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Los Angeles: A TV presenter is being sued by the family of a missing boy's mother who claim that the "cross-examination" drove the woman to commit suicide.
Melinda Duckett shot herself after being questioned by Nancy Grace, a former criminal prosecutor known for her combative technique, over the disappearance of her two-year-old son, Trenton.
Grace demanded why Duckett, 21, had not taken a lie detector test about her movements on the day. "Where were you? Why aren't you telling us where you were that day?" she shouted during the interview, pounding her desk.
A few hours before the interview was broadcast on CNN Headline News, Duckett killed herself with her grandfather's shotgun.
In a nine-page wrongful death suit lodged in Florida, William and Bethann Eubank, Duckett's parents, claim Grace's accusatory questioning caused the "severe emotional distress which was a cause or proximate cause of her death by suicide". They allege Grace and her producers committed "fraudulent misrepresentation" to get Duckett to agree to the interview, telling her it would help find her son.
They failed to inform her "that once she appeared on the show, Grace would subject her to outrageous conduct such as severe interrogation, fist pounding and veiled accusations that she was responsible for her child's disappearance and death". The papers also allege that CNN broadcast the interview after the suicide to "improve their ratings".
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