The Confessions of Nancy Grace

From 2008 to 2009, I clocked untold hours staring into the abyss of my television screen in the hope that it might help me forget my problems. (Guess what? It did.) Every night at 8 p.m., I tuned in to HLN to see trial lawyer turned legal commentator Nancy Grace’s eponymous show. Nancy covered murders, kidnappings, and disappearances with a trademark panache forged in the flames of righteous indignation. She gave criminals mean nicknames and threatened to cut belligerent guests’ microphones while yelling folksy truisms and speculating about what the devil might be up to. Each night’s broadcast ended with a tight shot of Nancy staring into the camera, her beauty pageant hair glinting in the lights while she drawled the words, “Goodnight, friend.” She was, I suppose, making sure that we all knew it wasn’t us she was mad at. For the past two decades, Nancy has been one of the most recognizable talents in the Bad News Industrial Complex, a polarizing figure personifying America’s lust for outrage. Her style is not for everyone, but it is for me, and last month, I finally got to meet her.

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ALISSA BENNETT: Nancy Grace, is this real? I can’t believe I’m talking to you!

NANCY GRACE: First of all, that’s not normally the reaction I get, but thank you! 

BENNETT: I’m so excited! Can I call you Nancy?

GRACE: Oh, my goodness. I’m so flattered! Look, if you could see me right now, you would laugh. I’m trying to do an Instacart order, and I just cleaned out a guinea pig cage and wiped up some cat vomit.

BENNETT: You are an institution in American crime reporting.

GRACE: Well, I am very flattered that you said that, but I don’t feel that way. I’m just a trial lawyer. This is not originally what I set out to be at all.

BENNETT: You began your career as a prosecuting attorney following the unprovoked murder of your fiancé, Keith Griffin, in 1979, correct?

GRACE: Are you reading these questions?

BENNETT: I did just read that question because I’m so nervous.

GRACE: Okay, because I can tell that you’re reading.

BENNETT: Because you’re a reporter.

GRACE: I’m not a reporter! I’m not a journalist!

BENNETT: I already forgot! I read that you won every case you ever tried as a prosecutor. Is that true?

GRACE: Yes.

BENNETT: How many cases did you try?

GRACE: I lost count at a hundred.

BENNETT: Unbelievable.

GRACE: Honestly, it was so fast and furious. I would get a verdict, but I never felt jubilation.

BENNETT: Well, maybe because you knew that there was going to be another one right behind it. There’s an endless supply of crime.

GRACE: I think it was that, but also after about three years, I started doing more and more homicides. Eventually I had a specialty niche of nothing but murder, serial rape, serial child molestation, and arson of any type, which is a very, very technical niche in that you must first prove a crime occurred.

BENNETT: Right.

GRACE: And then you have to figure out “who, what, where, why, and when.” And when I say “why,” of course, the state bears no burden to prove a motive. Who expects me, a prosecutor, to get in some perp’s head and figure out, “Why did he do that?”

BENNETT: Are you ever interested in an analysis of criminal behavior or is the “what” always more important than the “why”?

GRACE: Well, in my world, proving the case and finding the truth of what happened is the ultimate goal. Let’s just talk about Scott Peterson. You could think, “Why didn’t he just divorce her? Why didn’t he just leave? Why didn’t he fly to Cuba? Why didn’t he hide his assets in Switzerland and then run away with his mistress?” But it doesn’t matter, because we can never explain an evil act logically. We can’t. It’s just like when you walk through Central Park, as I did many times when I lived in New York, and you see a little squirrel run across your path: Is it your instinct to go grab it, bite it in the neck, and eat it?

BENNETT: No! 

GRACE: Your instinct is maybe to say, “I wish I had some peanuts to give to that cute little squirrel,” whereas when you see an apple, you may have the instinct to pick that apple and bite it. That’s the difference between you and Alex Murdaugh, and that cannot be explained in words.

BENNETT: Incredible analogy.

GRACE: I just heard myself. Wait a minute—

BENNETT: You’ve been doing this for 40 years. Can I say that? Forty years? Thirty-five?

GRACE: No, don’t say that because my children will read this, so, stop it. Many years!

BENNETT: Okay, you’ve been doing this for many years. What are three cases that really stand out for you? 

GRACE: Well, I was born in rural Bibb County, where you can still ride your bike until you hear the church bells playing “God Will Take Care of You,” at which point you know it’s time to go home.

BENNETT: It’s like living in a Thomas Kinkade painting.

GRACE: Not far from there is Warner Robins, Georgia, where a boy you have maybe never heard of named Chuckie Mauk grew up. One day he said, “Mom, can I take my bike over to get some candy?” She was washing the dishes, up to her elbows in dishwater, and she said, “Sure!” and he hopped on his bike and took off. When he got to the store, a white male in a sedan had words with him—not angry words, just said something to him—and Chuckie stopped on his bike. He was still standing on his bike when this man took out a gun and shot him dead. That case has never been solved. I consider his mother, Cathy Miller, a friend, and this was the inaugural story I covered to launch the Fox Nation program [Crime Stories with Nancy Grace].

BENNETT: We had an incident like that where I grew up too. A little boy was abducted and murdered by a neighbor, and I completely understand that when something like that happens close to your home, it can really shape your worldview.

GRACE: Another one that sticks with me is the case of Danielle van Dam, which I covered on Court TV. That made me realize that there’s no rhyme or reason for anything. Danielle van Dam was a beautiful little girl out in California. Her parents did everything to protect her. One night she went to sleep in her bed, and when they woke up the next morning, she was gone. Nobody could find her. Her remains were identified by the Mickey Mouse earring that she was wearing because the Santa Ana winds had destroyed her body.

BENNETT: Horrible.

GRACE: It turned out to be a neighbor, David Westerfield. I think he was 49. He was an engineer and had a lot of patents for some medical devices he created. He was a father and, as I recall, his children were in college at the time of the murder. He lived a couple of houses down from the van Dams. That one really took me a long time to get through. We were covering it every day, gavel to gavel at Court TV, so I was completely immersed in it.

BENNETT: What’s the third case?

GRACE: There was a little boy, Matthew Cecchi, who was at a picnic—a kind of reunion at a public park in California—with his whole family. His mom, his dad, the aunts and uncles were all there, and he wanted to go to the bathroom, so his aunt takes him to the bathroom, the men’s bathroom; she stands outside to wait for him, but he doesn’t come out. She finally calls, and his throat has been slit. The poor boy was 9 years old! I could never get beyond that case because of the sheer randomness, but it reminds me of a poem that struck me when I was studying English literature. 

BENNETT: A lot of people don’t know that you were a literature major before your public career. 

GRACE: Yes! And I had a concentration in Shakespearean literature, among other things. I wanted to study at the Globe Theater and write my dissertation on Shakespeare. But the poem I am thinking of is called “Hap,” which is by Thomas Hardy, and he says if you want there to be rhyme and reason in the world, you can take it.

BENNETT: Right.

GRACE: You can take it, even if it does you wrong and you suffer, but there’s a method, and there’s a reason. But what if it’s all happenstance and there’s no reason for everything? Up is down, and down is up; north is south, and south is north. That’s how that case ended—it just messed with my head so much. 

BENNETT: A lot of us who look at crimes from the outside are fixated on locating the reasons for why people do things. What do you think about the explosion of amateur detectives on platforms like TikTok?

GRACE: Three words: Cain and Abel. We’re still talking about it. The first murder! People have been talking about, speculating upon, and solving crimes since Genesis. Why? We want justice, and that is not a cliché. Think about two other words, Gabby Petito, and how the people behind [travel blog] “Red White and Bethune” saw a white Ford Transit van parked in dispersed camping and called it in because they knew about the Gabby Petito case. And guess what? It led authorities there, and not far away was the body—what was left of Gabby Petito. So, anyone who denigrates or undervalues civilian tips and so-called sleuths doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

BENNETT: I was glad to learn that you are not a Burke Ramsey conspiracist, because I think that’s an example of public imagination becoming incredibly destructive. I think that speculation ruined his life.

GRACE: His life was ruined when someone murdered his little sister.

BENNETT: Who do you think did it?

GRACE: Let me just say, I think the killer is beyond our jurisdiction.

BENNETT: I see, say no more.

GRACE: It was not Burke Ramsey, and I said that a million times, literally said it from day one. When so many people started bringing up her brother, I said, “No, this was not sister-brothercide,” as I call it on air—though that’s not the technical name for it, of course. 

BENNETT: Sister-brothercide at 9 years old.

GRACE: That made me very angry, by the way. I thought it was repulsive.

BENNETT: It was repulsive. I think that’s the corrosive element in our brains that gets activated by unsolved crimes. We can sometimes go places that are completely outside the realm of reality or rationality because it’s more interesting.

GRACE: I don’t know why they did. It never made sense to me.

BENNETT: How much does reporting that affect you psychologically? Especially when it’s a crime against a child. How do you deal with that?

GRACE: I can’t really explain it, but I do know the effect it has on me is that I love life so much. I wake up in the morning, and I literally thank god I’m alive, for the twins, for David, and for my mom. I just know how precious life is, and I know how blessed I am to have this family and to have this life.

BENNETT: Can we talk about Casey Anthony, and can I give you a theory that I believe might have resulted in her conviction? I was very surprised it was never brought up.

GRACE: Ready.

BENNETT: So, the duct tape around Caylee’s skull that no one could explain was a real wrench in the wheel during this trial. I think Casey put it there to support the story that “Zanny the Nanny” had abducted Caylee and was holding her hostage. I also believe it indicates that the crime was a first-degree murder. 

GRACE: Hold on, let me talk to you about crimes of the first degree. Do you mean premeditated?

BENNETT: Yeah.

GRACE: Well practically every murder is premeditated. The time it takes you to pull the trigger is pre-meditation under the law. It does not require a long drawn-out plan, such as poisoning someone over a period of months. Even in a bar fight, if you use the gun and you pull the trigger, that’s time for premeditation, although usually that’s considered to be manslaughter because it’s typically in the heat of an argument. But that is a really good theory.

BENNETT: Thank you, Nancy! 

GRACE: And I will use it on air and give you credit. I’ve always thought—and I’ve examined it like a Rubik’s cube—that Casey would drug Caylee. She didn’t want any problems. She wanted to live a free and single life with her boyfriend and his roommates. Isn’t that romantic? The boyfriend and his roommates? She wanted Caylee to go to sleep—and this is the best-case scenario—so she would drug her, let us just pretend, with Benadryl or her homemade chloroform, she’d put that on Caylee’s mouth and put her in the trunk of the car. That is one thing I’ve come up with. Is that what really happened? I don’t know, but I do believe that she killed her.

BENNETT: So what do you think happened with the verdict?

GRACE: I think that the case became too complicated. The evidence was too complicated, and I don’t mean that your jurors are not highly astute, but when you look at the facts, very simply, it’s clear that she murdered Caylee. There really is no question, but by the time you have a bunch of scientists up there trying to explain it, I think it can make your head spin. It’s very confusing. 

BENNETT: Do you have any of these concerns about the Bryan Kohberger case?

GRACE: No.

BENNETT: Will he be found guilty?

GRACE: Yes.

BENNETT: Do you feel sure?

GRACE: Yes, I do not have that concern because now the world understands DNA. Everybody gets it. We all get it. Almost to a fault where, when we don’t have this evidence, we don’t want to—

BENNETT: But that’s my concern about the Kohberger case. It’s not that we know too much, but we know enough for it to be dangerous.

GRACE: Alexander Pope said that. “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” 

BENNETT: I have a really big question for you that comes from my group chat, where we discuss your show quite frequently. We mostly talk about Bryan Kohberger and suspected—but probably guilty—Long Island Serial Killer, Rex Heuermann.

GRACE: Did you say probably guilty?

BENNETT: Guilty. We know he’s guilty, but this is the question. Shannan Gilbert: insane coincidence, or Long Island Serial Killer victim?

GRACE: I’m having a very difficult time believing this is a crazy coincidence, okay? I’m having a really hard time believing that she is not connected. However, think about it like this: Was her death simply the catalyst for finding the other bodies? Think about what just happened with Suzanne Morphew.

BENNETT: An absolutely crazy recent development where they went out looking for one missing person and ended up finding another.

GRACE: Yes. Cops are out looking for Edna Quintana, who goes missing. They find Suzanne Morphew instead. And that, of course, is leading to a lot of speculation. People think, “Oh, there’s a serial killer!” There’s not.

BENNETT: Because Suzanne Morphew’s husband murdered her.

GRACE: I did not say that, you said that. 

BENNETT: I said that! I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to believe that Shannan Gilbert’s proximity to the other LISK victims could be a coincidence, but I find the idea almost impossible. It bends the contours of logic to think that this woman, who was a sex worker on a job in Oak Beach, stumbled into the weeds and accidentally died 50 feet away from 11 other murdered sex workers on Gilgo Beach. It’s too crazy for me. Do you think that Rex Heurmann committed all of those murders?

GRACE: I believe that the Long Island Serial Killer and the Manorville Butcher are one and the same.

BENNETT: With an altered technique?

GRACE: Well, everybody is like, “That is not the same M.O.; it’s not him!” Modus operandi, the method of operation, it doesn’t matter! Ted Bundy assumed all sorts of personas and used all sorts of methods of operation in order to effect many murders—more than we give him credit for, okay? For instance, he would pretend he had a broken arm; he would pretend he was lost. He would use his VW Bug to lure people. He would be charming. He would travel the country all the way, coincidentally, from one death penalty state to the next. From one place to Florida, and then just go around, grab a club, and beat somebody dead. P.S. I don’t know if you have seen it. I’ve interviewed four of his survivors. One of them was clubbed so badly. Oh, she was this great, phenomenal dancer; a Broadway producer had been scouting her. He beat her so badly that she lost her hearing. She can no longer dance. Guess what she did? She became a dance instructor for the deaf. It’s amazing to me that both her and some of the other victims were happy.

BENNETT: You must relate to that.

GRACE: I do! I don’t know anyone happier than me.

BENNETT: Oh, Nancy!

GRACE: What?

BENNETT: Okay, last question. Is there a way for people to protect themselves from being victimized by violent criminals?

GRACE: Stay home, lock the doors, and hide under the bed.

BENNETT: Never leave.

GRACE: Oh, Alissa, there are so many things, but I think you must be ever-vigilant. For instance, David Westerfield was the van Dams’ neighbor. They knew him, yet they didn’t. Today, my son has already driven three times with a driving instructor. When it was time for him to get in the car, I went out. I eyeballed the guy. I actually smelled him. He didn’t notice, I hope. I needed to make sure I didn’t smell any pot, booze, or anything. I shook his hand and had a conversation with him to make sure he was coherent and for him to know my eyes were on him, and before they left, I said, “Don’t worry, I’m watching your life in 360 degrees. I know your every move.” Is it crazy? Some people might say so, but in my world, evildoers exist. 

BENNETT: That’s the scary thing. And I think it’s almost impossible to be vigilant in your life like that a hundred percent of the time because then you’re not living, right?

GRACE: I find it fine. Just fine.

BENNETT: Nancy, what’s your favorite Shakespeare quote?

GRACE: Well, that’s easy. “To thine own self be true.”

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First murder by: Cain.