Breaking: Location of Blood Inside Nancy Guthrie's Home Revealed | Nancy Guthrie Missing Update

Summary

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Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield

Episode: Breaking: Location of Blood Inside Nancy Guthrie's Home Revealed | Nancy Guthrie Missing Update
Date: March 25, 2026

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Overview

This episode of "Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield" centers on the mysterious disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, a case now more than 50 days old. Ashleigh Banfield shares a new investigative breakthrough: the precise location of blood found inside Nancy Guthrie's home. Banfield, leveraging her journalistic connections, brings on Dr. Peter Valentin, a seasoned forensic and bloodstain pattern expert from the University of New Haven, to dissect the crime scene findings and what they might indicate about the crime. The episode also explores the embattled position of Sheriff Chris Nanos amid growing criticism about how the investigation has been handled.

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Key Topics & Insights

1. New Evidence: Blood Inside Nancy Guthrie's Home

Timestamp: 01:30–07:30

• Ashleigh reports, via her sources, new information about blood being found inside the home, specifically in the front entrance/hallway.
• Prior to this, the presence of blood outside the threshold was public, but the precise indoor location had not been revealed.
• The blood trail starts inside the front entrance and continues outside, described as a “dripping pattern” that matches the outside stains.
• The discovery raises new questions about where and how the assault or abduction began.

Notable Quote

"Now I know where the blood is inside the house. And it is a fascinating piece of data because it is right in the front entrance of the home."
—Ashleigh Banfield (06:03)

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2. Details of Entry and Doors

Timestamp: 04:30–07:00

• Multiple back doors were often left unlocked by Nancy Guthrie, but one back door was found “wide open” on the morning of her disappearance.
• There is uncertainty whether a sliding door on the side was also unlocked, but reporting emphasizes a back door, rather than a side slider, being wide open.

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3. Sheriff Nanos and Investigation Controversies

Timestamp: 10:30–13:50; 17:24–20:13

• Sheriff Chris Nanos is facing significant scrutiny for the handling of the Guthrie investigation.
• In interviews, Nanos now claims no regret for releasing the crime scene early, though Banfield plays a prior clip (11:55) where he did express regret:

  “Monday morning quarterback. Absolutely. I probably could have held off on that.” —Sheriff Nanos (11:55)

• Nanos continues to publicly plead for Guthrie’s safe return, seemingly presuming she’s still alive.
• The Board of Supervisors meeting includes a “no confidence” declaration from the lead deputies' union and calls for a recall and investigation into Nanos’ alleged concealed misconduct from decades earlier.

Notable Quote

"His past renders him unfit to wear the badge."
—Sgt. Aaron Cross, Pima County Deputies' Union (18:22)

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4. Blood Pattern Analysis with Dr. Peter Valentin

Timestamp: 22:34–76:18

a. Type and Location of Bloodstains

• Blood drops both inside and outside the front entrance are drip stains: vertical, undisturbed drops falling with gravity, not splatter from a violent struggle.
• Significance: The pattern’s continuity from inside to outside suggests Nancy was injured prior to reaching the door, and her movement was “slow” or “stationary” at the threshold for “not insignificant” time.

Notable Quote

“The spacing of the droplets is generally what tells me something about the speed of the event... There’s definitely a not insignificant amount of time.”
—Dr. Peter Valentin (35:43, 45:23)

b. Interpretation of the Blood Trail

• Drip stains do not pinpoint where the assault happened. The absence of blood in other rooms (e.g., bedroom) does not rule out an attack elsewhere—blood may start dripping only after a delay.
• Entry wound could have occurred earlier, and bleeding could begin later as blood soaks through clothes or begins to drip.

Notable Quote

"Finding blood on the inside of the threshold doesn't mean she wasn't first attacked in the bedroom."
—Dr. Peter Valentin (28:15)

c. Movement & Perpetrator Actions

• Quantity and undisturbed nature of droplets suggest Nancy may have been carried or walked slowly, not dragged, with possible pauses at the threshold.
• Valentin comments on the possibility, suggested by Ashleigh, that Nancy was carried over the perpetrator’s shoulder with blood trailing behind.
• Speculation that if perpetrator carried Nancy, there should be blood on the back of their clothing.

Notable Quote

"That would be a treasure trove of potential trace evidence... a carpet fiber from the vehicle... mud from his home..."
—Ashleigh Banfield & Dr. Peter Valentin on the welcome mat (63:48–64:23)

d. Nature of the Injury

• Judging by the blood pattern, Valentin suggests the injury was not necessarily grave or lethal—consistent with minor or non-fatal injuries, especially given Nancy’s age (84) and likely blood thinners.
• No evidence-based way to determine if Nancy was alive or dead when blood dropped, though Valentin leans slightly toward her being alive due to gravity-driven bleeding.

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5. Assessment of the Investigation

Timestamp: 73:45–76:18

• Valentin discusses the importance of letting the crime scene "tell its story.” Mistakes are more likely when investigations are rushed, especially under media and public scrutiny.
• He is critical of potential missed opportunities and the early release of the scene, emphasizing the role of forensic evidence in leading, not lagging, this particular investigation.

Notable Quote

“They let the house go too quickly... I would have held that house for as long as I possibly could, particularly because this is one of those very few cases where forensic evidence is leading the investigation.”
—Dr. Peter Valentin (74:48)

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6. Community and Public Response

Timestamp: 17:24–20:13

• The case and its handling have inflamed local sentiment. Public outcry at the board meeting includes allegations of long-concealed misconduct by the sheriff and a unified no-confidence vote from the deputies’ union.
• There’s talk of launching an official investigation into whether Nanos lied under oath.

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7. Memorable Moments & Tone

• Ashleigh’s irreverent, direct style is evident throughout:

  “What made you un-regret it? I don’t know.” (12:51)
  “We will absolutely bring the full force of Pima county and Arizona and the federal government down on your sorry stinking ass.” (13:46)

• Dr. Valentin’s calm, methodical approach balances Ashleigh’s urgency and frustration.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• Blood location revelation:
  "Now I know where the blood is inside the house. And it is a fascinating piece of data..." —Ashleigh Banfield (06:03)
• Sheriff’s changing tune:
  "I probably would have. But I'll say this. We processed the scene. We did..." —Sheriff Nanos (11:55)
• Union’s scathing assessment:
  "His past renders him unfit to wear the badge." —Sgt. Aaron Cross (18:22)
• Blood pattern insight:
  "They're what we refer to... as drip stains. And drip stains are probably the most common stains that we see..." —Dr. Peter Valentin (22:34)
• Scene investigation critique:
  “They let the house go too quickly.” —Dr. Peter Valentin (74:48)

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Key Takeaways

• Breakthrough Detail: Blood was found inside the front entrance, continuing outside, with a distinct drip pattern—challenging some previously held theories.
• Crime Scene Interpretation: The absence of blood in other areas does not localize the attack; the drip pattern mostly indicates slow/stationary movement and some pause at the threshold.
• Injury Severity: Blood loss pattern does not necessarily indicate a fatal injury; bleeding could occur from relatively minor wounds, especially in the elderly or those on blood thinners.
• Criticism of Police Response: Sheriff Nanos is under fire for prior professional conduct and choices made in the investigation, particularly the early release of the scene.
• Ongoing Uncertainty: Dr. Valentin emphasizes the limits of science without full access and cautions against rushing to conclusions when evaluating complex crime scenes.

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For Listeners Who Missed the Episode

This episode provides a nuanced, deeply-reported update on the Nancy Guthrie disappearance—focusing on physical evidence inside the home that had gone previously unreported. Through forensic analysis, Banfield and Dr. Valentin challenge common assumptions about the crime scene, stress the importance of slow, methodical investigative work, and highlight the mounting political fallout from perceived investigative missteps. Banfield’s signature no-nonsense style ensures listeners get both the facts and the pulse of the controversy—in the Guthrie case and in Pima County law enforcement.

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Transcript

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[Ashley Banfield]

Foreign. I'm Ashley Banfield. This is drop dead serious. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you also for subscribing. I appreciate it. If you haven't already, this is the thing right there, the little guy. And it's easy and it's fun and it's free and it's cute and it doesn't cost you a penny. And then you're subscribed and I get you all the information you need and you never miss an episode. And if you're a member, that that's the join thing down there. Thank you as well for being a member. I appreciate it. I have a video coming out for you very soon, by the way. So I have more information on day 52 of Nancy Guthrie having vanished and this investigation, which feels very, very stalled. But I've been talking to multiple sources, folks, and I have a little bit more information that I did not know before. That changes a few things. I have been mystified by what happened inside the house. Right. We know that this crime happened sometime likely between 1:47am and 2:28am on February 1 Sunday. And as Sheriff Nanos explained, Nancy Guthrie had come home, put her garage door down and presumably went to bed, as we probably all would do around that time. So this perpetrator likely got her out of her bed because Savannah Guthrie said my mother disappeared, you know, from her bed in the dark of night. So I've been wondering, was there a struggle? Was there something that happened in the bedroom? Was there a struggle? Out in the family room, was there a struggle? Out in the front hall, the kitchen? Where did this crime take place? However long this scumbag was in her home. Filthy scumbag. Infiltrating this innocent woman's home. Where did the crimes happen? Like, what happened in the home? And I have come to learn, I think you probably, if you follow me regularly and thank you, that my source told me on day three that there was blood found inside the home. Okay. Second source of mine confirmed definitely blood inside the home. And that second source went further and told me that the deputies who'd arrived, who thought they were looking for a missing woman, just maybe she wandered. An elderly woman didn't show up for her church event. And her family has called us. When the more skilled investigators arrived, they saw evidence that indicated they needed to call in a more skilled and experienced team like the homicide investigators. Right. They saw, according to my source, the back door was wide open. My first source had told me that. That the back door was wide open. My second source told me, back door's wide open. My. My episode yesterday, if you haven't seen it, told you which door we think it may have been, based on many data points that I have sort of amassed, and that she regularly left her back doors, plural, unlocked. There's a back door that goes into, like, a storage unit or. Or storage part, or a shed part of the house that could be part of the garage, but it doesn't look like it's part of the house proper. And then there is a back door that is right smack dab, kind of in the middle of the house that goes into the back patio. And it is visible from the front door. If you come in the front door, you can kind of see that that back door out to the back patio is right there. And if it's open, you can see it. And we were told there was blood in the house, but I could never find out where. Where did those investigators see it, so that they knew there was something so dire that they had to bring in homicide investigators. And now I know. Now I know where the blood is inside the house. And it is a fascinating piece of data because it is right in the front entrance of the home. Front entrance, front hallway, whatever you want to call that front entrance. We don't have a perfect photograph of the inside of Nanc Guthrie's front entrance. We have a good photograph of what's off to the left. And it is a living room. As you look off to the left, there's a nice living room and a window behind you there, and a fireplace and another window and a sliding glass door at the end. But if you're standing at the front entrance, you're looking to the left down the living room, and you're looking pretty much straight ahead to the sort of family room area with a fireplace and a nice big, long window out the back of the home. And then off to the left of that, a door that is more than likely the door that the investigators saw open, because that's what you would see. Could you also see the sliders open way down the left in the living room if those doors were left open? My source said back doors were routinely left open, not side sliders. There are two sliders that exist on the side of the house. Right. You walk in the front door, look all the way down to the left, There's a sliding glass door out to a little patio, and then there's another sliding glass door that goes into another room, presumably the master bedroom, maybe Nancy Guthrie's bedroom. And if you're confused at all between the difference between open and unlocked, let me explain. The investigators saw a door, a back door, wide open. That's the reporting I got. Not just unlocked wide open. And the Guthrie kids told the police that Mrs. Guthrie routinely left her back doors unlocked. So those are the difference between unlocked and wide open. As far as sliding glass doors go, they are towards the side of the house. And I was told back door wide open and back doors, plural, routinely left unlocked. I don't know about the sliding glass doors on the side of the house way off to the left as you walk in the front door. I'm not sure if those were unlocked as well. Did this perpetrator get in through those? Maybe. Possibly. I don't know. But the blood now in the front entrance of the home is a significant detail about this crime. Just in the front entrance, not in the bedroom, not in the kitchen, not in the living room, not in that family room. The front entrance has a pattern of blood that is the same as it is outside, and it goes over the threshold, out the door. So imagine, if you will, standing in the front entrance of someone's home, and there's blood dripping, and you're walking out the door, and that blood dripping continues in the same pattern out to now, the front entrance outside the home, and the pathway that goes down the front walk towards the driveway. So this is the new evidence that I've learned about from my sources that the blood dripping pattern, which I had already learned, was the same. I just didn't know where I Now know it is on the other side of that front door, inside the home. That's where that blood is in the front entrance of Nancy Guthrie's home. If you were to walk through the front door and say, hello, that's where. That's where the blood pattern is. And so I wondered, well, then what happened there? You know, what happened? And I have reached out to somebody who is really good at this and a lot better than I am, Dr. Peter Valentin. And I'm so glad that he joined me on this because I really needed someone to sort of tell me not only about this new information about where the blood now is crossing over the threshold of that front door, but also the shape of all the blood drops and the verticalness of them and that thing that everybody thinks is a expiration pattern. And he's so much better at this than me and a whole bunch of folks on the Internet because he's got other theories about that expiration. Like stain. Don't get too caught up on it being an expiring kind of stain. He's an associate professor. He's got a long title, so I have to read it. Sorry. Dr. Peter Valentin is an associate professor and a department chair of the forensic science at University of New Haven. He's testified in seven states. He's also testified in federal court as a blood stain blood spatter expert. He's also a forensics expert. So not just blood pattern, but he's very, very good with the blood patterns. And so I asked him a lot about what new information tells us, and also to give me his, you know, expertise on the blood pictures that we've seen outside. He's got a lot to say. Don't go anywhere. You have to hear this. Because it's not what I thought. A lot of it is not what I thought. Like, I've had to rejig my thinking about what might have happened to Mrs. Guthrie based on what Dr. Valentin has said. Also, just a few things in the news today regarding you know who. Sheriff Nanos. He seems to make all the news, don't he? So he's given a new interview. Not to us, no. Nope. Those news conference ended months ago, and now he just cherry picks. So this is a new interview that he's given with news for Tucson, and Fox News has released this, and he's defending his department's handling of the investigation. Look, he read a lot of his press because he knew exactly stuff that Brian Enten had reported. He went head to head with a lot of us. Right. He knew a lot of stuff that I reported. Boy, did he ever chew me out. Not by name, but was when I broke all that news on day three that he got real mad and actually took it out on his department, too, who all said that he just tightened the noose around them as soon as I had reported from my sources. So he told News4 Tucson that he has no regrets about decisions that he made early on, Even as this case remains unsolved. Can I quote him? Here we go. Look, I have no regrets about my team and their efforts. I don't regret we let the crime scene go too soon or any of that. Do what now? Because I distinctly remember, like, on day, I don't know, 20 or maybe 14 or somewhere along the line, Somebody asked you if you let the scene go too soon, sir. And this was your answer, you know, Monday morning quarterback.

[Sheriff Chris Nanos]

I probably would have. But I'll say this. We processed the scene. We did. We got what we thought was complete. My. My team did that. I have to have all the faith and trust in their abilities and. And their skills. And I think they went through that pretty well. But because another agency now steps in and wants to assist, if they. We're just like with you. We're an open book. Absolutely. How can we help? One of the things people don't see. I heard your question about, you know, and we left. And then others could walk up, you know, when we process a scene and we're done, we return that scene to the. In this case, the homeowners, the family. And we don't just go march back in there. We call the family again and get permissions to go back to the home. So, yeah, there's again, Monday morning quarterback. Absolutely. I probably could have held off on that.

[Ashley Banfield]

So you did have regrets. You did admit that you let the scene go too soon and said, mea culpa. That's on me. Whatever. So now why are you saying no regrets? Nope, I don't regret that we let the crime scene go too soon. Did you forget that you did regret it at one point? Like, what made you unregret it? I don't know. Okay, so then when asked. Well, this was a good one. When asked what he would say to the person or people behind Nancy Guthrie's disappearance, Sheriff nanos decided to say this. It's like a direct appeal. You ready? Quote, just give her up. Let her go. Take her to a clinic, a hospital, drop her off. Just let her go. End quote. So I guess sheriff nanos believes that Mrs. Guthrie is still alive because it's Just let her go. Take her to a clinic, drop her off. Even Savannah Guthrie has issued a different tone. Right. In her last statement, she said, we just want her home so that we can give her a place of final rest. I'm paraphrasing, but effectively, Savannah seemed to indicate that a place of final rest meant we want her home so we can celebrate a funeral of some kind or a memorial of some kind. And so to hear Sheriff Nano say, this, here's what I would say. And listen, what am I? But I've seen a few sheriffs do their thing. And I would say, we are going to find you. You can run, but you can't hide. But we are going to find you and we will tear you limb from limb, so to speak, in our system of jurisprudence in America, we will fuck with you when we find you. So, yeah, live your life looking over your shoulder because we will find you and we will absolutely bring the full force of Pima county and Arizona and the federal government down on your sorry stinking ass. That's the thing that I would say, not please drop her off, let her go, take her to a clinic. Again, that's just me. But I'm not so sure that this is the thing that you want to say to the perpetrator.

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[Ashley Banfield]

I don't think he's gonna do it. I don't know. Call me nuts. It's day 52. So then something else happened today, and that was that the There was a hearing. Pima County Board of Supervisors held a meeting and it's kind of like an airing of the grievances festivus for the rest of us. And a lot of people showed up. There were some issues that are unrelated to Nancy Guthrie that certainly happened at this meeting. But also there were some people who had some things to say about Sheriff Nanos. There were official people who came and spoke their piece. Get him the hell out of there, so to speak. There's a recall effort and there were citizens as well. I want you to hear from some of the folks who stood up and said what they wanted to say about Sheriff Chris Nanos, especially in light of the Nancy Guthrie investigation. Have a look. Chris Nanos is an international embarrassment at this point. I know that you guys didn't hire him. We elected him, unfortunately.

[Liberty Mutual Representative]

I'm sergeant Aaron Cross, president of the Pima County Deputies organization. As many know, a reporter recently uncovered the long hidden, terrible record of Sheriff Chris Nanos from his time as an El Paso police officer. This includes purportedly beating a handcuffed suspect in the head with a flashlight, for which he was suspended and nearly indicted. This record, if properly disclosed, would have likely prevented him from being hired or from becoming a peace officer in the state of Arizona. For over 40 years, this has been concealed from the department and the voters of Pima County. Because of this scandal, our organization, the largest union of deputies in Pima county, has taken a vote. We asked our members a clear question. Confidence in Sheriff Nanos to continue in Office or no confidence. And a call for his resignation. The verdict was unanimous. No confidence. He has lost the faith of his deputies and the community. His past renders him unfit to wear the badge. That he has concealed it for 40 years does not make the concealment right. It makes the fraud of the badge, his deputies and the community. His past renders him unfit to wear the badge. That he has concealed it for 40 years does not make the concealment right. It makes the fraud greater. The 300 deputies I represent speak with one voice. Chris Nanos must show the integrity he once swore to uphold. He must show the dignity that the office requires. He must resign. If he will not, then I ask this board charged with oversight to exercise every authority vested in you. The power of this board should be used not for comfort, but for accountability. There are moments in the life of a community when those entrusted with authority must stand firm against those who abuse it. This is such a moment. We ask that this board have the courage to support supervisor Hines item. Pima county and the nation is watching. Thank you.

[Ashley Banfield]

I'm here to ask that the entirety of this board support the measure to hold accountable. Open an investigation into. Call to question by legal means, in fact, that Sheriff Nanos lied under oath in a sworn deposition about his previous work history and subsequent discipline thereof, which is misrepresentation of office. So there you have it. Don't know how the recall is going to go. It's going to be tricky. You need a lot of signatures, but board of Supervisors sure has a lot to process after today. So let me get you to. To the. The meat of the reporting that I got today that my source has gotten that is that the blood continues inside the house at that front entrance, inside the front entrance. Not just outside the front entrance of her home, over the threshold of her front door and into the front entrance of Nancy Guthrie's home. And what that story might tell us, but also what the blood drops that we can see, which both Michael Ruiz and Brian Enten, Michael Ruiz from Fox Digital and Brian Enten from News Nation were able to videotape with their own eyes. You know, I think 38, 48 hours after the crime scene was just let go, Right? And actually crime scene was let go 30 hours or so after the disappearance. By the time that Brian Enten and Michael Ruiz were able to videotape, I think it was like Tuesday. So, you know, two to three days after Mrs. Guthrie disappeared and the crime scene was released, the reporters were able to at least witness the blood pattern, the blood spatter pattern. At the front door, but we don't see it inside the house. So I spoke to Dr. Peter Valentin again of the University of New Haven, who's an expert in blood spatter about what the blood tells us that he can see and what the information tells us that my source has told us about the blood inside, and what it tells us about the crime. And what he has to say is fascinating. Dr. Valentin, what do you make of, first of all, just the overarching information that we've learned, and that is that the blood droplet pattern that we've all seen outside Nancy's front door continues over the threshold and inside her front entrance. But that. That's it. That. That's it for blood spatter, for blood droplets, for blood evidence in this crime scene.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

So what's interesting about those blood droplets is that they're what we refer to in bloodstain pattern analysis as drip stains. And drip stains are probably the most common stains that we see. And they are what they sound like. They are blood dropping from an object and landing on a surface, and they have no energy associated with them. It's simply gravity pulling blood down and blood falling onto a surface. And notice I didn't say it means that somebody's bleeding, although very often that is what's happening. What could be happening here is that. And we're all assuming that that is Nancy Guthrie's blood.

[Ashley Banfield]

No, we know that. We do know that. The sheriff confirmed it's hers.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

Okay. Right. Because otherwise we'd be doing forensic genetic genealogy on that unknown blood. But what it means is that an object, most likely Nancy Guthrie, is the source of blood outside the threshold. Right. So outside the door. But where it stops can mean one of two or even more things. One is that she is put into a vehicle. It is she. Or somebody sees that she's bleeding and then stops it. Right. Puts a towel, puts a hand, does something to stop the bleeding. The other thing it can be is that she is repositioned, and the repositioning changes the blood flow.

[Ashley Banfield]

Well, that. That would be really critical if we had a continuation, but we don't. My sources tell me that what you see is what you get. Except for the stuff inside that I broke, you know, in this podcast. And that is that the blood droplets go down the outside entrance of Nancy's home and down the path and stop, no gap, and then restart. So it just seems logical that that's where a car could easily park and that that's where she could have been taken away.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

Yes. And so now I was A detective with the Connecticut State Police, in addition to being a forensic scientist. So here's where I get to combine those two skill sets. And so imagine what I just told you that, you know, we have the repositioning of the source of the blood, right? So we'll assume for a moment it's Nancy's, maybe it's her chin, maybe it's her arm, wherever it happens to be. And then, you know, along with that, you have a waiting vehicle, right? So the blood stops because there's a repositioning. And then why doesn't the pattern continue? Because she's put into a. Into a vehicle, which is certainly what makes sense giving. Given the location. Now, investigatively, you know, what do I want to do with that information? Of course, there's been a tremendous amount of investigative effort put into finding the vehicles that were in the location that night. And, of course, as it should be. Now, what do I care about as a forensic scientist and a blood stain pattern expert, and really, as a forensic scientist, trying to find traces of blood. There's blood in that vehicle. Even when you know that you're trying to clean an area to remove blood, it is exceedingly difficult because most people, when they clean a place where they think blood is, they only clean until the color red is gone. But the chemical components of blood stay there. And we have a whole cache of reagents that are called latent development reagents. And what they're specifically meant to do is help us find blood that we otherwise can't see. So in the event that a vehicle is recovered that is believed to be the vehicle that transported Nancy from that house, the first thing that we'd be doing or should be doing is looking for that latent blood, because I'd highly doubt that it would be visible at this point in time, because it's a critical piece of information that puts that vehicle at the house at the time that she's bleeding, because blood doesn't stay liquid for very long.

[Ashley Banfield]

And we so hope that we'll get there, but, I mean, we're starting to feel as though we may not. We may not get to a vehicle. Let me just go back to the source of the. Of the bleeding, because this is what's new to this. This is new to me, and I believe it's new to everybody. I haven't seen anybody else report it. And my source gave me this information that the bleeding begins inside the house, not outside the house. This is not something that happened at the door. The bleeding didn't begin at the Back at the front door. Outside. It began inside. And I had imagined that anyway, because a source had told me there was blood found inside. We just couldn't tell where. We know she was in her bed because Savannah has said she was taken from her bed in the dark of night. Those are her words. Taken from her bed in the dark of night. So you would assume then perhaps there'd be some kind of a struggle in the bedroom where she would see for the first time, this intruder. But my source says that is not where blood is found. Blood is only found inside the home, at the front door, inside that front hallway. It's where the dripping begins and it continues over that threshold. So if you're that Connecticut state cop again, what are you imagining happened inside that house?

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

Okay, so this is great information. And finding blood on the inside of the threshold doesn't mean she wasn't first attacked in the bedroom. I think everybody can remember a time that they were injured when it took some period of time for blood to accumulate for it to begin dripping. And a common mistake a lot of investigators make is they hyper focus on the place where they first see the blood, and they think this is where the attack occurred. And that is almost. I wouldn't say almost always incorrect, because in shooting scenes, you can have the immediate production of blood where it does fall, or, you know, you get spatter stains where they. It memorializes where the shooting occurred. But not even in shooting scenes all the time. You know, you can have somebody wearing a winter coat or a shirt, and if that bullet enters and exits that person, what's first going to happen? The blood is going to soak into the clothing before it then begins to drip or then otherwise present itself outside of that. So finding the blood in one room doesn't mean that that's the room where the, you know, the attack occurred or the incident occurred. You have to go back, and you need to look for other potential items or artifacts to give you indications of what might have happened. Now, what you can do is you can look at the type of blood stains potentially, and then look for, you know, other sources of evidence and put those two together to. To say, do the blood stains and the, you know, the artifacts within the space help me understand what happened. And therefore, are the blood stains suggestive of the event happening in this space? I know I'm being a little cagey about what we have here, but I'm

[Ashley Banfield]

fascinated with, well, everything that you're saying. The droplets are vertical and they're undisturbed. And my source tells me that inside, as you go in through the front door, and you now are standing in the front entrance of the home, and the blood is there. They are identical. They are droplets that are undisturbed. There's no sign of struggle in them. There's no footprints in them. They are just quite literally a trail of blood droplets that goes from the front hall, over the threshold of the front door, down that front walk, and disappear. But I get very confused about how that could have happened if she were walking, say, at gunpoint, because theoretically, the gun would have to be behind her to be moving her along, not dragging her along, you know, from behind. Right. Or carried. But I mean, take, take your investigative lens and tell me what you think about an undisturbed trail of vertical blood droplets like that. And then we'll get to that one spot that doesn't look like a trail of vertical. It looks like an expiration zone. So start inside and then tell me, what are the opera. What are the options here for an investigator to imagine how she was taken out of that home?

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

Okay, so I, I, there's, boy, there's a few things there. We might need to slow this down because I actually do see some disturbance in the blood droplets outside the house.

[Ashley Banfield]

Okay.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

And what I see are called skeletonized droplets. So if you look at some of the droplets on the outside of the house, they look partially dried. So what you'll see, it's essentially a perimeter stain. So you'll see the exterior of the circle, and then you'll see an absence of blood in the middle of the circle. And what that means is that that blood droplet was on the surface long enough for the drying process to begin, and then something disturbed the droplet as it was drying.

[Ashley Banfield]

Okay, I can explain that. And here's the reason I wish these were forensic pictures we're looking at. They're journalists pictures. And I don't know if the investigators got good forensic pictures. I assume they did because they knew they were there. But these are journalists who, after the scene was released 30 hours or so later, and they may have gotten to it 48 hours and walked up and seen it and started rolling video. So you can imagine those blood droplets have now been there for at least 48 hours, and the journalists are walking.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

So I'm going to make an assumption about what the temperature was at the time that those blood droplets were deposited. Mid 70s, maybe 80 degrees.

[Ashley Banfield]

Well, February 1st, 1:47 to 2:28am I'm going to assume closer to 2:28am because that's when her pacemaker separates from the Apple device. So 2:28am In Tucson, Arizona, February 1,

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

let's say even 60 degrees. I mean, I'm in Connecticut, so I'm jealous of the temperature, no matter what it is in Tucson, that blood was not liquid more than 15 to 20 minutes. So it wouldn't have mattered when the journalist came to the now released scene, those blood droplets had already dried. They couldn't have changed the appearance of those droplets unless they rehydrated them, and that would have been an obvious alteration.

[Ashley Banfield]

So a skeleton, highly unlikely, by the way, rehydrating them, highly unlikely because they were covered over. That's the covered entrance.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

Exactly. So, you know, I have to make that, you know, because I've testified, I have to make that, you know, acknowledgement that I recognize that there is a way to do what I'm talking about. But it's so unlikely that it's not an explanation for what it is that we're seeing. But what we do tend to see in scenes is that recently deposited blood can begin to dry and then the movements of our, you know, our source of blood, our bleeding victim and, or our perpetrator can disturb those stains and memorialize the activity. Now, these drip stains, the ones that we're talking about, they don't tell us what happened. Meaning, like, what's the injury, what's the, you know, what happened during the attack? What is the attack? What's the injury of our victim? What they do for us investigatively is they tell us what's the movement post event, post injury. So in one sense, they're not very helpful in kind of helping us understand the, the incident itself. But where they do come in handy, if you will, is that they tell us who's going where, right? Who is the DNA profile and where is, where are the stains located? So having Ms. Guthrie's DNA on the inside of the threshold and on the outside of the threshold tells us something that seems fairly obvious, is that she's at the threshold of the house. But what's interesting is, is that if she's at the inside of the threshold long enough for the blood droplets to accumulate there, and she's also at the outside of the threshold long enough for all those blood droplets to accumulate there, there's an inference that we can draw. And there's a phrase that I use when I write reports and I testify called, I say it's a not insignificant amount of time, and it's. It's a period of time that's not momentary. But I don't know how long it is, but I know it's not insignificant.

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[Alex Canceroitz]

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 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 right.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

She's there long enough for that blood to accumulate.

[Ashley Banfield]

I'm glad you said that because when I have an untrained eye and I say, and I thought these are very vertical, they're not moving quickly and coming in on an angle. And there are enough of them that this is a slow moving event. And I have been told by my source that the blood inside is exactly the same pattern as the blood outside. So the slow moving event started at least where the blood is concerned, in that hallway. And so as the investigator, is this somebody who's struggling to carry her or she's struggling to walk and is walking slowly like you tell me.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

So what I can say about the stains on the outside, and it would be hard for me to offer a well formed opinion because I would love to see the inside stains too.

[Ashley Banfield]

Wouldn't we all?

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

Yeah, it's like, are they a continuation or are they two separate patterns? But what I can say about the outside stains is that there's one photograph, there's probably more than one, but there's one that I paid a lot of attention to that essentially shows droplets falling in the same place. And you're getting this like secondary spatter and you see a lot of smaller droplets in the same area. And so we tend to see those when you have the source the of. Of blood in the same location for again, a not insignificant period of time. So if the blood is in the same place, where it's essentially dripping into itself, you get these tiny droplets that come from the now accumulating pool of blood on that surface. So you get these tiny droplets appearing around the edge of this now expanding pool.

[Liberty Mutual Representative]

Pool.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

And I say pool because that's what we call it, a pool pattern. But it doesn't necessarily mean it's large. But if you go back to that photograph, you'll see that around some of those drip stains, there's a slightly larger stain that has tiny droplets around it, tiny spatter stains. And what that is, again, preliminary opinion by looking at these photographs quickly is that that's blood falling into an accumulation of blood that's already on the surface.

[Ashley Banfield]

So she's standing there for a period of time.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

I would say I can't say she's standing, but I can say the Source of blood, which I think we'll say based on the volume, is not an object with her blood on it, but it's her, is in. Is stationary. Is she standing? I can't tell you because I don't know where the injury is.

[Ashley Banfield]

I'm glad you. By the way, let me just stop you there, because I'm glad you just mentioned that it's not an object with Nancy's blood on it. I hadn't contemplated that. But you do have to contemplate that if someone uses a weapon and is carrying the weapon out of the house, this is absolutely, in your opinion, and you tell me if I'm wrong here, this is absolutely not the pattern of an object with Nancy's blood on it.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

I would say, given the volume that we're seeing here, and given again, I haven't seen the photographs of, of the pattern inside, given that there's two patterns, one outside, one inside, it's highly unlikely that it's from an object because the pattern that comes from an object with somebody's blood decreases over time. There's a limit to how much blood you can have on an object. And so as a function of time, the distance between droplets increases because there simply isn't enough blood or there isn't more blood to continue dropping. So if a person is walking with an object that has blood on it, the distance between those droplets as the person continues to walk increases.

[Ashley Banfield]

No, that makes perfect sense. But so from what, again, you're having to look at the journalist's pictures, not the CSI photographs that you'd prefer, but you're seeing that Nancy was in a position for quite some time. This wasn't a slow moving event out that front door.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

I would say she was stopped at that threshold for, again, a not insignificant amount of time. Is that 30 seconds? Is that two minutes? I can't say. But something's going on at that threshold long enough for that source of blood to create that pattern that I just described, where you had those satellite spatter stains. And you know, now the question is, well, what's the activity? You know, in particular, when you think that she's being restrained in some way, whether or not she's standing and somebody's restraining her, or whether she's being carried or whatever the thought is, what's happening in that moment while she's being restrained and those blood droplets are landing on that surface. Now what you also can say is that there has to be a clear path from the source of the blood to the surface. So if you know by Way of example, if we believe that the blood is coming from her nose and her mouth, well, then there must be a clear path from her face to the ground. Right. So it can't be then dripping onto her clothing. It can't be hitting her pants or

[Ashley Banfield]

her legs is walking. It does. And by the way, to me, it looks as though this is a clear vertical path without a lot of dynamic movement.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

Yes. So the fact that the stains are circular tells you that the source is directly overhead. Because as the source changes its orientation and it no longer is, you know, directly overhead, the shape of the droplets change. So we generally don't need to do this with drip stains, but in other situations, you can actually estimate where the blood's coming from based on the shape of the stains. And in this situation, because we recognize them as drip stains and an overall drip pattern, we wouldn't need to do that. But in other situations, the angle of the droplets is critical for us.

[Ashley Banfield]

And these don't look. Yeah, these don't look like they have angle.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

No, they don't. They're generally circular, which means it's a

[Ashley Banfield]

slow moving event because you can't continue the movement without some kind of an angle.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

Yes, there's definitely. The spacing of the droplets is generally what tells me something about. I'll say the speed of the event or the speed of the movement is two things. Right. Because there's also a rate of blood flow. Right. How much is the person believing that can also contribute to the spacing of the droplet? So you can see this quickly becomes a pretty complex, you know, situation as you're trying to process all of these. Not only the appearance of the blood stains, but what do the characteristics of those bloodstains mean in terms of investigative possibilities, in terms of, you know, potential for injuries and where blood might be found later?

[Ashley Banfield]

What about the one area of blood that many people have already discussed? And it looks like this is common parlance, but an expiration of some blood, that's what it looks like. It looks like a cough. What do you see when you see that particular spot that isn't a nice clear drop?

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

So the satellite droplets that I mentioned as being potentially the blood falling into liquid blood could be confused for an expiration or an expirated pattern. Now, the way to distinguish between these is that expirated blood tends to mix with saliva and mucus. Right. Because it's coming from either our nose or our mouth. And had somebody been at the scene that either was a bloodstain pattern analysis or knew enough about BPA to have somebody consult and look at these stains. That blood could have been tested for the presence of amylase, which is the enzyme that is in our saliva that helps us digest starch. And that would allow us to distinguish blood coming from this area from other blood sources on our body. And that helps us understand something about the dynamics. If we recognize where the blood is

[Ashley Banfield]

coming from, I can understand that. But I also just sort of see amidst all these direct vertical drops, there's this, what looks like a spray. How else could you get a misting of blood but for expiring?

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

Well, I don't see enough detail in that photograph that I could necessarily infer that it's a spray. So there is a pattern that we call a projection where you have blood accumulating generally in your mouth and you could project it or. And this is not what I see here at all. You have a breach of a major vessel and you project a large volume of the blood. And that's not what we have here at all. So the idea that blood is being sprayed onto the surface is really inconsistent with everything else that we see, really, that I'm seeing from the photograph and not coughed, it could be. Again, I don't see enough in that photograph to say that looks like a cough, but if it were, if it looked like it when I was actually looking at a better quality photograph, the easy way, first off, the other thing that you could do just from the photograph is there's a dilution of the blood because again, it's mixing with saliva. The other thing that you tend to see is that because there's a, like a tackiness to saliva and mucus. When blood is mixed with saliva and mucus, little droplets tend to. To stick together and cluster together. So the way that the blood behaves changes in a way that you can recognize in the resultant droplets. And I didn't really see that in the photographs that we had. I just saw satellite spatter. But again, you know, if what we needed to do was really interpret. Hey, is there a difference between these two patterns and does it have value for us to interpret them? You know, you would take a photograph and really zoom in and see, are there satellite.

[Ashley Banfield]

Sorry to interrupt, but for the satellite spatter, don't you need a source that is your direct source that sprays out to the satellite spatter? Because that doesn't look like it in that one misty blood pattern.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

So your source of blood actually is the blood that was already on the ground. So if you drop three or four droplets of blood on the ground. And then you have a fifth droplet hit those four droplets that are already there. It creates its own spatter.

[Ashley Banfield]

Okay. And you see that is a possibility in that particular spot, because to me, I would have thought you'd need a concentration in the middle to even have the satellite spatter from another blood drop.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

Yes. And you don't need a lot.

[Ashley Banfield]

Okay.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

Yeah. So I think if anybody in your audience has ever had a leaky faucet, and if you have one or two droplets of water land in your faucet and that third droplet hits, you see water droplets from the water that's already accumulated in the sink. And it's the same concept.

[Ashley Banfield]

Is that what you see there? Like, you don't see it as a cough or an expiration. You see it as blood droplets that hit other blood droplets and cause that spray.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

I'd say between the two. The two options, the one that seems more plausible to me is the satellite spatter. But I'm an evidence based analyst, and so if I look at that and the stains look diluted and there's artifacts to suggest that you have blood mixed with saliva and. Or mucus, then I'm thinking it's an expiration pattern.

[Ashley Banfield]

Can I ask you. Because my theory, and it's based on, you know, just my work as a journalist and certainly not having any. Any. I haven't seen any evidence that. That. That CSI investigators have collected, let's put it that way, is that she was carried out and that he had her over his shoulder and that she may have been bleeding behind him and leaving that pattern behind him that he's not stepping in and nor is she, but that when he struggles to get through that big, heavy door, and maybe there's some time that it takes him to get those doors open and those doors closed, and he's turning around with her, is it possible he may have moved and shifted so that her diaphragm, which might have been over his shoulder, would have gone? Huh. And that might have been that source of that blood?

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

I think it's as plausible as anything else I've heard up to this point. The one part of it that I think is valuable is that it gives us a reason to think that Ms. Guthrie's blood would be on the clothing of the perpetrator. Right. And most importantly, on their back. And in a lot of cases, when people don't think to look at their back as a potential source of blood stains, they always worry about what. What's on the front of them. You know, they look at the front of their pants, the front of their shoes, the front of their shirt, and they don't ever think about the back, especially in situations where they're using objects. And.

[Ashley Banfield]

Well, let's hope. I mean, again, this is down the road. If we catch the guy and we can go through his closet and we can find something on the back of a jacket that looks like he was wearing or did he change clothes that were in the backpack? We don't know. But can I ask you also just the. The height of the blood droplets? I mean, it would seem to me that if you're dropping blood droplets from somebody who's over your shoulder, that's, you know, a solid four feet that feels like it wouldn't drop in a nice, beautiful round spot. It would spray completely out. What's your thought about the height of where those droplets came from?

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

So there is a. There's a relationship between how far blood falls and the size of the stains. So if we were to drop blood from, you know, a few inches off the ground, it makes a very nice, neat, you know, smaller droplet, and the higher we go, the bigger the droplet gets. But there is a limit to how big that droplet gets, because there's also a limit to how big a droplet can be in terms of volume. A droplet can only be so, so big because surface tension holds it together, and there's a limit to that surface tension. But blood can only go as fast as its terminal velocity, you know, much like a skydiver can only go so fast towards the earth. So once we get to blood's terminal velocity, which is about, you know, three feet off the ground, it doesn't matter how much higher they were above that, there's no difference and how those blood stains look. But, Ashley, what's just as important in assessing how blood looks when it's hitting something is what are the characteristics of the surface? Is it smooth? Is it textured? Is it porous? And so, you know, these are ceramic tiles, and, you know, they might look smooth to us when we're looking at them on a photograph, but there's probably a. A texture to them. You know, if we were to touch them, that actually disturbs the blood as it's trying to make a neat circle. And so you'll actually get some satellite droplets potentially from that. But what you'll also get is you get, like, an irregular border.

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[Cool Stuff Daily Host]

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[Dr. Peter Valentin]

With its two juicy beef patties and three slices of melted cheese topped with tangy Big art sauce. The Big Arch is what happens when you start making a McDonald's burger and never stop. The big arch. The most McDonald's McDonald's burger yet for a limited time. So it won't actually look like a neat circle, you know, it'll look like as, you know, how kids draw the sun, you know, with the little beams coming off the edge. So you get what we call, like, scalloped edges. So you'll see a bit of that. But, you know, you don't want to mistake that for anything other than what it is. But it's just a, you know, it's a. It's. To the surface. Yeah.

[Ashley Banfield]

Yeah. Well, I hadn't thought of that, but it makes perfect sense. I also wanted to ask you how much you know about the difference between somebody who's my age and I'm 58, the way I bleed and the way my skin, you know, how tough it is to get me to bleed compared to someone who's 84 on blood thinners? Do you look at your science differently based on the person who's bleeding or is blood blood no matter what?

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

So, you know, the idea that somebody might be on a blood thinner doesn't mean that the viscosity of somebody's blood changes. You know, it's more. It's more in reference to, you know, the. How their blood behaves, I'll say chemically, for lack of a better way of describing it. So it doesn't manifest any differently in the way that it appears at a scene. So I don't really need to consider it. Now, there are some disease processes that will have a marked appearance or a marked difference in how blood appears at a scene. This is not one of them. So if she was on blood thinners, or if there were, you know, or if somebody has high cholesterol, there is no appreciable difference in how the blood stains appear. And I don't need to take that into consideration when interpreting them. And the normal variation in the viscosity of human blood is something that always sort of factors into the variance. Like, I don't calculate angles to, you know, three significant figures. You know, there's always a very sort

[Sheriff Chris Nanos]

of

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

wide range that I'm working with. So even if we calculate angles, where we're looking at angles of impact, the only way that I'll describe them is, was the person standing, Were they at some, you know, lower height that was not standing, or were they, you know, near the ground? We won't say, oh, they were 2ft, 7 inches off the ground. So there's a. There's an appreciation for all the variables that could exist here, and we don't get too specific, and that's the key to staying within the, you know, the limits of our science.

[Ashley Banfield]

Do you see that those blood spots came from 3ft and below or above 3ft? Could you tell based on just, again, the journalist's photographs?

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

I wouldn't want to speculate based on the journalist's photographs alone. I would say this, Ashley, if I had to form an opinion about that very issue, I would actually want. Want to conduct some experiments and drop on that tile, and that would be the best way to form a scientifically derived opinion.

[Ashley Banfield]

Do you think, Dr. Valentin, then, that that might have been what they were doing when they put that white tent up for, you know, half a day or a couple of hours at least, out in front of her front door? I think two or three weeks into this crime, that suddenly they might have been doing those kinds of experiments under that tent?

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

Yeah, somehow I doubt they were doing that part. If I had to speculate, I would imagine that they were using other reagents, maybe an alternate light source, and they were looking for latent evidence. Right. Evidence that they hadn't found during their first pass through the scene. Because you only find the evidence. I know this is. Is going to sound very simplistic and cliche, but you only find the evidence you're looking for. And if you go to your scene with the wrong sense of what your scene is about, you could walk right past the evidence of what actually happened. And in the days and weeks since this happened, has their understanding of this event changed? Right. And if it had, and now they're aware of a new bit of information. Right. Would that have made them go back to the scene to look for something that they had no idea was relevant the first time they were there?

[Ashley Banfield]

Well, when that tent came down, guess what was missing. The bracket for the camera. That was her doorbell camera, her nest doorbell cam. It had been up for three weeks, and suddenly they decided it was worth taking down. And I kept saying, well, if this guy's putting a bite light in his mouth, well, there's DNA all over those gloved fingers. And then he's messing around with that nest cam and the bracket. So I was astounded that it wasn't taken earlier, but it ended up being taken.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

Yeah, I can't believe that that wasn't seized the first time either. And I mean, you could say, well, we didn't know the. What was on the video immediately.

[Ashley Banfield]

You knew he took the camera, but

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

you also had the blood Evidence right outside the threshold. And so you should have immediately just looked around the threshold to say, well, what's small enough that I can take this with me and bring it back to a laboratory where I can examine it. Take evidence with you that turns out to have no probative value. What did. You just spent man hours, Right. You spent some time looking at it, and it turned out not to have probative value. You wasted something.

[Ashley Banfield]

What's your opinion of them leaving that half moon welcome mat right there? I think it's still there. Honestly, I don't know. I haven't seen a picture recently. But, my God, that half moon welcome mat was there for weeks.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

It's the same thing. To me, that would be a treasure trove of potential trace evidence. Now, would that have been an absolute nightmare for a trace evidence analysts to shake that out over their bench and get tens of thousands of pieces of sand and, you know, detritus from the environment? Absolutely. But within that, might there have been one or two, three. Could there have been a carpet fiber from the vehicle that the perpetrator drove

[Ashley Banfield]

to the house or his mud from his home on the bottom of his shoe?

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

Exactly.

[Ashley Banfield]

Yeah. No, I was very frustrated. And again, I'm not a CSI expert, I'm just a little crime reporter. But I've seen enough of this stuff that I have noticed that that is usually very valuable. I couldn't understand why it wasn't. I want to just pull on one more thread before I leave it, because we went on a little bit of a tangent, worthwhile tangent, and that was the nature of Mrs. Guthrie's injuries. When you see those blood droplets, and knowing what my source has said about the continuation over the threshold and inside the front entrance of that house, is that a grave injury? Is that a, you know, somebody grabbed her too hard on the arm and, you know, when your skin at 84 is so fine and you are on blood thinners, you can easily cause a bleeding injury just by holding somebody too tightly. Is it a punch? What is it that you think it could be?

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

That's. See, that's a difficult one. So this is not something I would write in a report or testify about, but I would say investigatively, if we were like in the, you know, we were in the command post and we were talking about next steps, I don't think this is a, you know, a lethal injury. I don't necessarily think that if she has shown up in an emergency room that, you know, she's not. She's not surviving this. Right. Because sometimes that's the issue. Right? We have scenes where we can recognize that this is a catastrophic injury and that if the person does not show up in an emergency room, we're dealing with a different kind of case. This isn't that, you know, however, she does need medical attention of some sort of, you know, do we want to go to the drugstores and see who's buying gauze and, you know, hydrogen peroxide? You know, there's all sorts of ways that you can take this. I mean, clearly it's. It's survivable. But what are we combining it with? What else happened that I don't have physical evidence of.

[Ashley Banfield]

Exactly. The other question is, and I think it's. It's always hard to ask these questions because we've all hoped that Mrs. Guthrie would be found alive. Even Savannah is intimating that she wants her mother home for a final resting place at this point. So there's a lot of reality that's coming, you know, into focus. There's still optimism. Sheriff certainly seems optimistic. He wants the perpetrator to drop her off somewhere. I'm not sure where that comes from, but. But is that the kind of bleeding that comes from a dead person or a live person?

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

So I would not have a way of distinguishing between those two, at least not from what I've seen in these photographs. And, you know, and I share your feelings about all of this. It's so frustrating. And, you know, my heart goes out to the Guthrie family and, you know, the simultaneous national coverage of, you know, their mother's disappearance. But at the the same time, perhaps even needing this coverage to keep the spotlight on this case, because I remember working cases that had no coverage, that I understand why, and cases that had international coverage, and I didn't understand why. So I can appreciate the double edged sword here. And given what I saw, I. You would not be able to distinguish whether or not the person was still alive or not. But perhaps there are other aspects of this that we're not privy to that might. That potentially could change my opinion on that, but certainly not based on the photographs. I could say anything.

[Ashley Banfield]

If Mrs. Guthrie was killed inside the home and this perpetrator removed her body and left that pattern behind, inside and outside, over that front threshold. What kind of a circumstance would cause that kind of a blood pattern? Because we don't bleed after we die.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

Well, it's not that we don't bleed after we die. It's the matter of there's nothing creating pressure in the way that we would if we were still Alive, I can create a source of blood in somebody who's dead if I simply reposition the body so that the injury is lower than the rest of the body. So that you have this passive pressure, for lack of a better description.

[Ashley Banfield]

Gravity.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

Exactly. So you could imagine if you had somebody on a stretcher and their arm was hanging off the side of the stretcher, that could create it. And so you'd have scenarios like that. But, you know, aside from that, I mean, it is suggestive of it. There's just not enough there to. And, you know, so here I have to exercise some restraint and say, you know, scientifically, I have no way of distinguishing between the two. But investigatively, what would I say if I saw that? I said tends to lean in the direction of her being alive?

[Ashley Banfield]

And then the other question I'm going to ask you, and this is a really hard one, too, more on your Connecticut cop hat here, because you have to noodle all the possibilities, all the theories, all the scenarios in order to, you know, move along in an investigation. Knowing what you know about this crime scene, knowing about this blood pattern going from inside the house over the front door and to the outside of the house and being the same all the way, and knowing what we've seen on the front doorbell cam and that my source says the back door was left wide open, what would your theory be about what happened to Mrs. Guthrie?

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

I don't know enough to say what happened in the house. I mean, your guess is as good as my guess is as good as anybody else's. And I'm a person that is really driven by physical evidence, and physical evidence tells a story. And let me explain it this way. When you open up the door to Nancy Guthrie's house, that house tells a story. How does she keep her house? Like, what level of order is her house normally? And what would draw my attention is what are the alterations to that normal state? So if you tend to be a person who keeps your house neat, where are the disruptions? Where are the disturbances to that otherwise neat state? Now, that's not to say that you couldn't, you know, you weren't attacked in the place. That still looks neat. But I'm drawn to the changes to the status quo. Right. Most people will say, you know, signs of a struggle. But I guarantee there are people listening to this. The whole house looks like a sign of a struggle. That's how they live their day.

[Ashley Banfield]

There's my kids, bedrooms. Yes, exactly.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

That's what I usually joke around because I'm here at a university and most dorm rooms look like a sign of a struggle all the time. So you know, we can't really look at things that simplistically. Right. You're looking for a change to the normal state. So I would have to look at that house and let myself get drawn to what looks. I'm not going to say out of place because that's not really the way to think about this. But what looks recently changed. Right? That she didn't have a chance to bring it back to the normal state. But I can't let myself get drawn to that without first walking through and looking at everything in a methodical way. It would be like reading a book and skipping a page. 276 I wouldn't have any sense of who the characters were. So I will understand what's out of place once I digest the entire scene. Then I become really well versed in what is the normal state for that house. And it's only when I do that that I can really sense where in that house are the areas that I now need to focus on. Because I work with physical evidence. So you could swab that house and get a thousand exhibits and they're all useless because you didn't apply the right frame of reference here. How you're going to do this. I could do it that way and find three places there that clearly look like something happened here based off subtle cues and find 20 swabs. And those potentially are more probative. And in a lot of cases people will walk in, whether it's ego, whether it's to be right first. People will rush to figure out what happened instead of hanging back and letting a scene like that essentially talk to you. Right. By soaking it in, working a scene methodically and then letting that drive the process.

[Ashley Banfield]

Do you think that happened here?

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

In almost every case like this that I've seen seen, and in the cases I've worked that have had this level of scrutiny the pressure of multiple agencies having to cooperate, the pressure of the media and now exacerbate all of that by the pressure of, you know, a famous family being involved. It creates unforced errors. And errors always complicate things.

[Ashley Banfield]

Yeah, but the sheriff is saying that he doesn't regret anything. He doesn't think he made any errors. He doesn't think that he returned the scene too early. Even though I think in week two or three he admitted that he had done that. I'm not 100% sure why he's saying these things. But in your estimation, do you think that the investigative you know, teams let that house tell them the story. Story, or do you think they told the story too quickly?

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

I feel very confident in saying that they. Well, first they let the house go too quickly. Unless the Guthrie family was beyond adamant that they wanted the house back. And I can't imagine why I would held that house for as long as I possibly could. Particularly because this is one of those very few cases is where forensic evidence is leading the investigation. In most situations, we conduct our investigation and forensic evidence is running in parallel or forensically, what we're doing is we are confirming what we're figuring out investigatively. Right. We're almost like a lagging indicator of what you figure out investigatively. This is one of the very few cases where everyone's waiting with bated breath to know what the forensic testing results are so that we can figure out what to do. And this, you know, this only happens in maybe 5 and 10% of the cases I ever worked where everybody wanted to know what I had to say about what to do. Because if the forensic testing doesn't give us useful information, we're stuck. And that doesn't happen very often.

[Ashley Banfield]

This is the word that keeps coming up. Stuck, sat, or stumped. And I guess I'll leave it there because I feel as though as we learn more, I'm going to be calling you again to see where these new puzzle pieces fit in and if they take us in a new direction. Dr. Valentin, thank you so much. I really appreciate this conversation.

[Dr. Peter Valentin]

No, it's my pleasure, Ashley. Thanks for calling.

[Ashley Banfield]

So there you have it, folks. Day 52. Not a good day for Sheriff Chris Nanos, I gotta say. I'll bet you he was listening. It was live streaming, right? So I'm sure he was like somewhere having to listen to all this. Or at least he's got a representative who's going to give him the cliff notes on everything that was said. Where that goes from here, Maybe subscribe, because I will figure it out and I will put together something to tell you where it goes from here, especially that whole recall effort. And I got some more information for you coming tomorrow on this podcast on Drop Dead series. Don't forget, subscribe so that you don't miss these episodes. Something else that's just like, what the actual F with regard to this crime scene. So again, that's coming tomorrow. Thank you so much for listening today and for watching today. And remember, the truth isn't just serious, it's drop dead serious.

[Cool Stuff Daily Host]

Every day the world gets a little weirder and a lot more awesome. Cool Stuff Daily takes a look at everything from mining in space to the latest in the fight against cancer to how AI is basically changing everything. It's all the cool stuff you didn't know you needed to know. Join us for Cool Stuff Daily as we take a quick look at science tech and the Wait. What stories that make you sound way smarter at dinner. Subscribe to Cool Stuff Daily now because the future's happening fast and it's way too fun to miss.

[Ashley Banfield]

Support is available 247 with VRBoCare. We're here day or night, ready whenever you need help because a great trip starts with the right support.

[Cool Stuff Daily Host]

Every day the world gets a little weirder and a lot more awesome. Cool Stuff Daily takes a look at everything from mining in space to the latest in the fight against cancer to how we AI is basically changing everything. It's all the cool stuff you didn't know you needed to know. Join us for Cool Stuff Daily as we take a quick look at science tech and the Wait. What stories that make you sound way smarter at dinner. Subscribe to Cool Stuff Daily now because the future's happening fast and it's way too fun to miss.