Hi everybody.

I’m Ashley Banfield and this is Drop Deadad Serious.

It’s nice to have you here.

Uh it is Friday as I record this.

Uh it is April 3rd and this is day 62 of the Nancy Guthrie investigation.

I got a couple of things I want to share with you.

First and foremost, there’s been a lot of talk among the true crime community about some internet chatter, some photographs of the blood droplets outside of NY’s front door.

Um Brian Anton from NewsNation, Michael Ruiz from Fox Digital both were able to capture those images early on.

I think around day two or day three.

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And if you zero in very very closely on one of those droplets, uh does that look like a shoe print? Does it look like a partial shoe print, a transfer print, or an impression? It’s a really good question and I had been following along with all your comments as well and looking at it and finally I decided I think it’s time to bring in the experts on this and I’ve assembled three very very good blood experts.

They’re experts in spatter in CSI in crime scene investigation uh evidence recovery all those kinds of things but specifically they have a lot of savvy when it comes to blood evidence.

And so I’m going to ask all of them, what are your thoughts about these images? Does it tell you that it’s a sneaker? And some of you have talked about it being a cloud sneaker.

Um, and some of you have said it’s not that at all, but I always want to turn to the experts.

So, in a moment, you’re going to hear from three experts that I’ve assembled in blood evidence.

Uh, Dr.

Peter Valentin as well as Dr.

Laura Petler and Dr.

Ken Kinsey.

and they will have I think varying opinions.

Super interesting.

I’ve heard varying opinions and so I I can’t wait to share that with you.

Also, a couple of things as well that have happened just in the last few days.

So, Brian Anton had a really interesting report on NewsNation.

He talked to a guy in uh silhouette with his voice altered because this person’s still on the uh sheriff’s department force, right? But the person was very very critical of not only the sheriff but also some of the people who were assigned to work the case.

Now if you saw our episodes earlier this week and last week, you’ll see that I actually broke news about the lead investor lead investigator assigned to the case had only two years as a homicide detective under his belt.

That was very distressing um to hear that.

And since that time, I have learned as well that that lead investigator with only two years of homicide experience under his belt also didn’t even attend every daily briefing.

Don’t know why.

I don’t know how they work their cases.

Maybe there’s a good reason for it.

Maybe he’s out in the field.

I don’t know.

But that was sort of a eye openener to me because that on top of Brian Enton’s reporting last night from this law enforcement source he interviewed was that the homicide sergeant who oversees the whole department, right, oversees the lead detective is a guy who’ never worked a homicide before he showed up at Nancy Guthri’s front door.

Also weird.

Um, from what we understand, this guy’s not a a a rookie cop, right? It’s not that he’s never been a detective.

It’s just that he hadn’t worked homicides.

The way it works is many officers will work in different divisions um within uh a department, a sheriff’s department, and they’ll work their way up to homicide.

Like they’ll work in burglaries and violent crime, maybe gang, also uh sex assault divisions, and they will eventually, you know, work their way up to what’s considered to be sort of the pinnacle, uh which is homicide.

So, hearing that the sergeant overseeing the homicide division um didn’t have any homicide cases under his belt, that’s distressing.

And then to hear that news of mine added to that that the lead detective assigned to the case, uh you know, two years under his belt, that’s that’s worrisome as well.

And I’m also learning that he didn’t even want to be there, that lead detective.

So, yikes.

Uh, talk about a confluence of not very good circumstances, right? Not only that, but Brian Anton learned a few other things that are interesting.

He said, well, his source told him that almost immediately the sheriff and the investigators focused in on this being a missing person.

I get that.

I do get that.

This is an elderly woman, 84 years old, missing, and the back door is open.

So, could that have been someone who wandered off? Sure.

Oftenimes that is right.

Then you get a silver alert, those kinds of things.

But there’s a lot of criticism from this veteran uh officer, the you know, the um source that that Brian interviewed saying that there was like laser focus on on her being a missing person in those first few critical hours.

Yeah.

That that was a misstep.

There’s blood on the front walk, right? And my source says blood on the inside as well of the front entrance of the house.

The back door is propped open with flower ports, flower pots, and so is the the gate the back gate propped open flower pots according to my sources.

And at this point, of course, they don’t know about the guy on the doorbell cam that doesn’t come for well over a week later.

So, they don’t have that, but they do see a you should see a missing doorbell camera.

There’s a bracket there.

Maybe inexperienced officers wouldn’t notice that.

they just see a bracket and not know what that is or it would just not you wouldn’t think of it.

I don’t know.

In any case, we do know one thing and that is that the sheriff on February 2nd, easily 24 to 30 hours after Mrs.

Guthrie disappeared, had changed his tune and said publicly that they’d thrown all their assets at this, right? But that they’re drawing back the assets that they now think it’s a crime and that Mrs.

Guthrie is sharp as attack.

She didn’t just wander off.

She couldn’t wander you.

She couldn’t walk more than uh 50 yards, I think he said, without assistance.

So, we know that at least a day later, he had changed his tune to know that there was a a likely crime.

And they’d called in homicide.

But the source talking to Brian Enton in his report said the first instincts of the folks who’ arrived um was that this was a missing person.

I know from my sources that at least one of the officers who’d arrived there early said to the patrolman, “This is something far more serious.

Get out and don’t um compromise the scene.

” So maybe there’s like a disconnect between what the sheriff thinks and what his um department thinks.

The the guy’s on the ground, right? No matter what, it’s it’s problematic because the first few hours are so critical in a missing person’s case.

We do know that at least 30 hours later, he’s laser focused on it being a crime scene.

And we know from my source on day three that he’s got a laser focus towards uh family members.

Again, not weird that you look at family members.

In most missing person cases, if not all, you start there.

Okay.

It’s also really interesting if you think about it because a couple weeks ago the sheriff said during a one of his rare TV interviews with cherrypicked, you know, outlets, “We know why he was here and we’ve known since day one.

” I that really just doesn’t square with what Brian’s source is saying, what the sheriff said the next day.

And then what the sheriff said just a few weeks ago that he could strike again the man who’s out there cuz you know on day two, February 2, the sheriff said there’s no concern uh out there for the community.

The community is not at risk.

And those are my words but effectively his message.

But then you know day 50ish he’s saying yeah this uh this suspect could strike again.

So, we’ve known since day one.

Hey, don’t get me started.

Also want to say that Brian’s source said uh felt that the scene may have been mishandled, felt that um the morale inside the sheriff’s department is low, not irreparable, wants the sheriff to step aside, and that still there’s no suspect.

So, lots of breaking information.

One area of discrepancy that and I’m reading a lot of your comments as well on on Brian’s reporting and my reporting.

I had a source on day three that told me there was blood inside the house.

Also told me the nest cams were smashed and we learned they were nest cams.

We learned they’re gone.

Uh said that uh the sister’s uh car was towed.

That panned out.

Said that the back door is wide open.

That also panned out.

Um and the the report was that there was blood inside the house from that source.

Later, second law enforcement source told me not only was there blood inside the house, that the pattern of the blood inside the house matched the pattern of the blood outside the house.

Third law enforcement source that I spoke with said that blood actually replicated right over the threshold of the front door, meaning it’s inside in her front hallway and outside um on the front stoop.

And so Brian has a source saying there’s no blood at all in the house.

I can’t square that because I don’t know his his source and he doesn’t know mine.

And so this happens in reporting.

Sometimes wires gets crossed.

Wires get crossed.

Sometimes it get those wires get crossed with our sources as well.

Still working to square that.

It is not easy to cultivate sources.

I’m telling you in these uh stories, but still working to to square that out.

But again, I got three different uh law enforcement folks that have said that.

And so and I’m still working it to get more.

But also want to tell you about some things that uh Michael Ruiz was reporting.

They don’t bode well for the sheriff again.

And the sheriff’s really really struggling.

He’s uh under a recall effort right now.

And the Puma County Board of Supervisors apparently, according to Michael Ruiz, looked for legal advice um into how to address allegations of perjury that they say the sheriff committed.

Yeah.

Lying under oath.

That’s not good.

It’s also illegal.

And it’s also something that um many have said he would never have qualified for a law enforcement job in the state of Arizona had the hirers known about that um and about a past of alleged um missteps in a in his disciplinary record.

Let me clear it up.

So he’s accused of lying about his past about his disciplinary record as law enforcement officer.

He said allegedly he’d never been suspended on the job, but public records say otherwise, right? The public records indicate he was suspended actually for multiple different weeks early on in his career, like in the 70s and 80s.

And the things that he’s alleged to have been suspended for, according to the public records, excessive force, coming to work late, failure to report for duty, and firing a gun inappropriately.

Those are not small.

Um, I will say that many police officers have, you know, disciplinary records.

It’s not always unusual.

Look, people hate being, you know, dealt with uh by cops and so often times they’ll complain.

So, it’s not always unusual to have a disciplinary record, but what is unusual is if you don’t say under oath that you have it when you’re being asked.

So, this is the allegation from the Pima County Board of Supervisors at this point trying to figure out if these allegations of perjury are accurate and what to do about it.

That’s separate and distinct from the recall effort.

So, I think Sheriff Nanos is really feeling the heat and now hearing these reports saying like, you know, the allegations are you’re installing your friends in positions where people of experience need to be, right? you don’t reward your friends who aren’t experienced or don’t have the the chops to take leadership roles in say the homicide division.

Um, that’s problematic.

And did that cost the Guthrie investigation, especially in those first critical weeks? I think that’s a really valid question to ask and I think it should be asked.

In any case, task force is still at work.

We’re day 62.

Uh again, I’m recording this on Friday, April 3rd, and the task force is being pretty quiet.

You know, it’s comprised again of like five or six Puma County uh homicide personnel and then don’t know how many FBI agents who are based out of the Tucson office.

They’re all apparently working in the Tucson office from what we’re told.

And whatever it is they’re doing, uh things are quiet.

Last I heard, and if you saw an episode of mine a while back, um the quote was, “We ain’t got shit.

” And there’s Brian also reporting that there’s still no suspect.

I mean, at this point, it feels obvious, right? But, man, it’s hard to hear that because going into month three, that is painful, especially for the Guthrie family.

I’m going to stop there and just say again, it’s never too late to think back about February 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, Feb 10, Feb 20, all of these dates, right? It’s never too late to think about did stuff go weird with someone you know.

Were they behaving in a really weird way? Because if somebody uh did this, then they’re going to behave weird.

It’s real hard to be normal after you do this kind of stuff.

And it’s real hard to cover your tracks if you’re out all night because this guy had to be out all night, right? You cannot get into someone’s house, bust off a camera at 1:47 a.

m.

, be separating her from her pacemaker at 2:28 a.

m.

Ostensibly have her in your vehicle at that time and then somehow some do something, whether it’s take her alive back to some place or take her not alive and do something about that.

That’s going to take all night.

So, do you have someone who on February 1st, Sunday, and February 2nd, Monday, was behaving really weird and can’t account for their time? Think about it.

1800 call FBI.

Were they acting weird on the phone? Were they acting weird on text? Even if you don’t live in the Tucson area, were they behaving in a weird way in those days and the ensuing days? And then, let me ask you this.

Eight or so days later when that video came out, that person was acting weird because that person got nervous.

That person figures they got rid of the camera.

They didn’t know that we were going to see them presumably.

So, they might have been acting real weird around feb 8 9 10 11 12.

Was somebody acting weird? 1800 call FBI.

It’s these tips that lead to solutions.

Did your uh boyfriend recently jilt you and was doing weird things on those dates? Might be time to talk.

There’s 1.

2 million in reward money.

I’m just going to keep repeating that.

$1.

2 million reasons to call 1800 call FBI.

$1.

2 million.

Is he worth it? Is he worth it to you? I say the money is worth it.

Do the right thing.

All right.

So, now to the uh the main event, so to speak.

I really wanted to get to the bottom of all the conversation that everyone’s been having about that so to speak blood stain that looks like a shoe print.

Maybe I’m not going to say one way or the other because I do not have the training.

But I look at pictures like you do.

I zero in on the pictures like you do.

I check the cloud sneakers like you do.

And I’m curious about those prints.

And I just so happened to have a handy dandy kind of dirty.

This is Chris’s class sneaker and I grabbed it.

Didn’t ask.

Um I think he works in these.

They’re really They are really dirty.

Anyway, and please don’t think that those are blood stains.

They’re not.

It just looks like that.

They’re kind of There’s like a color pattern all the way up.

I think that’s the color pattern on the sneaker itself.

Can you see that? I don’t know.

Like that weird color goes all the way up.

Anyway, um, so I want you to see the the pattern along the back, right? And I’m going to tip it this way so you can see the pattern on the bottom.

I also want you to see something really important.

Can you see right here? This little thing, that’s a stone.

Yeah, that is a stone.

And the stones often get stuck in there.

super important because whatever gets stuck in the tread of a sneaker really helps forensic investigators.

Uh because especially if that stone stays there for a while and happens to be in the perpetrator’s closet still jammed into their shoe and it left that mark like I’m going to jam it back in there.

There.

And if it leaves like a mark, you know, with the stone pattern.

I remember a case I covered, god, when was it, ages ago, where the the stone patterns in the shoes were still there when they got the per shoes and it matched the blood stains.

So anyway, um I want to talk to my bloodstain experts about the pattern, the size of the drop versus the size of those treads.

And my s my husband’s like a size I think 10 and a half, 11 or so, I think.

And I don’t know what size that guy sho Yeah, size US 11.

Um, I don’t know what size that guy’s shoes were, but we know that they’re almost the size of a tile, maybe just a little more than 2/3 the size of a tile from the video.

So, you know, it’s worth asking the experts, and that’s what I did.

And let me tell you something really interesting.

As you watch these interviews coming up, know this.

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They have differing viewpoints on what you’re looking at in that blood pattern.

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com/banfield.

I want to start with Dr.

Laura Petler.

Uh Laura is a forensic criminologist.

She’s the founder of Laura Petler Associates.

LPA is actually an internationally uh recognized leader in staged death investigation.

First of all, I love that title.

Um also expert in forensic reconstruction methodology and advanced forensic investigation.

Here’s my conversation with Laura.

Dr.

Peter, there’s been so much back and forth on the internet about the blood stain and in particular one that looks if you zero real close in could look like a shoe print maybe even a cloud sneaker.

When you look with your expertise, what do you see? I see blood stains that are um passive in nature and um inconsistent with a beating, inconsistent with an injury happening there.

It could be a transitional location.

Um it’s a way point.

You know, blood doesn’t lie, but it also needs to be interpreted with a tremendous amount of responsibility.

And um it’s always best actually to be ultraconservative when interpreting blood stains because we’re looking at this way after the fact.

So it’s important it’s important to recognize what pictures we’re using to analyze these blood stains versus what might be of might photographs that might have been captured actually during the crime scene investigation.

That’s a huge point to make um that these are pictures the media took.

These are not the pictures that hopefully hopefully the crime scene analysts took at the front door.

I can only assume.

Yeah.

All of that above like media wasn’t there in those first 12 to 48 hours.

Um I think that the reporters Michael Ruiz and uh Brian Enton were there about 60 hours after the fact.

We’ll get into why that’s significant in a moment.

Okay.

But and so it’s really clear that you know I’m asking you to look at media pictures not crime scene analysts photographs.

So with that and with your you know very conservative look being that nobody should have overreach when they do this.

Do you see what a lot of people on the internet are seeing and that is a shoe print? No, I don’t see a shoe print.

Um I think that you you could have some type of impression there.

It could be consistent with a shoe print.

you do have something like right in front of it as well, but to overstate that it’s like consistent with a shoe, you know, I can’t do that as a scientist.

Um, I can’t even say that it’s a transfer.

And that’s basically what we’re asserting here.

So like if people are on the internet are talking about the shoes w being worn by the suspect in comparison to this particular blood stain, there’s a whole scientific process that has to happen in order for that to be proven either to to for that hypothesis to either be supported or refuted.

And one of the things that I can tell you by and I have the pictures pulled up on my screen next to where we’re we’re recording here.

So, I’m looking at the photo, and in the photo, if you had that much volume on the bottom of that shoe, not only would you consider possibly having an impression in that tile, but it might trail off as you go.

So if you consider like dip your hands in paint and then walk them down a wall.

When you start at the beginning of the wall, it’s going to be heavy in paint because you just dipped your hands in paint.

But as you continue walking your hands, pressing your hands down the wall, you have less paint and less paint and less paint and less paint on your hands.

So, in order to have like that volume, imagine how it has to be ad the blood must have to be adhered to the bottom of the shoe in order for it to actually stamp a pattern onto the tile.

And then what is that? All the blood.

We don’t have any blood before it.

We don’t have any blood after it.

There’s no second stamp is what you’re saying.

Yeah.

It’s like not it’s it would be trailing off to me.

Now that is under a normal circumstance of like if somebody steps in blood and then you know it’s very normal in crime scenes for us to see this pattern where you step in blood and then you walk through it and then it trails off as you’re walking.

And so for me, when we only have one little piece of of what can be to for me just several blood stains, it’s the same.

It actually to me it’s almost maybe like the same pattern as we have in the photo before where you have blood into blood.

It could be blood into blood.

It could be a transfer but without more information, without measuring it, without seeing it perpendicular.

So you’d have to have photography directly over top of it and things like that.

and then standards and testing.

It would be impossible to render an opinion on if it’s consistent with a shoe at this point.

What if that was all you got? I mean, do you know how you you deal with the case you’re given? It’s not the case you would design.

If you could design it, you know, we’d solve everything, right? Um, but if this is all you had, the naked eye looks at shapes, right? That the at those curvatures, they look like they’re semicircle, semicircle, semicircle, then a big break, and then behind it a repeat of the semicircles.

And that doesn’t look, for lack of a better word, natural.

It almost looks like it wouldn’t like it can’t fall perfectly in a in a pattern.

So what does that tell you? Right? So like the the target surface is the most important thing to consider here.

And so you see some other blood stains that are right beside it that are round in nature.

Those are the two on either side.

Yes.

On either side of it, there’s they’re very round in nature.

meaning that the source that was bleeding is above that area and it’s the blood is only being so when blood leaves that bleeding source all the cells go in and and they’re basically a round ball like this and they travel through the air in a spheroid looks just like a a volleyball or any other ball and they travel through the air in a spheroid and then when they impact a surface especially a hard non-porous surface they spread out.

But when you have this type of a texture, they can become Yes, the tile when you take into consider the fact that it’s like made out of clay, it’s made out of some type of rock stone, those types of things, it may not be exactly smooth.

So, if you have one, two, three, four, five, six blood stains coming out at the same time, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, eight, nine, you know, uh, 10, something like that in the same area, and they’re all falling at the same time, that can create a a pattern that might look like this, too.

Could it be a transfer of a bloodied object? Basically stamping the blood on a non-bloody object, which would be the tile.

Yes, it can be.

Um, but without further investigation and better photography, it would literally be impossible to tell because the angle of the lens when you’re taking a photograph like this, it can make it look very different than it does when you’re looking at it straight straight down.

So, answer me this if you can.

Um, I get the shape of the three blood drops that are directly around this little what looks like a print pattern.

might not be a print pad.

It looks like it.

Um what else would cause blood to be in the pattern that we’re looking at if it’s not a stamp? Um it would multiple drops falling at a very in in a very short period of time and landing in each other while it’s still wet.

So, if you go back to the other photograph where it looks more spattered or looks more broken up, there’s another photograph where it looks a bit more broken up.

That’s more consistent with a pattern we call blood into blood.

So, this is more these are larger drops.

They’re about the same size droplets as probably the ones on the outside, you know, the ones that we see that are skeletonized.

And skeletonized actually means that the peripheral edge, we can see the peripheral edge around where the original blood stain impacted the target surface.

So when blood hit the tile, it starts to dry.

Blood dries within under normal circumstances within about 16 minutes after it leaves the body.

So then as it dries, it dries from the outside in to the center.

And then after it dries a after a period of time, and I’ve seen this, I don’t, you know, countless times in 25 years, the center of the stain will often lift from the surface of the target surface, which in this case is the tile.

It curls like a wave, and then blows away.

And a lot of times that’s because there’s dirt on that surface, there’s grease on that surface, there’s some other type of material in between the actual target surface and the blood and the blood can’t stick to it.

But in this case, the blood did stick.

It did stick in the center.

We don’t see any skeleiza skeletonization except if those areas where you see the where there’s no blood is are those actual areas of flaking like we see in the other two blood stains that are beside it.

So like there could be it could be consistent with the drying element of under normal circumstances and then the pieces that are missing could have blown away.

I I’m super interested that you say the skeletonizing, the flaking, because like I said, I think that I’m going to give a really rough estimate here, but I think these videos by Michael Ruiz and Brian Anton were taken around 60 hours after Nancy disappeared.

And in that 60 hour time, lots of things happened.

There presumably was a sizable number of agents and sheriff’s deputies and patrolmen and homicide response team.

ERT evidence response team members.

I don’t know how many people might have just walked over it.

To me, that sounds crazy.

You see blood, you avoid it, you tape it off.

But I don’t know that at the beginning they didn’t see it.

They showed up to what they thought was a missing woman.

They knocked on the door, stood there, walked around, talked, looked around the front, were stepping in, and maybe didn’t notice it right away.

So, it’s possible that this has been walked on.

I would actually grid this whole thing off on the front porch.

Yes, we have these beautiful tiles that could act as help, you know what I mean, to help understand the size and the shape of the suspect’s shoes and, you know, how he walks and all that stuff.

But, I would actually grid these off into areas.

So, you know, all these different blood stains on the porch would be labeled.

So, if we had area 1, area 2, area 3, area 4, area 5, cuz that’s kind of what I see in the video.

Say we have four to five areas.

Within those areas, Ashley, every single one of those blood stains would have been labeled for me.

So, like like say the one the the photograph that we’re talking about with the alleged impression or the maybe the potential impression, let’s say that’s area two.

So the blood stain to the left would be area two, blood stain one.

The one in the middle would be blood stain two, blood stain three, blood stain four.

So there’s four different things that we’re looking at in area two.

So the first one’s a skeletonized stain.

The second one, is it a transfer or is it actually like six drops of blood dropping in the same area? And then the third one would be again a skeletonized stain.

And then the fourth one appears to be maybe a drip pattern or again it looks like it almost could be skeletonized then ran downward.

Maybe a flow pattern maybe some type of um other activity after the deposition of blood.

So, as experts, when when we write this down, um we would say something to the effect of um the the blood stain in blood stain number one in area two is consistent with a passive drop that impacted a hard non-porous surface.

And after the period of drying, the center appears to have been removed by either flaking, wind, or some type of disruption like what you’re talking about, somebody walking through it now, in the crime scene, like you said, let’s block it all off.

Let’s tape it all off.

Let’s mark all the blood stains.

Photograph them from a macro to micro standpoint.

Overall, mid-range, closeup, closeup with scale.

We don’t know if they did that or not because we’re not inside the investigation, but that would be the appropriate way of handling this.

So hopefully those kinds of photographs exist.

So they can be compared to shoes, right? That’s what I was going to say.

And you think with all that you could do solid comparison, but but to to any kind of sneaker, right? I mean, you send it to like someone like uh Leslie Hammer up in Alaska or or another footwear impression um expert that is really really good at at impression evidence and you know ask them does this can you know does this look like a a shoe uh an impression? And what we would call that scientifically would be it would be a transfer because the the shoe has to have come through blood and it then the blood has to stick to the bottom.

Then after they walk over to this location, the blood then has to, you know, be deposited.

But, you know, I’m not sure if people are thinking it’s the edge of the shoe, the center of the shoe.

Do you know that for sure? I think everybody’s just talking about the semicircles seem to match a lot of what a cloud shoe would look like.

And look, I’m sure there’s a lot of other sneakers as well.

But I do want to say this, Laura.

Uh, we’re we’re a quarter of a tile away from the welcome mat.

And so is it possible if this is a shoe print this initial hands in the paint nice and dark and then the next step is over on the mat where everything else is wiped away so you don’t get a second impression anywhere.

That’s correct Ashley.

So then that way you know you would want to use um alternative light sources potentially lasers potentially reagents um like blue star forensic or because it’s black you wouldn’t want to use amid black.

it’s not going to show up, but you would want to bring that latent blood up on that mat.

So, you would darken that entire area with like like contractor bags or some kind of black curtains and and darken that area.

Set the camera up to have a very low f-stop, which means that the shutter’s going to stay open a long time and then start spraying these things on the mat.

They could also do that in a laboratory setting.

Um, I would probably do it there as well to put it in context with the other blood stains and then of course send that mat to the lab.

But I the mat’s still there.

So the mat didn’t get collected.

Yeah, I would have collected I personally would have collected the mat, you know, myself.

But I tend to be on the I am one of those people that is what if what if what if what if what if.

We can always we can always release the evidence later if we don’t need it.

But we have one shot, one search warrant, you know, one opportunity to get this crime scene right.

So, let’s take everything and then decide because if if if they hadn’t done full victimology by this point in the investigation, there’s no way to know what pieces of evidence were important yet and what weren’t.

Do you think that that tent that went up outside the front door, I think it’s FBI who uh mostly came and put that tent up I think almost two weeks after the disappearance.

Do you think that that’s what they were doing? Trying to black out, measure, spray, do all that? It could be.

It could be.

Yeah, it definitely could be.

If they if if it was right there at the front door, I remember that now that you’re mentioning it.

There was like a white tent right there at the front door.

They it does sound like it that maybe potentially for what they were doing process in the front porch and and we also know they were they brought in measurement tools, you know, height boards and everything as well.

So, they were probably trying to figure out and and then shortly after we got the relative height of the the the suspect.

I just wonder if they were doing a little bit of lumininal business under that tent as well, but you think they could have been Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, hope hopefully somebody processed the front porch.

Oh, you and me feel that way both.

Uh, and I think everybody watching right now is saying, “I sure hope the right stuff happened.

” I mean, there’s been a lot of criticism about the folks early on who were there.

Lots of inexperience, lots of young, new uh, detectives.

One of them who was the bus who’d never done a homicide before.

So, it’s it’s a little upsetting to think what might have been missed.

The homicide investigation is purely a reflection of the education, training, and experience of the investigator.

This is why I call you, Dr.

Peter.

Thank you for this.

You’re welcome.

Thank you for having me.

My great thanks to Dr.

Laura Petler.

I love talking to her.

I always learn so much.

Now, I want you to listen to what Dr.

Peter Valentin has to say.

Uh Dr.

Valentin is an associate professor, department chair, forensic science at University of New Haven.

He’s testified in seven different states, including federal court as a blood stain expert.

Here’s my conversation.

Dr.

Dr.

Valentin, thanks so much for um helping me muddle through this, but just to summarize, a lot of people online think they see a shoe print in this particular spot of blood.

Is that what you see? I don’t see enough detail to identify that as a shoe print.

There’s definitely something that’s made contact with the blood in some of the areas after the blood’s been deposited and before the blood has dried.

And so for some of the circular droplets, you see an a an absence of blood in the center of those droplets.

So we call those skeletonized droplets, right? So there’s something called a perimeter stain.

So basically it’s the it’s the outline of a circle and the absence of blood in the middle is the perimeter stain or the you know the skeletonized droplet.

So what that means is blood landed on the surface, it started to dry, which is how you get that perimeter stain, and then something came into contact with that stain before it dried.

Now, investigatively, what that does for me is it tells me two things.

It gives me a sense of time because I know how long it takes blood to dry.

And then it tells me that there is some other object that left that scene presumably that has Nancy Guthri’s blood on it, which is a huge piece of information for me investigatively.

But but but all skeletonized droplets can’t some of them have just been affected by by wind.

These are possibly the pictures you’re seeing are possibly 60ish hours after the blood was deposited and it’s outside.

Yeah.

So it that’s a good question.

We tend to see artifacts of blood that has dried in that way where you could um then infer that something happened to them afterwards.

So you tend to see it they they crack or they have uh cracking in them.

And that’s not what I see here.

And we don’t see them in any more than just one or two droplets.

So that if that were the explanation, we’d be seeing that across multiple stains uh in in the outside of the house and we don’t see that.

So if we look at the so-called shoe print, and I’m not saying that it’s a shoe print, just people are referring to it that it looks like it it’s a shoe print.

If you look at that photo, um on either side of it are two round droplets that look skeletonized with some missing blood in the middle.

What would account for that? So, one thing we want to make sure we don’t do is we don’t want to conflate what is probably or could be two separate events and say that they have to be together.

So, if you want to get to the idea that that must be a shoe print, then you’re saying the two skeletonized droplets are happening at the same time as that larger, you know, uh, blood pattern that looks like, you know, a footwear impression.

So, we don’t say shoe print, we say footwear impression.

Um, because we don’t really know, right? You need a lot of detail to say shoe print, right? We need like tread and all sorts of things.

But a footwear impression covers socks, covers bare feet, right? So, we really don’t know what we have just yet.

But if we consider that those are two separate events and they just happen to be right next to each other.

Now, we open up different possibilities that just happen to be in the same place.

Separate events meaning separate times.

Separate.

We could have the the larger stain occurring and then subsequent to that or before that you have the skeletonized droplets and they’re not related to each other, right? Two different events caused those two blood stains, but they’re right next to each other.

Meaning it could have been seconds apart.

A foot could could have gone down and then left and then those two droplets could have happened afterwards.

So that that does help explain.

Um let’s get to the meat of the matter and that is all the debate uh online that this sure looks like a shoe print impression.

And I said it earlier in the podcast that it looks this is what a lot of people say it looks like a cloud shoe and you see the these treads and the and the bottom.

Um size-wise you’ve seen the tile.

Each tile looks to be you know and again this is not very scientific but each tile looks to be about big enough for him to step into it and his his foot looks to be about a little over twothird of the of this the length of a tile.

What does that tell you about the size of this this impression if it is one? So I frequently see crime scene photographs that are missing scale, right? So the ruler, right? Everybody knows what that looks like.

And so when I’m missing scale, I need to find other things in those photographs to help me get a sense of, you know, relative size.

So I can’t tell from those photographs just yet because exterior tiles can be 16 in square.

You know, interior tiles are very often 12 in square, which gives me a rougher sense of what we’re looking at.

But I’ll give you a better way to get a sense of is this footwear or is this something else.

So we have this whole group of reagents that we use u when we’re working with blood stains that are called latent development reagents.

And we use these not to determine is it blood or isn’t it blood but we use them in situations where we think blood is supposed to be here but we don’t see any.

And when we use these reagents or very often we spray them onto surfaces.

What happens is in the presence of blood we get a color change.

And so there’s a reagent that’s called lucco crystal violet.

And violet is the key word here because it turns a very dark blue purple color in the presence of blood.

And so if I thought that that was a component of a footwear impression right and on running is my my shoe of choice right now.

Really helps my old body when I run.

If that was a footwear impression and we used a latent development reagent, we would see that pattern repeating on other sections of tile either closer towards the door or closer towards the driveway.

Unless hold it I I keep I said this to Dr.

Laura Perler as well.

If you made that step and you put that imprint down there, then your next step was on to the welcome mat where you worked your way around a little bit or struggled a little bit and and rubbed everything off of your shoe.

Would you still see uh those those additional prints with a reagent? I would use a different reagent on the welcome mat because one like the primary thing that you have to consider when deciding what reagent you use is contrast.

Am I going to see the reaction if there is one? And so if I’m dealing with a dark colored welcome mat, I can’t use a reagent that’s going to turn a dark color.

What about after he stepped off the And I’m just again this is this is just me theoriz theorizing and asking if that is a shoe print and then the next step was onto the welcome mat where he worked his way around and wiggled around and then the blood was was uh wiped off so to speak.

Then his next few steps are down the entrance towards the walkway and you used reagents on the walkway at this point.

Would you still, even though you can’t see it with the naked eye cuz he’s rubbed it off on the mat, would you still see, would reagent still help you see those footprints as they continued out to say a waiting car? It’s possible, but considering that the particular shoe that we’re talking about here, there’s not much um tread there, right? These are very big, blocky um uh sections.

And it’s very likely or it’s conceivable that a if if they stepped onto the welcome mat, all the blood would come off on that one step.

And so if we don’t really think about the welcome mat as being where all the blood could have transferred, we get a situation that we call a false negative, right? We do something and we think that, you know, we use our reagent, we don’t see a reaction, and we’re like, well, there that wasn’t blood or it wasn’t a foot impression.

Turns out, well, there actually was evidence there, but because we applied the wrong logic or we used the wrong reagent, uh, or we didn’t critically examine this, we walk away thinking we don’t have evidence there, but in fact, we do.

We just didn’t do it the right way.

So, we have to treat the welcome mat differently than we have to treat the tile.

And so for the welcome mat, I would actually take that welcome mat away from the scene and I would use a reagent that a lot of people are familiar with.

It’s the one that everybody thinks is the coolest one we have, blue star, luminol, right? So that’s something called chem luminescence.

So essentially we have a reaction where the product of that reaction is a glow, a faint blue glow.

Now, the reason why I want to take the welcome mat away is because that glow is very, very faint and it’s very easy to miss if you don’t do it under very dark conditions.

Right.

Well, we did see the FBI, it looked like, showing up with a big old white tent in about two weeks since the disappearance and do some experiments.

They had a, you know, a height board and all sorts of things they were taking in there.

And who knows if they were doing that or listen, I don’t know if the sheriff’s department and their homicide detectives did that uh in those first 30 hours before they released the scene.

We didn’t see that.

The media wasn’t all there at that point.

But let me get to the actual shape of the the blood drop in question that everyone’s debating.

Mhm.

Does this look like it could be an impression, a shoe impression, or do you have other, you know, other theories that that that resembles to the expert eye instead? I think there are other potential explanations.

And if you look at that that stain closely, you’ll see that there’s some circular edges to it, right? Semic-ircular edges.

Yeah.

I mean, that’s the whole thing is that they all look so perfectly symmetrical and in nature nothing’s symmetrical.

Right.

Right.

And and to me, what that suggests again and you know, I have to be careful not to prematurely form hard and fast opinions about things, right? You have to stay open until you have all the information you possible.

Those look like aspects of drip stains.

And if you had a couple drops of blood land in the same approximate area, you could get those stains merging together to create one larger stain, but yet you have some of the artifacts of the original droplets before they merged.

But wouldn’t they all have to be perfect to have all those little semicircles lining up in a line? And then there’s one more little what looks like stamp in the same pattern behind that big uh you’re referring to there there’s an area that where there isn’t blood, right? Yeah.

I mean, there’s there’s the main, you know, so to speak shoe print that looks like shoe print and then behind it there looks like a continuation, a piece of a continuation of a so to speak shoe print.

I’m not convinced it’s a shoe print.

I’m just saying that that’s what a lot of people are saying.

Yeah.

So yeah, any place where I have a disconnect between two stains, I have to entertain the possibility that they’re formed by two separate events unless, you know, there’s a latent, you know, uh I can develop blood in between those two that suggest that they actually were the same event and I just couldn’t see the blood between it because it was so faint.

Um that’s one explanation for it.

But I do see the potential that those were actually that’s what we call a drip pattern.

Series of droplets landing in the same place and then before they had a chance to dry they actually merged into each other.

And it would give you that perfect symmetry all the way down.

Yes.

So you’re the second person who’s not so convinced um that this is a a shoe impression.

Could you be convinced it’s a shoe impression? And if so, what would take you there? Like what about that? And again, knowing that these aren’t CSI pictures? Um, what would take you there? Or would nothing take you to that? It’s certainly that no I could be taken there, but I the first thing is better photographs, right? Um, higher higher quality images so that I could zoom in and see more detail.

So, we’re looking at photographs where we’re not, you know, we’re off at an angle.

So what what that means is that you know what’s closer to me, you know, what’s at the bottom of the picture is closer to me than what’s at the top of the picture.

So you have this distortion of distance or or size.

So the way that that stain actually looks in reality is different than the way it looks in the photograph.

So that, you know, changes the way you actually perceive things.

So, I would want to see a few more aspects of it that would lean in the direction of it being what’s called a transfer stain.

So, long before we get to the the notion of what made the transfer, we first have to say it’s a transfer stain because, you know, transfer stains are very common in blood, you know, in blood stain cases and casework that we have.

And that’s simply it’s it is what it sounds like.

There was blood on one surface and it transferred to another surface.

And very often that’s the end of the decision- making process that you know in bloodstain pattern analysis.

It’s a transfer stain.

Sometimes we can decipher information about what it was that made the transfer.

Sometimes we see finger marks, but sometimes because humans love to see meaning in patterns, we think something is a finger mark or a series of finger marks, but it wasn’t at all.

It was simply the folds of a sweater or, you know, some other arrangement of a random object that we thought meant something.

And if I’m losing your audience for a moment, has anybody ever looked into the sky and seen, you know, a cloud that looked like a horse or something like that? That’s the same effect.

We tend to create meaning from, you know, random arrangements of things.

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