Nancy Grace was born in Macon, Georgia, the youngest of three children, to factory worker Elizabeth Grace and Mac Grace, a freight agent for Southern Railway. Her older siblings are brother Mac Jr. and sister Ginny. The Graces are longtime members of Macon's Liberty United Methodist Church, where Elizabeth plays the organ and Mac Sr. was once a Sunday School teacher. Grace graduated from Macon's Windsor Academy in 1977.

On November 22, 2011, Toni Annette Medrano accidentally killed her 3-week-old son, Adrian Alexander Medrano, while she was sleeping on the couch with him. According to the criminal complaint, Medrano told police she had consumed almost an entire fifth of vodka the night before her son died and fell asleep with him on a couch. The following morning, she woke up and found her infant son unresponsive and cold to the touch. While Grace was covering the case, she infamously dubbed Medrano "Vodka Mom". During one of her shows, Grace brought a bottle of vodka onto her set and poured shots to demonstrate how much Medrano had drunk the night of her son's death. In June 2012, Medrano was charged with two counts of second-degree manslaughter. If convicted on both counts, Medrano would have faced a maximum of ten years in prison.  "The baby is dead because of vodka mommy," Grace said during her June 11 show on HLN. "I don't care if she was driving a car, holding a pistol or holding a fifth of vodka. [It] doesn't matter to me. The baby is dead at the hands of the mommy." During the show, Grace said the charges filed against Medrano weren't harsh enough. "I don't see how this whole thing was an accident and I want murder charges," Grace said.  On July 2, Medrano doused herself in flammable liquid and set herself on fire. She died of her injuries on July 7. After her death, Medrano's husband and the father of her son said he felt the segment Grace did was cruel and added "The things people said were horrible. It shows that cyberbullying happens to adults, too." Following Melinda Duckett's suicide, this is the second suicide to which Grace has been linked. On January 4, 2012, a lawsuit against CNN brought by Medrano's family was settled, "I can tell you the case was settled in principle two weeks ago," said personal injury attorney Michael Padden. A lawsuit was never formally served but "we resolved the case just by negotiation," he said.

What did Nancy say?
"The baby is dead because of vodka mommy," Grace said during her June 11 show on HLN. "