SHE’S FIGHTING ‘INJUSTICE’
Nancy Grace returns to true crime genre
NANCY Grace is back on cable TV covering crime with her trademark doggedness and in-your-face panache. “Injustice With Nancy Grace,” airing Saturdays at 6 p.m. on Oxygen, marks the onetime Atlanta prosecutor’s return to the small screen three years after leaving HLN and starting a Web site and SiriusXM podcast both devoted to crime. “I wanted to do the right thing,” says Grace, 59, about landing at Oxygen. “I knew all along I wanted to do a crimefighting Web site, and since leaving HLN I certainly did not leave the world of crime and justice. I’d been talking back and forth with Oxygen and finally when ‘Injustice With Nancy Grace’ came up, it really struck a nerve. I just knew it was right.” The eight-part series, which premiered July 13, features Grace tackling cases involving wrongful accusations, botched investigations, suppressed evidence, un
clear motives and unjust accusations. She opened the series by tackling a case that hit close to home: the gruesome 2005 murder of Pamela Vitale, the wife of criminal defense attorney Daniel Horowitz, Grace’s close friend and frequent TV sparring partner.
On this Saturday’s episode, Grace examines the case of Mike Williams, who went missing and was presumed drowned in Georgia’s Lake Seminole while on a romantic getaway weekend with his wife, Denise. The truth (of course) is much more damning.
“We sifted through close to 2,000 cases and narrowed them down to 700 and then to 100 and then to 30,” Grace says. “Many of them had already been discussed and were in the spotlight and many of them didn’t have any lingering issues where I felt there had been an injustice. The vast majority of cases that go to trial end up with the right verdict.
“We’re looking for cases that spotlight some sort of injustice that represents something critical to our justice system ... It’s not always a case of cops screwing it up,” she says. “I didn’t want to jump on that bandwagon. The first eight cases we’re featuring were specifically hand-picked by me and Oxygen. The one difference between this show and my HLN show is that this is more akin to prepping for a trial — and you I’m not getting in front of a jury without knowing every twist and turn.
“A lot of people think they’re immune to crime but they’re not — and they’ve learned that the hard way.”
Grace isn’t shy about sharing her opinions about several other high-profile crimes, including the 2005 rural Wisconsin murder of Teresa Halbach, the basis for the two-season Netflix documentary “Making a Murderer.”
“I think that was highly edited to make people think Steve Avery and Brendan Dassey were innocent,” she says of the two men convicted of the killing. “Avery is not innocent. He chopped off her hair and chained her to a bed and raped and murdered her and Dassey stood by, took part in the rape and watched while [Avery] killed her. I had Avery on my [HLN] show when it was still a missing persons case and he was lying through his teeth.”