No signs of an assault inside Nancy Guthrie’s house — new vantage point from backyard — day 59

Hey guys.

Uh, today is day 59 in the search for Nancy Guthrie.

Uh, it is Tuesday.

This is actually NY’s house right here behind me.

This is the closest I’ve been able to get to the back side of the house.

And I’m going to take you really up close uh in a second.

Some interesting things that you can’t see from the drone that you can only really see from back here.

Um, I also wanted to let you know about some new information that I’ve confirmed with the source close to the investigation.

uh that there were no signs of an assault inside NY’s house.

No signs of an assault.

The house was mostly clean and the way it was described to me is that some rooms were actually immaculate.

Uh but the headline is that that there were no signs of an assault inside.

Remember obviously there was blood that was seen on the front uh sort of steps area, front area right in front of her front door.

That’s where we saw the blood.

Um, and there’s been a lot of questions about, well, what what what did it look like inside? Uh, and apparently it didn’t look like much at all.

It looked relatively normal.

No signs of an assault, which would explain when Savannah did her interview um why she was saying that when uh Annie, her sister, and her brother-in-law Tomaso first showed up here to the house, they didn’t understand what was going on.

and the back doors were propped open, but they initially thought that perhaps there was some kind of medical episode, that an ambulance had come.

Uh, and maybe they took Nancy out the back.

Uh, but this would all kind of line up with what Savannah said, this reporting that I have now that there were no signs of an assault uh, inside um, the house.

I’m going to flip my camera around now because I want to show you uh, what it’s like kind of up closer to um, to the backyard.

All right, I’m going to walk up closer here.

Uh, and yes, I have permission to be back here, just so you guys know.

Um, you guys know I’ve kind of gotten to know a lot of the neighbors.

So, um, and I’m not going to go.

You see, there’s these private property signs, so I’m obviously not going to cross onto NY’s property, and I want to be respectful in that way.

But, uh, this is, again, it’s just kind of surreal to be back here because this is the closest that, um, I mean, I’ve only seen it from the drone video, but, this is the closest I’ve been able to get to NY’s backyard.

Um, this is obviously her pool area here.

Uh you can see that these cameras were put up which we saw on the drone.

Um these cameras I believe are new since uh remember we saw people come and put cameras up after everything uh went down.

Um so this is the pool side.

Uh and I think there’s a there’s a gate over here right down those steps right there.

You can’t really see it um that easily, but like right there is a gate to get into the backyard.

Uh and then if I walk this way, it’s all This is This is what the brush That’s actually our tent right there, but this is what the area behind NY’s house looks like.

So, you can see there’s a lot of brush.

There’s some power lines right above.

Very very dark here uh at night.

And again, I’m going to be careful of the rattlesnakes cuz everybody’s been telling me that.

Um, but yeah, let me come around the side here.

A lot of cactuses out here.

I don’t know what animals live in all these holes.

There’s little holes everywhere back here.

But so this is the back side of NY’s house here.

Um, so there’s this door.

So there’s this little patio in the back, which we’ve seen from the drone.

There’s this door here, which again, initially thought there was a sliding glass door.

It’s not a sliding glass door.

There’s this um just regular door with like glass pane on the panes on the top.

So that’s on one side of the overhang.

You can see where there’s the the glass window here, which a lot of people thought was a sliding glass door.

Um it’s a it’s really a beautiful backyard.

Um and then there’s another door with a screen right here on this edge of the on this side of the outdoor area.

I’m told that that screen was propped open.

Uh and um and then in the Savannah interview, she said that uh that doors plural were propped open, but I’m told that that screen right there was propped open.

Um so this is the outdoor area here in the back.

Again, it’s it’s really just a beautiful house.

I keep thinking about the fact that she lived here since the 1970s and all the memories that that uh Savannah must have in the backyard.

Um, and then there’s another This is the cassita over here.

Um, and there’s obviously you can’t really see it through the brush.

There’s obviously a door into the casita which is like the little guest house which is next door.

So, and again I have permission to be back here.

It is kind of weird being in the back.

I’m not really in her backyard.

I’m in someone else’s backyard.

But, um, it’s it’s just strange to get this vantage point from the back.

Uh, and again, this is what it looks like.

There’s just a ton of like wooded area back here that um, you know, you can walk through.

There’s like little trails.

It’s not like like in Florida where there’s swamp or there’s forest.

It’s really thick.

It’s hard to get through.

I mean, you can walk around back here.

you will see a ton of cactuses and you could stick yourself.

I mean, everything has thorns out here.

Um, but it technically is, you know, walkable.

Uh, and they did put these no trespassing signs up all around the house.

So, again, I’m not going to get too close.

Um, but even from this distance, you can see quite a bit the side of the house here.

Uh, and that’s that’s what it looks like.

I want to um talk to Kurt Dab, who is a former detective with the Pima County Sheriff’s Office.

He was there for decades.

Uh, he came and met me out here a little while ago.

I wanted to ask him about some of my new reporting about how there’s no signs of an assault inside the house.

And then also he had something really interesting to say about something he spotted in our drone video that detectives were doing that I’ve never heard anyone talk about before that I don’t think anybody else spotted.

So I want to play for you guys my my conversation with Kurt.

The first thing I want to ask you about Kurt is this new reporting we have that um according to a source close to the investigation there was no sign of an assault inside inside the house.

I mean we know there was blood on the outside but inside uh and that the house was clean.

Some of the rooms were immaculate, uh, but there were no visible signs inside.

What What does that mean to you? Well, I had heard that information early on, um, from some of the deputies that had responded that there didn’t appear to be the house wasn’t in in shambles.

Um, again, I think what that says to me is these individuals felt comfortable being there.

They were there for one thing and one thing only, it appears, and that was to to take Nancy.

Nothing else was disturbed.

as far as we know, you know, on the outside.

Why do you think we would see the blood in the front of the house but nothing inside? Well, you know, one of the things that, you know, could happen, you know, and I’m basing this on my training and experience.

I don’t know if this is the way things transpired, but it’s one of the ways.

um you know if she was still ambulatory and being guided out of the house whether or not she was bound you know her hands or her mouth or anything she could have put up a little bit of struggle at the door knowing that man if I get out of here you know this is the last chance that I have to put up some type of resistance.

So, I think that may be what happened.

And, you know, she might have got hit in the nose or the head, you know, maybe with a fist or a weapon or an implement of some sort because the the blood spatter pattern that was in front of the door.

Um, it just looked like it looked like bleeding from a head wound or a nose wound where the drips appeared to be just straight down and there was no direction of travel or direction of spatter or anything.

It was just straight down.

When you go into a house as an investigator and it looks clean, I mean, you know someone’s missing, but there’s not, you know, an area that’s obvious like, oh, something went down right here.

There’s a pool of blood or, oh, there’s all sorts of stuff thrown on the ground here.

If it just looks clean, what do you do? Well, you uh do a very good canvas of the scene.

Um, you’re going to protect everything that you can.

you’re going to have the forensic um investigators come out, our photographers, and they’re going to photograph, they’re going to fingerprint, they’re going to swab for DNA.

Um but they’re going to do that at the direction of the homicide detective.

So, just because you know the house isn’t in shambles or, you know, there’s evidence of um an assault or something like there doesn’t mean that they’re just going to bypass the house.

They’re still going to fingerprint it, DNA swab it, photograph it.

Does it make it harder? Um, in one aspect, yes, because you don’t know if there was an assault that occurred because nothing got disturbed.

But I think in the grand scheme of things, the the biggest thing that matters is the blood spatter at the front of the door because we know that there was an injury and we know that that injury um was to Nancy.

Um, so it’s uh it’s just a little bit weird that there’s not a lot of disarray in the house, but again, if this individual or individuals as I believe that it’s more than one, um, they had a plan and they carried it, you know, to fruition successfully so far.

And you said before you you think it’s more than one.

Absolutely.

I’ve been one of the theories that yes, it’s got to be one.

Now, let’s say, you know, it could be many different theories, right? Everyone has their own theory.

Um, but I think you know somewhere between three and four, maybe one and two.

You know, you have someone that’s here stationed at the house waiting for her to come home possibly.

That individual goes in the house, subdues her, another guy comes in front, she’s, you know, still ambulatory, let’s say, and so they’re guiding her out the house and that’s where the impact occurs and the blood, you know, blood spatter comes on the ground.

Or, you know, maybe there was one or two or more individuals and they subdued her in the house and took her out and the blood was a result of an assault that occurred in the house and maybe didn’t start bleeding through.

Maybe they had her covered.

So, I just think it’s very highly unlikely that it’s one individual.

Is it possible? Yeah.

I don’t think one individual is going to carry a non-ambulatory 84y old woman out of the house.

So, if it was one individual, maybe, you know, they got lucky.

They were able to subdue her, you know, enough to carry her out.

But again, there was no car parked in the driveway that we could see.

Um, so, you know, it leads me to believe that someone was parked down the street with a car.

And if that’s the case, you have two people here and you have one person in a car.

So if it’s like two, three, four people though, do you think there’s more of a chance that someone would have leaked by now, especially with the million-doll reward? Sure, absolutely.

It’s one would think it would be probable that that would happen.

Um, but we don’t know what the motive was behind this.

We don’t know who benefits from this.

And if you and I are going to go commit a crime like this and I’m the one leading it and I believe you know loose links loose lips sink ships and I think you know you may up to be up to something who’s to say that me as the bad guy wouldn’t take you out either.

You know I got away with killing Nancy or disappearing Nancy.

you know, it wouldn’t be too hard for, you know, the the leader of of this group, if you will, to make that decision as well, to take out his his partners.

Yeah.

But at the same time, if you’re like, let’s say, the getaway driver, and the whole plan was for Nancy not to die, for for her to be okay, but just to get money, and now all this, you know, didn’t go the way they planned, and you’re just the getaway driver.

Couldn’t you come to the detectives and say, “Look, like, I’m not the reason she died.

I’ll give you the info if you um you know, I’ll tell you.

That’s probably that’s probably not gonna happen until arrests start getting made.

The first one that gets arrested is the one that’s going to get the sweetheart deal.

If there is a sweetheart deal in this case, usually in homicide investigations where there’s more than one individual involved, one of those individuals will provide information and then possibly get a profer from the prosecutor to not use any of that information to charge them.

So, yeah, it’s absolutely a possibility.

Has that happened in cases you’ve worked? Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The majority of homicide cases are that way.

True.

But usually there has to be some one arrest first for it to sort of Yeah.

Yeah.

Because you know in bad guy parlance the first one arrested is usually the first one on talk.

So all the other bad guys are out there you know freaking out.

Oh my god.

You know he said something and even if you didn’t say anything and I think you said something now we’re partners but I think you’re snitching on me.

So you know what am I going to do? What’s my what’s my course of action? So this is the closest we’ve gotten to the back of the house before.

Um, what’s what stands out to you? Is this the closest you’ve seen it in person? Yep.

Never been here.

What stands out to you? Um, well, it’s like every other house in this and the surrounding neighborhoods.

It’s very well covered by vegetation.

It’s very easy to sneak and snoop around without being observed.

Yeah, especially at night.

I bet it’s really dark back here.

100%.

And I mean, there’s no street lights here.

You guys have gone over that, you know.

ad nauseium, but it’s just true, you know, without the street lights and especially I don’t know what the moon was that night, but if you have a partial moon or no moon, I mean, it is dark.

It’s dark.

And if you’re not looking for something specifically, the chances of you seeing something is, you know, next to impossible.

What about the doors being propped open in the back now that you can see the doors? Well, yeah, I see that there are three doors back there.

Um, and the information I guess you know that I was provided I think by you guys talking with you and listening you know to some of new snippets is yeah a door was propped open or maybe two.

I’d like to know which ones.

I think everybody would but you know the that would lead to a scout you know or a recon of the place right because you got to know your avenues of approach in order to set up something like that.

I mean, that tells me that this thing was planned.

It wasn’t, you know, a oneoff.

Yeah, that goes back to the, you know, that the January 11th date, those dates that we’ve talked about from before where someone was probably here looking around.

Dogs in the neighborhood were barking was one of the things and maybe that’s how they got those dates.

And yeah, that’s Dogs see all kinds of of stuff at night.

You know, they have great eyesight, great great smell.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, you’re talking about one of the neighbors, the dog woke up in the middle of the night.

It was and um wanted to go out right around the time that Nancy went missing, too.

And and just looked in the direction of NY’s house.

This is one of the neighbors right over here, which he said the dog never normally does that.

It was like 1:00 in the morning.

It’s strange.

Yeah, it’s uh it’s a clue, right? I mean, it’s definitely a clue.

It’s something that the investigators need to look at.

Um 100%.

in terms of this area where we are now.

I mean, do you think And first of all, all these people have dogs around here.

Um, so I’m just And if someone tried to come through here in the night, I mean, do you think that’s a possibility? They came in through the back or do you think they just went around NY’s house? Yeah, it’s absolutely a possibility.

It’s probably I mean, if if I was going to do something like this, yeah, I would not come out the front.

I would drive through the neighborhood a couple of days, you know, just to get the law lay of the land and do your scout, look for cameras on porches and telephone poles and then, you know, make your um the decision about where you’re going to go and coming in through the back.

I mean, it just makes perfect sense.

With the back door, let’s assume it was propped open like Savannah Guthrie said, her doors, uh, we know there was blood in the front.

What’s your theory? Do you think they came in through the back and then left through the front or like what how do you see it in your head based on what we’ve heard? Yeah.

Why is the back door propped open? Like if the back door was propped open and you think someone would be inside, you would think the front door would be opened or unlocked as well, but maybe not because they didn’t know how she was going to, you know, enter the residence.

But um yeah, I don’t know if someone was waiting inside or maybe they came and did it earlier.

You know, they were scouting a location, they saw her leave, now’s our chance.

You know, let’s get it’d be really nice to know how they got in the back, how they prop open, how did they gain entry into the house? Like there there’s no information from the sheriff’s department at all that there was forced entry anywhere and and and the main house or the pool the pool house.

So, that’s a that’s a very big tell about how well this was planned if they were able to go in without forcing entry.

And Nancy may have just left her back door open.

Quite possibly.

I mean, people around here do that.

Yeah.

Unlocked.

No, no, no.

Not Not up here.

Um, people like to protect their their property.

Tucson, Pima County, is a very violent place.

Um, there’s an awful lot of burglaries.

I’m from a small town in Michigan where I grew up and we didn’t lock our doors.

We didn’t lock our cars.

Maybe it’s just me, but you know, my neighbors, I was a cop.

You know, my car is parked out front.

I lock my doors.

They lock their doors.

So, I think pretty much everybody up here locks their doors.

Um, but sometimes we forget, you know.

Well, I was just wondering with her living here since the 70s, maybe she just got comfortable, you No, quite possibly.

So there are but there are a lot of burglaries.

Yeah, there’s a lot of burglaries in Tucson.

I don’t know up in this neck of the woods there are burglaries, but they usually happen during the daytime when everybody is at work.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We’ve had a couple, you know, where they’re at night time.

A couple um up in this area, you know, where it happened in the afternoon, but um it’s not an everyday occurrence, but they do happen and people like to protect their stuff.

So to me, the burglary gone wrong theory is just not possible at this point.

It doesn’t doesn’t seem like it makes sense to me.

I mean, the only the only time a burglary would come up into this is it’s a lesser and included charge in homicide/kidnapping for this investigation because burglary is breaking and entering into somebody’s property with the intent to steal something, a theft or commit a felony therein.

So, it would be a charge if they arrested somebody, you know, they’d be charged if it turns out to be a homicide with a homicide, kidnapping, and and a burglary charge.

So, but people don’t show up to houses with a backpack full to commit a burglary, right? In my experience.

And it was such a full back.

I forgot about that.

I mean, it was like jam full.

He had his kidnapping kit in there.

Yeah.

This is what I believe.

Um, what stood out to you? You mentioned to me the drone video you saw and you could tell what some of the the investigators were doing.

Yeah, it was early on.

Probably within the first week or so or maybe the second week I the FBI came back and they were taking the cameras off the the roof of the house and I think the other pool house.

But during that time I saw investigators taking forensic investigators taking photographs and what appeared to be to me was perspective shots which would be you know you have information that somebody is standing in a particular location.

Uh let’s say an officer involved shooting for instance.

Um you know the next day everyone will come together.

the photographers, the prosecutor will come out and you’ll do a walk around and they’ll ask the officer or deputy, you know, where were you standing when you shot? So, what they would do is they would stand where they were and then a photographer would come from behind them and, you know, take a perspective shot as what that deputy or officer is seeing.

So, when I saw that, you know, a number of weeks ago, it was it was weird to me because there was no information about a shooting.

However, there were cameras, I guess, on the roof on the roofs and maybe they were using those perspective shots to, you know, get height, you know, some type of measurement or something like that.

But that’s what that’s what it appeared they were doing when I saw that.

So, you think it’s for height? It it could be for a number of things.

It could be for height.

It could be just getting a perspective of if someone was to jump over this wall at this location, you know, what are they going to be seeing? Have you seen them do that before on like just you know nonofficer involved shootings? No no no usually in homicide investigations where there is a shooting involved or you know an assault or a stabbing or something like that.

That’s you know where those things would come into play.

So it’s now been uh almost two months since we first met when we first got here.

You know um I’m just trying to think back to when we first started talking.

I think you know we I was hopeful that you know maybe in a couple week things were going to move quickly.

the FBI involved.

Yeah.

What are your thoughts now that it’s been two months? Well, I think in that first interview, you know, I said, “Man, this looks like a real professional deal.

” And then, you know, I kind of went, “Well, this guy’s like fumbling around.

You know, maybe it’s not professional, you know, maybe he’s just an idiot.

” Um, well, he is an idiot, that’s for sure.

But, uh, it is just it’s mindboggling.

um whether this was a professional thing and there was no who benefits from it.

Maybe they benefit, you know, maybe it was something that was done to get back at the family, you know, for some reason.

But it is they were either really, really, really pros or really really really lucky so far.

And I think it’s a mixture of the two right now.

I think you got to have some facet of experience and training to carry out something like this and be successful for two months.

Yeah.

So many of the law enforcement experts I’ve interviewed like you have started off saying, “Gosh, this looks like an idiot.

The gun was out fumbling, you know, to picking the grass up to then kind of saying, well, um, I don’t know, maybe.

” And now they were kind of shifting to like, “I think this may have been more professional than we realized.

” I I think the longer you know that this goes, everyone’s theory is going to evolve, right? Um, everybody’s just trying so hard to figure out the clues with the very limited amount of clues that we have.

And um I myself much like you and I think many other people thought once the FBI was involved.

I mean they got Elmetro down in Mexico, you know, they got Maduro down in you know Venezuela and you know all the they can find people in the middle of nowhere.

Yeah.

And it was just very surprising to me.

Um, one of the things that I someone brought up on another podcast about a week ago that I did, they asked about satellite imagery and I’m like, “Oh, satellite imagery.

That’s thinking outside the box, right?” Um, so who do you reach out to to find out if there were any satellites above, if they have the capability of capturing video or photographs? How the hell do you write a search warrant for something like that as a local cop? and you know who who who are these entities.

So, you know, that’s another thing that, you know, thinking outside the box that possibly could be used that I don’t know if it was or not, especially with like FBI involved now.

There’s all sorts of and they’ve got all the technology.

That’s why it’s very the geo fencing thing where, you know, you you you put up a theoretical fence around an area, you know, around this one or two mile area, so you can see what cell phones were being used at that time.

And the fact that as far as we know, you know, they don’t have any putting anybody here, but then there was information about the jammer and all that stuff.

I I thought that was malarkey, but people use it.

You can buy them on Amazon for, you know, a couple bucks.

So, I think that these individuals I think this was a well planned and wellexecuted um caper.

Unfortunately.

Do you think the person or people responsible are close by? What do you mean by close by? In Tucson, like in the Tucson area, someone from Tucson responsible or do you think they’re still in the area? Do you think they’re still in the area? I don’t know.

Your guess is as good as mine.

Um whether or not they’re from the area or whether or not they’re still here.

Um I don’t know.

I’ve just thought since if it’s true that the person cased the house January 11th, which would have been three weeks before.

Yep.

You know, that’d be a long way if you’re from another state or something to come back over and over again.

Sure.

Also, Nancy Guthrie is kind of a random person to hold for rans.

You know what I mean? Like it almost seems like a would be a local who would know that she lived here and would think that would be a good ransom person, you know? Well, yeah, but I think the first time I found out about Savannah was last year or something when they did that hometown thing and it was on the news here.

So, I mean, anybody could have seen that.

And I mean, they just had the anniversary of John Hinckley, you know, shooting Reagan.

You know, that guy was crazy.

and you know other celebrities have gone through things with and even not I mean Lieutenant Bob Kger retired sher sheriff’s you know department that’s been on your show and spoke with you he he had a stalker I mean did he really never told me that so when you get somebody that you know that has and I’m not saying that this is the result of some mentally deranged individual I I don’t think that I I think it’s just a well planned operation and we still don’t know what the motive is yet.

And just lastly, how would you describe the mood in Tucson right now? I mean, are people frustrated? Are they surprised it’s still gone? Are people moved on? Um, I think it’s a mixture of all of them, right? I think some people have moved on, some people were like, “Oh my god, thank you.

” You know, there’s thousands of other missing people and, you know, they they need, you know, media, too.

I think a lot of people were really disheartened when you and you know the other media entities left because it’s not when you’re not doing things here you’re not drawing publicity to the case which is um important for something like this especially because it’s so old you know I mean it is extremely cold if you will because it’s been so long doesn’t mean that the investigation has gone cold but the initial hoopla you know so and And you know there are there are people that you know just don’t care and that’s unfortunate because you know they may be somebody that sees something or hears something and they’re not going to say anything because they just don’t care.

So, but I think most of the local community in Tucson and Pima County, even the state of Arizona, is still very much um enthralled with this investigation and want to see it come to some type of fruition.

All right.

So, I really appreciate Kurt for taking the time uh to talk with me.

It’s been nice kind of getting to know people here in Tucson.

A lot of people who worked at the sheriff’s office, a lot of people who do work at the sheriff’s office.

So, um I appreciate his time.

Uh interesting just again seeing the back of the house for the first time.

Uh just kind of a different perspective on the whole thing.

Uh a couple of other things that I’m going to be working on while I’m here in Tucson uh this week that I’ll get I’ll get to you guys later in the week.

Some of them are really I think you guys will find really really interesting.

Um and that’s about it.

Uh if you guys I mean if anybody knows anything know I’ve said this before but um you know it’s like Savannah said this in her interview even if someone something someone was just acting strangely something stood out to someone um any little bit of information you never know what little bit of information could actually help crack the case wide open.

The number of course is 1800 call FBI.

Um and you can call and you can remain anonymous.

Uh because it’s just hard to believe that it has now been 59 days.

So, almost two full months since Nancy Guthrie went missing from her house behind me.

Um, it’s hard to wrap your mind around.

I mean, it’s such a quiet area out here.

It’s like to think that someone or multiple people came back here, whether they came in through the back of the house, the front of the house, and took this woman away, and that no one knows where she is or who is responsible or what happened, and it has been almost two months is still very, very difficult to wrap your mind around.

So, um, hopefully someone will know something.

Again, it’s 1800 call FBI.

Uh, I appreciate you guys for watching.

Appreciate you guys for supporting the channel as always.

Um, and I’ve got some more stuff cooking for this week, so I’ll keep you guys posted.

All right, talk to you guys later.