Podcast Host (5:37)

So.

Ashley Banfield (5:37)

So I called CeCe Moore about this because she knows everything about DNA. CeCe Moore is head of Parabon Nanolabs and she's a genealogy expert. DNA expert. She's basically just the encyclopedia of all things DNA. I've interviewed her before in past episodes. We'll link it in a great episode she did with me about partial DNA and the genetic genealogy, how it works, how you get to the person when you just have a tiny little partial or crappy sample. As in Coburger, right. Idaho, they had a partial little sample. They were able to deal with it scientifically. They were able to extrapolate what it meant, who it meant, and through genetic genealogy, get to their man. So in this case, it seems like there's a partial sample and. But whatever is wrong with it, you know, the sheriff had said it's mixed. That's not always the problem. In lots of rape cases, the DNA is always mixed. But there's something about it that makes this a difficult case. And CeCe is going to weigh in with. Because I'm talking like a. But cece's going to weigh in with her information and what it all means in just a moment. So don't go anywhere. You have to. You have to hear this. But also just the news about Savannah. It's finally been decided when she's going to be back on television. The announcement is that she's going to take the chair on the Today show a week this Monday, April 6th. I think that's going to be really big because she's. She is just not feeling like her. And we completely understand it. You can see it in her interview, right? And actually she talked about what it's going to be like for her, like how she's going to manage this, what she's going to be able to do who she's going to be. Here's how she explained it to Hoda Kotb in her interview.

Savannah Guthrie (7:28)

I've been so grateful to have this family. I consider this my family, my greater family. And when times are hard, you want to be with your family and I want to be with my family. And so I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I'll belong anymore. But I would like to try. I would like to try.

Ashley Banfield (8:02)

You know, I think we all want to rally behind her and help her and support her in the horror that she's been through, that her family's been through. This is not easy. None of this has been easy. And this next step of hers, going public in front of millions and trying to sort of put on a brave face every day while she's still living in this. This sort of netherworld of not knowing what happened to her mom, right. She says she wakes up every night and wonders about the terror that her mother saw over top of her bed before being taken from her bed in the dark of night. No shoes, in her pajamas, bleeding. So, you know, we all wish her well. And, and I think everybody also wants this solved. 1-800-call FBI. 1800, call FBI if you know anything even small. There was another piece of news today, and I want to be real clear about this because I'm seeing online people getting all fussy about this. You know, there was an arrest made today. It was a Pima county sheriff's deputy from the department that's investigating the Guthrie case. Somebody who's been arrested and fired. Kidnapping charges. Yeah, I know. Your first thing goes to. Oh, God. Kidnapping charges. Whoa. Are they looking into him for the Guthrie case? That's what everybody's saying. They're even putting the picture of the. The suspect and, and, and this, this sheriff's deputy. It is not related, full stop, okay? It's not related. His name is Travis Reynolds. I think he said 22 years old, if I saw correctly. Yeah, 22 years old. So arrested, facing charges of kidnapping, fired following the. The Pima county sheriff's department confirmed, and here's what I can tell you. He is accused of sexually exploiting and soliciting a woman that he had under arrest, according to the court documents. The complaint is apparently backed up by some partial video, I think, as they say, some evidence. That's video, a witness statement and apparently some kind of non denial, it seems from the deputy himself. He is accused, he's not convicted. That a lot of this information coming from tmz, the prosecutors say that a female victim told the authorities that she was afraid of the deputy because of the, quote, power dynamic between the two of them. After Reynolds, the sheriff's deputy allegedly called her hot and shared a vape pen with her while transporting her to the Pima County Jail. That's, of course, in Tucson, Arizona. He allegedly offered to help her with her case, saying that they could, quote, go to a hotel and have sex, end quote. The woman claimed that the officer showed her sexually explicit videos and kept her in the car for a while. The court report also says that Reynolds, quote, eventually got her out of the vehicle and demanded that she show her breasts before bringing her into the station again, allegedly. The video surveillance from the Pima county jail apparently confirms part of the account, according to tmz. And the deputy Reynolds stated in the complaint that he may or may not. This is a, quote, may or may not have discussed having sex with the alleged victim or shown her sexual videos. So that doesn't look good for that deputy, that's for sure. And not for the department, either. I mean, yeah, this is a 22 year old, right? So he's probably pretty new. I don't know if he was working on the Guthrie case. I'll be interested to find out, though, because lots of new guys were on the case. So about Savannah, I want to tell you something else. She. Well, her. Her colleagues said that her arriving back on the set, back on the show after two and a half months is right after Easter. And they said this is almost symbolic after Easter, after the resurrection. I saw Al Roker talking about it on the air. You know, Savannah's a very deeply faithful woman, and she's written a book about her faith, and she talked a lot about her faith in this interview with Hoda. And so it's probably apropos that that Al Roker would make that comment. She also said, I won't let sadness win for her, meaning for her mom. And she says she taught me. She talked a lot about her mom's resilience after her dad dying. I saw her world shatter. I saw it, and I saw her get up and I saw her believe. Wow, it's really hard. And I saw her love. So a lot of talk from Savannah in the Today show interview about faith and about love and about resilience and about, you know, her love of her Today show family and that she really misses that family and needs family. That in trauma, everybody needs family. And she has two families, her own and then the Tadesho family. So Good luck to her on April 6th. Okay, now I want to bring in Cece Moore, genetic genealogy expert, head of Paraben Nanos Labs, to ask her about this news that I have discovered from my source that the lab in Deerfield Beach, Florida, DNA Labs International is rushing the job for Pima county, and they're rolling out technology early. Something that was supposed to roll out next year. They're using it now on the Guthrie case. Here's my conversation with cece. So, Cece, what do you make of the news that I learned that the DNA International lab in Deerfield is rushing the job and using tech that is, you know, state of the art, Wasn't even supposed to roll out until next year.

Podcast Host (13:56)

Well, earlier we heard from the sheriff that this case might not be able to be solved for a year or so. Right when they were talking about the mixture. So we know there was something in the offing that they were looking forward to. I don't think that that was just completely random. That tells me that DNA Labs International may have told him there's some new tech coming out that if we haven't solved the case, we may be able to apply to this. And then I think what happened is whoever was working on that was either encouraged to speed it up or was just really inspired by the case to try to do that. When companies are working on new tech, you know, there's usually a schedule. And so I'm guessing that whatever this new tech is, they sped that up and they, you know, tried to put it in this quarter or next quarter versus next year at this time.

Ashley Banfield (14:48)

You and your colleagues speak a whole other language than I do, and I think a lot of our listeners, too. But I imagine you all getting together at, like, super egghead conferences and having the most incredible dialogue and then being so optimistic about what is on the horizon. Can you talk a little bit in my language about what is on the horizon and what this might actually be be and what it might mean?

Podcast Host (15:12)

Sure. Let's go backwards a little bit. When we first started genetic genealogy and creating this methodology, it was just this little niche thing. People laughed at us, to be blunt, or rolled their eyes at us. It was just considered this thing for genealogists or to help adoptees, and people didn't take it that seriously.

Ashley Banfield (15:33)

Boy, you showed them.

Podcast Host (15:34)

Yeah, right. We sure did. We love doing that. We were actually told by scientists that we would never be able to use this type of DNA, autosomal DNA, for genealogical purposes, to learn more about someone's family tree. So we definitely proved Them wrong. But what that meant is there wasn't a lot of advancement that was done specifically for this field other than what us volunteers and citizen scientists were doing. So on the academic side, on the scientific side, there wasn't as much progress helping to push it forward because they were working on other things. Now sometimes they would develop something that also benefited us, but we were not the focus. Well, once we started solving these cold cases and high profile active cases, like the CO Burgers case with investigative genetic genealogy, suddenly there was a lot more attention and interest in what we're doing. And so I think that sparked a lot of advancements that we hadn't seen previously. And they've been moving at a really rapid pace.

Ashley Banfield (16:36)

Pace.

Podcast Host (16:37)

So it's always difficult to predict what's coming unless you're the person working on them. But the things that we run into, I'll say that are challenges, are highly degraded DNA. You know, we, we already do have ways to work with that and mixtures, which is what we've heard a lot about in this case. So the company I work with, Parabon, is really expert. They are expert in working with mixtures. But what has not been developed successfully yet is using whole genome sequencing for mixtures. It's been on this other platform, like when you spit in the tube and mail it into Ancestry. They're using something called a microarray chip or a SNP chip. That is the platform where it's easiest to separate out mixtures, called deconvolution. And so my guess is there's a lot of work being done on trying to deconvolute or separate out mixtures, different people's DNA using whole genome sequencing.

Ashley Banfield (17:35)

Well, there's where I get confused because honestly, with all of the rape cases and all of the messy murder scenes, all I've ever imagined is mixtures. And all I ever hear in court is mixtures. But they seem to talk as though it's not an impediment to solving a crime. So what kind of mixtures are you talking about that are an impediment?

Podcast Host (17:56)

Well, they're simple mixtures where you have two people's DNA and the person you're trying to identify is the majority. Say the suspect, the rapist is 90% and the victim is 10%. That's really straightforward because you have the victim's DNA, you can extract out that DNA profile and you're left with this majority suspect profile. When you are dealing with complex mixtures, that either means there are multiple people, three or more, or the person you're trying to identify is by far the minority. So the scientists where I work at Parabon can go down to 40%, which is actually pretty groundbreaking. They can deconvolute or separate out the perpetrator's DNA if he's at least 40% of that sample. But if you have three, four, five people, right, and everyone's only providing 20% or 10%, 15%, that's really not doable for investigative genetic genealogy right now. And so that's where we could see the most progress. And I think with scientists, academics, forensic scientists, all really excited about what we're doing now. That's why we're seeing so much forward motion. We've seen a tremendous amount of advancement just since the Golden State Killer was identified through investigative genetic genealogy in 2018. We needed quite a lot of DNA at that time, and now we need just the tiniest amount. And that's thanks to our scientists. That's not something the genealogists can help push forward. So we're reliant on the scientists to push the technology forward and the techniques in the lab. But I do need to make one distinction here, which is when you're in court and you're hearing about mixtures, they are talking about STR profiles, short tandem repeats, which is what is admissible in court. That is the type of DNA that law enforcement has used for decades. That's the type of DNA that you always hear about in court, because, one, that's what's been used, and two, that's what is admissible as evidence. That's what's used to arrest somebody, charge someone, convict someone of a crime. That's a totally different type of DNA than what we use for investigative genetic genealogy. So they often can deal with complex mixtures for STR profiles. There are many, many years of historical advancements on that side, because that's what's been of interest, right? STR profiles are what have been helping get criminals off the streets for decades. And so there are a lot of scientists who've worked on mixture deconvolution packages, software packages that can help law enforcement to separate out those mixtures in their criminal labs. And so this is totally different. This is a different type of DNA that we use. So our profiles are made up of single nucleotide polymorphisms, or we call them SNPs. And so that's a whole different technique and science to deconvolute that type of DNA mixture. And so you can't really compare the two. The STR mixtures have had decades to be worked on. Developed refined SNP profiles have only been used in law enforcement for a relatively short time, less than 10 years. And so the techniques to deconvolute mixtures are still new and are still being developed.

Ashley Banfield (21:30)

Can I ask you if I were in fifth grade, because that's sort of how I think. What's the difference between the STRs and the SNP?

Podcast Host (21:40)

They're just a different type of genetic marker, a different type of DNA. When you test someone, you can test their STRs, or you can test their SNPs, their SNPs. The SNPs are. How do I say this? The SNPs are locations on your genome that vary widely between people, because, as you know, 99.9% of our DNA is the same. So when you're looking at the SNPs, you're looking at the ones that mutate more quickly and that vary between you and me and, you know, someone over there, and that helps us to identify someone. STRs are how many times something is repeated, the short tandem repeats. So that's where you're seeing maybe there's eight repeats at that location or 10 repeats. So it's really just a different type of DNA, and it's. There's not really any reason for us to get too technical about it if we're talking to, you know, an eighth grader. Right. If that's what you want.

Ashley Banfield (22:43)

Well, I always say fifth, because I think the eighth graders are smarter than that. But I'm curious that we're just not there yet with SNP research and development. But at some point, is it going to be as good as what STR has been in the last, you know, five, six decades?

Podcast Host (22:59)

Well, in my opinion, it's much better because we are able to broaden the search. Right. With STRs, they're using just a small number of them. 20, traditionally, you still may be 13, as you probably know, and that has worked great for its usage. But that means there's been a lot of cold cases, there's been a lot of violent criminals who've left their DNA behind at a crime scene but have not been identified. So SNP profiles, because we look at hundreds of thousands of those genetic markers in genetic genealogy, we can find their cousins. Right. And we've all seen that we've been able to reverse engineer the identity of these people from their distant cousins. So to me, SNP profiling is actually far superior. Another example is if there's a missing person, if we find unidentified human remains or what's commonly known as Jane or John Does. Traditionally, you have to have a first degree relative, so a parent, child or full sibling to identify that person. Legally, they don't always exist. Mom and dad might have died, this person might have died before they ever had children. They might not have any living siblings. And so now we're able to use SNP profiles to close those cases, not only to identify that unknown individual, but then to let to have the medical examiners rule it's legally closed. That legal identification has always been through strs. And so a lot of those cases just sat, even if they thought they knew who it was. Now, if we write up these very conclusive reports using SNP profiles saying we've got a first cousin on each side of this person's family, for instance, or we have their maternal aunt, some medical examiners are willing to take that now in addition to the other evidence to close those cases. So it really just broadens what we're able to do with a DNA profile. And so I think we'll be moving more and more towards SNP profiles in the future. It's just, it's so ingrained in law enforcement and the courts to use STRs. And so I don't see them moving away from that soon or totally. But I think SNP profiles will be used more and more. And we've seen that even we had a case where we were able to narrow it down to twins, and that was as far as we could get because they had identical DNA through traditional methods of comparison. So STRs, their STRs were exactly the same, same. But Dr. Janet, Katie, one of our brilliant scientists at Parabon, was able to find novel mutations, so small differences in the full genome of this person looking at their SNPs. And she was able to say it's more likely this twin than this one. And the court accepted that as identification for the very first time in history. This just happened a few months ago. And so once courts start accepting snake snip profiles for identification, that changes the game. And we've seen that a couple of times now also with rootless hairs that didn't have an STR profile. We recently saw that.

Ashley Banfield (26:08)

I'm going to get back to a rootless hair in a moment because that's on my mind about what's going on in Florida. But back to the egghead conference where you guys all talk about stuff none of us understand, if you had to wager a guess on what kind of tech they're working on, that they're going to roll up next year, or what would it pertain to? Not suggesting we know what the tech is, but where's the real friction point in your industry where everybody's trying to get this. This piece of the Holy Grail? Like, where do you suppose that might be?

Podcast Host (26:35)

I think it must be the mixture deconvolution. And I think that is. There's two reasons for that. There's really only two options that I can see, and that would be a more advanced software package to work on more complex mixtures or some type of equipment that is really sensitive, that can pick up tiny amounts of DNA. But we've already seen tremendous advancements in that area with the M Vac, for instance. And in this case, it doesn't seem as relevant to me because if you're picking up really tiny amounts of DNA or finding really degraded DNA, that's less likely to be relevant in an active case like this. And you're much more likely to get someone's DNA who is not your suspect. And so if this is something they're really excited about, to me, that leans more in the direction of the mixture issue. And this is, you know, such an issue in the field. We've had a lot of success solving cases with mixtures because we get them all the time with sexual assault cases. But I wouldn't say that that's been true across the whole field. We've definitely been a bit ahead of the game because of our really brilliant bioinformatics scientists at Parabon. And they had a jump on others because they started working with mixtures way back in, I think it was 2014, when they pioneered using SNP profiles for forensic purposes because they were using SNPs to predict someone's physical traits. When you see those images that are created just from the DNA, the hair color, eye color, cell, skin color, shape, face, that's using SNP profiles because you need more information from the DNA than you can get from an STR profile. So they started working with those before investigative genetic genealogy was even a thing. And so they had kind of a jump on everybody else.

Ashley Banfield (28:29)

Quick question about the mixtures, because you said something that sort of sounded interesting to me in that I didn't expect it. The mixtures that are too tricky to solve are when the contributor is 40% or below. Is that what you said?

Podcast Host (28:41)

Yes.

Ashley Banfield (28:41)

Okay, that seems like a lot to me, but 40% isn't.

Podcast Host (28:47)

I think we are able. I said, as I said, at Parabon, they're able to work with 40% or above for that perpetrator it for a case like this. I'm sure they would try. If it was say 30%, they would, because they're making advancements all the time. With what?

Ashley Banfield (29:04)

That still sounds like a lot, though. Like I was thinking, you know, oh, well, if it's only point point zero one percent of a contributor, it's too hard. But I mean, 30 to 40% to the layperson, that's like really, to my

Podcast Host (29:16)

knowledge, Parabon's the only one who will even work with a 40 mixture. Most labs or all the other labs I'm aware of, say at least 50% or more. And so you, you'd probably be surprised if you went to one of these labs and said, I've got a mixture that's 50, 50. They might even say no, because we've had a lot of people come to us who had been turned down other places. I mean, the issue is if you are going to perform genetic genealogy, right, you need those, at least the majority of those SNPs, those genetic markers, to be from your unknown suspect. And so if it's a minority of that mixture, that becomes more and more difficult. We can work with quite a few of those missing. I've helped, like the Angie Dodge case in Idaho Falls, Idaho, that I worked on. We only had 61% of the SNPs that we normally have because we had a low call rate. A call rate is how much of the DNA or how many of those SNPs you were able to call, you were able to get the values for. So if, if, you know, I'm sure at DNA Labs International they're trying everything they can. They're a great lab. And so I'm sure they've tried, even if those proportions are not optimal, even if they do have only 30%.

Ashley Banfield (30:41)

But can I ask you about the. Well, listen, I'm going to ask you to read some tea leaves only because I cannot imagine what sort of men mixture they got. We are unaware that there's blood or semen or anything like that, that those are the big obvious ones in, in, you know, we know this is the guy, we just have to find the guy. We don't know that the mixture they have is even the guy at this point.

Podcast Host (31:10)

And so it's not only two people. Usually two people would be considered a simple mixture. It's when you get three or more that it's complex. Now, as I said, if your perpetrator was only 10%, you've still got a challenge. But complex mixtures implies there's three or More so I think there could be four people.

Ashley Banfield (31:31)

Where do you find things like. Where would you find mixtures like that? Because I'm thinking a toothbrush has one, unless someone borrows it. I'm thinking a Kleenex has one. Unless somebody was rooting around in the trash. Where would you find a complex mixture like the one they might be sampling right now?

Podcast Host (31:44)

Well, I think it's, you know, transfer DNA, or what's commonly known as touch DNA. It is something that was touched probably with that glove after he took out the bite.

Ashley Banfield (31:58)

That's what I think, the bite light, or whatever they call it, if it is a bite light. I think it is. It looks like.

Podcast Host (32:03)

I mean, we've kind of assumed it was. And when we're talking about this, that that's the best chance of getting that perpetrator's DNA is if he took that out of his mouth. I can't imagine for 42 minutes he would keep it in his mouth. So then if he touched somewhere in Nancy's home, where many other people had touched, like, say, a doorknob, for instance, if he touched a doorknob with that glove, it would have some of his DNA on it, even if he just scratched his nose or adjusted that mask he had on.

Ashley Banfield (32:34)

And by the way, people do that, they put gloves on and then they still touch their. They touch their steering wheels, they touch their car seats, they touch their seat belts, they. They touch their car door, maybe even their own door.

Podcast Host (32:46)

So.

Ashley Banfield (32:47)

Yeah, and then they touch them and they scratch their face or their hair, you know. Yeah.

Podcast Host (32:50)

I mean. Yeah, even like with Coburger, right. He was so careful, but then he left a sheath that he had touched the snap. Right. Without gloves. And so this person could touch their gun holster that they touched before they had gloves on or something, you know, along those lines. Or if they pulled a gun on Nancy, for instance, a gun maybe that they hadn't fully wiped down, for instance, touching before without gloves. So it might just be skin cells, you know, a tiny amount of DNA that's mixed on a surface of her home that many other people have touched over the weeks or months or whenever the last time something was thoroughly cleaned. So I think that is likely what we're looking at here. If he had drip saliva, for instance, on the ground, that's less likely to be a complex mixture. Right. There might be some things that people dragged in from their shoes, but that's a pretty good source of DNA. So I don't think that is what they found. But again, it's all Speculation. Right.

Ashley Banfield (33:51)

Yeah. No, I, because we know so little, and I think the deputies know so little as well. But I keep going back to the things we know that he touched. We know he had to have touched. We know we saw him touching the, the nest cam and the mount because he's got his fat hands on it and wrenching it. I mean, I'm angry when I talk about this guy. I think everybody else feels the same way. They probably don't mind my F bombs. But, you know, he's wrenching on that camera and then he's, you know, using, I believe he's using the, the twig to get between the camera and the mount to yank it off. Maybe he isn't. Whatever, but he's messing with it with his disgusting hands. So we know he touched the mount, we know he touched the camera. We don't have the camera, but we have the mount and they took it off the wall. And then we started hearing about DNA. I believe after that, I'll go back to my notes, but I believe we started hearing about DNA.

Podcast Host (34:38)

I think that's a great theory. Yeah. I didn't realize they'd taken them out,

Ashley Banfield (34:41)

but that makes perfect they finally took them out. But it took them weeks. It was up there for about two or maybe three weeks till they finally took the mount off and they, and I think that was after they saw him do his business, you know, but they had to have known he was there because he took the damn camera. So he didn't have to have the video to know that he'd messed with it. Then we also know, as has been proven out, I had a source that told me on day three, back door wide open. Savannah has confirmed back doors propped open. So we know he had to have touched something on that door or doors to get in. So whether it was a handle or pulled on it or whatever it was.

Podcast Host (35:21)

And how often do you clean the outdoor handle of your back doors? Probably not very often, right?

Ashley Banfield (35:28)

How about never?

Podcast Host (35:29)

Yeah. And so that supposed to wait, cc, I, I, I don't, I haven't either. But maybe if, you know, you're a germ phobic person and you go in and out, you might think to wipe it down, but likely that would be a great source for a complex mixture

Ashley Banfield (35:47)

because, honestly, think about it. No one touches your door handle if they don't belong to the house. You know, like your FedEx guy's not gonna touch your door handle necessarily. They might, but it's unlikely. So the people who touch your front door handle are gonna Be your family, you, your friends, maybe a guest who stayed there, you know, however long ago.

Podcast Host (36:09)

But generally speaking, maybe a gardener possibly. And you'd think they would know those people, as you're saying, but. But do they know every single person that Nancy ever hired to work on or help with her home since she lived alone? I still think it's very possible they don't know every person. I mean, you could go back through her financial records, hopefully there'd be checks or something. But maybe she paid with cash sometimes. And so maybe they've got two unknown males. I think they have to have at least two unknown males because if not, they could the Y chromosome. So the Y chromosome is the DNA that men get from their father who got it from his father. Father, father, father. And you could learn a lot about this person's background even if you couldn't identify them from that Y chromosome. And maybe they've done that. You know, it can often tell you the surname of a male because that Y chromosome is passed down in the same pattern as surnames in many population groups, but not all. And so for instance, the Hispanic population group, they take mom's and dad's last name and they have a different naming pattern. So it probably wouldn't give you their surname if it was a Hispanic person, but if it was somebody who had deep roots in say, northwest Europe, you very possibly could get their surname from that Y chromosome. And sometimes that works in cases where there's nothing else to work with. So I suspect they must have at least two Y chromosomes or they would have already been going down that road and probably already told us at least the population group that that person's father's father's father's line comes from.

Ashley Banfield (37:48)

So let me ask you if presumably Nancy's daughter Annie and her husband Tommaso, they're going to use that door in their regular course of interaction with their mom and mom in law. And then of course, Nancy's going to use that front door, maybe a couple of her friends, if, and I assume the police have gone and they've, they've gotten the DNA from her direct circle of friends to compare it. If you have all those, those DNA profiles, is it easier to deal with that mixture because you're just canceling out the ones you can see, or when it's mixed like that and you've got 10%, 10%, 10%, 10%, 10%, you can't even match the ones you know, it

Podcast Host (38:29)

starts becoming a real jumble. It's made the SNPs are a T, Cs and GS that make up our DNA. So you either have an, you know, an A there, a T, C or G. When you start getting too many people's profiles, it's just a jumble of those letters. And it gets harder and harder to know which goes where. So there have been a lot of studies done that allow them to predict if you have an A at this location, then you may have G or whatever at this location. Because population groups tend to have patterns in their DNA, the way it lines up. And so they can use that to a certain degree to predict this A goes with this G and this A goes with this T, and so on. But if it's just too many people, I think that is going to become extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Ashley Banfield (39:23)

So what about, what about the last guy to touch the door handle? So, for instance, many people have touched the door handle, but the last guy, he's all over it. Does that help? Does that make it.

Podcast Host (39:35)

Yeah, it should be that that person is the majority contributor. But if this is a second person, for instance, not the guy that we saw with the possible bite light. Right. Who hadn't touched his face yet or had just a tiny amount of his DNA on the outside of those gloves, then there's probably not going to be much of his DNA there. So even if he's the last one to touch it, he has to actually have some DNA to place there. And if that was the beginning of the crime being committed, maybe he didn't have any DNA yet, or maybe he had just a super tiny amount of DNA on those gloves. As the time went on, I would believe that they would have more and more DNA that has been transferred onto their gloves. Because like we just talked about, you're gonna touch something, right, but you're gonna

Ashley Banfield (40:26)

move your mask over because the holes aren't lining up for your eyes. So you're gonna just move it over.

Podcast Host (40:31)

Yeah, you're sweating. You know, there's certainly ways that you would be able to transfer DNA, but at what point in the crime? I would think it would be. Be later when they're leaving, that you would have a better opportunity of detecting that person.

Ashley Banfield (40:46)

I don't know. He was working pretty hard outside that house to, you know, conceal things by

Podcast Host (40:50)

smacking the front, right? Yeah, but is he smacking the camera one who went in the back door, though?

Ashley Banfield (40:57)

And, well, that, I mean, look, a lot of people think that there might be two perpetrators. I don't. That's just my own personal theory. I see the same went around the back. And, yeah, I, I, I think he. My just, my personal opinion is that I think he came to the front door to get rid of that camera. Whether he smashed it off its mount, broke it off its mount, yanked it off its mount. There were glass shards up, according to Fox, found down below, and it's gone. So he got it off its mount, and I think he planned to bring her out that front door because she's bleeding all the way down the front door. The path. She's bleeding inside. According to my source as well, she's bleeding inside at the front door. So the front foyer, you know, just in the front. The pattern of blood drops, according to my source, in, in the front foyer of her home, is the same as the pattern that goes over the threshold of the front door and out onto the front entrance of the tiled, you know, entrance of her home, and then down that gravel pathway and stops at the driveway. So I think, I think his plan was to break in through the back, because you're not getting through that front door. There's no way come in through the back. And our sources also told us that the Guthrie kids told the police. Police that Nancy Guthrie rarely locked her back doors.

Podcast Host (42:05)

Oh, no.

Ashley Banfield (42:06)

Yeah, so. So he's come in through the back. Now, we know that my source was accurate when they said back door wide open. And however he got Nancy out of there, he then gets her out the front door and into a waiting car. But he's, he's made sure to, to take out the camera. So you're not seeing all of that.

Podcast Host (42:25)

I wonder if.

Ashley Banfield (42:25)

My guess, anyway, I, I wonder if

Podcast Host (42:28)

he made her open the door, because if he did, I would expect he would be the majority contributor on that door handle.

Ashley Banfield (42:37)

You mean on the front door, like, as they're leaving the voice out.

Podcast Host (42:39)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you know, was it like this kind of door handle or was it like this kind?

Ashley Banfield (42:45)

I think it's. I don't have to look at it. I think it's circular. But she may have been incapacitated. We don't know.

Podcast Host (42:51)

Yeah, yeah, I.

Ashley Banfield (42:53)

And we know. But Cece, we know she's bleeding, so, so we know she's hurt in some way.

Podcast Host (42:57)

Yeah. Which I hope means she fought back, tried to fight back. That's so often the answer to these cases, because that's when you get DNA from the perpetrator. So everyone should always fight back if they're able, because that is often what solves the case in the end. And, you know, getting DNA under fingernails, for instance, is huge. I'm sure you've heard that many times.

Ashley Banfield (43:18)

Many times. And I don't know if an 84 year old woman will fight back, but I do know that they know she's on blood thinners likely and with her conditions and, and her skin is probably like my mom, so tissue papery that you know, you bump into something and you can bleed. You know, if you're, if you're in your 80s, it can be very, very easy to bleed even with a harsh grab, you know, that kind of thing. So she might not even have fought back. But, but I am fascinated to hear that the door handle might be the place. I swear there's no way you could put a bite light into your mouth without those grubby little fingers getting something

Podcast Host (43:54)

on them and holding. I mean you wouldn't hold it in there. That would be very uncomfortable. I can't even imagine.

Ashley Banfield (43:59)

Well, not if you're giving verbal commands. It's got to come out. Fingers have to take it out or you have to spit it out. And then it's on those gloves. It's all of those gloves. There's more DNA somewhere in that. He had to have touched other things and thought he was fine cuz he was wearing gloves. But there's got to be, I think,

Podcast Host (44:16)

and I had talked about this publicly and there was these interviews saying that I was giving the FBI advice. I was not giving the FBI advice. All I was saying is I too agree with you that there had to be more DNA there. And I was hoping that if law enforcement hadn't did not find a viable profile that they would go back and re swab and you know, look around and even look for a rootless hair. Just any hair, root or rootless can solve the case. Case.

Ashley Banfield (44:42)

And that's what you reminded me of because I've got it written down. Ask her about rootless hair. Ask her about any hairs like a beard hair, anything. Because let's not forget he's got some goatee going on there. And those little ski masks aren't meant to be used in a hospital. They're meant for warmth. And so they're rubbing up against your face and presumably they might be loosening some hairs and they might be able to fall out below if there's a, a rootless hair that's part of that they found anywhere in that home. That wouldn't be what we're talking about as a mixture. It would it.

Podcast Host (45:14)

No it wouldn't. And it would be solvable if they have that. And that is thanks to the brilliance of Dr. Ed Green from UC Santa Cruz, because again, we were told, you will never get DNA, usable DNA from rootless hair. And he proved everybody wrong. And he developed a method to extract. Extract DNA snips, specifically a snip profile from rootless hair. And we've been able to solve a number of cases already that that is the only physical evidence they had even a pubic hair. Excuse me, but you know, that's not that different from a beard hair. So if we're able to do it with a pubic hair, you certainly could do it with a beard type hair or mustache type hair or even an eyebrow, I would imagine. I haven't heard of that yet, but I can't imagine why not.

Ashley Banfield (46:00)

I find it hard to believe that there isn't something there. I mean, we're shedding all the time. And if he did all these terrible things in this home, I just feel as though. It just seems as though there would be. And I just. Who knows if they did the right collection, who knows if they knew what they were doing? And who knows if the. Might have been a hair, but it took. Took it found its flight out of that home on the bottom of someone's shoe.

Podcast Host (46:22)

Yeah. How do you find a single hair, you know, from somebody with short hair or from a beard? It would take a lot of luck for that crime scene investigator to have found that. And so even if they're very experienced and very thorough, I think it's highly possible they could have missed something. And not even through any fault of their own, just that that is such a challenge. And current crime scene investigators need to know now just how important those hairs are. In the past, they were useless if they. They didn't have the root. And so they might not have been looking for that type of hair as much as now they should be. Yeah, you know, I'm hoping that they're getting training in that and they're being made aware that that can't be what solves the case.

Ashley Banfield (47:06)

And we know that Nancy was taken from her bed, therefore he had to have been close to her bed, and there wouldn't be short beard hairs near her bed from anybody likely, except for a guy like this. Or if she's got a male cleaner, maybe, who knows? But it would just seem like such a natural if that happened.

Podcast Host (47:29)

Do you know if there was blood in the bedroom?

Ashley Banfield (47:33)

My source told me the only blood was at the front entrance, meaning inside the house, in the front foyer, over the threshold of the front door, and out towards the path. But. And they were Identical. The pattern is identical both inside and outside.

Podcast Host (47:51)

Very well could be from, like you said, grabbing her at that point and trying to get her to leave the home. And. Yeah, that's kind of unfortunate. I would. I had hoped there might be blood in the bedroom, because if there was more of a struggle there, there's a greater likelihood he would leave his DNA in that bed or maybe on that bedside table. If she had. That was somewhere I could see. See him bracing himself or touching. And so, you know, who knows? She might have gotten out of bed when she heard something, and they might not have even seen each other until she was out of bed, because I know we've heard. Taken from her bed, but then they walked back.

Ashley Banfield (48:30)

Well, you're right about that. And let me tell you something again, at this Sheriff Nanos, he was the one who said it. And then when it was actually published, he then came back and said, I didn't think you were going to take me literally. I'm walking that back. So everybody walked back until Savannah put out her Instagram a couple weeks later, saying, my mother was taken from her bed in the dark of night. And then yesterday on the Today show, in her interview with Hodakoti, said, my mother was taken in her pajamas, in her bare feet, you know, no shoes. So it's pretty clear at this point that Sheriff Nanos messed with us at the beginning, told us, then untold us. And Savannah's told us, you know, multiple times now. So it appears she was taken from her bed. And again, that guy's got a gun. So it doesn't take a lot to get someone to move at gunpoint, but dark.

Podcast Host (49:20)

I mean. Yeah, how would you even know they had a gun?

Ashley Banfield (49:25)

Unless they've got it out and they're holding it and maybe, you know, what. Light switch. If he did it, who knows, you know?

Podcast Host (49:30)

Oh, well, there's a great place to look for DNA. I'm sure they looked.

Ashley Banfield (49:34)

I hope so. And you know what else I hope they did? I hope they check the fridge doors. Because you and I know enough sick criminals that get themselves a snack or a drink either in the middle of or before they perpetrate their crimes.

Podcast Host (49:46)

I mean, the toilet. I mean, there's a number of. We've solved where they. The perpetrator used the toilet or spit in the toilet, and that ended up solving the case. So hopefully, I'm sure they knew to swab all of those surfaces. The toilet seat, you know, the. Everything, the. The faucet in there. Who knows? Maybe, you know, the guy Needed a quick drink of water and used the faucet to, to get a little bit with his hand.

Ashley Banfield (50:12)

I mean, you hope they did. There's a lot that's happened in this that makes me shake my head.

Podcast Host (50:17)

42 minutes, right? He was in there.

Ashley Banfield (50:20)

I just hard to tell. I mean, look, it's really hard to tell how long he was in there because what we all we know is 1:47am the camera disconnects. We don't know which camera. Maybe we can assume that's when the camera breaks off from the front mount. And then at 2:12am a person is detected on camera. So it's, it's disconnected. But then a person connects and then at 2:28, her pacemaker separates from her Apple devices, which is likely the time that she was taken. But it is hard to know in between any of that. How much time did he actually spend, spend in the house? How much time did he spend outside breaking things and smashing things?

Podcast Host (50:58)

I just can't imagine, you know, any significant amount of time inside. 30 minutes, 20 minutes, you are going to leave your DNA behind no matter how hard you try not to. And it really is just a matter of finding that and collecting that DNA. And so I don't think there's a question of whether he left DNA. I think that he absolutely left some sort of DNA. But is it findable? You know, is it detectable through standard collection methods? That is the question. And so, you know, we know they opened the home back up relatively quickly, but.

Ashley Banfield (51:36)

Oh, relatively extremely quickly. 30 hours. Ish.

Podcast Host (51:40)

But didn't they just allow the family in, you know, known people into the home?

Ashley Banfield (51:45)

Sure, because it belongs to them. But the outside of the home, reporters and delivery guys and pizza people and flower deliveries, they were all walking up on down that front porch area, right where the blood was and right where the bracket for the nest cam still was. Never took the half moon foot carpet from the welcome mat from the front door. Never took it, to my knowledge. Never took it.

Liberty Mutual Spokesperson (52:10)

It.

Podcast Host (52:11)

Yeah, that seems concerning. I always hesitate to criticize law enforcement because a lot of times I've been working a case and heard the public criticizing and knew it wasn't deserved. So I'm, as I said, very slow to do that. But it does seem concerning that they didn't take the doormat, that they didn't take the mount until you said a couple of weeks later.

Ashley Banfield (52:32)

I'll criticize them for you, Cece. You're right about that. They didn't take the mount for a couple of weeks. They didn't take the doormat, I think, ever. And they didn't take the flower detritus from beneath the. The mount, which makes me assume they also did take the fragments of glass that Michael Ruiz from Fox News reported he saw beneath the nest camera mount. So I'll criticize them for you. That's there.

Podcast Host (52:57)

I think that was the best chance of having saliva dipped dripping because he had. If he had that bite light in his mouth, which we think he did, and he leaned forward to try to take that camera off, it's almost impossible, I think, not to have a little bit of saliva then land on that cement below. So I hope they, you know, they thought to swab that. But of course, they didn't have the footage yet, so it might not have occurred to them.

Ashley Banfield (53:26)

Didn't matter. They knew he'd been there. They knew he'd gotten that camera off its mount. They knew the. That on day one. That was one of the big things. Camera's missing, blood on the step, back door wide open. Oh, Nancy's gone. Something horrible's happened here. So they knew that he'd been at that front messing with that camera. I just so shocked that they didn't take them out. And you're right, he would have had to have touched it in some way. We saw him touching it, you know, we saw it.

Podcast Host (53:56)

Yeah. I just, I've never had one of those bite lights in my mouth, but I just imagine it's very easy to slobber.

Ashley Banfield (54:02)

I. Well, I know you got to put it in there and I know you got to take it out. If you're going to. You're going to demand something. If you're going to command someone verbally, you got to take that bite light out, you know.

Podcast Host (54:10)

But I mean, when he was trying to disable the camera and he was leaning forward.

Ashley Banfield (54:15)

Yeah.

Podcast Host (54:15)

I just feel like it's very likely that he might have slobbered a little

Ashley Banfield (54:19)

or maybe those shards of glass below might have some of that DNA on it from the. The mucking about before you actually got it separated.

Podcast Host (54:28)

Well, and certainly the mount, like you mentioned, I mean, in order to get enough force to remove the camera, it certainly seems you would have to brace yourself with that. So maybe that is where we're seeing the mixture from, though. I just can't imagine many people would have touched that camera mount. And so. And maybe, you know, maybe he didn't have as much DNA on his gloves at that point. Point.

Ashley Banfield (54:51)

Because that a lot of people, A lot of people touch the. The ring doorbell on that Nest cam. Right. They'll. They'll touch it.

Podcast Host (55:00)

Oh, is it the same?

Ashley Banfield (55:01)

But who knows where his is located? So you're right. It could be on that. It could be on the door handle. But it's, it's or light switch.

Podcast Host (55:08)

Like you mentioned, the light switch is

Ashley Banfield (55:09)

a great DNA if you used it. Yeah. You know, if there's one thing this conversation has done, it is deconvolution. This story for me because of you.

Podcast Host (55:20)

Good use of the new vocab word.

Ashley Banfield (55:24)

I get smarter by the minute when you show up. Thank you so much for this.

Podcast Host (55:26)

Oh, thank you for having me. I wish we knew more, but we'll just keep plugging along and you seem to be a great source of information.

Ashley Banfield (55:33)

Well, I keep trying. It's only because of people like you. So thanks again.

Podcast Host (55:36)

Thank you.

Ashley Banfield (55:38)

So there you have it. Really fascinating. And I really hope that the lab in Florida is able to do what Pima county sheriffs have not been able to do, and that is solve this case if they could do what we know has been done before. Or at least we believe has been done before. Taken something awful and made it make sense and then led to a suspect. Well, I hope he's shaking in his shoes right now, you know, because they often say in true crime, you can run, but you can't. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you for listening and thank you for watching. And remember, the truth isn't just serious, it's drop dead serious.

Liberty Mutual Spokesperson (56:23)

And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

Liberty Mutual Spokesperson's Partner (56:33)

Hey everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?

Liberty Mutual Spokesperson (56:36)

Oh, no. We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

Liberty Mutual Spokesperson's Partner (56:43)

Yeah, the bird looks out of your

Liberty Mutual Spokesperson (56:44)

league anyways, only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty.

Liberty Mutual Spokesperson's Partner (56:49)

Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.

Alex Canceroitz (56:51)

Hi, this is Alex Canceroitz. I'm the host of Big Technology podcast, a longtime reporter and an on air contributor to cnbc. And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how the all artificial intelligence is changing the business world and our lives. So each week on Big Technology, I bring on key actors from companies building AI tech and outsiders trying to influence it, asking where this is all going. They come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices in meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties. Listen to Big Technology Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.