For Nancy Grace, the Nancy Guthrie case is personal.
As a former prosecutor, she knows firsthand how mishandling of a crime scene early on can complicate the case if it ever gets to court — and it can put the search for Guthrie in jeopardy, too, she said in an interview on Sean Hannity’s new podcast, “Hang Out with Sean Hannity.”
But the 84-year-old’s suspected abduction also brought back painful memories from her own past — the murder of her fiancé during summer break from college in 1979.
When Guthrie’s daughter, “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie, gave her first televised interview with colleague Hoda Kotb last week, the emotional account reminded Grace that “you’re never the same” after a loved one is taken away.
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The emotions ran raw, Grace told Hannity, but other aspects of the case pained her, too.
The sheriff released the crime scene back to the family before bringing the FBI into the case days later. In the interim, delivery drivers and journalists walked up to the front door, dropping off parcels and taking photographs.
“By destroying the crime scene and by releasing the crime scene too early, they destroyed a lot of evidence,” she said.
“People called them ‘missteps,’ that is certainly putting perfume on the pig, isn’t it?” Grace said. “That’s a euphemism, ‘missteps’ — they’re screw-ups. The feds wouldn’t have done that.”
Then, as the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Phoenix office was with the Guthrie family filming a video response to a ransom demand that authorities viewed as potentially credible, the sheriff was caught on camera enjoying an Arizona Wildcats basketball game.
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Hannity noted that once the FBI did get involved, the bureau worked with Google to obtain imagery from Guthrie’s missing Nest doorbell camera that the sheriff’s department had not been able to recover.
“I don’t like attacking the actual men and women that are doing the work. The fish stinks at the head, Sean,” Grace said. “It’s Nanos. He stinks. He’s gotta go. But that’s a distraction to finding Nancy Guthrie.”
“When Savannah was talking…when she felt like it was her fault, she said, ‘Oh, Mommy, Mommy, I’m sorry. I am sorry,'” Grace said. “It took me right back to that moment — those horrible moments — when I was lying there in the dark, feeling like howling, because there just were no words.”
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Grace’s fiancé, Keith Griffin, was killed on his way to work during a break from college — months before they hoped to get married.
The 23-year-old had a summer gig on a construction crew, she said, and his killer had been fired from the same job before his arrival. Griffin went on a run to pick up drinks for his co-workers and bring them back to the rural job site, arriving in the owner’s jacket and driving the company truck.
“The guy came up and just opened fire and shot Keith five times in the face, the neck, the head and the back,” Grace told Hannity.
After his death, Grace dropped out of school. But eventually she returned, she said, motivated to help other crime victims.
“When I would be tired or weary, just as when I was prosecuting, I would think about Keith just looking at me with those big, blue eyes, and I would know it was my duty,” she said.
“That’s your calling,” Hannity replied.
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She went on to prosecute violent crimes in Atlanta for a decade before becoming one of the most recognizable true crime hosts in America.
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At one point, Hannity brought up an emotional moment from Guthrie’s interview with Kotb — where she acknowledged that her fame and fortune could have provided a motive for the unknown abductors.
“That’s not her fault,” he said. “Are we supposed to stop living our lives because there’s evil in this world?”
Grace agreed and argued that a victim’s family doesn’t have a script on how to respond to such a crisis.
Catch the full episode of “Hang Out with Sean Hannity” at 7 a.m. Tuesday.
