← Crime & Justice with Donna Rotunno
Crime & Justice with Donna Rotunno
Former Prince Andrew Arrested in Epstein Probe & The Nancy Guthrie Digital Trail
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Foreign.
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Welcome to our new podcast, Crime and Justice. I'm Donna Rotuno. Today, day 19 of the Nancy Guthrie mystery in Tucson, Arizona, and the stunning arrest of the former Prince Andrew in England. We will get to all of those things today. Thank you for joining me. And let's start with Matt Finn in Tucson. Matt, thank you for joining me today.
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C
Thanks for having me, Donna.
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B
So tell me, what is the latest in Tucson on this day 19 of Nancy Guthrie missing?
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C
So right now we're kind of in the phase of a little bit of a letdown period because there was a lot of focus on this one particular glove that was found about 2 miles away from Nancy Guthrie's house behind me. That glove did not have a hit in the CODIS national database. Also, it did not match any other law enforcement databases. And so now the sheriff here in Pima county tells me that there was other DNA and biological evidence recovered from inside of Nancy's home behind me. And they are going to run that up against some of these forensic genealogy databases. And some of them may be private. Our understanding of is that the sheriff's office may be reaching out to some of these private companies, and we've been talking to several of them here, and they tell us, they claim that they actually have many more data points and factors that they test for and that they could perhaps build a DNA profile in a matter of a couple days, and that also they can, you know, begin to identify maybe family members or what sex the person is or, you know, what region of the world they're from. And so a lot of these private companies are telling us they're promising that, you know, if they get a hold of the DNA from inside of Nancy Guthrie's house, they may be able to kind of pinpoint who this person is.
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B
DONNA and you know, Matt, we saw this happen in Coburger. We talk about this all the time. And we use this case as an example because it was 47 days. I mean, here we're at day 19. It was 47 days before Coburger was identified and arrested. And so, you know, although this is a more difficult situation given the fact that we have a missing person person, not four dead bodies like they had in Coburger, we are still hopeful that they will get some information that leads them to a suspect here.
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C
Yes. And, you know, the FBI says it has a very large investigation going on behind the scenes on the ground here. Of course, we're not seeing a lot of it. And also, you know, the sheriff says that they are running down all types of Leave. I think the FBI says it's got hundreds and hundreds of tips in this case, perhaps a little more incentive. Right now. The, the reward has been increased to more than $200,000. The sheriff's department says there was an anonymous reward for 100 grand, and that's in addition to the, the FBI's reward. And you know, Donna, it's. We're about an easy 90 minute drive north of the Mexican border right now, so it's kind of impossible to ignore the possibility or scenario that Mexico or cartels are linked to this. But so far, Sheriff Nanos here in Pima county says he is not aware of any direct link to Mexico. And the FBI says it's standard practice for them to reach out to their Mexican counterparts. And our understanding is it's very likely that as soon as the FBI got involved in this, they were, at minimum, in communication with Mexico about this case.
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B
Donna, given the history of the way Sheriff Nanos has kind of dialed back, changed his story, said different things to different reporters, I'd be interested to see if we can really believe that statement that this doesn't really involve Mexico, especially given the fact, like you said, that it is so close to the border and it is very possible that her body could have been taken or her person could have been taken across the border the exact night that she was taken. So this, this will be interesting. I think that they, they don't really know, but again, how do we know? Because there's a lot of things that they're not telling us. While you're out there, are you, are you seeing law enforcement activity? Are you actually watching? Or is most of the work now being done behind the scenes? Because we haven't seen anybody at the home, but we did hear that somebody came to look at a camera at one of the neighbor's houses. I think it was yesterday or two days ago.
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C
Yeah, initially we were seeing a ton of law enforcement presence, you know, FBI combing this neighborhood and also Annie's neighborhood, the daughter. And that went on for many days. Now it's much more quieter in these two neighborhoods, but our understanding is that there are still a lot of investigation going on that we're just not aware of. Someone pointed out to me yesterday that the FBI is operating outside of town. And then the sheriff says there's going to be follow ups at the home behind me. And yes, the other day we saw two men with badges, you know, go to the neighbor's house next door and it seemed like they were touching or like kind of interacting with A maybe a floodlight or a camera, but we just weren't able to confirm exactly what that was. And so we're seeing stuff like that pop up. You know, we'll see what looks like law enforcement or agents in the area, but we can't confirm exactly what's happening. You know, Don, a lot of times federal agents are in plain clothes, so it's hard for us to ID exactly what we're seeing.
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Well, Matt, thank you so much. Thanks for joining me today. I hope that while you are in Tucson this weekend, we get some breaking news, and there's some great news about the fact that they have found Nancy Guthrie and she comes home safely. So, Matt, thank you so much for joining me today. And now let's bring in Damon Charonis, a wonderful defense attorney from Chicago. He will tell you that he is a better lawyer than me, but we will fight that out off of camera. Damon, thank you for joining me today.
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D
Thank you for having me, Donna. You know, I'm a huge fan of yours. You and I try cases together with regularity, and it's the best trial partner I've had.
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B
Well, thank you. We have had a ton of fun together, and I'm so thrilled that you're here for me in the first week of this new podcast. So thank you so much. Let's get into day 19 of Nancy Guthrie. You know, this has been one of those cases, like many investigations, where we. We have watched an ebb and flow of evidence. There has not been much, you know, sort of new information in the last 48 hours or so. I think everybody was really hoping that that DNA on the glove would give us some insight as to a potential suspect here, which didn't happen. We did hear today, and I just heard about it from Matt, too, that the sheriff is talking about testing biological evidence from inside the house that was located inside the house. How is biological evidence different from DNA evidence, if at all? I found that an interesting statement, biological evidence.
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D
So I think the difference is the biological evidence is the saliva. It's the. Any fluids, things like that, and then it just gets sent out to be tested for DNA. But it's really exactly where DNA evidence comes from. So they're synonymous? For the most part.
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Yeah. That's what I thought. I mean, you know, obviously, any kind of fluid, any kind of skin left behind, any hair follicles. I mean, all of those things are pieces of evidence, but what you're searching for is actual DNA. So I. I just thought that was an interesting distinction. Maybe he wanted to have a Distinction between this glove testing that they've been doing, and now, of course, other things that they may have found in that home, which, of course, we don't know because they haven't told us, and they don't have to do that. So. Okay, let's talk about a few other things here. We learned about a really interesting Google search, and this is new information today, and I think it sort of shed some light into why when the police officers were. The sheriffs were going to different homes in the neighborhood, they were asking for camera footage from January 11th. And everybody was kind of surprised because, of course, this. This crime was the end of January. So everybody was wondering, you know, what. What's the significance of January 11th? But what we've learned today is that there were Google searches made on January 11 looking for Nancy Guthrie's address. So what kind of information might that lead to enforcement? And how would that potentially work itself out in a courtroom someday if that does lead to some person who was searching for Nancy Guthrie?
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D
Sure. I mean, it depends on how they got it. Certainly if it's a Google search, maybe that was sent out by them. But just amazing. You know, you search something on the Internet, whatever it is, and it seems like it can be uncovered. But what they did in this case is they tied the search to the date and probably wanted to see if anybody was around that area that day. I know in certain cases that I've had, search warrants have been issued to Google, and Google has rejected them, and they have to jump through a lot of hoops sometimes. So it'll be interesting to see how this sort of came about.
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And with Google, you know, I think it's interesting, and I think Google, you know, hasn't really said much, obviously. And I'm wondering if you are an executive at Google, how you feel about this. Right. Because if you're just a regular person and you're just curious, right. And you're searching now, it would be maybe a little strange that you're looking for Nancy Guthrie's house before January 11th. But let's say that there's somebody who's going in after the fact, right. Looking for Nancy Guthrie's house or looking for information. Does it make the average Google user think twice about what they put into a Google search?
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D
Yeah, I mean, I think that now that it's been sort of put out there, people just search for things all the time. And you and I know, as criminal defense lawyers, we've had cases where the police have gone through Google searches and used those in court to establish motive or intent or things like that. But I think we just use Google and other search engines, and we really don't think about those types of things because the average person, it's never going to come back to bite us because we're not out committing crimes. Right. But at the same point, you know, you also search for things and do things, and, you know, you don't expect it to be publicized.
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Well, in this, like, dystopian society now, where we're seeing. It's just like there's just a big brother camera in the sky watching you wherever you go. And it's. It's. You know, we've talked about it before multiple times, and I know I've heard you give arguments in. In courtrooms where there's cameras and they don't have information about a suspect or a defendant on camera. And you're going, you know, if you bought coffee at Starbucks this morning, you are on camera. So, you know, odds of a crime being solved these days with camera footage are quite likely, especially in big cities like ours.
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D
Well, if you look at the difference in our practice, Don, over the last 20 years, right. When we first started trying murders, we weren't looking at 75 hours of recorded evidence. Now, that's how we spend a lot of our time. And when you think about this case, the Guthrie case, I think the public has sort of gotten spoiled a little bit. They think everything gets solved right away because there are so many cameras and there's so much access to evidence, and law enforcement has so many databases that something like this maybe isn't the norm. Right,
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Right, Sure. Well, and it takes longer to shift through, to sift through it. Right. So, I mean, now, if. If back in the day, right, 20 years ago, we got a police report, we may have gotten a grainy surveillance video from a store or something. But today, you get cell phone tower pings, you get license plate reader information, you get eye in the sky cameras from big cities. You get every police body camera for every officer that showed up at every portion of an investigation. So can you imagine in a case like this where you have days upon days upon weeks of investigations and what you would have to sift through if there is someone arrested here, in terms of the way this evidence was collected and. And how the case was. Was put together?
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Sure. And we've seen other cases where, you know, I'm sure that the sheriffs and the FBI, they've had to fan out and get private footage from Dunkin Donuts, from any sort of restaurant or Anything that's available, just. And there are teams of FBI agents right now and sheriff's police going through that evidence. Perchance, they see something and it's in. It's. You know, there's really not a suspect right now. I mean, there might be, but they don't have a ton to go on, so they don't even know what they're looking for to an extent. Maybe something pops. Maybe something looks out of the ordinary. So with a case like this, you know, the leads, they're going through every single thing they can. And those things do take time.
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B
And what's interesting, too, is in this neighborhood where she lived, the homes are far apart, as we've talked about. The. You know, even if you have surveillance or NEST or ring cameras, and they're far from the street. So, you know, officers and sheriffs and FBI agents are looking for this footage, hoping that they may see something. But, you know, it's not like a city where you have cars passing by every. Every two seconds. Right. So you're shifting through, sifting, I keep say shifting, sifting through footage over and over again, trying to find some, you know, gleam of. Of activity, which you may not find at all.
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D
Yeah. And you try to connect that to maybe a lead you've received. And that's the thing about leads. You think about it, you could get 2,000 bad leads, but there may be one thing there that uncovers this. So you can't not look at things. And. No, it's a daunting task. And, you know, and I understand the public and they want this solved. And I think, you know, it's not for me to say whether there's been some issues with the investigation. It sounds like there have been. I think eventually it's going to. Right. It's gonna take maybe a little more time than this, but it sounds like they have some leads. And as you've talked about on your show, we don't know everything they have. Right. We don't know every card they have. We don't know everything that they're doing.
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And nor should we. Right, Nor should we. Yeah, nor should we. For all the people out there that are like, you know, yelling about the fact that the FBI doesn't tell us anything. We know that. Right. They don't have to tell us. But because everybody's interested in it, it's okay for us to talk about it and question it a little bit.
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Yeah, we have those conversations with our clients. Right. They say, well, we don't know because it's an investigation. They don't tell us. So certainly we live in a culture, we live in a society where people want instant information. They want, they want the crime to be solved the day it happens. And that's just not always the reality of police work.
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B
And you know, if you're the family here, right, if you're Savannah Guthrie and her family, there was definitely chatter early on about, you know, the brother in law and the sister because they're the ones that potentially are allegedly dropped her off. And there was all this conversation. And of course, everybody is a suspect until they're not, right? Everybody's a suspect until people have been ruled out. But if you are, and I'm sure the Guthrie family has lawyers, whether it's for PR purposes or, you know, for other helping them manage this because it's, it's such a difficult situation. If you were representing Savannah Guthrie's family from a PR standpoint, would you tell her, because she is such a known person and she's a morning person that people wake up with, would you tell her that she should make some type of a statement that is different than the, the pleas that she has made about giving her mother back, the pleas to specific possible captors? Would you, would you suggest that she make any type of a statement to the public or would you say, you know what, let law enforcement handle it and say nothing?
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D
Yeah, I mean, I think I would probably go that route. I mean, look, she gave a very heartfelt plea. And you and I both know that somebody who's going to go to the steps to do what they did in this case, to kidnap an 84 year old woman from her home, is not probably going to be swayed by the plea of somebody, even such a heartfelt one as that. So at this point, I think, you know, what else can come from a public statement other than letting them know the family is okay? Especially since there have been sort of claims throughout. Right. That family members have been, you know, sort of in the suspect. But. And it seems, according to the sheriff, that they've been removed from that. Now whether that stays the case or not, who knows? But that might be a reason to get out there and talk.
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Sure, yeah, I would agree. And you know, I think that as time goes on, of course people who watch her regularly would, would like to know what she has to say. And especially because if you get used to your morning people, whoever you watch, whether you're watching Ainsley, whether you're watching Savannah, whether you're watching Gayle King, you want to hear from the people that you're you're used to hearing from in the morning. And so I, I think I would probably say the same. But now everybody, don't get too excited. We actually have something else to talk about other than the Nancy Guthrie case. And so we are going to move over to the big news out of the UK today and the arrest of former Prince Andrew. Let's bring in Shawn for. Excuse me, Eric Shawn for those details.
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Yeah.
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Hey, Donna. Pretty astounding that Prince Andrew has been arrested right now. He has been released by the police in England, arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. That sounds like a pretty vanilla, you know, nebulous type of charge. But it has to do with Jeffrey Epstein. We know that Jeffrey Epstein's emails, some of them have been released. There are apparently many others that have not been released, as well as other evidence, evidence of alleged misconduct. But this case has to do not with the sexual. Alleged sexual abuse. But this case has to do with his conduct as a businessperson and his emails with Jeffrey Epstein. It turns out that in 2010-2011 or so, at that point, Prince Andrew was a trade representative. He was appointed as the trade representative for Great Britain. Well, you've seen all this dump of emails. Well, among those emails are some emails from Prince Andrew to Jeffrey Epstein in which it is alleged that the Prince is giving away official government secrets. He's detailing meetings that he had with people, in one case, for example, investing in Afghanistan, you know, discussing that with Jeffrey Epstein, apparently another one trying to set him up and report on the meetings that he had as the trade representative with private hedge fund companies and then giving all that information to Jeffrey Epstein. I have one here, Donna, which says from this is what Prince Andrew used as his address. The Duke, from the Duke to G. Vacation. That's Jeffrey Epstein. Southeast Asia visit reports he got a whole bunch of attachments from the prince of reporting on his official duties and what he did in Hong Kong and Vietnam and Singapore and elsewhere that authorities say is clearly illegal, a violation of the Official Government Secrets Act. And that is why he was arrested early this morning at his home. Police searching two of his residences. Of course, he has been stripped of his royal titles, is basically a common citizen now, but just an astounding shock that a member of the royal family has been arrested in this case. Just astounding. Has this apparently hasn't happened in centuries.
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B
No, it really is astounding. And when you think about it, Prince Andrew, former Prince Andrew, was brought into life, brought into a monarchy that has lasted centuries. And these are rules that they follow. I mean, anybody who's watched the crown, right, Anybody who knows anything about the monarchy and the royalty, knows about decorum and handling things the right way and not putting your business out into the world, but much less a person who is put in a position of power and a governmental role. And then to take that information and pass it along. You might understand it if it's somebody who never understood the way this works, but this is somebody who was born into this.
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A
And also I think that we're beginning to see something that many in the public didn't know and I didn't know that he's, he's doing business. You know, we've seen in the Epstein files the relations of this whole, you know, subterfuge of this group of the most powerful billionaires and business people and celebrities, all connected in some way to Epstein. And here you have Prince Andrew apparently doing deals on the side, perhaps, or as part of, you know, whatever he's doing. This does not have to do with the allegations of sexual misconduct with Epstein being a abuser, sexual abuser of underage girls. You may remember that one of the first most prominent victims, Virginia Giuffre, came out and she wrote a book in 2024 and she accused Prince Andrew, saying that she was forced to have sex with him, that she was raped three times, and tragically, she committed suicide last year. The Prince has always denied any wrongdoing, saying that that is not the case. That never happened. There's that photograph of them together, smiling. Of course, this charge does not have anything to do with those allegations of sexual misconduct. I want to make that clear. But it certainly is the background overlay over this whole incredible scandal that is already causing the scalps of some public officials around the globe, diplomats and business people to resign from their lofty, prominent positions because of their connection to Jeffrey Epstein.
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B
Yes, absolutely. We saw it where we are from with one of the hotel moguls resigning recently. So very, very interesting. So I can't thank you enough, Eric, for your insight on this. I know we'll be talking about it for weeks to come as this is going to be quite the story. So thank you. As this shakes the monarchy. I appreciate your time today. Thanks so much.
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Thanks. Thanks, Don.
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Thanks. I'm going to bring Damon back in. Damon, let's talk about this unbelievable circumstance here happening in the UK with the Prince Andrew. What do you think?
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You know, nothing shocks me or you these days. You know, a lot of people were waiting for the other shoe to drop. Right? How many people are Sitting there holding their breath about this. And you know, that oftentimes happens, you have all these people making statements and doing things, but then there's paperwork, right? That's a very federal way to go after somebody. There's paperwork, there's emails. And it's interesting because, you know, it's very similar to certain crimes that could be charged in the United States States. If it was a classified document, it could be espionage, theft of government property. So it's certainly scandalous. Nobody's been charged in the royal family for 400 years. And I think that, you know, part of me thought of Al Capone, right? You go after him for tax evasion, not the main charge. So, yeah, it's definitely going to keep unwinding.
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And you wonder, you know, obviously now put yourself in the shoes of the King of England, who is the former Prince's brother. And he's put in a very difficult position. I think for years the royal family, in my opinion, has shielded Andrew from the spotlight given the fact that he was always creating some type of issues and problems. And as we know, he was stripped of his royal titles. And now you have the King of England who's dealing with poor health, he's dealing with, you know, taking over a monarchy from his mother, who was this long standing monarch and somebody that was so revered. And then he comes in when I think everybody was kind of hoping for Prince William. And now you have this situation where you've dealt with the scandals of your brother basically the entire time you're there. Talk to me about how hard that would be as a family member to separate yourself from the wrongdoings and yet do what's right not only by the law, but what's right for your country and for the monarchy, which, you know, is teetering.
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Yeah. I mean, can you imagine the behind the scenes conversations that have been going
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on,
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like, oh my God. I mean, that would be a TV show in and of itself, I'm sure the disappointment. But what, what, what the King said was, look, the law has to take its play out in this situation, which is a pretty sufficient, you know, pretty strong statement. We're not going to intervene, we're not going to help. And at some point you have to understand you are the King of England and you can't, you know, cover for your family and that people make mistakes. And I'm not saying this guy's guilty of anything that he's done, but it looks bad. And I can't imagine how you separate yourself, you know, from the brother role and those types of things. But it's gotta be behind the scenes, even much worse than we can imagine. And it has been for a while.
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Well, and if the former prince is your client and you're looking at these emails that were sent, it's very difficult to walk back or come up with any justifiable reason that you're sending this information to Jeffrey Epstein, of all people.
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Well, the interesting thing is this, Right. I mean, and I guess he was sending him, like, right away. I mean, the real question that, you know, in thinking creatively as a defense attorney, you know, was there some sort of coercion? Was there some sort of, you know, why did he do this so quickly? Not that that would necessarily be a defense, but was something being held over his head? Was. Is it some form of blackmail?
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Sure.
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D
You know, we don't know the. The cabal necessarily of everything that was going on.
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Right.
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But it would be interesting to learn sort of what the actual motivations for that are. Sometimes it's just greed. Sometimes somebody can benefit themselves from something. Sometimes it's out of loyalty. I've got a good friend. We know we've dealt with insider trading cases, Right. Where somebody gives information and other people benefit. But in a situation like this with Epstein and all we know about him and all we don't know about him, you know.
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B
Yes, right.
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D
Yeah. The fascinating part is the motivation behind this. And, you know, we may never know that. Right. And it'll be interesting to see if he even gets charged. You know, I just read something recently today, actually, that in the UK they have a reasonable suspicion standard for arresting somebody, and a lot of individuals who are under investigation don't get charged. Now, in this case, it looks like he's probably going to get charged. You don't arrest him unless you're going to go the distance. Yes, but I thought that was an interesting nuance, you know, in difference between the law in our country and in Great Britain.
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B
So given the fact that all of this information is coming out in these Epstein files, and, you know, this, of course, as we said, has nothing to do with the sex aspect of the Epstein allegations for years. It has nothing to do with the Ghislaine Maxwell allegations and the crimes for which she's been convicted. But it definitely opens up the question here to say, you know, these were things happening in the United States, and obviously, you know, Epstein is getting these emails from the former prince when he's in the UK or wherever he is when he's sending them. And the fact that the UK has kind of been the first to act on any potential prosecution out of what we've seen in those files. I think is interesting. And do you think that the US Sort of files. Files behind and says, okay, you know, do you expect to see any arrests here in the United States?
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D
I mean, you know, you. You would hope that if the federal government uncovers evidence of criminality and there's a statute of limitations issue, I'm sure, on some of these things. Right. But if there is something that is chargeable, that they're gonna. That they're gonna bring something before a grand jury and get an indictment, again, we know that doesn't mean somebody did something. They are entitled to a defense. But looking the other way for things like this is not how anybody wants it to be done. Let a jury decide, let a judge decide. So I'm sure that the U.S. attorney's Office, Department of justice is going through this stuff. Obviously, they're the ones who, I think, turned it over. So they probably knew a lot of it. But this could cause some pressure across the pond. As you said, Great Britain's like, well, we're doing it to one of our most powerful, powerful families. You know what's going to happen in the United States, right?
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B
Yeah. It'll be definitely interesting to see. And I know that there's so much chatter in the online true crime world about this whole Epstein saga, as there has been for years leading up to this. And now that these files have been released and all this information is coming out, it will be interesting to see, and it's just so interesting for me to see all of the different tentacles of communication that happened between Jeffrey Epstein and so many people from so many different areas of life. So I think it's just very fascinating. And again, like you said, all the things we know, but there's still so many things that we don't know. So I think as time goes on, we will probably learn a lot more and probably be talking about it a lot more.
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D
And the people involved, there's buckets of people involved, Right. There's people who were involved with them who probably knew nothing about what was going on. Right. And then there were people who were involved who probably knew a little bit, and then there were people who probably knew the whole thing. And it's interesting to see how that sort of gets sorted out, because not everyone who had a relation with him or was his friend was involved in criminal activity. That's ridiculous. But certainly some of them were. And to me, that's really the fascinating thing, because if your name is associated with him right now, you're poisoned. You're toxic. So that to me, you know, we all know guilt by association, that's not how we do things in this country, or we shouldn't. But that'll be interesting to see, you know, who gets put in what bucket and for what reason.
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B
Well, based on the feedback we got from the viewers, the viewers were most interested in the question of whether or not the US Will follow suit. So we will see. We hope we answered that question for you. For anybody who's listening or watching us, thank you. Damon, thank you so much for joining me this first week. I know I will have you back and we will talk about cases that are happening, and I really appreciate your time. So thank you so much. I'm Donna Rotuno. Thank you for joining me for another episode of Crime and Justice. We want to hear from you. Keep sending us your questions on social media and don't forget to subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Thank you.