire. He'd been there when this fire
was started. So that proved his his
confession. And with that, Tianan Danton was
charged with the murder of his own grandmother.
And his trial was set to start in November of 2021.
So this is actually really recent, and his team decided to
come at this from quite an interesting angle.
TNN denied all involvement in his grandmother's murder, and he
maintained his innocence. He said that her death was just
an accident, just a tragic house fire.
And he said that his two confessions, you know, in the
truth or dare game and the confession to his therapist, he
said that they were both just big misunderstandings.
He literally stood up there in court and said that he was just
attention seeking. He was just making up lies
because he wanted attention, because he wanted friends.
He even said that the group of kids that he was playing the
truth or dare game, they were the edgy kids, and he wanted to
impress them. So that was why he made this
really dark, twisted joke about his grandmother's death.
But it was all a big misunderstanding, he said.
But realistically, no matter how much denying and lying Tian and
Danton did, everyone saw through it, and everyone knew that he
was responsible for the murder. In fact, everyone could see just
how cold and calculated he really was with it as well.
Dismantling her smoke alarms, disconnecting her telephone,
pushing the table in front of the door so she can't get out.
These are all very calculated steps.
Because he did not want his grandmother to survive that
night. He'd sat at home and planned all
of this before he went and committed it, and it's clear how
well he planned it too. He wanted to make sure that Mary
Gregory died that night. But why?
But all because of an argument that they'd had earlier that
day. He was going to murder his 94
year old step grandmother over an argument over an argument
about the cleanliness of the house.
So before the trial actually started, psychiatrists were
brought in to assess TNN and now that the trial was here, they
were presenting all of their information.
And the first psychiatrist that saw him actually said that he
suspected TNN of having some kind of autism.
I say some kind of autism because that was never
elaborated on. It was never diagnosed.
He literally just said that he suspected that TNN might have
undiagnosed autism to some degree, and that was all he
said. And then he never diagnosed him
or never even like referred him for a diagnosis.
I think it was more just kind of a note on file so that he could
get the right tests for that or the right assessment for that.
But the psychiatrist wasn't the person to do it.
So I actually don't think that has been done.
But what the psychiatrist was actually there for was to assess
TNN's mental health or potential mental illnesses that could have
caused him to to do this. But really there wasn't anything
major to note. I mean, the psychiatrist agreed
that TNN was suffering with depression and anxiety, quite
severe depression and anxiety. But neither of those are excuses
or triggers to commit murder. The reason he committed this
murder wasn't down to his mental health, it was down to him.
It was down to Tianan Danton being a bad person and wanting
to murder someone over over an argument.
But it wasn't just anyone as well, which makes it even worse.
It's your family. It's a 94 year old vulnerable
woman that has opened her doors to you and, and you know, given
you a bed so that you weren't sleeping on the streets.
And this is how he repaired her. The psychiatrist said in court
that he believed that Tianan Downton was 100% responsible for
what he did. There was no mental illness
influence there at all. At the end of his trial, Tianan
Downton was found guilty of the murder of Mary Gregory and he
was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 15 years.
And that is where he is right now.
He's aged 21 and he's in prison and he will be for the rest of
his life, hopefully. I think those things that police
found on his laptop were especially terrifying.
Imagine if this had never come to light.
Imagine we'd probably still be hearing about Tian and Danton in
a few years time, just for a different murder.