DISTURBING Similarities to Nancy Guthrie’s Disappearance | Nancy Woodrum Case

Summary

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Podcast Summary: DISTURBING Similarities to Nancy Guthrie’s Disappearance | Nancy Woodrum Case

Podcast: Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
Date: March 10, 2026
Host: Ashleigh Banfield
Guest: Detective Clint Cole (Retired, San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office)

Episode Overview

Ashleigh Banfield draws striking parallels between the ongoing high-profile disappearance of Nancy Guthrie (in Tucson, AZ) and the resolved 2018 case of Nancy Woodrum (Paso Robles, CA). Banfield tells the Woodrum case in-depth—detailing investigative twists, the use of new forensic techniques, and the eventual identification and confession of the perpetrator, Carlo Fuentes. The episode features an extended interview with Detective Clint Cole, who led the Woodrum investigation. Through this analysis, Banfield points out haunting similarities to the Guthrie case, offering hope that patience and tenacity in detective work can prevail, even as Guthrie’s case remains unsolved.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: Two Nancys, Two Mysterious Disappearances

[01:05–05:30]

• Banfield introduces the Guthrie case’s current stalemate, expressing hope that, as with Woodrum, police are working intensely beneath the surface.
• Presents the Woodrum case—a popular, kind 62-year-old woman living alone, vanishing from her bed in 2018—whose circumstances closely mirror Guthrie’s:
  • Both women: older, live alone on rural, expansive properties, disappear mysteriously from their beds, with blood evidence found at the scene, and unknown male DNA recovered.
  • Both cases: police faced mounting public and family pressure, with scant initial leads.

“Two women, both disappeared from their beds, both absolutely mysterious. As I go through this case, you won’t believe the number of similarities…”
– Ashleigh Banfield [03:32]

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2. Discovery and Early Investigation of Nancy Woodrum’s Disappearance

[05:31–16:25]

• Woodrum’s disappearance is discovered by her daughter and son-in-law amidst a wedding party at her estate.
• The crime scene: stripped bed, blood stains (including distinctive handprint), missing bedding and clothing, evidence found along a highway.
• Initial forensic analysis reveals only an unknown male DNA profile. No match in CODIS.
• Police methodically clear a long list of suspects:
  • All 24 wedding guests, including a guest who “misspoke” about his whereabouts but was cleared by photographic evidence and DNA.
  • Joe, an ex-realtor with a financial motive, also cleared by a solid alibi.
  • Sean Bloom, a contractor with a recent dispute, ruled out by DNA (as was Nancy's estranged son, Chad, who initially refused a DNA swab).

“He [Chad] flat out refused the police when they asked him to provide them with a DNA sample. Can you think that one through, Chad?... He was literally behaving like a suspect would, wasn’t Chad.”
– Ashleigh Banfield [16:56]

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3. Breakthrough via Digital & Forensic Innovation

[34:00–40:30]

• As weeks pass, with Woodrum still missing and the community growing fearful, investigators try a then-novel digital method: Google geofence analysis.
  • Police set a tiny digital "fence" around Nancy’s bedroom for a narrow time frame.
  • Google identifies a device inside the bedroom at 1 a.m. not belonging to Nancy—a phone registered to Carlo Fuentes, a painter previously interviewed as a benign witness.
• Investigators surreptitiously collect Fuentes’s DNA from a restaurant Coke bottle, establishing a match to the DNA found on the bloody pillow.
• Fuentes is confronted and eventually confesses in detail, leading police to Nancy’s remains.

“Google returned the records, investigators found a device inside that zone inside Nancy’s bedroom at about one o’ clock in the morning…The device belonged to a man named Carlo Fuentes…”
– Ashley Banfield [35:30]

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4. Confession, Motive, and Resolution

[40:30–60:00]

• Fuentes admits to harboring a sexual interest in Woodrum, misinterpreting her kindness for flirtation (she’d offered him homemade tamales).
• On the night of the crime, he entered through a sliding door, sexually assaulted, then killed Nancy to prevent identification.
• Blood at the scene is explained by Nancy’s attempt to call 911 and being punched in the face.
• He wrapped her in her bedding, carried her to his truck, then drove 60 miles to a remote area to dispose of the body—chosen for its seclusion and his past visits with his family.
• Fuentes’s confession was pivotal; investigators believe Nancy’s remains would never have been found otherwise.
• He ultimately receives a life sentence without parole.

“Carlo frickin caved. Sang like a canary. … He admitted that he had developed a sexual interest in Nancy, right, said that he had a preference for older women… And in the early morning hours…he comes back…lets himself in a sliding door while she’s asleep.”
– Ashleigh Banfield [36:52]

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5. Interview with Det. Clint Cole: Lessons & Emotional Toll

[41:53–83:01]

Key segments and quotes:

• The “Whodunit” Nature:

  “It was definitely started out as what we call a whodunit…we had a few persons of interest… but nothing really, you know, lighting up to murder.”
  – Det. Clint Cole [41:53]

• Managing a Complex Scene:

  “When we got there and learned there was this huge wedding party…you know, you’re just getting out of your car. So it was a little overwhelming at first.”
  – Det. Cole [45:31]

• On Media Scrutiny:

  “The media scrutiny is very, very stressful and can become very overwhelming. … You’re working your tail off. We just weren’t releasing anything.”
  – Det. Cole [49:36]

• Father/Son DNA Red Herrings:

  “The son’s refusing to help us…he still refused, which made him look very suspicious.”
  – Det. Cole [55:28]

• Technology’s Role:

  “…inside Nancy’s on a, on a Google Earth map inside Nancy’s studio…there’s two phone hits… at like 1 1:30 in the morning…then we get the subscriber info and it’s this guy Carlo Fuentes…”
  – Det. Cole [62:10]

• On Whether They’d Have Found Her Without a Confession:

  “No, I don’t believe we would have ever found Nancy’s remain without that [confession].”
  – Det. Cole [67:08]

• On the Nature of the Crime:

  “Not only that, but he actually…had a major thing for older women. … His Google search history. He searched…for cougars, which is older women. … That was his proclivity.”
  – Det. Cole [76:07]

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6. Comparisons and Implications for Nancy Guthrie’s Case

[59:26–end]

• Banfield and Cole note chilling similarities:
  • Both women trusted contractors.
  • Both lived where cell service was poor (making investigation, digital tracking problematic).
  • Both cases involved unknown male DNA without CODIS matches.
  • Blood evidence in both scenes, but not enough for law enforcement to presume death early on.
  • Both perpetrators appeared “normal” in their communities, with no criminal record.
  • Motive in Woodrum’s case was a sexual fixation; Banfield warns listeners not to discount similar motives in cases of elderly women.

“There are just so many aspects of the crime that was committed against Nancy Woodrum that are similar to whatever may have happened to Nancy Guthrie.”
– Ashleigh Banfield [39:55]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “He [Fuentes] was almost proud of the fact that he put tumbleweeds on her because he didn’t have time to bury her…Out there, the wind blows 40 miles an hour. They’re going to be gone in a half a day…”
  – Det. Cole [70:17]

• “So if you have a Carlo in your life…$1.2 million at least right now is the reward money. 1-800-call-FBI.”
  – Ashleigh Banfield [82:57]

• “A lot of people, they assume…if you’re an older woman, it can’t possibly be a rape motive. But this does happen. Men do this…over 90% of geriatric rapes are committed by men in their 20s.”
  – Ashleigh Banfield [75:25]

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Important Timestamps

| Time | Segment | |----------|--------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:05 | Banfield introduces the Guthrie vs. Woodrum parallels | | 05:31 | Detailed recounting of Woodrum’s disappearance | | 16:28 | Police investigate suspects; focus shifts to contractors | | 34:00 | Stalemate, Google geofence breakthrough explained | | 36:52 | Banfield narrates Fuentes’s confession and motive | | 41:53 | Interview with Det. Clint Cole begins | | 45:31 | Managing a rural estate with a wedding party crime scene | | 49:36 | The toll of public/media pressure on law enforcement | | 55:28 | Son Chad’s red flag behavior and DNA sample process | | 62:10 | Explaining the geofence digital investigation | | 67:08 | On not finding Nancy’s remains without Fuentes’s confession | | 75:25 | Discussing sexual motive and crime patterns | | 82:57 | Banfield on the public’s responsibility and tip lines |

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Takeaways and Insights for Guthrie Case

• Investigators must be exhaustive and methodical, even as public pressure mounts and theories swirl.
• Suspicious behavior by family/friends may be a red herring—cleared with hard evidence.
• Digital forensics (e.g., geofencing) can unlock cases, even with minimal physical clues.
• Elderly female victims of violent crime should not have sexual assault motives ruled out, as these crimes are more prevalent than many realize.
• The “normality” of suspects—Fuentes was married, employed, with no criminal record—reminds us not to dismiss those who outwardly seem benign.
• Keeping investigative details secret can be frustrating for the public, but may be essential for case integrity.
• Sometimes the case hinges on someone coming forward with what seems a minor or “weird” sighting.

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Final Reflections

Ashleigh Banfield ends with a plea for anyone with information on the Guthrie case to come forward, underscoring that past cases (like Woodrum’s) only cracked open thanks to dogged police work and the right tip at the right time. She highlights the emotional strain on families, law enforcement, and communities caught in the limbo of a missing-person mystery and cautions against false certainty around motives or suspects.

“The truth isn’t just serious, it’s drop dead serious.”
– Ashleigh Banfield [83:01]

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This summary highlights the most critical content, provides interpretive bridges between the two cases, and features timestamped, speaker-attributed quotes for those who seek deeper engagement with the episode’s narrative and implications.

Transcript

[Ashley Banfield]

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[Ashley Banfield]

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[Narrator/Announcer]

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[Ashley Banfield]

Hey, everyone, I'm Ashley Banfield and this is drop dead Serious. Thank you so much for being here. Do me a quick favor, hit the subscribe button. It is a huge deal for me. It's free, it doesn't hurt, and it's a cute little thing down there. So thank you. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for your support. I appreciate this. I'd love you to join our club as well. We do some members only stuff on the club. In fact, we just put a video out this morning. So have I got a story for you. It is day 37 in the search for Nancy Guthrie. It's March 9th as I bring this to you tonight. And there are so many theories about what might have happened to Mrs. Guthrie and only the police, you know, know more than we do and perhaps have a better handle on what exactly happened inside that house and who took her and why. But they sure aren't letting on and it sure does feel like the leads are not going anywhere. I really hope that there's a lot going on under the water, right? The ducks that paddle under the water and they seem all calm above, those feet are going crazy. I hope that's the case. But while we wait for more information on this case, because there's been next to nothing today, I wanted to bring you the story of another case that I can't stop thinking of because of the haunting similarities to Nancy Guthrie's case. Two women, both disappeared from their beds, both absolutely mysterious. As I go through this case, you won't believe the number of similarities, but let me tell you a little bit About Nancy Woodrum. Okay, May 4, 2018. 62 year old Nancy Woodrum. She is well liked. People in town all love her, right? She's in Paso Robles, California, and she just vanished under extraordinarily suspicious circumstances. Vanished from her bed. And her daughter and her daughter's husband came to try to find her the next day and called the police. There were so many suspicious people in Nancy Woodrum's mystery, it widened into this massive, long list of possible suspects before the investigators actually did uncover the real truth, the very disturbing truth of what happened to Nancy. And that gives me hope. They did find out what happened to Nancy Woodrum. It took a long time, y'. All. It took a very long time. And it took a lot of people that they had to clear along the way until they found out who did it. But Nancy Woodrum, not unlike Nancy Guthrie, Nancy Woodrum lived on this sprawling ranch in Paso Robles, California. It was surrounded with vineyards and it was outfitted with horse corrals and a pool and a spa and a guest house. And I mean, you probably know that in Tucson, Arizona, Nancy Guthrie has this beautiful area on a sprawling property in the desert. She's got this beautiful pool and this guest house and she lives by herself. Nancy Woodrum once shared that property with her husband and after he died, she began fixing it up to sell it. But in the meantime, she moved into the little guest house and then decided to rent out the bigger home, the main home for like weddings and events. Which is why on Friday, May 4, 2018, 24 wedding guests arrived at Nancy Woodrum's home, suitcases in hand. And they were there to spend the weekend and celebrate a big wedding of their dear and beloved friend. But what those wedding guests got was anything but a celebration. While they were there for the wedding, Nancy Woodrum disappeared out of her bed in the middle of the night. Don't get me wrong, the weekend had actually started like any other wedding weekend, right? The bridal party had gone to a rehearsal dinner at a nearby winery. And by the next morning, the house was full of, you know, the usual pre wedding ceremony chaos, right? But everything went completely sideways when Nancy Woodrum's daughter drove up in a golf cart, visibly shaken. She had been looking everywhere for her mom. She could not find her. So Nancy's daughter went up to her mom's bedroom and that is when the world turned upside down. What she found in that bedroom instantly set off alarm bells. The bed had been stripped, the room looked disturbed, there was blood. Prompting Nancy's son in law her daughter's husband to call 91 1. So again, similar, right? Daughter and son in law come looking for the mom that morning. Same thing happened with Nancy Guthrie. So not unlike what happened in Nancy Guthrie's case. When the deputies arrived at Nancy Woodrum's house, they quickly realized this was far from a routine missing person call. Same as in Nancy Guthrie's case. Inside Nancy Woodrum's bedroom, they found blood on the carpet, blood on the wall, and a decorative pillow had blood stains on both sides. And even a faint handprint. You're going to learn more about that in a minute. They didn't even know it was a handprint at first, but wait until you hear how they figured out it was actually a handprint. And you think, well, you should know if you can see. Took an amazing eye and it took a ladder. That sounds crazy. You'll understand in a bit. So Nancy Woodrum's bedding was missing. And then the investigators found a whole lot more evidence along Highway 58. Bedding and clothing. Clothing that belonged to Nancy Woodrum. And some of it was stained with blood. And by then, detectives feared that Nancy had been taken from her home after a violent attack and was either gravely injured or possibly dead. Which, by the way, really tracks with what we've been, you know, hearing for the last five weeks in the Nancy Guthrie case. They've been saying, you know, since day one, Nancy went missing, and they have to go on the fact that she's probably alive because they don't have anything else to go on. But as days continue to progress, it becomes harder and harder to believe that because of Nancy Guthrie's medical conditions. And we have just, you know, entered into week six now with Nancy Guthrie missing. When the forensic investigators processed Nancy Woodrum's house, the pillow in her bedroom became one of the most critical pieces of evidence. The testing that they did on it showed that that was Nancy's blood all over that pillow. Right? And the handprint was something that only one of the more trained CSI investigators could make out because she brought in a ladder and got up on the ladder. I'll explain to you what she did when she was up there. But there was something else there. There was something even more critical to the investigation and to solving that mystery. All of the testing that they were doing, all the CSI they were doing, what do you think it discovered? Say it with me now. It revealed the presence of unknown male DNA. Same like in the Nancy Guthrie case, right? Unknown male DNA in Nancy Guthrie's case, unknown male DNA in Nancy Woodrum's case, and that unknown male DNA profile became critical. And while police aren't saying, you know, where they found that DNA in Nancy Guthrie's case, the DNA in Nancy Woodrum's case told investigators that that perpetrator was in her bedroom during the violence. And like the Guthrie case, the unknown male DNA was uploaded into codis, you know, that whole national criminal database of offenders. And like the Nancy Guthrie case, they didn't get a match. So the horrifying criminal who abducted Nancy Woodrum from her bed had either never offended before. Right, because he's not been caught and loaded up into codis, or he just hadn't been caught yet or caught in the act of his crimes. And you're going to hear a little bit more about that in a minute. So in Nancy Woodrum's case, the investigators, no CODIS strike. We got to go back to square one. And the first place that they started to look was the wedding party. Right? 24 people just showed up on Nancy Woodrum's property that night, suitcases in hand. Right. They were all there the night that Nancy disappeared. Every single one of them had to be interviewed. Every single one of them had to be ruled out. But. And actually, that. That went pretty smoothly. But there was one guest in particular that drew the specific attention of the police. That guest initially told the investigators that he had decided to skip the rehearsal dinner on the Friday night, instead decide to remain behind at the house, which, of course, that would place him alone on the property with Nancy for several hours. So obviously, that raised a lot of red flags, and the detectives hauled him in for questioning. Right. And clearly he was uncomfortable when they pressed him on his timeline. He did something that stunned the police. He had his wife come in, and she had a bunch of pictures from the rehearsal dinner. And wouldn't you know it, they're timestamped and he's in them. I know. I don't get it either. Why did you say you weren't at the rehearsal dinner when your wife brought these photographs? And here you are with the timestamp showing you're at the rehearsal dinner Friday night. So it turned out it was just kind of a mistaken understanding of what the police were asking him. I think he was really nervous. He just misstated. He thought they were asking him about another time. But ultimately, he clear that pictures do not lie. And you know what else doesn't lie? He gave them his DNA, test it. And once his sample was compared to the unknown male DNA in Nancy's bedroom, he's ruled out he's not the guy. So over time, each and every one of these wedding guests is ruled out as well, one by one. But if not these wedding guests, who is it who did this? Right, so there was another man who I would say quickly landed on the investigator's radar. He was a former realtor that Nancy had enlisted to sell her property. His name was Joe. He was the listing agent, right, for the ranch. And this property was no. No small deal. It was, like, around 2 million bucks. So it was a big commission that he would get if he could, you know, sell this house. But something just didn't go right. Nancy eventually parted ways with Joe, cut him from the deal. And the detectives were told that Joe was really pissed, like, fuming about this, furious. And people close to Nancy said that Joe had been demanding payment for all the work that he had done to try to sell Nancy's home. Some people even described Joe as. Well, his behavior was threatening, they said. So this obviously sounded like it would be a hell of a break for the detectives. You got a guy who's pissed off. He lost a bunch of money. He's known from Nancy's friends who have argued and threatened her, and she disappears from her bed in the middle of the night. So law enforcement move in, and they decide to give Joe a very close once over. But despite all of the tension that Nancy and Joe displayed. Right, despite the eyewitnesses who saw them arguing, Joe's timeline did not place him anywhere near Nancy at the time that she disappeared. Lucky for Joe, he'd actually been out on a trail ride with a big group of people, horseback riding. And so he literally had an alibi that could be confirmed with a big group of people all out riding horses. So he might have looked like the perfect suspect. But Joe was not their guy. And Joe was ultimately cleared back to square one. So Nancy had been using a lot of contractors, like we all do, right? Especially when you got properties like Nancy Guthrie's and Nancy Woodrums, and you're by yourself. You're an older woman by yourself. The contractors that Nancy Woodrum had been using, they deserved a closer look, right? The men who'd been working on her house, and there was one named Shawn Bloom. He'd been helping her fix up her property. And by the time Nancy vanished from her bed, the business arrangement that Shawn Bloom and Nancy had forged, it was going south. She had fired him following disagreements about the work that he was doing, and she didn't agree with what he said she owed him.

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[Ashley Banfield]

And it wasn't long before investigators learned that Sean had been angry enough to threaten legal action over the money. I'm going to sue you, Nancy Woodrum, for the money you owe me. That's, you know, a red flag, of course. But then like a crimson tide came Detectives heard that Nancy Woodrum and this Sean fella got into a screaming match, right? Fighting outside of her house, verbally fighting. And contractors were nearby. And they could all hear, you know, well, many of them could hear what was going on. And one of those contractors, a painter, was asked by the police, did you see this, this fight? And he told them everything he saw. Sean is yelling at Nancy. He's angry with her, but he couldn't give much more of a description because he said that they were kind of walking around the house while they were yelling and screaming, and he only had a view until it went out of sight, so he couldn't make out everything that they were saying. But, I mean, talk about a red hot poker of a lead in this case, right? So, of course, man, this guy, he needed his DNA tested, right? And Sean Bloom gave them his DNA and they tested it against the sample that was found on Nancy's pillow. And the results were clear. He wasn't the guy. John Bloom was not the guy. Not the guy in Nancy Woodrum's bedroom. And he was cleared back to square one. I know I'm exhausted. And I keep wondering if this is what's happening at all behind the scenes in Nancy Guthrie. Do they have somebody and then they run it all down and they clear them, but they don't tell us and they have somebody and they run it all down and they clear them. We've seen a few people, right? Some raids, we've seen them clear the family verbally. But as the. As the Nancy Woodrum investigation kept going, the detectives had to contend with another very uncomfortable possibility that maybe somebody in Nancy's own family might have been involved. Right. There's. Look, she had a $2 million house. There's financial incentives. Some families don't get on well. And you're going to hear a little bit more about that in a minute because they looked at Nancy Woodrum's son, guy named Chad, and they soon learned, investigators, that her relationship, Nancy's relationship with her son was not good. In fact, it had been in trouble for years. They had reportedly been estranged for five years. Five years. And yet Chad, Nancy's son, was the last person known to have had contact with Nancy. And the phone records showed that Nancy had texted her son Chad the very evening that she disappeared. So, yes, investigators are going to pay Chad a call. And to say that their spidey senses started tingling would be an understatement. Because when the detectives tried to speak with Nancy son Chad, estranged son Chad, his demeanor was way off. He was angry, he was distant. He was intransigent. He was not going to cooperate with them. And then, then this Chad fella, the son of Nancy who's missing, right? And they are hoping not dead, but it is not looking good. And the weeks are, you know, stacking up in this investigation. Chad did something that they absolutely did not see coming. He flat out refused the police when they asked him to provide them with a DNA sample. Can you think that one through, Chad, your Mother is missing. We have bloody bedding and bloody clothes on the highway down from her house. There's a scene of the crime in her bedroom. We'd like to at least eliminate you, help us help you help us find your mother. Honestly, the police at this point with this guy saying, nope, you're not getting my DNA. Nope, they figure they've got their guy, they've got their suspect. It's $2 million house here. He would. Right. There's a financial angle there. He. He might stand to have some gain on that $2 million house. Can't ignore that. If Nancy's dead, maybe that sale would be divided up between his sister and him. So that could be at least a million each. And who knows what else Nancy had. So the investigators zeroed in on Chad, and they started really looking at him closely, and they tailed him, and they eventually got what they were looking for, a sample of his DNA. And wouldn't you know how they got it? Not from him, thank you very much. They pulled him over because he was drinking and driving, and turns out he had some beer bottles. So thank you very much. We'll take those beer bottles and whatever mouth has been on them. Right. Officers grabbed the beer bottles, and when they tested those beer bottles, they compared the DNA to the sample from inside Nancy's bedroom. Detectives were shocked. It was not Chad. He was not their man. No matter how weird he was behaving and suspicious he was behaving. He was literally behaving like a suspect would, wasn't Chad. And Chad was quickly eliminated as a suspect. So now we're at the end of summer. Remember, she disappears in May, beginning of May, and now we're at the end of summer. May, June, July, August. We're, like, getting into four months here. And the detectives have worked their way through almost every obvious person of interest in Nancy's world. The wedding guests, those people had all been ruled out. The realtor she was fighting with ruled out. The contractor that she was fighting with ruled out. Nancy's own estranged son that she'd been fighting with but communicating on the night that she disappeared. And he's all, you know, hanky. He's investigated and cleared. But the male DNA profile recovered from the pillow was still unidentified. After ruling all these people out and Nancy officially still missing. Right. The similarities between Nancy Guthrie's case and Nancy Woodrum's case are eerie. And sometimes, honestly, I think they're uncanny. Search teams in both women's disappearances spent weeks, you know, combing through the countryside looking for Nancy Woodrum looking for Nancy Guthrie. Understandably, not as many search teams as you would think in Nancy Guthrie's case. Because the sheriff, on day two Monday, after the Sunday disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, he called off the search. There have been scattered searches. All of a sudden, they show up, they disappear. They show up, they disappear. Volunteers have gone out. But in Nancy Woodrum's case, there was a lot more searching than went on. So law enforcement volunteers, they cover miles and miles of land, checking culverts and fields and ditches and hillsides in both women's cases, but everybody came up empty. And so far in Nancy Guthrie's case, nobody has come up with anything of use that we know of. Right? And as the case continues to drag on in Nancy Woodrum's case, without answers, fear starts to settle over this, like, whole community. Because as much as they did know, you know, all the people they were ruling out, there was so much they didn't know. Right? Especially one terrifying fact. Whoever did this to Nancy Woodrum was still out there and he could still strike again. Which, if you think about it, we're in week six right now of Nancy Guthrie. This guy's still out there. And, yeah, I guess you could say he could strike again. Right. So while the investigation is. Is kind of stalling in Nancy Woodrum's case, the detectives decide to employ this tool that at the time was still pretty damn new. Google geofence analysis process is kind of like it sounds. It allows them to put a. A geofence, a digital fence around Nancy Woodrum's living space and then track what devices entered into that exact fencing area in the exact hours that they believe she disappeared. Right. They kept the radius incredibly small, like 12ft. So precise, in fact, they could isolate Nancy's actual bedroom. Right. And when Google returned the records, investigators found a device inside that zone inside Nancy's bedroom at about one o' clock in the morning that should not have been there. And that was right around the time they believed she disappeared. And it was not Nancy's phone. Right. They found Nancy's phone in there, but then they get this mystery phone in there. So. Hello, Warrant? Yeah, they get the warrant up, they used a warrant to trace that phone and the account behind the phone. And the result was pretty shocking. Not gonna lie. The device belonged to a man named Carlo Fuentes. C A R L O. Carlo. Carlo Fuentes. Carlo was that very friendly painter who'd been working on Nancy's property. You remember the guy that. The painter who'd been so helpful when police were questioning him Months earlier. And he had told them at least one detective. He told them that he'd seen that contractor, Sean Bloom, the angry contractor, arguing with Nancy as they walked around behind the house. And then he couldn't hear anything more as they were arguing and yelling at each other and went out of range. And he couldn't offer anything more. Carlo Fuentes was not the kind of suspect who immediately set off any alarm bells for the detectives. Right. He'd been living in this area for years. He was married. He had no criminal history. He had a child. But once detectives had enough to confront Carlo directly, they brought him in and they started asking him questions. And in the beginning, Carlo denied any involvement at all. Right. I got the wrong guy. It's not me. But that started to change once the investigators laid out what exactly they had on Carlo. Yeah, they had the digital geofence that placed his phone in Nancy's bedroom in the middle of the night, the night she disappeared. But what Carlo didn't know was that detectives had his DNA. How, you ask? Good question. They tailed him as well. You remember they tailed another suspect and got the beer bottles. Right. They got Chad's beer bottles when he was doing the drinking and driving thing. So they tail Carlo and his wife to a restaurant, and Carlo orders up the old Coca Cola and then leaves the table. And detectives swoop in and grab that Coca Cola, and, you know, on the mouthy part of the Coca Cola, they get his DNA and they got the match. Carlo doesn't know that. Right. So now they've got him in the interview room, Right? And they tell him, carlo, it's your DNA on the bloodied pillow in Nancy's bedroom. Okay? And it's your phone inside Nancy's bedroom. And as the interview goes on, you know, Carlo story shifting all over the place. First he's trying to explain Nancy's disappearance by claiming that he'd come to the property to pick up a ladder and that as he left, he accidentally hit her with his truck. Oh, I didn't mean it. But, you know, none of the forensics match up with that. None. And the detectives see through this immediately. So little by little, Carlo's version of events started to unravel. And what he ultimately ended up telling the detectives was quite simply, it was horrifying. He caved. Carlo frickin caved. Sang like a canary. I've never seen anything like this. I mean, this kind of a confession that just is like Hoover Dam opens up and everything comes out. He admitted that he had developed a sexual interest in Nancy, right, said that he had a preference for older women. And he said that when he was working as a painter, Nancy was so nice to him. She even brought him out tamales that she'd made and said, they're not as good as your grandmother's, but I hope you like them. And Carlo took that to be flirting. Carlo's a lot younger than Nancy. Nancy's in her 60s, and so he takes that to be flirting. And in the early morning hours of the next night, about one o' clock in the morning, he comes back to her property and he lets himself in a sliding door while she's asleep. And according to his confession and according to the police, they believe, and they don't know 100% if this is what happened, but they believe that Nancy tried to call 911 when she heard somebody in, you know, in her house, but he got to her too fast and probably hit her, punched her, caused her to bleed a lot, and then sexually assaulted her. So at the point now Carlo realizes that Nancy has seen him and knows him and can identify him. And that is when he made a decision that his attack, his rape, that he was. That's what he wanted, right. It had to turn deadly. We don't know if he went there that night to rape and kill her or if he thought somehow he was going to be able to rape her without him seeing her, without her seeing him. But one thing I can tell you is that on his way to her house that night, one o' clock in the morning, mysteriously, Carlos stopped at a church in a strip mall. He stopped at a church and he got out and he spent 20 minutes at that church. 20 minutes, and then got back in the car and went right to Nancy's. So you got to ask yourself, what's he doing in that 20 minutes? Because the assumption by the police is he's wondering if he's going to go through with it. I don't know if he's asking for forgiveness in advance. I don't know. But he went through with it. So now he has sexually assaulted this elderly woman in her bed. And I know you're probably thinking that is insane. It's not. It happens a lot. Geriatric rape is not uncommon. It happens. And a lot of the men that do it are in their 20s. It is a sick fetish. And they do it also. Older women, geriatric victims fight back less, so it's easier. Just like children, you know, sick people who think children are easy to assault. Same thing with geriatrics. So he is now in a predicament where she's seen him. So he takes the pillow and he silences her and he suffocates her after he sexually assaulted her in her own bed. And then he wraps Nancy's body, Nancy Woodrum's body in her own bedding. And he hoists her up onto his shoulder, like over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, right? And he carries her out the same door, those sliding doors that he came in. And he gets out to his truck. He's got a painter's truck, right? It's like a. It's a pickup with all the painter's material in the back and the tarps and everything. And he. There's a bunch of scuffle marks. And the police were wondering, what are all these scuff marks in this driveway here? There must have been a scuffle here. And it wasn't. It was him with, you know, 160 pounds or so over his shoulder, trying to put her in the truck. And he's struggling, you know, he's struggling with his feet in the. In the gravel sand. And he gets her into the truck and he leaves the gate of the truck open. This is the weirdest thing right now. It's like 1:30, 2:00 clock in the morning. He puts her in the back of the truck all wrapped up in the bedding. And some of her clothes are in there too. Like her. She laid her outfit from for the next day on the bed. And she had her pajamas on as well. And so those clothes ended up in the bedding and now they're in the back of the truck. And he does not put the gate up. I don't know why. Maybe he couldn't. Whatever reason, he drives away and Nancy Woodrum's body is in the back of the truck. I suppose you could say it looked like a painter's mess in the back, right? So people driving behind him might not think anything, but there's clearly visible all this bedding wrapped up and amidst all the painting equipment. And then he drives upwards of 60 miles with her in the back of his pickup truck with the gate open. And so a lot of the bedding flies out the back and some of the clothes, her bloody clothes, bloody bedding clothes fly out the back. And he is driving at 2, 3 o' clock in the morning, upwards of 60 miles away to something called the Carrizo. Hey, I'm with you. It just defies everything, what it is to be human, you know. He gets to where he's decided to dump her Body and he gets her out of the back of the truck and he puts her again up over his shoulder. And he's trying to make his way a hundred yards off the road, but there's a vehicle coming. It is the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, and he freaks out because there's a vehicle coming. So he puts Nancy on the ground and he lays himself down flat on the ground to try to avoid being detected. And the vehicle actually pulls up and stops because there's this truck sitting there, like abandoned with all the painter stuff in the back and no sign of anybody. What the hell? Those people could have caught him in the actual. They could have. They could have caught him in the act, but they started up again. Look, who knows who was in that car. Could have been a single woman who's like, hell, no, I'm not getting out here. I'm not investigating this. No way. I'm out of here. Right? But nobody reported it. This was not the same as the Nancy Guthrie case, where there's just eyeballs everywhere as to weird stuff. Nobody reported it. So now there's Carlo again, and he's got a deal. Like he's done 50 yards with her over his shoulder and now he's like giving up. He's going to go the next 50 yards dragging. He drags her the next 50 yards and he finally finds the spot where he's going to leave her because there's like a berm that keeps her out of sight, maybe like, you know, from the main road. The topography just lent itself well at that spot for him to leave her there. And so he did. Upwards of 60 miles away from her home. That's where he abandoned her remains and then split himself. And this was a road where he could go to Nancy Woodrum's house and he could attack her and then take her and then continue on this 60 mile journey and dump her body and then continue on and end up back at his home. It was a perfect route for him. And in a moment you'll find out why exactly there, because there's a specific reason. But in the end, Carlo told the detectives everything and he said he'd show them where Nancy's body was. So they drove. They drove out to the Carrizo Plains, which is a harsh and lonely stretch of land where heat and distance and wildlife can erase just about anything, and does. And the investigators fanned out through the area that he'd identified. And before long, they find a rock formation. They're thinking, that's it. And sure enough, Something was left of Nancy in that rock formation. And ultimately those remains were confirmed to be Nancy's through dental records. That was Nancy Woodrum. That's where she was. Would they have found her if he hadn't given them the vicinity, taken them there? You're going to hear the detective tell you the answer to that in just a minute. So ultimately, Carlo did a deal. He pleaded guilty to Nancy Woodrum's murder and rape, and he was given a sentence of life in prison, no possibility of parole. Same thing that Coburger got. You're going in, you're never coming out until you have a toe tag on. Right? And all of these things are. There are just so many aspects of the crime that was committed against Nancy Woodrum that are similar to whatever may have happened to Nancy Guthrie. Right? Blood in the house, taken from her bed in the middle of the night. Keys, purse, phone, all of her things left in the home. Something mysterious in the home had investigators instantly and her daughter and her daughter's husband call 91 1. Not enough blood to think that she was definitely dead. Blood in the home, whereby they thought she could still be alive. But as time went on, month after month, they started to lose, obviously, a lot of. A lot of hope. Unknown male DNA found in both crime scenes. No match to CODIS on either one of them. Right. Here's another similarity. Both of these women's homes, Nancy Guthrie's home and Nancy Woodrum's home are in pockets with very little cell service. Brian Enten tells me all the time how right at Nancy's home, there's almost no service at all. Like, you're down to almost one bar and maybe not even. But then maybe a few driveways over, you can get service. But Nancy's home, Nancy Guthrie's home, next to no cell service. Same thing with Nancy Woodrums. No cell service. Everything by WI Fi. And this rapist and killer thought he was being smart by turning off his phone when he came to commit his crime. But his wife was so pissed at him for, you know, stepping out on her all the time that she was blowing up his phone. And while he's at the crime scene, while he is in Nancy Woodrum's bedroom in her home, he turns his phone on to check, you know, messages from the wife. And so it hooks up to the WI Fi. That's that handshake. It just, you know, boom. That helped them. That helped them. Yeah. Your phone actually hooked up to the WI Fi. You checked your messages from your wife as you're doing this Horrifying thing, apparently so. You know, the kindness, that's another thing. A lot of people talk about Nancy Guthrie as being very, very well liked, extraordinarily kind. All of her neighbors just can't say enough about her. Never heard a negative word about Nancy Guthrie. Kind, sweet, living alone older woman needs contractors to help her keep that place going after her husband had died long ago. Same thing with Nancy Woodrum. Kind and nice. And gave her own rapist and killer tamales to be nice. Yeah, he took it to mean she was flirting with him. Nice try. Obviously we don't know what happened to Nancy Guthrie, but I was able to talk to the detective who worked this case, Clint Cole. Detective Clint Cole, retired detective with the San Luis Obispo county sheriff's office. He is known for his work in the cold case unsolved unit. He solved multiple high profile cold cases, including Kristen Smart and Nancy Woodrum. So he knows a thing or two about these perplexing disappearances of an elderly woman from her bed in the middle of the night with blood inside the house. So I called him up and I said, tell me everything. And he did. Detective, the Nancy Woodrum case seemed as though it might actually be unsolvable. Did it feel that way when you were working?

[Detective Clint Cole]

Did it was definitely started out as what we call a whodunit. We really, we had a few persons of interest that were near Nancy, contractors, ex, boyfriend, but nothing really that was really, you know, lighting up to murder. So it was definitely like what we call a whodunit.

[Ashley Banfield]

I mean, it is not every day that an older woman disappears from her bed, as we are learning in the Nancy Guthrie case in Tucson.

[Detective Clint Cole]

Yes, especially in our county. You know, we're small. We're a small county. Paso Robles is a small city where she lived. She lived in a rural part of like ranchers. Very, very unusual in this area for somebody to be taken out of their home.

[Ashley Banfield]

Well, obviously it seemed like the whole world, but certainly much of America has been fixated on the Nancy Guthrie case because it seems like a complete mystery as well. We don't know what's going on behind the scenes. But as I looked more into Nancy Woodrum's case, the similarities are sort of uncanny.

[Detective Clint Cole]

There definitely are some similarities. I don't know much about the case in Arizona. I don't really follow it too much. I've got my own cases that I worry about. But obviously a lady being taken from her home is very similar.

[Ashley Banfield]

Yes, and taken from her bed. If we're to believe what Sheriff Chris Nanos said early in the case, but then retracted. He said she was taken from her bed in the middle of the night. And then Savannah Guthrie, Nancy Guthrie's daughter, said about four weeks later, she was taken from her bed in the dark of night. So if we're to believe the literal sense of that, it's almost exactly the way, you know, Nancy Woodrum disappeared from her bed. Have you ever had a call from the authorities in Arizona? Because I brought this case up to Sheriff Nanos on day two of the case.

[Detective Clint Cole]

I have not received any calls from law enforcement. No.

[Ashley Banfield]

Do you know if, if Sheriff Nanos has reached out to anyone in the Woodrum case?

[Detective Clint Cole]

No, I do not.

[Ashley Banfield]

Do you think it would be helpful?

[Detective Clint Cole]

You know, it's hard to. It's hard to say. I. I don't know what they know. All I can go by is in our case, we. We didn't reach out, but I don't know the details of their case, so I don't feel super comfortable commenting. But it could go either way. I mean, it just depends on what's going on over there.

[Ashley Banfield]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, listen to the untrained eye, which of course is me. It's just when I looked at Nancy Woodrum's case, sort of a light went off. I want to talk about the original piece. When you arrive on the property, you get a 911 call from a family member, her daughter and her daughter's husband saying, we can't find our mom. And you show up. And what's the first thing that goes through your mind when you see there's a whole wedding party of 24 guests there?

[Detective Clint Cole]

Yeah, that was. That was a little troublesome when we got there and learned there was this huge wedding party staying at the property. It was a large five or six bedroom house, plus another two bedroom house which was next door to Nancy's living quarters, which was a little studio. So just right off the bat, you have, you know, 24 possible persons of interest and, you know, you're just getting out of your car. So it was a little overwhelming at first. Yes.

[Ashley Banfield]

Did you immediately think it's more than likely one of these people because this is the outlier, all these strangers have come to the property. Not all strangers, but many. And in if that was the case, how did you do your CSI on a property that just had so many potential sources of DNA on it?

[Detective Clint Cole]

Well, luckily for us, Nancy's house was separated some from the big house where most of the guests were. There was guest stain next next to Nancy's house. Where only a single wall separated the two structures. There was one big building with a wall and Nancy studio. And then on the other side was a two bedroom, little small place. And so in that regard we, we didn't. We could focus more on Nancy's place initially. You know, that's where our evidence was, was in Nancy's place. We had a search warrant for everything and we searched everything. Luckily we got, we got word pretty early of where the. The wedding party was from. We knew we had heard that one of the wedding party. Well, not just the wedding party, the groom was a member of law enforcement and so that eased our mind a little bit. But there was also confusion with one of the wedding guests. We weren't sure. His statement was a little bit unclear where he. He thought. He didn't go to the reception.

[Ashley Banfield]

A rehearsal dinner.

[Detective Clint Cole]

The rehearsal dinner. Right. The night before. So here we have a guy who says, who's telling us he stayed behind and would have been alone with Nancy for several hours. So we did have to focus on at least that one individual. But luckily we, we knew most of the wedding guests during the time that Nancy disappeared, we felt were tucked away in bed or at the party, except for this one lone ranger guy who really couldn't decide where he was at.

[Ashley Banfield]

But ultimately the time stamped photos that his wife had, thank God, gave him his alibi and cleared him.

[Detective Clint Cole]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ashley Banfield]

That in the DNA?

[Detective Clint Cole]

Yes. It took us like three or four days later. So we wasted three or four days. Part of it was our fault. One of the investigators could have probably cleared that up a little bit better. He, the wedding guest certainly could have, but. So we did clear it up fairly quickly. But it did waste a couple days.

[Ashley Banfield]

And imagine if the eyes of the world had been on you. The scrutiny that the Pima County Sheriff's department and the FBI have all been under while investigating this case. Could you sort of put yourself in that predicament and imagine how things would have been different for you?

[Detective Clint Cole]

Well, absolutely. Here in our county, Nancy Woodrum's case was very, very newsworthy. This, as I said earlier, this is not something that happens in our county. So Nancy Woodrum's disappearance was in our news every day, not the national or international news, but

[Ashley Banfield]

I'll bet that was enough.

[Detective Clint Cole]

Yeah, the local news was enough. It was stressful enough. Just, you know, paying attention to social media. They're not doing anything, they're not saying anything, those sorts of things. You try not to let it. You know, at some point you got to just quit reading it because you Know, you're working your tail off. We just weren't releasing anything. And so that media scrutiny is very, very stressful and can become very overwhelming.

[Ashley Banfield]

I can imagine. I actually can't imagine it. So let's move on. Like, once you got past the wedding, guests got the DNA, and thank God for the. The DNA. I mean, thank God you had that. Joe, the realtor. There was quite a story that followed. The real estate agent who had, you know, gotten into a business disagreement with Nancy, lost the listing. And, you know, it was thought that maybe there'd been acrimony there. Did you feel when you heard about that, Aha, we have her first real potential suspect.

[Detective Clint Cole]

You know, no, it's certainly enough. We thought about it enough that we needed to clear him, and we cleared him very quickly with an alibi. He was out of the county on a trail ride. But, you know, when I said earlier we had some persons of interest, but nothing that really rose that really stood out. You know, there was another contractor that Nancy was actually in verbal arguments with.

[Ashley Banfield]

Both Sha Bloom.

[Detective Clint Cole]

Sha Bloom, Correct. And. And Shawn Bloom was well known to law enforcement. I knew him many, many years ago as a young patrol deputy and he was a youngster. But once again, even though we have to look at these guys and we have to clear them, you know, does a couple thousand dollar disagreement over some lumber going to lead to murder? Yeah, it can and it has, it as it has. But, you know, this. This was truly. And for us, who done it, and it was. Is very, very stressful. And

[Ashley Banfield]

well, Sean. It was Sean Bloom who the painter said, I saw them having an argument walking around the house. And it almost sounded as though, you know, it made perfect sense. This painter only caught pieces of it and then admitted, I didn't get to see the whole argument. They were walking around the side of the house. It sounded very, very plausible.

[Detective Clint Cole]

Oh, it did. No, it. It did. And what we knew about Sean Bloom, he, you know, he certainly could have been capable of it. You know, people murder for a lot less. You know, that. And so he was definitely on our radar. We called him in the first time, asked him for his DNA. He initially said no, not until he spoke to his attorney. So then that raises your suspicion quite a bit. But to our surprise, a couple days later, he spoke to his attorney and he marched right back in and opened his mouth and gave us his DNA.

[Ashley Banfield]

And thank God for that. But the frustrating thing is the offender DNA from Nancy's bedroom just didn't strike in codis. So you knew that you didn't have this guy out there who'd been doing a lot of this. And I feel like that's sort of a similar story for Nancy Guthrie, because they didn't have, you know, a strike from the glove in codis. And they also aren't sure that they have the kind of profile that's, you know, useful to them. Certainly not at codis, maybe through familial or investigative genetic genealogy, but they didn't have the luck that you had in terms of a really solid sample that you could go to each person and rule them out.

[Detective Clint Cole]

Yeah, we did have touch DNA on a pillow, which we were able to rule Sean Bloom, Joe the realtor, everybody that we. The. The wedding guest, you know, people that we wanted to out. And it eventually showed our suspect was the guy who, you know, I don't want to jump ahead, but was actually on the property and was a painter who was trying to rat out, kind of turn the suspicion over to Sean Bloom.

[Ashley Banfield]

Yeah, yeah. And then on the subject of those who raise the red flag because they don't want to cooperate, like Shawn Bloom said, not till I talk to my attorney. You're not swabbing my cheek. The weirdest thing in. Well, not the weirdest, but one of the weirdest parts of the story was that Nancy's son Chad, also refused to give a DNA sample, which to me, was just sort of confounding.

[Detective Clint Cole]

It was. It was very, very strange, Suspicious. And I told Chad, we were sitting in his living room, and I told him, do you realize what this makes you look like? And he said, yeah, I do. His wife at the time told him he understands that he looks like a suspect by not giving you his DNA. And they hadn't talked in months, and they had had a text conversation that night, so that's suspicious. They had been in a feud. They're not talking. All of a sudden, she reached out to him. Did that make him snap? You know, once again, maybe not, but people have done less. You know, people have for less. So. And then we go to his house, and you would think the most helpful guy in the world would be her son. And he was one of the least cooperative.

[Ashley Banfield]

So weird. Did you ever get a. A good explanation? Like, was he worried that he'd be identified in another crime that maybe he'd been involved in? And. And that was why he was so resistant?

[Detective Clint Cole]

He would never say. My suspicions are, yeah, he probably did something at a younger age. That's the only thing I can think of. Why you wouldn't help your mother. Yeah. When you're doing a familial DNA. So let's say we. Somebody found Nancy's remains in another county and we didn't. Nobody knew who it was and we didn't have Nancy's DNA. The best, the only way to really prove familial wise that it's her would be son and daughter. Right. And the son's refusing to help us do that. And I explained that to him. Hey, we're not wanting your DNA as a suspect. As much as, what if we find your mother's remains somewhere else, you help us identify her. And he still refused, which made him look very suspicious.

[Ashley Banfield]

Yeah, yeah, he was.

[Detective Clint Cole]

He wasn't cooperative, not only with the swab, but he just. He was very irritated and agitated about the whole thing. It was very, very strange.

[Ashley Banfield]

Well, it's red flag after red flag too. You must have thought this must be our guy, only to get the beer bottles that he discarded, get his DNA, and it's not him.

[Detective Clint Cole]

Yes. You know, I had my doubts whether it was him. He. But everything pointed to, hey, this guy. So yes, we. We got his beer bottles on a traffic stop. He was drinking and driving, and sure enough, we sent him in and right away, not him. Yeah.

[Ashley Banfield]

So all the while, you know, Nancy Woodrum is just missing. No one knows if she's dead. I mean, you're going on two principles, just like in the Nancy Guthrie case. The sheriff says, until I know otherwise, I'm going on the principle that Nancy is out there in somewhere still alive. Is that how you felt?

[Detective Clint Cole]

Well, not as much based on our scene and based on families information that Nancy wouldn't just leave. Nancy was very devoted to her church, to her friends.

[Ashley Banfield]

That sounds like Nancy Guthrie too. I mean, honestly. And she is not a wanderer and very devoted mistress. Church that Sunday, her. Her church group that Sunday all sounded very similar.

[Detective Clint Cole]

Yeah, I don't like. Once again, I don't know with that case, but I know in the, in our, our case, the Nancy Woodrom case, she definitely was out of character for her to take off. Her keys were at. At her house, her cars were at her house. Her purse, her cell phone, the shoes that she wore the day before and would have worn were laying by her bedside. All her bedding was rolled up and gone. Most of her bedding was gone. We later found out it was rolled up and, and some of it blew out on the road seven miles down the road. And we knew that that night. So we, we knew something a little bit more in our case that her bedding's missing some of it. And we had family confirm it was hers. Was found seven miles down the road. That bedding found seven miles down the road had blood on it as well as the stuff left in the house had blood on it. So in, in. I guess what I'm trying to say is I didn't, I wasn't as sure Nancy Woodrum was still alive after the first day or two, based on our evidence.

[Ashley Banfield]

Yeah, well, and, and I, I think you've got some, some good reading ahead of you. Just given what I've learned in the Nancy Guthrie case. I think you're going to be fascinated by how many facts are the same. Nancy Guthrie's phone, keys, cell phone, everything left behind. We don't know if there were shoes missing. We don't know if there was bedding missing. They are holding a lot of that close to the vest. But we do know there are blood droplets inside the house. That is according to a source of mine, law enforcement, and we have seen with our own eyes a similar pattern of the blood droplets going outside the front door and down the front walk. So it's just every permutation and combination I try to come up with as to how Nancy was taken doesn't make sense. I keep coming back to Nancy Woodrum's case, though, and how, how many of the facts are the same. But in the end, how did you end up like, walk me through the geofencing and how you got to Carlo Fuentes.

[Detective Clint Cole]

So Google, whether you have a Google phone or not, like an iPhone, obviously is Apple, not Google, but there's so many apps owned by Google. So if you're using an Apple app, I mean, a Google app on an iPhone, Google is tracking your location and,

[Ashley Banfield]

and most, and also your, your advertising, you know, your preferences in your products because they're always looking to see if you're close to an ad and then they want to, you know, tailor the ads to you.

[Detective Clint Cole]

Right. And that's why when you like Google tires or talk about tires, all of a sudden your, your Facebook and all your social media is filled with tire ads. Right? That's go. And so although some people get kind of freaked out about that, it's. It's a benefit to law enforcement because our phones are tracking us. And the new iPhone, when you, the newer iPhones, when you go to shut it off, next time you look, if you have a newer iPhone, go to shut it off, it'll tell you you're not necessarily shutting off location data on your phone. So even if the phone is Shut off. It's potential for the phone still to be tracked. And so how what happened is we built through on Google Earth, we built a little rectangular square around Nancy's property. And you, you have to, you have to be specific on the time that you want it. You can't ask for, you know, a week's worth. It's just too many, too many responses would show up from Google. So we, we narrowed it down to a very specific time when she was last, when she last talked to her son at like 7:30 at night and when she was supposed to go walking at 7 in the morning. So we narrowed it down to like 12 hours or so. And we asked Google for any phones that were in our geofence, which was set by GPS coordinates during that time frame. And it, and it was one of the first ones in the state of California. One of our detectives had just gotten back from the training and wow, you know, we've got very lucky. Did you ever lucky. And you can't really. It's my understanding I work on cold cases now. I was still active back then. So there's not a lot of Google geofences in 1970s cases. So it's my understanding you can't do the Google geofences that much or very much anymore because cops do silly things and abuse them and use them for things other than murder and rapes. So they're harder to get now, but they're a great tool. So we, inside of our perimeter, we saw a couple of our wedding guests that were up that at that time frame. And inside Nancy's on a, on a Google Earth map inside Nancy's studio, like literally inside the wall, there's two, two phone hits at like 1 1:30 in the morning and the 152 something in the morning. Well, we're thinking it's either Nancy who was most likely asleep, or it's our suspect. But it's only a number, so it, it's not identifiable. So then you have to write Google another search warrant. And it takes a search warrant to get that write another search warrant for the subscriber info. And that took another month or two. So then we get the subscriber info and it's this guy Carlo Fuentes, and it's like, oh my gosh, that's the painter. What is Carlo doing inside Nancy's house at 1:30 and 1:52 in the morning the night she goes missing? So at that point, and that was in November, Nancy went missing Cinco de Mayo. So 5th of May, that we're in November, things change for us right away. All of a sudden we've got a guy we focus on and we jump on him and, and follow him around as you mentioned. And got a Coke bottle confirmed the DNA on the pillow was his. Now we have his phone in her house and we have a DNA a Y haplotype. So it's Y only because of the mixture with Nancy's blood. So it wasn't a normal st. Excuse me. It wasn't a normal str DNA 1 in 250 Quintilian. It was Carlos paternal lineage. That it's like one out or out of 1100, that it could be anybody else. So then all we have to do is rule out his father and his two brothers. Which one? Father and one brother were in Mexico. The other brother was right here in Paso Robles. We were able to rule him out. And then that leaves Carlo. Plus we have Carlo's phone. And then if you. It sounds like you know the Woodrum case pretty well, we eventually get a confession and he takes us to Nancy's body.

[Ashley Banfield]

I mean, Detective Cole, you didn't get a confession. This guy sang like a canary. Unbelievable. The things he told you. I mean, you must have been gap jawed listening to everything he was offering up because that doesn't happen that often.

[Detective Clint Cole]

No, it doesn't. Especially when there's trying to locate a body. When he, When I realized he was going to talk, I, I think I kept my mouth closed as you said, but my heart literally, I could see my shirt bouncing. The anxiety, the stress of like, oh, oh my gosh, he's. He's gonna tell us. He's gonna, you know, he, he said, I want to help you. I want to take you to Nancy's body. And that's, you know, that's. It was just overwhelming it. I had to like do some deep breathing and kind of like catch myself for a few minutes.

[Ashley Banfield]

Do you think you would have found her body had he not taken you there?

[Detective Clint Cole]

No, there. No, not out there. We actually flew a helicopter along that roadway that she was found on, but she was a hundred yards up. We actually flew a helicopter and they couldn't see her. And there wasn't the extreme animal activity out in this area. It's called the Carissa Plains or Carrizo Plains, depending on how you pronounce it for a reason. It's plains. It's open cattle range, it's windy, it's hot in the winter and cold, or excuse me, hot in the summer and cold in the winter due to Animal activity. There wasn't a lot left when we did find her. So, no, I don't believe we would have ever found Nancy's remain without that

[Ashley Banfield]

would have been several months by that point, right?

[Detective Clint Cole]

Yes. Yeah. So he. We. We. We followed him. We. We did a bunch of research. Google, his Google search history, learned what made him tick, all this stuff. So about the middle of December is when we got word it was his phone. December 18th is the day we called him into the office and he confessed and took us to the body.

[Ashley Banfield]

So June, July, August, September, October, November. Seven months.

[Detective Clint Cole]

Yes. And. And it's. And. And during that time in little tiny San Luis Obispo county, we were taking a beating in the local media, not national, thank goodness. But I have experience with the national media because I was a lead investigator on Chris Smart case. And so that case.

[Ashley Banfield]

Wow.

[Detective Clint Cole]

That case did make national and international news.

[Ashley Banfield]

And so it's still making international and national news, Detective. It still is.

[Detective Clint Cole]

And it's one of the reasons I came back to help try and bring Kristen home to her family, because I did retire in 2023, but not to get off to a different subject. The. The relief that came when he said he was gonna help us. Now, when he said where she was, we were still worried that he may not be able to find her. That. I mean, this area all looks the same. It's. It's literally the plains. And. But luckily we got lucky, and he had put these rocks around her body. And we were up on this little knoll, and I looked off to the right, and he was describing these white rocks about, you know, size of a small watermelon. And I said, is those. Are. Is that the rocks over there? And he broke down, fell to his knees, started crying and said, yes, that's where she's at. And I walked over and saw what was left of Nancy's remainder.

[Ashley Banfield]

Why. Why did he put those rocks around her?

[Detective Clint Cole]

You know, I don't know. One thing that has always irritated me and bothered me is during the interview, he almost was proud of the fact that he put tumbleweeds on her because he didn't have time to bury her, so he just put tumbleweeds on her. And he was almost proud of that. And I don't know why. When you work these cases, sometimes there's little things that just, like, gnaw at you, and that's one of them. Like, what do you mean, you put tumbleweeds on her? I mean, out there, you want a medal?

[Ashley Banfield]

Yeah.

[Detective Clint Cole]

Out there, the wind blows 40 miles an hour. They're going to be gone in a half a day. Yeah, it's just something that really always bothered me about his confession.

[Ashley Banfield]

Why do you think he told you everything? But do you think that he figured, if I'm more helpful, they'll go easy on me, or do you think he had a guilty conscience? Conscience.

[Detective Clint Cole]

I do think he had a guilty conscience. I really do. He. He there never really made it in the news or in court because there really wasn't a real court trial in this case. But he had gone to get a pizza right before we caught him at a local pizza place. And one of the workers who called us after he was identified and in the media was standing outside on smoke break. And when Carlo picked up his pizza and walked out, he knew the guy a little, and he talked to him and he told. He just started talking to the guy, and he told the guy that he had done some really bad stuff and he's probably never going to see his kid again. And he was crying, and then he drove home. And that guy thought, well, that's weird. Didn't think about, we have a missing woman all over the news. But once Carlo's name and face were plastered in the news, this guy calls and says, hey, this is what the guy said. And during our contact with him, he. I, you know, I hate to give him any credit, but he was remorseful. He. He was. He wanted. He wanted to get this off his. Off his conscience for sure.

[Ashley Banfield]

Detective, one thing I didn't understand, and it might have been because there was a. A plea deal in his case was what he did. Like he said, he smothered her with a pillow. But how did all that blood come about?

[Detective Clint Cole]

Well, what. What I think happened. And for some reason, it was one of the things that he had a hard time admitting to. There was a 911 call on her landline that went to AT&T, but didn't last long enough to transfer to our dispatch center because that was our jurisdiction. And so it shows 911 at midnight, 140 seconds. So what I think happened is he admitted to opening up her sliding door. Walking in, I think she gets up, grabs the phone, dials 91 1, and he punches her in the face. There was blood at the foot of her bed, as if, like, she had been standing there for a little bit, bleeding from her nose or something. He then said he threw her onto the bed. So what. What I think happened is when she tried to dial 91 1, he punches her. And that's what caused the blood and There wasn't a tremendous amount of blood, which was some hope that she might still be alive because there wasn't enough blood at the scene to say, imminent death. And so, you know, we did try and hope that, but when you looked at everything, it didn't lend a whole lot of hope. But then he throws her onto the bed, and when he did, she was bleeding and some blood spatter got up against the wall and stuff. And like the pillow that he smothered her face with, I just looked at it again for somebody that's doing a show on the case, and it wasn't a tremendous amount of blood. I mean, it was, you know, like six or eight inch little circle of blood. It wasn't, you know, a tremendous amount. And, and you could only see the handprint on top of the pillow. If you were looking from above, looking straight at it, it was hard to tell. But our, our crime lab lady, Janine west, did an excellent job. She always would get up on a ladder and take photos. And when she got up on the ladder and took the photo of the pillow straight down, you could see the handprint where he had smothered her. And so there wasn't a tremendous amount of blood in the house. But I would say it would be consistent with the amount of being punched once or twice in the face.

[Ashley Banfield]

If you're, I mean, you have such an incredible grasp on what can happen. Because, look, a lot of people, they assume that if you're an older woman, it can't possibly be a rape motive. But this does happen. Men do this. And I think this particular man admitted he just wanted. He had a wife and I think a child at home. Right. And he just got fixated and wanted to actually rape this poor victim regardless of her age.

[Detective Clint Cole]

Not only that, but he actually,

[Ashley Banfield]

he

[Detective Clint Cole]

had a desire for older women. He had a, his, his Google search history. He searched what is known as a cougar. So he was, he was searching porn sites for cougars, which is older women. So in this case you're mentioning an older woman. Yes, Nancy was, I don't remember the exact age, but I would say pushing 20 years older, at least, maybe older. And he, that was his kind of, his proclivity was towards older women.

[Ashley Banfield]

Well, what I found shocking is that some of the statistics actually show that over 90% of geriatric rapes are committed by men in their 20s.

[Detective Clint Cole]

Yeah, I didn't know that, but it doesn't surprise me.

[Ashley Banfield]

It doesn't surprise you?

[Detective Clint Cole]

I work sexual assault cases for five years and, and I didn't have a ton of them, but my main experience is this case. I mean, he was, he had a major thing for older women. I mean, a ton of Google history searches on it.

[Ashley Banfield]

I, I feel like you've just got the savvy that might be able to bring a different element to these investigators. If called on. Would you, would you help in this case in Arizona?

[Detective Clint Cole]

Oh, I would. I would always talk to an investigator. Sure.

[Ashley Banfield]

Well, I hope they call you because I feel like so many other avenues have been explored in this, in this mystery. And it really is confounding. Even this particular scenario is still confounding because there are blood droplets that lead out of the house. They're Nancy's blood. So it wasn't the same scenario. And I don't know if, if there was a sexual assault in this case or not. People are very hesitant to even discuss it just because it's so sensitive.

[Detective Clint Cole]

Yeah. And, and to be honest, the less, in my opinion, the less that is discussed publicly, the better for the case and the investigators. That's what we did is we kept things very close to the vest. We took a lot of heat. We took a lot of heat for it. But here's, here's how I look at it. When we were investigating Nancy Woodrum's case, if we, whatever we said publicly, we were telling the suspect. And, and so we kept everything very close because it's just the way my opinion things should be done. And I'm not talking about any other case other than how we handled an anti Woodrun case. It's just, it's just, it's just important to keep things close because.

[Ashley Banfield]

Do you know if Carlo Fuentes followed the case and followed the news for those seven months that he was on the run?

[Detective Clint Cole]

He, he said that he did. Interestingly enough, his wife did. His wife was somewhat suspicious. He wasn't the best husband in the world. He had had multiple affairs. And I. The night that he was killing Nancy, she was blowing her phone up and he turned it off to not deal with it when he turned it on, to check it when his phone connected. And that's how we were able to identify him. So his wife, now ex wife, actually helped us catch him because he knew she was going to be blowing up his phone. This wasn't the first time that he had gone out all night. It was the first time that we're aware of that he, you know, raped and killed somebody. But his wife was suspicious of him. Once in a day or two later, she sees the news about Nancy Woodrum. She puts two and two together. She. She was. Not so much. I wouldn't say she was accusing, but I think she was concerned. Wow.

[Ashley Banfield]

But never said anything to law enforcement.

[Detective Clint Cole]

No, she did not.

[Ashley Banfield]

Yeah, she.

[Detective Clint Cole]

She didn't say a lot, even. I mean, she was cooperative, and she helped us, but it's a tough situation to be in. They had. She had to pull her kid out. She had to change her kid's last name. It was. It was horrible for them.

[Ashley Banfield]

I can't. I mean, I can't even imagine what they went through after all of that. But I'm also curious. Did anyone ever run his DNA through all of the. The rape kits that sat up on shelves for years and years and find out if he had done it before?

[Detective Clint Cole]

He's in codis. And so as long as people. And there's a. There's a law in California where all rape kits are to be uploaded at some point, which the Department of Justice labs usually do. So far, he's been in CODIS since right after this all happened, 2018. We've had no. No hits. He said he's never done it before. It. You know, I. I go back and forth on whether I believe him. He may not have killed before, but I. I would be shocked if he didn't force sex on a victim before and it was just never reported. That's a surprising.

[Ashley Banfield]

It's a pretty aggressive crime to have that your very first go round.

[Detective Clint Cole]

Yeah, that's like. If there was ever a to z crime or 0 to 100, whatever you want to call it, that was it. And he. He told us. I remember this very clear, as if it was yesterday. He said, you'll never find anybody say a bad word about me. And we didn't. Other than one lady who. He was painting for her landlord, and he tried to get into her house and drink beer with her, but other than that, not one person said a negative word about Carlo. He was right about that.

[Ashley Banfield]

Well, you know what, Detective Cole? It. It might be testament to the work that you did that you caught him before he could continue his new path in life, if that is, in fact, the case. Thank you so much for. For talking with me about this. I. I actually really hope that you do get involved at some point with Sheriff Nanos to just impart some of this wisdom that you've got in this case and to his detectives and see if it maybe helps in any way.

[Detective Clint Cole]

Well, thank you. I appreciate you saying that. Thank you.

[Ashley Banfield]

My great thanks to Detective Clint Cole for talking me through that case. Absolutely fascinating. And I really hope at some point Sheriff Chris Nanos calls him, because I think they have a lot of wisdom they could share that might help that department. Who knows if that's the same crime? We don't, but there's so much that's similar. But there's one thing I wanted to tell you about, because I keep wondering, if someone took Nancy, where did they take her? And if Nancy's no longer with us, where did they leave her? And so what I learned from Nancy Woodrum's case is that the place that her killer chose, the place that Carlo Fuentes chose to leave her, actually had some significance. I told you already that it was kind of convenient. Right. He had a road that took him to Nancy Woodrum's house. He could commit the crime, and then he could continue on, sort of in a loop, and then this spot where he left her, and then he could continue on and get home. But he'd been to the place before. He'd been there prior with his wife and child because it was a beautiful area with wildflowers. Every year, these wildflowers come up, and they're gorgeous. And so he'd been there with his wife and his child. That's how he decided on the place he was going to dump Nancy Woodrum's body. And of course, it was upsetting to hear the detective say, without the confession and the tour guide that took them to the place where she was left, they never would have found her. That's what he said. They never would have found her. And I just hope that's not the case with Nancy Guthrie. I hope we find her. I hope we find somebody who's willing to confess his sins. I don't know if they're going to have this much luck with Nancy Guthrie's captor, but we can hope. But I just want to leave you with this, because there were several people in the case of Nancy Woodrum who could have called a number like 1-800- call FBI and help to solve this case sooner. The person who drove up behind Carlo's vehicle as he was dumping her body in the middle of the night. A vehicle on the side of the road like that, with all of its paint equipment and everything inside. Yeah. That person could have called the police and said, I saw something strange. It wasn't right. And here's where I saw it. And how about Carlo's wife? Carlo's wife had been frustrated with her husband for a long time. He'd been stepping out on her a lot. Lots of affairs. Right. And she called him, blew up his phone that night. She actually heard the news the next day of Nancy Woodrum missing and wondered. She wondered. But she didn't call. Now, there's all sorts of reasons for that. I'm never going to pass judging on anyone, but anonymous, maybe. Here's the really creepy part. Carlo Fuentes and his wife followed the case. They followed the news of Nancy Woodrum's disappearance. They followed it, not a lot, but they checked in on it. One knowing full well what all the answers were, what the mystery was, and the other one, really, I guess, wondering. So if you have a Carlo in your life, if you have a Carlo Fuentes in your Life, there's over $1.2 million with your name on it right now. You can be anonymous. 1.2 million at least right now is the reward money. 1-800-call-FBI. You might have a Carlo in your life who acted real weird on February 1st and acted weird in the days afterwards and has been a little weird since, Right? Patterns all changed. Behavior really went weird for a while there. No explanations. Maybe he steps out on you. Maybe he's burned you. Yeah. 1-800- call FBI. $1.2 million. That is a sweet ride. You know, it's enough for protection, too. 1-800- call FBI. Thank you, everyone, so much for indulging me because I have had this case on my mind for weeks. It's hard to bring this case to you, though, because nobody wants to imagine for a moment that Nancy Guthrie befell the same fate. No one wants to imagine that. But police have to game out everything. They have to. That's their job. That is what they have to do. And that, I hope to God, is what they're looking at. All of these possibilities. They have to be, because once again, we're going into week six here. Thanks, everyone, for listening, for watching. And remember, the truth isn't just serious, it's drop dead serious.