BATON ROUGE - Hundreds of family members and friends of Nicholas 'Nicky' Abraham attended his funeral Monday in Mississippi. 

The 69-year-old Baton Rouge therapist was laid to rest in Clarksdale, Miss. Former WBRZ anchor Whitney Vann made the six-hour drive to say her final goodbyes to one of her closest friends. 

“It's been unbelievably painful,” Vann said. “It's the worst thing that you would ever want to happen to someone you love to die such a vicious, horrible, inhumane death.”

Vann first met Abraham in 2003 when he was a guest on her WBRZ show, 'Weekends with Whitney.' He was a recurring guest - known as 'Dr. Nick.' The two were fast friends and have been for the past 20 years. Vann said she last spoke with Abraham the week of his death. 

Abraham's body was found Sept. 29, discarded along a Tangipahoa Parish highway. Terryon Thomas, a 20-year-old TikTok star known as 'Mr. Prada,' was arrested and booked in connection to Abraham's murder. Deputies say Abraham was last seen outside of Thomas’ Baton Rouge apartment around 11 a.m. Sept. 28, and his body was found the next day.

"There is absolutely nothing that could have happened on that Saturday at 11:00 that would make someone beat a really good man so brutally,” Vann said.

After Thomas was identified as a suspect in Abraham's murder, the internet erupted with theories that spread quickly.

“It's sick some people always want to think the worst,” Vann said about the influx of social media posts digging into potential motives for the killing. “There are a million things that could have happened, but for people to stay with the ugliest of stories, is not at all being true to who he was as a man and a person who walked this earth”

Through it all Vann says she wants to keep in mind the spirit of the man she called a friend.

“People really loved him and connected to him, and he just gave a lot of himself,” Vann said.