← Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
Ransom Note Horror: "Hello Savannah. We Have Your Mother, Nancy." | Nancy Guthrie Missing
01:04:43
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- [00:00]
Ashley Banfield
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- [00:56]
Chris McDonough
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- [01:30]
Ashley Banfield
Hey everyone, I'm Ashley Banfield and this is drop dead serious and a huge development in the Nancy Guthrie investigation. You have probably been hearing a lot in the last few days about the ransom notes and an apology and how it's now clear that Nancy Guthrie was said to have died during the abduction or sometime thereafter. The big news today is that CBS is actually releasing what the ransom note actually said word for word. And what's chilling is that it said Savannah. It was addressed to Savannah. In fact, it actually opened with the words, hello, Savannah. We have your mother, Nancy. These are details that have been kept close to the vest and by a lot of people, I will say, not just by investigators, because the random ransom notes went to three different places. The first ransom note that was sent went to TMZ and two local stations in Tucson. And so everybody within those orbs kept that to themselves, kept those details to themselves. But only in the last week have a lot of these details started to come out. And today CBS decided that it was time to actually put out some of the wording. One other piece of information that CBS is releasing is that the ransom well, I'LL just say the alleged ransom seekers, this alleged ransom note indicated that they had knowledge of where in Nancy's bedroom her Apple watch was located. And a lot of people have put a lot of stock in that. But I'm just going to say it's worth thinking about how many people have their Apple watch charging on their bed stand on their on their bedside nightstand. And so was this a really big guess on the part of whoever wrote these ransom notes or was this actual knowledge of a ransom seeker? We don't know. But CBS is now saying that the note actually contained detailed information where in the actual bedroom there this Apple watch was located. So what is so critical is the wording of the rest of the note. And those are some of the details that have started to come in. I've got news on that from Chris McDonough on why that is so unusual and rare for real ransom seekers. That's coming in a moment. The second note came days later and it's this second note that was so key and is making news right now. The second note did not ask for money. We are learning a lot more details about that note now from the person who actually got eyes on that note. Brianna Whitney is a reporter, a fantastic reporter. At the time that all of this was happening, she worked for a local TV station that was part of Arizona Family that is a an overarching sort of company that owns television stations. And she got eyes on the actual note that came into one of the TV stations under the umbrella of Arizona Family. She no longer works for that TV station. She now works for Crime Junkie, very popular podcast. But she has come forward to say, I have seen the actual wording of this note and she has now divulged what the wording is. Lots of people were speculating and saying, our sources say this and that, but Brianna Whitney actually knows what the words are. I'm going to tell you exactly what they are in just a moment. First, I just wanted to say thank you. If you've already subscribed, subscribed to this podcast and if you haven't, please do because it does us a huge solid. Also, join the membership. We've got a really great membership going and I do private events for the members. I'm going to do another one really soon, so it'd be nice to have you in our little coffee clutch. Okay. Now to the, to the reporting. I think the wording of this second note is super critical, okay? Because it tells us a lot about whoever these authors are. If the authors are the perpetrators or if they aren't, let me just go right to it. And again, this is from Brianna Whitney's reporting. She had eyes on the note. She said that the note said this, quote, we never intended to hurt her in all of this, meaning we never intended to hurt Nancy Guthrie in all of this business of getting her asking for ransom. And now here comes note number two. They admit, quote, she perished shortly after she was taken. I got questions about using the word perished. Is that somebody who doesn't speak English as a first language and this is the way they've translated it? That's my feeling because not many people say she perished. You'd say she died, she passed away, you know, but this is the wording, she perished shortly after she was taken. According to Brianna, the note goes on to say she was buried with nature. Again, a very odd choice of words for someone who is an English speaker. So I'm thinking maybe not. That sounds like someone who's been translating into English. Nothing you could have done could have changed the outcome. And we are truly sorry. We. That's important. And truly sorry are you now what kind of person are you, you wretched beast? Have you suddenly had a flood of conscience? It's not enough just to go into someone's home and steal a grandmother out of her bed in the black of night. Really, you're truly sorry something went wrong? There's also a reference to the fact that they underestimated the condition, you know, the fragile condition of Mrs. Guthrie. So these are critical aspects to the story that are now coming out from people who are actually first hand reporters. Brianna Whitney in in particular, I also wanted to let you know that something that, that Harvey Levin has reported that I find really significant, Harvey Levin's TMZ was one of the recipients of note number one. And that was the note again that came in, I say two days because all of Sunday and most of Monday right before this note came in, around six o' clock in the evening and Harvey received it, so he's a firsthand reporter and he said that this Note said again, 4 million by this date or the price goes up to 6 million and this additional detail is added or we kill her.
- [08:15]
Chris McDonough
Wow.
- [08:17]
Ashley Banfield
So that was something that I hadn't really heard in concrete reporting before that there was this initial threat to kill her right away. When I talk to Chris, we're going to discuss about the rarity of real ransom seekers who go that far that fast, like they're just zero to 60. Right. It's not normal. We'll go into what is normal, why that's unusual. In just a moment. Then there's reporting as well. Harvey received, and TMZ received, a whole batch of other communications after the fact. Not from the original sender, from someone else who said, they know who did this and they're prepared to sell that information. And that person kind of nattered away at Harvey, you know, suggesting, give me money and I'll give you info. And Harvey said that. That person said not only did they know who did it, but they know where Nancy's buried. Very interesting, because now we know that the second ransom note that Harvey didn't receive said she's buried with nature. And don't forget that the women's group that searches for missing people in Mexico, who just last week got that tip in Nogales, just south of Nogales in the Sonora province, that Nancy is buried in a specific area, and they said in a grave over a stream. So, buried with nature, from some of this reporting. And this group down in Mexico gets this tip that she's buried in a grave over a stream. They didn't find her. They did. This is a group that's found 20, 25 unmarked graves, which is tragic in its own right, but they didn't find Nancy. Not yet, anyway. Very legitimate search as well. Very legitimate, Legitimate development in the story because the Mexican authorities gave them back up and helped them with security as they went out and did this search. All right, so interesting that. That Harvey's reporting has this notion that they, you know, this person who's selling the info on the perpetrators knows where Nancy's buried. But also, Harvey has revealed that the FBI contacts that, you know, have been working with tmz, because tmz, again, is a part of the story. They received the original overtures. They received the original ransom, purported ransom letter. So TMZ has been working with the FBI, and Harvey said that the FBI has indicated that this second round of letters, the person who says they know who it is and where she's buried, and they'll sell the info that the FBI is suggesting. They think that may be a woman based on the linguistics, based on the writings. And that's a fascinating development. Wow. Special place in hell for any woman that would do that kind of twisting of the knife. Right? But okay, so this is. This is what the FBI has told Harvey, that it's possible that one of the perpetrators involved in all of this, this one says that he or she didn't do it, but knows who did and where Nancy is and wants money for the info. So ick that that could be a woman. It's fascinating stuff. And one more thing. Maureen o', Connell, who's a former FBI special agent, she mentioned that she's got a source, and the source had indicated that authorities are really close to arresting the guy who appeared on Nancy Guthrie's doorbell cam. That horrifying figure that came in the dark of night and is the person that is believed to have stolen Nancy Guthrie from her bed. I'm having a tough time with that one, because that is a really giant leap towards solving this case. But I was really curious about that. That's a big, big jump to say that you might be close. And so I wanted to talk to other people in the business of solving homicides to talk about the possibility, especially with where we are and the reporting that's come in just in the last, you know, few days. And I thought Chris McDonough would be a perfect person to speak with. Not only is Chris McDonough the director of the Cold Case foundation, but he's also a retired homicide detective. He's co host of the Interview Room, if you've seen his podcast. And Chris has a pretty impressive CV, right. He's got 25 years in law enforcement, 30, 13 of them in a homicide unit. And do you want to know what his solvability rate is in the cases that he actually tackled? 90%. 90%. That's an A. Yeah, 90% solvability. So he looks at these facts as they come in very cold and hard, factually puts them on a grid, looks at them, applies the magic that he knows from his business. And so, with all that in mind, I wanted to go over these new developments with him to get his thoughts. Here's my conversation with Chris McDonough. Chris, it's great to have you. Thank you so much for being on with me. I want to sort of address that. The big elephant in the room. There's a. There's a report, there's a headline that's getting a lot of traction saying that the. The FBI might be close to actually catching the man seen on Nancy Guthrie's ring camera. I've talked to sources who say that's not accurate. And that sounds like a hell of a thing, you know, to not have some sort of vetting. What are your thoughts about that?
- [13:48]
Chris McDonough
Yeah, I would agree with you. I. I was just down there in Tucson, and I talked to law enforcement sources also, and that was not the indication I walked away with as well. They're diligently working, you know, in that direction, but I don't think they have a solid lead as to who that individual is yet.
- [14:07]
Ashley Banfield
And that's kind of shocking. I mean, we're recording this on June 24th, and I think she's now been missing for 144 days. And to not have some kind of thread that they're following or just some sort of advancement in the case, it just feels really hopeless.
- [14:28]
Chris McDonough
Yeah, I mean, it. I mean, actually, you've been doing this for so many years. You. You get the fact that, you know these folks. In this type of investigation, it's such a high profile circumstance, you want to make sure that you're crossing the T's and dotting all the eyes. And, you know, in this particular situation, you know, they have to get out onto the street and they need to start, you know, kicking the beehives. Right. Because the street's going to start giving them information about that guy on the, on the porch. And I, My concern is the fact that these were new homicide investigators that were basically handed, you know, this massive investigation. And at first there was a lot of mistakes that were made. We saw them. I mean, it was visible, you know, shutting the scene down, that kind of stuff. The disagreements behind the scenes, you know, politically, etc. With the FBI avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start. Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin or what that clunking sound from your dryer is. With thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates and read reviews, all on the app download today. But now that that's all been, you know, smoothed out and everybody's, you know, working together in this, you know, miniature task force, you've got the FBI focusing on the forensics evidence, the notes, the, the bitcoin, all of the stuff that they do really well. But then you have the Pima County Sheriff's Department, who is probably focused on the homicide end of this thing. And what concerns me was the fact that, you know, I just got back from there, and one of the things that you want to do pretty quickly is try to find what we call, you know, a contact site. And what I, what do I mean by that? There are three women potentially who could have been victimized by this potential perpetrator. Nancy, Savannah, and Annie. All three women within that family. So what you, what you want to do is reverse engineer that principle into Number one, who would try to do something like that? The second is, how would they try to do it? And of course, the most important one is, why would they want to do that? Okay, well, we know Savannah's out of the circle because she's in New York pretty quickly. So that leaves Annie and it leaves Nancy. So now you want to try to dissect that into terms of, well, why was Nancy selected and not Annie? So what you try to do is you look for what we call a contact point, meaning what type of environments would the suspect, you know, hang out in and do? Any of the victims potentially. Did they. Could they have crossed into those environments inadvertently even, and come across the suspect? Well, what we discovered just this last, you know, week or so, I spent the last seven days out there, was that Annie's workshop for her jewelry business is in an area that is an extremely high profile crime area. And that told me, well, wait a minute, let's look a little bit harder about why this is a possibility. And within that area is a foundation that she supports and has been helping. Well, this is also a foundation that supports those who are getting out of prison, for an example, career felons. Okay. And they're trying to help them go back into society, you know, through job applications, through all the stuff that, you know, these organizations help with. So I asked the question is, okay, well, is it possible that Annie inadvertently could have come across a suspect? Maybe the individual, you know, over time, was overhearing conversations. Is it possible that Nancy had gone down there, you know, to support her daughter? Is it possible Savannah had gone down there, you know, to support mom, you know, etcetera, when she's on her days off? And is it possible that there was conversations that somebody had said, hey, wait a minute, that's a very famous woman. And if in fact she's famous, that means she's probably has some money. Could that have been the nexus that kick this whole thing off? I don't know yet. I wanted to explore that avenue.
- [19:20]
Ashley Banfield
That is fascinating because you just think about how inadvertent conversations can be. Let's just say Annie is in a room where there's processing or there's some contact with some of these individuals who've just gotten out of prison? Not to suggest that everyone who gets out of prison is ready to commit a crime again. But, hey, let's just be frank. There is a recidivism reality. And she happens to mention, I just have to go pick up my mom. And somebody else had mentioned that, like, oh, yeah, that's that's Savannah Guthrie's sister. And all of that together foments very quickly in someone's mind about the potential for a target. It's remarkable. How do you suppose then that investigators would run that down? Would they take a list of all the people that may have been in and out of that environment with Annie for the last, say, year and then track them or what would they do?
- [20:15]
Chris McDonough
Well, that's where you would want to sit down with Annie and you want to have an extensive interview about the individuals that come and go. You'd want to talk to the employees of the organization that she, you know, is, is there, you know, where her shop is, her workshop is. You'd want to talk to, you know, the folks on the street around there. And that's what I started to do. I went up, you know, it's a really high fentanyl area. It's a, you know, it's basically the type of place where you would find that guy on the porch. For lack of a better term, that guy on the porch is just too smooth. You know, I mean, this was not his first rodeo. And we know he was violent because we have Nancy's blood on the porch. So that tells us also that the video tells us that he came there with a weapon. So he was prepared to use more than just physical violence. He was prepared to potentially use that gun. And so this is not something that your everyday burglar, your everyday, you know, crook just kind of picks up and says, hey, you know, I'm going to break into this random house of an 84 year old woman in the middle of this neighborhood that quite frankly, the roads look like a bowl of spaghetti had been flipped over and you got to know exactly where you're going. So this individual, you know, was somewhat sophisticated, but not too much, but he, they spent some time learning about the victim here. And so you've got to reverse engineer that and ask yourself, okay, well, who spends a lot of time concentrating and studying other individuals? And quite frankly, it's former, you know, former inmates. You know, if you, if you ever, if you've ever interviewed inmates, they'll tell you they know exactly what time the guards come by, they know where the keys are, they know what time the food's going to be there, you know, and they, they have nothing but time on their hand. So is this possible? Somebody could be this type of personality? The other thing, interesting point I found out in that area there, there are three Walmarts within two miles of Annie's workshop. I don't know if that's a coincidence, but we certainly know that the wall, the backpack came from a Walmart. We certainly believe the clothing, the mask and other things came from a Walmart. Is it possible that this area right there is a hot zone to try to find maybe this guy on the porch? I would submit to you, if this was my case, I would spend it a tremendous amount of time down there.
- [23:09]
Ashley Banfield
I think it's an incredible aspect of this case that hasn't been placed plumbed yet. I always come back to Mrs. Guthrie's backyard. It was beautifully manicured. It was kept immaculate. And that's not the work of an 84 year old woman. That's the work of landscaping crews. And you and I both know how landscaping crews work. A lot of times some of these workers are picked up on the side of the road as extra hands, extra labor. Might not even know their names. And if you do know their names, might not know their real names. And I just keep coming back to the possibility that a landscaper was watching Mrs. Guthrie use that kitchen door and noticing the other back doors. And the kitchen door is the one our sources said was propped open with the flower pot. So it just feels as though it was such an easy opportunity. Clearly lives alone. Maybe at some point she said, thank you. Thank you. I live alone. So I need this extra help. If you could move this for me. You know, all of these other possibilities and we, we keep coming back to this at Ockram's Razor is it where it's like, think of the simplest possibilities. That one's pretty simple. And I think this guy got extraordinarily lucky.
- [24:22]
Chris McDonough
You know, I, I would agree with you and. But I want to push back just for a second. Okay. There's what they call the victim risk continuum. And what that is is you get environment situated. Think of the letter L. You have environment, situation and circumstance on one side. Then you have low, medium, and high risk on the bottom. Okay. And so you have to ask yourself, what's the environment? What's the situation? What's the circumstance? Well, the environment's obviously, she's in her own home. What's the situation? She's 84 and she's sleeping. Okay. What's the circumstance? She's been taken out of that home that she's been in for over 50 years. Okay, so now we have to ask the secondary questions are sleep. Is sleeping in your house at 84 year old, at 84 years old for 50 plus years where nothing ever has happened to you. Is that a Low, medium or high risk activity. That is a very low risk activity. Now, if I take those same circumstances, environment, situation, circumstance, and put it at a truck stop at 2 o' clock in the morning, and, you know, Nancy was walking up to trucks and talking to truck drivers, is that a low, medium, or high risk activity? That's a very high risk activity. So statistically, from a behavior analysis side, and the BAU will tell you the lower the risk, the higher the probability that she was a targeted victim. Meaning there was a cross nexus of some point, which we call the contact point. There was a cross nexus of some point to your point. Could have been the gardener, could have been the, you know, the pool guy. It could have been anybody like that. It could have been the guy at any shop that comes in and decides, you know, hey, I'm going to hire you to come cut my lawn, to come trim the bushes or whatever. But there has to be that nexus because she is such a low risk victim. So, you know, chasing all of this other stuff, you know, you first have to stay at the house, and then you have to reverse engineer that back, you know, from the house. But you have to see it through the eyes of the perpetrator who has studied the house first. He hasn't studied Nancy first. Okay. In investigative analysis, if you know a suspect's in a particular location, well, you have to figure out what house they're in. And you'll notice in law enforcement, they always do surveillance past the house to make sure they know that their target's inside. Okay, well, just, just think of that. That's exactly what the suspect's thinking. He's got to know that environment before he's going to take a risk to go into the house and get Nancy Guthrie. So you have to look through his eyes or her eyes or whoever it's going to end up being. You have to look through their eyes first, and then you can do the victimology and look through the eyes of the victim.
- [27:29]
Ashley Banfield
Let me touch base on a couple of little bits and pieces that have made their way into the zeitgeist just in the last few days. Some of them, not everyone picked up on, but I sure did. Harvey Levin of TMZ mentioned in one of his reports, and it almost came out as though that everybody's already known this for a long time. But I'm not so sure that I knew this for certain. And Harvey was in receipt of the first ransom letter, so he knows what he's talking about. He said that the first Note asked for $4 million on one date, which we knew. And if they missed that date, it would go up $6 million. But what I didn't know about that was that they threw. Threatened to kill her. It's not maybe a surprise, but it is something that I had not heard in concrete reporting. And I wanted to ask you about the kind of ransom seekers that say that. Meaning, I've got your loved one. Meet me at this time in this date with this amount, or she's dead. Do they often say that right away or do they say, I've got your loved one, you'll get her back, give me the money. And then they up the ante later with the death threats. I. I just don't know the mechanics of, you know, of bad guys like that.
- [28:47]
Chris McDonough
Yeah. So there is the ransom note. Number one, is an anomaly. The. The way it came in. Yeah, because. And we. We can say. I can say that pretty quickly because, you know, when they had a text message from somebody in Hawthorne, California, the FBI was on top of that, like, lickety split. Okay, so in this situation, it did. Did the suspect use some type of encryption, you know, software, etc. Was it open Wi Fi? The first thing we know is the suspect had access to an Internet connection somewhere. That means that opens up a lot of possibilities. The suspect could be sitting at, you know, Starbucks and writing this note of ransom. Okay, but that's a problem because if you have Nancy Guthrie now, you have a management problem as well with the person that you've just kidnapped. So now that's actually an advantage for law enforcement because they're in a stationary place, potentially somewhere with both the victim and the computer. And so that computer becomes somewhat of a problem in terms of forensic search because now you can. There are tools available that the FBI has access to that they can basically try to pinpoint where these things are starting from. So the note in of itself, the note where somebody says, okay, I'm going to put you on a payment plan, 4 million now. And if that doesn't hit by a certain time, I'm going to give you six. I'm going to ask for six. And if that doesn't hit, then we're just going to eliminate her. Very rare. In fact, it's almost like too weird. Tell me more about that.
- [30:44]
Ashley Banfield
I am curious about that. Very rare. What is the name Norm? And I hate to say there is a norm, but we know that kidnapping for ransom is a serious business. What is the norm?
- [30:54]
Chris McDonough
Well, the norm is, number one, you don't go to, you know, news agencies yeah, the media, you know, and so that's, that's the first anomaly here. The norm is, you know, reach directly out to the family and say, okay, let's talk. Okay? And usually those Quiet.
- [31:14]
Ashley Banfield
Correct. Like they would not want this to be out. Usually it's, you know, shut your mouth or else.
- [31:20]
Chris McDonough
Right. Because remember, everything is about Nancy, right. If she's being held ransom. Now, one of my auxiliary duties when I was on my agency is I was a hostage negotiator for 11 years. And you do not, you know, go from zero to 60, okay. Within three days, that is, your victim's going to be killed or she's already dead.
- [31:46]
Ashley Banfield
But this is day one. The, the Harvey's note is the first note. It's not the second note. And the first note he said, said either you, you meet day one or you meet day two. Or. Or we kill her.
- [31:59]
Chris McDonough
Yeah. And. And so to lay it out like that with just three options, you know, it's like door number one, two or number three, but they're all on the, the exact same, you know, moment. Okay, that just doesn't make any sense in terms of the sophistication of the whole planning here. It almost sounds like it was a secondary thought process. After she died. Let's say they took her out and within 24 to 48 hours, remember the very first press conference, the sheriff comes out and says, look, she needs her medication within 24 hours or she could die. Right. Okay. And all the, you know, trust me, the suspects are watching the TV and they're listening to every single word that's coming across that podium, okay? Now, are they picking up that messaging and going, oh, man, they know, I. E. She had died already. Okay? And now what they're going to try to do is lower their, you know, their involvement in terms of, you know, it was an accident, it was this or it was that. And we started to see some of that unfold in the other notes that started to produce themselves. It was like you could do. There's nothing that you could have done, et cetera. You know, we didn't know her heart was that bad if those are legitimate communications from the suspect. So the suspect's panicking. That's what's taking place here. Because they never anticipate her dying potentially, but they were prepared to let her die, evident of the fact they took her out at 2:30 in the morning. But there could be some truthfulness to the fact that, look, we didn't know how bad her medical conditions were. So that makes you think about, okay, well then why are they still communicating with the media and haven't gone back to the family in totality and said, okay, here's what we're going to do. It's just, just hasn't felt right for me. The fact that they've been, you know, communicating through, you know, the local news sources down there and quite frankly, tmz, no disrespect, you know, to anybody. They do, you know, good stuff down there. But at the same time, this is not a sophisticated play for somebody who would take such a high risk to kidnap an 84 year old woman out of the house.
- [34:36]
Ashley Banfield
And to just button up the point, you're saying that it is rare for serious kidnappers for ransom to immediately put out in the first overture, I'm going to kill your loved one.
- [34:52]
Chris McDonough
Yeah. I mean you've gone from zero to 60. It's like, it's like having the guy on the bridge hypothetically, and the guy says, you know, I want to talk to my sister. The moment you put the sister on the phone and they, and you have no background onto what those dynamics were and he says, I love you and he jumps. Okay, it's over at that moment. So for the suspect to go from 0 to 60 in the very first letter. Okay. Is very, very suspicious.
- [35:26]
Ashley Banfield
I was also very interested to hear Brianna Whitney's accounting of the second ransom note that she actually saw because she worked at the TV station at the time. And she said these words, we never intended to hurt her in all of this. She perished shortly after she was taken. She was buried with nature. Nothing you could have done could have changed the outcome and we are truly sorry. And again, this is from a reporter who saw the note. So I believe her before everybody else who said. My sources say, and I was curious to get your opinion about that kind of wording. It's awfully nice for somebody who did something so incredibly horrific.
- [36:16]
Chris McDonough
Yeah. It's actually in the third person. You know, the words we, they're talking for more than one. So that tells us at least in that note, if we're to believe it's from a perpetrator, there's at least more than one. So the writer, you have to say, okay, what's the, their role in this incident? If there are two people at the crime scene that evening, one, the driver of the vehicle to get away and two, you know, we'll call him porch guy. Okay. To get in. Okay. Or like Dr. Dr. Brado has a, a statement. He says it's like the chef and the Waiter. Okay. And you know, the waiter is on the porch, but there's a chef behind the scene and making all the food. Okay. And the waiter's just delivering it. So let's say this is one of the waiters. There's more than one waiter. Let's say there's a total of three. Hypothetically. Well, first of all, the. The guy on the porch, the first waiter has no empathy evident of the fact that he had a gun and the evidence of the fact there's blood on that poor porch that they have definitely identified as Nancy Guthrie's. So this guy, let's call him the Muscles.
- [37:37]
Ashley Banfield
I mean, honestly, no empathy. You're going in to take an 84 year old woman out of her bed in the middle of the night. You are the epitome of thug.
- [37:47]
Chris McDonough
Exactly. And. And now once you've got her out of the house, you've got the second guy, the. The second waiter. Hypothetical, hypothetically, either is going to assist you to get her into the car. But once she's in the car, is this person, the driver? Okay, Is this the role of that person? And now they get her to a secured location where the third person says, okay, you're going to be handling the bitcoin, you're going to be handling all the notes, you're going to be handling all of this. This is your role. Okay, everybody understand, you know, meaning, right? Are we all in? Right. A conspiracy to commit a kidnapping, and now all of a sudden she has a health issue and she dies. Now they have a murder. I either sitting with a deceased person, and I don't mean to be disrespectful to Nancy or Savannah, but, you know, I'm thinking from an investigator's hat, right, that now all of a sudden they realize, holy cow, you know, what are we going to do from here? And so they panic. And maybe one of the individuals, you know, who may have had the lesser role, they want to mitigate their risk as quickly as possible. Look, we didn't know, you know, etc. Etc. We're, you know, we're sorry, I didn't. Blah, blah, blah. And boom, that note goes off. Because if there's no ransom demand in it, then that's kind of what they're trying to do, is cover their own bases. Because if this thing ever comes down, that is, things start falling into place and, you know, they start doing this. Okay, well, you want to be the first one, you know, with your attorney to the, to the deal to say, look, this is all I did was sit at the house and wait for them to show up. And that happens all the time. And so that person there may be even laying the foundation for their own attorney one day to say, well, what did you do? Well, you can tell the court I wrote the letter. But look what I said in the letter. I'm the good person. That's the bad guy right there. He took her out of the house. And trust me, there's no loyalty among thieves. Right? We both. We all know that at that moment. But now you have a homicide, potentially. So you have to now think about, okay, what do we do? What are we going to do with Ms. Guthrie? We weren't anticipating for her to die. We were hoping they were going to do, you know, pay all the money. And these suspects never, ever think that far ahead. They only think about the abduction and then the secondary piece of this. But now they have, you know, now they have a body, and that body is just weight. So what do you do with it? You know, now you've got a secondary plan. You got to put her back in a car, maybe. Do you use the same car? Do you get another car? That means it's another crime scene. Where are we going to take her? Do we take her to the desert? Do we take her over to the border? What do we do? And so now this panic starts setting in. Do we bury her? Do we put her in the desert for the animals? What do we do? And so they don't think that far ahead. And it won't surprise me if they find Nancy unfortunately deceased, because we, you know, there's a huge indication that she could be and is that they find her just thrown into the desert somewhere, and, you know, the animals have taken care of things. So it's a really dangerous terrain out there.
- [41:45]
Ashley Banfield
What do you make of the wording, though, in the second note? And again, I refer to the first and the second note together because they came from the same address. Buried with nature. She's buried with nature. Do you think that's, again, an effort to. To be kind when the cruelty may have been as simple as, let's just get rid of her in the desert.
- [42:11]
Chris McDonough
Yes. And that's more of a feminine approach versus a male approach. It's more of a softer approach because that guy on the front porch was willing to hit her. This guy isn't saying, hey, you know, she's. She's buried in nature. Okay, right now, or she perished. Okay? What career criminal uses the word she perished? Okay? What. You know, that. That. That ain't happening.
- [42:42]
Ashley Banfield
Well, Chris, I'm thinking maybe they used a translation app. I mean, honestly, why not?
- [42:49]
Chris McDonough
Yeah, they could have, but, you know, yeah, they could have used AI to write it as well. And that in of itself tells you there's not, you know, these. The elevator's not going to the top floor. And so it's not a very sophisticated situation. So you start looking then for. If they're willing to do that, then they're going to use secondary WI fi areas. And so you want to start, you know, kicking down the doors into the local WI fi hotspots. And that just again, goes more towards this. Okay, were these people hired? Did they think of this themselves? Is there another reason behind this? Is the motivation. Money, which I would submit to you. The motivation is money in this particular case. And I think chasing other stuff is a waste of time. And once. Once you start thinking through that lane and you start seeing through the eyes again of the perpetrator coming into this thing, you know, for all we know, somebody was hired and said, hey, I'll give you, you know, 500 bucks. Here's the house, here's the layout. Here's this. You go. You go do your thing. Okay. And you, you're going to drive. Yeah. Okay. You know, here's your 500 bucks. And, oh, she died. No problem. You're going to now move the body. Here's another 300 bucks. And, you know, they're off into the wilderness somewhere. That happens all the time. In fact, I had a case in 1995. Her name was Rebecca Jensen, and she had gone to the store. She left a pot of potatoes on the stove with her three children in the house, and she went to the store and she disappeared. And about three months later, I found her buried behind a transient camp. In a transient camp. And the story basically was that she was in line at a store, and there was these people in front of her, and she paid for their groceries, and they thought she had a lot of money. So as she was walking out, they waited for her. And as she walked out, they turned and said, hey, thank you for paying for our groceries. Can you give us a ride? And lo and behold, she gave him a ride. And they took her into the brush and they tried to rob her. And as she was running away, they chased her down and they murdered her. And then they buried.
- [45:24]
Ashley Banfield
I mean, I know I'm off topic. Running away.
- [45:29]
Chris McDonough
Yeah, yeah, they tackled her, and then they got a third person to come help dig the hole and bury her. And, yeah, her name was Rebecca Ann Jensen. And I'm still very close to her daughter Cody, who's now a mom. At the time, she was 12 years old, but she's now a mom with three kids. And hi, Cody. If you watch Ashley Bamfield. You know what? I'm sorry, Chris.
- [45:58]
Ashley Banfield
I'll tell you something. This is not an unusual story, and it is tragic. I mean, I think about Ed Smart reaching out to a transient to say, I'll give you some work, some handyman work in my house. And he came and stole Elizabeth in the middle of the night because this family had shown love and then access, you know, and it really is because you want to help people, you want to lend a hand. But it is so scary that you open yourself up to people who clearly are not of this flock.
- [46:30]
Chris McDonough
Yeah, the. The human spirit is capable of some really crazy stuff sometimes.
- [46:37]
Ashley Banfield
You know, you tell me that story about Rebecca. I think about Nancy Guthrie that way because she strikes me as the kind of person who would be kind like that. She strikes me as somebody who would, without question, she'd help somebody and then she'd be vulnerable because they would know either who she was or where she lived, or that she was vulnerable and couldn't walk easily or was an easy target. The whole ransom piece, it could be bullshit. Do you know what I mean? Like, we. We tend to hang a lot on the ransom. And the FBI, if you believe some of the reports, have gone back to the. This as the, you know, as the default, because they've got nothing else. But the truth of the matter is, again, it could be Occam's Razor, where somebody did something terrible and then somebody else has come in and done something terrible to get money off a bad situation.
- [47:28]
Chris McDonough
Yeah. And. And I said five months ago, within a couple of days, I did a whole program on it. The. The notes could just be noise.
- [47:36]
Ashley Banfield
Yeah.
- [47:37]
Chris McDonough
And. And let's not focus on the noise. Focus on what the reality of the circumstance is. And that's why we have to stay, you know, not only in a simplistic concept, but we have to look for those idiotic inconsistencies. And the most important piece of this entire puzzle is within the first 24 hours of what was said and who said it and does it line up. That is the most important piece of this whole puzzle. And when you run out of leads and folks, you know, we work with many, many agencies around the United States in the Cold Case foundation, we get phone calls all day saying, hey, I got a 15 year old case here. We don't know what to do. And our organization we have over 200 experts that we have, like, we call it the Mayo approach, where we put them all up on a zoom, whatever that agency needs. You need a forensics guy. You know, do you need this? Do you need that? We can put them all in front of these agents and these officers and deputies and say, look, have you thought about this, this and this? And when they do that, they go, okay. And they're thinking outside of the box now. And that's where you get ideas like, okay, has anybody gone down to Annie's shop and poked around? What's happening down there? Okay, and here's. Here's a disturbing piece, though. I will tell you, actually, that I found out. I called. Well, I reached out to Tucson Police Department, and I asked them, I said, has Pima County Sheriff's Department hit up your street teams? They're called bravo teams down there. Guess what they said?
- [49:28]
Ashley Banfield
I'll bet it's no.
- [49:31]
Chris McDonough
Correct. They said, no, they haven't talked to them.
- [49:35]
Ashley Banfield
And I am so angry to hear that, Chris, because I think, gosh, I'm thinking back, what are we, 144 days, I think on day five or 10 on this podcast and others, we were talking about how, because there's no honor among thieves, you have to go out and start hitting up all of your street folk, the folks that need a better deal, the ones that are easy informants, the ones that know stuff, the ones that hear stuff, the ones that are in the CD bars. That is how crime is often solved. How could that not be a huge part of this case already?
- [50:10]
Chris McDonough
Well, that is a great question. And remember, Nancy's no longer in that house. House. She's in another spot somewhere. And she could have been in another house somewhere. Well, guess what?
- [50:23]
Ashley Banfield
That.
- [50:24]
Chris McDonough
That neighborhood where that house is could have cameras. That neighborhood could have, you know, vehicles coming in and out of it through license plate readers. Just because you may not have it over here, you've got to think, okay, is there a second, third, fourth location that she could have been transported to? And then you can start, you know, pushing that way. Now, a lot of, you know, officers today, I don't think it's the folks on the ground. I'm being honest with you. I think it's an administratively driven, you know, situation right now. And it's. It's sad. I was hoping that behind the scenes, they had squashed and, you know, were working, you know, in conjunction, in totality. But my sources are telling me, look, you know, everybody's playing nice, but there's still this Underlying current. You know, it looks smooth on the top, but there's this current underneath between the politicians.
- [51:25]
Ashley Banfield
I keep going back to those first few days where I had an impeccable source inside the Pima County Sheriff's Department saying that they, they had their mind made up, it was the brother in law, that they had him as a prime suspect. And Sheriff Chris Nanos even said on those first few days, there's no, there's no reason to be concerned in the, in the community. There's no, there's no reason to fear. We're shutting down the search. We're shutting down, you know, we're opening up the scene and it just feels like moronic, you know, to have said so early on, there's no reason to be worried out there. It's the same thing that the folks in Idaho said, there's no, there's no reason for concern out there in the community. Nothing to fear. Well, Brian Coburger was out there for months and this guy's still out there now for 144 days. So why on earth would we have been told so early on, no reason to be worried out there?
- [52:24]
Chris McDonough
Yeah, I mean, and why on earth did the sheriff come out and say, you know, know, nothing to see here or move along?
- [52:30]
Ashley Banfield
Yeah.
- [52:31]
Chris McDonough
You know who we haven't heard it from?
- [52:33]
Ashley Banfield
The FBI.
- [52:34]
Chris McDonough
FBI, that's right. And the, my sources that I talked to, they almost fell off the chairs. My people and, you know, I've been in this business since 1982, so I know a couple people and everybody almost fell off the chair when he came out and said, everybody's, you know, nothing to see here move along. Because you don't know that. Nobody knows that. When. I'm not saying they. Anybody's involved. I'm just saying from an investigation side, okay, you don't project that to the suspect, the real suspect, okay? Because what they're watching, okay? And if you think about this for just a second in terms of that concept that you just brought up, okay, we now know that second note says your mom's. Or even the first note, your mom's gone. She's dead.
- [53:32]
Ashley Banfield
Well, the first note, the first note said, you've got, you know, this many days until it's 4 million. You've got this many days till it's 6 million or we'll kill her. The second note says, we're sorry, we misunders, you know, we underestimated her health and, and accidentally she died. We're sorry.
- [53:50]
Chris McDonough
Okay? So at least by the second note, the family Knows their mother is deceased
- [53:59]
Ashley Banfield
at that time. Yeah. They believe that these are real people.
- [54:02]
Chris McDonough
Right. Okay. So now you have to ask yourself, what's the purpose of the card coming down the driveway and putting it at the curb? Because guess what? The suspect's doing. The suspect did what every one of us did, was watch the news and saw that display of hope coming down the driveway.
- [54:23]
Ashley Banfield
When Savannah and her siblings came down and placed the card at the base of the driveway, at the memorial, the
- [54:28]
Chris McDonough
makeshift memorial, the suspect again looked through the eyes of the perpetrator. That person saw that if that note was legitimate, the. The second note, right? And this guy is probably thinking, maybe I didn't do a good enough job in letting them know that their mother's not alive. So that, again, that behavior start could change a dynamic very quickly in an investigation to where they're going to do second and third behaviors, what we call post incident behaviors, okay? Because they watch the tv, they watch the news, they follow the news, they're going to follow. This person is going to watch your podcast, I guarantee it. And everything we're talking about, they're going to measure it and they're going to take it in and they're going to learn from it. Because remember, now they're on the run, okay? They're still on the run. They've had five, you know, they've had a five month lead time, but the authorities are. They're also on the run, okay? And at some point, there's going to be a collision, okay? And at some point, if everything falls into place, they'll capture this individual. But you can bet that suspect, watching the family come down in unity and put the card down there, had to be thinking, hey, wait a minute, didn't they read the note that I sent them? Why is she. What is going on here in this dynamic? Or is that a play from the FBI to put the card there and hope the suspect comes running out and grabs the card, okay? And they got some other stuff set up.
- [56:23]
Ashley Banfield
I'm still, still really, I'm not convinced about these, these notes. I know Savannah had said that she tends to believe that. That the first notes were real only because if you're that wretched that you would go into a home and steal a grandmother out of her bed, you are as wretched to ask for money for just the body. And they didn't. They just said sorry and moved along, which I tend to think is garbage because they didn't have the goods and they didn't carry through with the effort to get the Money. And I also think they're maybe not smart enough to know about the forensics that are involved in returning a body and how dangerous it is to return a body that would probably be rife with forensic clues as to who took that person.
- [57:14]
Chris McDonough
Well, exactly. I mean, and why would you want to do that? Number one, if you're willing to take her out of the house like you're talking about, why are you going to tell them, hey, this is where the body is? Okay, that to your point? Exactly. Because now they've. They've just raised their risk level so high, it's like the gun. Okay, why. Why were the feds going to a gun store to say, hey, do you recognize any of these people? As if this suspect's gonna go to a legal gun store, okay, and buy a legal gun and say, oh, by the way, here's the paper trail to me. Okay? Come get me. And if that gun had been used, now it's a paper trail to, you know, you know, a death penalty case, right? Homicide during the commission of a felony. And so it's. It's almost like, wait a minute. What the heck is going on here? It's as if they're checking the boxes. Okay, well, we got to do this because we're over here. The public thinks we're over here. Let's keep them over here. That's a good spot. But we're actually over here. And the investigation's moving. There's two trains, and if you go back and watch what I said, within two weeks, I said there are two trains in this investigation moving. And those two trains were. Will not collide. They will keep moving. And you will not know what train number two is doing because. And this is where the FBI and the task force is. But the public is seeing all this noise over here, but behind the scenes, they're checking those boxes. They want to know about data points. They want to know about who the last person that saw them, what did they say, what they do, et cetera.
- [59:00]
Ashley Banfield
I want to think we're just so much better at crime solving than this case leads me to believe we are. Because, look, we are able to do so much nowadays, right? We just. We have so much data with license plate plate readers and genealogy, and, I mean, we're just so good. And then along comes this guy on the porch, and we're flummoxed. I do want to ask you one other thing, and it's slightly tangential again, but TMZ received multiple notes that are different than those first two ransom notes. This is someone who purports to know who did this, not purports to have done it, but know who did this and is willing to sell the information. What's interesting about that is that recently Harvey said that his FBI contact has indicated that it's possible that person is actually a woman. Based on the way the overtures are written. I mean, I don't even know what to make of it. What kind of wretched beast would do this if they don't actually know what they're talking about? If they're not actually honest about having information and then wanting to sell it rather than just getting the reward? But the whole notion that this is someone who's possibly a woman, what do you make of that?
- [60:16]
Chris McDonough
Well, I think. Think that's a really interesting concept. If you listen to the press conference from Nanos very early, he said, well, we may not have enough to get our guy or our gal. If you go back and listen very carefully, he's the first person that put a female into the environment over the, over the pulpit. Okay. And now with this, what you're talking about, is it possible, Again, we go back to, is this the person where the delivery, the drop off point, is this the person that's supposed to take care of her? Is this the feeling person that's trying to keep her alive while everybody else is doing their own thing? Okay, that's. Is. Is it more, you know, feminine in nature in terms of nurturing? Okay. And just being, you know, a. A good person because, you know, the guy who took her out of the house, we already know he beat her. Okay, well, that's not the guy you want to put her in the room with.
- [61:26]
Ashley Banfield
I. I got to. I keep thinking about my own mom, who's 88, and, and. And how it's entirely possible that the bleeding was an accident or was just manhandling because. Because this, you know, usually on older people, skin is so thin and it can tear so easily. And just in the art of manhandling and getting someone out the front door, that bleeding could have happened. As opposed to many others who think that she's been punched or hit or some sort of violence has happened.
- [61:51]
Chris McDonough
I think she tripped.
- [61:52]
Ashley Banfield
I think everything is violent. Let's just be clear. The whole awfulness is the worst kind of violence you could perpetrate on someone. But just the detail, you know, I
- [62:01]
Chris McDonough
think she tripped over the threshold and I think she went down and she hit out front and she coughed, which was the aspiration that you see there. Okay. And I think they lifted her up and as, as they were bringing her out those street, 90 degree drops, okay? They believe it or not, they go down that walkway and then they turn, they make a right turn. They don't go all the way down the steps to where a car would have been parked. They actually turn towards the patio area. And it's possible there could have been a vehicle over there, there could have been a vehicle behind the house in another street. Anything's possible at that point.
- [62:42]
Ashley Banfield
Okay, well also I've got a source that said that the blood drops are actually inside the house as well as outside, just over the threshold on either side of the front door and have the same exact vertical pattern. But you know, I've also talked to several experts in sort of serology who say that the bleeding could have started long before the actual drops hit the ground. Meaning if you have a cut up here and it takes a while to soak through your shirt and eventually run down your arm and then drip off your finger. So the bleeding could have started say in the bedroom and then eventually started to actually drop off her body, you know, around the doorway. In any case, I, I probably should close this way. And that is that I really hope there are more than one person involved in this because I believe, and I assume you will believe this too. I believe that because there's no honor among thieves and because the advent of time adds to the stressors of this very high profile case, eventually there'll be a difficulty in the minds meeting and maybe even a falling out and maybe even a love affair that goes sour and eventually that might lead to either loose lips or an actual effort to get the million dollar reward.
- [64:01]
Chris McDonough
Absolutely. There's an old saying that no man got to the top of the mountain by falling there and they're all going to race to the top of the mountain. What we used to say is let's start hooking them up for warrants out in the field, okay? And it's amazing what a set of handcuffs does, okay? To memory, okay? All of a sudden things start to change. Okay? So to your point, start putting bracelets on people. Get out there, you know, you know, twist and burn, hook and book, and you're going to get information. That's where this case will be solved. Rather than sitting back and saying, okay, we need digital evidence. We need, we need this. We know. Remember I came from the age where we solved homicides with none of that stuff. We didn't have any of it. If we had an ABO blood typing, we were jumping through the Walls. Okay. You got to be kidding. He's an O positive. Oh, yeah. Okay, let's go. Let's find all the O positives out there. And that's what it takes to solve these kind of cases. You can wait for the stuff. Those are great tools. You can wait for it, but you got to get out on the street, and you need to start talking to. To where this person could be. Because guess what? That's where Nancy is. She's not at her house anymore. You can't wait for Santa Claus. You got to get out.
- [65:24]
Ashley Banfield
Chris McDonough, thank you so much for this. I love talking to you.
- [65:27]
Chris McDonough
Thanks. You're so kind.
- [65:30]
Ashley Banfield
So there you have it at day 144. And again, I'm recording this on on June 24, five months. It is absolutely blistering to think that there's just not much to go on this deep into the case. Did this person really just get lucky, or is that luck running out? I hope the latter. If you know anything, 1-800- call FBI. 1, 800, call FBI. If you're afraid of the police for some reason and you want want to talk to us, we welcome that as well. Drop dead serious info gmail.com. drop dead serious info gmail.com. we're happy to keep you quiet, but we do pass information on to the police if it is germane to an investigation. Thank you so much, everyone, for watching and listening. And remember, truth isn't just serious, it's drop dead serious.