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I’m still here in Tucson, Arizona investigating the Nancy Guthrie case since Nancy Guthrie just disappeared, vanished out of her home right outside Tucson.

Here still doesn’t make any sense.

How does an 84 yearear-old woman just vanish? It’s the reason that I am still digging into this every day.

Um, and in this episode, something really interesting and unusual.

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I have have an insider source close to the investigation, uh, who is now speaking out about several different things, including issues that happened early on with the investigation, specifically when the first set of investigators showed up at Nancy Guthri’s house.

I’m going to get into it in this episode of Brian Enson Investigates.

All right.

Hey guys.

So, yeah, I’m still here in Arizona investigating the Nancy Guthrie case.

Um, and you guys know, I mean, I’ve spent so much time here.

I’ve gotten to know a lot of people in the community.

I’ve gotten to know a lot of people in law enforcement.

I’ve made a lot of new friends.

Uh, and there’s a lot of people who want to speak out who are frustrated with the investigation, including the person you are about to hear from.

Uh, this is a source close to the investigation who wanted to speak, is frustrated, uh, with the sheriff.

um and frustrated with some things that happened early on in the investigation.

Um and uh obviously I have to conceal this person’s identity because they would definitely get in trouble for speaking openly with me.

Um again, this is just a clip.

I’m going to have the full interview, which is really eye opening, coming up tonight and whenever depending on when you’re watching this, it’s Thursday night at 10:00 Eastern on NewsNation.

Uh, but I wanted to play you this part because this source explains what really was shocking about the early parts of this investigation when investigators first arrived at Nancy Guthri’s house that weekend.

Um, the first team that arrived and how inexperienced this person says that they were.

Um, listen to this.

from what you know were the initial people who responded and experienced.

The people that were there on the scene um were not tenure homicide detectives.

They didn’t have a lot of experience in homicide at that point.

Uh to include the supervisor who um from my understanding never investigated homicide before being installed as the supervisor for the the homicide unit.

So wait, so the supervisor who first responded to Nancy Guthri’s house had never investigated a homicide, correct? How is that possible? Well, you have decisions made by people that will install friends and people that can do stuff for them opposed to people that are there on their merit and can do the job correctly.

So obviously two interesting things that the person tells me there.

first of all that the supervisor had no homicide experience, had never worked a homicide before, which could explain why the scene was cleared so quickly and other issues that happened early on.

Uh, and then also the fact that this source says that the sheriff put people in leadership roles based more on loyalty and less on merit and less on people with um, experience.

I reached out to Sheriff Nanos to get a comment on all of this.

Uh, as of the recording of this video, I haven’t heard back as specifically about some of these things that were brought up.

Again, I’m going to have the full um interview coming up later on NewsNation.

Um, but uh, it’s eye opening.

I mean, you know, as you peel back the layers to what was going on behind the scenes with the Nancy Guthrie investigation.

Um, I want to talk more about all of this with my friend and a retired FBI agent, uh, Steve Moore.

Steve, thank you for joining me as always.

I I really appreciate I know you’ve you’ve been busy, so that’s why you’re in your car, so thanks for for hopping on with me.

I wanted to get your reaction to this interview that we did with this uh source that’s very close to the Nancy Guthrie investigation.

Um, one thing the person told us is that the people who responded to NY’s house initially were were the detectives were inexperienced.

Specifically, the homicide supervisor had never worked a homicide before.

Um, does that surprise you? I would wonder how that person was put in charge of homicide if they’ve never worked a homicide case.

Um to me that sounds like a political um appointment.

I but I you know I don’t know the facts but never heard of something like that.

uh you work your way up through and the ones who rise to the top uh whoever they may be uh generally are the ones you want working homicide and because the job of the homicide supervisor is not just to click stats and stuff like that.

Their job is to monitor the cases of the investigators and make sure that they are following cogent leads, that they have a good strategy for the case, and that they’re not going off the deep end on on, you know, rabbit trails.

And so, how can you do that if you’re the one who somebody else should be uh, you know, monitoring? Yeah, I would think the supervisor by definition would be someone with a lot of experience.

Yeah.

And you know, it’s funny in the FBI, uh, there’s a lot of, uh, there’s a lot of consternation about sometimes agents just off probation putting in for supervisory positions when, you know, most agents on on competitive squads.

Um, first of all, they don’t want to be supervisors.

They want to work the cases.

And secondarily, uh it’ll take you 10 years, uh working your way up through um through the skills through through, you know, you have to make cases.

Somebody who’s never made a case on the homicide squad is not going to be considered for the supervisor.

So then you have you have to wonder why somebody who’s never even worked a case got made a supervisor.

One thing that this source said in the interview was that the sheriff, and this is a basically a quote, put friends in positions of power versus people uh based on merit.

So friends instead of um people based on merit.

And I know you were in the FBI where I don’t think it’s as political because you don’t have elected sheriffs and that kind of thing, but is did that ever happen in the FBI? And when you would work with local municipalities on cases, did you see things like that happen where someone would get a job because they were friends with someone instead of, you know, merit and how much experience they had? I’m I’m not going to say it never happened in the bureau, but it was rare.

Um, and the reason is that there’s a protocol.

You can’t just in the FBI say, “Oh, we need a supervisor here.

I like him.

He’s going to do it.

” What you have to do is because it has to be posted nationally to every single FBI agent who’s eligible uh so that they know that the job is is up for posting.

People can have a lot to say about whether this person is skilled enough to do this job or whether they have the experience.

Um, but one person generally cannot point and say that’s the guy.

Um, unless they’re very high up in the bureau and uh, I just didn’t see that happen a lot.

I’ve seen it more in local police agencies, but again, something like LAPD, they don’t they have protocols, too.

And while I’m sure it happens every once in a while, you really have to jump through a lot of hoops to uh to fight the bureaucracy to uh get to get a friend in in a position.

Uh and and what you’re describing to me, the allegation that the sheriff used uh or posted friends to positions that maybe they weren’t qualified for.

I can’t I don’t know the sheriff and I wasn’t in that department.

I can’t allege that that’s what happened.

But it fits the scenario as to why somebody without homicide experience would be the supervisor of homicide.

Well, and I think too with sheriff’s offices, especially kind of smaller ones, and and you know, Puma County isn’t that small, but um you know, when a new sheriff comes in and there’s a contentious election, I would imagine they want people in in positions of power who they feel have loyalty.

Um and there’s a lot of people in the department who didn’t support that person when they ran.

That kind of thing, I think, happens.

you know, it’s very it gets political and and I’ve never I’ve never existed in that ecosystem uh as an FBI agent.

Um but I think if I listen if if I elected sheriff and there are pe some people in certain positions who don’t like me and I don’t want them to stay in those positions, I get that.

I might remove them from those positions simply because I think they might sandbag me or or not be not loyal to me, but might sabotage me, which would mean that they’re sabotaging the department.

Uh so what I would do if I needed to replace somebody like that is I guarantee you I would find somebody who uh knew what the heck they were doing so that my department looked good.

operated well.

If you pick people who are good at their jobs to work for you, they’ll make you look good.

If you pick people who can’t do their jobs, regardless of the reason, it’s going to bite you in the ass.

How important is it to have experienced people from the very beginning stages like it’s something with the Nancy Guthrie case, the people who first showed up, the first homicide team that showed up to investigate.

I mean, obviously the deputy who’s working the call when it first comes in, it’s a weekend.

Maybe that person doesn’t have a ton of experience, but you know, when they call in the detectives, now that we’re hearing those people were not experienced, how important is it that they have some experience in in the early stages, right? When you walk into a scene like that, that’s crucial.

That is absolutely crucial.

Um, it is like uh it’s hard to explain.

All the evidence is fresh.

All the evidence is right in front of you.

The decisions you make at that point are going to either send you on the right track and uh accelerate the investigation of the case or they’re going to ruin evidence and send you off in directions that completely derail an investigation for several days or worse.

the people who get there first can make the difference between solving a case and never solving it.

And and why is that? Again, it’s because the evidence is fresh.

The people I mean I mean literally the people are probably closer by than they will be tomorrow.

They’re probably trying to flee.

I mean, people leave, you know, if you were on if this crime happened five or 50 feet, you know, north of the of the Mexican border, the first person there would make sure that they took a look at every person who was crossing the border that day because that would be something that you could only do right immediately.

Um, evidence is perishable.

It’s like sushi.

And you know, the first guy that gets to the restaurant can eat the sushi.

The people that get there the next day that where it was left out on the table, it’s not going to be good for them.

Is um Yeah, that that’s interesting to think about.

You know, you always hear like the first 48 hours are the most important at least.

I’ve always heard that.

Is that true? Is that actually true? It’s it’s uh more than I mean, it’s tighter than the first 48.

every hour that the case goes unsolved um is exponentially more diff difficult.

Um when I worked um I remember one school shooting the guy got out got away carjacked somebody and he was out somewhere uh in the in this uh Los Angeles San Frernando Valley.

We thought he he stayed in the San Fernando Valley for 8 n 10 hours and we were working him the whole time.

Had we been able to get one more break, we could have gotten him before he left town.

That those first eight hours were crucial and unfortunately we couldn’t turn him in that time.

uh and somebody died eventually uh in those eight hours.

And you know, you think about that constantly.

What could I have done differently? How could I have got got some got something going? But every single hour is crucial.

Yeah.

like with Nancy Guthrie and it’s always, you know, it’s easy to Monday morning quarterback these things, but the fact that our source is saying that the supervisor had no previous homicide experience, it just makes you wonder if you had experienced people that got in there quickly.

Um, would they have canvased the neighborhood faster? Would they have I feel like there’s a lot of things.

Yeah, you take charge.

You the first one there takes charge.

You say, “I need a perimeter setup.

I need a perimeter set up uh at all the roads that’ll come in and out of this place.

I need witnesses interviewed right now.

I want people who are who were here at the time of the crime.

I want you canvasing every house right now.

None of this stuff was done.

And and what if you came up, you know, you were flying somewhere across country and you get into the airline or the captain says, “Oh, is this a button?” Oh, yeah.

Hey, uh congratulate me everybody.

this is my first time flying a jet, you’d get off the plane.

Uh, in the same way, if you’ve got somebody who has never worked a homicide before, and they’re the one who responds, I mean, I’m not saying that they’re not going to be an intelligent person, a good cop, anything like that.

I’m not are arguing that.

I’m saying that experience has uh has a quality of its own.

Are there issues? You know, hopefully one day they make an arrest on this case.

Do these things become an issue when this goes to court? Uh very easily can be uh because if the person made uh investigative evidence uh investigative errors, then they would have made um um errors, legal errors very possibly.

uh you know if if you don’t know how to pick up or or for instance if you pick up a piece of evidence and in doing so you compromise it uh then you’ve really hurt your I mean you you’ve lost that evidence.

All you have to do is pick up one thing with your own hands without a glove and um you can almost guarantee you’ve lost that.

And you know I really need to say I’m not anti- police.

I mean, I’ve got a a brother-in-law, a cousin-in-law.

I’ve got my dad was an FBI agent.

I was an FBI agent.

I bleed blue.

I want law enforcement to be run and and handled by the best police officers out there, the best investigators, the best detectives, the best agents.

I want the best because that makes that lifts the entire law enforcement community.

uh up and so I don’t enjoy saying these kind of things.

I don’t enjoy making statements that might cast a a certain department or certain individuals in in less than a a stellar light.

Um, I’m I’m But if you don’t if you’re not willing to say the king has no clothes, you know, then you’re just you’re just playing along with them.

And um, you’ve got to be truthful about it in order for law enforcement to be exceptional.

Yeah.

And I’ve never been like an anti- cop reporter.

That’s never been my shtick.

I’ve always been like a kind of a pro law enforcement person, honestly.

And uh I’ve always had good sources with police through all the local markets that I worked at and now you know with my national gig.

So I don’t you know like being crit criticizing people either especially when there’s an ongoing investigation and I put a lot of thought into this interview and things that we’re not reporting because we don’t want to um you know influence the investigation at all and obviously we want them to figure out what happened to Nancy.

But I I do think the media has to uh hold like sheriffs and officials accountable in situations like this.

Oh, listen.

First of all, I I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you if I thought you were anti-law enforcement.

I I you know, like they say, I have a choice in the people I podcast with.

And um so so um yes, I don’t think that for a moment.

Uh but journalists and the media, not that it always happens, but they have a responsibility to hold law enforcement accountable.

Um I I was very involved in the Amanda Knox case in Italy that you had a rogue prosecutor uh just locking up this innocent American girl for a rape and murder.

He he arrested a woman for a rape.

Um and she spent four years in an Italian prison while the Italian and the British media said, “Oh, this is what they said.

This is what they said.

Oh, what an evil person she was.

” When they should have been saying, “Prove the evidence.

” Because when we finally got the evidence looked at, it was all bogus.

And so the family of the murdered girl never got the the closure that they deserved.

They never knew for sure who killed their daughter and raped their daughter, even though the evidence was very clear.

Um, and Amanda spent four years in a prison for a crime she didn’t do.

Uh, and and the media owned a part of that over there.

So when the media is willing to to say the hard things and not because they hate police, not because they want to defund, not because they think police are thugs or anything like that.

When the media wants to go after that small fraction of people who shouldn’t be in law enforcement, I think that’s necessary.

And also, I don’t know if you heard, but we’ve reported on this before, there was a a no confidence vote for this sheriff.

Um, where 100% of the deputies in the union voted that they are not confident.

Uh, and and there’s about three a little more than 300 deputies in the union out of roughly 400 um, you know, with the department from what I’m told.

So, and look, I I’ve like I said, I’ve covered other sheriff’s offices where a lot of times the unions have issues with the sheriff, like just because they want more pay.

You know, the unions are always kind of having issues, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen where it’s a 100% no confidence vote.

I don’t think I’ve seen that either.

Um and again um I I have to tell you my my bottom belief is that uh 99 and% of of law enforcement are awesome people trying to do the right thing.

So when you get, you know, when you get 100%, which is almost all of them, when you get 100% of the people voting, um, that’s a pretty strong indictment.

And, you know, I’ve had supervisors and special agents in charge that I didn’t particularly enjoy working for or didn’t agree with, but there were always people who who would say, “Nah, you got to see it this way, Steve.

you don’t, you know, you don’t understand the whole thing.

And while they may not convince me, it was proof that it wasn’t 100% of the people who thought you were a fool.

Um, not that I’m saying that they said he was a fool, but um 100% is 100%.

Yeah.

No, it was I think it really made um a statement.

Um so something else, Steve, uh is that we were able to confirm that in NY’s house there were no signs of foul play.

Uh, you know, there was the blood outside on the front steps, which we’ve seen, but inside the house, no signs of foul play that they were able to find.

What do you make of that? She went uh she went voluntarily.

Um, even even an 80 a woman in her 80s can can provide um a lot of resistance.

I mean, ask policemen who have to respond to uh incidents with people who have cognitive issues in in nursing homes.

Uh they fight.

They they they grab things and throw them and swing things.

And so to me, that likely means that she went she at that point was cooperative.

She was probably terrified, but she was cooperating at that point, which means she had some control of her fear, which is comforting at that point.

But, um, that’s and again, I don’t have the full view of everything, but every crime scene I’ve looked at where somebody was attacked in their room, it looked like a tornado went through.

Yeah.

And and I said no signs of hell play.

what what I should have said the exact words that I was given were which is kind of the same but no signs of an assault no signs of an assault is what what I was told assault or struggle or anything like that and and uh I’ve I don’t think I’ve ever seen a room where there was an altercation between just two people uh where there w wasn’t broken glass on the floor so they may have said something to her like just be calm you know we’re going to get money and then you’re going to be free.

I you know what I mean? Maybe there was some kind of conversation.

Yeah.

I I you know I don’t know what they would have said to give her the feeling that cooperating was her best uh option.

Maybe it’s just her character to cooperate.

Um I don’t know.

Uh I you know and and I you know I I can let my mind wander a little bit but I don’t want to do that without seeing other evidence that they have.

When you go in to investigate a crime scene like these first people that showed up in this supervisor who were told had no homicide experience when there’s no sign of an assault, does that make it more difficult? Cuz I I mean just as a as a normal guy, I would I mean not a police officer, I would think, you know, if you if you could see where there was something that went down somewhere and broken glass, you would know to focus on that area.

But if there’s no signs of an assault, like where do you begin? Yeah, it’s tough because um any any struggle like that gives you evidence.

Uh sometimes it’ll give you blood evidence, sometimes it’ll give you uh evidence of where things happened and and you know, information like that.

Um but uh when nothing is uh there um it just it’s like walking into a quiet room and listening for voices and you can’t hear a thing.

Is experience more important then? Oh yes.

The the harder the case, the more uh it’s like it’s like saying, you know, is is uh is brain surgery harder than than knee surgery? Well, yeah, that’s why they spend 20 years practicing it.

Um the the harder the uh the case is, the more valuable experience is.

And I’ve got to tell you, I I can’t name more than a thousand uh homicide detectives that I would rather have a case than me.

I mean, there are so many really sharp homicide investigators.

When I went to a a crime scene where there there might have been a kidnapping or crime scene or something like that, my first inkling was, “Who can I call? Who can I get out here?” Uh, I would always call evidence people and say, “There’s a lot of stuff here.

I don’t want anybody walking in here, you know, and destroying your crime scene.

How do I proceed?” And, uh, Moren uh, who’s on your show a lot.

Moren is one of the people that I would try to get in touch with.

Yeah, that was what she did, right? She was like an expert crime scene investigator.

Oh, and she was so valuable for that.

Yeah.

I love Moren.

You guys are the best.

um the back doors being propped open.

You know, we’ve heard that from Savannah that the back doors were propped open.

How does that fit into what we now know about no signs of a struggle? No signs of um an assault inside.

Does any of that fit together? I just don’t know why and how.

And uh the back doors were propped open.

I don’t know if she propped it open to get fresh air on a temperate night.

I don’t know if um I mean if you’ve got the back door already open and propped open then why are you walking in front of a a Ring camera at the front door? Makes no sense.

Um, so I I can’t figure out why in the world the back door was was a uh was a a something that they did because if that was the case there wouldn’t be blood on the front uh steps and there wouldn’t be a need to walk in front of a camera.

As always, I really appreciate Steve for taking the time to talk with me.

Uh I appreciate my source for trusting me with um this information.

Again, I’m going to have the full interview uh coming up tonight.

Today is Thursday, so Thursday night uh 10 o’clock Eastern on News Nation.

And then I’ll talk about it more here on my YouTube channel later.

Um but uh you know, I I I say this all the time, but now that it’s been 2 months, I really hope that this case will be solved.

I know how hard people are working behind the scenes.

There’s this task force that has now been set up uh where there’s Pima County detectives and now there’s also FBI and they’re working together and I’m told that they are working together uh in a better way.

Now, you remember earlier on in the investigation, the first couple of weeks I was here, we had FBI sources who were saying that there were issues that the local sheriff, Sheriff Nanos, wasn’t and his team that they weren’t sharing things with the FBI agents.

I’m told that for the most part that’s been resolved.

The task force is working well together and um hopefully there will be a break in the case soon.

I am very very hopeful.

Um and again I’ll have more of this interview later.

So appreciate you guys for checking out my channel.

Appreciate you guys for tuning in here and tuning in to NewsNation and for subscribing to my channel.

Uh and I’ll keep you guys posted here from Arizona and I’ll have more later.

All right, talk to you guys later.