← Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
Nancy Guthrie Mystery: An Ominous Milestone & Everything We Know | Day 47
00:55:58
Loading summary
Transcript43 lines
- [00:00]
Amica Insurance Announcer
At Amica Insurance, we know it's not just what's inside your home that matters. It's who you share it with. That's why we work even harder to protect it. And as a mutual insurance company, we're built for our customers. We prioritize your needs and are here for you when you need us. Amica empathy is our best policy. Visit amica.com and get a quote today.
- [00:30]
Grainger Announcer
If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H VAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-granger. Visit grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [01:05]
Ashley Banfield
Hey, everyone, welcome. I'm Ashley Banfield. This is drop dead serious. Thank you so much for being here. And by the way, thank you for subscribing. If you already have, if you haven't, that's the little button right there. It's free, it's easy, it's painless, it's fun, and it does me a real solid. Thank you so much. Also, thank you for being a member if you already are, and if you already are, this Sunday, March 22, 6:30pm Eastern time. Gonna do a big Q and A. Members only Q and A. If you want to be part of it, just hit that members button and join up and you can be a part of it. You can ask me anything. We're gonna do it from Vermont. Looking forward to it. Okay, I have something that I need to bring to you. I've been thinking about this for a month and a half and I've been thinking about it a lot. Every time somebody asks me, is the Nancy Guthrie case going cold, I say, be patient. Just hold on. Don't Forget. It took 47 days to arrest Bryan Coburger. We're now at day 47. And that's why this day, day 47 in the Nancy Guthrie investigation has been weighing on me. As it's been approaching, I have felt this sense of foreboding because this is why I asked everyone to be patient. Day 47. It took 47 days to arrest Bryan Kohberger. And so here we are in the Nancy Guthrie investigation. And all sources tell reporters and those who are investigating this case in the media that there are no suspects, there are no leads that are really hot right now. According to Sources and my sources said not only do they not have any suspects, they don't even have enough evidence to scrape together to satisfy a judge to sign a warrant for a raid or a search. You know, like, that may be where we're at. I hope we're wrong. I hope behind the scenes, police are as close as they were on day 46 before they got Bryan Coburger. Because I remember that day, day 46 was my birthday in Bryan Coburger, and I felt like that trail had gone cold. Only the next day to hear they got him. They got a guy. So let's just hope that right now, here on Our Own Day 47 in the Nancy Guthrie investigation, there may be actually something behind the scenes that we know nothing about, because the sense of hopelessness is real. Don't say cold, because cold means there are no more leads to chase down. And they had 40,000 at last count. Right? Loads of tips. So have hope. You know, Savannah said it enough in her videos that you've got to pray and you've got to have hope. And that's all we can have right now as we go past this Rubicon of day 47, which was my barometer with regard to the Idaho case. So what I decided to do today, because a lot of people I run into ask me questions like, what. What's the latest in the Nancy Guthrie investigation? Did they ever find the guy? And whatever happened to. And I have found that not everybody has the full picture. Some people were really, you know, dedicated to following the case in the first week or three weeks or five weeks. And now we're going into, like, seven, you know. And so I put together a full recap. Everything from the beginning, everything that's happened so far in the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie in this case, you may know some of it, you may know a lot of it. You may not know all of it. And so Today at day 47, I decided it's time just to put the whole case together so that you can get up to speed, because I'm hoping that once you have this behind you, when that arrest comes, you'll know all of it. And when they start dumping out information in those affidavits, right, Search warrants, the arrest affidavits, you'll say, oh, yeah, I remember that from day five. Right. So full recap here. You probably remember this. Nancy Guthrie was 84 years old. And that's the kind of person in the business of true crime we call a vulnerable person. Right? Nancy's the mom of the Today show host Savannah Guthrie, who's been off the air ever since this happened, this case. Now at day 47, we are about to enter week eight after this weekend, right. We'll head into the eighth week of this case, which means the story's been unfolding for nearly two months. And the deeper it goes, the stranger it seemed to get. What began as just a desperate search, right, for this missing elderly woman quickly became something, well, just way more ominous, right. Investigators treating Nancy Guthrie's home as a crime scene, really from the very first hour since then, we've seen alleged ransom demands. We've seen a fake extortionist, a guy who was charged in federal court with that, with that charge, with that count alleged to have been doing this. Right. A family put under a police microscope. Dramatic FBI video images that were released of a suspect in a terrifying balaclava at Nancy's front door. DNA recovered from multiple locations and gloves, right. Even DNA recovered from inside Nancy's home. DNA they don't know. They said it's male DNA that isn't in her circle. But it's tricky. It's mixed and they're trying to work with it and they're not getting far. And they got stopped at codis, the national database. It couldn't be loaded in there because it's just partial sample. But they're still working on it. We've seen locations that have been tested and retested. We've seen SWAT raids, we've seen gun stores being canvassed, gun store workers being asked, questions asked. Look at these pictures and these names, put them into your list, see if they did they buy a gun here. And we've seen a lot more than that too. So let me walk you through where the case started, where it's going, and let's start right from the beginning. January 31st. The night of January 31st, Nancy Guthrie goes to dinner at her daughter and her son in law's house and she takes an Uber. She goes to Annie and Tommaso's house and she arrives there in that Uber about 5:32pm and she has dinner and the sheriff says, plays games, does the things we do on a Saturday night with our families. But then she gets a ride back home. She doesn't take an Uber back home, she gets a ride. The Pima county sheriff man named Chris Nanos, which is, you know, a name that's pretty much a household name by now, first said that Nancy's daughter Annie brought her home. And then he told the New York Times that Nancy's son in law Tommaso brought her home, and then he told somebody else that Annie and Tommaso brought her home. And then publicly he decided to just change all of that and say, let's just leave it at family. So family dropped Nancy back at her home, and at 9:48pm he said that her garage door opened. And then at 9:50pm Two minutes later, that garage door closed. And the sheriff said presumably at that point, Nancy Guthrie would be getting ready for bed and going off to sleep. But nearly four hours later, 1:47am now it is February 1, the doorbell camera disconnected. Now, do I know if it's the front doorbell camera? I don't know that. Do I even know that it's a doorbell camera? I don't. It was just camera disconnected at 1:47am which would make you wonder which one, because maybe she has plenty, right? 2:12am Software detected a person on camera, but there was no actual video available. Well, that's very confusing. And then we looked at this timeline and we all thought, that's just very confusing. Then at 2:28am Something a lot less confusing, Nancy's pacemaker app showed a disconnect from her phone, presumably the time when she is disconnected from her phone and maybe even from her home. The next morning, Nancy does not show up for church. Plans that she has with friends and family members quickly came to check on her at 11:56am that time at the beginning was a mess, right? It was like an hour earlier, the sheriff told us. And then everybody wondered, now, why is the family in that home for an hour before calling 91 1? Well, they settled on 11:56am Family members come to check, and then 12:03pm, seven minutes later, they call 91 1. So that makes a lot more sense. You get there, Mom. Mom, where are you? You see things, you wonder, what the hell is this? I'll get to what they saw. They run outside, they wonder if she's in the backyard, has she fallen? Is she out in the front street? Is she somewhere? And within seven minutes, 91 1, help. So a police patrol arrives, what, 13 minutes later, 12 minutes later at. At 12:15pm okay. From the beginning, law enforcement made very clear that they did not believe this was a case of an elderly woman just, you know, wandering off. Nancy's purse was still inside the house. Nancy's wallet was still inside the house. Nancy's cell phone was still inside the house. Nancy's vehicle was still inside the garage. And the sheriff assured everybody that this was not a woman who didn't have her wits about her. They said she was as sharp as a tack, right? She was not somebody suffering from any kind of cognitive decline. And then he added something else, gave you the physical picture of Nancy Guthrie, and said that she wasn't in the best health. She could not walk more than about 50 yards on her own. And then he brought down the hammer and said she needed very important medications and that without those medications, it could be fatal. 24 hours without those medications, and it could be fatal for Nancy Guthrie. So now she is separated from her home, her medications, and the clock is ticking. So search and rescue efforts launched really hard and fast. First, there were, like, canines and helicopters and drones and ground crews, and there were deputies everywhere. But almost as quickly as the search effort started, that search came to a grinding halt on day two. Day two, the Monday after the Sunday disappearance, the sheriff said this was no longer primarily a search mission. He basically drew down on the search, said that part was kind of over, and instead called this a crank scene. He said that the air assets, the searchers, they would all step aside unless they were needed again. Made a lot of us look askance. We were thinking, what it's been like 30 hours since. Since the report to 91 1. Like, that's pretty quick to be calling off a search, right? Even if there's a crime scene, like, there still might be something around the house or, you know, out in the back in the desert brush or down the road or, I don't know, in some of those drainage culverts or washes, as they call them in Arizona. But nope, Sheriff seemed to know something we didn't know. The decision has haunted this case ever since. Couple reasons why. First and foremost, the sheriff, well, I don't know, a week or two later, would say, yeah, maybe that wasn't what I should have done. I'll. I'll fall on the sword on that one. My bad. My words. But effectively, his message was, okay, maybe I made a mistake there. Releasing the crime scene, calling off that search, doing that also early, you know, maybe that's on me. Right? But also it signaled that the investigators saw something inside that house that pushed them away from a rescue mindset and towards something a lot more sinister. They weren't telling us, but they knew something. Curiously, at the same time, the sheriff also publicly stated that roughly 30 hours after Nancy disappeared, there was no immediate danger to the community, nothing for any of the neighbors to be concerned about. That message is a hell of a cry from where the sheriff is today. You know, seven plus weeks since this whole tragedy began. That really changed. I will get to that. Everything in line. The first major details about evidence in this case came out during the sheriff's second press conference on day five. And Sheriff Nanos confirmed that blood droplets that we had seen outside of Nancy's front entrance. And we'd only seen them because Brian Enten was able to walk up to the house because the sheriff released that scene on Monday and videotaped blood droplets at her front door. We didn't know whose blood, but the sheriff at that press conference on Thursday, day five, confirmed that that was Nancy's blood. Brian Enten wasn't the only person who saw those blood droplets. Michael Ruiz from Fox Digital also spotted that blood trail right after the sheriff released the home as a crime scene. The sheriff would also eventually say other biological samples had been collected and were being processed. And sources told me on day three, two days before that second press conference, day three, Tuesday, that at this scene the back door had been left wide open, that there were signs of forced entry. The sheriff would not publicly confirm that. And that same high level law enforcement source told me that there were multiple Nest cameras that had been smashed, that there was blood found inside the home, and that police had turned their attention towards Nancy's son in law as a suspect. And that same source also told me on day three that police had towed the car belonging to that man's wife, Nancy's daughter, and that the car was, quote, in evidence. On day five, the sheriff confirmed that the car had indeed been towed, adding that it had been processed under a warrant. And while he refused to confirm which door may have been used to gain entry to Nancy's home, he did confirm that investigators did not have the front doorbell camera, that it was, quote, not in their possession. And we would eventually learn that the camera was indeed a Nest cam, one among multiple Nest cams at Nezzy's home. Also on day five, the sheriff refused to rule anyone out in their investigation. In fact, the sheriff said everybody had to be looked at. The Uber driver, the gardener, the pool person, everybody. He emphasized that the family had been cooperative, but again, he stopped short of a sweeping, you know, edict that everybody had been or that anybody had been, you know, swept off the table in those first days and in fact, first weeks
- [16:57]
Amica Insurance Announcer
at Amica Insurance, your time and peace of mind matter. Bundle your auto and home coverage with us and enjoy savings that make life a little easier as a mutual insurance company. We're built for our customers. We prioritize your needs and are here for you when you need us Amica. Empathy is our best policy. Visit ameca.com and get a quote today.
- [17:27]
Texas Tourism Announcer
Calling all sightseers and selfie takers. Welcome to Texas, where a day at our hiking trails will lead to a lifetime of memories and family road trips become family legends where thrill seekers make a splash into spring fed pools and picky eaters will clean their plates. This is your invitation to visit Texas and see it for yourself. Visit traveltexas.com and plan your family's trip today.
- [17:55]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer
Let's Texas Safeway and Albertsons have made saving easier than ever with great savings on family favorites this week. Cosmic Crisp apples are $0.99 per pound
- [18:05]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer (Co-Speaker)
member price and USDA Choice beef boneless
- [18:08]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer
petite steak value packs are $5.99 per pound member price plus selected sizes and varieties of Coca Cola or Topo chico
- [18:15]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer (Co-Speaker)
Saboras or buy 2 get 2 free
- [18:17]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer
limit 1 offer equal or lesser value member price with digital coupon. Hurry in. These deals won't last. Visit safewayoralbertsons.com for more deals and ways to save.
- [18:28]
Omaha Steaks Announcer
You know when you're wrapping up a long day and that what's for dinner? Panic hits. Well, when you've got convenient everyday protein from Omaha Steaks waiting at home, that panic turns into your weeknight win. And now's the time to buy during Omaha Steak Spring Savings event. Save big on their exclusive lineup of mouthwatering steaks, gourmet burgers, air chilled chicken, pork, seafood and more, all delivered right to your door. Plus get an extra $35 off with promo code audio when you shop omahasteaks.com today. With over 100 years of unrivaled quality and variety, Omaha Steaks understands what you need to get dinner done. Plus, every bite is backed by their 100% guarantee. Omaha Steaks is your weeknight win, so get the world's best everyday protein during their spring savings event. Go to OmahaSteaks.com for an extra $35 off when you use Promo code audio at checkout. That's omahasteaks.com, promo code audio terms apply. See site for details.
- [19:28]
Ashley Banfield
Behind the scenes, A so called ransom letter was sent on day three to the national media outlet TMZ and also to two local TV stations in Tucson. They also received copies. And that ransom letter demanded $4 million in cryptocurrency with a threat that if that amount wasn't received on a deadline, it would rise to 6 million after the deadline passed. So police said that one ransom communication contained details that appeared to match some of the known facts in the Case like references to things like an Apple watch, where the Apple watch was located in the room and in the house, and also a floodlight that was smashed. They took it seriously because of those things. And I know what you're thinking. A lot of the videos show that the floodlight was smashed. Right. And a lot of us keep our Apple watches, you know, on our bedside table. So was that really such a good reference? Was that really so critical? Was that really something that should lead us to take those ransom letters seriously? Well, they did. FBI and local law enforcement alike. Here's the problem, and it's a critical problem. There was no proof of life. There was no established communication protocol. There was no continued verified contact after that original letter came in. But later, more messages surfaced. Seemed a little different. But they included one that demanded a single bitcoin coin, which amounts to about tens of thousands of dollars. And still later, even more communications, swapping out the kind of cryptocurrency being demanded. Right. Kind of sounded like people were just piling on, you know, scammers from overseas, the ones that have a. I don't know, millions of dollars that a Nigerian prince wants to give you. We just need your bank account number, you know? In the middle of all of that chaos, federal prosecutors made a big announcement. They charged a man in California, a guy named Derek Kaleia Kaleila, however you pronounce Derek's name. Derek's in a heap of trouble. They accused him of sending fake ransom communications to the Guthrie family and then trying to profit from their agony. This was one of the first concrete arrests connected to the case, but not because he had Nancy. Because, according to investigators, he was a fraud. Just a fraud. That case is coming up. You wait, hope they have cameras in that courtroom, but it's federal, so they won't. So we'll just have to get a sketch artist if it ever gets to court, because this one I could really see being a settlement. Publicly, law enforcement never said that they believed those messages were authentic, even though in one of Savannah Guthrie's Instagram videos, she told the alleged ransom seeker that she would pay. But she wanted proof, and that proof never came. As the investigation continued, Nancy's security cameras. Those quickly became the biggest mysteries in this case. Early on, language was all over the place. There were questions about whether the cameras had been removed or disconnected or smashed or tampered with or taken. Right. Sheriff said the cameras were, quote, removed. Said the timeline reflected they were disconnected, but that over time, investigators would try to recover whatever residual imagery they could from Those systems, given that Nancy did not have a subscription to a service that would save her nest cam videos. And then later, he came out to say, can't do it. We went to the providers. They can't do it. So sadly, there'll be nothing. We won't get any video. Well, watch the space. In a moment, you'll find out why that was wrong and why we got what we got. By February 5th, law enforcement was openly acknowledging that investigators were digging into a series of digital trails. They were looking at social media, bank activity, phone activity. They were canvassing for surveillance footage all over the place, like going out two miles. FBI agents visited a chevron and a circle k, those establishments located between Nancy's home and her daughter Annie's home. But that same day, the sheriff said no suspect had been identified, that no one had been ruled out, and that the family remained cooperative. And still, late at night, investigators went in to Nancy Guthrie's daughter's home, Annie and Tommaso's home. And as reporters were outside wondering what in the dickens they were doing in there in the dark, they saw flashbulbs going off, photographs being taken for three hours. They saw packages being taken out of the home and put into a law enforcement vehicle, Mail being taken out of the. The daughter's mailbox put into an envelope, taken away. Lots of suspicion. Neighbors of Annie and tommaso being canvassed, Searches going on around the neighborhood of Annie and Tommaso's home. Reporters were getting very, very curious. Then came one of the biggest bombshells in the entire case. On February 10, that's 10 days after Nancy vanished, the director of the FBI, Kash Patel, released some absolutely terrifying images from Nancy Guthrie's nest doorbell cam. I remember a friend of mine sending me the video and the image and saying, oh, my God, Fargo. If you've seen the movie Fargo, you'll know what I mean. The terrifying image of the man with the three hole balaclava coming to kidnap someone's wife. Right? It just looked like that. It felt so frightening. It showed the suspect, this intruder, right? Fumbling outside of the front of Nancy's home. He appeared to be a man, about five nine, five ten, average build, wearing dark clothing, including this frightening three hole balaclava covering his face. In several of the images, he could be seen carrying what was later identified as a black 25 liter Ozark Trail hiker backpack. Those are sold by walmart. Several images also appeared to show that he had a firearm, you know, crudely affixed in a holster right in the front In a strange place where most people don't holster a gun. But in another image, something very curious appeared. What looked like the same person, but appearing without the backpack and without the gun and holster. And that immediately raised a lot of questions online about the sequence of the images and the timing and whether or not those images were even from the same date.
- [26:34]
Amica Insurance Announcer
Right.
- [26:34]
Ashley Banfield
Investigators later reached out to and worked with Walmart and other retailers. Obviously, they were trying to isolate who may have bought that Ozark trail hiker backpack. But by early March, the sheriff was saying even the backpack may not have been purchased at Walmart. Maybe it was secondhand, maybe just not a direct purchase from the store itself. Right. Really deflating because it just seemed like such a good lead. We have found so many people based on purchases and cameras on the, you know, the checkout lines didn't look like that was going to happen here. And on the very same day that those haunting videos of the suspect were released, investigators also raided a family, their car, their home in Rio Rico, about an hour south of Tucson. A man there was detained and questioned. His home was tossed and searched, parents taken out, everybody taken out. And the operation was, like, massive. It was huge attention. We were all following it live. Right. But he was later released, and the sheriff described him as a delivery person whose digital footprint had placed him, quote, in the area of Nancy's home. The sheriff also said more than one issue had led investigators to that man. And he fit the bill. Right. He was about the same height, billed, had the goatee that you could kind of see under the balaclava. But it would not be long before the sheriff said he was satisfied with this man's alibi. So no arrest. More importantly, no Nancy. But then just two days later, February 12, activity intensifies again. FBI agents are back at Nancy Guthrie's house overnight. Right. And then in the morning, a white tent goes up over the front entrance at her front door. And, you know, reporters can zero in and they can see guys carrying high resolution camera equipment and a forensic height board. All that is going into the white tent. And this is also the time that Michael Ruiz of Fox Digital reports that when he had been on Nancy's front entrance videotaping like Brian Entin had done, he witnessed small glass fragments on the ground at Nancy's front entrance, just below where the doorbell cam had been. So did this support the information that my source told me that cameras had been smashed? Good question. Sheriff still won't confirm it. Eventually, that white tent came down a couple of hours, and those investigators disappeared but there was something missing. The bracket. The bracket on the front door that had once held that nest cam. Right. The nest cam was gone, but the bracket had still been up there. And now suddenly, it was gone, too. So presumably taken by those investigators who were under the white tent. But weeks after Nancy had vanished, why now did they decide to take that bracket? Why didn't that go the first day? If the homicide investigators were there and they saw blood at the front door, why didn't you process a lot more at that front door and you saw that that nest camera was gone. Glass fragments below. Maybe it was smashed off. But what the hell, why wouldn't you take the bracket? And for the love of God, why wouldn't you take the Half Moon welcome mat? It's still there, to my best of my knowledge. Then police made a very broad request of Nancy's neighbors. They asked for doorbell camera video and surveillance camera video from all of the neighbors within a very wide range of dates and going out couple miles. First, they asked for anything that could be seen on a doorbell camera on January 11th and anything that you may have witnessed with your own eyes, anything weird. January 11th. And we were all trying to figure out why. January 11th. Get to that in a minute. Then police began to broaden their request of the neighbors, and they asked for all of their video and anything that might have been weird that they might see on their videos between January 1st all the way through February 2nd, like a whole month. And then they began to revisit all the neighbors homes and ask more questions, looking beyond just the hours of the abduction itself. And then came the gloves. The story of the gloves. That one took days out of our lives. Pair of gloves was found roughly 2 miles from Nancy's home side of the road. And this became one of the most important pieces of evidence in the case, it seemed, at the time. And soon investigators developed an unknown male DNA profile from those gloves. Why did we care about those gloves on the side of the road? Well, for one, they resembled the pair of gloves that was seen on the suspect in the doorbell footage. So that profile was put into codis. That's the national DNA database that basically looks at all offenders whose DNA profiles have been uploaded so that anytime they commit a crime in the future, we can find them if we have their DNA. But on this case, sadly, there was no match. So whoever had been wearing those gloves and inserting his DNA into the fingers, et cetera, he wasn't the criminal. He wasn't a criminal, according to codis, and he certainly wasn't the criminal that they were looking for at the Nancy Guthrie home. And how did they know about the Nancy Guthrie home and a criminal in there? Because they had actually found unknown male DNA inside that home as well. And the gloves didn't match that either. So there were other reports, right, that had come in that a pair of gloves had been found inside Nancy Guthrie's house. And, oh, my God, that was kind of earth shattering, but it was wrong, unfortunately. And Sheriff Nanos later had to clarify that that report was just wrong. There were no gloves found inside Nancy's home. As for the DNA found inside the house, well, that was a little bit more tricky. It was male DNA that did not match with anyone inside Nancy's close circle, and that would have to be tested. So off it went to a Florida lab, and the Florida lab would take some time and, and determine that this is a mix. It's not really easy. It's kind of a partial profile, so it can't be sent to codis. CODIS only takes a full profile. And so here's what I'm thinking as we speak right now. They're still working on that partial profile, and perhaps they're working through the potential for genetic genealogy, investigative genetic genealogy, to find somebody, find somebody out there, right, in the Coburger case. Because here we are, day 47, the day they arrested Brian Coburger, they had a really shitty little profile from the snap on the K bar knife sheath that was left behind at the, at the crime scene. And they took that crappy little profile and they were able to build it out. Right? CODIS wasn't any help. First of all, he wasn't a criminal, and not that we know of. And second of all, it was too small. It was like a really, really imperfect profile. But the Othram lab down in Texas was able to build that profile out, and investigative genetic genealogy led to Brian Coburger in 47 days. This is what I think might be going on now. Yeah, we're at 47 days. But patience is a virtue, I hope, in this case. The sheriff also said more than a dozen different gloves had been found in the area just surrounding Nancy's home. But that many of them likely belonged to searchers, which made a lot of people crazy, because why would searchers be drunk, dropping their effing gloves, right? Just complicates the matters for people later on who go out searching because there's been search after search with pauses and, you know, reignitions and all the rest. So very frustrating that the whole glove story in the Nancy Guthrie case. And it occupied several weeks of our attention, but ultimately it really just didn't lead anywhere. And then on February 13, Blockbuster late at night, the case erupted again. A major SWAT style operation. Operation number two, right? This time it was a home that was located at Orange Grove and First Avenue home was raided. This wasn't far from Nancy's home, right as the crow flies, I think like about a mile or so. But multiple people were detained, including a mom in the home and then her son who was actually out driving a silver Range Rover to the nearby Culver's restaurant where they grabbed him in the parking lot and cuffed him and questioned him in that parking lot. He was the target. A law enforcement told me that police had actually been surveilling him from the air from a plane for quite some time before the raid, but that at the moment he left his mom's home to go for food, they thought perfect time move in. And move in they did. Like holy friolies, this thing was massive. There were dozens and dozens of SWAT cars and the bomb squad and like trucks and vehicles from the FBI and from the sheriff's department. Dozens and dozens of these vehicles. The entire neighborhood was shut down. People couldn't get into their homes or out. I think most people who were covering the story really believe this must be it. I mean, the amount of firepower they brought in really looked like they had something very dangerous.
- [36:28]
Amica Insurance Announcer
They say if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together. At Ameca Insurance, we know what matters most to you and we work even harder to protect it together. As a mutual insurance company, we're built for our customers customers and prioritize your needs. Amica empathy is our best policy. Visit amica.com and get a quote today.
- [36:57]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer
Safeway and Albertsons have made saving easier than ever with great savings on family favorites this week. Cosmic Crisp apples are $0.99 per pound
- [37:06]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer (Co-Speaker)
member price and USDA Choice Beef Boneless
- [37:08]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer
Petite Steak value packs are $5.99 per pound member price plus selected sizes and varieties of Coca Cola or Topo Chico
- [37:16]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer (Co-Speaker)
Saboris are buy two get two free.
- [37:18]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer
Limit one offer equal or lesser value member price with digital coupon. Hurry in. These deals won't last. Visit Safeway or albertsons.com for more deals and ways to save.
- [37:28]
Alex Canceroitz
Hi, this is Alex Canceroitz. I'm the host of Big Technology Podcast, a longtime reporter and an on air contributor to cnbc. And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is is changing the business world and our lives. So each week on Big Technology, I bring on key actors from companies building AI tech and outsiders trying to influence it, asking where this is all going. They come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices, in meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties, listen to Big Technology podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
- [38:03]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer
Safeway and Albertsons have made saving easier than ever with great savings on family favorites this week. Cosmic Crisp apples are $0.99 per pound
- [38:11]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer (Co-Speaker)
member price and USDA Choice Beef Boneless
- [38:14]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer
Petite Steak value packs are $5.99 per pound member price, plus selected sizes and varieties of Coca Cola or Topo Chico
- [38:21]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer (Co-Speaker)
Saboras are buy two, get two free,
- [38:23]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer
limit one, offer equal or lesser value member price with digital coupon. Hurry in. These deals won't last. Visit safewayoralbertsons.com for more deals and ways to save.
- [38:34]
Ashley Banfield
And very, very real. And then they've got this guy in cuffs. They've got his silver Range Rover that he was driving, right? And they're looking, they're, they're photographing the Range Rover while he's in cuffs in another vehicle. And they're searching his mother's home, and they've pulled her out to the neighbor's home. And something really weird happened that made all of us watching live think, oh, my God, maybe there's a body in that Range Rover. They wouldn't let the press get anywhere near, but all the investigators were photographing every aspect of the silver Range Rover through the windows and all the rest and looked very dirty. The car looked very dirty. But they decided to pop the back, you know, trunk. They decided to pop it open. But they didn't just do that. They actually put up privacy screens on either side so that the press could not see what was inside the vehicle when they opened the back hatch. And in all my days of doing this, privacy screens are typically, for one thing, because there's a body and you want to offer dignity to the body. Yeah. And so we, many of us, assumed, oh, my God, there's a body in that Range Rover. This all has to do with the Nancy Guthrie case. This is horrifying. And then they put yellow paper over the license plate. They loaded that thing up on a flatbed truck and they, and they put, they put it on the flatbed, and then the police towed it away. But this guy, this guy, my source said was targeted for this raid and for this questioning and for being detained because he had a criminal background in trafficking, and that there was a very, very specific tip that led police to him at that home. Again, the Range Rover he's driving, they thought at the time it had something to do with the trafficking that he used to do or still does. Don't know. But it was shielded from view. We just never saw what was inside it. Right. And in the morning, for those who stayed up till 4am and couldn't. Couldn't stay up any longer, they wondered if they'd wake up to Nancy's case being solved. But that was not the case. In the morning, the news was really just disheartening, I guess. No arrests, no sign of Nancy. The raid was a bust. And weeks later, the people who were connected to that raid, the mom who had her house searched, the guy who was in the silver Range Rover, who was yanked off and put in custody, cuffs and thrown in a car and questioned. Right. Detained weeks later, the people who were connected to that raid, the mom whose house was raided, her son who was picked up at the. The Culver's restaurant parking lot, his Range Rover towed off. They had been under so much public scrutiny, they had been publicly assailed online. People accusing them of doing awful things, even though there was absolutely no evidence or source information that. That said they were connected, other than there was a raid that produced nothing. Yeah, it was so bad that they publicly announced they had no link to Nancy Guthrie, that they, like us, felt horrible for her and wanted the best for her and wanted her to be found. They had no idea why the police landed on their doorstep and questioned them. By mid February, the public learned that the investigation now had gone very high tech. Detectives confirmed that they were using something called a signal sniffer in an effort to try to find Nancy's pacemaker. Because a pacemaker will continue to send out a signal. Right. It's basically reaching out for its. Its connection. And Nancy's was connected to her. Her iPhone. So when it gets separated, the pacemaker continues to look for the iPhone, sending out a hello and waiting for a handshake, you know, so the signal sniffer was going out to see if it could send a handshake down to find that specific address of that pacemaker, because alive or dead, God forbid, but that pacemaker would still be taken. It would still be working for years. So it's something called Blue Fly, Bluetooth and WI fi signal detection. The technology, and it's from Parsons Corporation. And that TAC was used during helicopter and ground search operations beginning in early Feb. And it's good. Like, it can detect electronic signals from like 800 to a thousand feet away. So, yeah, flying around looking for that handshake, sending out a hello and waiting for an answer from the pacemaker. To our knowledge that it's just been nothing. Right. They didn't have any success. At the same time, FBI investigators were out there on foot canvassing the local gun stores all around Tucson. And in some cases, they carried with them long lists of names and pictures. Some reports said up to 40 names and photographs. And the store owners and the workers in those gun stores reported to the press interviews, saying that the agents had asked them if anybody with those names or resembling those photos had been in the store or had tried to purchase any weapons from the store. And sadly, none of those folks could say that they recognized any of the names. And as much as they wanted to help, the pictures and the names just didn't help, and they couldn't come up with any answers there. And what's frustrating here is that when the sheriff was asked about that, he said to the reporter who asked, well, that's a lie. Those agents haven't been out doing that in those gun stores. Well, it had already happened, and the press had already seen it happening. So. Guffaw. Then Mexico came laser focus into the story. Right early in the investigation, the sheriff had publicly said that they had no evidence that Nancy had been taken south of the border. But then later, the feds, federal law enforcement sources, told reporters, several different reporters with several distant sources, that the FBI had in fact been in contact with their Mexican counterparts to ask about help in this investigation. So Brian Enten went across the border into Mexico, and he found that most folks in that Mexican border town of Nogales had not even heard of the case and had not even heard of Nancy Guthrie. It was just a whole other world over the border. And the attorney general there publicly said their office had received no formal request to help and investigate this case, and no information suggested that Nancy was there. They said that they'd spoken to their federal authorities from that province in Mexico. They'd gone to the feds and asked about it. They said they'd had no discussions from the provincial level with the American authorities. So maybe it was a question of the federal authorities in Mexico. Maybe they'd spoken with the federal authorities in the US but it didn't seem that the provincial authorities were part of any of that. That was their message to us anyway. So even the Mexico angle of the Nancy Guthrie case became another example of the case Having public contradictions and partial disclosures and a lot of uncertainty. In the first few weeks of this case, the sheriff announced that there were upwards of 400 different people involved in this investigation, Both local and federal. Right. Put them all together, Whether they're foot patrols or administrators or, you know, lab, whatever it is. There were over 400 people who were working that case, and that there were more than 40,000 tips that had come in at one point. At the apex of this case, both the FBI and the locals, local sheriff, they had received more than 40,000 tips. But as the case moved into late February and early March, that posture changed, and the numbers really fell away fast. The resources were refocused into a smaller but dedicated task force. We're told that was made up of about five pima county homicide detectives and then a smattering of FBI agents, and that this task force would be working out of the FBI office in Tucson. But before that, we'd heard that the majority of the FBI presence in Tucson had already, you know, withdrawn back to the headquarters in Phoenix, but that there would be a presence of footprint in tucson. So that's what we're left to believe, that this footprint, I don't know how many people that is. You know, tag teamed up with the five or so homicide investigators. And so that leaves us to think that maybe there's a dozen or so in this task force working out of the FBI office in Tucson. It's a far cry from 400. Right? Patrol presence remained in the neighborhood of Nancy guthrie's home. But this was very clearly a brand new phase of this investigation. And these things happen, right? Like in my line of work, I watch this all the time. There's a flurry of activity, and the natural progression of that is that it begins to atrophy. It has to. There's other crimes to solve. The resources are needed elsewhere, too. And so eventually, things shrink, and that seems to be what's happened in this case. And then the sheriff did something that would alter the way the media would and could even cover this case. The sheriff forced an egregious parking restriction for hundreds of yards around Nancy's home. Went out for many blocks all the way around Nancy's home, prohibiting anyone from parking for hundreds of yards. Now, you might not think that means much, but let's not forget this is the desert. I think one temperature that I clocked in the middle of all this was 87 degrees in the dry, hot, dusty streets all around Nancy's desert home. And what this effectively meant was that any media crews could no longer have their transmission equipment or their trucks or their power sources, you know, near them as they did their work. They could not have their vehicles to seek shelter from the blazing hot desert sun. They couldn't charge their phones or their equipment with their vehicles. They couldn't have adequate food or water without hiking in heavy loads of supplies with and hiking in a tent and setting it up just to sit under it all day in that heat. That makes it very, very hard to do that job. And almost overnight, hundreds of members of the media vanished, just disappeared. So thanks Sheriff. Way to go. What a way to keep the story alive and get those tips, you know, continuing to come in. There are only a handful of dedicated reporters in this case and journalists and streamers who dec that they were dedicated enough to finding Nancy Guthrie that they would remain in that shit situation. Hot, hellish situation with no wi fi and no support right?
- [50:36]
Amica Insurance Announcer
At Amica Insurance, your time and peace of mind matter. Bundle your auto and home coverage with us and enjoy savings that make life a little easier. As a mutual insurance company, we're built for our customers. We prioritize your needs and are here for you when you need us. Amica empathy is our best policy. Visit amica.com and get a quote today.
- [51:05]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer
Safeway and Albertsons have made saving easier than ever with great savings on family favorites this week. Cosmic Crisp apples are $0.99 cents per
- [51:13]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer (Co-Speaker)
pound member price and USDA Choice Beef
- [51:16]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer
Boneless Petite Steak value packs are $5.99 per pound member price plus selected sizes and varieties of Coca Cola or Topo
- [51:24]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer (Co-Speaker)
Chico Sabores are buy two get two
- [51:26]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer
free limit one offer equal or lesser value member price with digital coupon. Hurry in. These deals won't last. Visit safewayoralbertsons.com for more deals and ways to save.
- [51:36]
Alex Canceroitz
Hi, this is Alex Canceroitz. I'm the host of Big Technology Podcast, a longtime reporter and an on air contributor to cnbc. And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is changing the business world and our lives. So each week on Big Technology I bring on key actors from companies building AI tech and outsiders trying to influence it, asking where this is all going. They come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices, in meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties, listen to Big Technology Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
- [52:11]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer
Safeway and Albertsons have made saving easier than ever with great savings on family favorites this week. Cosmic Crisp apples are $0.99 per pound
- [52:19]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer (Co-Speaker)
member price and USDA Choice beef boneless
- [52:22]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer
petite steak value packs are 5.99 per pound member price plus selected sizes and varieties of Coca Cola or Topo Chico
- [52:29]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer (Co-Speaker)
Sabores are buy two get two free
- [52:31]
Safeway/Albertsons Announcer
limit one offer equal or lesser value member price with disc Digital coupon Hurry in. These deals won't last. Visit Safeway or albertsons.com for more deals
- [52:40]
Ashley Banfield
and ways to save Brian Entin stayed. Michael Ruiz of Fox Digital stayed. A live streamer named JLR stayed. But pretty much everybody else vamoosed, right? And around the same time, Nancy Guthrie's family emerged. This was a moment that was pretty like I don't know what the word is, but it was like overwhelming, was very emotional. It was extraordinarily sad. The family, including Savannah, her sister Annie, Annie's husband Tommaso, the three of them, arm in arm, publicly came out of the house and visited the Yellow Flower memorial that had been building at the foot of Nancy's driveway. And they walked very, very slowly, captured by only a couple of the people who were still there to videotape this, including Brian Entin. And Annie could be heard crying audibly as she and her husband and her sister put their flowers down on this memorial and also left a card that was addressed to Mama, saying that their hearts were broken and that their love still burned bright. And then just days later, Savannah returned to New York and briefly returned to the studio that hosts the Today show and told her colleagues off camera, while giving them lots of hugs, that photographers were able to sort of capture from the outside window. She told them that she was still standing and that she was still hopeful and that she was still trying to find a way back, whatever that way would look like. But even as the investigation narrowed operationally, investigators were still out there and could still be seen by Brian Enten and Michael Ruiz and JLR working in the neighborhood. In early March, FBI agents and Violent Crime Task Force personnel were back out again, canvassing door to door, and the news was finally released that one of the gloves that was found near Nancy's home eventually traced back through DNA to a local restaurant employee. And according to the sheriff, that employee had nothing to do with any of this, was not part of the investigation. It just seemed like every moment you think something might yield, I don't know, a good lead that might take you to a resolution, it just halted and it was dashed. One development after the other, dashed right then, in late and unsettling development, investigators began looking into the possibility that there was a Very weird Internet outage or other electrical disruption. The very night that Nancy was taken, right around the same time, Sheriff Nanos confirmed that investigators were looking into a timeline in which Nancy's neighbor's WI fi went out and power was disrupted again right around the time she vanished. One neighbor that lives within eyesight of Nancy's home even reported that their dog was behaving in an agitated way in the middle of the night, something that was very uncharacteristic. And I should tell you that every time that we heard investigators were out canvassing neighbors, the neighbors weren't always talking to the press. But after about five weeks or so, six weeks, they started to. And some of those neighbors told the police that investigators asked them specifically about January 11th. So one thing I can tell you about these investigators returning over and over again, we never really knew what it was that brought them out over and over again. But Brian Enten reported that neighbors finally said to him that investigators actually were asking about January 24th as well. That's a week before Nancy vanished. January 24th, they were being asked, did you see anything? Have you seen anything? Is there something odd that happened on that day, Very specific, a week before Nancy vanished? And that would be like the Saturday, Sunday, right? January 24th is right there in the middle of the weekend. So that's interesting. Then Michael Ruiz from Fox Digital reported that two law enforcement sources told him that January 11 was a specific date that investigators were asking those neighbors about, because January 11, they said, was the date of the photograph that we've seen of the suspect on the back porch not wearing the backpack, not wearing the gun. Many of our sources told us that that picture was taken at a different date than the other pictures where he's wearing the backpack and the gun, the video. But we didn't know what date. We didn't even know if maybe it might be just a few hours earlier. So the date before. But now Michael Ruiz says two law enforcement sources says this was. This was January 11th, this image of the stalker of the suspect two weeks before the disappearance. That's the image that Ruiz's sources say was taken on that day. So put it together now. January 11th, two weeks before Nancy disappears on the weekend. That's when the image, according to Ruiz's sources, is taken of him without the backpack, without the gun. January 24th, one week later. And now one week away from the abduction, again on the weekend, investigators are out canvassing the neighborhood and asking about January 24th. Did you see anything weird on January 24th, which makes you Wonder if this monster was casing her weekend after weekend to see what her Saturday night pattern, Sunday morning pattern was. And now, six weeks into the case, investigators have reportedly recovered new thumbnail images from multiple motion activated cameras that are stationed around Nancy's home. Right, including cameras pointed at the pool, backyard, side yard, and all three property cameras, including that front and the driveway. But investigators said that the images they got, perhaps from the scratching process, that the FBI said that they were working with Google to. To effectuate, like the scratching process scratches the video, like an onion peel from the back end servers, the scratching process yielded the horrifying video and images we saw at the front door. But maybe the scratching process yielded these pictures, too. But the investigators say, sadly, they just don't show anything that's currently considered suspicious, and that these images didn't capture the critical hours when Nancy disappeared. So even that recovery, while, you know, significant, it didn't deliver the breakthrough that, yet again, we've all been waiting for. Which brings us to where things stand now, right? No suspect publicly identified. No suspect vehicle publicly identified. No confirmed proof of life publicly released. No CODIS match publicly announced. And yet, astoundingly, 40 plus days into this case, the sheriff announced that he believes they know why this happened and that it was targeted and that the person responsible could indeed strike again. Let me read you his exact words. Quote, we believe we know why he was here and have known since day one. Let me read that again. We believe we know why he was here and have known since day one. Which makes you wonder, why then on day one, did he search Annie Guthrie's car and then her home and impound that car for more than 40 days? Why on day two, did he say there was no threat to the community? And why on day three, did he take the alleged ransom seekers so seriously? Really, what it makes you wonder is were there serious errors made in those early days that may impede the investigator's ability to track down the real guy, the real person who took Nancy. Looking ahead, the sheriff says the mixed DNA sample found inside the home could still lead them to a suspect, even as sources say there isn't one person on their radar today, not even one suspect. And even though my source says there isn't enough evidence to scrape together to even get a search warrant, not enough to even get probable cause. Again, that source saying don't expect any raids anytime soon. He told me that a few weeks ago, and that's played out till today. And this is the part that lingers over everything, because if they really have had a working belief since day one. If they really do think this was targeted, and if they really believe the person who did this could do it again, then it raises the question that has haunted this case from the beginning. What did investigators see inside that house and in those first critical hours that made them shift so quick, quickly from searching for Nancy to simply building a criminal case around her disappearance? That question still has not been answered publicly, and neither has this one. Where is Nancy Guthrie? If you have any information, the number to call is 1-800- call FBI. I'm Ashley Banfield. Thank you so much for listening and for watching. And remember, there's a members only queue Q and A session coming up this Sunday, March 22nd at 6:30 Eastern Time. If you want to be a part of it, if you want to ask me anything, just go ahead and join that membership and you'll be able to come in and ask whatever question you want. Thanks again everybody. And please remember, truth isn't just serious, it's drop dead serious.
- [63:43]
Amica Insurance Announcer
They say if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together. At Amica Insurance, we know what matters most to you and we work even harder to protect it. Together. As a mutual insurance company, we're built for our customers and prioritize your needs. Amica empathy is our best policy. Visit amica.com and get a quote today.
- [64:13]
Josh Spiegel
Hey, I'm Josh Spiegel, host of the podcast Lunatic in the Newsroom. If you enjoy journalism that drifts into mild panic, wild overthinking, and a guaranteed nervous breakdown, Lunatic in the Newsroom is for you. It's news like you've never heard before. The only newsroom with a panic button. You'll laugh, you'll cry and gasp in horror as the show spirals completely out of control. It's not just news, it's emotionally unstable. Lunatic in the Newsroom Listen today.
- [64:44]
Cool Stuff Daily Host
Every day the world gets a little weirder and a lot more awesome. Cool Stuff Daily takes a look at everything from mining in space to the latest in the fight against cancer to how AI is basically changing everything. It's all the cool stuff you didn't know you needed to know. Join us for Cool Stuff Daily as well. We take a quick look at science, tech and the Wait, what stories that make you sound way smarter at dinner. Subscribe to Cool Stuff Daily now because the future's happening fast and it's way too fun to miss.