Nancy Guthrie’s suspected kidnapper made a series of amateurish moves that “boggle the mind,” a former FBI bigwig said early Thursday — calling it proof the masked thug was unlikely “a trained assassin.”
Retired FBI supervisory special agent James Gagliano said the awkward way the suspect was carrying a holstered gun when he was caught on surveillance video outside Savannah Guthrie’s mom’s home was unlike anything he’d seen before.
“It does not look like a trained assassin or somebody who’s been doing this a long time,” he told “Fox & Friends” early Thursday.
Nancy Guthrie, mother of “Today” show anchor Savannah Guthrie, disappeared from her Arizona home on Feb. 1, 2026.Courtesy NBC Universal
“I look at the gun, I’ve never ever seen somebody carry a weapon that way. I carried a weapon in the service of my country for 33 years. I have never seen somebody carry it that way,” the ex-FBI official continued.
“This looks like it was thrown together either last minute or the person got a holster from one person and the weapon from somebody else.”
Gagliano said he was also stunned that the suspect went to the ailing mom’s heavy front door, where he was caught on her doorcam.
“There are multiple points of entry that you could get into very easily,” he said of the “Today” show host’s mom’s home in Tucson.
FBI Director Kash Patel released surveillance images Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026, of a suspect wanted in connection with the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie.FBI
“In the back of the house, there is a door that’s got like nine panel window panes in it, and you could have easily broken one panel, reached in your hand, unlocked the door and gone in with nobody noticing.
“So why did this suspect [go] to the front?” he asked.
“It really boggles the mind.”
Gagliano also said that The Post’s photos of a black glove being recovered by authorities on Wednesday could be a “margin of victory” for investigators who have yet to ID a suspect.
“If the gloves come back to this person, if there’s DNA on it and they ultimately be the item that undoes him … who commits a crime, a violent crime, abducts somebody and then drops off clues 1.3 miles from the house?” he said.
The ski-masked suspect seen on video.FBI
The former FBI official said the glove, which resembles the pair worn by the armed perpetrator caught on video, could be “part of the margin of victory” for detectives scrambling to find the missing mom, who needs medication to stay alive.
“And why is that? Well, the DNA aspect. So you can pull off the trace fingerprints, hair, and fiber, any type of body fluids on it,” he said.
The Post spotted at least one member of the FBI Evidence Response team pulling the glove from desert shrubbery in Guthrie’s secluded desert suburb at the edge of Tucson on Wednesday afternoon.
Investigators refused to comment when asked about the potential piece of evidence.
