FBI sources said this week that kidnapped Nancy Guthrie may be in Mexico, while the sheriff of Pima County, Arizona, claimed his team’s evidence puts her in Tucson.
It’s just one of many rifts between the local cops and the feds, which critics say is a major reason why little progress has been made in finding “Today” show co-host Savannah Guthrie’s 84-year-old mom, who was abducted from her home on Feb. 1.
“[The FBI] should have taken the case over within the first few days. We have been treating this as a kidnapping and the FBI is the premier agency to deal with kidnappings,” Aaron Cross, president of the Pima County Deputies Association, told The Post earlier this week.
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A surveillance image shows a suspect wearing a ski mask, light-colored jacket, pants and a backpack outside Nancy’s home on the night she disappeared.FBI
A glove that police say is similar to the ones worn by the suspect has been analyzed for DNA but did not match other DNA related to the case.FBI
But hard-headed Sheriff Chris Nanos is keeping a tight grip on the case, even though it’s been over a week since recovered doorbell footage of a masked man at Guthrie’s door was revealed, and cops are no closer to finding her.
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Here’s how the evidence in the case has been handled — and bungled — in the desperate search for answers.
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Early errors
The FBI wasn’t called in for the first couple of days, despite the high-profile abduction needing resources beyond what Tucson can offer, critics say.
There is also criticism that local cops surrendered the scene too early — with everyone from reporters to true-crime sleuths able to walk right up to Guthrie’s front door with no security or crime scene tape.
“It looks unprofessional. It doesn’t look good for our department when we’ve had reporters walking up and essentially contaminating the scene,” Cross said.
Tensions are mounting between the FBI and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department as the two law enforcement agencies are giving conflicting opinions on where Nancy may be.California Post
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On top of that, a roof-mounted camera was overlooked during the sheriff’s cursory review and only found by the FBI in a more thorough sweep.
“In my professional opinion, I believe they released the crime scene too early. And that was on Sheriff Nanos,” Brantner Smith, a former cop, previously told The Post.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department announced Wednesday it is “analyzing biological evidence” found at Guthrie’s home, and had potentially retrieved new DNA left by the suspect. However, the search for DNA evidence has so far proven unfruitful.
DNA
A miles-wide dragnet around Guthrie’s home in Tucson recovered 17 discarded gloves — 16 of which turned out to have been abandoned by law enforcement officers during the manhunt.
One glove found on a roadside two miles from Guthrie’s home resembled the black gloves worn by the man in the Nest doorbell video, cops said.
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However, it was sent to Florida-based DNA Labs International — instead of FBI labs in Quantico, Virginia — causing more contention between the local cops and the feds.
Nancy Guthrie’s residence in Tucson, Arizona. Critics say the crime scene was surrendered too early, with possible evidence being lost or destroyed.Getty Images
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The mysterious case has dragged on for nearly three weeks as investigators are now desperate, deploying some novel forensic techniques.James Keivom for NY Post
“Nanos has insisted instead on using a private lab in Florida,” an anonymous law enforcement source told Fox News Digital.
The lab — which cost around $200,000 — was chosen because of its specialization in forensic genealogy, Pima County officials said.
Colleen Fitzpatrick, who has worked with the Florida lab, explained it would generate a multitude of leads.
“If the guy’s from Morocco [for example], you’re not going to find out who he is, but you’ll know he’s from Morocco, which is an investigative lead,” Fitzpatrick told The Post.
DNA from the black glove was sent to faraway DNA Labs International in Florida, which specializes in a field known as forensic genealogy.DNA Labs International
Colleen Fitzpatrick was a pioneer in forensic genealogy, and was even the first person to solve a homicide using the technique.Courtesy of Colleen Fitzpatrick
However, it was announced this week that DNA on the glove did not fit with that of an unknown male that was found at Guthrie’s home. Nor did the DNA from either return a hit in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), the FBI’s national DNA database of convicted offenders and arrestees.
Sheriffs also said this week that all of Guthrie’s family have been cleared of any involvement in her kidnap.
Ransom notes
Multiple notes have been delivered to news outlets. At least two notes have asked for a ransom to be paid in two different cryptocurrencies to different crypto wallets.
However, the notes provided no proof of life and their deadlines have come and gone, making many doubt their authenticity.
While a popular motif in movies, ransom kidnappings in the US are so rare that the FBI doesn’t track them as a distinct category. In fact, they almost never happen, especially to high-profile people or their family members.savannahguthrie/Instagram
A series of unconfirmed ransom notes appeared in the days after Nancy’s disappearance, demanding payment in bitcoin.savannahguthrie/Instagram
Experts told The Post that asking for crypto is an amateur move, as it’s easily traceable.
Email addresses of the senders are also unlikely to yield much.
William Odom, a digital forensics expert formerly with the FBI, said smart criminals don’t use Gmail or Yahoo, for example, but communicate by “burner email” accounts.
“They’re impossible to trace back because there’s no way to tell where the source is coming from,” Odom told The Post. “It would look like different email addresses coming through every time.”
Those free, disposable email addresses are usually hosted on servers outside the US — in places like Montenegro and Germany, Odom said.
Video evidence
It took 10 days to recover crucial footage from Guthrie’s Google Nest doorbell camera of a masked, armed man — about 5 feet 9 inches to 5 feet 10 inches tall, average build, wearing gloves and an Ozark Trail backpack — tampering with the device in the early morning on the day of her disappearance.
The backpack is sold exclusively at Walmart, which is cooperating with authorities to try to pinpoint the sale.
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos has been seen as at odds with FBI officials.REUTERS
FBI agents are assisting the sheriff’s department in the prolonged search for the missing 84-year-old grandmother.BACKGRID
It took a team of digital forensics investigators from the FBI, along with cooperation from Google, to get the doorbell footage, as Guthrie did not subscribe to a storage service. If the assailant hadn’t crushed the camera, the video would have been written over.
That’s exactly what happened with the other Nest cameras in her home. Experts told The Post that more video could be coming, but investigators are sifting through mountains of information.
“It’s the equivalent of a digital landfill at that point, so they’ve got to dig through that. It’s not necessarily that they will find where all of this [data] is. It’s going to take time to figure it out,” Odom said.
Pacemaker
The Pima County Sheriff Department’s aviation unit launch was delayed due to lack of staff, leaving vast airspace unsearched in the critical early hours of the investigation.
Now cops are deploying a new tech: flying over the Tucson desert with a Bluetooth signal detector, called a “signal sniffer,” in an attempt to locate Guthrie’s pacemaker, which stopped communicating with her iPhone at 2:28 a.m. Feb 1.
Savannah Guthrie with her mother, Nancy Guthrie, on the set of the “Today” show.Nathan Congleton/NBC via Getty Images
Using a helicopter to fly in a low, slow grid pattern, the sheriff is deploying advanced FBI technology to try to pick up a ping from Guthrie’s heart device. But the chopper will have to get very close to catch a signal — within 800 feet, the device’s inventor told CBS News, adding that it will still work if she is deceased.
However, the whole project attracted President Trump’s ire: “I didn’t like when they talked about going after the pacemaker before they even started going after it,” he told reporters Thursday.
Arrests
No arrest has been made in the case so far. Felon Luke Daley, 37, and his 77-year-old mom were detained by police for questioning on Feb. 13 after FBI agents and a SWAT team swarmed their home, two miles from the crime scene, but he was later cleared and let go.
Another man, Carlos Palazuelos, was also briefly detained on Feb. 11. He was stopped by police as he drove toward the US border. However, the delivery driver was also let go after a short time.
Mexico
The motive for the apparent kidnapping isn’t even clear. Officials have ruled out a burglary gone wrong, and Nanos has said Guthrie could have been snatched as “revenge for something,” but little else has been made public.
Social media users have speculated the kidnapping may be linked to Mexico’s notoriously ruthless drug cartels — citing a profit motive and Tucson’s proximity to the border.
Mexico security expert and former US border cop Leon Boyer said nothing about this case has the hallmarks of a Mexican drug cartel operation.Courtest of Leon Boyer
Unnamed sources told TMZ the FBI had been in contact with Mexican officials about the case, but Border Patrol officer Leon Boyer, an expert on Mexican security, told The Post he doesn’t think that if she had been taken there, cartels would be involved.
“[Cartels] are going to target people in Mexico. They’re not targeting people in the US. Why would they bring attention to themselves?” he questioned, adding that cartel kidnapping schemes usually relate to local extortion plots and business interests.
Doorbell footage was retrieved 10 days after Nancy went missing and involved digging through a “digital landfill” of junk data.FBI
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Suspect pool
Authorities don’t give away certain key information if it could harm their investigation, but an Arizona gun store owner says the FBI recently came to him with a list of approximately 18 to 24 individuals with photos, asking if he had sold them a weapon. He said he agreed to help out of concern for Guthrie’s family.
However, Nanos has disputed reports of the suspect pool being narrowed.
“We haven’t narrowed it down to anything other than we have pieces of evidence,” he said on Tuesday.
A reward for information leading to Guthrie’s return stands at $202,000.
