Maria Phillips, Medrano's younger sister, said Medrano was "shaking and couldn't take a breath" as she watched Grace's show. "She got depressed and said life wasn't worth living. She said she couldn't live with herself."
As to the show:
About a week after she was charged, flame-throwing CNN talk-show host Nancy Grace featured the case on her show. Grace held up a fifth of cheap vodka and said she was going to see how many glasses she could get out of the bottle.
She poured at least nine as the words "vodka mom" appeared on the screen.
Her guests that night were unfamiliar with the case (no surprise there), leaving Grace to rage without dissent:
She then spoke to a reporter from her show and two officials unfamiliar with the case as she theorized that Medrano had been sleeping on her child for hours. "There was a long period of time that baby's life could have been saved," Grace said.
She said the baby was purple and one guest theorized that was from a "pooling of blood" because he had been dead for so long. "Why no murder one charges?" Grace asked, referring to the charge for premeditated murder.
You can watch Disgraceful Grace's performance here.
Ms. Medrano's friend posted this letter to Nancy Grace:
thank's for demonising a person for an accidental death and causing another persons' death. I use to be a fan, but now all I see is another rating seeking soul-less monster.
Grace's viewers aren't much better than her. Where do people learn such hatred of others they've never met?
Why is it just Ms. Medrano -- the mother -- Grace has a problem with? She has no harsh words for the father, who came home and found his wife inebriated, who expressed his concern (to his inebriated wife) an accident like this might happen, and then went upstairs to bed . Why didn't he think to put the baby in a crib or his wife in a bed?
Medrano’s husband told police that his wife sleeps heavily after she drinks and that she had been drinking throughout the weekend. He said he also told his wife not to lie on the couch with the baby because she could fall asleep and suffocate him.
With Ms. Medrano's suicide, there are now two unnecessary deaths instead of one, double grief for the families involved, and two other children without a mother.
Nancy Grace may not be responsible for the woman's drinking problem, but it sure sounds like she capitalized on it and by playing judge, jury and executioner on TV, hastened her demise. Treatment for alcohol dependency is what Ms. Medrano needed, not a firing squad.
Will Grace lose a wink of sleep over the traumatization Ms. Medrano's other children will suffer, knowing their mother took her own life in such a horrific, violent way? Of course not. She'll think, "Well I didn't tell her to drink and suffocate her kid."
I have not watched a single episode of Dancing With the Stars since Grace's wooden-legged stomping, which followed a season by the equally untalented Bristol Palin, left me with a permanent acrid distaste for anything and everything connected to the show. I'll bet I'm not the only one.
There ought to be limits on who gets to be a national mouthpiece. When the only marginal talent a TV host has is that she can inflame rabid passions in ignorant viewers who think they are at the circus, and that the host is its ringmaster, I think its fair to say that networks, like Turner Broadcasting System, Inc (which owns Headline News Network)shares in the shame, if not blame, for tragedies like this.
The network isn't just an enabler of these suicides and tragedies. Its role is more like an accelerant in an arson fire, fueling the flames to rake in the advertising dollars. The more outrageous Grace behaves, the more ratings go up, the more advertising dollars the network can charge. Shame on all of them, from Turner to the shows' lowly producers who spend half their day robo-dialing the unfortunate souls their host has targeted that day for her evening pleasure.
R.I.P. Toni Medrano.
