Grady's first wife, Mary Teresa, left him to marry Harry Glenn Newman, a little person who was billed as the "Smallest Man in the World".
In 1992, Teresa, together with her son from a previous marriage, Harry Glenn Newman Jr., hired a seventeen-year-old sideshow performer named Chris Wyant to kill Stiles for $1,500 (equivalent to $3,257 in 2023).
[6] As Stiles smoked a cigarette while watching television on the sofa, Wyant entered his home with a semi-automatic pistol and shot him in the head twice, killing him.
Stiles was reportedly widely disliked in his community, so much so that only 10 people came to his funeral, and nobody volunteered as a pallbearer to carry his coffin.
[3]: 150 Fred Rosen wrote a book on the case called Lobster Boy: The Bizarre Life and Brutal Death of Grady Stiles Jr., and E!
[8] On HBO's Carnivàle, set on a traveling carnival during the Great Depression, the central character, Ben Hawkins, is sent out by his employers to investigate rumors of a "Scorpion Boy" in a nearby town in the episode "Lonnigan, Texas".
American Freakshow: The Terrible Tale of Sloth Boy, a graphic novel published by IDW Publishing, tells the tale of Dante Browning, a carnival sideshow performer with clawed hands who, because of his abuse and cruelty to his family, is shot to death by a hit man hired by his wife and stepson while in his home in Gibsonton, Florida.
In addition, a snapshot of Stiles is briefly seen at the American Morbidity Museum in the third episode ("Edward Mordrake, Part I").
John Strohm wrote "Ballad of Lobster Boy," inspired by Grady Stiles and recorded the song for his 1999 album Vestavia.