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Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
Nancy Guthrie Mystery: Every Twist After 3 Explosive Weeks | Nancy Guthrie Missing Update
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- [00:00]
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- [01:35]
Podcast Host / Narrator
Hey everybody, it is Friday, February 20th. It's been a long, long three weeks in the Nancy Guthrie case. We are basically about to enter the fourth week of Nancy Guthrie being missing, and I don't feel like the investigators are any further ahead. Listen, there's a lot we don't know. Granted. Want to just let you know. I know you guys all have questions and I hear so many of your comments and questions as well. I'm going to have a member event this Sunday at 6pm Eastern. It's February 22nd and I'm going to answer a ton of your questions. We can have a conversation like we did last time, but I'm also going to answer a lot of the questions about the Nancy Guthrie case because you got a lot and we've got answers. And then I'll let you know when we don't have answers as well because that's also the case. Also a quick housekeeping. Just don't forget, subscribe. It really does me a solid. I appreciate you so much when you do that and it makes a huge difference. I know it's little for you, but it's huge for me. So thank you very much in advance. Let's talk about where we are. We're three weeks in, and if you go back to the beginning like we did for this episode, suddenly you start to see things in a different light. And so we thought tonight would be a really great opportunity in this episode to just get you back to speed on everything that has transpired. Things that became huge that suddenly went away, things that suddenly got people excited that they were going to have some resolution and then went away, and things that were said that suddenly don't make sense anymore. So I want to take you from start to finish. Let's start on February 1st. That's basically day one. That's when the 911 call came in. Family members were alerted that Nancy Guthrie did not show up for her group event for church. Now, this is, this was sort of misreported and then clarified, but clarified in strange ways that maybe not everybody heard. Nancy hasn't attended church, according to reports, since COVID actual church. Instead, she and a group of friends gather and they watch a live stream of the church service together on Sundays. And that apparently is what Nancy hadn't shown up for. And the friends of hers had alerted family members. So family members arrive at Nancy's house to check on her. And obviously what they saw was extraordinarily concerning. They got there at 11:56am and they were calling 911-7- minutes later at 12:03pm didn't take but a minute for the law enforcement to get there. And the case, you know, officially kicks into overdrive with the officers arriving. So this is day one, and authorities tell us this is a dire situation because Nancy has a pacemaker. Nancy is on medications and they are life saving medications that she needs. And in 24 hours without those medications, it can be detrimental to her life that she could be in grave danger. So this has become a very worrisome situation. Sheriff Chris Nanos of the Pima County Sheriff's Department quickly said, lest you think this is an older woman who's 84 years old who's wandered off and might be in the neighborhood somewhere, not the case. He said. Nancy Guthrie is not the type to wander off. She is sharp as a tack. Her mind is fine. And he added that she actually can't walk without, you know, help for more than about 50 yards on her own. So that changed the metric of why this was so critical. And homicide detectives were Brought in right away. They were brought in by the sheriff's department to investigate Nancy's home. And they said it's due to what the sheriffs would only describe as concerns about what they found inside her home. They wouldn't say much else, just concerns inside the home led them to bring homicide detectives right away. Day one. So concern is big enough that they bring out the search and rescue teams. They're launched immediately like canines and helicopters and drones and ground teams. They're fanning out looking for Nancy Guthrie. That's normal, right? That is normal on day one. This is not a woman who wandered off. This is more serious. We've got homicide detectives in her house. Get the search crews out and about now. And 24 hours later, something changed, like drastically changed. Suddenly Nancy's home, which is this crime scene where homicide detectives have been present in, is released to the family. The crime scene tape comes down, it's no longer a crime scene anymore. That's odd. 24 hours, maybe 30 hours. Also, the sheriff announced that this is no longer primarily a search mission and calls off all air assets and all canines and all searchers until further notice. Right. That happens Monday. That's the announcement from the sheriff. He says these assets that they brought in unmasked, they're going to step aside now. Now that this is a criminal investigation. These are his words. Even so, he did emphasize something that was very strange given what we know now, that he did not think the community was in any danger. So one day after that press conference. So now we're on Tuesday, right? She disappears on Sunday. They call off the search on Monday. They release the crime scene on Monday. They say the public's not in danger on Tuesday. The next day, a high level law enforce enforcement source tells me that multiple nest cameras were smashed at the home, that Nancy's back door was left wide open, that there was forced entry, indeed, that there was blood found inside the home as well as outside the home. And that they had towed Nancy's daughter's car and that they may now be considering her husband as a prime suspect. That is on Tuesday. A few days later, at a press conference, Sheriff Nanos confirms they had towed the car under a warrant and that it was being processed, but said that family was not being identified as suspects. Here's how he put it.
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Sheriff Chris Nanos
Suspects. I know there's been a lot out there about suspects and I want to be very clear at this time, we have not identified a suspect or a person of interest in this case. We are working our best to do that. But to be clear, we have nobody of interest or any suspects that you would consider a prime suspect. We're just not there. We're not there yet.
- [08:10]
Podcast Host / Narrator
Sheriff, you said you've identified no suspects.
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Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
Have you ruled out anyone she was
- [08:14]
Podcast Host / Narrator
with on Saturday night?
- [08:16]
Sheriff Chris Nanos
You know, we've talked to so many. I'm sure that my investigators have feelings about this one's clear or this one isn't. But. But no, I wouldn't say anybody's ruled out yet, because what if. What if I rule you out? And then later I learned something else. No.
- [08:30]
Podcast Host / Narrator
Still, law enforcement just two days later was seen searching at the daughter's home at night, wearing gloves and taking photographs in the dark for three hours. They're also seen searching the property and the properties nearby at the daughter's home, also at that same Thursday news conference again. So now we're at Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, we're at day five. At that same news conference on day five, the sheriff also confirmed that it was indeed Nancy's blood that reporters had spotted outside of Nancy's front entrance. Still, the sheriff at this news conference on day five would not confirm whether there was forced entry, which door may have been used, whether other biological evidence had been located in the home. That would change. And he would not confirm if there were multiple cameras. Again later. He did confirm weeks later that there were multiple nest cameras at Nancy's home. So he also would not rule out the family as suspects. When many of the reporters asked and asked multiple times, here's how he put it. Have you been able to clear any of the Guthrie family members?
- [09:43]
Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
Well,
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Sheriff Chris Nanos
I put it like this. Everybody, particularly the Guthrie family, but everybody has been very cooperative. We've done a number of interviews and investigations and taken DNA swabs from a number of different people. They've all cooperated with us. I'm going to say this real careful. They are under tremendous pressure and tremendous grief. And I think it's really irresponsible for anyone to start pointing fingers that way. They have been nothing but cooperative with us.
- [10:22]
Podcast Host / Narrator
But I think cooperative and cleared are two different things.
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Sheriff Chris Nanos
I know, but the evidence will take us there if that's the case.
- [10:29]
Podcast Host / Narrator
Here's the official timeline that Sheriff Nanos released to the public about the early stages of this crime. And he released this to us on Thursday on day five. So he said that Nancy Guthrie on Saturday, the 31st of January, got in an Uber at 5:32pm and went about four miles down the road to her daughter Annie's house, where they had dinner they played games. And at 9:48pm and this gets a little confusing because originally he said her daughter Annie brought her home. Then he said her daughter Annie and her husband Tommaso brought her home. And then he said Tommaso brought her home. And then it got really messy. Later he'd have to say, I'm going to leave it at just family. But he told the New York Times it was Tommaso who brought her home. At 9:48 on that Saturday PM the garage door opens. And at 9:50, the garage door closes. And the sheriff says, and we assume Nancy goes to bed at 1:47am now we are into February 1st. Sunday morning, the timeline says that the camera disconnects. Later, they would say is tampered with. At 2:12am the sheriff says there is an image detected, a person detected on the camera, which is interesting because they don't have the image. I don't know how they detect a person. Maybe, maybe the NEST camera just said person detected on your front door or back door or whatever camera detected a person. But the really tough news was that Nancy Guthrie didn't have the subscription, so they didn't have the actual video. And the sheriff said, we've reached out to our partners, you know, the people behind these cameras. They didn't tell us at that point that they were NEST cameras, but we've reached out to the partners, the companies, and we're waiting for that information to come back. It would be very disappointing because soon they would be told by the company we don't have. It wouldn't be the end of the story. However, at 2:28am the timeline continues. Nancy's pacemaker disconnects from the phone app that she has. And at 11:56, relatives respond to her home. 12:03 relatives call 911. So that's the timeline from the sheriff. So as all this continues, the ransom demands start coming in. On day three of this nightmare, ransom communications begin. Right. One email is sent to a national outlet, to TMZ and also to two local outlets, television outlets in Tucson, and that Ransom overTure is demanding $4 million by Thursday of the first week by day five. But the email also threatened that if that Thursday deadline were missed, if that Day 5 deadline were missed, the price tag would go up to $6 million by the following Monday deadline. That would be day eight, and the demand was for cryptocurrency. So it wasn't long before a California man was hauled in in cuffs. His name was Derek Kalea Kayea Kalela. I don't know how he pronounces his name. But Derek was charged with a federal crime. He was charged with sending another fake ransom message directly to family members. Right. Federal prosecutors alleged that he was an imposter and that he was exploiting the family's grief for money. Does not appear that he's the same person who sent that original ransom note to TMZ and the two Tucson outlets. Again, his ransom note allegedly went to directly to Guthrie family members Nancy's daughter and her husband. So later on, ransom style messages would surface again in the media, again including one demanding a single bitcoin worth about $67,000 at the time for information. Basically, I know where she's being held. I know the people. So you give me the money and I'll give you the info. And similar overtures would come into TMZ about that same offer multiple times in the ensuing weeks. But after those first few overtures, the Guthrie siblings pleaded with whomever was behind those emails to please let their mom come home, even agreeing at one point to pay as long as there was proof of life and proof that they actually had Nancy. And as far as the public was told, there were no such reassurances that came in. Several emails would follow demanding the same kind of ransom, even one changing the type of cryptocurrency being demanded. But the law enforcement sources that were tapped on this topic indicated they had no reason to believe that any of these were authentic. Still, they said they were taking them seriously. Quick note here. Taking them seriously could mean two things. Taking them seriously with regard to finding Nancy or taking them seriously with regard to finding who's behind them. These grifters who are exploiting a situation because that's a crime in itself, a big one. You can go away for 20 years for this. So taking it seriously, let's hope they find them for so many reasons, right? Cnn, in fact, reported in week three that federal prosecutors had a whole team standing by ready to prosecute anybody attempt attempting this kind of extortion on the Guthrie family. Also on day five, that's Thursday, FBI agents are confirmed to have visited a Chevron station and a Circle K asking for those two companies their surveillance video. And it's noted that the gas stations just geographically were located in between Nancy's home and her daughter's home. And the people who worked at those stations confirmed that the agents had been there to ask for and received that surveillance video looking for vehicles that may have been driving in the area. Savannah Guthrie put out another short video, seemingly addressing the alleged Ransom seekers, she said the word. And everything seemed very. To many people, it seemed very much like the FBI had been working with the Guthrie family, helping them to craft specifically with their knowledge of the behavioral unit at the FBI. And it seemed cryptic, but basically Savannah had said to the ransom seekers, we hear you, we understand, and we beg you to return our mother to us so that we can celebrate with her. So agents then return to Nancy's home, right? They now load her car up onto a flatbed out of the garage. It's been in the garage all this time since she disappeared. And they tow it from her garage. And this follows, actually several sporadic searches that had happened, happened around Nancy's front yard, Nancy's property, her backyard, behind her backyard. Again, this is many days after the crime scene has been released. And a lot of people are very critical about this, saying, you know, why'd you release the scene if you're still doing searches? And this is not going to help in any prosecution down the way, right? Any defense attorney with his or her weight in salt is going to be able to say, contamination everywhere, you know, Regardless, the searches continue on day eight, Sheriff's vehicle shows up and blocks the entrance to Nancy's driveway. That's on a Sunday morning. That's a week since Nancy has disappeared. And Brian Enten told me that the private security guard had been hired by Nancy Guthrie's family. The man who came out of Nancy's driveway putting on latex gloves and emptying the mailbox at Nancy's house, putting the mail into a plastic bag. Then Fox News captures video of law enforcement in the back area behind Nancy Guthrie's backyard, and they are probing with a long probe down into an underground tank. Nobody could quite come to the, you know, conclusion as to whether it was a septic tank or a freshwater tank or an overflow tank. But regardless, those giant lids, there are two of these big lids, they were both lifted off. And those, those law enforcement agents were probing with a very long probe down into that tank. Never heard anything about resolution. Did they find anything? I think to a lot of people, it looked like they may have been trying to see if there was anything down there, maybe a body. Some were trying to suggest they were bringing up samples, but none of that panned out publicly. Anyway, more agents then show up at Nancy's home, searching the rough all behind her backyard. Then, Tuesday, February 10th, ten days after Nancy was abducted, an absolute bombshell drops. The FBI releases to the public nest doorbell footage that they had retrieved from Google's back end. Servers they had done something called scratching, where they, as it's described, try to scratch away like the, the peels of an onion to get to the video because Nancy didn't have a subscription, therefore it wasn't saved. And those cameras outside had been taken. Law enforcement didn't have the camera. So Google is able, with the help of the FBI, to get these images. And this is what they released to us. A male suspect, his face obscured by a three hole balaklava ski mask, wearing dark clothing, carrying a backpack that was later identified as a black 25 liter Ozark trail pack, a product available exclusively at Walmart. The FBI's Operational Technology Division drills down on the suspect ID. Right. The description. They do this using something called photogrammetry and they release this description. And yeah, it's great to have a description, but my God, tens of tens of millions of people, maybe even hundreds kind of meet this Description. Male, approximately 5, 9 to 5, 10. That's average. And an average build. So basically an average American shape. But okay, while that's average, it's not average to somebody watching. Right. Somebody recognizes the way that person moves, their gait, the way they walk. Right. The way they bend when they bend down, the way they approach. There are movements that are unique to all of us. Sometimes you can recognize someone right down the street, just the way they're walking before you see their face. Okay, that's important. And that's why, okay, 5, 9 to 5, 10, average build. But somebody out there recognizes this guy. Somebody has to know, I think I know someone like that. By February 12th, TMZ is reporting their law enforcement source says that the suspect was captured on Nancy's front doorbell camera at 2:12am which brings up a big question as to which camera was quote, unquote disconnected and quote unquote tampered with. That's how law enforcement described it to us at 1:47am because the two times we got from law enforcement is that the camera was tampered with and disconnected at 1:47am and then an image was captured at 2:12am TMZ says their law enforcement source says it was that image that they released to us. But what happened at 1:47am and where? Front door, back door. It also left people wondering if two of the images that were released were the same or if they were captured at the same time. Because in one image, the suspect had a gun and a backpack on. Right? In the videos, he's got a, he's got a backpack with reflectors and a gun. That's clearly visible. Right, right in the center of his belt. But in one of the other images, just a single image, a still shot that they released, he is wearing neither, doesn't have the backpack on, doesn't have the gun on. So this left people wondering whether one of those images was at 212 and the other image was at 147. It's just very, very confusing as to why they would release these images and show them with two different. What happened with the suspect that he took off the backpack and the gun? Why did he feel so safe to take that gun off? Where was he in this crime? At what stage of this crime was he that he took that gun off? Just super fascinating, and we don't have the answer to that. Another question that was brought up by a lot of people who looked at this. Is it possible that image of the guy without the gun and without the backpack was taken on a different night altogether? Some people pointed to the sky being a different color. It's possible that the camera just accommodated for it. But others said, no, no, it just. It looks different. But we're just left to wonder because the law enforcement folks who released those images to us did not give us context or clarity. They just gave them, gave the images out and said, 1-800-call FBI if you know who this is. And the tips started flying in, flying in. As of this recording, there are upwards of 40,000 tips that have come to the FBI or to the sheriff's department. 40,000. They said they look at every single one of them. One other question I had about this video was what the suspect was doing with the foliage. Most people have just been saying he's trying to cover up the camera. I just have a different perspective on it. Because ring cams have such a narrow, narrow space between the bracket that holds the camera and the camera. You can't get your fingers in there. You can barely get a key in between there. And so when the suspect puts his hand on it, I could see the suspect squeezing. And I don't know if he's trying to pull it off, but he can't get his fingers. They're too thick to get in between the bracket and the camera to yank it off. And then he goes and he grabs the foliage and he's really holding it in his fist. So I wondered if he was actually putting a vine in between the bracket and the camera and trying to pull it off. But we don't get the rest of the video. So we don't know. And we don't know if they have more video that they're just not sharing with us, the video stops. And we're not able to determine what exactly happened there. What we do know from Brian Enten and Michael Ruiz's video as they, you know, shot video walking up onto Nancy's front doorstep where there are blood spots, and they were able to do that on Tuesday, day three. There's also debris from that foliage right beneath the nest camera where it used to be. And Michael Ruiz goes further from Fox Digital and says there's actually glass fragments that he sees in that area beneath where the nest doorbell cam had been before being taken away by the suspect, more than likely, because at this point, the sheriff didn't say that. Just said that we don't have them. Right. On Tuesday, February 10th, massive bombshell again. A SWAT raid. And it's big, right? The SWAT unit goes out of the sheriff's department, and the bomb squad goes out in tow. Reporters are trying really carefully, you know, not to disclose where they're headed, but they're following. And a man is briefly detained in Rio Rico about an hour south of Tucson. His home is breached by law enforcement and searched by law enforcement for hours, but he's later released. He's not charged. He vehemently denies having any knowledge or any involvement in the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie. Have a look.
- [26:04]
Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
As you can see, I have nothing to do with it, right, Carlos?
- [26:07]
Interviewer 1
What? What do you want? People, your name's everywhere.
- [26:10]
Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
I'm innocent. That's all I can say. I didn't have nothing to do with this.
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Podcast Host / Narrator
Were you shocked when.
- [26:14]
Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
Yeah, I was.
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Interviewer 1
Tell me.
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Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
Come on. Like, what do you expect me to do? See, they helped me against my will. They didn't even re me my rights until two hours later. Okay. My wrist is all swollen from. From the handcuffs, like.
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Interviewer 1
And did you have any idea that this was about Damon? Do you know who Nancy Guthrie is?
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Sheriff Chris Nanos
No.
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Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
That's a problem. No, I don't know anything.
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Interviewer 1
You were like, where is this coming from?
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Interviewer 2
How did they come up on you?
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Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
I don't know.
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Interviewer 2
Like, what, were you just driving around?
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Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
Yeah. Working. Jack?
- [26:49]
IQ Bar Advertiser
Yeah.
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Podcast Host / Narrator
They said you were deliver. Georgia.
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Interviewer 2
Oh, how they pull up on you
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Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
like n. I pulled up on them. They were following me. Yeah, they were following me. Marana, this is Santa Cruz county, and Miranda was down here. It's like, come on, two and two.
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Interviewer 2
And so then when they. When they came up on you, what did they say? Like, what did they say?
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Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
Nothing. Nothing. Literally nothing. Nothing. They just told me, stop moving. Like, what's Your name? Carlos. And that's it. They put me in the cop car. I gotta wait like two hours. I waited like two hours until the detectives kill here and everything.
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IQ Bar Advertiser
Oh, my God.
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Interviewer 2
Well, when they finally told you that was had to do with some kidnapping, like what. What were you thinking?
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Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
What the am I doing here? I didn't do anything, to be honest. Like, I'm innocent and you don't even
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Interviewer 1
know who the lady is. Do you know who Savannah Gun is?
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Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
No, I don't follow the news.
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Podcast Host / Narrator
Right.
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Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
I don't watch.
- [27:36]
Interviewer 1
You don't watch the Today show?
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Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
No.
- [27:38]
Interviewer 1
So this was a complete shock.
- [27:40]
Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
It was.
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Podcast Host / Narrator
What kind of questions were they asking you?
- [27:43]
Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
Nothing. They didn't ask me no questions. So nothing? Nothing. They just sent me in the car. They investigated my car and this man. And that's it. They didn't ask me no questions, no nothing.
- [27:52]
Interviewer 1
Did you get the other car back or they still have it?
- [27:55]
Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
No, it's right there.
- [27:56]
Interviewer 1
Oh, they gave it back to you?
- [27:57]
Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
So, yeah, it's like.
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Interviewer 1
And they said you can go home.
- [27:59]
Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
Yeah.
- [28:01]
Interviewer 2
And how did they treat. Like the people you were with. Your girl, your child,
- [28:06]
Interviewer 1
how's your family? They scared everybody. I was gonna say they scared everybody, huh?
- [28:11]
IQ Bar Advertiser
Yeah.
- [28:12]
Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
They're all in shock right now.
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Podcast Host / Narrator
Wow.
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Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
Did they damage the house?
- [28:15]
Rocket Money Advertiser
Yeah.
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Interviewer 1
What did they do to the house?
- [28:17]
Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
They broke the doors. What else, babe? The garage door in the back.
- [28:23]
Interviewer 1
So what are you going to do now?
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Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
I'll try to clear my name. I didn't do anything.
- [28:27]
Podcast Host / Narrator
Well, this is one of the.
- [28:29]
Detained Delivery Driver (Carlos)
I mean, I hope they get the suspect because I'm not it.
- [28:32]
Podcast Host / Narrator
According to the sheriff, this was a delivery guy whose digital footprint may have had him, quote, in the area of Nancy's house. And the sheriff says, quote, more than one issue led law enforcement to his home. Maybe the description. I mean, it's kind of hard to have a description under the balaclava, right? A lot of people said certain eyes. You can tell the goatee and the mustache. But I mean, really, how many people have that? Loads. In any case, the man is not arrested, and within a day, the sheriff says that he is satisfied with this man's alibi. But this would not be the last SWAT raid. Another big one, maybe even bigger, was about to happen just three days later. Before I get to that, DNA developments came in. Around this time, about two weeks into the case, things began to intensify with a key discovery. A pair of gloves, black gloves, located about two miles away from Nancy's home on the side of the road. And they appeared to match the gloves that the suspect was wearing on that doorbell video. According to the FBI, the gloves were sent to a private lab in Florida. An unknown male DNA profile was developed. It was entered into the National DNA Offender Database called codis, and sadly, no match was found. Although multiple media outlets reported that their sources indicated a suspicious glove was found inside Nancy Guthrie's home. The sheriff disputed that and clarified, saying absolutely not. No glove was found inside the home. And he went on to say multiple gloves had actually been found all around the broader area. Like upwards of 16 different gloves had been found. But the sheriff also said something else that was key. Said that DNA other than Nancy's DNA that did not match anyone close to Nancy's circle that was collected from inside Nancy's home. He said that investigators were working to identify who it belongs to. We were waiting to see. Well, are you uploading that Dakotas like you did the gloves that were found two miles away, but the DNA from those gloves? Yeah. When that was entered into codis, there was no hit. No hit. And it didn't match the DNA that was found inside the home. But weirdly, we still hadn't heard if the DNA inside the home had been uploaded to CODIS and had had a hit or not. And they just keep saying that there's a mixture, it needs to be separated. The sheriff said, and they're still working on that. They're still working on that. They did not say that they'd uploaded it to CODIS and they'd had a result from codis. But here's what I think may have happened. I don't know this, but it would explain a delay. Maybe they uploaded it. Maybe they separated the DNA out and they uploaded it to codis. And CODIS did not give them a match, but said, but you know what? We do have a partial. We don't have your full match, but we do have like a 25% match or a 50% match or maybe even a 12% match, which could mean that there's a cousin in the CODIS database, which then, if that were the case, that would then take the law enforcement on a different tack, that would then take them to genetic genealogy. Well, let's go track down who this relative might be. Right. So I wonder if that is what we're waiting on and if that's the actual case, then we're going to wait for a while because it can take a long time. It's how they caught Brian Coburger. It's how they caught the Golden State Killer at California as of this recording, though, and again, we are recording on February 20, Friday night, there have been no CODIS hits confirmed in this case, but it lent itself to a big controversy over the use of a lab in Florida. By the way, the lab in Florida is a fantastic lab. Everybody I've spoken to in law enforcement says this, that this is a lab that has had confirmed incredible results. They do great work. It is a lab that. That the Pima county sheriff uses all the time. However, multiple outlets were reporting that key evidence in the case was being sent to this private lab rather than to the FBI lab in Quantico, and that the FBI was being blocked from evidence. This was like a source of friction between the sheriff and the FBI. Sheriff Nanos came out and tried to knock all that down. Said he defended his decision, saying the lab had been used in Pima county for decades and that the FBI had agreed with keeping all the evidence consolidated in one facility. Right. Said there was no daylight between local authorities and FBI. But, boy, it sure did gin up a lot of ink. For several days. Several media outlets, including, I think Reuters and News Nation, did say that their federal sources were steadfast, that there was some friction between the agencies and some folks on the ground. Law enforcement saying, we don't know who to report to. We don't know who's running the show here, the feds or the. Or the locals. But the sheriff knocked that down, too. Denied those reports, that there'd been any issues, that there was no clarity on who was leading this investigation, that they were working in concert, that they always played in the sandbox. Well, and that no one had been blocked from. From any evidence. So then came Friday the 13th, the day before Valentine's Day. Late at night, suddenly, action, lots of it. Dozens and dozens of vehicles from the sheriff's department, from the FBI, the SWAT vehicle, the bomb squad, the forensic vehicles, all flying to this location within 2 miles of Nancy Guthrie's home. And everything's locked down. The whole neighborhood is shut down. Even people who live in that neighborhood can't get in. People who are in that neighborhood are watching all this happen. Three people ended up being detained that night, two of them from a home in that neighborhood. And one of them, a man, was being held near a Culver's restaurant not far away, and he was reported to be connected to a silver Range Rover. Right. That SUV was photographed in that parking lot by the police. Multiple photographs all the way around that, looking into the windows of that silver Range Rover. And then privacy shields went up, which meant to many of us, my God, is there a body in the back? And they opened up the back, you know, hatch of the silver Range Rover, and then they closed it again. And the privacy screens went back down. We couldn't see what they were doing. Didn't look like they were unloading anything, though. And then the flatbed truck arrived, and they hooked that silver SUV up, that Range Rover and they towed it off, and they covered its license plate with a yellow piece of paper just so that none of us could get the license plate and run the plate and find out who it belonged to. We still don't know the result of what happened there. Like, that's still kind of circling, you know, Brian Enten said his law enforcement sources said there's meat on the bones of the work product from that raid. You know, from the home and the Culver's parking lot where the guy was detained in the back of a law enforcement vehicle. FBI was there asking questions. Sheriff's deputies were there asking questions. They towed the car. They had a warrant for it. We were told it was being tested. We still don't know the results of. Why was that a part of this story? How did it connect? Are there results that connect to the Nancy Guthrie investigation or not? Nobody was arrested. That man was released, as were the two people in the home. We are told through various reports it was a mom and a son, and then the other son was at the Culver's restaurant, but no arrests. So Sheriff Nano said the man who was detained near the Culver's, which we believe involved with the gray Range Rover, was a person of interest who was cooperative and later released. That's all we got. That's all we got. Still waiting. Sheriff also said, regarding any other detainees, quote, I'm guessing anyone at the residence was detained, but that is standard, standard procedure to allow investigators serving a search warrant freedom to conduct their search. I was not at the scene, he says, I'm sure people were detained, but no one was arrested. And more importantly, no sign of Nancy was found. End quote. Most critical thing, because I think so many people thought on that night, Friday the 13th, 4 o' clock in the morning, this thing went on till, right, that we'd have answers. Maybe not good answers, but at least answers. And the next day, it just all seemed to vanish. So then three weeks into the case, we start to learn how high tech the search has become. Something called a signal sniffer begins making the news. Right. It's a device that they hope is going to sniff out Nancy's pacemaker. How can I describe it to you? The way I see it and I've read into it, it is basically a device that sends down an invitation looking for something that's advertising a specific address because the pacemaker has a specific address. So this invitation goes down and starts looking around for an advertisement from that actual address of that pacemaker. And we learn that pacemakers continue to work whether the person they are assigned to is alive or dead, and they will work for years. So this is a really interesting investigative technique. And the investigators confirmed that they deployed something called blue fly signal detection technology from Parsons Corporation. And Brian Enten reports that the device was actually attached to the rudders of a sheriff's helicopter that was hovering overhead above Nancy Guthrie's home. In fact, when he was down below it doing a live shot, he was pointing to the chopper above at the time. He didn't realize it, but found out later that that's actually what was going on at that time. What's interesting about this device is that it reportedly can detect that pacemaker signal from as far away as 800 to 1,000ft. So I started asking the questions, like, why then wouldn't you put it on a drone and, you know, get close to a lot of locations? And you know what, to our knowledge, that may be happening. We don't know. There has been no update, though publicly, that this technology has had any success, that there's been a signal recovery. So now, again, week three, something else starts to surface, and it's the burglary theory. It starts to get some traction. The Associated Press, along with Arizona Family that is a a news brand that incorporates two local TV stations in in Phoenix, Arizona. They both report that investigators believe the crime may have been a burglary gone wrong. That makes big, big news. But law enforcement sources start to really push back strongly. Sheriff Nano saying that didn't come from us. So the sheriff actually pushes back publicly, saying there's nothing to indicate that this is a burglary gone wrong or otherwise. Just doesn't basically give that report any credence. And then law enforcement starts doing something else that makes its way into the reporting domain. They start canvassing gun stores in the Tucson area, and it's FBI agents visiting several local gun stores and carrying with them sheets and sheets of paper, carrying the names and photos of somewhere between 18 and 40 different individuals, asking the folks who work in those stores about people who've come into the store. Do you recognize these faces? Can you run these names? Have you seen them in the store? Have they bought A firearm here, which is huge. Even some of the firearms store proprietors or employees do interviews with the press saying that this is what happened. And the weird thing is the sheriff has asked about it in an interview with Fox, with Jonathan Hunt, and he says, that's a lie. And it's like, no, it isn't. It happened. We saw it. It's very strange. Which made me wonder, and I'm sure a lot of other people, did the sheriff not know that the FBI was doing that, or did the sheriff just not want us to know that law enforcement was doing that? Don't know the answer to that. We just know that he said to Jonathan Hunt, that's a lie. When we knew it was happening. Because, you know, the media was in there talking to the folks in the gun stores. So odd. One other thing that the sheriff did not know in this entire process was that Savannah Guthrie and her siblings worked with the FBI to record the very first video to the alleged ransom seekers. You know, asking for proof of life and proof that you have her. Apparently the sheriff found out from his wife. Brian Enten reported that when asked, the sheriff said, yeah, I didn't know about that. My wife told me about it. So the FBI may have been keeping things from the sheriff, certainly kept that from him. Maybe they kept the gun store canvassing, too. I don't know what the purpose of that would be because that would be something that would leak, would get out in any case. TMZ reports that the. The lists that the federal agents were taking into those gun stores contained people who may have purchased that gun holster. I couldn't match that reporting anywhere else, but it was super interesting because we all asked the question, who was on the list? Who were those people? The 40 people. Upwards of 40 people. Where those names come from and those photographs. Anyway, TMZ said it was people who may have bought the gun holster in any case. Fox had a report a couple days later saying that here we are in week three, and the gun store canvassing has turned up nothing. Just empty. No results, no. Nothing helpful in any case. So here we are, we're going into the fourth week of this case this weekend, and authorities have yet to be able to identify a suspect vehicle involved in this case. Shocking, but maybe not so much. It's a very, very dark area. There's streetlights aren't allowed in Nancy Guthrie's neighborhood. It's a deal that they have with the observatories, University of Arizona. They do a lot of that kind of. They call it stargazing. But it's astronomy. And so it's extraordinarily dark. And many of the cameras all around the Tucson area, as it's been reported, don't record. Some of them are only there for traffic monitoring, you know, to change the signals when the traffic's heavier or lighter. Some of them do record, but not well. And so, unfortunately, it doesn't seem as though at this point, they've got a good vehicle description because, you know, we were only, I think, a week or so into the Bryan Coburger case, and we got the white Elantra. Everybody was supposed to be on the lookout for a white Elantra, and everybody did. They found their nest and ring cams, and they found that white Elantra. Bryan Coburger driving his own car to his crime, and the neighbors found it. But here we are going into week four, and no one is able to look for a specific vehicle in this case, which is really astounding if you think about it in this day and age. You know, also in this last week, some controversies emerged over some reported Google research. Okay, the report surfaced that Nancy's address and her daughter Savannah Guthrie's salary had been searched by like, oh, in a Google search in Arizona, by somebody in Arizona prior to Nancy disappearing in the year prior. But Google saw that report and then publicly wanted to knock it down, saying it's not that simple. And it's tricky the way that they worded it. But effectively they said that Google trends, that's the searching, don't show actual individual query volume, and that low volume charts may show statistical noise for privacy protection, but that trends data cannot confirm a specific individual conducted a search. Again, hard to parse their language. But basically Google just wanted to correct the reporting, saying it's not exactly as it seemed. So that was a bummer, too, because I thought that was really going somewhere, you know, but then all of a sudden, all eyes turned south of the border. Week three is coming to an end, and law enforcement sources tell several reporters that the FBI had contacted their Mexican counterparts, the Mexican authorities, even though Sheriff Nanos had said previously and a few times during all of this that there was no evidence that Nancy was taken to Mexico. You know, during the Rio Rico raid. That was a big question. Was there thought that maybe Nancy had gone over the border. And no, that's not where this investigation is taking us. Then the attorney general of Sonora state in Mexico, that's right over the Nogales border crossing. That attorney general quickly pushed back, publicly stating that they had received no formal request for collaboration about this case from the federal authorities in the US or the federal authorities in Mexico. That was weird. Then later on, they said they reached out because of all the rumors about this. Like they said, yeah, we heard the rumors just like you, you know, that the feds are, you know, working with the authorities down here. And they said the FBI informed them right, in this state that there were no investigative leads suggesting that Nancy was in Mexico. So what a circle jerk, right? Just so frustrating. And as of the latest public statements, there's no suspect publicly identified. There's no suspect vehicle identified. There's no word if the unknown DNA profile is going to trigger a CODIS match or maybe if it's triggered a partial one and it's now being, you know, borne out in genealogical searching, genetic genealogy, IgG investigative genetic genealogy. But that mix of DNA apparently still needs to be separated. That was the last thing the sheriff told us about it. There's been no confirmed proof of life of Nancy Guthrie. Law enforcement has received more than 40,000 tips between the FBI and the sheriff, but so far, all they can tell us is that this investigation is active and ongoing. And still there are so many questions that remain. Right. All unanswered. Why was the search scaled back on day two? Why did the sheriff state within 24 hours of Nancy's disappearance that there's no danger to the public? Because that guy that I saw on the nest cam a couple weeks later looks pretty dangerous and he's still out there somewhere. Why has there been no suspect vehicle description? Do they just not have anything? How many people might have been involved? Because the sheriff is now saying as of day 20, that it's possible there were accomplices. And most importantly, the biggest question, where is Nancy Guthrie? Day 20 going into week four, agony for her family. If you have any information at all, any inkling, something you recognize, something that's odd in this case, anything. 1-800-call FBI. If there's someone who behaved in a weird way on February 1st and those days after, if they just dropped out of sight, didn't show up for work, suddenly acted strange, suddenly took way more breaks and were disappearing a lot more than they're used, you know, than they were used to, than they used to do all of weird behavior of someone, you know, in the Tucson area, right, right after Nancy disappeared. Sunday, February 1st, Monday, February 2nd, Tuesday, February. Is there somebody who acted strange? Their patterns completely changed. 1-800-Call-FBI that said, it was just today that the sheriff put out a statement saying, we have so many calls to go through. If you're going to pick up that phone, please check yourself. Is this gonna help? So on one hand they're asking for those tips. On the other hand they want to make sure that the tips are good so that they're just not sent on a wild goose chase. But the question remains, where is Nancy Guthrie? Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for watching. And remember, the truth isn't just serious, it's drop dead serious.
- [48:56]
Sheriff Chris Nanos
Foreign
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