After 12 years of true-crime bullshit and an official twitter account so demented as to be indistinguishable from parody, Nancy Grace is out at CNN sister network HLN.
A network spokesperson tells The Hollywood Reporter that a new series — one that will "utilize the expertise of the current team" — will replace Nancy Grace in the 8 p.m. slot following the airing of the final episode on Oct. 13. The decision was a difficult one, according to Grace, who in an emotional interview with THR admits to being "really mixed" about taking a step she's been "thinking a lot about" for the past three years.
Grace's reputation is for shouting down guests and making dubious accusations, at least two of which preceded her targets' apparent suicides. Her professional background was as a supposedly brilliant prosecutor, and her crime-fighting origin story was a fiance's murder, but it never quite added up. The New York Times:
Ms. Grace came by her victimhood honestly when her fiancé, Keith Griffin, was killed when she was just 19. In her book "Objection," Ms. Grace suggested that a stranger with a criminal record shot Mr. Griffin outside a convenience store, was arrested and denied any involvement. By her recollection, she had to sit through three days of agonizing deliberation and then the prosecutor asked her if the defendant should be given the death penalty. She said no, she had no stomach for it.
The New York Observer fact-checked her written account and discovered that Mr. Griffin was killed by a former co-worker with no criminal record who confessed to the crime immediately. At trial, he was convicted within hours and the prosecution did in fact ask for the death penalty, but was denied. Ms. Grace explained the variance by telling The Observer, "I have tried not to think about it."
It seems CNN, though, has finally tired of all this shit, replete as it is with relentless lawsuits and dead-eyed efforts to trend hashtags such as #BabyInDryer and #TooFatToDie on their chyron.
