New ransom note claims to know where Nancy Guthrie is — but is it real? Day 65 in the search

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Uh today is day 65 in the search for Nancy Guthrie.

Uh and there is some new news that just came down um a little while ago.

TMZ is now reporting that they have received yet another ransom note and they’re giving some very specific details of what that note said.

I’m going to get to that uh in just a second.

Also, Savannah Guthrie um was back on the Today Show for the first time since her mother, Nancy Guthrie, disappeared.

And one thing that I’m wondering is, is it just a coincidence that TMZ has received this new um alleged ransom note on the same day that uh Savannah Guthrie went back to work.

Look, I don’t know if this ransom note is real.

I think most of the ransom notes have been fake.

I think that TMZ has overblown a lot of these notes.

Um, and I’m going to again going to get to exactly what it says in a second, but I have wondered if when Savannah Guthrie went back to work, would that spark new interest in the case, would that spark whoever did this to somehow um do something differently or react differently? Um, so it’s something that’s kind of been in the back of my mind.

I was wondering if there was going to be some kind of development today.

So anyway, I’ll get to the TMZ note in a minute.

First, I do want to reference though uh Savannah going back to the Today’s Show this morning.

Um she uh went said that she had received many letters that she had received so much kindness.

She said, “Good morning.

Welcome to today on this Monday morning.

We are so glad you started your week with us and it is good to be home.

” She wore yellow uh and she later went outside.

you know how the Today Show anchors do and and was taking pictures with fans outside and there were all these people who had signs saying welcome back Savannah.

Um and there was no real uh direct mention of Nancy Guthrie or of the investigation or anything but it seemed emotional um obviously with her first day back after everything that she has been through and was obviously tooken an enormous amount of strength and she has just been really incredible through this entire thing in my opinion.

Um, okay.

Back to this TMZ note.

So, I’m going to read I took notes of what TMZ is saying uh happened here with this latest ransom note.

They are saying that a person has been incessantly contacting us.

They use that word incessantly.

Um, that they received another letter saying, “I know where her body is and where the kidnapper is.

Give us half a bitcoin and I will tell you.

” Uh, and again, they were saying this person has been very persistent.

This is someone who has contacted them in the past, wanted to make clear they have nothing to do with it, meaning Nancy Guthy’s disappearance, that they’ve been out of the country, but that they know who the kidnapper is and where the body is.

Um, and Harvey Lean at TMZ says that they’ve forwarded the letter to the FBI.

He said, “My Spidey senses say there is something about this guy.

” So, it doesn’t seem like he’s totally discounting the letter.

uh at one point uh said time Harvey Leven said at one point the same person who emailed before said time was of the essence then later said time was no longer of the essence which it seems like is making Harvey Leven think that this is legit because the person may have sent the first note when they knew that Nancy got was alive and then perhaps sent the second note when they knew that Nancy Guthrie was no longer alive.

Now I don’t know what to make of these TMZ notes.

Um I’ve been skeptical.

I mean are they just looking for attention? They make a good headline for TMZ every time they report on one of these.

But again, I think the timing is interesting that this is coming uh on the same day that Savannah Guthrie is back at the Today Show.

Um and uh I think it’s interesting that Harvey Leven is saying that his Spidey senses say there is something about this guy.

Um, I also think you have to remember that Savannah Guthrie said when she did her Today’s Show interview that she believed that two of the ransom notes were perhaps legit, which actually surprised me.

That was probably the most surprising part of the interview for me cuz I did not think that she was going to say that.

I just assumed that they realized that none of them were legit, but she said she believes the two are legit.

Uh, and now we have this new note reportedly coming from TMZ on the same day that Savannah Guthrie uh is back to work.

I am joined now by Joe Jackalone, uh a retired NYPD sergeant.

He’s, uh, been involved in a ton of criminal investigations and cold cases over the years.

Uh, Joe, thank you so much for joining me.

Really, really appreciate it, sir.

Thanks for having me on, Brian.

Uh, I first want to ask you about this uh, this new development within the last couple of hours.

TMZ reports that they’ve received another ransom note.

I’ve always been a little skeptical of the ransom notes, especially from TMZ, like, are they just trying to get headlines? But I was just reading through what they said.

Um Harvey Leven said, “My Spidey senses say there is something about this guy.

He’s written them before.

He’s been very persistent.

He he doesn’t claim to be the kidnapper, but says he knows who that person is and where the body is.

” Um I mean, what do what do you make of it? Well, listen, law enforcement is going to have to try to track down anything they can on this.

Like you said, I I’ve took the ransom stuff with a grain of salt from the very beginning because it was unlike anything we’ve ever seen before in history in textbooks or what have you.

So, listen, they they have to do this as part of their investigation, but there’s always been a couple of investigations, you know, tracks going on here.

Your ransom, you know, stranger kidnapping family members.

I mean, all of these things happen just about in every investigation.

So, you know, it’s just another thing that they’d have to concentrate on and and quite frankly, probably waste a lot of time trying to figure out what exactly is happening on that end.

With Savannah Guthrie going back on the Today Show this morning though, I had always kind of wondered in the back of my mind when she decided to do that, would that have an impact in the investigation? Like, would that spark someone new to come forward? Or if it was like a obsessed Savannah person who did this, would they be sparked to send a new note or something? So, the timing is kind of interesting that the same morning she goes back to work after more than two months, TMZ suddenly gets noted.

I mean, what do you what do you think of that? Eventually, I mean, she had to go back to work.

All right.

I mean, I remember standing at a homicide a long time ago at a scene and and I remember the detective next to me saying, “Hey, SGE, you know what? Life goes on, right?” You know, and and things just happen like this.

But yes, I I think the best thing for her in her own, you know, for her own mental health and overall health is to try to get back to some sort of routine where she goes back to work and does something that she loves to try to keep her mind off of this because I’m sure she’s basically losing her mind in so many aspects about what’s going on with the investigation, worried about her mom and her health and everything else that goes along with it.

You know, we can only imagine what somebody would go through that kind of trauma.

What do you think about the timing though of this note to TMZ on the day that she went back? Do you think that there could be a link there? I I don’t think so.

But like everything else, u if this is somebody who’s just been trying to make, you know, trouble, so to speak, you know, then yes, sure, they would they would do this take this opportunity because she’s back on the news and and everything else that goes along with it.

But I I don’t know.

I just hope that they figure out who this person is and if they have real information.

I mean, there’s over a million dollars in reward for this.

So, I mean, come on.

You don’t seem that just as the tone of your voice, you don’t seem that convinced with these notes.

No, I didn’t.

Like I said, I wasn’t really a big fan of this ransom stuff from the beginning.

Um, you know, and one person they did catch, right, that was trying to scam the people out of this.

It it would have rewritten textbooks, Brian, on how law enforcement handles ransom notes.

I mean, they didn’t go directly to the family.

They go through the the media, which is something we’ve never seen before.

Uh there’s just some other, you know, things I just don’t like about this, right? The idea is to get the money and be able to give the person back, but that doesn’t seem to be part of the equation when this thing first happened.

And there was no proof of life ever from what we know, right? And you’re not going to send any money over the internet for this.

I mean, it’s not that it’s gone forever.

I know a lot of people don’t think that the Bitcoin can’t be, you know, traced, but listen, there are a lot of people out there that have the skills to be able to do this.

And you know what? The FBI, I’m sure, is working on that as we speak.

Yeah.

I sort of thought all the ransom notes were just made up.

But then when Savannah did that interview with Hoda, she said that he believes that two of them, two two of the ones that they received could be legit.

So then I started to think to myself, well, wait a minute.

She’s saying that, you know, that’s probably the FBI telling her that.

So maybe some of them have been, you know, real.

Well, I mean, listen, they don’t tell the FBI is not going to tell the victim’s family exactly everything that’s going on.

They might just say like, “This is what we got.

We think it’s credible, but law enforcement’s job is to is to make sure they vet out all that information anyway.

They’re not going to come out and say, “This is nonsense, and we’re not going to even be bothered with it.

” So, you know, you you don’t want to give people hope, but you also want to say, “Listen, we’re taking this seriously.

We don’t know if it’s real or not and we’re going to try to track it down and see if we can get you an answer.

I mean, I’m sure that was kind of like the conversation that was going on.

Yeah.

And so, we’ll see where these notes go.

I mean, again, I I just wonder if TMZ thinks it’s a good headline every time they get a note, but obviously they’re saying that they’re forwarding it to the FBI and we’ll just have to see how that plays out.

I I’m curious, Joe, um you know, it’s now been more than two months.

uh you did so much cold case work and I don’t want to call this a cold case yet but if if you were to receive if you were working this case you received the file now like where do you where do you begin? I I it’s easy for me Brian I would just say I would be creating an international cold case task force and we would be bringing in every agency that’s in within 100 miles of where this crime happened and I’m talking about at least one representative and of of course we would include the federal partners including the DEA.

Now, people say, “Well, how do you know? Why would the DEA?” Because Mexico is not that far away.

And I’m sure the DEA has assets and confidential informance in Mexico that they can help out with this investigation.

And one of the things that I would be pushing for is to be debriefing every prisoner that gets arrested within that 100 mile radius, asking them if they know anything about the case, asking recently convicted prisoners as they’re sitting in in the cell for the first time in the first week.

You know what? Maybe they do know something.

Listen, you have to go to the sources where these guys hang out and these guys know one another, so to speak, and try to get information out of somebody.

This is a get out of jail free card.

And like I said before, over a million dollars and you haven’t had a real tip that led you anywhere is is really concerning, which means it could be a big part of the dark underworld that we don’t know about just yet.

And people have been kept keeping it quiet.

But you know what? One thing I found in my career is that somebody who’s been sitting in a cell says, “You know what? I know something.

I got to get out of here and they can try to make a deal.

It’s interesting you say that.

One of my cop friends and he’s not even a detective.

He’s a street cop and he’s a younger guy.

He was asked, we were chatting about the Nancy Guthrie case and that’s what he said.

He said, I bet at some point someone in prison is going to have the tip.

And I was like, why do you think that? And he said, I don’t know.

I just have a hunch like at some point it’s going to be someone behind bars who who gives up some info.

Well, I mean, it’s it’s a tactic that we use quite often when we were trying to investigate cold cases.

When you’re dealing with things with 20, 30 years old, who else would know about things such as this? And listen, debriefing of prisoners, even at intake, and I don’t care if it’s for something minor, you never know exactly how many times people have been arrested and, you know, they might be looking at some serious time and they’ve heard something.

I I’ll take a rumor.

I’ll take anything.

Of course, the police have to go and vet that information, but it’s a lead, right? it there comes a point you have to go and shake the trees and create your own leads.

I don’t want to see police departments sit back and say, “Well, we have DNA possibly, right?” Well, no.

You have nothing until you get it back.

That’s the first thing.

And even if you get it back, you don’t know if it’s going to be usable, if they were able to extract the mixtures, all those things to go, right? Get off your butts.

Go out there and start shaking your own trees.

Make something happen.

And listen, law enforcement has the the capability of doing this, but having all of those other departments doing the same thing you’re doing, you shake enough trees, it could be something falling out of it.

You mentioned Mexico.

Um, I’ve always wondered why it seems like they’ve downplayed Mexico.

Like, in the beginning, they made a point to say, “Well, we have no evidence to believe this has anything to do with Mexico.

” The Mexican government said the same thing.

Uh, but it’s so close.

I mean, I I drove there from NY’s house.

it takes like an hour and a half.

Um maybe even less time if there’s no traffic.

Like I I just have a hard time just saying it has nothing to do with Mexico.

It just I don’t know.

It seems like we should keep that possibility open.

You always keep it open.

But I also remember whatever the law enforcement agencies say too, you never take them for full value.

They say everything and nothing all in the same sentence, right? Oh, everybody’s cleared.

You know, nobody’s cleared until the case is over.

I mean, it’s just it’s as simple as that.

First of all, you don’t want to keep people you want to keep people calm.

You want to keep people, you know, in a situation where if they might make a mistake.

So, we never want to label anything as, you know, this person, that person, or anything else.

But, yes, you have to keep the Mexico angle open.

Not even saying that there, you know, drug cartels are involved.

It’s just an easy escape over the border kind of thing, which in in this case might even help even more in respect that it’s an automatic federal takeover at that point soon as you have that international line cross or a state line cross.

And quite frankly, something I was hoping for where the feds would be able to just step in and say, “Okay, our turn.

” Uh, the feds are always lurking in these cases.

I mean, I work with the feds, and it’s not like television where you’re always fighting.

Uh, it’s it’s actually really a symbiotic relationship, and I’ve always had some good relationships with those guys and girls, but you know what, we hear differently.

We don’t know for sure what’s happened in Puma, but it’s if that’s the case, it would be an absolute shame if that occurred.

Yeah.

So, what I heard from sources is initially that there was an issue between the FBI and the local sheriff’s office, that the sheriff’s office wasn’t sharing everything, that the sheriff has this long-standing beef with the FBI, and there there were issues in the beginning, but now they have this task force.

Uh, and apparently it’s it’s pretty seamless now.

They’re they’re getting along.

you know, it’s less about the sheriff and more just like the the the detectives and the FBI agents working together and they’ve sort of straightened all of that out from what I’m hearing.

Well, let’s hope so, right? I mean, but even then, you’ve lost valuable time in those weeks where you’re trying to iron this out and did it get ironed out because it finally became public and became part of the the discourse of what was going on in the investigation.

Because if if that’s the case, you know, okay, great, you fixed it.

But it’s still like you got to shake your head and say, “What were you thinking?” I mean, there’s so many things that I look at this case and I just scratch my head and I always make the joke that I said if I had hair, I’d pull it out because, you know, things such as not even holding the crime scene.

I mean, there was no reason to let that crime scene go.

I’ll tell you right now, if that case happened in New York City, not only we would have kept the house, we would have cordoned off that entire piece of property and we would have parked one of those big old temporary headquarters vehicle right on the front lawn.

And I I mean, we’re talking I haven’t seen a line or a grid search or a zone search.

I haven’t seen any of that.

I mean, you have people walking around like, you know, on on an Easter egg hunt.

It that’s not the way you do these things.

Dava dogs.

Why aren’t we bringing them in? Why have they never brought back blood hounds? You know, they said that they did it in the beginning.

They said canines.

They didn’t specify the kind of dogs that they brought in.

I don’t know for sure.

I’m sure you know uh if you if you heard the type of dogs, but at this point, bring back blood hounds, let them sniff the clothing, you know, the pajamas, whatever was left over, and see if we can get a trail, anything.

But I mean, now we’re talking months into this and and I just say this is like basic investigation stuff and why wasn’t it done? I don’t think we’ll ever get the answer for.

I still don’t understand why they cleared the crime scene that first time because the family it wasn’t itching to get back into the house.

Um I I don’t know what the urgency was in doing that.

There there didn’t seem to be any pressure from the outside.

Like I couldn’t figure it out.

from all we know that there was nobody else that even had an expectation of privacy for that house.

Meaning the only person that had access to the house or the privacy was Nancy herself, which means we wouldn’t even we meaning law enforcement, not me personally, wouldn’t need even a search warrant at that point.

So, I mean to to say that you would just do this and then leave and then let everybody kind of walk all over the place um is kind of like I I question that.

say that entire place should have been done cuz remember we saw the guy come into the um I think it was the septic tank right and kind of like poking in a few days you found the blood you know on the on the the doorstep right I mean the gloves talk about another nightmare scenario right having was it 16 pairs of rubber gloves that they were left at the scene by by searchers and then you know another pair of rubber gloves from what 16 excuse me two two miles away I mean it’s like what are we doing here folks I This is not the stuff that we train.

And there is there are no national standards per se on how to run a crime scene, but there is plenty of literature on this.

The National Institution N National Institute of Justice has guides out on this stuff.

There have been plenty of textbooks written on this.

So to me, it’s unacceptable in 2026.

when I think you saw my story.

We had a a source close to the investigation in Silhouette talking and I think you tweeted about it where he was saying that uh the supervisor had never investigated a homicide which I think I remember seeing your tweet like that didn’t seem to bother Weren’t you trying to say well that part didn’t bother you that much right it doesn’t bother me that because the supervisor is there to make sure that the detectives have what they need in order to investigate the case so when I was a sergeant into the detective squad I remember the lieutenant telling me when I was brand new sergeant in the squad I remember the lieutenant says give the detectives enough space.

Your job is to make sure that they have the equipment and the necessary means to do their job and just let detectives do their work.

So yes, when you saw I said that doesn’t matter, right? The idea behind the supervisor in this is going to be the manager, be the mentor, the trainer to be able to go in there and say, “Okay, guys, have you thought of this?” No.

Okay, why don’t we give that a shot? I mean, that’s really what the supervisor’s job should be.

But we’re hearing all kinds of stuff about what’s going on like benching your homicide detectives or the or the people who had the the skill sets already, but you know what, Brian, I don’t know if you’ve asked this question, like why didn’t they ask for a mutual aid from Tucson or Phoenix, right? And initially I I would be calling Phoenix and Tucson say, “Hey, I need five homicide detectives or five detectives with experience.

I need them there within 48 hours.

You know, we’re gonna pay the bill, but you know, send them down here.

We need everybody at bear on this because it’s been proven.

The more detectives on an initial case, the faster you’ll get it solved.

It’s as simple as that.

And having all these people involved in all this experience to do so is something that needed to be bought brought bare to the initial stages of this investigation.

Yeah.

And beyond the supervisor, we’re hearing that the detectives also had less than two years experience because the experienced detectives were moved out of homicide because of a beef with the sheriff and all this drama with the election.

And it gets very political.

Oh yeah.

And uh and I realized that like pretty much right when I got there and started talking to people.

There’s just these beefs with the sheriff that are have been ongoing for a long time and seem to have bled into this investigation.

And the the silence is sort of deafening too in regards to like what people know from the outside if they were even asked or they were even what they even feel about the situation.

But yes, listen, detectives who never caught a homicide or an investigation like this that the only way they’re going to learn is until they do.

So the idea is having that experience to help them move them along, right? Let them do the case.

We saw something very similar happen in Moscow if you remember, right? The detective there he oh he never really did the homicide.

Yeah.

and they they they they made an arrest in that case, too.

So, if you’ve investigated cases before, we train our detectives in New York City to solve homicides because you will then use all those tools to solve your lesser crimes.

So, we prepared our detectives to solve the ultimate crime against society so that anything less than that, they already had the tools necessary, which would bring in another conversation.

What is their training like? Who does the training? How often is the training? And was anybody trained? You know, I mean, those are the next questions that would come up.

I mean, I would like to see if if they have a detective guide or or procedure about how to handle a crime scene, even from the uniform cops, the first cops on the scene.

Listen, they often make or break cases.

Do they hold the scene? Did they see any witnesses? Did they did they detain anybody? Did they notice something out of place? Those are all real important steps when you’re dealing with a case like this.

Yeah.

And I was in Idaho for the Moscow murders, too.

And I I think the difference there was the police weren’t saying anything.

Um, and we didn’t know what was going on behind the scenes, but we we just didn’t know.

I mean, we didn’t know if they were busy, if they had a lot, if they didn’t have a lot.

With this situation though in Arizona with Nancy Guthrie, like we actually have sources telling us that they have nothing, that they have no suspect, that they don’t have any good leads right now, that they’re basically just I mean like the latest I’ve heard is that they’re going to all the construction sites in the neighborhood and trying to get a full list of everybody who’s worked these construction jobs just to go down that list and try to rule those people out.

Um, and apparently they’re having a hard time because some of the crews are nervous to give up names and, you know, like some people are in the country illegally.

There’s, you know, issues there with all of that.

Um, but I mean they’re not to say that they’re desperate, but they’re I mean kind of like you said shaking the trees.

Like they’re it seems like they’re really shaking the trees where when I was in Idaho, they actually had like really legitimate stuff going on behind the scenes.

They just weren’t they were closing in on Brian Cobberger.

They just weren’t telling us that.

Whereas they’re not closing in on anyone from what we know in Arizona.

Right.

And and I and I kind of agree with that so to speak because you see these have over a million dollars worth of rewards and we haven’t seen anything that resembles anything of you know of reports except for remember in the initial stages and you were part of one of those where they they had somebody in custody and they they made the cardinal rule of saying we have somebody in custody right um you know you don’t do that until after you vet out the information and and who this person is because it looks bad.

I mean, I I just wish that the sheriff and and we I’ve seen this a number of times recently would have just used a public information officer at the very beginning stages of this.

When you have a major case like this, I want to see my police executive at the scene.

I want him or her directing what should be going on, what assets they need, what, you know, if they need cell phones or batteries or even just food to keep them at the scene going.

That’s what I want my executives to be doing, not sitting in front of the press conference.

That’s why you have a PIO because as you know, Brian, these cases are dynamic and they change in the matter of minutes.

And when you, the executive, say something, everyone expects that to be the truth.

Even though you’re not lying, but you gave out bad information.

Who can walk back the executive? There’s nobody above you.

That’s why you have the PIO.

And then the next person who’s higher than them can step in and say, “Okay, I know we know we said this, but that was the initial thing.

Now the investigation has shifted.

This is what we found.

We will keep you posted.

And that’s it.

Instead, it turned into the mess that it has been.

That’s such a good point.

The sheriff could have almost protected himself and his reputation.

You use a PIO and then it’s kind of like, oh, we had bad information.

It’s more on them versus now you got the top guy making mistakes, saying things different ways, and then it it like it is now.

It’s like, who can we trust? Right.

Right.

And now every time he said something and or every time he did something, nobody believes him.

And that’s part of the problem.

But that’s why we have PIO’s.

Listen, this whole incident management system technique has been in place since September 11th where we have an incident commander and we have different sections.

And one of those sections is public information.

And that person is generally the public information officer.

And I can’t remember the case offh hand.

Well, it was a it was a much smaller department and it was a major case.

And they actually got a PIO from a major city that wasn’t too far away.

And he stepped in.

and the sergeant stepped in and controlled the entire narrative and everything worked out well.

We we spend the time and effort to train our PIOS to deal with the media to be able to speak in front of the media and do all those things.

As you know, it’s not easy.

So if we have somebody that’s trained versus somebody who in this case a police executive who really doesn’t have that kind of training who might think that they have that training stand up there and say things that end up not being true.

I think it turned off a lot of people and of course we see now a lot of negative attention directed his way and unfortunately is rightly so.

Well, you brought up uh Idaho earlier and and they did something like that.

They brought in the Idaho State Police uh public information officer to handle things for them in Moscow.

Even though it was a city case, city of Moscow, you know, they had someone from the outside come in and just handle all the media requests.

And the chief maybe did like one or two interviews total.

I mean, and it was very rare.

Uh and he just let that PIO handle everything and that’s the way it should be done, right? So, we have the model, we have the training, right? FEMA runs this.

we know exactly what we want them to do and say and be able to handle something during a big major case so that we don’t run into these kind of problems.

But we saw this up in the Brown University incident.

We saw this with the shooting at Charlie Kirk.

You know, we you know, people coming out who shouldn’t be saying things in the media and it just doesn’t it doesn’t foretell well about what what’s exactly the investigation is going to reveal.

Plus, you’re bringing chances for the defense attorney to be able to do things because remember the defense attorney if you if he’s going to say, “Well, my client wasn’t the guy because they were we’re excluding all others.

You had all these other people under arrest.

What happened to them? Why weren’t they the ones?” I’m sure, you know, you’re just opening yourself up to this kind of stuff.

And it’s just, you know, you have to prepare from the very minute this case starts that you’re going to trial and you dot your eyes and cross your tees and that’s the way it should be handled.

I know there’s still a lot of holes, but I haven’t talked to you about this case yet.

So, I’m just curious.

Do you have a theory? I mean, do you have a working theory based on the information that we do have of what happened here, what the motive might have been? Well, there’s a lot of things that we a lot of people have speculated on a lot of things, but one thing that I can think of is that I don’t I don’t believe she was a targeted attack.

Uh I think there was going to be a planned burglary and that this thing went bad.

How why do I say it’s not a targeted attack? Well, listen.

Look how they dealt with like the guy dealt with the the camera, right? I mean, you know, putting flowers on or whatever.

He wasn’t really in a big rush.

He wasn’t really too concerned about this.

And I had said from the very beginning that this guy was an amateur.

And the reason why I said that is because he just he did not look prepared.

Now, the people will throw that back at me and say, “Well, Joe, he’s not an amateur, but we’re two months into this.

” Well, listen, these guys make mistakes.

It’s up to law enforcement to be able to figure out what those mistakes are.

But you know, listen, most burglaries happen directly through the front door.

So that was his first intention.

You know, did it does it happen through the back door? Apparently, that’s where things go.

But you have an 84 year old immobile person who is has a heart monitor and all the other things that go along with it.

Uh, bad choice if she was a targeted attack because the likelihood of something going wrong with her is extremely high.

And now you’re looking at murder charges.

So, but if if it’s just a burglary gone wrong though, why would he have been there previously? Remember, like we think he was there January 11th, which would have been three weeks before.

Would have would he have been planning staking out the Yeah.

staking out the joint, right? He’s actually doing his homework.

He’s looking at things.

Maybe he’s follow knowing that her routine is like she goes over to, you know, she leaves every Sunday to go to, you know, wherever.

So, you know, it was that day a Sunday.

I mean was it on a weekend where you know so was he doing his homework so to speak that’s just the way I would be looking as as you know as the working theory and I had said before we started once the ransom notes started kicking in you have another level of investigation that has to be gone there so you have to be able to pivot so you have like I said three investigations happening ransom stranger stranger abduction and you know always friends and family are always included in these investigations I don’t care what anybody says most people are victim by someone they know and that’s that’s a direction that cases often go through.

That doesn’t mean it’s true, but you as the investigator have to exclude all others.

That’s the goal.

So, if I can exclude the family, great.

Move on to the next one.

Let’s go through this.

But that’s why I was, you know, I’m pushing this debriefing of prison stuff because this isn’t the first time I don’t think this guy would do a burglary or do something like this.

Show that photo to to your prisoners.

you know, show the video because he had a little bit of a of a funky walk, right? He had that map sack on that might have been a little too heavy.

Looked like he he almost, you know, would lose his balance.

Maybe somebody identifies the gate, right? I mean, anything.

You’re never going to know until you try.

And that’s that’s the bottom line here.

One of my friends and retired FBI agent, Moren O’Connell, who I have on a lot, you mentioned the gate and looked kind of funky.

She thinks he was high.

Like she’s just convinced that the guy was like on drugs.

He might be.

I mean, listen, you have an elderly person, probably information out there is who she actually was.

So, you know, guys like this who may be using drugs, whatever, think there’s drugs in the house.

There’s cash money, right? Because elderly people tend to have, senior citizens tend to have cash in the house, right? So, I mean, it becomes a target-rich environment as far as I’m concerned.

Listen, do I have I don’t have any background on this information.

That would just be our working theory.

And listen, this happens in every investigation.

the detectives get together and you sit there and you talk all right what what do we think of the scenarios and then you lay out all the scenarios and then you see what evidence leads you to that one of the things maybe you have an answer to this one Brian I’ve been asking all along and no one’s ever given me an answer was there a router in the house did they take the router so why is that important well if you have u friends and family and acquaintances and the pool guy and all the other stuff they connect to the Wi-Fi and that that Wi-Fi becomes that router becomes a real record of who is there.

And even if you don’t have access to it, right? You you you happens to you go somewhere and it says, “Hey, there’s a Wi-Fi here.

” It connects onto your MAC address or whatever it is on your your phone or your watch, you know, and and people are going to turn around and say, “Well, he made her take off the wristwatch, you know, the Apple Watch and the phone.

” Yes, because the word is out there that these things can be easily traced and trackable.

So, the bad guys know to get rid of these things now.

It’s unfortunate, but it’s just a sign of the times.

You think we’ll get a resolution soon? Uh, no.

If you would ask me this question in the first week or two, I would say yes, because I was I was really uh hopeful when I saw the FBI coming in here and doing this because it is a, you know, it it’s not a mini department.

People think like this is like some mom and pop sheriff’s department.

They have like 500 deputies in this this department.

And as far as the 18,000 agencies goes, it’s it’s huge because most departments have fewer than 20 sworn cops.

So this is a big department, but the FBI brings so many assets to bear.

And you know, I quite frankly, I wouldn’t have mind seeing even the Secret Service coming in because of their cell phone data and technology and all the other things.

Like I said, the DEA because of the drug connections that they have in Mexico.

So, I would like I would, you know, look to further my federal partners in this thing and just throw it out there and say maybe somebody didn’t think of it.

I don’t know.

I mean, and I’m not saying I had the answers to everything and I’m the greatest and all that other stuff.

I’m just saying this is what I would be.

This is how my brain thinks even 14 years into retirement when I first started this.

I said I’d be doing this, this, and this as of right this second.

Yeah.

And you make a good point.

People do think it’s like some small little country department.

There’s 400 deputies.

couple.

Yeah, it’s not a small it’s not a small department.

Tucson isn’t like some small place, you know, it’s a it’s a it’s a city with the ransom notes.

What are you looking for, you know, as an investigator to see if they’re legit? Well, it would be that direct connection to the family.

They want the money.

They don’t usually I don’t think they’ve ever wanted a big production out of this.

It’s usually very quiet one-on-one kind of conversation between them, the law enforcement agency and or the family members to get the money to come up with a scenario where they’re going to drop off the the victim and get and and be gone with it.

So to bring in all of the, you know, national media and all the other stuff is just way too much for me as far as I’m concerned because if you’re trying to keep something like this, you want to keep it on the down low.

You don’t want to have the FBI getting involved in this thing off the bat.

You don’t want that if you’re a bad guy.

No way.

we know how.

All right.

I appreciate Joe for taking the time to talk with me, help me go over all these new developments.

There’s a couple of other things I wanted to tell you about that have that’s developed over the last couple of days, specifically when it comes to Sheriff Nanos.

Um, you guys remember the board of supervisors in Puma County has been investigating the sheriff.

There was this whole controversy with him uh allegedly lying under oath and saying that he had never been suspended before when actually at his last job decades ago in El Paso, he had been suspended a number of times.

So the board of supervisors hired this legal team to look into the sheriff.

There’s also been um allegations of ethical violations involving his opponent when he was running for sheriff, uh a woman named Heather Lapin who also worked at the sheriff’s office.

And these allegations are that he was purposely punishing her ahead of the election and that there was election interference.

So there’s this new document that’s come out um where there are three different things that he was being investigated for for bullying.

It said that they they don’t have the evidence to support a finding.

Uh but then these two they backed up.

ethics.

Uh the preponderance of the evidence supports a finding that Sheriff Nanos used his authority and department resources for political gain.

The evidence includes considering uh Lieutenant Lapin’s political campaign in investigation and disciplinary decision-making culminating in issuing a press release that included information obtained in his capacity of sheriff.

So they backed up an ethical violation basically saying that he put out this press release before the election against a woman who he was running against who was also under him at the sheriff’s office.

And then also code of conduct.

The preponderance of the evidence supports a finding that Sheriff Nanos violated applicable code of conduct rules by including um confidential information in a press release about the reasons he placed Lieutenant Lapin on uh paid administrative leave for political gain.

He did not maintain rules about courtesy and civility.

So, they upheld that one.

And it says the sheriff’s actions were found to be inconsistent with the listed policies.

However, the sheriff is not subject to these policies as an elected official.

So, again, it just goes back to the fact that because he is an elected sheriff, um, you know, they can issue these rulings, but there’s really not much they can do in terms of getting him out of office because he is elected by the people.

There, of course, is the recall going on behind the scenes, which I’ve told you guys about, where they’re trying to collect enough signatures to try to have another election to get him out.

So, he’s obviously been under fire from all different sides.

There’s also this new um report that came out from Fox Fox Digital over the weekend that he tried to bring a loaded gun on a plane and was going through TSA.

Um I had that here.

Uh accused of bringing a loaded gun to an airport security checkpoint.

It was apparently in his carry-on bag.

The sheriff wasn’t charged, but he was required to secure the gun before continuing uh his travel.

Just makes you wonder if it had been anybody else, would they have been charged or fined or something like that? but because he was the sheriff, um maybe they just sort of let him go.

But again, a loaded gun trying to get on a plane.

That was kind of a shocking report.

So, uh those are the latest headlines from today.

Got a couple of other things I’m working on this week that I’ll keep you guys posted on.

Again, I really appreciate everybody for um all your support for checking out the channel.

Again, day 65 since Nancy Guthrie just vanished out of her home in Tucson, Arizona.

So, I hope that um I hope and I still believe that answers will come.

I just hope it’s sooner than later.

Uh, and my heart again goes out to the Guthrie family and I just think of how difficult it must have been for us to get Banna Guthrie to um to go back to work with everything going on.

So, I’ll keep you guys posted if there are any developments and I’ll talk to you guys later.