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  • HLNTV.COM

From this week's Last Days: The Week in Review:

WEDNESDAY, JULY 11 In worse news, the week continues with one of America's actual monsters: Nancy Grace, the hawk-faced harpy who routinely makes a carnival show out of what seem to be reckless insinuations of guilt on her cable news show. As the New York Daily News reminds us, back in 2006, Grace welcomed grieving mother Melinda Duckett onto her HLN show, then grilled the 21-year-old about her failure to properly help police after the disappearance of her 2-year-old son. Not long after the broadcast, Ms. Duckett fatally shot herself in the head, with her family crediting the suicide in part to Duckett's on-screen humiliation by Grace. This week splashes more blood onto Grace's hands, courtesy of Toni Medrano, a 29-year-old woman facing two counts of manslaughter in the death of her 3-week-old son, whom she allegedly rolled onto and fatally crushed after allegedly drinking the better part of a fifth of vodka. In the world of Nancy Grace, Medrano became "vodka mom," whom Grace lambasted at length on television. "Did mommy booze it up and kill her baby?" asked Grace. "Why no murder charges?" Grace also devoted a portion of her show to showing exactly how many full glasses of vodka are in a fifth. Last Days would take the time to explain to Grace that she knows very well "why no murder charges" (zero intent and what looks like a surplus of reckless indifference); however, Medrano provided her own retort to Grace's trial-by-television on Saturday, when she poured a flammable liquid over herself in her mother's backyard and fatally set herself on fire. Confirming the death this week, St. Paul Park police chief Michael Monahan told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that Medrano was "despondent and suicidal over personal issues," with Medrano's mother telling Fox 9 News that the mass media taunting by Grace "broke [her daughter's] spirit in the worst way." Certainly, a woman who allegedly drinks herself into a stupor in the presence of her newborn has plenty of problems beyond the bleating of callous news harpies—but it couldn't have helped. Roast in hell, Nancy Grace.

Full column here.