Transcript
Ashley Banfield (0:01)
The sun's shining, birds are singing, and all feels right in the world.
Narrator/Announcer (0:06)
Until the season changes and suddenly you lose your motivation to get out of bed. In fact, one in five people experience some form of depression, no matter the season or time of year.
Ashley Banfield (0:15)
At the American Psychiatric association foundation, our vision is to build a mentally healthy nation for all because we want you to live your best life and be your best you all year round.
Narrator/Announcer (0:26)
Please visit mentallyhealthynation.org to learn more.
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Ashley Banfield (1:05)
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.
