← The Megyn Kelly Show
The Megyn Kelly Show
NEW Details About Guthrie Kidnapping Investigation, and GOP in Hollywood, with Kelsey Grammer, Brian Entin, Jim Fitzgerald, and Jonathan Gilliam | Ep. 1246
03:00:56
Megyn Kelly is joined by Brian Entin, NewsNation national correspondent, to discuss the video released by Savannah Guthrie and her siblings about her missing mother Nancy, the potential random demand, the clues about whether it's a kidnapping or an abduction, his reporting on the scene about recent police activity at Guthrie’s home, what he observed at the home of Savannah’s sister’s home, and more. Then former FBI agents Jim Fitzgerald and Jonathan Gilliam join to discuss the key elements they notice in the video message from Guthrie and her siblings, the language of Savannah and her sister, if they're trying to send a message to a potential kidnapper, and more. Then Megyn breaks down the new details revealed in the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping press conference, and discusses crucial information the FBI says is in the ransom note, and new details about the timeline. Then actor Kelsey Grammer, author of "Karen: A Brother Remembers," joins to discuss the tragedy that was part of his ear...
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- [00:01]
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- [00:56]
Megyn Kelly
Welcome to the Megyn Kelly Show show live on SiriusXM channel 111 every weekday at noon East. Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show. We've got a great interview coming up later in the show with actor Kelsey Grammer that you're not going to want to miss. But first, the latest in the search for Nancy Guthrie, the 84 year old mother of NBC News host Savannah Guthrie, who has not been seen since Saturday night. As we told you on AM Update this morning, if you missed AM Update, you should listen to it. We always have a lot of great developments in there. There was a major development last night when we heard from Savannah and her siblings themselves in a nearly four minute video filmed on a couch seated together, Annie was on screen left, Savannah was in the center and their brother Cameron, who's I think retired fighter jet pilot, was on the right. Savannah pleads for her mother's return and addresses the reports of a ransom letter. We too have heard the reports about a ransom letter in the media. As a family, we are doing everything that we can. We are ready to talk. However, we live in a world where voices and images are easily manipulated. We need to know without a doubt that she is alive and that you have her. We want to hear from you and we are ready to listen. Please reach out to us. We're going to play a few more of these clips with our law enforcement experts later. But a few observations. Let me just give you this one first, okay? It was stunning to watch. Stunning because everyone in this country, virtually everyone in this country has seen Savannah Guthrie on tape countless times. Looking directly into camera or reading a script in front of her. We've all seen that many times. And this was so different. You know, of course she looked distraught. I mean, she looked exhausted. Doug and I were talking about this last night. I'll bet she said absolutely no sleep. How would you fall asleep at night without a sleeping pill when your mother was missing, when you didn't know whether your mom was alive or dead, whether she was in the custody of bad guys who wanted to hurt her, when you'd seen what we believe was her blood outside of her home, when you know she's doesn't have access to her medication that she needs. I mean, you could just see. You could see that wear and tear on Savannah's face, and you just wanted to reach out and try to make it better for her. It was very jarring to see her that upset and just distraught is the word. Look, the video itself was also somewhat jarring because it's of course, not what you would expect from a top paid news anchor. Clearly, they did not want to make it a slick video. Obviously, she knows how to do that and she would have the full resources of NBC to do it if she wanted to. Clearly, they intentionally went a different way. It's not even like HD quality video, even just like the quality of the actual filming the film. The background is as bland as can be. The siblings, they're cramped together to all get into frame, which is also an interesting choice. And they never acknowledge each other. The three siblings never acknowledge each other. They never, like, really interact. They also all read from a script. Savannah, she ad libs all the time on the Today show, as you know. But here she did not. She did not want to say one word that wasn't previously written down, which, I mean, I think we all know why. I mean, this had to have been coordinated closely with law enforcement and I'm sure some sort of hostage negotiator to make sure no triggers were activated, you know, in a potential bad guy who's got her mom and to the contrary, that maybe they could press some button inside this person that might, I don't even want to say tug on a heartstring. How do you bank on that even being available in a kidnapping case like this? But they're trying to reach him. So it's all carefully orchestrated. And as we're going to show you, the first part of the message is dedicated to how wonderful their mom is. Is there something strategic about that? None of the spouses appear in this video, we're going to see what we can glean from all of this in just a bit with two former FBI agents. But first we're going to go to someone who's been on the ground in Arizona getting scoop after scoop. And that's News Nation's Brian Enten. International disputes, inflation, rising national debt, digital currency. There is a never ending list of reasons that gold has risen over 700% in the last 20 years. And a never ending list of reasons smart Americans diversify a portion of their savings into precious metals with Birch Gold Group. Gold can thrive during uncertainty, which is why it's a crucial part of a balance strategy. It gives you peace of mind given all the events that could impact the US Economy. See if holding gold in a tax sheltered retirement account is right for you. Birch Gold can help you convert an existing IRA or 401k into an IRA in gold. Just text MK to the number 989898 to receive your free info kit on gold. There's no obligation, just useful information with an A rating from the Better Business Bureau and tens of thousands of happy customers. Consider letting Birchgold help you diversify with gold so you too can have peace of mind regardless of the uncertainty. Text MK to the number 989898. Brian, welcome. Thank you for all the great reporting you've been doing on this case. What did you make of that video last night?
- [06:53]
Brian Enten
Well, a few things that I noticed. I'm sitting in the car, by the way, Megan, outside where the press conference is gonna be right here at the sheriff's office. That's why I'm in the car. But so a few things I noticed. I was outside Annie Guthrie's house yesterday when federal agents arrived. The ICAC agents, which are the Internet Crimes Against Children agents, but they specialize in kidnappings and going through electronic devices. And I noticed that they walked in with a ring light and a small tripod for an iPhone, which I thought was strange. Like, why are they going in with a ring light? It makes sense now. They were the ones who helped coordinate the video. They likely are the ones who helped come up with the script. And yeah, there's the video right there. That was them going in. So it was just kind of interesting. After I saw the video, I thought, okay, that makes sense now. That's why they had the ring light and the tripod. The other thing that I've learned is it is no coincidence that the video was just posted on Instagram. I have been told that there is an arrangement that has been Made between FBI and Instagram, where behind the scenes scenes, they're now able to monitor messages that are coming in, comments that are coming in, and they can, you know, work with Instagram to go back and, you know, trace where these things are coming from in terms of if anyone now tries to reach out to Savannah, saying, you know, I'm the one who sent the note.
- [08:16]
Megyn Kelly
Brian, what did you make of her statement there? Savannah's where she said, we've heard the reports about a ransom letter. I mean, almost certainly the authorities have shown her the ransom letters that have come in. Right. There have been three in total. And, you know, we haven't had independent confirmation that they're identical. Right. Like, there could be. We don't know. In my head, I was kind of assuming it was all the same thing, but we actually don't know whether they're identical. But wouldn't you believe that Savannah had seen the ransom letters prior to.
- [08:49]
Brian Enten
Now she has seen the ransom letters. I can confirm that. I heard that from the sheriff, and she saw. Let's see, today's Thursday. So we started reporting about the ransom letters yesterday, and it was the night before. So I'm getting my days confused, but it was the night before the news went public about the ransom letters, that the sheriff took one of the ransom letters to Savannah Guthrie directly and showed it to her when no one even knew the ransom letter existed yet. Remember tmz? Yeah. No, we didn't know it was the night before that, so they were very quiet about. About it. But they already had the ransom letter, and they went and showed Savannah the ransom letter.
- [09:28]
Megyn Kelly
Wait, didn't the. I'm trying to remember. I think the ransom letter hit on TMZ on Tuesday, which would mean Monday night Savannah was shown the ransom letter. Which. Which makes this a little bit more interesting because one of the things that seems sketchy about the ransom letter was it took them a few days to get out their demand for millions of dollars. You know, like, you've got a woman in custody, and you're kind of sitting around waiting while the whole world is talking about this case. But if they stole her in the wee hours of Sunday morning and the very next day made this demand, maybe it's more credible. And we don't know whether the ransom letters are credible at all. We don't know whether she actually was kidnapped by somebody. We don't know whether she was, forgive me, but possibly killed in the house, and they just got rid of the body. We don't know any of that. But we are Keeping an open mind on the ransom letters because it certainly seems like Savannah and her siblings are.
- [10:19]
Brian Enten
Yeah, that's right. And you're right. I got my days confused. It was Tuesday that TMZ went public with their ransom letter. It was Monday night, I am told, that the sheriff went to Savannah Guthrie with the ransom letter. And I'm told it's. It's the ransom letter that went to the local TV affiliate here in Tucson that was shown to Savannah. I don't know if they're all the same. The other thing that I thought was interesting, Megan, in the video is she talks about, you know, there's ways to manipulate video and audio these days, like with AI which also makes me wonder, did they send some kind of video with a voice. With a voice sounding like Nancy? And now Savannah is saying, we need more. We need to know that this is actually real.
- [11:03]
Megyn Kelly
That's exactly. I had the same issue exactly. Like, why would you talk about how images and voices have been manip. Are easy to manipulate unless someone had taken a shot. That's how it seemed to me. You know, I don't know if you've spoken with Harvey Levin or any of the folks who have received the ransom notes, but when I hear them talk about them, like, I can't tell whether they believe them. You know, it seems that they have some. Some doubt, Brian. I don't know. There was Mary Coleman. She spoke with CNN yesterday, and she seemed like, you know what? Keep an open mind on the ransom note. It really. Here's a clip. It's sat six. Listen here. A lot of it is information that only someone who is holding her for ransom would know. Some very sensitive information and things that people who weren't there when she was taken captive would know. One of the detectives did get back to us and ask us for some more information so that they can start searching for an IP address and things of that nature to try and figure out who or what people are responsible here. Well, you know, it also included a dollar amount, a deadline, and, again, other specifics that only Guthrie's abductor might know. So that definitely raised some red flags when we saw some of those details. It was clear after a couple of sentences that, you know, this might not be a hoax. So that's. That was a much more ringing endorsement of the ransom note being real than I heard from Harvey Levin. He seemed. He didn't seem to dismiss it, Brian, but he seemed a little bit more skeptical. So are you hearing more about what was in the ransom notes that would have led to, for example, this anchor, Mary Coleman. To. No, we believe it was clear. A couple. From a couple of sentences. This. This was not. This might not be a hoax.
- [12:49]
Brian Enten
Yeah, I mean, I think they must think they might be real or they wouldn't have had Savannah Guthrie make that video that came out last night. All I know about what is in the ransom notes is that there is specific information about what Nancy Guthrie was wearing and also specific information about details from inside the house that apparently only someone would know who was inside the house. What I don't know is if any of that information correct. Is it even the right outfit that she was wearing? I don't know. And the sheriff. Look, the sheriff.
- [13:22]
Megyn Kelly
And how would the family know what she was wearing?
- [13:24]
Brian Enten
Right, That's a good point. And yeah, unless they just. I don't know if they, you know, go in the house when she goes to bed sometimes and they know about her pajamas or. Yeah, that. That's true. We don't know if the family would even know.
- [13:35]
Megyn Kelly
All right, talk to me about what you saw yesterday, because you've been on scene. You're the one the. The audience probably knows, but you're the one who found the blood. The droplets of blood still left outside of the front door. The. One of the news media. Obviously, we believe the cops had this. But they left. They turned the house back over to the family and they left it unguarded. And you went on the doorstep like a good old fashioned shoe leather reporter and found the actual evidence, which was shocking to see. And then, Brian, they. They reassumed custody of the house yesterday.
- [14:05]
Brian Enten
Yeah, that was kind of shocking. I was just out there. You know, I'd been out there for like 36 hours, just waiting to see if anything happens. And. And the Guthrie's had h. Security to come out and just sit in the driveway. So we're used to seeing them. But then all of a sudden, around 4:30, all of these deputies drive down the street in unmarked pickup trucks and in like an. In a big evidence van. And. And then they all got out of. There were others that got out of a minivan. And at first I thought they were FBI, but I do think they were local sheriff's deputies. They were in just plain clothing. And all of a sudden I. I got this video. They. They start putting the crime scene tape back up and they all get out of the car and we put our drone up right away. Cause it's hard to really see what's going on. Cause it's. You know, the house is kind of Set back, and there's all the cactuses. And we could see that they were searching the area around the house. But then also they were going in and out of the garage with evidence bags, bringing things out. And it looked like we were trying to see through the windows. There was one room in the front of the house that they were definitely in the entire time. And they were there. Yeah. There's our shot of the.
- [15:06]
Megyn Kelly
This is your video, by the way, as you're speaking, we're showing of the garage. You've got this with your drone. Keep going.
- [15:10]
Brian Enten
That's the garage.
- [15:10]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah.
- [15:11]
Brian Enten
And so they were. I think they knew what they were after because it all seemed just so coordinated because they put the tape up. They were there for just two hours, then they all packed up very quickly. They took the tape down, and they were gone.
- [15:26]
Megyn Kelly
And what happened in the back of the property? Same like, more searching back there, because, as you know, our mutual friend Ashley Banfield is reporting that a law enforcement source told her a bunch of things, including that the back door was wide open when law enforcement showed up and that the ring camera, it was a nest camera, had been destroyed, both the one in the front and the one in the back. So there is some question about whether the intruder may have used the back door and what happened back there. Cause they were. They were behind the house yesterday. No, they were.
- [15:55]
Brian Enten
Yeah, they were behind the house. And they also had a canine that they had out there, you know, sniffing around and going around the house. But it seemed like they were more focused inside the house. I mean, at first they did a search around the house, which you can see here, they went out into the brush, but then they. It seemed like most of the time, then they all went into the house.
- [16:14]
Megyn Kelly
Hmm. What. What was the grid search you reported on yesterday?
- [16:20]
Brian Enten
So I was going back and forth between Nancy's house and Annie's house, which is about 10 minutes away, just trying to kind of keep an eye on both places. And when I was driving back to Nancy's house in her neighborhood, there was another search happening with about half a dozen deputies where they were, you know, lined up doing a grid search in a. Near her house. So I don't know if they got.
- [16:43]
Megyn Kelly
The way you do, like, forgive me, to find, like a dead body potentially, where you're sort of shoulder to shoulder, walking together.
- [16:50]
Brian Enten
Correct. Or like a little piece of evidence. That way they don't miss anything. They all line up. So they were doing that. And then the night before, right before the sunset, there was this helicopter that came out of sheriff's office helicopter that did a pass over the house. So at first I thought, like, oh, maybe they were just coming to check on things. But then they were there for an hour, hovering very, very low with two deputies peering out the helicopter looking down and just circling the house. So I think they're probably getting different tips coming in that they have to run out on and check on. Maybe they heard there was something in the field yesterday, and that's why they were there. But they've definitely been very active.
- [17:27]
Megyn Kelly
We have this online video of Nancy Guthrie's house and the property around it, and it really does show the backyard. It's not that big. You can see there's brush. Can we put it on the screen, please? There's brush in the back of the house, but it's not, it's not, like, huge. This is just from. From Google Maps. So it's like, it wouldn't take that long to search that, Brian. In other words, like, it's very manageable to make sure, God forbid, she's not back there, or a weapon wouldn't be back there. It's not, it's not a ton to search. Am I wrong?
- [17:56]
Brian Enten
No, you're not wrong at all. And that area, you know, it, like I said, it's. It's wooded with cactuses, but it's also kind of open, like, it wouldn't be terribly difficult to search. And they did a search the first day, too. You know, they had border patrol out here. They had the border patrol dogs. So it seems like they've been pretty thorough in terms of searching the land around the house.
- [18:19]
Megyn Kelly
So now what happened at Annie Guthrie's house? Where, by the way, she lives there with her husband, Tommaso. Right. And is Savannah staying with them?
- [18:29]
Brian Enten
She is. It's my understanding she is staying there. We haven't seen her come out, but it would. We heard she was there, and it makes perfect sense, because when I saw them go in with the ring light and the tripod, and then they recorded the video, I presume, inside that house with Savannah. So I, I, I'm 99% sure she's there.
- [18:47]
Megyn Kelly
And can you describe the house for us? Like, what, what kind of house is it?
- [18:50]
Brian Enten
Yeah, it's. It's kind of a ranch style. I think they bought it a couple years ago for $650,000. It's a nice house. The neighborhood is similar to Nancy's house, Nancy's neighborhood, where the houses all sit on maybe, like, an acre of land or a couple of acres. It's not right in town. It's out also in the foothills. And it's just kind of.
- [19:09]
Megyn Kelly
What do they do for a living?
- [19:10]
Brian Enten
It's kind of like a normal house. And her husband, Annie, is a poet. Like, I don't know that they have. I mean, I hate. I don't know. They have, like, real jobs. Annie's a poet, and Tomas is, like, in a band. And I think was. It was a teacher. I was looking through records yesterday. I know he either worked or still works at a charter school. And so they. You know, they have, like, normal cars. I think she has a Camry, and then there's an suv. And so I saw Tomas and Annie together leaving the house the day before yesterday. So that would have been Tuesday. I didn't see Tomas at all yesterday. And none of my, like, friends or colleagues that were out there keeping an eye on the house saw him either. But we did see Annie outside the house yesterday, and we saw Savannah's brother there. They were coming and going, and the FBI was there the day before yesterday. And then yesterday, the only agents that I saw were those ICAC agents that were going in, presumably to help make the video.
- [20:08]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, the. You know, Ashley's reporting that the authorities seized Annie's car the day before yesterday. Did you see two cars on property, or do you have any reason to, you know, believe or disbelieve that particular piece of her reporting?
- [20:24]
Brian Enten
Yeah, I don't have any reason to disbelieve it, but I don't. I don't know that I saw one car outside, and there could be a car in the garage. No one got any video of a car being towed, which I think is kind of interesting just cause there's, you know, how it is at these things. There's, like, always some camera outside. There's, like, these paparazzis that show up and freelance people who stay there all night. So I'm kind of surprised we never saw any video. I mean, that would be kind of a big deal for the car to be towed, you know, That's a good point.
- [20:51]
Megyn Kelly
Well. And we don't know whether it's true. Even Ashley doesn't know that it's true. She was told by one single senior law enforcement source that it was. And no one else has been able to match the reporting on that or the other piece about Annie's husband, Tomas, which also remains unconfirmed. But we don't know what's happening there. No reporting Right. At this. At this point about any suspects or persons of interest.
- [21:11]
Brian Enten
Right. That's Right.
- [21:12]
Megyn Kelly
Other than Ashley's.
- [21:13]
Brian Enten
Right. She's. She's. That's the only reporting I've heard, the latest from the sheriff is that there's no known suspect and no person of interest. Which, back to what Ashley has said, I mean, it wouldn't be uncommon for them to be essentially lying to us. I mean, we've seen it happen again and again in other cases. But they seem pretty passionate when they say that they don't have a suspect.
- [21:33]
Megyn Kelly
So what did they do at Annie's house? Did they search Annie's house or did they just go inside with camera equipment to help presumably film that video?
- [21:40]
Brian Enten
Yeah, I didn't see them searching at all. I just saw them go in with the camera equipment and then the day before, just kind of talking to them in the driveway. And the thing is, if Cindy. I mean, I'm pretty sure Savannah's staying there, it would make sense that they would be coming to the house frequently to give them updates, to check on them, to talk to them. So I don't think it's that unusual that the feds are coming in and out.
- [22:02]
Megyn Kelly
Yes. And just to be clear, over at the mom's house, Nancy's house, there were two searches yesterday. One in the afternoon and then another one in the evening that included the garage and the helicopter overhead.
- [22:11]
Brian Enten
So the one search in it earlier in the day was not actually at her house. It was close by in the field. The only search at her house was the one later at 4:30 where it was kind of the big hubbub where they shut, you know, shut everything down, put the crime scene tape up. So that was. That was the only search at her actual house.
- [22:29]
Megyn Kelly
Two other quick questions. The Daily Mail today is reporting that. That Nancy Guthrie did not attend a church in person and that she hadn't been for years, since the COVID pandemic, that instead she'd been participating in the live stream into this church and then. And they had one source at the church who told them that. The church, for the record, is not saying that on the record. They're not saying anything. They're saying we're not commenting, but they're saying there'd be no way for anybody to know who was participating in the live stream. It's not. It's not like a thing where you can see who's joining. You know, people live stream in or they don't. Now, that would be a material change from the story that the sheriff told me, which was that somebody at church noticed Nancy wasn't there. She was a Religious churchgoer and that that person called the family out of concern. Have you heard anything on this either way?
- [23:25]
Brian Enten
So the church near her house that we went to, the pastor told my producer the same thing that the Daily Mail is reporting that she switched to online after Covid and didn't come to church on Sundays. I just assumed maybe she also went to a different church. That was just my first assumption, that maybe we had the wrong church or that she had switched in the last couple of months or maybe, you know, sometimes people go to, like, a couple churches. Maybe she goes online to that one sometimes and likes a different one, too, some Sundays. So I didn't read into it like, the sheriff definitely had the wrong story. I just thought, gosh, maybe there's another church we don't know about.
- [24:01]
Megyn Kelly
Yep, that could be. What's yet another button we need to close? Last but not least, what are we expecting at the presser that happens today at 1pm Eastern?
- [24:10]
Brian Enten
Honestly, I don't know. I mean, it's been so unpredictable with the sheriff. You know, the first couple of days, he was very open, and every time you would call or interview him, he would kind of give you a new little nugget. And then once the FBI got involved at the last press conference, he was much, much more guarded. So I'm not sure what to expect. I mean, he's obviously going to have to comment on the search. Yesterday on Savannah's new video, the last time we've seen him on camera, he said that he believed that Nancy Guthrie is alive, which was kind of a big statement to make. So I'm interested to ask him about that. So, honestly, I don't know. I know.
- [24:45]
Megyn Kelly
But then he followed it up with, I have to believe that.
- [24:48]
Brian Enten
Yeah, well, that's the other thing he'll say. All right. He says these things, and then he says, that's. And then he'll say, well, that's what my gut tells me. And it's like, okay, so is this based on the investigation, or is this based on what your gut is telling you? You know, it's like, kind of weird.
- [25:00]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah. I feel like we're 3, 2, 1 until the FBI takes over messaging entirely in this case. And maybe we'll see some of that today. I don't. We're T minus half an hour or so until it starts. Brian, you're the best. Love your reporting. Thank you so much for everything.
- [25:14]
Brian Enten
Thank you so much, Megan. I appreciate that.
- [25:16]
Megyn Kelly
Brian Enten everybody. Check out his YouTube feed because he keeps us on the edge of our seats. He's always walking. Always walking. He covered Kohlberger like nobody else and he's covered this case great as well. Coming up, we've got two former FBI agents to weigh in on that video and the latest developments. Let's talk about something we all want. Real peace of mind. It might start with knowing your family is truly safe no matter what. That's where Simplisafe comes in. It's the security system millions of Americans rely on to protect what matters most. Traditional alarms. They only react after a burglar is already inside. It's too late. Simplisafe's Active guard Outdoor protection changes that. AI powered cameras with live professional monitoring. Agents watch your property 24 7. If someone is lurking or acting suspicious, those agents spot it, speak to them in real time, blast spotlights, and call police before they ever get near your door. No long term contracts, no cancellation fees. Monitoring starts at about $1 a day plus a 60 day money back guarantee. It's been named best home security system by U.S. news five years running and number one in customer service by Newsweek and USA Today. So why wait? Protect your home today and enjoy 50% off. A new SimpliSafe system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com Megan that's S I M P L I safe.com M E G Y N there's no safe like Simplisafe.
- [26:45]
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- [27:46]
Megyn Kelly
We'Re going to break down the latest now with the search for Nancy Guthrie from a law enforcement perspective with two of the best former FBI Supervisory Special agent Jim Fitzgerald, co host of the Cold Red podcast, and former Navy SEAL and FBI Special Agent Jonathan Gilliam are with me now. Guys, great to see you. Jim. Welcome back to you as well. So that video was quite something. I'll kick it off with you, Jim, since you. You've been our guide through this. What did you make of it?
- [28:12]
Jim Fitzgerald
Yeah, it was. It was predictable, and I don't mean that in a bad way, but we talked in the last few days, Megan, about this was going to be done, and it was going to be done under advisement of. Of the FBI and the sheriff's department, perhaps even some attorneys of the Guthrie family. So it was well facilitated and put together in that regard. The visuals were important, and obviously the words were important. The goal was to humanize Mrs. Guthrie to make sure that she is seen as a human being. I don't think they called her Nancy once, if I recall, one time.
- [28:50]
Megyn Kelly
All right, One time, they meant. They said her name.
- [28:52]
Jim Fitzgerald
Everyone else every other time was mom, mama, Mommy. And that's good. That's. That's. That's healthy. I was glad to see that. I would have advised the victims in this case to do the same thing. It was all about her fragility, both, you know, physically, you know, and her heart, certainly, in that regard, and her overall health. And I'm glad they brought that up, too. So the important part in that. In that presentation was humanize her number one, and then say, look, we're open to talk. We're open to discuss this matter. Give us some sort of communication. Now, what we don't know yet, Megan, is, are one or more of these notes, these letters, these communications, real, or the ones we don't even know about that are real? And are there certain words or expressions that the kidnappers, again, we're assuming at this point, perhaps that's what it is. Wanted them to put in there.
- [29:46]
Megyn Kelly
There.
- [29:46]
Jim Fitzgerald
I know in the D.C. sniper case, Chief Moots was asked to put the line out there. We have the ducks in a noose. I'm paraphrasing. There was an odd spelling of the word noose. So there's times that kidnappers, they have the control, they have the power. They want to put people out there saying something. I also want to know, and I'll leave it at this, I think, was that the. Who was sitting next to Savannah? I'm not sure who the man was.
- [30:10]
Megyn Kelly
Her brother, Savannah's brother, Cameron, her older brother.
- [30:13]
Jim Fitzgerald
And he said something at the very end, not much, and he was wearing a baseball cap, but I couldn't make out what the logo was on the cap. I'm not sure if that's significant or not. It may be nothing. Maybe he always wears a baseball cap wherever he goes. But I would like to know if that is something that the. You know, put a baseball cap on this means you're willing to do this, that or the other to try to get mom back. So there are just some very basic.
- [30:39]
Megyn Kelly
Sort of signal possibly speaking. Can I ask you about this line? So, Savannah, I mentioned at the top of the hour it was extraordinary to witness. I mean, it was excruciating, but it was also jarring because, you know, Savannah's manner, her. Everything about her was just so different than what we normally see, for obvious reasons. But I also did wonder. You know, there's a reason, Jim, she didn't deviate from that script. Right? I mean, like, Savannah can absolutely look into camera and speak from the heart, especially on an issue like this. But they probably did not allow that. Right. I mean, I would imagine the FBI is saying absolutely not.
- [31:16]
Jim Fitzgerald
Yeah, don't go off script. It may not have been written word for word, but certainly bullet points. I have no doubt they rehearsed it. And this. This is all a positive thing. They should have and. And did a few different versions, and they no doubt, you know, and she. It was from the heart. She didn't have to fake that. Of course, we're aware of that. Nor her sister, nor her brother, so. But they wanted to make sure the right intonation, the right information was put out there because they know, you know, and I'm still going to assume Mrs. Guthrie is alive and. And who's ever holding her is in, you know, constant contact with her. And I should add here, too, I'm glad that they spoke to her mother. They spoke to their mother directly. You know, mom, if you can hear this, mom, we want you to know we're thinking of you every day. We're praying for you. And so that's important, too. So why.
- [32:02]
Megyn Kelly
Why are you glad?
- [32:03]
Jim Fitzgerald
Well, first of all, if. If they allow Mrs. Guthrie to hear or see this, that's. That will be important to her, Would give her something to keep on, keep pushing. And let me then just go right from that to. I'm also glad they said they're willing to talk, but they need some sort of proof. And they even threw out there, essentially, with AI there's ways of manipulating these type of pictures. So we want something to know. Our. Our mother, our mama, you know, it's different terms. Is still alive. So they really covered A lot in that, I don't know, three minutes or so. And I think they got everything out there of importance. They were obviously guided. Well, and it was clearly from the heart that they put those words together.
- [32:43]
Megyn Kelly
So, Jonathan, what did you make of it? Did you like. There's a set off quite a debate on whether they're in negotiations with someone already or they're begging to have a conversation with someone because they said, you know, we're ready to talk, we're ready to listen. And then there was that line about how, well, images and voices can be manipulated, which kind of suggested that they'd already received one, an image of their mom from this potential kidnapper. I don't. What was your take on all that?
- [33:16]
Jonathan Gilliam
Well, you know, it's interesting because being on this side of law enforcement now out and looking in, as you know, and James would know know, we're. We're trying to investigate what the police are actually doing. We're not just looking at this and analyzing the crime. We're trying to analyze exactly what is being done. And that's a difficult thing. But what I try to do is I look, I take all the possibilities, I put them on a whiteboard and then I start looking in particular at certain aspects of it. And I try not to narrow it down to one specific thing. But I think in this case, what, what we can gleam from this is that first they're taking that. The possibility that these ransom letters and that this communication is real. So they're taking that seriously. And there's. I think if this was a complete ruse, they might be able to track this pretty quick or they would get a sense of whether or not it was real or not. But they're taking it serious seriously. And that's good seriously enough where they make a video with the family and put it out. So that leads me to believe that there's a potential that this is actually something that has validity. So then I start looking at statistics of how these things typically work out and who is normally involved. And we don't see a lot of these high profile ransoms and kidnappings anymore. That just doesn't happen that often. I think it has a lot to do with cameras and has a lot to do with the way that things occur inside the United States. We see these all the time in Mexico. So that's another point of this, is that they are right next to the border. They're very close to the border. So if there is any potential that someone along the way identified her for some reason, I don't think if somebody across, across the border was just wandering around in these, these different communities and, and picked one person at random to take them back over the border, it would be somebody that had to have met her, had an encounter with her, or studied for whatever reason who she is to go after her because she has or is connected to somebody that has money. So these are things that I'm starting to look at. And the potential for a, an abduction and a ransom is, is higher now than it was before the video. So I can't look at the video and say that it's real, but I can say that. That the, the deduction is real. But I can look at it and say the potential there because of this video and the way that the law enforcement is acting is. It's leading some credibility to that.
- [36:03]
Megyn Kelly
Jim, let me play you a soundbite from Savannah's sister Annie. She spoke a little in the video, not as much as Savannah, but there. What this, this line kind of jumped out at me as odd. And I. To your point about the brother wearing the baseball cap. And are there other clues in here, like, is it possible they're saying things that they've been asked to say? Just tell me what you think of this. It's sought to. The light is missing from our lives. Nancy is our mother. We are her children. She is our beacon. She holds fast to joy in all of life's circumstances. She chooses joy day after day, despite having already passed through great trials of pain and grief. We are always. Is going to be merely human, just normal human people who need our mom.
- [37:08]
Jonathan Gilliam
Mama.
- [37:11]
Megyn Kelly
Mama, if you're listening, we need you to come home. We miss you. Okay, so that the parts, all of that sounded just like strange language to me. Me, to be honest, it sounded just like. Not the way you're used to hearing people talk. And, and in particular, where she said, we are always going to be merely human, just normal human people who need our mom. So am I reading too much into this, Jim?
- [37:42]
Jim Fitzgerald
Well, as a linguist, forensic linguist, who compares language all the time, from the manifesto to Ted Kaczynski and, you know, a thousand other cases after that, context is important. How does Annie normally speak or write? Now, of course, it wouldn't be as contrate and as. And as serious as we have in this particular message right now, but does she tend to maybe wax poetic sometimes in. In certain conversations?
- [38:06]
Megyn Kelly
I guess she's a poet.
- [38:07]
Jim Fitzgerald
Well, okay, there you go. So that helps. And, and again, if this is from the heart, I genuinely support what she's saying. I I can't imagine. Again, there's a lot of supposition here. If there are kidnappers, number one, if they've already reached out, number two, if one of these letters is how they reached out, that we know about, as opposed to a communication we don't know about. Number three. So are there some instructions in there, including what are they wearing and how are they sitting? And in the order in which you sit will tell us you mean this, or it'll mean Friday instead of Saturday, it'll mean noon instead of midnight. I'm just throwing out there other cases of which I am familiar over the years in which clues were asked like that. The old days, you'd put a response in the classified ads of a newspaper. You're probably not going to see that today, but it could be something on Craigslist or something like that where they have to put a response in there. And then this was the complimentary advisement to it. But all that aside, kidnap or not, if someone is holding her for some other reason, and we don't know what that would be. We talked about revenge motives our first day together. Megan, you know, they'd still want to humanize her, as I said. So the sister, Annie was. Was very gracious and very loquacious in how she was pronouncing and saying what she said clearly from the heart. And I don't think anyone in the BAU behavioral analysis would have any problem with the. With those. Putting those words together in that regard.
- [39:35]
Megyn Kelly
It seems to indict her. I'm more interested in whether she's sending like a code, because just the way she talks is, you know, like maybe she's responding to a kidnapper's demand, like, say it this way or. I don't know. I have no idea. It's just she's. The way she phrases things sounds odd to me, but it could be the poet thing. Jonathan, let me ask you about the police activity back at the house yesterday, because that. That took us all by surprise. They. They released the house to the family. The police did on Tuesday. Then here we are on Wednesday. And the. And they're. They're put the crime scene tape back up around it. They searched the outside in the neighborhood, like right down the road from where this house is. And then they did search Nancy Guthrie's house again for another two hours in the garage backyard a little, and inside the house for the most part.
- [40:21]
Jonathan Gilliam
You know, there's been this increasing rush by law enforcement to open up these scenes in recent years. I. I don't Understand why that's the case if you don't know that where the person is. It could be an abduction or something could have happened. They could have stashed her on the property. I don't understand why they do these things. I mean, there's still blood on the ground when Brian Enten was up there, and. And the scene was wide open. So I'm not real sure. I look at. Perhaps they got more information about something, and they. So they decided to. To lock it down for a few more minutes, and then they opened it back up. So I don't know. These are law enforcement tactics that are. Were not taught to me, and I don't understand from an evidence response team going in what type of reasoning they have for shutting down this sheriff.
- [41:13]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, so what. What you're saying, Jonathan, is like, if you were controlling this crime scene, you would have said, no one's going back into that house until we have Nancy Guthrie, or at least until we're much further down on the investigation than we are.
- [41:27]
Jonathan Gilliam
Right. Because once they have these letters and they start going down this other path of potential abduction, there may be other clues inside that house. House that they can gather.
- [41:36]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah.
- [41:36]
Jonathan Gilliam
And so I just would have.
- [41:38]
Megyn Kelly
That makes.
- [41:38]
Jonathan Gilliam
I would have held on to that for a little bit longer if I. But this sheriff has made a couple of. Of mistakes. I'm not putting him down. But, you know, he said that it was absolutely not an abduction from across the border. Well, he doesn't know that. So you. You can't. In law enforcement, you can't get ahead of the narrative because the. The public. The general public is a force multiplier that should be used. And in this case, when they make comments like that, they lose that forward momentum of potential eyes out there looking for things and saying, hey, this is. This is interesting. I might know this. One other thing about Ms. Guthrie is that I'd like to know if she took any trips recently. Did she go into Mexico? Did she go overseas, anywhere where somebody could have befriended her? Has she met anybody in recent years, that or recent months even, that anybody knows about, that she talked about meeting somebody. And lastly, is there anybody in that family? I'm still, you know, as a. As a hard investigator, I don't play the sympathy card. I look at this, and I still look at people sitting next to her on the couch. I'm not saying these people, but as an investigator, I'm looking at everyone. And so you have to. The lingo that you're talking about, where was it. Was it told to her to say it that way. Is she a poet from a law enforcement standpoint point, I'm going to be looking at that. And if she starts going into poetry, I'm going to start asking the question of why are we having to make this so flowery at this point? This is a crisis situation. So as an investigator, I'm going to look at every single person that is anywhere around her and any signs of oddity from normal behavior that lead me to any type of clue that I could, that I can find.
- [43:22]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, you get paid in law enforcement to be suspicious of everyone. So that's, I mean, literally your job. Jim, on that front, of course, we had Ashley Bamfield's reporting not matched by anybody since that one senior law enforcement source, who she said is impeccable, told her that Annie's husband Tomas, may be the prime suspect. The sheriff came out very quickly and dumped all over that report saying it's irresponsible. We do not have a suspect. We do not have a person of interest. For whatever it's worth, he would say that almost certainly even if her reporting were true. So we just don't know. But they did change the reporting yesterday, per the sheriff, on who was the last to see Nancy. Nancy Guthrie. He had originally said that her kids dropped her off back at her house on Saturday night at 9:45 after a church event. And he made a point of telling the New York Times and then everybody else ran with it, that actually it was Tomas, the husband of Annie Guthrie, who dropped her off, which was a change. Seems to me it may have been pointed, though, with the sheriff. Do we really ever know?
- [44:30]
Jim Fitzgerald
Can we back up a little bit, Megan? And I'll respond to that. But yesterday, as we ended my appearance on your show, one of the last things we discussed was they better go back. They better make sure they search the house completely, including all the property. We referred to the JonBenet Ramsey case where the little girl was down in the basement. And Megan, about two to three hours later, they're researching the whole property with the crime tapes. Would they listen to your podcast or not? Who knows? But it's very possible that they just said, hey, we have to make sure that Mrs. Guthrie is nowhere there the on the property itself. And it could be for other reasons. And also it's interesting with the sister Annie and Savannah sort of the abstract versus the pragmatic, like with the brothers just chipping in a few words at the end there in terms of the poetry part to the more. More specific with. With Savannah as far as the wording. Yeah. Now that's very interesting that Tommaso is the one now confirmed to have dropped off Mrs. Guthrie at the house that night. I, I think we're under the impression that it was the daughter Annie who dropped off the mother. Now it's the son in law.
- [45:32]
Megyn Kelly
Yes.
- [45:33]
Jim Fitzgerald
Now again, that doesn't put him in the suspect pool. Lots of husbands drop off their mothers in law, you know, after different functions or events.
- [45:42]
Megyn Kelly
But he had reportedly taken her out for dinner. Annie and he had taken her out.
- [45:46]
Jim Fitzgerald
For dinner, which of course happens all the time, all around the world. And, and that's the person. It's interesting though that the sheriff felt it was important to, you know, add that information to the public and, and let everyone know about that. What exactly? And I heard a big debate yesterday that, that it's, it's. They knew the family, someone dropped them off and the family told us they dropped them off. And the semantic, you know, content and implications of that, only because it's the sheriff, who I have no problem with. The Sheriff apparently has 50 years in law enforcement, but maybe behind the mic is not his strongest suit in a high profile case like that, like this. We saw that, quite frankly, in Brown University, a bunch of PhD people also didn't do a very good job on the, on the dais. The investigators were doing good work.
- [46:32]
Megyn Kelly
Very true.
- [46:33]
Jim Fitzgerald
But those folks. So it gets tricky sometimes. It's one thing putting a statement out.
- [46:37]
Megyn Kelly
In the case of Saturday night, you know, they did report earlier that the pacemaker stopped communicating with her apple watch at 2am which really would seem to put the time of abduction or removal of Nancy Guthrie from that home at 2, not at 9:45. So it's, it's interesting and it is important who dropped her off. But it really does appear this crime happened at 2am and we actually went back and asked a couple of different cardiologists what would happen with the pacemaker. Would it still be communicating with any sort of a central database that her cardiologist could be seeing right now and telling the family she's still alive or not? And the answer is no, that normally it communicates with a device like an iPhone or an Apple Watch, and that if the person with, with the pacemaker is removed out of range from that device, then the communication will stop. And it doesn't mean the person has died. It means you're out of range. So unfortunately, we don't think there's some secret option for them to keep tabs on whether Nancy's alive or not. Thanks to that pacemaker. It was just a point that had been bothering me all along. And now I think we've gotten to the bottom of it. Go ahead, Jimmy. You were going to say something?
- [47:50]
Jim Fitzgerald
No, just adding that those type of connections, that interconnectivity with Apple watches and pacemakers can tell a lot sometimes after a person is recovered. We'll just leave it at that. But in this case, I'm not sure it has the value for the ongoing investigation, as you just stated.
- [48:05]
Jonathan Gilliam
You know, Megan, one thing, one thing is that I think law enforcement needs to start doing this. If we. Because this is not a typical practice, is if we know that she was. That that pacemaker went off at 2am they need to look at the distance somebody could have traveled from 2am to the time that she was reported missing. And they need to alert law enforcement in that circle so that they can start searching from that point in, because those are finite distances that we know. Instead, everybody rushes to the scene and they search out. If we change these tactics a little bit, I think we might be. Be running into people who are doing nefarious things or finding bodies if they've been dumped a little bit easier.
- [48:49]
Megyn Kelly
That's a very good point. And we, we hope that they've done that, though. We really, we don't know. Typical in law enforcement, there was a different. There was a different take on the, the. The messaging last night from Andy McCabe, formerly of the FBI deputy director. Listen to what he told CNN last night. Satsang.
- [49:09]
Chad Ayers
I feel like this is a fairly strong signal that they do not believe they've had a legitimate ransom demand yet.
- [49:17]
Jim Fitzgerald
Right.
- [49:17]
Jonathan Gilliam
Because what you hear the family saying.
- [49:19]
Chad Ayers
Here is we're ready to talk. Reach out to us. We just want to know you have our mother. So that's not something that you would.
- [49:27]
Megyn Kelly
Do if you were already in negotiations.
- [49:30]
Chad Ayers
With someone that you actually thought had the victim.
- [49:36]
Megyn Kelly
So there is McCabe saying he thinks that. That those initial ransom notes may be nonsense and that this was just a raw plea for whoever the kidnapper is to communicate with them. I thought that was an interesting take. Could be the case. I mean, I'm sorry to say it, but it could also very much be the case that somebody killed Nancy Guthrie in the home and removed the body. Again, we talked about that yesterday. Jim. Jonathan, what do you think of that theory?
- [50:03]
Jonathan Gilliam
Yeah, well, first of all, I don't. Andy McCabe is totally opposite what I'm feeling, but, you know, his investigator, I still listen to what he has to say, but I, I think that if that video is out there, it's probably. They're looking at that pretty seriously. But yeah, a lot of these people that attack will remove the body, especially if it's a family member or they'll try to dispose of it and, and get rid of it in some way, shape or form. So that can destroy any evidence of them being there. And in the case of a lot of these kidnappings, especially the ones that you see in modern time, like down in Mexico, for instance, those people are killed very quickly and then. But the ransom procedure continues on and that's what we typically find nowadays.
- [50:49]
Megyn Kelly
Exactly. So that could be, unfortunately, one of the things that law enforcement has to consider. We should know more in just a short time. We will have a full report on what they say at this press conference. Let's be honest. America can still be a dangerous place and you cannot afford to wait for help when you need it. Sure, you could use a firearm, but in today's America, defending yourself with deadly force can have legal consequences. According to FBI data, 99.9% of all altercations do not require lethal force. And that's exactly why so many are turning to Burna Burna. Burna is amazing. It's proudly American. It's hand assembled in Fort Wayne, Indiana. And its less lethal self defense launchers. They're trusted by hundreds of government agencies, law enforcement departments and private security companies. Over 600,000 burner pistols have been sold, mostly to private citizens who refuse to be victims. 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Okay, so for the first time, we heard that the doorbell camera disconnected at 1:47am we knew that Nancy would drop back off at her home around 9:45pm on Saturday night. Now they have it down to 9:48 to 9:50 because they saw that the garage door, there's a timer on it I guess was opened at 9:48 and it was closed at 9:50. So that we believe is when she got back home. Then he told us for the first time at 1:47am the doorbell camera disconnected. Boom. That's the beginning of the crime. That's obviously what he's trying to tell us. By 12:12am the doorbell software, though they have no video, he now confirmed, but the software did detect a person on camera. They have a written notification from. We were told that it was a Nest camera by Ashley Banfield, that it was a written notification, person on camera or person at the door. And you'll get that if you have a ring cam or Nest cam. And they don't have video of it because it looks like Nancy Guthrie did not have a subscription to the Nest camera, which is by Google. And in order to get video of any particular moment, you have to have a subscription. Unfortunately, she didn't. And so all we have now according to the sheriff is a written record that there was a person at the door at 12:12am detects person on camera. Now, he did say could have been an animal. You know, he's not giving complete credibility to the eye of the nest camera. But we are getting a timeline here. 1:47am Doorbell camera disconnects and then 13:12, let's say 20. Yeah. So 25 minutes later, right? 13 plus 12. Yeah, there's is 25 minutes later the software detected a person on camera. So it's interesting to one to ask yourself what was going on in that time. It was 2:28am that her pacemaker app showed a disconnection. She got far enough away from it that it stopped communicating with her Apple phone, which was left inside the house. So by 12:28am we're guessing she was out of the house. All right, so that's about a 45 minute period, 43 minute period entirely that this whole thing went down. And the, the, the sheriff walked us all through it. He also appeared to confirm that they did tow Annie Guthrie's car. He wasn't as clear as we would like. He, he got very sort of jumbly with his words and seemed to just be saying, oh, is this a matter of course? Yeah, we took a car. Car. Well, the only car we know of is Annie Guthrie's. At least we think we know of, per the Ashley Banfield Reporting yesterday that her source was saying police had towed and impounded Annie's car. He was asked about it. He fudged the answer a little bit. We'll get into it. But that was an interesting thing. He said that they have no one of interest, and they do not have that. He said, we have no one you would consider a prime suspect. We're just not there. But he's now shifting his on the record statements about that involved Annie Guthrie's husband, Tomas. And I don't know why he's doing that. He went on the record with the New York Times yesterday saying it wasn't Annie Guthrie who dropped her mother back off, which they'd originally reported it was Tomas. So he made that change himself with the New York Times. Picked up everywhere. Fox and Hollywood Reporter, you name it. Now, today he was asked about it, and he wiggled again. Today. He shifted to, well, let's just say it was family. Well, why are we just saying it was fail? Who was it? Why would you be shifting it and making a point of that? So there's all sorts of interesting things. And then the FBI agent got out there, and while they'd been so careful about not disclosing any information about the ransom note, I think we now know virtually everything. We know that it set a deadline at 5pm today by which to send the bitcoin. We know that it named two things. We heard TMZ earlier today say there were things in there that turned out to be true that the writer of the ransom note referenced, and we believe they were actual true references to the crime scene. And therefore, we TMZ are taking it credit or seriously. And we believe that law enforcement is. Well, the FBI agent got up there and told us what they were. So we'll play that for you in just a second. Anyway, we learned a lot. We're going to go through it with Jonathan Gilliam. He's formerly of the FBI himself. Also joining me is Chad Ayers. He's former SWAT team leader. And Jim Fitzgerald is back with me now, former FBI himself and profiler. Guys, thank you for being here. All right, let's just go down the line on what you thought was most interesting. That presser. Chad, let me start with you, because we haven't heard from you yet today. What was your biggest takeaway?
- [57:34]
Chad Ayers
Honestly, it's that 5pm deadline that. That we saw. And, Megan, I don't know if you picked up on it. It's almost like the agent went to the RA back there, and it's almost like that Rack had A copy of that ransom note in his. Because they kept going back and looking at it. So whether those are just notes that he's made or did he actually have the ransom note on his person, you know, obviously, or a copy of it, who knows? But the whole idea that is so confusing to me is why. And again, the other panelists hopefully can, you know, give their expertise. But why the wishy washiness back and forth? That's. That's the frustrating part. Listen, I get it that we live in a time where viewers, the American people, are heavily invested in this case. It almost takes me back to the Kohlberger case and the frustrations that the American people had and viewers had of what's going on. Why are we not getting the answers that we want? But we do know that Idaho and that agency had a lot going on behind the scenes. So could that be happening? Yes, but I don't know. I feel like from the presser now, sure, we did get a great deal of information on that timeline. But, you know, is there more to it? And they are just for the integrity of the investigation, keeping that tight lipped? I don't know.
- [58:51]
Megyn Kelly
Now we're on the subject of the, of what was in the ransom note. Let me play for you in part that sound bite. Here's the FBI special agent in charge speaking to what appears to have been in there that may have lended credibility to it or maybe not. SOT103, why this one?
- [59:06]
Chad Ayers
Because this was the ransom that came in and it had facts associated with a deadline with a monetary value they were asking for. So at that point, what were some of those facts?
- [59:17]
Megyn Kelly
Because there's been a lot of speculation, as you know, if you could set the record straight.
- [59:20]
Chad Ayers
Yeah, the ransom itself. One talked about an Apple Watch and one talked about a floodlight. We're not going to go into specifics. It's very important that we keep this investigation moving forward. And we don't want to put more facts out there than others than can use to try to profit from that.
- [59:40]
Megyn Kelly
One talked about an Apple Watch. One talk about a floodlight. But he also said later, Jonathan, that because one of the reporters, I think it was Brian Enten who was on this show, we were just talking about this issue, raised the issue of, well, when do we think the ransom note was written? Because we all heard that there was an Apple Watch at this scene very early on in this case case. And the agent acknowledged that and even acknowledged whatever's in there about a floodlight he said could have been seen from the Road. So what may have sounded out, started out sounding very credible, may not be at all. Anyway, what was your biggest takeaway today?
- [60:20]
Jonathan Gilliam
Well, that's right. And that was the questions that I was having were those things said, were they released in a press conference? And so it kind of degrades the. The reliability of that information. I was wondering if she had an iWatch. A lot of people have an iPhone have an iWatch, and could be synced. Both of those things could be synced to her pacemaker. But I did take some notes, Megan, if I can go through those real quick about things that I found that were very interesting and very telling. One is that the FBI did not rule out bitcoin. Right. So they didn't say that bitcoin was not an issue. So if that's the case, I'd like to know if any of the relatives have any issue with bitcoin where they're invested heavily in bitcoin or they are experts. There's a lot of people that consider themselves experts in bitcoin. I'd also like to know, at 147, it says the camera went offline, but then it says at 212, the software detected a person on camera. So I'm not. I'm kind of confused on that. Were there two cameras? Because we've been told there were two cameras. What camera did they see somebody on online? Did the software detect somebody? Because the camera going offline? Perhaps if there was no movement around that area that the camera went offline, and then when somebody moved in front of it, it came back online. They're not clear about that. So I would like some clarification.
- [61:41]
Megyn Kelly
That's a good point. That's a very good point. I hadn't put that together. If the. If the doorbell camera was disconnected at 1:47am Then how was the software detecting a person on camera at 2:12?
- [61:55]
Jim Fitzgerald
Right.
- [61:55]
Jonathan Gilliam
So this. That to me is. I would like to know it. Because if somebody saw somebody coming from the front or if they were coming from the back, if they came from the back, for instance, that tells me they're sneaking in. If they came from the front, they could still be sneaking in, but it might be the fact that they just walked in the front. So that's. See, these are details that I really want to know in these press conferences that I don't think go above and beyond giving away secrets or. Or information. There's a couple other things. The. I want to know what family member checked on her. So we know who dropped her off. Now, who Made the call because we've.
- [62:36]
Megyn Kelly
We've seen on Sunday morning.
- [62:38]
Jonathan Gilliam
On Sunday morning. Because we've seen in the past where. I don't know if you know this statistic, but 20. 20 of the people who call in and report a murder are the people who. Who actually did the murder.
- [62:47]
Kelsey Grammer
Murder.
- [62:47]
Jonathan Gilliam
So what? Yes. And so I would like to know who called in, because it's often that it could be the person that had something to do with this, because as you said earlier in the show, she doesn't attend church. She attends church virtually. So this whole.
- [63:07]
Megyn Kelly
We think that's. That's based on one report from the Daily Mails. Not. Not yet. Totally confirmed by all of us.
- [63:12]
Jim Fitzgerald
So.
- [63:12]
Jonathan Gilliam
So where did the concern come from? Did somebody call her earlier? Had they not heard from her? And so where did this. This come up? That. That was another thing I would like to know if anybody in the family is under a financial burden. I'd like to know who benefits from her if she dies. Of course, these are things that are common questions. And was there any landscaping going on in and around that house? That's how Elizabeth Smart got targeted, was an individual was doing the landscaping and then came in through a window that was left open. There was no robbery that we know of. So that tells me that this was either a personal issue with getting rid of her for a benefit or because of anger or it was for a kidnapping and a ransom. But the ransom thing is it just doesn't happen that often anymore. So.
- [64:05]
Chad Ayers
So.
- [64:07]
Jonathan Gilliam
That would be. That's a whole nother game to kidnap somebody for a ransom. That is a huge game. And that is something that gets very technical, very quick, and you have to be a very smart criminal to carry that out. But what we typically see is that people who commit a crime, such as a killing or a kidnapping or a robbery, will use a ruse, such as some type of a. A ransom. And so that's why I want to know who in that family or who that they know may know about Bitcoin, because either they're the ones going to benefit from it or they're the ones using it for a ruse. So these are questions that I had that came through all this stuff.
- [64:50]
Megyn Kelly
TMZ did verify that the Bitcoin account that was mentioned in the ransom notes is a legit account, but they're so hard to trace. You were going to say something, Chad.
- [64:59]
Chad Ayers
Yeah. Now, was I under the impression that she was. And do we know the distance between their residence and. And where she went to. To her daughter's residence?
- [65:09]
Megyn Kelly
Because it was 10 minutes, according to Brian Enten.
- [65:12]
Chad Ayers
Okay. And didn't they mention that there was an Uber driver took her there, but.
- [65:17]
Megyn Kelly
Then Uber driver took her to the daughters and son in law's house for the, for dinner. And then, and we were told by this sheriff in the New York Times yesterday the son in law brought her home. And now today he wouldn't go that far. Today he was specifically asked who brought her home and he wouldn't say it. It's. I don't know why. We'll, we'll play in a second. We're still getting all of our sound bites together. He also was asked, as I mentioned, are you specifically looking into the son in law? And here's what he said. SOP107.
- [65:52]
Chad Ayers
Are you actively investigating the son in law in this case? Other reports earlier this week and you refuted that. You said you haven't eliminated everybody. Have you eliminated him or composed to it or are you actually looking at him? We're actively looking at everybody we come.
- [66:06]
Jim Fitzgerald
Across in this case.
- [66:08]
Chad Ayers
Everybody. We would be irresponsible if we didn't talk to everybody. The Uber driver, the, the gardener, the pool person, whoever.
- [66:22]
Megyn Kelly
Okay, so he didn't. I'm going to bring Jim in a second. But Chad, he did not, he didn't rule him out. He said we're talking to everybody. Yeah, but Megan, what did you make of that?
- [66:32]
Chad Ayers
Well, here's, here's the thing. He's also said we believe either him or the FBI agent says we believe she's still alive. And if he is our prime suspect and he's not acting alone, if we believe he's still, she's still alive, well, where is she? And who, who's got custody of her? You know, that's. That. If that's the case and you, and you're, and you're telling the American people we believe she is still alive, but we know where the son in law is. Well, what then? Then they're, they're not acting alone, Megan.
- [67:03]
Megyn Kelly
Well, I mean, I see what you're saying. If she's. Well, I mean, he could have like a worst case scenario. If it's somebody close to the family or in the family. They could have hidden her someplace.
- [67:13]
Jim Fitzgerald
Sure.
- [67:13]
Megyn Kelly
And be keeping her in some sort of a, you know, prison, a makeshift prison which would free him up. But the cops are all over him right now. There's no. You're right. I mean, like if he did this, they're all over him. The media is all over him. There's no like Going and checking on your kidnapped charge. If, if he's taking care of her at all in order to get proof of life. This is just a completely imagined scenario. He would need, need. He would need some help. Here is, here is a question to the sheriff about proof of life and whether Nancy's alive. Here's sat 102.
- [67:47]
Chad Ayers
Sheriff, over here.
- [67:48]
Jonathan Gilliam
Has there been any proof of life.
- [67:51]
Chad Ayers
And has there been any sign of life? I'm going to anything to deal with the ransom notes and that I would defer to the FBI, but no, to my knowledge, we're still looking for Nancy.
- [68:08]
Megyn Kelly
Okay. So Jim, your thoughts on what we witnessed today?
- [68:13]
Jim Fitzgerald
Yeah, not only the profiler, but the forensic linguist and he would really like to see that letter. I think there may be so many clues in that. I don't know if it's five sentences or 15 or more. There's definitely some information in there that I think someone who knows language could determine a lot from it. It. I also find it odd that there are two deadlines listed like 5 o' clock today, but then we really mean it by Monday afternoon. Usually kidnap, ransom. Again, there aren't that many of these that are legitimate. They are very demonstrative and deliberate. And here's our demands. You will not violate it. There can be, you know, give and take, room to go back and forth, the amount, the time frame, whatever, but usually they want to set up, they're in control. Here's exactly what we want and when we want it. Interestingly, Megan, about 20 years ago, still in the FBI, I developed an acronym called POMIC. And it's, it stands for a lot of syllables here. Post offense, manipulation of investigation, communication. You can see why I made it an acronym and what that basically is when a crime is committed, to cover it up, to make it stage, look like it's going somewhere else. People will write a letter, send it to the police, lawyers, the media, leave it somewhere to be found. And that is designed to misdirect the investigation. So I'm not ruling out that this is a legitimate kidnapping ransom communication. It may be, but it also could be either a bs, someone playing games with it just for fun, kicks and giggles, or, or, or somebody else who was involved in the abduction. And, and Megan, the first couple minutes we spoke, we, we delineated this abduction was for one of two reasons. For profit or for revenge. And if it is a revenge thing and they decide, hey, people are getting close, let me put this bogus thing out to TMZ and some other news station and make it look like it's a real kidnapping when it may not be. But nonetheless, having said that, the FBI has to follow through and. And go every method they can to determine the provenance of that communication and who wrote it.
- [70:19]
Megyn Kelly
So there. There was an interesting comment by TMZ where they said. They basically said that the letters told us, we don't want to talk, just give us our money. Listen here. This is today from TMZ116. So the final thing about the letter.
- [70:37]
Jonathan Gilliam
And again, we're not going to get into all the details, but. But when the family is reaching out to say we're ready to talk, this letter suggests no talk.
- [70:50]
Kelsey Grammer
Right.
- [70:52]
Jonathan Gilliam
That was made clear right at the beginning.
- [70:55]
Kelsey Grammer
Yeah. And so I think that the family.
- [70:57]
Megyn Kelly
Sitting down and speaking that way, they.
- [71:01]
Kelsey Grammer
Are trying to change the minds of the abductors and hoping that they actually will one provide that. That proof of life. But also, clearly, there was an attempt to humanize not just Nancy, but also themselves to say, look, we desperately want our mother back.
- [71:23]
Megyn Kelly
All right, so hold onto that in your head and listen. To set 108 from the FBI, there's.
- [71:29]
Jim Fitzgerald
The ransom note that you're working to establish any communication protocols do.
- [71:38]
Chad Ayers
No, it does not. And that is what I think is important, that if someone has Nancy and is demanding the ransom, that there is communication with the family we talked about. There has been no proof of life and there was no other demands within that letter. So they're still waiting for communication.
- [72:01]
Megyn Kelly
So there it is, Jim. There. If this is the actual hostage taker, if. If she's being held hostage and the ransom note is from her kidnapper, that person doesn't want to talk. He just wants his bitcoin.
- [72:16]
Jim Fitzgerald
But I'll play both sides of the coin here, Megan. If it's also someone covering up their revenge abduction of this person, they don't want to talk either letter because it's a better way to identify them and pick up some kind of a motive. So very convenient to put in the letter the communication, I don't want to talk. Again, they can argue in both directions or neither direction, but nonetheless, it's not uncommon for people to write. Again, these letters are very rare, these communications. Kidnapping, Lindbergh kidnapping had about a half a dozen different communications, but again, there was no social media back then. Even phone telephones were in the early days. So. So now it's a little bit different. And we'll see if some other communication comes in. If they want the money. They put a lot of effort into this case. This is a high Risk crime. If they want the money, they're not going to harm Mrs. Guthrie and they're going to somehow further communicate with the family. Otherwise, this is all for not all risk with no gain if, in fact, they don't get the money out of this. So they may want to consider talking to the family.
- [73:16]
Megyn Kelly
Did you. I know you gotta leave shortly, Jim. Do you. Did you take anything away from that presser? Like they. They've got a suspect or a person of interest and they're just not telling us, or they're further, much further along in this investigation and they're just not telling us.
- [73:31]
Jim Fitzgerald
Well, and I'll speak for Chad here, we know there's stuff they're not telling us, no ends if or buts. And I don't blame them for that. I respect them for that. And we're just. We're just working off the.
- [73:41]
Kelsey Grammer
The.
- [73:42]
Jonathan Gilliam
The.
- [73:42]
Jim Fitzgerald
The. The. The crumbs that they're putting out there and what we know from our own experience. I think we can say this pretty definitively at this point, Megan. And I may just leave you with this. Whoever took Mrs. Guthrie was inside that home or is associated with someone very close to that home who was inside that home. That's why they knew there was no subscription service on their. On their camera system. Smashing it is one thing that keeps any subsequent images coming up, perhaps, but. And maybe just done out of habit. But if they knew there was no subscription service, just walking up to the door, even with a mask on, whatever. It could be risky in that regard. So I think this all goes back to. They have. The police have a list of all the people. One of those people or one of those people's associates were somehow involved in this crime. Time easier said than done. The proverbial needle in a haystack. And you need probable cause to take things to a next step, search warrants and all. But they probably have a pretty viable suspect pool. It's just narrowing it all down, maybe crossing country lines, international lines with Mexico, which makes it, of course, more difficult in that regard. But whether it's a real abduction or it is a real abduction, whether it's for profit or for some kind of revenge motive of someone knows who did this, or at least knows, or that person who was in the house knows someone who did this. And that's where the police have to really focus. And it could be hundreds of people.
- [75:13]
Megyn Kelly
Oh, my goodness. Jim Fitzgerald. Thank you. We'll talk to you tomorrow. I'm sure. We appreciate it.
- [75:17]
Jim Fitzgerald
You're welcome.
- [75:18]
Megyn Kelly
Chad. The other. The other I mean, you know, Jim is saying if somebody kidnapped her, it's for hostage, it's for money, or it's for revenge. Like they hated Savannah and wanted to punish her. Or they hated Annie or Cameron, the brother or sister, or they hated Nancy Guthrie for some reason. Right. Like the other possibility is that they killed Nancy Guthrie and then they just decided to get rid of the body. Like they just thought it would be easier to not have a body, to just let people wonder. You know, maybe there was a panic thing, like, oh my God, I gotta get rid of the evidence. You know, maybe the person left DNA on Nancy's body. Like with a strangulation or something, like possible touch DNA. I'm just thinking about the possible scenarios and then felt, oh my God, I've got to get rid of the evidence here. And then just allowed it to play out as a kidnapping and possibly was behind that ransom note and. Or possibly wasn't. There could definitely be people taking advantage of this situation. See if they can't get Savannah Guthrie to wire them a few million bucks in bitcoin.
- [76:26]
Chad Ayers
There's nothing clear about this. And you know, the law enforcement community, even here in the upstate of South Carolina, you know, we've talked about this. We've got group chats going on of everyone's opinion and everyone is under the same impression. We just don't know anything could be out there. But Megan, listen, what I appreciate about you, you're one that always shoots people straight. You don't hold back. And I think, honestly, I mean, it's really hard for me coming from a law enforcement background and someone who has worked homicides, who was part of two high risk hostage rescues, hostage situation or I'm sorry, kidnappings. Like Jim said, they're far few between. This isn't Hollywood. We don't get these types of calls and we don't get these types of cases all the time. Very rarely did this happen in the country. I think if I'm being real, I. I don't think Nancy Guthrie is still alive.
- [77:23]
Megyn Kelly
I don't either.
- [77:24]
Chad Ayers
And it breaks and, and to hear. And I. And again, I. I don't know about the brother. I think it's odd. Again, back to the Uber there. Why didn't she just Uber back? You know, was he driving her, you know, back just to kind of case it one more time to see if there's any cars parked on the street? I don't know. These are all questions that I have, have. But what I do know is you saw at least. And again, I I'm not a judgment, I'm not a behavioral analysis. But what we did see last night, Megan, was a broken family.
- [77:55]
Jonathan Gilliam
All right?
- [77:56]
Chad Ayers
Whether or not the one sister was truly broken, we don't know. I don't, I don't want to put words, but what we did see is this family that is just broken and they want answers. And personally though, you know my frustration. I am so glad that the sheriff has, has and that President Trump and Cash Patel are putting these resources there because personally, I feel like that sheriff is in over his head just a little bit.
- [78:20]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, yeah, Chad, I totally agree. I'm so sad to believe it, but I don't believe she's still with us. I just, I agree with everything you said. I think that the kidnapping for ransom, it sounds very Hollywood. I don't remember it happening anything close to this scale or anything in my lifetime. You know, Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped and miraculously was found. But I mean you can name far and few between and kind of like, yeah, like the number of times that's happened, however, murders, especially a family members. Again, I, I do not, I'm not saying it's the brother in law. I don't know who it was, but it could be an extended family, could be somebody else. Could be, could be a worker in the house. She pissed off or didn't pay on time or just crossed in the wrong way. Even though she sounds like she was an absolutely lovely woman, is ideally we're stocking present tense. Murders happen all the time. Unlike kidnappings for money. Well, all the time. And, and, and I can absolutely see how in today's day and age somebody would, would then hide the body because like this person definitely didn't want to get caught. They, they broke the ring. Camera was, we think before the murder was committed. Right. I mean, I guess we don't know that for sure. Right. Because what we do know on the timeline is 147 Doorbell camera disconnects 212 Software detects person on camera. So, yeah, it's, it is confusing. How could the, how could the disconnection happen before? Maybe we have those two time. Are those two times juxtaposed or something? Do I have my notes wrong?
- [80:00]
Chad Ayers
I wrote it down from the screen.
- [80:04]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, I have it here too. 1:47am Doorbell cam disconnects 2:12 software detects a person on camera. How is that possible? Well, in any event, the point is we, we have every reason to believe that the crime happened right around 2am and that the person actively took steps to cover it up. So it does make it seem like what whoever did it didn't just like panic. Like they. They were like, I've got to do some things to sort of COVID up my crime and make sure my story looks clean.
- [80:34]
Chad Ayers
So one thing I do want to bring up that. That I was talking to a crime scene investigator and they were analyzing the blood droplets that were seen on the front porch. And this is what they said. They said they sent a picture. They said, chad, listen, if anything else, what I can see from this photo is the blood spatter tells me she was up and walking when it fell. It a 90 degree angle or close, which means the blood was falling straight down, which usually you see when someone has blood dripping off of them while they are walking.
- [81:11]
Megyn Kelly
Hmm. Well, that's kind of encouraging, right?
- [81:15]
Chad Ayers
I mean, exactly. And listen, with the blood things, we also see elderly people, right? Their skin tears very easily. It's very, you know, easy for them to get a bump or bruise or. Or, you know, was there an actual struggle inside the house? I don't know. But again, this is a crime scene person that. That told me that. So maybe she did walk out on her own. Look, Megan, you and I are both people of faith, and. And we are. I'm not ceasing to stop praying until we come to a conclusion on this.
- [81:44]
Megyn Kelly
Mm. The. I want to play some of these other sound bites, okay? Because there's other sort of like, nuggets in here that are kind of interesting to me. Me. We had Ashley report yesterday that her source told her the net. She said they were NEST cameras and that they were both smashed. She said they were smashed and that then law enforcement, we believe, removed them. The sheriff seemed to deny that here.
- [82:13]
Chad Ayers
In Sat 101, the doorbell camera, it was removed. We know that, but we're not confirming that any cameras were smashed or destroyed around the house. I don't know where that came from, but that's something we're not confirming.
- [82:32]
Megyn Kelly
So. We're not confirming. Why wouldn't he confirm a smashed camera?
- [82:37]
Chad Ayers
I have absolutely no idea. That doesn't jeopardize the integrity of the investigation at all. Unless, you know, I mean, he's.
- [82:46]
Megyn Kelly
He's giving us the timeline earlier of. Of doorbell camera disconnects. So it's like, how did he. Did they have like a bomb technician in there cutting the red wire but not the green one? It's like, obviously somebody did something to it. So what's that about?
- [83:01]
Chad Ayers
Yeah, that's what I can't figure out. I do find it interesting. And. And I like that either Jonathan or Jim mentioned was the fact that she didn't have a subscription.
- [83:12]
Jim Fitzgerald
Right.
- [83:12]
Chad Ayers
Very few people would know that. That only close personal. And I don't even think workers because at first, when I first started diving into this case, first thing that comes to mind is home health care workers, people that are in the house a lot of times that see maybe jewelry or anything around there, that's. That comes to mind first. But with the subscription aspect, it. It gives just another layer of someone who probably knew. And again, but smash versus unsmashed, I have no idea.
- [83:49]
Megyn Kelly
Okay, and what about. Let me play the, the sound bite about the car because we're back on Ashley's reporting where she said her law enforcement source told her that Annie Guthrie's car had been towed and impounded, whatever that means, you know, just like kept at the lot, not returned to her. Brian Entin couldn't confirm that. He said he wasn't sure having, like, he could see one car at Annie Guthrie's residence, but that didn't mean that the other car wasn't inside the garage. And the issue of a car being towed away did come up today. Not as clearly as we would like, but here's how it went down.
- [84:23]
Chad Ayers
The car, the. The car that was at the home. It's just standard investigative practices.
- [84:30]
Jim Fitzgerald
It's part of the search warrant scene. Court orders.
- [84:33]
Chad Ayers
We pull it out of there and do our scene processing with the vehicle.
- [84:41]
Megyn Kelly
Okay. Deb, do we know what the question was leading into that? Because, like, that's. Did somebody say, did they tow the car? Yeah, that's right. That's right. My producer Lauren's reminding me he just threw that out there. Chad. It wasn't in response to a question. It was like he was just clarifying a couple things and just says, the car. Okay, whose car? Where?
- [85:07]
Chad Ayers
Well, let's think about what was the key piece about the evidence in the Alec Murdoch case? The computer in the car.
- [85:16]
Jim Fitzgerald
Right.
- [85:17]
Chad Ayers
So if the family is saying, we took her home at 9:48pm I watched her walk inside of 9:50. She put the door or garage door down at that point, the vehicle, unless they're driving a 1950 vehicle, these, these. They're going to be able to pull the data. Did that car leave the house again later on in the evening? And the full processing of the vehicle as well. But I'm telling you, the day and age of driving your vehicle and committing a crime, that's over with. So could that be it? Are they searching for DNA? But again, with the DNA aspect, I Feel like with the FBI's crime lab, since they're already getting pieces of DNA back, if they're sending off samples or, you know, pulling up carpet or maps in the car that should be back by now.
- [86:06]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, they would, they, they would possibly know. And the other thing is in, in defense of the brother in law, I don't mean to dump on the brother in law because it's just one report and unconfirmed. I keep Savannah's brother in law, Nancy's son in law, but in, in his defense, they almost certainly would have said to him on Sunday, maybe Monday at the latest, let me see your cell phone. Like, let me have it. And I'm sure he would have turned it over. Even if he had done something, it would have been so, you know, make whatever, it would have made him look guilty. To say no would have been so incriminating to say no. And so by now they would have run that whole thing. Your phone, they know when you put it down to go to sleep, they know when it was at rest, they know when it was upright, like on you and you're walking around with it. They know everything. That, that Alex Murdoch case showed us that like they can, they could tell when he, they could tell how fast he was walking around his kitchen. Like if this guy got up in the middle of the night and went over to his mother in law's house, if he took his phone and maybe he was smart enough not to do that, if this is, if he was involved, they would know. Now if he left his phone sitting on his bedside table and never touched it, it, it's more difficult. But if he took the family car over there, you're exactly right. It's like taking your phone with you because that thing is recording a bunch of data too.
- [87:27]
Chad Ayers
Yeah, 100%. So again, there's, there's no getting past that. Also, I'm sure when we talk about diving into forensic evidence, it does make it hard to believe. And, and, and personally, as an investigator, I would take that phone, I would dump it. I'm going to give that phone back and probably wait a few days and then I'm going to take that phone and ask, and get a search warrant and ask for it again. What is this? You know, and again, I know we keep going back to the bro, the son in law, just because that's, you know, seems to be a, a person that's been mentioned several times. What is that person looking at in the following days afterwards? What are they researching on Google then?
- [88:09]
Megyn Kelly
It's true. They do that all the time. Yeah, they. It's amazing. Like if you listen to Dateline, you know that so often when a crime is committed, whoever is the perpetrator will go online on their phone thinking it's fine to Google how do I cover up murder? You know, I mean, it's crazy what people will do, but you see it over and over.
- [88:27]
Chad Ayers
Well, do we know who actually went into. So it says 1156, family checks on Nancy. All right, did they go, that's a new.
- [88:36]
Megyn Kelly
That's a new time. By the way, we were told before that the family got a call like around 11:10 and that they went right over to check her house for her. And the sheriff even said it is presser the other day. Excuse me. Oh, you know, it took him a while. They didn't call us right away because they're looking for her. And I mean, to me that made sense. You, before you call the police, you're like, you're checking everywhere. You're like, did she trip and fall in the backyard? Did she. She'd go for a walk or something. Like, I would check everywhere before I involve police. But today it changed to 11:56am the family can't read my own writing Checks, checks. The family checks on Nancy. She's missing 11:56am and then he says at 12:03pm so seven minutes later they call the sheriff. That was a new revision of the timeline.
- [89:28]
Chad Ayers
Why exactly? Because those, all those calls are date stamped. He knew the other day. That's like you said. I agree. That's a short time frame. I mean, we've got a large home, we've got a backyard. Wouldn't you assume if you come in now? I guess, Megan, the only caveat to this could be when they approached the front door and they saw the blood droplets spatter, they realize, oh, this isn't normal. So now we're going to, you know, call. In a normal situation, you would think they'd walk over to the neighbors. Hey, did you see mom call ems. Hey, did y' all happen to transport anyone? Call the local hospitals.
- [90:05]
Megyn Kelly
Okay, but let me just say something. Chad, let me just say something about that. I'm very, again, very open minded to. This is some guy from Mexico. It's a landscaper. I don't. It's some rando. It's the guy who trespassed on the 90 year old's lawn a month earlier or sometime within the month of January. I have no idea. But I will say this in the other lane that it's possibly a Family member. The original story was definitely that. That she didn't show up, that the family was told around 11:10 she didn't show up at church and that they spent about an hour looking for her and then called the cops. That's what the sheriff told us. But then what I've seen all over the Internet over the past few days is people saying, unlike me, who are. I'm like, I. I would wait before I called the cops, all these other people saying, who waits an hour to call the police over their missing elderly mother? And there have been a lot of people online who found that very suspicious. So I have to say, you know, I think it's just those two, Annie and Tomas at this point. Savannah, I presume, was in New York. She was about to go to the Olympics this week. She had a big week in New York. There's. I haven't heard any reports that she was out there already visiting the mom. So I think it's just Annie and the husband, Tomas, are the ones who come on scene and call the sheriff. Are they the ones who changed the timeline? Are they the ones who changed it from we looked for an hour to. Oh, no, no, no. It was 11:57 that we. We got to the house, and we saw she wasn't there, and we called within seven minutes. I don't know. But nobody asked about that change in the timeline.
- [91:36]
Jonathan Gilliam
Yeah.
- [91:37]
Chad Ayers
You know, and I think it's important, too. Did.
- [91:40]
Jim Fitzgerald
What's the.
- [91:40]
Chad Ayers
What's the daughter's name? Annie.
- [91:42]
Megyn Kelly
Annie.
- [91:43]
Chad Ayers
Annie and Tomas. Did they have. Ring doorbells as well? And do they have young children? Because if they have young children, you know who it does? Doesn't know how to lie very well. Young kids. Hey, the other day, did mom or dad leave at a certain time? You know, these are questions that I would want to ask. You know, whenever I would work, you know, roll up to a domestic kind of call, you separate parties, you know, who I talk to. If I talk to the husband or the wife, I talk to the kids. The kids. Kids are usually good at telling the truth in situations like this.
- [92:10]
Megyn Kelly
That's so true. Well, and also their phones on Sunday. Now, if they're not. If he's not using his phone and she's not using her phone on Sunday, that's suspicious. I mean, everybody picks up their phone. Phone when they get up. You know, it's like, sadly, it's a. It's an appendage now. So I think those phones will show us. And maybe they've already looked at that and ruled them Out. Although he wouldn't say he'd ruled anybody out. He specifically said they had not ruled anybody out. But you would think that the phone movement on Sunday might show them exactly what the movements were and when this alleged call came in from the person at the church, because now there's conflicting information on that. This is another thing nobody asked about today at the press conference. The original reporting was that she didn't show up at the church. And a concerned churchgoer, who knows she's always there, called the family, and then the family went to the home at around 11:10, I think there's a 10:45 mass, went to the home, blah, blah, blah. But now the Daily Mail, just. Just one. One source reporting based on one source of theirs. Okay, so one newspaper with one source says that Nancy Guthrie had not been going to church physically since COVID that she'd been live streaming it. Not even like zooming where the churchgoers can see you, but just live, like watching the church's live stream on her like home TV or computer. And that there'd be no way for anybody at the church to know she wasn't participating. Now, Brian Enten raised a good point today when I discussed that with him, saying I just assumed whoever said that like she hasn't been coming since COVID did not realize she'd probably moved churches. You know, and I do that. I go to more than one church depending on what my kids schedules are on Sunday and their sports and all that. But like, that's another possibility we have to keep in mind. I can't go right to the nefarious place like somebody lied. But it is an interesting possibility that she was not physically ever at church and nobody noticed that she wasn't at church. And if that's true, Chad, then we really do have some hard questions for Annie and Tomas. Like how did you know something was wrong on Sunday morning?
- [94:19]
Chad Ayers
Exactly. So what, you know, what are yalls routines on Sunday? As a family, you live 10 minutes down the road. You know, do. Do you typically come over after church and have lunch like I did at my grandmother's house growing up. But again, if that is the case, 100% tough questions are going to have to be asked.
- [94:41]
Megyn Kelly
We're looking it up because we actually I had my team go back and check the actual church name. That was if it was said by the sheriff initially that she was supposed to be at, but didn't show up at on Sunday. And. And then I believe the Daily Mail mentioned the church that she had not gone to. Since COVID So we're going to do that comparison right now. Oh, Mike's just coming in. Hold on a second. All reporting states that Nancy Guthrie attended Saint Andrews Presbyterian. Okay. So it's. Right now it's not looking like it's a different church. The Daily Mail source is from that church, and that's the church the sheriff mentioned that she always goes to. Now, just because one person told the Daily Mail Nancy Guthrie stopped going in person and that she was doing live streaming since COVID doesn't mean it's true either. I mean, I will say, like, if my church is any. If their church is anything like, like mine, you do kind of know who, who do expect to see the same faces. And if you know them, you would notice if they weren't there. Our priest just the other weekend when we had that big snowstorm was like, we all went to 5:30 mass the night before, 5:15 mass the night before. And he was like, oh, I'm seeing all the people. You, you guys are from the 9:30. You guys are from the 10:45. You know, like, you do kind of know. And when it's an elderly woman, I think a lot of us keep tabs on them for their families. You know, like, just obviously, we. We. What'd you say, Steve? Okay. Oh, really? Oh. Oh, that's interesting. My executive producer, Steve Krakar, just confirming in my ear that now Brian Enten of News Nation is confirming the Daily Mail report that that Nancy Guthrie had not been attending in person since COVID her church, and that she was live streaming the church service. So. So, I mean, honestly, maybe there's some innocent explanation for this that we're not thinking of right now, but that to me is a huge red flag, Chad.
- [96:31]
Chad Ayers
I agree. I mean, are we. Was it someone that just misspoke or someone trying to get their name out there, you know, to get involved in this case? I'm not sure, but. But certainly, you know, that's going to be able to be deciphered pretty quickly by law enforcement. What I haven't seen a lot of.
- [96:52]
Megyn Kelly
And the church. I just, I should point out the church is not comment. The church has been contacted in a few of these reports that I've seen so far. And they just keep saying we love Nancy and we're. We're not. Not going to comment. So clearly they've been contacted by law enforcement and they are keeping their mouths shut, which is proper. But that's also interesting. Sorry. Keep going.
- [97:11]
Chad Ayers
No, you know, as we expand and look at all possibilities Here, you've mentioned it. You know, we're less than probably an hour from the. From the border. We do know that the cartel, well, dabbles and does a lot of transactions via cryptocurrency. But I still go back to why. Why Nancy, why an 84 year old woman in this situation. But I, I do, you know, I will say this. I truly believe and we all agree there is more than they are sharing. And I re. I appreciate that. I respect that. But hopefully we get some solid answers quick.
- [97:56]
Megyn Kelly
Here's the sound. But I've been waiting for. I mentioned it three times that they originally said that Annie dropped the mom off back at her house on Saturday night. And then yesterday the sheriff made a point of telling the New York Times, I want to update my reporting. It was actually Tomas. And everybody ran with that because that was a material change, especially in the light of Ashley's reporting. It was like, okay, I'm hearing that name for the second time. Then today came up again and the sheriff wiggled on it. Very interestingly. It's sat 112.
- [98:25]
Chad Ayers
You know, there's also conflicting reports about.
- [98:27]
Megyn Kelly
Who was the last person to actually.
- [98:28]
Brian Enten
See Nancy and drive her home. We know she took an Uber to.
- [98:32]
Megyn Kelly
Annie's house, but can you confirm whether.
- [98:34]
Chad Ayers
It was Annie or her son in law, Tom took her home? I think the, the timeline that the sheriff provided was a family member, but just family.
- [98:41]
Kelsey Grammer
We're gonna go with family.
- [98:43]
Megyn Kelly
What? We're gonna go with Chad. That's very strange. I mean, he said it. He explicitly said it on camera. I'm gonna quote you from the New York Times piece, the headline of which was search for Nancy Guthrie, Savannah Guthrie's Mother grows more Urgent. And then he. This is the quote. Perfect quote. Ms. Guthrie's son in law, Tommaso Cioni, dropped her off and ensured she made it inside safely before leaving. The sheriff added he was on the record with the New York Times and that was 100% different. They had said it was Annie earlier, or in some cases they had said family. But here he's getting specific with the New York Times saying it was Tomaso Sioni, the son in law. And she. He made. He made sure that she made it inside, ensured she made it inside safely before leaving. The sheriff added. And so now can we just play it one more time? Why is he doing that at 112? 12. It's at 112.
- [99:41]
Brian Enten
You know, there's also conflicting reports about.
- [99:43]
Megyn Kelly
Who was the last person to actually.
- [99:45]
Brian Enten
See Nancy and drive her home. We know she took an Uber to Annie's house. But can you confirm whether it was.
- [99:50]
Chad Ayers
Annie or her son in law, Tom, so took her home that night. I think the. The timeline that the shirt provided was a family member, but just family.
- [99:57]
Kelsey Grammer
We're going to go with family.
- [100:00]
Megyn Kelly
I mean the. Use the words. We're going to go with Chad are doing a lot of work there.
- [100:05]
Chad Ayers
Well, what I want to go with is I want to know who was the last person to see Nancy Guthrie. This is. This is. Is criminal investigation 101. Start there. So why is there so much BS and. And changing of stories? That's frustrating and, and it's really hard for individuals like myself and you know, the other guests to. To kind of start piecing this thing together when every other presser we're getting, you know, different intel or information coming in diametrically opposed.
- [100:34]
Megyn Kelly
She was grabbed from her bed. No, she wasn't grabbed from her bed. Like completely reversed himself on that. And there have been quite a few things that the sheriff has. He acknowledged making mistakes. I'll say something in Tomas's defense though. Maybe the sheriff changed it back to family because he realized there's too much heat coming down in this guy. I don't think he's our guy. I'm like trying without ruling anybody out because I can't totally know that he didn't do it at this point. I'm trying to remove him from the front burner in a polite way, but he doesn't. He underestimates the media's attention to detail.
- [101:07]
Chad Ayers
Yeah, I totally agree. It's. Do we know which I haven't been able to research. What is. What does Tomas or whatever his name is, do for a living?
- [101:16]
Megyn Kelly
He is. Last we checked, he was a part time teacher at. In middle school, a sixth and eighth grade part time, I believe. And then his wife is a poet. They live in a. I think a $600,000 house that they. Either they got married in 2006 and. Or they purchased the house back then. But, you know, the mother's house is worth a million dollars now, but they've been living in it since 1992. By my mask, Savannah's dad died in 1989 or 90. So my guess is, you know, I don't think the mother has any sort of a. An income. My guess is she used her husband's insurance money. Sure. And she bought that house, which wasn't a million dollars, back in 1991 or two. And she's been living in it ever since. And I'll Bet you that the sister's house, 10 minutes away wasn't $600,000 when she bought it either. Probably appreciated in value. But this is not a rich couple. And look, I can speak to this. Obviously I'm making a healthy living in my line of work. But my sister, my dear sister who died a couple of years ago, who is six years older than I am, she didn't have money. She didn't have a professionally successful life. And I helped support her for all of her adulthood. And so I don't know whether they're in that situation. I confess to you, when I saw the sister, I wondered because she, she, she looked. I don't know, she looked. They all look rough around the edges right now because they're grieving. But I just, I wonder. I don't think the sister is a woman of mean and I just wonder what the real dynamic there is. Savannah is staying with her, we believe, and Tomas. So I mean, you do have to say, like, if I were staying with my sister and I thought that her husband may have had something to do with kidnapping or worse with my mom, I'd think of a reason to go to the hotel. So that's something in their favor too. And the only reason that they're so under the scrutiny right now is that we got nobody else. You know, we should spend some time on the. The weird guy who crossed into the 90 year old's lawn in January because that is disturbing. Not a single person asked about that either today. But there was a 90 year old couple doors down from Nancy Guthrie who saw a trespasser come on his lawn and he turned on the floodlight. Good for him. And scared the guy off. He took off. Off. And Tucson now standing last. Yesterday when I talked to Ashley, she was like, oh, Tucson, they don't see a lot of murders. You should see my inbox. All my listeners and viewers in Tucson are like, is she kidding me? Like, I really, I don't think I've ever been to Tucson. But they were like, basically like, it's a hell hole. You should see the number of crimes we have.
- [104:01]
Chad Ayers
Well, and, and, and again, that takes you back to, well, what kind of life insurance policy did Nancy have?
- [104:07]
Jim Fitzgerald
Right.
- [104:07]
Chad Ayers
Because if, if that's going to take me back to the family versus a random type of attack. But, and again, let's just stay with the family angle. If she does have a life insurance policy, is the ransom note with the bitcoin just to throw off law enforcement? I don't know. But you're right. One Thing we do know is diving in and getting information from these cryptocurrency places is extremely, extremely difficult.
- [104:34]
Megyn Kelly
Forget it. We did a whole week on people's fraud stories. Like people who had been defrauded or almost defrauded. And we were on there. We did not get defrauded, but they tried to defraud me and my husband and my husband's family. His. His mom was the target. But in any event, they wanted bitcoin from us, which was one of our first clues that we were like, oh, but that we did take a deep dive into the bitcoin thing. And it's like, you put money in there, it's gone. It is not traceable. Like, the cops were like, never, ever give money via bitcoin. It's not traceable. You'll never get it back, and you'll never figure out who you sent it to. I was like, how? How is this allowed?
- [105:18]
Chad Ayers
You're right. But what I do know is that in every crime, I would say the suspect is going to mess up. There's going to be something left. Whether, like we mentioned, touch DNA. You know, I don't care if you wear gloves and a tie, back suit, something, something is. It was left. There is some type of DNA evidence somewhere in that residence. Look, we saw it from the Coburger case with the knife sheath. And then using the genealogy testing. Look, I hope it's not the family, I truly do. But again, we. No stone was going to go unturned. We heard the sheriff say that. I am just glad that the FBI is there utilizing their resources. You know, we have the ability to use cell phone triangulation to see what, what cell phones were in that area during that time frame. And again, that's not saying someone took a cell phone. But I will. I will feel a lot better once we get the data back from all families, vehicles that live in the area, cell phone diving into those, his computer, his Chromebook at school. I want. I want to dive into that. We have to eliminate. We have to eliminate them as a suspect to begin with. Once we do that, I feel like then we can dive into some deeper waters here.
- [106:38]
Megyn Kelly
I agree with that. I agree with that totally. And look, this is what I'm an addict to, Dateline, which is an NBC crime show. And every single Dateline will tell you the very first thing you have to do is rule out the immediate family. And I'm sure that's what the sheriff's working on. That's what we're discussing because there is a report by not some nutcase. Ashley Banfield is a very serious crime reporter reporter. I've been following her avidly for 20 years. She does not just throw things on the board this serious, understanding what you're potentially doing to this grieving family member if you're wrong. Without really trusting her source. Not only did she say extremely laudatory things about the source, I then asked her, after the sheriff came out and clearly denied your reporting and called it irresponsible, did you go back to your source? And she said, said, yep, I did. And he stood by his comments and said they're all clamming up. So that's where that is again, for what it's worth, nobody else has matched it. We don't know. That could be because it's wrong and it could be good because they're all clamming up. We just don't know. I just. A couple of other items from the presser. They've offered a $50,000 reward. Now that was interesting, Chad. Like why now? It was 2500 bucks. Stocks as of, you know, two days ago. Why are they. What's going on now? Now it's 50,000.
- [107:59]
Chad Ayers
I think they're just, they're struggling to get solid evidence and solid intel on this thing. And they are hoping, listen, $50,000 is a lot of money to a lot of people. It's a lot of money to me. And if someone is sitting, because personally and I, and I know everyone's got their opinion on this, I don't believe this was a one man show acting completely on their own. I just don't. And I think that possibly, you know, loose lips sink ships and someone's probably, you know, my expertise also is on the active shooter side. We've talked about that in the past. But a large percent of people who commit acts either say something to someone they trust. Very few people can keep something in. And let me assure you, whoever this is, unless it is some cartel hitman, anybody that has somewhat of a soul, sooner or later finds a breaking point. And having to close your eyes every night and see in certain images comes, you know, it eats away at you. And sooner or later you feel like you just got to share in confidence to somebody. And maybe that's what the money is there for, is just to try to incite someone to come forward with something more solid so they can, you know, have probable cause to make an arrest on someone.
- [109:19]
Megyn Kelly
Well, that's the other thing that we haven't discussed. I'm probably avoiding it for a reason. I know For a fact, Savannah's got some deranged people who follow her and who have been. Who have posed a threat to her in the security department. I'm not revealing anything I learned at NBC, by the way. This was given to me recently by a tipster, and that's not unusual. I mean, that's. You could probably say that for virtually any major figure on camera, on TV or, you know, in the news. And so, like, there really is a chance that some nutcase obsessed with her realizing they couldn't get to her, Chad. Because, you know, of course, Savannah's got the proper security precautions in her life. She's got young children decided to go after her mom. I mean, that. That's got to be an angle that the FBI, I guess, would be pursuing that right now, looking into any threat she'd received. I know that there have been, you know, stalk stalkers and, like, incarcerations. So all of that, that's got to be. Each one of those has got to be tracked down and followed up on, I think.
- [110:25]
Chad Ayers
And there's. There's. There's ways and. And programs out there. You know, I would dive into her social media. Who's been liking, you know, is there a repeated person that's liking a bunch of photos? There's a bunch of people flooding her, you know, dms, you know, those unread messages that go to those folders. But you're right. And that's the sick times that we live in. And, Megan, we were talking right after Charlie was killed, and, you know, the importance of executive protection, and, you know, that's what I do. And it's the day and age where, unfortunately, people go to extremes. And it's not just like movie stars and actors. People are so contentious on the political side of things. There's so many people that just hate Donald Trump so much. And listen, I'm not telling you anything that you don't know in your team and other podcasters out here and news people, unfortunately, people resort to violence when they don't get their way, and that very well could be a reason.
- [111:29]
Megyn Kelly
There is a report in the Daily Mail actually right now showing a segment that aired on the Today show in November, which really isn't that long ago, showing footage from Savannah returning to her hometown of Tucson and being with her mother, Nancy. The Daily Mail is reporting that some at NBC are worried about this segment. It was a homecoming special that they air. I mean, I have to say, that's the thing about, like, these morning shows. And having been at the Today show for A year. They really want you to put your personal life on the air. They press hard for you to, like, reveal very personal details about your, your family, your kids, your marriage, your, your mom, your, all of that. There's zero doubt in my mind. Savannah felt that too. And here's a clip from what aired. Mom, you guys came here in the 70s and you'd been moving all around. What made you want to stay in Tucson and plant roots? It's so wonderful. Just the air. The quality of life is laid back and gentle. I like to watch the javelina eat my plants. But the best thing about Tucson is coming home and seeing you guys. Should we raise the glass? Prickly pear margarita. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Love you. Love you. Now, what they report in the Daily Mail is that there is. This is a quote. There's a lot of soul searching at NBC about whether their segment made Nancy a target. A Today show source told the Mail the segment did not feature Nancy's home or disclose details about where she lived. But after this week's events, people around here at NBC, this is a quote, are going to think twice before putting their family on television at all. Man, that's a dark thought and it's awful.
- [113:21]
Chad Ayers
But I think that's the important part. If individuals, you know, who are, whether you're a high net worth family or you're a news personality or an actor, an actress, you know, when I meet with a new client, you know, with executive protection and we have numerous clients that families that we protect and congressmen that we protect, it's so important. We are so addicted to this and our social media that, you know, just, just be, just be aware. You go on family vacation, talk to your children. Hey, guys, don't be taking photos of, of us out at dinner because all that can be. I can put images in Google and find out where you are. You want to post that? We can post our family photos when we get back. But again, we want to make sure that, you know, the safety and security of our clients is our highest priority. And so basically putting out where your mother lives, that is a different angle that we need to look at.
- [114:16]
Megyn Kelly
I mean, you don't. I, like, I just, I'm sure she wasn't thinking that way. I'm sure you think that way about your children. Right. But this is yet another, another one of those firsts, Chad, where it's like, I've, I'm sorry to raise it, but like the, the murder of Charlie, it's like it was a first. It was like a, a pundit Like a public figure talking head who. Who. Who gets murdered at an outdoor amphitheater because he's just going out there to speak to people. Like it was a new in the way Columbine introduced this horrible evil new way of ending people's lives into our national consciousness. Then the Charlie thing happened, which I do think changes public speaking for most people forever. And now this. No, I just think as a public figure, you are not thinking upward in terms of. Of protection. You're thinking downward in the generations because you're, you know, you're thinking about your littles. And like, if somebody gets kidnapped, it's usually a toddler. You know, it's. I don't remember an 84 year old ever getting kidnapped before.
- [115:20]
Chad Ayers
No, but you know, this, this. And this case takes me back to several years ago here in Greenville, South Carolina. There was an elderly couple who was brutally murdered in their home. And I mean, an elderly couple. And come to find out it was a worker that had been working there and saw a large amount of jewelry, credit cards, obviously got stolen. I mean, you're going to get caught there. But there's just. Unfortunately, Megan, there's too many potential subjects that could be involved in this. And we just don't know right now.
- [115:58]
Megyn Kelly
I mean, it is disturbing to think that it was just November that she broadcast that her mother does live in Tucson. And I haven't checked, but like, I bet it's fairly easy to find the mom's address. She lives alone, she's elderly. And so if you wanted to back to Jim's theory of it's either for money if it's a kidnapping or it's for revenge. You wanted to hurt Savannah Guthrie for some reason and like, yet people have to understand you don't have to be controversial. You know, you don't have to be our pal Tucker, who's lightning rod in order to invite this nonsense into your life. Like, I've told the story before, but my very first year at Fox News, I was a baby in tv. I was a cub reporter. I developed a very serious stalker. A previously convicted felon who. He was convinced that we were in a love relationship. They call it an erotomaniac. I'd never met him. I'd never seen him. He just saw me on tv. And his mind, which was addled, convinced him that we were in love and we were having a relationship and that my hand gestures on the air were communicating messages to him. And this was a very dangerous man. He wound up going away for 10 years for this crime. And so my point is simply back then, even I wasn't controversial. I was rather new and kind of sweet and just covering the Supreme Court in very generic terms. Terms. So it can happen to anybody, even somebody who's co hosting the Today show, which isn't particularly controversial. I just. There are nut cases in this business, and we definitely cannot rule that one out, unfortunately. Although you tell me, Chad, is there a sophistication to this crime that under undermines the theory of nutcase?
- [117:45]
Chad Ayers
It's hard to say because of the. I don't want to say, lack of transparency. I understand why they're doing it.
- [117:54]
Jonathan Gilliam
But.
- [117:55]
Chad Ayers
It'S hard to say. I feel like a true nut case and someone that's, you know, not done a lot of homework or prepared and didn't know the area very well would have slipped up somehow.
- [118:11]
Megyn Kelly
Yes.
- [118:12]
Chad Ayers
Does that make sense? You know, it.
- [118:14]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, it's. They would. They would have forgotten to wear gloves.
- [118:17]
Chad Ayers
Something would have slipped up.
- [118:20]
Megyn Kelly
Hair would have been found. They wouldn't have known about the two nest cameras. I mean, there were two. The person knew to take them both out, so. Very interesting.
- [118:31]
Chad Ayers
So again, that takes me back to someone personal. And I'm not saying family. I'm just saying someone. I truly believe it is someone who has been in that residence before.
- [118:43]
Megyn Kelly
Mm. Mm. Okay. Just one. One final look at my notes before I let you go. I want to make sure we. We have it all. Let's see. They did check to see with local hospitals if somebody had sought to refill her critical prescriptions. The sheriff did reveal that, and they. He said, we checked virtually every hour in the first day or so. It didn't. It could have gone on longer. He. He just mentioned that immediate time frame, and they did not.
- [119:14]
Chad Ayers
Well, one thing to look at Megan with the pharmacy aspect would be I would like to know when her script for those pills that she needs on a daily basis, when were they filled and how many are left in the bottle that was left at the house? So did the person who took her throw some because they knew she needed them? They're that personal, they want to keep her alive. So they took a handful of them to give her a daily dose of her pill to keep her alive. There's an avenue as well, an aspect that, you know, could be looked at as well. Okay, the script, she's supposed to take one a day. You know what I mean?
- [119:51]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah. If she just got it filled two days earlier and that bottle's missing all the pills, then this was somebody who actually planned a little like, dumped Them out in his hand and ran, knew.
- [120:02]
Chad Ayers
That she needed them.
- [120:02]
Megyn Kelly
I mean, the. The odds of that, I just. Well, who knows? I mean, if it. If it was somebody who knew her well and really did have the intention of keeping her alive long enough to get paid, then it. It could have happened. We can't rule it out. The ransom letter that they confirmed for the first time that the note that was sent to the media is the note that we are working on and that he did say he believes it was the same note. The same. Same note that the two local outlets in Tucson got and that TMZ got. And that's the only note they know about. They did say that they arrested some other hoaxer for sending a different ransom demand that we didn't know about before today that is not related to that note and reminded everybody that if you decide to be such a hoaxer, you will get arrested, too. They did confirm that the ransom note did not establish a communication method that dovetails with what we heard from Harvey Levin on TMZ saying that the note basically said there'll be no talking. Talking? We're not interested in talking. We just want to get paid. Was the doorbell camera taken? The Sheriff? We don't have it. So that's kind of an implicit yes. Well, I don't know. That's interesting. Was the doorbell camera taken, Sheriff? We don't have it. What Ashley had reported was that she was told the doorbell cams had been destroyed by the perpetrator and then she believed removed by the sheriff. So actually, if he's saying we don't have the doorbell cam, it's possible that the bad guy took the doorbell cam, too, like destroyed it and took it again. Disconnected at 147. But the software detected a person on cam at 212. That's the biggest mystery of the day. None of us has that figured out. Unless the sheriff did say he wasn't sure if it was the front. Front camera or the back camera. Acknowledging that there was one in the front. In the back door. Door that caught the image of the person on cam. So I suppose it's possible that one was destroyed at 147 and the other one detected an image at 212 remains a mystery. You look like you want to say something.
- [122:07]
Chad Ayers
Well, I'm just thinking. I'm trying to place this out, so I know we've talked about. Well, could the suspect have come through the back? We see the blood spatter on the front porch area coming out of the front door. So it's almost like she did exit through the front door. So if you're trying to be discreet, why would you come from the back but then exit from the front?
- [122:29]
Megyn Kelly
It makes no sense. Unless you just. You needed to get her into a car and that was the only way. Sure, yeah, but you'd have to pull a car up. I mean, I suppose it's possible the guy could have come in the back. He could have dismantled or disabled that back camera. He's in the house now. He gets her. He has an accomplice with a car out in the front driveway. He hurts her in order to get her to comply. And on the way out, he takes out that front cam, which possibly, possibly explains the difference in dates. I mean, like in times. I don't know. He shouldn't there technically be at 1:47. One doorbell cam was disconnected and then a second time where the second one was disconnected.
- [123:12]
Jim Fitzgerald
Right.
- [123:13]
Megyn Kelly
And shouldn't they both follow the software detecting a person on camera? That's they both of those camera destructions or disconnections should follow a software detecting a person on cam, Correct? Yeah. So that's one of the mysteries from today. There was a question, has the family received an image because of the reference in Savannah's on camera remarks last night? Digital images can be manipulated. You know, we need proof of life. And so that had us too, wondering earlier, where was she sent something that we don't know about? Like in those emailed ransom messages, was there an image of Nancy? I feel like the guys at TMZ who have lifted the dress up pretty high on what was on the note would have suggested there's something indisputable in there to show that they have Nancy. But the question was, have they received an image as the family received an image of Nancy? And the answer was, we're not going to get. Get into that. And then just talked about the dangers of A.I. okay, well, that doesn't. You know, that doesn't tell us much. Actively looking at everyone, the sheriff. The only DNA evidence we've got is from. We've gotten back is from the front porch. That blood evidence, other items could take longer. We did process some others for DNA. So there might have been something else inside the house. House. That's good. It's good to hear that they might have something still that could come back. The FBI confirming that they were there yesterday in Annie's house to participate in the video, to help with the video. But underscoring that was the family's decision. The family decided that they want. They wanted to be contacted they want to be in touch with the kidnapper. There's been no contact after that note went to the media. We have have a hostage negotiator as well as someone from Quantico. So the. Whoever wrote that ransom note has not contacted anybody to their knowledge since then. So if there was an AI image sent, it was in that note. And I'm misreading Harvey Levin.
- [125:26]
Chad Ayers
And the question, and the question is, who would they call, you know, if, if they've seen this, you know, on Instagram, of all places, which I think is very interesting in and of itself that they didn't go on, you know, they didn't choose to go on this show or Fox or cnn, any of these other outlets. They chose one that they know millions and millions and millions of people are going to see. I think that's very interesting. But how, you know, how do they get in touch with, with, with the family? What would that look like in the future?
- [125:56]
Megyn Kelly
I mean, you got to think right now, TMZ and these two Tucson outlets are hitting refresh in their email every two seconds, right? Because if this really is a kidnapper, who's got Nancy Guthrie? And There was a 5 o' clock deadline today. They didn't say what time where. I'm assuming Arizona time. I mean, that's scary. But I mean, realistically, do we believe the 5 o' clock deadline? Because, like, the family is saying, we want to talk. And if you think, if you're a real kidnapper and you think you got them on the line and one of them's rich, I don't think you just kill the mother. I mean, in this scenario, no, I'm.
- [126:33]
Chad Ayers
Going to want to work. If this is the case and you really want to do that and you truly want this cryptocurrency, you're going to say, okay, I'm ready to talk to you. You put some fake, you know, digital voice on or some computer app and you're talking to them and you go from there. So I agree with you on that.
- [126:54]
Megyn Kelly
Okay, let's see. When did. Let's see. Is there any signs that someone tried to clean up the crime scene? Brian Enten asked that. They said, we can't talk about that right now. Then they said the reason that they were back on the property, searching again, even though they had already done that, and then returned the property over to the family, was that the FBI came to town and they just wanted, like their own look. Do you buy that? What do you think actually happened there yesterday when they returned to the crime Scene did a search down the road from where the house is on foot, like a grid search on foot. And then two hours later went to the actual house of Nancy Guthrie with FBI agents in the garage for quite some time, in the backyard for quite some time, and in, in the house for the main time for about two hours with a helicopter hovering overhead for about one hour. And then left and took their crime scene down again and went home. Home.
- [127:47]
Chad Ayers
No, I, I honestly, I think that, and again, I don't want to, I'm not trying to down the sheriff's office or out there, but the FBI is going to have the best crime scene text technology resources out there. So it doesn't surprise me that they went back and just kind of did a secondary. They probably went to the sheriff's office, looked at all their video and photographs and, and, and, and really took about a day or two to dive into this case and, and then realize, okay, let us go now to the scene because maybe, you know, another set of eyes, a fresh set of eyes that hasn't been there in that first immediate, dramatic time frame. You know, take a step back. It's been a few days. New set of eyes comes in. Hey, I would, I would, I would, I would recommend that. I think that's a smart move on the bureau's part.
- [128:36]
Megyn Kelly
Mm. And this is definitely not their first rodeo like the FBI does deal with, with these sort of major cases all the time. So we're glad they, that the locals have their resources and their experience to, to work off of. All right, so between now and tomorrow morning, I, my team and I are going to work very hard to get to the bottom of why he said at 1:47am on Sunday, the doorbell cam was disconnected. And then at 2:12am the software detected a person on camera. How, how can that be? If the doorbell cam was disconnected, how is it detecting anything? We shall get back to you with the answer to that. Chad, thank you. Thanks so much for your commentary or expertise.
- [129:16]
Chad Ayers
Absolutely. Thank you, Megan.
- [129:18]
Megyn Kelly
All right, to be continued. Coming up next, Kelsey Grammer makes his first appearance on the MK show. Stay tuned for that. These are not the meat sticks you grew up with. This is Paleo valley, made with 100% grass fed beef from small scale regenerative American family farm farms. Paleo Valley lets you feel good about what you are eating and who you are supporting. In fact, Paleo Valley is one of the few companies that sources 100 of its meat from American farms right here in the U. S. Real ingredients, real results, no preservatives no gluten, soy, refined sugar, dairy or GMOs. Whether you are road tripping, working late, hitting the gym or just need a quick pick me up, these beef sticks are for you. High protein, low guilt, no crap. Keto, paleo, carnivore. Whatever your lifestyle, Paleo Valley could work with it, not against it. And the flavors, original jalapeno, summer sausage, teriyaki and more. Over 55 million sticks sold backed by a 60 day money back guarantee. Support small American farms with regenerative agriculture. With Paleo Valley you are not just snacking, you are making a statement. Right now you can get 20 off your first order. The end at@paleovalley.com with code Megan Busy.
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- [130:59]
Megyn Kelly
Hey everyone, it's me, Megyn Kelly. I've got some exciting news. I now have my very own channel on Sirius xm. It's called the Megyn Kelly Channel and it is where you will hear the truth unfiltered with no agenda and no apologies. Along with the Megyn Kelly show, you're gonna hear from people like Mark Halperin, link Lauren, Maureen Callahan, Emily Jashinsky, Jesse Kelly, RealClearPolitics, and many more. It's bold. No BS news, only on the Megyn Kelly Channel, Sirius XM 111 and on the Sirius XM app. Welcome back to the Megyn Kelly Show. Well, my next guest is known for playing one of the most iconic characters in television history and one of my favorite ever, ever throughout my entire lifetime on any show anywhere. And that is Dr. Frasier Crane.
- [131:50]
Chad Ayers
You're inviting me along to this evening of devilment?
- [131:52]
Kelsey Grammer
Sure.
- [131:53]
Jonathan Gilliam
You got a credit card, don't you?
- [131:54]
Kelsey Grammer
There you go.
- [131:57]
Chad Ayers
Not so sure if it really fits.
- [131:59]
Kelsey Grammer
In with my image.
- [132:00]
Megyn Kelly
A desperately lonely character on the make.
- [132:03]
Kelsey Grammer
Well, I guess I'm in.
- [132:05]
Jonathan Gilliam
All right here.
- [132:07]
Jim Fitzgerald
Singing and there's no one there.
- [132:11]
Kelsey Grammer
Hey, guess what everybody. Little Frederick beat Clifford Darts Fraser.
- [132:17]
Megyn Kelly
Uh oh.
- [132:18]
Kelsey Grammer
Everybody have fun tonight.
- [132:22]
Jonathan Gilliam
Everybody Wang Chung tonight.
- [132:27]
Megyn Kelly
Kelsey Grammer's story goes far beyond however, just Cheers and the even superior to Cheers program, Frasier. With roles in the Simpsons X Men and on the Broadway stage. He's built a legendary career across tv, film, theater. He's got all the awards. But behind all the success and the smile on the big screen has been devastating loss. What many do not know about Kelsey Grammer is that his sister Karen was brutally murdered when kelsey was just 20 and she was just 18. A tragedy that shaped his life and led him to write a deeply personal memoir published last year honoring her memoir memory. It's titled A Brother Remembers through the Grief. Grammer credits both faith and resilience for carrying him forward. And now the Emmy award winning actor Kelsey Grammer joins us for his first appearance on the Megyn Kelly Show. Kelsey Grammer, what a pleasure.
- [133:21]
Kelsey Grammer
Hey Megan, how are you? Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here as well. Thank you.
- [133:27]
Megyn Kelly
So nice to meet you. And so my producers put together that lovely intro not knowing that of course I love Cheers to but Frasier is literally my favorite television show to ever have aired on, on tv. I have seen every episode multiple times. I'm in love with you and the entire cast. Thank you for that. Wonderful.
- [133:43]
Kelsey Grammer
God bless you. We are, we were very fortunate to do a very nice show and I mean, yes, we are responsible for it and there were a lot of people that sort of came together to make it what it was. But it was a breathtaking time in my life and I love that character. I mean, the character is, you know, he's, he's like a, a bauble that's just been given to the world. You can do anything, basically, which is really fun.
- [134:07]
Megyn Kelly
Well, so funny. It's one of those things where it's really fun to listen to you talk in your, you know, regular voice because you don't sound like him at all. You know, I mean, it's just a reminder of what, what a good job acting you did. Hitting the hard T's and consonants as you played the erudite, uptight, arty.
- [134:25]
Kelsey Grammer
He has good diction. Certainly, certainly does.
- [134:28]
Megyn Kelly
Yes. And Niles too was a great foil for him throughout the years. So let's go back because I learned a lot about you in preparing for today. Born in the, in the Virgin Islands, which nobody was. That's you're it. Whenever. And, and then raised in New Jersey and Florida. So like, by the way, if that's true, those are the two best news producing states in America. You must have had the most colorful experiences as a kid.
- [134:55]
Kelsey Grammer
We did have colorful experiences. Listen, Florida for me was an ideal place. It was an ideal fit. I'll, I'll regress to Jersey in a second. But when we moved to Florida, it was a presumptive joy for me and for Karen, for my sister. We loved Florida. We'd been there for Christmas a couple of times previously. And the warmth, the sound of the palm trees, the humidity, everything just felt like a kind of a bath of sensual splendor. I mean, we, we grew up in a time that was, you know, a bit repressed and a bit sort of, you know, post 50s, post World War II. There was still a bit of that kind of hangover and for. To go there and to live our lives, going in the ocean every day and to go water skiing all the time and stuff like that was just, it was a magnificent way to grow up. We just had the best time. And I think that's part of why it took me so long to, to write the book about Karen was. I mean, I waited for almost 50 years to write it. It's a fascinating adjustment, but I finally realized I wanted to say something about her. And, and, and ostensibly there's an argument to be made that people might be interested in what the future, whether what the past was that, you know, brought about this, this creation of Frasier and, and my career and all that. The early days were good.
- [136:16]
Megyn Kelly
I suffered a lot of tragedy growing up. I didn't realize your dad was murdered and as was your sister. And then you had two stepbrothers who died in a.
- [136:28]
Kelsey Grammer
Right. That was more of a thing. The, the diving accident with the shark. I mean, they never found any, any remains of Billy. He was, he was lost completely. Stevie washed up on the shore.
- [136:43]
Megyn Kelly
My God. I mean, that's an unusually high percentage of tragedy. A young man's life. Yeah, well, I thought it was interesting. First of all, it explained to me all the stories I saw in the 90s of your drinking problem. And then second of all, I did think it was interesting you could have written about any of those experiences and made it a best selling book. But you must have been pretty close with your sister Karen to take on that particular tragedy and, and really deal with it because, I mean, that is, that, that was so brutal and so personal.
- [137:15]
Kelsey Grammer
It was pretty horrible. I wanted to, in writing the book, I wanted to. It's, it's funny, you know, people, people talk about what they've been through and then, you know, they often play like sort of a victim card. And I know that, you know, I've certainly been accused of doing that myself, but I've done my best not to. But in, in telling the tale about Karen's Destruction, the last night of her life. I wanted to make sure that there was an honest uncovering of everything that happened so that people would understand it as a credential of sorts. That when I gave out advice about how to survive such a thing, how to endure such a thing, that it would be recognized as the same kind of tragedy that others have actually endured. I was trying to extend a hand of comfort, comfort to people who've been through similar things. And sadly, there's a lot of people who've been through similar things. Somebody told me a long time ago that no matter how pretty you are, so there's somebody prettier, no matter how. How handsome you are, there's somebody more handsome, there's somebody more talented. There is always a more tragic tale. And so I just needed to let people know that what I was coming from was a real. A real place, a real source, so that the comfort I was hoping to offer would come from a place that seemed authentic and real and might actually bring.
- [138:34]
Megyn Kelly
Certainly does. Can you tell us what happened to Karen?
- [138:39]
Kelsey Grammer
Karen was abducted around 12:30 in the morning outside of the Red Lobster where she worked. She was waiting for some friends to come out, and a few hours later, she was dead. They took her. And one of the. One of the fellas walked up to her and showed her a gun and said, we're going to. You're coming with us. And so they put in a back seat. They went back into the Red Lobster after that, and we're going to rob the place. And I think something about the setup of what. Where they were in their heads. They didn't end up robbing it. They just ended. Ended up going back out to the car. Then they took Caren to one of their apartments, and that's where they raped her.
- [139:21]
Jonathan Gilliam
And.
- [139:23]
Kelsey Grammer
She pleaded for her life several, several times. And the. The. The account we have of what happened to her those last few hours was basically provided by a guy who was arrested in New Orleans several months after her murder, who said, I know about the girl in Colorado. And they said, what are you talking about? And then that's what. Then the police flew there and they finally said to me. They called me a week or so later and said, we think we have the guys. And so it was three of them. And they. There was one young man there who apparently had not been part of the other killings as much, and they thought he should earn his stripes, basically. And so he was the one that put the knife in her several times. And they left her to die by this little trailer park where I visited the. That spot in the book. It's sort of a sad feeling. There's a home there where I think the guy who found Karen actually still lives there. I think it's got a tall fence and some barbed wire on top. And, like, he didn't want to be bothered, so, you know, he wasn't bothered. I don't want to hurt anybody or make anybody go back and relive something, but for me, it's been left to relive it all the time because we've had parole hearings and stuff like that. That. Which take me back to it. And that was. That's. That's difficult. But you know what?
- [140:49]
Megyn Kelly
You're working to make sure that. That there is no.
- [140:53]
Kelsey Grammer
Yeah, but I just. I just think insult to injury would. Is what that would amount to for me.
- [140:59]
Megyn Kelly
Well, because I. I read that with your dad's murder, he was shot by a man who was convicted, but then it was overturned. Is that correct? It was overturned. He was found insane.
- [141:11]
Kelsey Grammer
He was found not guilty by reason of insane humanity. The other. The other problem is, I don't know all the particulars of it, but the rumor mill, you know, apparently there was more of a kind of a. An assassination thing because the tensions were running high in the Virgin Islands. They do that all the time. There's a kind of a. An energy there that's sometimes it's like, seasonally violent, and then it's kind of really placid and wonderful. In the paradise, you believe it is. But when a few years later, after this man, whose last name, ironically, is Niles, nobody understands how that happens. It's just weird. But apparently he was arrested again in an attempted professional hit on a judge, so he went back to judge jail.
- [142:08]
Megyn Kelly
As they usually do.
- [142:09]
Kelsey Grammer
He was. He was sent back.
- [142:11]
Megyn Kelly
Well, because when I saw. I was. But I was thinking you. You must be extra determined to go to those parole hearings.
- [142:16]
Kelsey Grammer
Yeah.
- [142:16]
Megyn Kelly
Your sister's killer. Because you've already been burned somewhat by the system.
- [142:21]
Kelsey Grammer
Yeah. And I.
- [142:22]
Megyn Kelly
To me, I don't know, Kelsey, if you ever thought about this, but it almost seemed like. Is it ironic or is it actually. Totally. It makes perfect sense that a guy who's been through all of that would choose a career in comedy.
- [142:34]
Kelsey Grammer
Well, it does seem. But I think that's how we do it, you know? Laughing. There's a great poem by a writer named James Merrill, who I think he taught at Yale for a while. But he describes at one point.
- [142:51]
Jim Fitzgerald
One.
- [142:51]
Kelsey Grammer
Of the characters in the story. But it's like an Epic poem. A modern epic poem. But he describes the sound of hearing God's voice. God's song. God. B. Song calls him God. Biology. And. And the. The character says it. It was like listening to a man on a life raft singing to keep up his nerve. And I think that's what I am, so.
- [143:19]
Megyn Kelly
Well, you were. You were on your way toward a career in the arts when Karen was killed. You were at Juilliard at the time, right?
- [143:26]
Kelsey Grammer
Well, I've just been kicked out.
- [143:28]
Megyn Kelly
And by the way, yeah, you just been kicked out, so what ha. Why did. How did you get. How did Kelsey Grammer get kicked out of Juilliard?
- [143:34]
Kelsey Grammer
You know, I look back on it, and I really think it's because I didn't go to acting class.
- [143:41]
Megyn Kelly
Oh, well, that'll do.
- [143:43]
Kelsey Grammer
Wasn't deeply personal. I just didn't really like the guy so much, and I thought, I don't know if I'm learning anything from. From this guy. So I just go take a walk instead. And that proved out, you know, proved to be sort of a bad investment of my time.
- [144:00]
Megyn Kelly
You know, it's funny because I was rejected from the Syracuse University.
- [144:03]
Kelsey Grammer
I can't imagine anyone rejecting you.
- [144:08]
Megyn Kelly
Well, I was rejected, and now I love telling that story. But the heir to the Newhouse fortune sat next to me at an event, it was actually. Actually an Oscars party one year. And said, please, please stop telling people that story.
- [144:22]
Kelsey Grammer
Okay, just cut it out.
- [144:24]
Megyn Kelly
So we got the last laugh. Kelsey, you and I both got the last laugh.
- [144:27]
Kelsey Grammer
Yeah. In the end.
- [144:27]
Megyn Kelly
So you. You. You had parents in the business, right? Your mom. Your mom in particular was a performer, right?
- [144:32]
Kelsey Grammer
My mom had done some summer stock. She met her mom. She met my dad at music school. That's really all I really know about that particular thing. They don't really discuss. They never discussed it with me. I didn't really know my dad very well, but. And then he was in the army for a while, and I've been told he blew taps at Arlington, so that's kind of cool. But once he got out of the army, he and his friend did that classic thing where you spin the globe and their finger landed on the Virgin Islands. So that's how he ended up there. And my mom was pregnant, and.
- [145:02]
Megyn Kelly
Wow.
- [145:03]
Kelsey Grammer
I was born. That's how it started.
- [145:05]
Megyn Kelly
And now along came you. All right, so you mentioned New Jersey and Florida. What. What were the ages? I'm just curious, like, where did you come up age?
- [145:12]
Kelsey Grammer
Florida, 3 to 12. Florida was 12 to 18. That's, you know, that's coming of age.
- [145:19]
Megyn Kelly
So that's kind of home.
- [145:20]
Kelsey Grammer
That's rock and roll.
- [145:21]
Megyn Kelly
So it also kind of explains why a man like you, who declares himself openly Republican, would choose to live in the People's Republic of California.
- [145:28]
Jim Fitzgerald
You.
- [145:29]
Megyn Kelly
You like warm weather?
- [145:30]
Kelsey Grammer
I do.
- [145:30]
Megyn Kelly
Like, you were born in the Virgin Islands, you know, all those years in Florida.
- [145:34]
Jonathan Gilliam
What else would explain it?
- [145:35]
Kelsey Grammer
California. I mean, I. My family is from California. I am actually from California. All the bones are baked here. All the burial plots live here. We just ended up on the east coast after World War II because my grandfather was in the oil business for Standard Oil of California. So he was assigned to go to New York City, where he worked in the Empire State Building for several years, where I would visit him. And then he was instrumental in moving the company headquarters on the east coast to Perth Fanboy in New Jersey, where my sister Karen was born. So it all sort of ties together nicely that way. But I always loved California. My great, great grandfather brought wagon trains across the country to California. He met his wife on one of those wagon trains, and that was Cora. And, you know, I mean, I have. I do have a lot of information because I did that show to, you know, who do you think you are? So, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got some more information.
- [146:38]
Megyn Kelly
Somehow you've made it work. We'll get to that in a bit. Your. Your politics and your chosen state and your governor, but we'll table it for now until we get there. So you're. You're making your way in the acting business. You do some. Some theater, as I understand you do some Shakespeare, which is good training for. For Frasier Crane. And was Cheers your big break?
- [146:55]
Kelsey Grammer
Yeah, I mean, I. I did some Broadway before that. I did. Yeah, I did Macbeth at Lincoln center, and I was understudying the lead at the time, an actor named Philip Anglam, who was a terrific guy and did a pretty nice job as Macbeth. Macbeth is one of those cursed shows. You know, you always. You always fail in Macbeth. I don't really know why, but. So he didn't really. He wasn't really happy about how things were received. So I went on. I played the role for several weeks, and he finally came back and played a few of the final closing performances. But it was a great role for me to cut my teeth on in terms of the classics and understanding what it's like to be the center of a piece in front of a crowd that is that, you know, educated and critical. And so I did pretty well out of that. And then I ended up in a Production of Othello with James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer. That's where I became great friends with James Earl Jones. I was recently at his memorial several months ago where they renamed a theater in his honor. And so it's now the James Earl Jones Theater just off Broadway, which is very, very cool. And it's very cool to have known him. He was a. He was a miraculous actor and an even better person. I have nothing but the highest of praise for him.
- [148:15]
Megyn Kelly
Wow. And Christopher Plummer, too. What a gift. And we lost.
- [148:18]
Jim Fitzgerald
Yeah.
- [148:19]
Kelsey Grammer
You know, Chris was so vital. He was an interesting fella. He and I did not get along so well early on, but I was a young man, you know.
- [148:26]
Megyn Kelly
You crossed Captain Von Trapp. What were you thinking?
- [148:29]
Kelsey Grammer
It did feel that way for a while, but then we ended up being pretty friendly.
- [148:37]
Megyn Kelly
You move on to Cheers and your career takes off. It's like rocket ship. That show is such a hit. And it was back in the days when we were all watching the same program at night. It wasn't as splintered as it is today. So you become a rocket ship superstar overnight. And is. Is that when you would say some of these past traumas started to manifest more in your life? As. As happens for many people.
- [149:00]
Kelsey Grammer
I mean, what. What happened to me was I felt guilty.
- [149:07]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah.
- [149:08]
Kelsey Grammer
But I also fell in love with the idea that I could actually finally, you know, indulge myself a little bit. I mean, I'd been living on little more than a prayer for almost a decade where things were very hard. I mean, I didn't buy my first new car Till I was 39 years old. I mean, this was. This was. It was time for Kelsey to finally explore what it was like to be flush a little bit, to enjoy his life a little bit, to live big. I finally got a sailboat. There was. There were several things that came into play that actually made my life quite worth living. But there was a. A dark side of it that actually, you know, I was. I was sad. I was sad. And I mean, somebody said that addiction, the major cause of addiction, is unresolved grief. And I think that probably fueled mine. I mean, it certainly wasn't trying to kill myself or anything. People have asked that question. I'm, you know, I'm writing another book now about myself, which is actually, I'm about 100 pages into it at this point.
- [150:10]
Megyn Kelly
But how are you liking yourself?
- [150:13]
Kelsey Grammer
I'm okay. It was. It was great to let go of some of the stuff about Karen without, you know, dishonoring her. I always felt guilty that she didn't have the life I had, but she was along for the ride in a lot of ways. So it was great for me to have a chance to introduce her to people in the book. And then. And then. Are you one of my great friends first? One of the first people who read what I had written so far. I would have edited since his reading of it, but he said, I feel like I know your sister now, and that was all I wanted.
- [150:45]
Megyn Kelly
That's exactly it. So you've done her a great tribute because you've kept her alive for all of us. Now I know her, and your friend knows her and so many millions of others know her, which is, you know, I think when you lose somebody, that's really one of your main worries. You want the world to know them. I know a lot of dear friends who have suffered major loss, and they repeat that. So you did honor her with this. With this book about her. And maybe, I don't know, did it take you to a place where you feel healed or more healed than you were?
- [151:18]
Kelsey Grammer
I think I said in the book, I will still weep buckets. But, yes, there is a sense of I can claim my life now, now without feeling guilty about it. And that was a. That was a real blessing for me.
- [151:36]
Megyn Kelly
The survivor's guilt makes no sense. You know, it makes absolutely no sense, but it is a real thing. I've talked to so many people who deal with it.
- [151:43]
Kelsey Grammer
There you are.
- [151:43]
Megyn Kelly
And, yeah, it can drive you to drink. It can drive you to do all sorts of things. A lot of people go to Hollywood and become big stars and do those things just because they want to anyway. Well, you had a few good reasons.
- [151:52]
Kelsey Grammer
Robin used to say. He used to say, you know, cocaine is God's way of saying you're making too much money.
- [152:00]
Megyn Kelly
So, I mean, it is kind of interesting. This year, I had the pleasure of getting to know and befriend Charlie Sheen. So I've been spending a lot of time thinking about some of this. How. How were you able to function at such a high level while drinking so much and doing so many drugs?
- [152:14]
Kelsey Grammer
Well, I've got a good brain, and I always knew when to pull it back. I always knew when to stop, honestly. I mean, there were moments when, you know, I looked pretty beat up, but I could always, you know, kind of pull myself together enough to have a semblance of acumen and talent and performance. So it was never that far out of my reach. And it's sort of like I've raced cars a little bit, you Know, a long time ago.
- [152:40]
Megyn Kelly
You have?
- [152:41]
Kelsey Grammer
Yeah. But the thing that I didn't do was I didn't go to the place where I knew I wasn't safe. And I think that was an indication of who I am, actually. Oh, I always knew that I was able to put it down. There was a moment when I'd say, okay, that's enough now. Go get some rest.
- [153:00]
Megyn Kelly
Was. Was there someone like, who you worked with either on the Cheers? I think this is mostly during the Cheers years.
- [153:07]
Kelsey Grammer
Well, there was a, there was a. There was a real section during Frasier. What? I, I needed to take some time off. That was when it kind of really came to a head because, I mean, suddenly I was making. Making an extraordinary amount of money and I still felt like I needed to apologize for that on some level. Of course, the world around us says you need to apologize for being successful, which seems absolutely ridiculous as America, for God's sakes. Which may explain. Point towards some of my politics. We need not be embarrassed by success. We need not be shamed by it. No, it seems that we like winning.
- [153:40]
Megyn Kelly
On the right side.
- [153:41]
Brian Enten
Yeah.
- [153:41]
Kelsey Grammer
Yeah, that seems. That's sort of what's going on. But trying to get back to my thread on.
- [153:49]
Megyn Kelly
Well, was there some. I was going to ask you, was there somebody who. Oh, somebody or somebody who really pushed you to. To put it down?
- [153:56]
Kelsey Grammer
And yeah, the folks at your said, you know, look, it's time to kind of, you know, step away from it. I said, okay, I did that for a while and had a few good years of clean living. Well, not exactly clean, but, you know, clean, clean ish living and a couple of, you know, messed up relationships, but a couple of good ones. So, you know, there were some decent people around I liked, and I still like interaction with people. And that's the greatest source for me of all experiences is the fact that you know people and watch them. And that's where I did my training. My training actually has just been in, you know, observing the human condition and the way people behave. And that's, that's what you.
- [154:37]
Megyn Kelly
Great actors and great writers.
- [154:39]
Kelsey Grammer
Yeah, and great writers.
- [154:40]
Megyn Kelly
Same thing.
- [154:41]
Kelsey Grammer
Good. Yeah.
- [154:42]
Megyn Kelly
So did you ever have a tawdry love affair with Shelley Long or Kirstie Alley or BB Neuwirth? Come on, spill the tea.
- [154:51]
Kelsey Grammer
No, you know what? It's, it's, it's never really a good idea to have tawdry love affair with people you're working with.
- [154:58]
Megyn Kelly
No, it's not a good idea. But that's not a denial.
- [155:00]
Kelsey Grammer
Yeah, it's Not a denial, but, no, I never did know. It's funny, I didn't get to know Shelley very well because she left really, after I got to the show a couple years later. She went off after the fifth season, and that's when Kirsty came on the show. And that's when I realized. When Kirsty made her first appearance in the show and I was watching, I thought to myself, boy, this show is going to be successful for a while. She's great. And I got to know her pretty well. And I always loved Kirstie. I think she's one of the funniest people that ever lived.
- [155:29]
Chad Ayers
Lived.
- [155:30]
Kelsey Grammer
I was devastated by her, by her premature demise. You know, I mean, just for her to go the way she went, it just was like, oh, come on. She was such a light and, you know, and she was. She was a kind of ecstatic person. She would live in a silliness about her. I mean, she. She did. I don't know if this would ever go anywhere anymore, but at one point, she stood all the men on Cheers up against the bar, and she's said, I'm going to guess which of you has the biggest package. She was unflappable. And of course, we all, you know, said, okay, well, what the heck? It's just. It was a different time, though, which.
- [156:10]
Megyn Kelly
Either makes you feel really, really proud or really nervous, depending on what category you're.
- [156:16]
Kelsey Grammer
That eye looking sort of askance at you. Yeah, but she was a riot. And she was. It was always in good fun. She was celebratory and fun and, you know, they were. She went up and down and, you know, it was. But always funny. It was Kirsty who told me that when you go on like a show like Carson or something like that, and of course, I. I missed Carson. Jaylen was his first year, and I thought, okay, but she said, just make up somebody. Pretend you're somebody else. Kirsty. I said, that's exhausting. No, I'll never. I'll never be able to keep track, for one thing.
- [156:51]
Megyn Kelly
So I think she gave that same advice to Brian Williams of NBC News. Now we come back to hunt.
- [156:58]
Kelsey Grammer
Again.
- [156:59]
Megyn Kelly
No, sure did. So then you wind up doing the spin off of Cheers, which is Frasier, which is, I mean, just as big, if not bigger a hit. Ran for the same. Another decade. And one of the reasons why I'm so surprised to learn that you love race cars is because. Because my favorite episode of Frasier, it is the one. I've mentioned it on this show multiple times. My whole family can recite it. Start to finish is you and your brother Niles. Who are these, you know, very uptight, priggish, socialite men? Both psychiatrists. Not men's men at all. Much to the chagrin of their man's man father. Decide you have to go to auto mechanic class.
- [157:46]
Kelsey Grammer
I saw that show the other day.
- [157:49]
Megyn Kelly
It's the greatest. I had my team pull a small clip for the audience that hasn't seen it. Here's just a tad.
- [157:56]
Jim Fitzgerald
No one else wore them in gym class either.
- [157:58]
Jonathan Gilliam
But then Tommy Fritz scratched his cornea.
- [157:59]
Brian Enten
And then they were mandatory.
- [158:01]
Kelsey Grammer
Give me that wrench.
- [158:02]
Jim Fitzgerald
Give me that wrench.
- [158:08]
Megyn Kelly
I'm telling you.
- [158:08]
Jonathan Gilliam
I'm telling you.
- [158:09]
Kelsey Grammer
It's on too tight here. I'll just try to loosen it up.
- [158:12]
Jonathan Gilliam
Whoa, whoa. Remember, spark plugs come out with a.
- [158:16]
Megyn Kelly
Simple twist and pull.
- [158:18]
Kelsey Grammer
Twist and pull. Give it a try. Okay. That's called stripping it.
- [158:29]
Jonathan Gilliam
Wow.
- [158:29]
Chad Ayers
Good job, Fraser.
- [158:30]
Jim Fitzgerald
Here, let me strip one.
- [158:31]
Jonathan Gilliam
No, no. Stripping it means breaking it. Watch.
- [158:41]
Kelsey Grammer
Well, so you twist and then pull. You see, I was twisting and pulling simultaneously as per your instructions.
- [158:52]
Jonathan Gilliam
Twist and pull. In the future, the phrase twist then pull might help.
- [159:01]
Kelsey Grammer
Look, fellas, maybe that's enough for one.
- [159:04]
Jonathan Gilliam
Night, but why don't you come in a little early next week and I'll.
- [159:07]
Kelsey Grammer
Try to get you caught up to everyone else. I've got a feeling you guys are going to be my special project.
- [159:15]
Megyn Kelly
And then you realize you were the remedial student.
- [159:18]
Kelsey Grammer
Yes. That was a nightmare. Unusual for those boys. It was not a good thing to be the remedial students. I love that guy, so.
- [159:24]
Megyn Kelly
But that was real acting because. Do you know your way around an engine?
- [159:28]
Kelsey Grammer
Well, actually, I do. This was one of my come to Jesus moments in my career when I realized as I was changing my own oil after I was on television, I thought to myself, you know what? There are people who make their living doing this. I'm depriving them of their living while I'm making mine. So I started thinking I should get my oil. Ch. My oil changed by a professional.
- [159:49]
Megyn Kelly
That. That is exactly the storyline of the Auto Mechanic episode where the two guys eventually realized that they're stealing jobs from very good auto mechanics and really should leave this class.
- [160:01]
Kelsey Grammer
A. Yeah, I, you know, I, I really. It was a real thing for me because I, I always, always. I was growing. I grew up looking after my mom's car. It's my grandmother's cars. I, I always change the oil, change the plugs, sometimes set the timing. You know, there was different things you said the gap on the plug. There's all sorts of stuff we used to do that you don't have to do anymore because we had carburetors then, you know, now it's fuel injection.
- [160:25]
Megyn Kelly
I, yeah, you're not, you're, you're speaking Greek to me. I don't even know if the engine of my car is in the front or the back. Back.
- [160:31]
Kelsey Grammer
I was very proud to do them and look after things in the house. It was my job. I was the, I was the man of the family, you know, and so it just carried on into my life a bit longer than maybe most of it.
- [160:43]
Megyn Kelly
So did you maintain a friendship with David Hyde Pierce, who played Niles?
- [160:47]
Kelsey Grammer
You're still friends? Yeah, yeah, it's a, it's, it's a good relationship. David's in New York. He's, he's sort of become the maven of, you know, Broadway theater.
- [160:58]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, I've seen him.
- [160:59]
Kelsey Grammer
I've, I've stayed over here on the west coast, but I, you know, backed up. I've gone over to New York once in a while and I did, I did a movie with Charles Durning several years back, a couple of decades now, I guess. But I said, what do you, what do you like to do to keep, you know, things sharp, keep things focused? He said, well, I try to do a play every year for at least six weeks. You know, it's like a, you do a, an out of town play somewhere, you'd probably take off a month or two to, to keep the engine running, you know, to keep the, keep the senses honed. And I thought, well, every year is going to be too hard to manage for me. Too many responsibilities. But I did try to do every five years and I think I've kind of stuck with that. I'm a little late right now, this little phase in my life. I think it's about time for me to go to a play again. But we'll see. I don't know what it's going to be.
- [161:49]
Megyn Kelly
It always seems exciting. I can't imagine standing up there and just hearing those applause from a live audience night after night after night. But on the other hand, at what point do you get sick of doing the exact same routine night? Right. Does that ever seep in? Especially as somebody who doesn't normally spend his acting career doing that?
- [162:07]
Kelsey Grammer
Yeah, there was an actor named Michael Gough. I think he was the, I think he played Alfred in the first, in the, in the, the first Batman, with which Jack Nicholson was in. I think, I think he played the butler, you know, and he's a wonderful guy. And at one point he was in a conversation with me. Maybe we were at Charlie's or something, you know, having an after theater drink. And he said, oh, don't you love long runs? And I thought to myself, well, not really, but it was, it was his insistence that a long run was a glorious thing to be involved in, that I started to try to dissect what he was thinking about and to appreciate it. And so the next time I was in a long run was actually doing Othello. And so that was. We ran for a year doing that. I was in it for a year and I started to allow myself to understand what that meant. It has to be a great place play, like a Shakespeare play. That language is just so much more excellent than most others. Most other plays really do not match up. I mean, you can try to do Eugene o' Neill for, you know, six months and you're just going to drive yourself into the ground with it. He's a lovely writer. It's just, it's just not the same kind of experience. There's a. There's a connection to life, a sort of a universal life that Shakespeare did just is. I believe there was a book written about him called the Invention of the Human, which is basically lays at Shakespeare's feet the creation of all our language, of how we communicate with one another. And yeah, it's only four, almost 500 years ago, but that language, when you're on stage, you'll be in the midst of a scene you've done a dozen times or a hundred times and suddenly hear something you've never heard before. And that's the beauty of the long run.
- [164:13]
Megyn Kelly
I can see it. Yeah. Now that you walk me through it. Poor Eugene o' Neill took a beating.
- [164:17]
Kelsey Grammer
There, but I didn't mean to beat him. Lovely. In a way, it's just, it's a bit self conscious, isn't it?
- [164:24]
Megyn Kelly
Yes. Well, now the thing, I mean, I go to Broadway all the time. We love Broadway. We're constantly there. But it's gotten very woke and you know, we went to see, we. We saw Macbeth and it was starring Daniel Craig and Kelsey. They had. The king's son was played by a girl, a woman who was. Had a blue mohawk. Okay. So we're trying to buy this like, okay, 14th or 15th century Scotland character with a blue mohawk. And it's supposed to be a man, but it's being played by a woman. There has, there was a character, it was a minority Majority cast, which is not at all representative of this time in Scotland either. There was a guy in a wheelchair playing a part, was like, okay, I appreciate the handicap getting roles, but like, that doesn't work for this time frame either. And no one wore a costume like, like the king's son was wearing a T shirt. Like a, like a Stones. A Rolling Stones T shirt. Like, what is this? You tell me, what is that?
- [165:25]
Kelsey Grammer
The good news is that Shakespeare can survive all of that. His language is, is that good that you can actually try to put as many overlays on it and the play is still going to work. That's extraordinary. Somebody, somebody.
- [165:38]
Megyn Kelly
See, now that's good advice.
- [165:39]
Kelsey Grammer
A very wise person once told me, they said, I've seen good actors enhance a poor play, but I've never seen bad actors ruin Shakespeare. Oh, so maybe these, maybe some of these productions are, oh, misguided or way too informed with current trends. The good news is that it's a play. It doesn't last forever. No one, thank God, is going to film it. And you will not end up printing that impression of Macbeth on too many people. Although it's clearly caused you some strife. But I apologize if I had to.
- [166:19]
Megyn Kelly
Act across from one of these super woke people. Honestly highly recommend you not take a role across from Patti LuPone.
- [166:26]
Kelsey Grammer
I beg, you know, Patty did my show. Don't do it years ago. She's just gotten, she's gone down that, that, that lane. And you know, I think it's. How do you explain it? It's, I love people of great passion and short sightedness. There, there's, you know, it's myopia, if you want, or myopic in its way. Near sighted, short sightedness. There's no real long game in it because it doesn't really have human value. It has exaggerated value. It's like you, you know, in, in Alcoholics Anonymous they talk about how you can raise your bottom, meaning the, you don't have to completely bottom out. You don't have to end up, you know, sleeping on the street to realize, oh, this is now a problem. Well, well, in this case, they've raised a level of a perceived injustice or a perceived need in their society to a place where it actually is discordant. It doesn't necessarily equate to human necessity or human value. It doesn't necessarily make the world better. It makes us more strident and less tolerant. And certainly if we believe in tolerance, then you don't need to be yelling and screaming about whether or not a person with A Mohawk deserves the same degree of attention or to be taken as seriously as someone who is wearing a suit. I mean, you can elevate so many things to a pinnacle of meaning that are pretty much not very important.
- [168:04]
Megyn Kelly
So this is your diagnosis of wokeness, of what the woke do.
- [168:07]
Kelsey Grammer
The woke thing is really. It's a manufactured outrage that has been used as a lever for political change when it's probably not. It probably doesn't have the teeth for that. It probably doesn't have the chops to make it all the way to. Oh, we have to define our lives by this. For instance, we have a lot of people in theater now who say, if you're not gay or trans or whatever, you can never play a gay person. Well, that would be like, how many times do we have to play. How many. How many. How many straight men do we have to have in the theater to allow us to have, like, straight relationships? Certainly, at least in the play itself, in the world of the play, a man and a woman are married. A lot of. A lot of people doing those roles. That's not the case, but it is acting. And we've now. We've now entered a world where people say, you have to be the person in order to play the person. So unfortunately, there will be no, no, no more acting careers, because you'll just.
- [169:05]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, no, there was a.
- [169:06]
Kelsey Grammer
There was a. I'm not going to do that.
- [169:08]
Megyn Kelly
There was a movie coming out, I don't know, eight years ago about a trans person, and Scarlett Johansson was supposed to star and it got killed because she's not trans.
- [169:16]
Kelsey Grammer
It's ridiculous to think that a person can't play a trans person.
- [169:20]
Megyn Kelly
Surely we could understand your actors.
- [169:22]
Kelsey Grammer
Maybe we don't. Maybe we don't place the same value on it as having, you know, your mother marry your. Your father's brother or something like that. That's. That's Hamlet. I mean, I thought we were talking about by Carl.
- [169:38]
Megyn Kelly
I was like, you're close. You're. You're. You almost have.
- [169:40]
Kelsey Grammer
Yeah. Who? And he says they. Yet they all want to play Hamlet. They haven't exactly seen their mothers, you know, messing around with their father, with their father's brother. They haven't actually seen their fathers murdered. They hadn't haven't exactly, you know, gone to. Gone to a place where you try to stab your best friend with a. With a. With a sword. And yet they all want to play Hamlet. Our creative imagination is what draws us into being actors. It's not the fact that we are actually gay. Or straight or anything else, or married.
- [170:08]
Megyn Kelly
Or a Harvard educated psychiatrist.
- [170:10]
Kelsey Grammer
We can play anything that's part of the human experience because that's what we're good at. It's okay to be there.
- [170:18]
Megyn Kelly
So I think everybody agrees with that. They just pretend not to, to get themselves some of social clicks. But you've been kind of outspoken. My team found a clip of you speaking of you going on Leno from 2012, talking about being an out Republican. Now that's bold. 2012. Like, wow, you came out with it pretty early.
- [170:37]
Kelsey Grammer
I was early on.
- [170:38]
Megyn Kelly
Already a big star. But why be so open about it? Because virtually every Republican I know in Hollywood just calls themselves an independent.
- [170:46]
Kelsey Grammer
Yeah, that's why it's so popular now. There's a lot of people who are popularly. Oh, I'm an independent. Okay, well, fine. So thank God you make some sense once in a while. I'm a little more outspoken about it. I just think it's sort of exhausting to be so up in arms about every single issue that comes down the pike. It is not wise, I think, to take anything but a more long, a longer view of things, to have a little bit of perspective and to stand back from issues that seem important in that day or in that moment and realize that, yeah, that's the currency of political discourse, I guess, and of trying to win elections or not win elections or destroy your opponents. I mean, we live in America. We're all Americans. We need to remember that. And at least I believe we need to remember that. And that my fellow American is not my enemy. No, that goes back to my Christian lens that I put on things, which is, you know, love thy enemy as thyself, do unto others as you have others do unto you. These are things that still are important to me. And so that's why I think I probably outed myself a long time ago in retrospect, and this is a current topic, it did relegate me to the fringes of society and Hollywood. And so I may have had my, my, my peccadillo, as they say, but I was never part of the dungeon crowd. The stuff I've heard about, I'm not in that world. And so the world that.
- [172:27]
Megyn Kelly
How did it relegate you to the fringes?
- [172:29]
Kelsey Grammer
Oh, well, I wasn't invited to those parties. I'm glad I wasn't.
- [172:37]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Speaking of raising the bottom, you don't want to go to those. You don't want to go to those parties at all. I've heard about what goes on there.
- [172:45]
Kelsey Grammer
Well, that's what I heard about it. A few years ago, I was on a flight with a fairly famous actor who shared some stuff with me that I thought, holy moly, this actually goes on in Hollywood. And he was a participant and a fairly knowledgeable fellow. And I thought, my goodness, I really dodged a bullet there.
- [173:06]
Megyn Kelly
Are we talking about sex stuff or drug stuff?
- [173:08]
Kelsey Grammer
Sex slash. Just all of it. All the stuff you see.
- [173:12]
Megyn Kelly
Let me tell you something. News, too. News, too. I could tell you some stories not involving yours truly, but with some people in news that would make your eyes roll in the back of your head. People who are on the air right now posing as very severe news anchors who have a whole different side.
- [173:30]
Kelsey Grammer
I do love that you have that information.
- [173:35]
Megyn Kelly
But I like you. I don't go to those parties. I stay home with my husband.
- [173:39]
Kelsey Grammer
Yeah, I think that.
- [173:40]
Megyn Kelly
Speaking of the spouse, why did I watch you for a good year? Maybe more on the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. There you were.
- [173:51]
Kelsey Grammer
You know, I don't really talk about that part of my life very much anymore.
- [173:54]
Megyn Kelly
I do.
- [173:54]
Kelsey Grammer
There's a couple of wonderful children that I have as a result. I don't throw any daggers or knives or anything else. That's a part of my past. And I was not going to survive. So I'm glad I. I'm glad we went to a different place.
- [174:12]
Megyn Kelly
You found you found a way out of that. But it was fascinating to watch. It was a window into your beautiful home and your. Your life.
- [174:18]
Kelsey Grammer
It was. Well, it was a window through some, but it wasn't a clear glass, say. But that's the nature of those shows, you know. You know, they're not real. So it's. You kind of. You kind of accept that this is just all, you know, high dudgeon.
- [174:34]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, that's right. So. But you now have eight children, right? Eight kids. And are any of them in the business or have the taste for it?
- [174:42]
Kelsey Grammer
Well, they're all sort of business adjacent. My eldest daughter, Spencer, is an actress and does. Has had, you know, a substantial career. She's done really well, and she's. She's currently on Rick and Morty. So she's one of the voices in Rick and Morty and she does really well. And that's been over a decade. I think that she's been on that. And that's. That's given her some independence and some. Some wealth, you know, certainly enough to manage having a home and stuff like that. She has a wonderful son. So I have a grandson named Emmett, who's a terrific kid. And we don't see each other as much as I'd like to, but I do see them enough to, you know, to know there's a relationship there. My next daughter, Greer, is. She's doing pretty well. She's an actress. She's very interested in it. We spend quite a bit of time together and then we'll spend, you know, a year without seeing each other at all. But there is still a real love there, and I love that.
- [175:40]
Jim Fitzgerald
Actually.
- [175:40]
Kelsey Grammer
Actually, you know, took us a little time to figure out. To get.
- [175:43]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah.
- [175:44]
Kelsey Grammer
To identify because it wasn't in her life really when she was younger. Then there's Mason and Jude. That's from the. The previous show is just. Just the Real Housewife. Yes. So she's. But I see them quite a bit. Jude's off in school and Mason's now living in California. She's got boyfriend and she tends to live with her mom most of the time. But I don't really ask any questions.
- [176:11]
Megyn Kelly
Okay. That's probably. That's the safest way sometimes.
- [176:15]
Kelsey Grammer
Exactly. It's not part of my life, so I'm actually gracious. Very gratefully removed from it. The. The life I live now with Kate is a magnificent life. And we just had a baby. She's an extraordinary mom. Our little boy just turned 4 months old yesterday on her. Mom. It was Kate's birthday yesterday. And.
- [176:44]
Megyn Kelly
How long have you and Kate been together?
- [176:46]
Kelsey Grammer
We've been together 16 years.
- [176:50]
Megyn Kelly
Wow.
- [176:50]
Kelsey Grammer
It doesn't. It doesn't seem possible, does it? It's like you go, what?
- [176:53]
Megyn Kelly
No.
- [176:53]
Jim Fitzgerald
And.
- [176:54]
Kelsey Grammer
Yeah, I feel like I was watching.
- [176:55]
Megyn Kelly
You on that show five years ago, but I guess it was longer anniversary time that now. Is she a Republican?
- [177:02]
Kelsey Grammer
She's English, so she's not particularly anything.
- [177:07]
Megyn Kelly
Okay.
- [177:08]
Chad Ayers
She's more.
- [177:09]
Kelsey Grammer
She's sort of apolitical. She doesn't really care for it.
- [177:12]
Megyn Kelly
That's good.
- [177:13]
Kelsey Grammer
She's very funny about California. I mean, you know, we have. You know, we have. There's people who wear their views on their sleeve here that just. It is kind of just tiresome after.
- [177:23]
Megyn Kelly
A while or on their mask.
- [177:25]
Kelsey Grammer
I can't be assaulted by some human being who doesn't seem to have any real deep thought going on. They're just parroting things and you think, I don't have to.
- [177:34]
Megyn Kelly
But you're in trouble now. You're in trouble because it's one thing to be a Republican in 2012, but it's quite another to be a Trump supporter, which you've outed yourself. Maybe the most dangerous thing you've done in your life?
- [177:44]
Kelsey Grammer
Well, you know what? It's never cost me. It's never cost me opportunity. It has probably cost me some jobs, but.
- [177:56]
Megyn Kelly
Has it cost you any friends?
- [177:59]
Kelsey Grammer
One. One that I know of. It was more of a recent friend who. Who. Who looks through the darkness of. Well, whatever assumptions are made.
- [178:08]
Megyn Kelly
Is it Bryan Cranston?
- [178:09]
Kelsey Grammer
No, it's not.
- [178:10]
Jim Fitzgerald
No.
- [178:12]
Kelsey Grammer
Okay.
- [178:13]
Megyn Kelly
I know he's abandoning everybody who's right of sense.
- [178:15]
Kelsey Grammer
Well, you know, I've heard that from some people, too, but, you know, I like to live where I can live, you know, and I would not actually be able to tolerate living on that. On that side of the line, so it's okay. We all have our own.
- [178:29]
Megyn Kelly
Well, how do you think Trump's doing?
- [178:31]
Kelsey Grammer
I think he's doing really well. I think he's, you know, it's annoying to a lot of people. I think he's doing a wonderful job. He is. There's a phrase in Shakespeare, he's. He puts transgression to it. It's not popular sometimes, but the man speaks his mind and you know where he stands. And I've never seen a more transparent presidency in my life. I mean, he talks every day to the press. Some people don't like it. I don't know why they don't like it, because we spent years, you know, hearing from the previous guy two or three times, and that was always just like, yeah, if you don't like gun rights being taken away from you, go find an F15 and see if you can beat us. A belligerence that was seen to come from a very weak position.
- [179:21]
Megyn Kelly
So you're feeling good, and how are you thinking about the next election, if at all, like, in 2018? Is there somebody you like right now?
- [179:28]
Kelsey Grammer
Well, I mean, the House may change, but the presidency won't, and Senate won't. So, you know, it might change, it might not. Not. Who knows? We'll just.
- [179:36]
Megyn Kelly
Well, I meant the presidential election. Like favorite J.D. vance, Marco Rubio.
- [179:42]
Kelsey Grammer
Well, I like. I actually like both of them. I think there's a. A pretty deep bench. I think there's a lot of people who actually would be pretty extraordinary on that side. There's a couple of people on the left that are. Are fairly interesting. I think they have to abandon this idea of, like, supporting criminals and saying, you have to. I was really surprised that Kamala Harris supported the idea of bailing out people who were clearly rioting. I thought that was a little odd. I don't think that holds up. Yeah, I mean, it's. We're doing the same thing, you know, now. But political seasons. Political seasons are like this. You go back to Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. I mean, but they were staging stuff outside of Wall Street. Remember that? There was like, you know, and everybody.
- [180:25]
Megyn Kelly
I mean, you're. You're from California, though. So, like, now. Now it's kind of shaping up to be possibly Gavin Newsom versus maybe a J.D. vance. I mean, is there any world in which you could get behind your current governor?
- [180:37]
Kelsey Grammer
No. No. Gavin Newsom. As I said, I'm from California. I mean, I really am from California. My grandfather told me stories of fighting fires outside of Fresno, where he was born. Black Mountain Ranch is where he was born in the Kettleman Hills. And when he was 14, he was part of a volunteer group that fought fires. He said it was the only thing that really scared him. And he served in Guadalcanal for two years. This was a man of incredible courage. But you live in California. You know, there are fires here. The. The abject failure of Gavin Newsom in his role as a governor indicts him to the point where there's no way he can be taken seriously as a candidate. I don't think, think. I don't think even most Democrats take him seriously as the next possible presidential vp. He can, you know, he can lob grenades, and he's great at doing that. He's very good at talking for about four hours and sits still saying nothing. I mean, you know, politicians have a certain gift that way. I call it the balancing subterfuge of political doublespeak. He's really good at it because, I mean, honestly, I've heard that guy talk for over four or five years, and I still don't know what he said says. I just know it's garbage. And, yeah, I have no particular state.
- [181:50]
Megyn Kelly
He doesn't actually sit still.
- [181:51]
Kelsey Grammer
No. He's got very weird, soothing issue in there. You know, when he was rocking back and forth, LA 2.0 or whatever, it just. It was a monumental masterpiece of malfeasance.
- [182:08]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah. And people are still not recovered, I think. Kelsey, I'd love to continue this when. When the race is on. Please come back and we will analyze all aspects of Gavin versus Or Kamala. Both California people versus anybody on the right. Because it's going to be a fun. Thank you for coming on.
- [182:26]
Kelsey Grammer
Thank you so much.
- [182:28]
Megyn Kelly
Oh, the pleasure was all mine. Thank you. Thank you so much. Kelsey Grammer. Check out his book about his sister Karen. It really is powerful and very open. I mean, not. Not every star as big as Kelsey Grammer will share with you this kind of story. And it's called Karen A Brother Remembers. And it's a deeply personal memoir of what happened to his sister. And you learn a lot about him. And what a charmer, right? And what a brave guy to come out with all that in today's day and age in Hollywood. We need millions more just like him. Okay. We will be back tomorrow. Thank you for listening. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly Show. No bs, no agenda and no fear.