“Crime Stories with Nancy Grace” host Nancy Grace said the disappearance of Savannah Guthrie’s mother is a painful reminder of her own fiancé’s murder nearly 50 years ago.
Grace’s fiancé, Keith Griffin, was shot and killed by a former co-worker in August 1979 — just months before their scheduled wedding — after the man had been fired by the company.
“When my fiancé was murdered, I didn’t even want to say words. I felt like going out in the dark in the woods and just howling like an animal. I didn’t have words to say,” she said in an emotional interview on a new episode of “Hang Out With Sean Hannity.”
Her fiancé’s murderer was convicted in 1980 and served more than 25 years in prison before being paroled in 2006.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE RETURNS TO ‘TODAY’ SHOW STUDIO FOR FIRST TIME SINCE MOTHER WENT MISSING
Grace candidly explained on the podcast the heartbreak of losing her partner to a senseless act of violence just months before they were to tie the knot.
“It was so awful,” she said. “Not just losing him, but to violent crime, stupid, senseless. For what? For nothing! I just couldn’t take it in, especially the dichotomy of having grown up the way I did, in a very loving home. And then that, just before our wedding? It was just too much.”
The true crime host said that Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance resurfaced her grief, saying that Savannah Guthrie’s first televised interview since her mother’s abduction made her want to howl in pain all over again.
“When Savannah was talking, just her face, and she started talking to her mother when she felt like it was her fault, she said, ‘Oh Mommy, Mommy, I’m sorry, I am sorry,’” she 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, nothing.”
Grace explained how her fiancé’s murder motivated her career change as she sought to dedicate her life to helping crime victims.
“I was studying to be a Shakespearean literature professor, and I knew I could just never be happy in a classroom, and that had always been my dream,” she said. “I decided to go back to law school to help other crime victims.”
Grace attended law school at Mercer University and later earned a Master of Laws at New York University, characterizing this era of her life as “a blur.”
“If you look at my books, which I kept, there’s watermarks on them where I would even study in the bathtub,” Grace explained. “And when I would be tired or weary, just 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. This was my duty now.”
Grace’s full conversation with Sean Hannity is now available on the “Hang Out with Sean Hannity” podcast.
