Grace was born in Macon, Georgia to a working-class family.Mentioned on
The Glenn Beck Show, August 12 or December 8, 2006 She attended Valdosta State University, and later received a B.A. from Mercer University. As a student, Grace was a fan of Shakespearean literature, and intended to become an English professor after graduating from college. However, after the murder of her fiancé, Keith Griffin, when she was 19, Grace decided to enroll in law school and went on to become a felony prosecutor and a supporter of victims' rights.
Grace was a member of the law review at and received her Juris Doctor degree from the Walter F. George School of Law at Mercer University. She went on to earn a Master of Laws degree in constitutional and criminal law from New York University. She has written articles and opinion pieces for legal periodicals, including the
American Bar Association Journal. Grace worked as a clerk for a federal court judge and practiced antitrust and consumer protection law with the Federal Trade Commission. She taught litigation at the Georgia State University College of Law and business law at GSU's School of Business. As of 2006, she is part of Mercer University's board of trustees and adopted a section of the street surrounding the law school.
Marriage and motherhood
In April 2007, Grace married David Linch, an Atlanta investment banker, in a small private ceremony. The two had met while she was studying at Mercer University in the '70s. Grace, who had given up on marriage after the death of her fiancé, said, "We've been in touch all these years, and a lot of time, we were separated by geography and time. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision to get married. I told my family only two days before the wedding."
On June 26, 2007, an emotional Grace announced on her HLN talk show that her life had "taken a U-turn" in that she was pregnant and expecting twins due in January 2008. Nancy Grace gave birth to twins, named Lucy and John, on November 4, 2007.
Allegations regarding fiancé's murder
In March 2006, an article in the
New York Observer suggested that in her book
Objection!, Grace had embellished the story of her college fiancé's 1979 murder and the ensuing trial to make it better support her image. Grace has described the tragedy as the impetus for her career as a prosecutor and victims' rights advocate, and has often publicly referred to the incident. The
Observer researched the murder and found several apparent contradictions between the events and Grace's subsequent statements, including the following:
- Her fiancé, Keith Griffin, was shot not at random by a stranger, but by a former coworker, Tommy McCoy.
- McCoy did not have a prior criminal record and, rather than denying the crime, confessed the night of the murder.
- The jury deliberated for a few hours, not days.
- There was no ongoing string of appeals (McCoy's family did not want any). McCoy has only once filed a habeas petition, which was rejected.
Grace told the
Observer she had not looked into the case in many years and "tried not to think about it." She said she made her previous statements about the case "with the knowledge I had."
In response to MSNBC's Keith Olbermann's claims in a March 2007
Rolling Stone interview in which he was quoted as saying, "Anybody who would embellish the story of their own fiancé's murder should spend that hour a day not on television but in a psychiatrist's chair," Grace stated, "I did not put myself through law school and fight for all those years for victims of crime to waste one minute of my time, my energy, and my education in a war of words with Keith Olbermann, whom I've never met nor had any disagreement. I feel we have X amount of time on Earth, and that when we give in to our detractors or spend needless time on silly fights, I think that's abusing the chance we have to do something good."
Keith Griffin's murderer, Tommy McCoy, was released from the Georgia Department of Corrections on December 5, 2006.