Nancy Grace's Next Steps — Crime-Fighting Website

From Cosmopolitan

After an unparalleled 15-year-long run, Nancy Grace signed off her eponymous HLN show in October for the very last time. But don't think she's even taking a break from true crime for a hot second - she just can't help herself. Her latest book in the Hailey Dean murder mystery series, Murder in the Courthouse, is out now (there are shades of the Scott Peterson trial about the primary trial's plotline, but that's only the beginning) and the Hallmark Movies & Mystery channel is also signed on to produce a series of original movies based on the books. Yes, Nancy landed a cameo role in the first film, but as a defense attorney, so let's not dwell on that OK?

She's also set to launch her own crime-centric website shortly - capitalizing on the internet's fascination with true crime and the determination to solve said crimes that comes with it. (Everyone will have the chance to come up with a hashtag as snappy as #TotMom, in other words.) In an interview with Cosmopolitan.com, Grace discussed this venture and her career plans moving forward, as well as reminiscing over times, and crimes, past. She also talked about crockpots, and it was perfect, oh, and yes, more true crime stuff still. Nancy knows who killed JonBenet, FYI, if you read between the lines.

This is the third book in the Hailey Dean series, all of which are murderous whodunnits - do you ever stop and think, Oh, you know, maybe I should write a historical romance novel next?

Well, I’d love to branch out but I have absolutely no interest in romance. I just don’t. The thought of trying to write a rom-com … it just completely skeeves me out. No!

So do you ever have downtime or not-thinking-about-true-crime-stories-right-now time? What are you doing if, or when, you switch off?

I love to be with my twins. They are my true joy in life. I never thought I’d get to have children; to me [they’re] just a miracle.

Every night, I’ll get between them in their bed, and we read until we fall asleep, and then … hold on, my house alarm’s going off, give me one second. Don’t go anywhere. Wait, I hear somebody cutting it off. Let’s just hope it’s not a burglar.

Are you literally about to foil a crime during our interview?

It is not a burglar, it’s one of my friends from HLN … I guess my alarm code is not that much of a secret. Where was I?

Your downtime, or lack thereof.

Yes, well, another thing, I’m a runner. I like to run. And I love to cook. In fact, at this exact moment, I am trying something new: I am cooking a whole chicken in my crockpot, which I’ve never done before. I browned it with garlic powder, salt and pepper, and I put a bunch of celery and onions - which I’ll have to hide from the children because they claim to hate onions - and I’m going to make homemade mashed cream potatoes. I always, before I leave for work in the morning, have supper cooking. That way, when I come home and they come home from school, there’s all kinds of good smells in the house.

So maybe no rom-coms, but how about a Nancy Grace cookbook in the future?!

I’m all about the crockpot.

Without spoiling too much of the new book's plot, main character Hailey Dean's backstory seems to mirror your own - a "feisty" prosecutor who, following the death of her first love, is married to her job. Do you see a lot of yourself in Hailey, and is that intentional?

Hailey [as a character] was born when I left the courtroom and moved to New York for Cochran and Grace, my TV show with Johnnie Cochran. I moved with two boxes of clothes, a curling iron, and $300; I didn’t know a soul in the city, so I would come home at night and I’d be all alone and just write. I missed the courtroom and [what led me to the courtroom] so much I wrote about it. After my fiancé Keith’s murder, I had never thought I would have children - I thought that it was not God’s plan for me to have a family. But I had always wanted to name a daughter Hailey, after Halley’s comet from Once in a Lifetime.

As fate would have it, many, many years later I did marry, I did get pregnant, but as I was giving birth, my daughter and I almost died. We were rushed to the hospital. I had an emergency cesarean and in that moment, in the emergency room, I felt my grandmother come to me. She was with me and when my daughter was born, instead of naming her Hailey, I named her Lucy after my grandmother. Hailey lives in the pages of my books.

Do you still miss the courtroom?

Yes, I very much miss trying cases - I knew that I made a difference in the world working with crimes directly and trying to get verdicts that spoke the truth. On TV, you never really know what effect you’re having.

Leaving HLN was a really tough decision for me, because I loved it. But I’d noticed that the last few cases that my viewers helped crack, [the intel] was coming from Facebook and social media. Crimes are being committed 24/7, 365 days a year. My show aired one hour a day, and then a repeat at 2 a.m. So I am launching a website, a crime-fighting website, a community. I will be writing for the website and curating content. Also, we’ll have social media, Facebook Live, and a podcast. I’m really excited about it, and I believe we will help people - find missing people, solve unsolved homicides.

Given the circumstances that led you to your career as a prosecutor, were you ever triggered by the cases you were taking on? How did you deal with that?

Oh my goodness, all the time. In school [I wanted] to be an English teacher; I had no plans to be ever a lawyer, a crime fighter, much less be on TV for Pete’s sake, but with Keith’s murder, I was changed. I thought I would be a prosecutor forever, but there were so many days when I would leave the courtroom during a trial, and go down the hall to the ladies’ room, and go into a little stall, and cry.

And then I would wipe my tears, and walk out of the stall and the bathroom, and march myself back into that courtroom because the only way that I could deal with Keith’s murder was to feel like I was doing something about it. In retrospect, what did I do? I know that I put a lot of bad guys in jail and if I kept them off the street one day more, that may have been one less crime victim.

Talking about "coping" in a different context, how do you deal with the vitriol often directed at you and your show? You've frequently been criticized for the TV theatrics employed on Nancy Grace, the cases you've focused on, the treatment of those cases, your demeanor as a host, your appearance as a host, the list goes on. Do you see any as valid, or is there a double standard being applied versus your male peers in the cable business?

There’s rampant sexism, of course there is! It just goes without saying. Every woman in the workplace knows this; [every woman] in the workplace has to work harder than a man to prove themselves. When I raise my voice and take someone to task, I’m an evil bitch. When a man does it, he’s just being … strong and committed. And if I dare to tear up or shed a tear, then I’m criticized for that as well! It’s a horrible double standard, but quite frankly, I don’t have time enough to fight that battle and fight crime. I chose to fight crime and ignore the rest. I just keep going to the best I can.

And I don’t know how much longer that’s going to last but I can tell you this much: If I was to listen and pay attention to everyone that criticized me for, some rightly and some wrongly, I’d stay home under the bed. I don’t mean under the covers, I mean under the bed. I would never have achieved a single thing. The haters can just keep hating but I’m certainly not stopping because of them. But I can’t say it doesn’t hurt. It hurts a great deal. It hurts very much.

You've covered many high-profile cases - are there any you'd say you're particularly proud of working on?

Well, honestly, some cases have been more famous than others - like Tot Mom, or Steven Avery, or Scott Peterson - but I would not characterize any one as being more special to me, more intriguing, or more important because that would be placing one victim as more important, or one defendant as more [notorious] than others, and I don’t think that’s right.

Among them, are there cases you felt you got so involved in that you wish you'd gotten to put your prosecutor's hat back on and try? Or just famous crimes in general?

You always think "woulda, coulda, shoulda." I wish that I had prosecuted Tot Mom, I wish I’d prosecuted OJ, and I wish I had prosecuted the JonBenet Ramsey case. [Although] I think that [case] was bungled by the police in the way that they conducted the investigation.

In your experience, and given today's climate, do you agree with calls for police reform then?

I wouldn’t call it "police reform," but I would say that police procedure enhancement could be helpful - these police shootings are absolutely horrible. A lot of police shootings are justified, but many others are not. I believe very firmly that dash cams and body cams should be instituted for every single police officer in this country. Admit it, isn’t it true that you behave differently when people are watching you? You chew with your mouth closed and you mind your table manners because people are watching. Cops are no different. Dash cams and body cams should be standard operating procedure. Not only that, police vetting should [take place] every one to two years. They should go in for a psychological, to see if they’re burned out, see if they’ve been traumatized. If they’re having a hard time, help them!

I am not anti-cop, I am pro-cop. But I’ll never forget, I cracked a child prostitution ring - I’d worked with three vice cops every day for months, out on the street, in the cold, trying to track down the pervs and the young girls being prostituted. After a lot of hard work, we finally got the convictions. Now, I would say six or seven months later, I was working, and I glanced up at the TV, and it was a report on a federal case. I went, "Wow! That looks like my vice cop." And it was. It was all three of them, in federal court, in handcuffs. What they had been doing, every time they busted a drug lord or a doper, they’d take all their money and their jewelry and flat screens before sending them to jail. They had been stealing from dopers for years! For the most part, cops are decent and honorable, but that’s how I know that there are bad cops, cops that you think you know so well.

Do you have a theory as to who did kill JonBenet?

Well, think about it, an intruder comes in to kidnap JonBenet and hold her for ransom, for $118,000, which is coincidently the amount of JonBenet’s father, John Ramsey’s recent bonus. Wow, what’s the stats on knowing that? And suddenly, halfway into this kidnap-for-ransom plot - and whoever did it felt very comfortable in the home, writing that three-page ransom note - they go, "You know what? I think I’ll just take her down to the basement and kill her," forget the money. That doesn’t make sense. Why? Because it’s not a true [narrative].

Based on what I know of the case, Burke Ramsey was not the killer. I absolutely do not believe that Burke Ramsey had anything to do with his sister’s murder. If you look at the statistics of fratricide or intra-sibling homicide, it’s extremely rare. And look at Burke and JonBenet at the time of her murder. She was the powerhouse, the firecracker; she’s the dominant one, not him. I just don’t see it. And as I recall, John Ramsey passed a lie detector test. I can unequivocally say that Burke is not the killer nor do I think John Ramsey is the killer. Let's leave it there.

Do you feel like you’ve developed a ~sixth sense~ for identifying the bad guys?

Definitely. My husband makes me stay totally quiet in movies because otherwise it’s [five minutes in] and I go, "Oh, so-and-so did it," and he’s like, "OK, I haven’t even finished my popcorn and you ruined it for me."

Follow Nancy on Twitter, and buy her latest book Murder in the Courtroom on Amazon.

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