Yahoo Lifestyle Nancy Grace Opened Up About Her True Crime Career — And Why She’s So Angry On TV
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Nancy Grace, the firebrand former prosecutor turned media pundit, is a paradox in the true crime world.
She has been criticized for her “rabid persona” that terms defendants as monsters before a court has weighed in on their guilt, and the “Controversies” section of her Wikipedia page requires multiple scrolls to get through. Yet after decades in the public eye, she remains beloved by many true crime fans, who hail her as a fierce, outspoken advocate for victims’ rights and justice. She has been a fixture at CrimeCon since its inception in 2017, drawing rapturous applause from thousands of attendees in her primetime panels with long snaking lines for her “meet-and-greets” and book signings.
She’s loud, abrasive and single-minded in pursuit of justice that, in public, leaves little room for gray areas and nuance. Her aggressive on-air demeanor, parodied along with her Southern drawl multiple times over the years on “Saturday Night Live,” is a reaction to the subject matter she covers, the now-64-year-old told HuffPost earlier this year.
“When I am fighting crime, that’s all I can think about,” she said, surprisingly soft-spoken, even charming, in person. “And who wouldn’t be angry and furious and confrontational?”
Almost since she began her broadcasting career in the 1990s, she has attached herself to highly publicized, sensational cases, like O.J. Simpson, Casey Anthony, Jodi Arias and Scott Peterson. The town crier of true crime pictured a much different life for herself as a young college student from rural Georgia.
When she was 19, she was studying to become an English professor and planning her wedding to her 23-year-old fiancé, Keith Griffin, when he was gunned down by a disgruntled former colleague.
In an instant, the English major at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, became the grieving loved one of a murder victim — like so many of the people she advocates for today.
She dropped out of school but eventually returned to study law and become a prosecutor. Her role in the courtroom flipped to presenting the evidence rather than watching brokenhearted from the courtroom gallery.
A jury found Griffin’s killer guilty, and he was sentenced to life in prison. When he was released on parole in 2006, she was astonished at the way she found out, she told HuffPost.
“I had no idea that my fiance’s murderer was let out of jail,” she said. “I found out because somebody wrote to the CourtTV public email site and said, ‘Hey, did you know Keith’s killer was released?’ I didn’t know.”
“Victims get the short shrift in our system, no matter what,” she said.
She joined Court TV full-time in 1997, then in 2005 moved to HLN, where she firmly ensconced herself as a household name. After drawing a massive viewership for more than a decade, her show’s ratings began to decline and she left the network in October 2016. After a brief hiatus from TV, she returned for the new era of true crime, launching the website CrimeOnline and a daily podcast, “Crime Stories With Nancy Grace,” in January 2017. She had a two-season show on Oxygen, “Injustice With Nancy Grace,” and her streaming series “Bloodline Detectives,” which examines the role of familial DNA and genealogy in solving cold cases, is in its fourth season.
“It’s really amazing the way that the [true crime] genre has evolved. However, for me, it’s not a genre,” she said. “It’s a way of life. It’s a mission. I started when my fiancé was murdered. And I have no intention of stopping now.”
But as committed as she is to advocating for victims, people accused of crimes have rights too. On “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart critiqued her relentless coverage of the Duke University lacrosse players rape case, before the charges were dropped against the three men accused of sexually assaulting a woman at a party. (Grace told HuffPost she immediately reversed her position publicly after seeing how credibly one of the Duke students spoke about his innocence at a press conference. Her HLN show was hosted by a substitute on the night the charges were dropped because she was on vacation, it was reported at the time.) Many of her critics, like Sarah Marshall and Michael Hobbes on their podcast “You’re Wrong About,” have accused Grace of trampling over defendants’ rights, due process and the Constitution, and even fudging the facts, in her zeal for what she considers justice.
The criticism stings, Grace admitted to HuffPost.
“No matter what anyone does, whenever you take a stand, whenever you believe in anything, someone will hate you, and that is part of my job,” she said. “Do I like it? No, does it hurt? Yes, can I change it? No.”
Grace said she has found “real happiness” with her husband, David Linch, whom she married in 2007, and their 16-year-old twins, but realizes that she is not winning any popularity contests in her professional life.
“I’m not here to be crowned Miss Sweet Potato. That’s not happening, and I have to accept that. I’d love to be liked, I’d love to be loved. I love to be appreciated, but that is not part of what I do, and I have to accept that,” she added.
“Didn’t she bully a woman to suicide?” a Redditor recently responded to someone complaining in a podcast forum about being served ads for Grace’s daily podcast, “Crime Stories With Nancy Grace.”
In fact, two women killed themselves after being the subject of Grace’s wrath.
Melinda Duckett, whom police identified as a suspect in the disappearance of her 2-year-old son, died by suicide in 2006 after a taped interview with Grace.
In 2012, Toni Modrano killed herself weeks after she was accused of passing out after drinking a fifth of vodka and rolling over onto her 3-week-old baby while she slept next to her on a sofa, smothering her.
In a segment on her HLN show, Grace called for Modranao to be charged with murder instead of manslaughter and dubbed her “Vodka Mom.” CNN later settled a lawsuit filed by Modrano’s family.
Grace told HuffPost she coins short monikers — most famously “Tot Mom” for Casey Anthony — because she realized in law school that “it was easier for me to remember fact scenarios than names.”
She declined to comment on the suicides to HuffPost but has previously said the attention on her interview with Melinda Duckett was misplaced.
“To suggest that a 15- or 20-minute interview can cause someone to commit suicide is focusing on the wrong thing,” she said on “Good Morning America” a week after Duckett’s death.
“If anything, I would suggest that guilt made her commit suicide,” Grace continued at the time.
Even though Grace considers her broadcast work an extension of her past as a prosecutor, she told HuffPost that she considers “both sides” when she discusses a criminal case.
“In every case, I try to seek the truth,” she said. “I try to hear both sides. I especially try my best to speak to victims’ families and people working an investigation to put the truth of what I know out there.”
When HuffPost asked about “Serial” and other podcasts and documentaries relitigating the cases of Adnan Syed, Scott Peterson and other high-profile convictions, Grace said she wished the spotlight remained focused on the victims.
“I wish that so much effort and money would be put into championing crime victims and not killers, and rapists, kidnappers,” she said.
At the same time, Grace acknowledges true crime podcasts and docuseries covering old cases can play an important role in exposing injustice.
“There’s no reason that our justice system should not be put under a spotlight, should not be reevaluated with a fine-tooth comb. Why not? If there is an inappropriate guilty verdict, it should be overturned. I don’t think anyone wants the wrong person behind bars,” she said. “I don’t think I could live with that.”
But her focus will always remain on crime victims, she said, and she values the personal connections she makes with them.
At CrimeCon, for example, “crime victims come up and speak to me and tell me stories — and we cover their stories,” she said.
“It’s very fulfilling [to hear] that I did something right.”
