If you could choose one word to describe the investigation into the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, what word would you use, Morgan? That is a good question.

What What one word would I use? I would use um it’s actually two words, but I you know, it deals with assumptions.

Let’s put it this way.

It’s about assumptions.

Okay, I want to get into that.

I’m very curious to have this follow-up conversation with you.

Morgan Wright is back with us.

He is the CEO and founder of the National Center for Open and Unsolved Cases.

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He’s also the editor and host of Crime Reconstructed, something that you can access on Substack and podcast as well.

Uh, former detective.

In fact, just to get us a little bit more familiar, although some of our audience will be familiar with you, Morgan, because of our conversation a few weeks ago on the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, I I want to share this so they have a little context for who you are.

You shared this this photo.

For those of us listening on podcast, just so you know, it’s a it’s a younger version of Morgan in uniform.

Morgan, would you describe what we’re looking at here? That was November of 1984.

I had just I no uh June, July, August.

Yeah, like August or October of November of 1984.

I was a police officer.

I got on the highway patrol.

That is a young Morgan Wright as a Kansas state trooper.

And actually what I posted that question on it was kind of a joke meme, but that was when Chuck Norris died and I said, “Hey, you know, as a Kansas State trooper, I had the chance to meet Chuck Norris one time.

Unfortunately, it was for 85 and a 55.

Fortunately, Mr.

Norris let me off with a warning because I I wrote everybody.

But yeah, but those we actually won um I got on in 84 and 83.

We won the best dress agency in the United States.

So that is our Kansas Highway Patrol uniform, dark blue pants with a French blue stripe down the side, French blue shirt, our campaign hat, and we had that’s what you call a Sam Brown belt.

So you’ve got your gun belt, but the Sam Brown goes across the chest.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Go back to best dressed.

Is that is that a real competition? That is a real competition.

Yeah, that’s a real competition.

Uh put on by all the uniform companies so that you could enter it.

And in 1983, you can stop patrol won the best dressed agency in the United States.

I mean, listen, fun fact, if anyone’s on Jeopardy, this is you’re welcome for that.

But who had any I had no idea no idea that there could be a little Let me point one thing out to you on this for the folks watching the video.

And this this is how far we came.

When I got on the highway patrol, there was no technology.

As was as Clint Eastwood used to say, I had the badge, I had the gun, and I had the love of Jesus in my pretty blue eyes.

That’s all I had.

I had Smith and Wesson 686, a pair of handcuffs.

And when you look on the very lefth hand side underneath my hat when I’m holding it in my hand, we didn’t even have speed loaders back then.

Those were ammo dumps.

When I when I fired, I had to eject the shells and I had to load them one at a time.

So, that’s that’s how far we’ve come to where now.

You’ve seen the loadbearing vest, the the tasers, the bodywn cameras, all the gear.

Um, but back then, uh, as they used to say down in Texas, one riot, one ranger.

That’s all I I was the only guy out sometimes for four to six counties.

So, you go to war with what you have and that’s all we had at the time.

Wow.

You know, that’s something to really tie to our conversation today because there has been so much change in technology over the last several deca decades, but good detective work stays the same in some capacities, which let’s talk a little bit about that, Morgan, related to the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, which we’re back to talk about today because it’s two months uh to the day of the realization that she went missing.

And I thought it was a good time for us to revisit.

So many members of our community really enjoyed your analysis a few weeks ago because it was grounded in your experience in detective work and also your expertise as I mentioned CEO and founder of the National Center for Open and Unsolved Cases and we have an unsolved case in front of us.

Just talk to us about detective work for a moment here.

What do you think about the detective work that has been done so far on this case? The hardest part about detective work is dealing with the which has not changed is dealing with the public expectation, the pressure.

So when you get a big case, everybody thought that when you got the uh FBI involved with Puma County and you had all this stuff going on and President Trump going, “We’re going to give you everything you need.

” There was an expectation that you’re going to be solved.

Can you imagine? And and I’m and don’t get me wrong, um I I I cannot speak to the Guthri family uh misery that they went through, the heartache and stuff.

That is, you know, that’s not what I’m talking about here because I I’ve had to deliver bad news.

I mean, I it is is the tough thing you never want to do is knock on somebody’s door 2:00 in the morning and say, “Hey, sorry.

They’re never coming home again.

” So, I don’t want to talk about that, but I want to talk about the pressure on the law enforcement officers and detectives.

Can you imagine the the pressure when you’ve got the president of the United States down through the governor, down through political officials saying we we’re going to work on this case.

We’re going to get it solved.

Can you imagine the pressure it puts on the investigators? Um and so the the crime scene analysts so now when you get the FBI involved.

So the one thing has changed is the resources, the technology.

We’ve got DNA of no such thing as the smoking gun.

And everybody wants that.

They think with the technology, we got the smoking gun.

a smoking gun, a a single piece of evidence never survives a competent defense because a competent defense can raise reasonable suspicion and doubt about a singular piece of evidence.

So, I think what’s changed is that we’ve got more and more systems out there now.

I worked at I mean I had the chance after 911 to I wrote the entire strategy for the Department of Justice.

It’s called the Law Enforcement Information Sharing Program called One DOJ.

now, but it it is how do you share information between 18,000 federal, tribal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, you know? So, that was part of the challenge.

A lot of times that’s how cases are solved.

It’s still through the hard work, the gum shoe, the detective, the leather, just knocking on doors.

I’d rather be lucky than good when it comes to big investigations like this.

There’s so much of what you’re saying that really resonates with me as a journalist because I think that’s why we actually get along quite a bit, Morgan, and and like talking to each other about some of these complicated stories because one of my missions at Smarter News is to bring journalism back to basics, similar to what you’re saying here, which is good detective work.

And from what I gathered from what you just said is is more information doesn’t mean necessarily good information.

More doesn’t necessarily mean better.

And even if you have technology or more people, if it’s not funneled or organized in the appropriate way, then it doesn’t necessarily add value.

And the same is true for information when you’re reporting, which is you could have all the different details, but if you can’t weave it together in a way that that actually leads to the authentic story or the truth, then you get to use it any way you want to, which isn’t really journalism.

So, one of the things that I as we were preparing for for our conversation, I had sent you some different interviews I was looking at and just so our audience knows this was a very frustrating process, more frustrating than I thought to try to compile well what have we actually learned in the last several weeks.

And when I get frustrated, I go back to basics and I write down on a piece of paper oldfashioned uh who, what, where, when, how, and why.

I used to do that during breaking news on live television to keep myself focused on what was important and not to get distracted.

So, in this case, the who is very easy.

84y old Nancy Guthrie.

The what is pretty easy.

She went missing, but we don’t know much more than that.

The where is her home in Arizona.

The when is January 31st/February 1st because we actually don’t really have a time stamp or an exact date still to this day.

The how and the why, we have no idea.

So, there’s some really big pieces still missing in some of the basics.

What do you think is the biggest piece that we still don’t know, Morgan? Well, let me preface it by saying you were just hitting upon it.

I I wrote in fact, if people go to my Substack again, it’s just I wrote a whole thing called informationational entropy.

What is entropy? When we move from order to disorder, how do you do that? Is when you think that if I just had more information? No, not really.

It’s addition through subtraction.

Every piece of evidence you get in that you should look at is what does this eliminate? And when we don’t eliminate, it becomes convoluted.

And Jenna, go back to your reporting days.

When was the most favorite time and day of the week if you wanted to dump a bunch of articles that you wanted to make sure the news didn’t cover? Friday at five.

Friday at five.

There you go.

And and how many times did you hear in Congress we have produced 142 million pages of documents means absolutely nothing.

So u kind of goes back to this I think.

Um you know here’s my add kicking in.

I know what you said.

Just finish the to do the question again.

I know where I was going.

I just forgot.

Well, I was just saying what you know there’s and I and I’m going to I’m going to ask the question with this disclaimer.

We know at the center of this case the most important thing is the innocent life of of Nancy Guthrie and there’s an innocent person in the center of all of what we’re going to talk about today and I don’t want to lose sight of it.

So that is the biggest missing piece.

But to you what is when I you look at the list of who, what, where, when, how, and why, right? and the puzzle that’s in front of us.

What do you think is the priority piece that we should really put at the top of the list to try to figure out next? Here’s the mistake a lot of people make out in the public.

All of these Tik Tok detectives, these influencers that went out there, they have no access to the house, so they don’t know what law enforcement knows.

So, they try and close that gap.

I say it’s very similar to Jurassic Park.

You’ve got this DNA, but you’re missing a strand.

So, you fill in that strand.

And now we get unintended consequences.

Um I think so I was on a podcast friend of mine Craig Floyd used to run the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial.

Um they do a podcast called Heroes Behind the Badge.

And one of the gentlemen on there said, “Well, let me ask you this.

Let’s say I put you in charge and I said, “I want answers in 72 hours.

What would you say?” I say, “You got the wrong guy.

” Because you can either get it right or you can get it fast, but you can’t get both.

So the here’s the biggest missing piece.

The biggest missing piece is I don’t know because we don’t know what will solve the case.

It’s the uncertainty part.

That’s where the coherence comes in.

People want a story.

Well, don’t tell me that.

I need to know.

What are we missing? Fingerprints? DNA? No.

We We don’t know because we don’t know what will break the case.

You and I were talking just right before we started.

If $1.

2 million doesn’t motivate somebody to rat out a good friend, I mean, you and I are I mean, if we rob banks together, I said, “You give me five grand, Jenna, you’re going down.

You know, you’re going to jail.

” I just want our audience to know that I expected it to be a little higher for Morgan, but I am so transparent.

I’m sorry.

Yeah.

No, actually with inflation and everything.

I thought a little higher for that price.

But think about this.

Think about think about that.

You obviously no less than one and I think no more than two because we know I to me as far as people you’re saying people involved in this.

So that would say something to you.

You’re saying of what we do know, we do know that there is a ransom that’s being there’s at least one and there’s ransom communications, right? Ransom communication.

I shouldn’t say we we know that there’s a reward and we do know something about the ransom, although very little, which I’ll get to in a moment.

Let me do this.

Morgan, let me play the sound.

It’s a little bit of a longer sound bite.

If you want me to stop it anywhere, just raise your finger and I’ll stop it.

But this is Sheriff Nanos and he’s on scene the night of u of what would be February 1st.

Remember that’s a Sunday.

Yeah.

So it’s dark.

This is poorly shot.

I found it on YouTube.

You know, I’m trying to find the very first on there statements by law enforcement so we could retrace our step.

I didn’t even see this at the time.

So I’m going to play this.

This is Sheriff Nanos on the scene apparently right near Nancy Guthri’s house.

It’s dark at night.

Here’s what he says.

We’re looking for a missing person.

Uh Nancy Guthrie.

I think we sent out a media release to all of you.

Uh came to our attention.

We got a call, a 911 call that Miss Guthrie was reported missing from her home.

That call came in around noon this earlier today.

Uh our teams came out, our search and rescue team, uh being supported by our volunteers are from Search and Rescue Association, uh from PR, from uh um Border Patrol.

They uh gave us their their um search and rescue dogs.

Uh we’ve pretty much just thrown everything at this as we can.

Uh Miss Guthrie is 84 years old.

Um and uh uh uh is not of good physical health and so naturally we have some great concerns.

Um the scene at the house also has some concerns for us as well and so that’s why we’re doing all we can the house he said the scene of the house has some concerns for us ourselves.

Right.

So that gets back into that’s why I said it’s either a burglary gone wrong or it was never a burglary.

So if it was a burglary gone wrong, then you have to ask yourself, as we talked about on the first episode, what conditions had to exist inside the house to make somebody think that abduction, kidnapping was less risky than fleeing.

But here’s the question I raised that everybody was missing to begin with because it’s really just basic, right, Jenna? It’s 2:00 in the morning.

You decide you need to get up and get a glass of water.

How do you get out of bed? I guess just normally, right? Just Well, describe.

Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.

But describe normally.

Yeah.

Uh two I would I guess two feet on the ground kind of blureyed stumbling to the kitchen.

But you fold the you fold the covers back, right? You you you fold your covers back.

You get out.

You slide out of bed.

I mean, fold my covers back.

Yes.

I thought you may said making my bed words.

No, but yes.

Fold my covers back.

Two feet on the floor.

Kind of stumbling to the kitchen, I guess, is how I would describe it.

Now, let’s say that, God forbid this doesn’t happen, but let’s say that your house is on fire, you’re not waking up for some reason, your husband comes in and grabs you out of bed.

How different does that bed look versus with that versus you getting up and going to the bathroom or going? Totally different.

Right? So, where I would have folded it back and it looks sort of calm, perhaps my husband’s still in bed.

It’s neat.

This is total chaos.

And so, that’s the part we don’t know, right? We don’t know the condition of the bedroom.

That’s the first indicator.

The second indicator we’re looking at is we know that blood came out of the front door.

And so this gets into the question, was it one person or two? So if it’s one person and she’s injured inside the house to the point where she can’t move, but she’s bleeding already, you would expect to find pools of blood inside the house showing that she was laying there as the person went to get the car, came back, and then took her out of the house.

If you have a continuous if she’s assaulted or something happens, you have a continuous trail of blood from inside the house, out the front door, out to the car, that’s gonna I think you’re gonna my hypothesis would be that would take two people because in any abduction, you need three things.

You need entry, which is either forced or consensual, control, and then egress.

For egress, you need logistics, support, and that car is the support.

That’s why I say when the blood stops at the edge of that driveway that the the the only plausible explanation is that she was put into a vehicle.

How do we know that? Because nobody’s going to carry somebody out.

Even if you’re in good shape, how far can you carry 150 lb person? You’re not.

So, it’s in a car because that is a remote area.

Okay, but hold on a second.

Let me play the rest of this because at this point, nobody knows anything really about the blood.

We’ve just heard that the crime something seems off, right? [snorts] That’s what he’s describing.

They would know inside the house if there was blood.

They already know if there’s blood on the front porch.

So the question was we don’t know as the public whether or not blood.

Yeah.

But but we know now that he they had that information, but we didn’t have that at the time.

So let me just play the rest of this.

Remain in contact with all of our local area hospitals, um our medical transport teams.

Uh so far that’s proven uh to lead nowhere.

Um, we will continue to search as we are right now with our our survey our our air assets.

Uh, we use drones and um our airplane or our helicopter.

Uh, we’ll be back at we’ll be at this all night um processing the house.

Um, and then um tomorrow morning we’ll start again with our search and rescue mission and try to regroup and see what else we can do.

Maybe we’ve missed something.

Uh, but I don’t need to tell you.

Uh, this is, um, very concerning to us.

Uh, we don’t typically, you don’t typically get the sheriff out at a scene like this.

U, but it’s very concerning, uh, what we’re learning from the house.

And so, we’ll just continue um, the detectives there, our homicide team is out right now, uh, looking at the scene as well.

Is that true, Morgan, that a sheriff normally wouldn’t be out at night for a sort of a scene like this? No, I thought that was kind of an interesting remark.

Like, what did you what what did you make of that remark? You know, that I kind of struggled with that when I heard that.

It’s like I don’t know if he’s trying to say, well, let’s be let’s be honest about something.

And I’m not trying to be disparaging, but let’s be honest about something.

If this was somebody nobody had ever heard about, would the sheriff be out there? No.

And it’s not to say that he shouldn’t be out there in a high-profile case because when you have a high-profile case, which this is is going to be right from the start, you want to make sure you manage everything that goes on, that the teams don’t get distracted, you got the right resources.

Now, again, I go back to had it not been Nancy Guthrie had it been Anna Smith and nobody knew who Anna Smith was and her kids live, you know, stayed away, would they have put the amount of resources and stuff into this? I I can’t answer that.

Um, would it the same? I mean, if I’m out on the scene, I’m working it the same way.

I’m working my heart out.

Either everybody counts or nobody counts.

But would I have got the FBI involved? Would I have got air assets? Would I have gotten border patrol? And would the sheriff would come out? So, those are questions I can’t answer because we don’t know the question.

But, it is easy to measure.

How many other cases has he been out on that are similar to where he showed up and these types of resources were brought to bear? So, I just find it strange that he had to reinforce the fact is that I don’t normally come out for these cases, which I’m not going to read anything into it, but he again he mentioned what was inside the house caused them concern.

And so, when you have a homicide detective there, one of the easiest thing, one of the easiest jumps I can make because I’ve done this.

You got blood inside of a house.

When we had a homicide of a gang members, two gang members, kidnapped a guy in his own car, ran him over in a field with his own vehicle, then dropped the vehicle off.

We had blood spatter on the car.

Patrol officer found the vehicle 5:00 in the morning, windows broke out, lights still on, saw blood spatter.

Did they call a detective right away? You bet.

Because that is the early indicators that we have a homicide here.

So, I think that what they saw inside the house was concerning enough to call in homicide.

Got it.

So that’s what that’s the little clues that we had in the hours that were following this event.

It still was at that time sort of a local story.

But by the next day, now it’s not because now Nancy Guthrie is missing.

It’s national.

So then we have the official press conference and and when I say official, uh we have now what’s looking more like a traditional interaction with the media by law enforcement.

So now Sheriff Nanos is back in an office.

He’s given a little bit just some context here.

He gave a little bit of an update as to what had transpired over the last several hours.

He mentioned a little bit, by the way, Morgan, of how much his team is working.

You know, that they’ve been up all night.

Uh, and he he also was t he talked a little policy about surveillance video in the area and and looking through some of that and why that was important.

But then he also was answering some questions.

You had something to say before I get into play the video.

Is there something you want to add? And let me tell you, here’s what’s interesting.

Who is the press secretary for President Trump? Carolyn Levit.

Everybody knows it.

Who who comes out and faces the press almost all the time? It’s the press secretary.

In large agencies, when you look at LAPD, the NYPD, you’ve got a public information officer.

You got somebody whose job it is to take the message and go out and be the public face.

So, when the sheriff does that, uh, again, a lot of people have their own theories about the sheriff and their own opinions.

But here’s what I will tell you.

Even sheriffs who are politicians are not public information officers.

There is an art to working with the press as you know too from doing this for a long time.

You can work with good people and you can work with people that just don’t understand what you need to do to feed the beast.

And so I think part of the part of the issue here and let’s get to this press conference is that I never I nobody knows I I would ask people everybody knows Sheriff Nanos.

I said who’s the public information officer? Nobody knows.

Yes.

And it is interesting and typically for our audience that PIO officer so PIO a public information officer uh would usually come to the microphone says is everybody set up you kind of see and even if you don’t see that as a member of the public that’s assigned to the broadcast channels that someone’s going to be coming live so get yourself ready.

It’s a way to check the microphones.

They may give names.

Here’s who’s going to speak.

Uh if you need to be on a list here’s the list.

They’ll give you a little information first and it’s just uh a way that they’re trying to be in control of the information so they also can cut you off when they don’t want to talk anymore because they’re the one that’s going to jump in front of the mic and be like, “Sheriff, thank you so much.

That’s enough.

” So, it is a little protection for the agency as as well.

I mean, it is definitely there for protection.

Well, PIO’s know the know know the traps that are set by the press because right um what do you have to say to the family about your failure to do X? You know, right? You know, we we all see these traps that happen.

I’ve testified in Congress.

same kind of traps there.

So that’s what a PIO does.

PIO is designed to keep the sheriff or the the chief or whatever out of trouble by managing the interactions with the press, making sure that the press conference doesn’t go off the rails and you don’t fall victim to these traps.

So that’s why I found it interesting.

I never saw the PIO and and still haven’t by the way accord from what I’ve seen.

So here’s here’s the the Q&A.

The the sheriff’s talked for about five or six minutes.

Here’s the Q&A and I want our audience to really hear some of the questions and think about whether some of these questions asked the first day have been answered.

We just want to find her and and bring her back safe.

Sheriff, you mentioned uh that she didn’t just walk out, but was is there any like additional information that you can give us on what may have alluded to this being a crime scene? You know, I wish I could.

I I I really do.

I know that everybody wants to know certain things, but I can’t do that for the just it it it would be inappropriate at this time.

Are there any signs of breaking and entering or any force entry, anything like that? I’m not I I [clears throat] again don’t want to get into that.

David, do you can you see anything here? you um at this time it’s like still a very active and investigation um that we there were circumstances on scene um that that we believe are are suspicious in nature I think is the best way to put it uh but we can’t really get into a whole lot of details with that now do you believe that this was targeted or they just happened to hit Savannah Ducker’s mouth or if this was just random we don’t know that we don’t we we we look at all of that but we just don’t You stop there for a second, Jenna.

Go ahead.

So, they’re they’re asking a very important question right there because nobody’s really talking about is it a burglary that got wrong.

That was a narrative that got spun up.

They were saying, “Was this targeted or not?” And he doesn’t he doesn’t know the answer to that whether it was targeted.

And um because they obviously don’t have the photographs, which it looks like you the offender may have been at.

That’s why January 11th becomes an important date.

Were they there before? If that’s the case, and here’s why human behavior is so important to understand.

When we talked about terrorism, when you when you look at I worked with my friends, I had a couple friends on the counterterrorism command, Scotland Yard, New Scotland Yard that worked the 7705 train bombings.

When they went back and looked at them, they did the same thing many terrorists do.

The 911, Lashkar, Taiba, the attacks on Mumbai.

You do broad target selection, then you do initial reconnaissance, then you do specific target selections, rehearsals, final reconnaissance, actions on the objective.

So what is this? If in fact [snorts] that picture, again, it doesn’t matter what you believe.

It only matters what must be true.

But if it is true that that is picture is from January 11th, which it looked like a different moonlight up there and stuff, that shows targeting.

It shows targeting because that’s what human behavior does.

And you you think about this, you do reconnaissance.

You’re out there reconnaissancing the area.

You’re looking.

The other thing you’re looking for, uh, if you’re up there like that, were there any reports of a suspicious person in the neighborhood? That’s going to let you know at that time of night, is the camera triggering? Is it sending an alert somewhere? So, for all of these people who think who make the assumption, like you said, what’s one word? All of these assumptions that people made that the offender is is an amateur, he’s not a pro.

Okay, here’s my question to you folks.

Where is he then? You put the full weight of the FBI, you’ve got a $1.

2 million reward.

If he’s not good, why haven’t we caught him? But what is the motivation still, Morgan? That’s still whoever this person is, whatever skill level, and we’re going to go back to some of the images and some of those dates that you mentioned and connect some of those dots in a moment.

What possibly is the motivation here? Is it a couple million dollars in ransom? Are you going to go through all of this for that? Like, what do you think is at the center of all of this? Well, look, in homicide cases, you don’t have to prove prove motive.

um the the the um that the grief book case, the recent I think her name was Corey Reese and and m murdered her husband Eric.

Um they were never they in fact they were n never able to prove how the fentanyl got into a system.

They said it might have been a Moscow mul they could never prove it but they had enough constraints and circumstantial evidence and so they were able to do that and what was the motive? A lot of people say well the motive was money.

Yeah, but the real break in that case was a search in a new phone.

She got it was a burner phone.

She was searching, does fentanyl show up in your system? What goes on the death certificate? That move from motive to u you know into execution.

So the reason I say that is in this case, what what what could be the possible motive? Well, here’s the only way I can frame it.

If it were a kidnap for ransom, the motive is really clear.

What does human behavior tell us? It’s for money.

Is she is she it would not take much for people to know that Nancy Guthrie lives there.

Her daughter is Savannah Guthrie.

NBC makes it’s easy to search for it and see there makes a lot of money, right? So that is if it’s an abduction, a kidnap for ransom.

So the question then you have to ask yourself is then what is the purpose then of taking somebody out of the house if it’s not for ransom? We can’t answer that question right now.

And that’s the motive is the biggest thing.

That’s the story everybody wants.

They tell me the story daddy.

you know, the bedtime story, you know, once upon a time and then everybody lived happily ever after.

We’re not anywhere close.

We don’t even know where the end of the beginning is right now.

Um, does that surprise you? Does it surprise you that we’re still at that place? It’s it surprises me with the full weight of the FBI and and the analytics that they can do.

What And see to me that was one thing I’m very concerned about the relationship even though the sheriff says, “Hey, we work good with the FBI.

” They insisted on sending it to their lab down in Florida when it should have, in my opinion, gone to the FBI because they’re world class.

Now, the the the lab down in Florida, they can do what the FBI doesn’t do, which they call SNIP profiles, SNIP, SNIP.

You use that for the DNA.

That’s for investigative genetic genealogy.

The FBI does not provide SNIP profiles.

But to do a full workup, you have to have what they call 20 short-term repeat tandem markers, STR, short tandem repeat markers.

That’s to get a full DNA comparison.

13 you can get a a a potential match, but you have to have a minimum of 13, but 20 gets you a full match.

That’s what the FBI does.

This is the people can say all they want.

You know, I know administrations come and go, people dog on the directors, but let me tell you, the people in the labs, the agents out there, they work their heart outs.

These folks are worldclass experts at doing this.

I’m just surprised that that didn’t go there because that would have accelerated the pace of the information.

Why can’t it just go both places? Why can’t you just send it to both labs? uh number one, chain of custody.

Number two, you want to make sure that you know um the other thing too is that there’s only so much DNA to test.

So you have to be careful about how much is tested because DNA is even though you can do this thing um there’s two things called RFLP and PCR.

And the guy who actually invented um the ability to basically replicate DNA, he was driving in Oregon on a road one day and it came to him and he pulled off the side of the road and he wrote it down on basically the back of an envelope and it got him a Nobel Prize.

But that was how we were able to take small amounts of DNA and replicate them.

So there’s RFLP and PCR.

Um but all of these things we’ve learned and then we’ve learned uh epithelial cells, touch DNA.

We’ve heard now all about touch DNA, right? So but my point is is that it’s chain of custody.

You never want to you never want to divide your evidence up with something like that, especially when it’s cerological.

Uh you want to ensure chain of custody that you do your testing on one thing, it’s done so that we can make sure nothing was introduced.

And then if they want to send a snip profile, then you can send a portion of that down to there.

But from an evidentiary standpoint, um my I if I if I’d been running this, I would have made sure everything went to the FBI first because guess what? Investigative genetic genealogy is a long-term play.

That’s you know, you’re looking what I need is immediate.

What I need is something immediate right now that I can put into CODUS to see, do we have a match between any DNA at the scene and what’s listed in Cotus? because then that gives you a lead that gives you something you can follow.

A familiar DNA investigative g gen genetic genealogology.

Now you might get lucky um on some of the cases uh like the Coberger case that took three or four months.

The Golden State Killer took quite a while.

Uh there’s a case a lot of people don’t know about.

April Tinsley, young girl was kidnapped and murdered from Indiana.

Um it took them 30 years.

B the killer was taunting them, but it took them 30 years to finally get some uh DNA.

But when they did off of the one of the things, it was very simple cuz they got the DNA and uh it was the brother of the suspect.

They could tell by the DNA.

That was a quick solve.

I mean, that was days, right? So, we may if we get the right DNA, we might do that.

But this is the the most perplexing thing about this is with all the attention it’s got is that to some people it doesn’t appear you’re farther along.

And here’s where the here’s where the myth of the smoking gun comes in.

Well, we want this.

What they don’t understand is the nons sexy part of doing detective work goes back to your original question is if you do this right, you’re eliminating a lot of stuff.

You’re bringing things in, you’re putting them into the frame.

What do we eliminate? Right? You can make a case based on constrained analysis as opposed to we have the smoking gun.

DNA indicates a new suspect in the case.

Now, everybody goes, suspects are downstream artifacts.

You should never name a suspect until you’ve gone through all of these other steps.

But yet, what do we want? You know, we have to name the bad guy.

What do they do in every true crime TV? Who’s the suspect? You know, who’s the bogeyman? We got to name them.

And that’s the trap people fall into is naming somebody too soon.

Absolutely.

We don’t want to name them too soon.

I understand human nature to want justice to be done, right? Which is that these people or this person is held accountable for something that uh terrible that they did.

Let me just share.

I’m sure everyone’s seen this.

I know we talked about it last time, Morgan, but we have the the camera footage again that was captured on this Ring camera of sorts.

Uh, and scary as it is, I’m going to show it.

Our audience has seen it probably too many times.

But what’s interesting about this footage is a in the weeks that followed after those first press conferences here we get what we think could be a break which is from the FBI suddenly discovering with the use of working with technology companies this extra data that we didn’t know was there.

What’s interesting and you mentioned January 11th uh I also just want to mention for everybody January 24th.

These are the weekends before the weekend that we believe this crime happened.

We know that this crime happened which was January uh 31st going to February 1st.

So Saturday January 31st Nancy Guthri is dropped off at home.

Sunday February 1st it’s discovered that she’s missing but we have a lot of hours there.

We don’t know exactly what took place.

So in what now appears there’s a couple things a few of these things are hard to put together is that there uh is a question about when some of this data was from there.

The assumption was this is the night of the crime.

And then there was, well, wait a minute, maybe there was extra footage that wasn’t from exactly the same date and it could have been from a couple weekends earlier, which would suggest premeditation of casing the property, but it’s a little confusing and those those weekend dates are kind of thrown out and thrown about.

Uh, what do you make of those different reports, Morgan? What do what does our audience need to know about that? So, the initial video that we talked about about the offender coming up with a vegetation, I think that’s pretty clear because one of the things they did and having taught computer crime before and I actually spent a year training the FBI on computer crime investigations, now the students become the master.

But, um, you get enough of the metadata out of there so even though she didn’t have a subscription, they know by collecting it, they know when these blobs of video were collected and then you can start narrowing it down.

So, I have high confidence and so do they is that when they said that this was happening that night from 1:47 to we know that when the phone tried to ping her low power Bluetooth pacemaker and it didn’t that was 228 that’s 47 minutes.

So, you know, I think and one of the other things I wrote about too is first thing you got to do is exhaust the timeline.

It’s all about the timeline.

If you’re saying if you’re saying that Jenna like you and I robbed a bank and I said I wasn’t there.

I was 40 states.

So, you know, I was four states away, but the video shows me walking out the bank with you.

That’s physically impossible, you know.

So, physics deals with the timeline, right? So, we can’t we can’t violate the laws of physics.

And so, in this case, I think they they for the FBI to come out and say, “We’re highly confident this is the time frame.

” That goes back into the computer, that goes back into the storage, that goes back into Nest and Google because they know how these systems work.

So, when they say we can narrow it down to this range, they can.

The problem was since it didn’t have a subscription, it wasn’t easy to find because it wasn’t in her account.

She had no account.

So, they had to do it’s like using a match to hunt in a forest for a pin uh a needle.

But they found it.

And so, that gets back to um looking for other things that could be some unique artifacts that they say, “Okay, what else do we have?” So, do they Here’s the other question I get to.

Well, the FBI’s got more than what they’re releasing.

How do you know? I mean, I ask people, “How do you know?” All I know is what they say.

I don’t have access to their uh evidence response team.

I don’t have access to their case files, their 302s or the sheriff’s.

They’ve released what they released and they to their credit as soon as they got it, they released it.

They learned the lesson too of the Boston Marathon bombers.

Ed Davis, the commissioner of the Boston police, a friend of mine, did a podcast with him.

They were debating whether or not to release the pictures of Zhokar uh Sernay, the Sernay brothers.

Um I tell you, you know, another famous case where they debated releasing it was the uniomber, Ted Kazinski.

They had his manifesto.

Should we release this? They debated, you know, adnauseium.

I think one of the lessons we learned is get it out to the public.

You know why? Because it prevents speculation.

It prevents the white panel van problem with the DC sniper.

And it gives them something concrete to go on.

And by the way, if you’re looking for somebody, somebody somebody out there, I’m confident, has a pretty good idea who that person is.

Just the same way you could see your husband dressed up the same way, but walking in and you know by the way he walks and carries himself, that’s my husband, right? Same thing with your kids, right? So somebody out there knows who this person is that by the trade craft, by what they carry, what they did.

So I think that was the thing of getting it out there.

Okay.

But you know what? When you say that, Morgan and and you hear Savannah Guthri’s plea from her family for someone to do the right thing.

I think one of the things that surprises me is that even in the news when you cover these awful cases, there are these moments when you see the goodness in human nature and you see that person that could do the right thing do it.

And the fact that no one is saying anything still goes back to what you were saying about the ransom amount, which is did what what does that mean about the number of people that knew about this incident taking place? And is it just two people? Is it three people? Could that be it? Like I still believe, and maybe I’m too optimistic.

I’ll be I’ll be uh very curious to see what our audience thinks about this that I still believe that someone will come forward and do the right thing.

Am I too naive in that, Morgan? Is that very seldom that cases are solved that way? Is it too Is that too Hollywood? Maybe too Hollywood.

Well, it’s it’s I don’t know.

Um it’s not too naive.

I mean, it’s you hope for the best.

But that’s why there’s good people like you out there.

That’s why there’s good people like in your audience.

They hope that people do the right thing.

Um in this case, as I said, it’s no less than one because that’s the obvious fact, right? One person had to be We know there’s one person on there, one person had to take her out.

No more than two.

There’s an old saying in the intelligence community.

Wait, three.

Well, I I think because of um the the mechanics of how it was structured.

In other words, you have one person and and the other thing too we’re looking at too I did some work with the signals analysis what’s called adte.

So you have the cell site locator information that the FBI does but then there’s another thing called adtech every and that’s irrespective of your carrier.

Every mobile app has apps on there and that sends data back to the app provider and that DAP provider sells that data to data aggregators who then can use it to determine hey do we have any pings here.

So they had good trade craft from at least the standpoint is that very little from this standpoint of signals analysis.

I worked with experts in this field.

People that do threeletter agency stuff can’t come up with anything.

And it’s possible the way how you get around that walkie-talkies.

You don’t bring your phone into the area.

So no less than one.

I think no more than two.

And here’s why.

It’s hard enough to keep a secret.

How many times when you were covering the news, Jenna, did you hear we have a leak of classified information or somebody, you know, we have a whistleblower, right? So, anytime more than one person knows information, it’s not a secret anymore.

It’s a shared secret.

And shared secrets are easy to, you know, they’re easy to get to.

That’s why so many reporters have good sources and they can get this kind of information.

I think when you get to three, you only see one person on there.

Um, I know some people say, “Well, I saw like a phone down here and it looks like a lot of good assumptions, supposition, but we still don’t have any hard facts, hard visual facts at least to prove that.

” So, [gasps] again, it’s not it’s not the truth.

It’s a hypothesis.

The reason I say it’s a hypothesis, I work no less than one, no more than two, because that allows me then to constrain and test my model here, which is somebody drove the car up, they took her into the car, and then they drove off.

One person for control, one person for egress.

Okay, so doing away with the hypothesis for a second and just based on the information that we do know of what has been precedent, how much time does a traffic camera record and hold? How much time do we have to get cell phone data before it disappears? Is it always available? Because still to this day, we do not have cell phone data that’s indicating anything in particular or traffic cameras or public cameras of any type that have tracked any sort of car in the middle of the night.

Well, they they have some folks that come out said, “Hey, here’s some Ring video.

One of the neighbors saw a car speeding by at 2:36 a.

m.

” Really? I didn’t hear that.

Yeah.

So there’s there’s a somebody had a Ring video shows a white car speeding by the house at about 2:36 a.

m.

which where it was at about 2.

1 miles away.

Time distance physically.

Yeah.

Phys from a physics standpoint.

Yeah.

It’s it’s possible to do that.

Um, and to your point, it it depends because the other thing I did when I was looking at this, I said, “Where are the we have the traffic cameras now, how how long they stored like Arizona a U AZ a DOT, you know, 511, they’ve got cameras around there.

How how much they store it as a function of the state’s record retention policy.

It’s not it’s not an issue of technology.

In other words, if you had unlimited money, you could just store unlimited video, but states are run by budgets, so you can only store so much.

So, it would have been it, you know, and it depends.

you go back is it 24 48 hours.

Um there are trail cameras out there.

Um some of these folks have uh in fact when I looked at the Sonoran Desert Trail Coalition put up its first two cameras at one of the major intersections when I did a whole study.

It’s called the egress analysis.

How many different ways out of there? There’s only about five ways out of her neighborhood to get to major arteries to get you out of there.

And that was one of the locations.

So um how long it’s stored is really a function.

It’s each individual.

I mean, it’s like how long do you store paperwork? You know, people say, “Well, you got to keep receipts for 10 years.

” You know? Yeah.

Too long.

Too long.

[laughter] But at some point, what do you do? You purge, you shred, right? So, it’s interesting.

I just think that’s an interesting part of it that you go back to.

Well, where where can we actually find some some facts? Here’s here’s a neighbor that just I had an interview with Nancy Grace.

His name is Jeff Lame.

He lives apparently four houses down from Nancy Guthrie uh who was very kind about his description of his neighbor who he used to see occasionally on the street uh as he was walking his dog.

He is the neighbor that’s talked about the behavior of his dogs on the night of January 31st but also a previous night as well where he says his dogs are very deep sleepers but then wanted to get up and go outside.

And so just want everyone to hear because we haven’t really heard that much from neighbors.

I want I thought this would be interesting for our audience to consider.

Well, preceding the event, there were some evenings where our dogs woke up, which was highly unusual.

We don’t know if there’s a correlation.

Uh I know the FBI and the investigators have asked for cameras and camera footage.

All the neighbors have shared camera footage and any recollection they have.

But the next day, we were surprised when there were helicopters above flying through the neighborhood, a large response of of sheriff’s department, a volunteer crew of community members who do a rescue in the mountains of uh hikers who came and scoured the neighborhood.

And initially, we were wondering what was going on.

And then we found out it was our neighbor, which obviously is horrible.

What time was that, Jeff Lame? Gosh, it was I I’m working from memory.

It may have been a little bit past 1:00 a.

m.

So, he said that this happened not just in the night of the crime, but as he mentioned in a few of weekends before that, and he actually has a camera in his backyard, so he could see himself doing this and he went back.

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