Latest / Crime Night / The kidnapping of Savannah Guthrie's mother

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The kidnapping of Savannah Guthrie's mother · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Picture this. It's the pitch black early morning hours of February.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: First, right in the dead of winter exactly.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: And you are standing in the Catalina Foothills of Tucson, Arizona.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: It's this sprawling landscape, you know, older homes set deep
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: into these massive, isolated desert lots.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: It gets incredibly dark out there.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Oh, it really does. You're surrounded by dense cacti, thick brush,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: and you are miles away from the city lights. The
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: darkness is just absolute.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that heavy kind of silence.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: But on this particular morning at the home of Nancy Guthrie,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: who is She's an older, vulnerable woman and the mother
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: of Today Show anchor Savannah Guthrie, that silence has been
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: violently shattered.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: It's just a horrifying scene.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: It is. You walk up to the front porch and
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: the nest surveillance camera has been ripped completely off its
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: mount wires are just hanging there, exposed, and right there
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: on the cold concrete there are fresh droplets of blood.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, that is a terrifying visual.
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: It's the physic that's cool, Remnants of a nightmare left
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: right on the doorstep, you know. Yeah, when you encounter
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: a scene like that, Every single investigative instinct screams that
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: a violent struggle just took place. But uh, I have
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: to warn you right from the start, as we unravel
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: this timeline today, you're going to quickly realize that nothing
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: in this case is exactly as it seems, not at all.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: So today we're pulling you in as the third investigator
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: in the room. You're going to want to eliminate all
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: distractions for this deep dive.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, you need to focus for this one.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: We are stepping into a real time, active criminal investigation
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: into the abduction of Nancy Guthrie. Our mission is to
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: make sense of a timeline that honestly defies basic logic.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: We're going to examine these bizarre ransom demands, unpack some
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: truly baffling police missteps on the ground, and ultimately look
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: at a terrifying new criminal framework that kind of explains
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: how modern extortions are being executed today.
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: And we are doing this with six months of just
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: agonizing silence currently hanging over the case.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: I mean, there are no arrests, no clear answers.
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: It's just an incredibly complex puzzle where the physical evidence
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: on the ground and the digital evidence.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: You know, up in the ether, they seem.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: Like they belong to two completely different crimes.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: It's wild because, Okay, if you want to solve a crime,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: you have to secure the scene. It's the most fundamental
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: rule of an investigation.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, you lock it down.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: You lock it down, you log every person who steps
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: over the tape, you preserve the environment. But the physical
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: investigation at Mancy's house, it almost immediately went off the rails.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: It's honestly hard to comprehend.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: It really is. Just days into this massive kidnapping case,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: the p MC County Sheriff's Department, the PCSD, they bafflingly
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: just release the scene.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: Which is unheard of.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: I know, they gave reporters and civilians the green light
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: to walk right up to that driveway. We were talking
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: mere feet from the blood evidence on the porch.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: Releasing a scene that early, especially while a victim is
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: still missing and the full scope of the crime is
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: completely unknown, I mean that is a massive operational failure.
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: You have to think about the fundamental rule of forensics
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: low cards exchange principle, right. It basically states that every
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: time a person enters an environment, they bring something in
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: and they take something away, dust fibers, DNA.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: So by letting media crews and curious onlookers trample all
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: over that driveway, the area becomes hopelessly contaminated.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: Hopelessly, if a suspect is ever arrested, a defense attorney
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: will completely dismantle the integrity of that scene in a
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: court of law, and simply because the police failed to
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: protect it.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: It feels like having a highly sensitive, corrupted hard drive
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: full of ransomware, and instead of isolating it, you just
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: let a dozen strangers randomly overwrite the data sectors.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: You can never get the original code back. Yeah, but
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, why does an agency make a fundamental error
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: like that in the middle of a high profile case.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: Well, it often comes down to a lack of experience
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: with these complex hybrid crimes, and that gets compounded by
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: severe inner agency friction.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Ah right, the turf war exactly.
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: Behind the scenes, the local sheriff's department and the FBI
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: were locked in this jurisdictional battle. The FBI wanted to
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: take the reins, while the local authorities wanted to maintain
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: control of a high profile case in their own backyard.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you can see this tension so clearly and
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: how they handled the evidence.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: The PCSD insisted on sending crucial DNA samples to a
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: private lab in Florida, but the FBI, meanwhile, they were
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: demanding the evidence go to their premier lab in Quantico.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: But wait, if the FBI has a premier, state of
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: the art lab at Quantco, why would the local police
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: insist on sending it to a private lab in Florida.
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: It's really a matter of speed versus depth. Private labs
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: can sometimes turn around a basic DNA profile faster just
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: because they don't have the massive backlog of a federal
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: Agency's Okay, that makes sense, right, But Quantico has far
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: superior technology for complex mixtures, like separating touch DNA from
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: multiple people who might have, say, bumped into a doorframe.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: So by arguing over where to send it, they were
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: just delaying the processing of the absolute most critical evidence
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: they had.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: And the sloppy evidence handling it wasn't just confined to
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: the lab on the ground, it was totally.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: Chaotic, complete chaos.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: During the grid searches, a black glove was found about
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: two miles away from Nancy's house, so they tested it,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: you know, hoping for a break, but it matched a
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: local restaurant worker who had absolutely nothing to do with it.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: A total dead end.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a dead end. But meanwhile, back at the actual
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: crime scene, investigators were literally throwing their own used gloves
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: like the blue ones the black ones, onto the ground
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: while they were working.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: I still can't believe that.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: They were essentially creating a scavenger hunt, mixing their own
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: trash with potential evidence left by the kidnapper.
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: It paints a really clear picture of an investigation buckling
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: under immense public and media pressure, and you know, the
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: local leadership's response to that pressure was incredibly telling.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Oh it was. We are about a week into one
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: of the most heavily scrutinized investigations in the country. The
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: local news stations in Arizona, they have a strict ten
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: pm nightly broadcast. So at nine point fifty pm, a
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: reporting team sends Sheriff Chris Nanos a text message. They're
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: just trying to clarify where the DNA evidence is actually
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: being sent so they can report the facts accurately.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: To an anxious public, which is their job.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The Sheriff's response, he texts back and I quote,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: did you happen to notice the time give it a rest?
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: It is a staggering response. I mean, the victim's family
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: is not resting. The community is terrified. And while this
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: defensive back and forth is happening with the press, the
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: actions taken by the deputies on the ground were equally chaotic.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Right, because Nancy is out there somewhere and in the
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: middle of this, the Sheriff's department temporarily detained three local residents,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: just scooped them up. Yeah, they pulled in a DoorDash
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: driver and named Carlos who lived an hour away, and
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: a mother son pair who lived much closer, Mary and
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Luke Daily. The public court of opinion instantly went wild,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: obviously tarry into these people online, of course, but all
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: three were subsequently released with zero explanation from the police,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: no press conference clearing their names, no context as to
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: why they were detained, just grabbed and let go.
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: You see, when law enforcement operates without transparency, it creates
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: a vacuum, and that vacuum always gets filled with public panic. Yeah,
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: the physical investigation was flailing. They were chasing shadows and
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: detaining locals. But while the authorities were struggling in the
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: desert dirt. A highly sophisticated digital trail suddenly emerged, and
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: this trail proved with chilling certainty that this was a
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: targeted abduction.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: So the physical scene is a mess. But then this
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: ghost appears in the machine. Just days after Nancy vanished,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: a ransom note surfaces, but it doesn't go to the police.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: It gets sent to an anonymous tip line at a
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: local news station, and it arrives via an encrypted Okay,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: pause for a second, what exactly is a jot form
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: in this context and why use it?
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: So, a job form is essentially just an online web
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: form like a survey or a contact page you might
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: fill out on any basic website. But in this case,
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: the sender used an encrypted version that was routed through
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: anonymous networks. When they hit submit on that form, their
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: internet traffic wasn't coming directly from their computer to the
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: news station.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: Joe was hidden exactly.
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: It was bounced across multiple servers around the world. It's
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: a technique called IP bouncing. It masks their physical location entirely. Wow,
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: So to the news station servers, the message might look
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: like it originated in Switzerland and then Russia and then Brazil.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: It makes the sender virtually untraceable, and.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: The contents of this untraceable note they were incredibly direct.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: It opened with just two words, Hello, Savannah.
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: That direct address changes everything. It snaps the entire mode
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: of right into focus.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: It wasn't random exactly.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: The target was never a Nancy herself. The target was
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: Savannah Guthrie's wealth. Shortly for the abduction, Savannah had actually
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: filmed a highly publicized hometown segment for the Today Show.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: Oh right, I remember that.
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: The broadcast showed her and Nancy walking around Tucson eating
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: at Elcharro, which is a famous local restaurant. They talked
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: openly about Nancy's quiet life in the desert.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: So they basically advertised it.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: That segment unknowingly painted a massive target on Nancy's back.
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: It showcased a wealthy, high profile figure with a deep
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: connection to a vulnerable relative living in a remote area.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: The kidnapper laid out very strict demands. They wanted millions
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: of dollars in bitcoin. They set two hard deadlines, a
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Thursday at five pm and a Monday at five pm.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: Very specific very they explicitly stated they would hold Nancy
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: for a maximum of seven days, and promised to safe
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: drop off back in Tucson within twelve hours of the deposit.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: But what forces the FBI to take this seriously is
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: the proof of life they included.
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: Right, The author of the note described two highly specific things.
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: First a white smart watch on the floor of Nancy's
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: bedroom okay, and second a destroyed floodlight in the backyard.
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: The police had intentionally held those details back from the public.
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: Only the abductor and the investigators standing inside that house
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: knew those.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Facts, So that validates the threat immediately instantly. But there's
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: a glaring anomaly in that note that we need to
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: look at. The kidnapper demanded millions in bitcoin, right, but
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: they specifically requested the valuation be calculated in USD. Why
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: would they write that?
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: And it's so strange.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, if this is an American criminal operating in
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Arizona promising a drop off in Tucson, US dollars is
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: the default. You don't need to specify us D if
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: you live here.
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: That phrasing is a massive red flag for investigators. Linguistic
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: anomalies like that are often the first major crack in
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: a digital extortionists facade. Interesting unnecessarily specifying USD strongly suggests
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: the person typing that note operates in a multi currency environment.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: It hints that the author of this highly sophisticated IP
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: bouncing ransom note might not actually be in the United States.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Which makes no sense initially, because we have video of
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: the guy.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: At the house right we literally see him.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: On February tenth, the FBI finally releases the missing nestcam
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: footage and we come face to face with a person
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: who actually stepped onto that porch. The Internet immediately dubbed
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: him porch Guy.
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: It is a deeply unsettling piece of footage because it
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: captures the exact moment the crime begins.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: It really is chilling. You see this man wearing a
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: ski mask, carrying a backpack, staring right into the lens
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: of the camera.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: But his actions are so bizarre they are He.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Is holding a piece of shrubbery, like a literal branch
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: of desert brush. He's awkwardly trying to hide his face
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: behind it, or maybe he's using it to pry the
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: camera off them out.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: It's hard to tell.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Whatever he's attempting, he's fumbling, it's clumsy. The camera goes black,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: and then a short time later, Nancy's pacemaker disconnects, and.
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: That pacemaker disconnecting is the most crucial piece of technical
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: evidence in the entire timeline. Modern pacemakers aren't just standalone devices,
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: they are connected health monitors. They frequently communicate with a
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: base station next to the patient's bed via Bluetooth or
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: Wi Fi, which then logs the heart data to a
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: medical server.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: So it's constantly pinging.
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: Yes, when Nancy was taken from the home, she was
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: separated from that base station, the data flow ceased. It
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: grounds this digital ghost story in a very grim physical reality.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: Nancy had a serious haut condition. She was incredibly frail
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: and could barely walk without assistance.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: But looking at the video porch guy, I have to
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: challenge this whole criminal mastermind narrative. If this crew is
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: sophisticated enough to use encrypted jotforms, bounce IP addresses across
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: the globe, and manage untraceable bitcoin wallets, why is the
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: guy on the physical scene clumsily fumbling with a bush.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: It's a great question.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: It is like hiring a brilliant state sponsored cybersecurity hacker
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: who suddenly decides to go rob a physical bank using
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: a plastic scort gun. The digital sophistication and the physical
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: sloppiness just you not match.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: They don't match at all.
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: And that glaring disconnect between the digital extortion and the
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: physical abduction is the vital clue. The sheer mismatch and
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: competence directly explains the tragedy that followed.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: So we have a clumsy abduction on night one. How
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: does the person writing the emails react when the physical
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: plan clearly goes off the rails?
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: Well, we saw it happen, right.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Because a few days later, a second message arrives. Savannah
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Guthrie have been posting deathperate please on social media. She
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: publicly offered over a million dollars just for proof of
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: life or simply to bring her mother's remains home.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: Just heartbreaking.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a tiny test deposit was even made into the
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: kidnappers bitcoin wallet to initiate a dialogue. But when ransom
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: note number two lands, the tone is entirely shifted.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: It is a devastating message. The demands are gone. The
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: tone is sterile, cold and almost apologetic. The note reads
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: and I quote we did not fully grasp the seriousness
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: of her physical conditions. She perished shortly after she is
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: buried in nature.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Now buried in nature. Now it's such a strange, haunting phrase.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Is it possible? Note two is just a bluff, like
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: could the kidnappers be lying about her dying just to
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: cut ties and force the FBI to back off the.
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: Investigation investigators definitely have to consider that. But you have
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: to cross reference the note with the medical telemetry, the
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: pacemaker data ceased on night one.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: Oh man.
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Connect the sudden loss of that medical signal with
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: the phrase she perished shortly after, and the conclusion is
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: near certain. Nancy's frail heart likely could not withstand the
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: terror and physical strain of the abduction. She likely passed
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: away almost immediately.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: That is just awful.
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: It is what was planned as a highly coordinated, multi
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: million dollar wansom plot instantly devolved into a panicked cover
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: up in the desert.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: To make sense of all these contradictory pieces, you know,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: the USD glitch, the strange perished phrasing, the brilliant digital
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: encryption paired with a guy fumbling with a bush, we
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: really have to look at a terrifying framework. Seasoned investigator
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: Lisa Miller proposed a theory for this case that ties
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: it all together. She calls it the evolved wrench attack.
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: It is a brilliant way to frame the evidence. In cybersecurity,
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: a standard wrench attack is a brute force physical crime
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: used to steal digital assets.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Like physically attacking someone.
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: Exactly, instead of trying to hack your complicated crypto password
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: through a computer, a criminal just hits you with a
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: wrench until you physically hand the password over. It bridges
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: the digital and physical worlds through violence.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: But this case is an evolved version.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: Of that, right.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: It's evolved because they didn't target the person with the assets.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: Savannah Guthrie is surrounded by security.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: In New York.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: She's insulated.
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Instead, the criminals targeted her vulnerable stationary relative living
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: in a remote location, applying maximum emotional leverage to extract
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: the digital currency.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: And the core of Miller's theory is that this was
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: never a single crew. It's the two actor theory. Actor
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: number one is the mastermind. This person is sitting safely overseas,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: highly sophisticated, protected by layers of encryption, untouchable. Basically, pretty much,
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: this is the entity who wrote the ransom notes. That
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: perfectly explains the strange phrasing usd perished, buried in nature.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: The mastermind was likely running their demands through translation software
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: to write the emails in.
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: English, which perfectly explains the digital footprint. And Actor number
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: two is the local actor coorch guy. He is entirely
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: separate from the digital side of the operation.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: So they don't even really know each other.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: Likely not.
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: He's just hired muscle, a low level contractor recruited locally
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: in southern Arizona or maybe just across the border in Mexico.
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: He was given a date and address and paid a
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: flat fee to do the physical grab.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: It is a terrifying reality of modern crime. It's basically
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: a decentralized kidnapping franchise. You have a CEO sitting thousands
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: of miles away managing the digital demands in the crypto wallets,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: while a local contractor completely botches the physical job on
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: the ground.
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: It is the absolute darkest application of the gig economy.
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: When Nancy tragically died on night one, the entire business
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: model collapsed. The local muscle porch guy he panics, he
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: has a deceased victim he wasn't prepared for. He buries
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: her remains somewhere in the vast desert and goes into
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: hiding to save himself.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Meanwhile, the Mastermine realizes their asset is gone, but they
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: are sitting safely in another country, completely shielded from US
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: extradition laws. So the Mastermine sends Note two to officially
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: sever the connection, not just to cut ties with the
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Guthrie family, but to burn the bridge with the botched
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: operation entirely. She's buried in nature now.
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: End of transaction, which leads to a horrifying realization for
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: the authorities. Because this crime is decentralized, the mastermind oversees
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: likely has absolutely no idea where Nancy's remains actually are.
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: That's chilling, and porch guy hiding out locally might not
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: even know the true identity of the phantom who hired
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: him online.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: They are completely insulated from one another.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Which drops us right back into the present day. Months
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: of absolute silence. The bigcoin wallet has not moved a
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: single cent, There are no arrests. The authorities have a
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: mixed DNA sample from inside Nancy's house, but they are
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: still trying to isolate the profiles.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a slow process.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: It is. They want to use genetic genealogy, but deconvoluting
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: mixed DNA takes months, and that's assuming the low suspect
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: even has a relative and a commercial database.
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: Looking objectively at the state of the investigation, there are
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: really only four paths forward. Path one, the mastermind overseas
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: gets greedy, assumes they can still manipulate the family for
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: the reward money, and reopens digital communications, which could give
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: the FBI a new vector to trace okay. Path two,
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: the DNA genealogy eventually separates the clean profile and identifies
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: porch Guy. Path three, the massive million dollar reward money
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: eventually tempts an accomplice or a confidant of porch Guy
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: to snitch.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Or Path four, And given the geography of southern Arizona,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: this honestly feels like the most likely scenario. A hiker
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: or so on out exploring the endless desert trails please
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: stumbles upon the area where she was buried.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: It is a highly sobering reality to confront as you
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: process all these details. I want to leave you with
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: this thought. We live our lives out loud online. We
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: share our hometowns, we post our favorite local restaurants, and
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: we celebrate.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: Our love for our families.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: We all do it.
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: But in a hyper connected, decentralized world, your digital footprint
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: and your success can inadvertently place a physical target on
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: the back of your most vulnerable loved ones, a target
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: placed there by a phantom sitting in the dark thousands
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: of miles away.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: Wow. It fundamentally changes how you view every piece of
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: information you put into the world. Thank you for joining
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: us at the table as the third investigator today. Keep
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: questioning the narratives around you, look closely at the mechanisms
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: behind the headlines, and remember that pitch black desert landscape,
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: because out there, somewhere, the truth is still waiting to
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: be found.