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Savannah Guthrie's Mom Did Not Leave On Her Own - Sheriff Says · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The Deep Dive February sixteenth to twenty twenty six. We
• 0:04
  need to talk about the silence and the Catalina Foothills.
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  And I don't mean the peaceful kind, you know, the
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  kind people pay millions for, the kind you see in
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  those glossy real estate brochures promising tranquility and these amazing sunsets. No,
• 0:19
  we are talking about that heavy, terrifying silence that follows
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  a vanishing. We are looking at the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie.
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  Speaker 2: And this is not just a missing person flyer on
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  a telephone pole kind of situation, not at all. This
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  is a case that is I think currently rewriting the
• 0:35
  playbook on how law enforcement handles geriatric abductions.
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  Speaker 1: Rewriting the playbook.
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  Speaker 2: It's a masterclass in modern forensic limitations. It truly is.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: It's a paradox, isn't it. You have an eighty four
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  year old woman, Nancy Guthrie, living in one of the
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  most secure, affluent enclaves in Arizona, gated communities, private security,
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  and she just disappears, vanishes. The immediate public reaction and
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  I'll be honest, my first thought when I saw the
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  push notification pop up on my phone was, Oh, it's
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  the mother of Savannah Guthrie from the Today Show. That's
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  why the helicopters are up. That's why it's a national story.
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  Speaker 2: And that's the missing white woman syndrome amplified by you know,
• 1:08
  celebrity status. Yeah, it's a cynical take, and look, usually
• 1:12
  it's pretty accurate.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Usually.
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  Speaker 2: However, in this specific instance, if you strip away the
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  famous daughter, if you take away the whole NBC connection,
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  the police response would likely be exactly the same. Why
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  because the facts here from our one are terrifyingly anomalous.
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  They just don't add up.
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  Speaker 1: And that right there, that is our mission for this
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  deep dive. We are sixteen days into this. It is
• 1:37
  February sixteenth, and the Pima County sheriff again named Chris Nanos,
• 1:41
  is using words like baffling and stuck in his press conferences.
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  Speaker 2: Which is something a sheriff almost never says publicly.
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  Speaker 1: Exactly, so we want to understand why we aren't here
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  to just rehash the headlines you've already seen. We're going
• 1:53
  to look at the specifics, the digital forensics that failed,
• 1:56
  the biological evidence that didn't, and the psychological profile of
• 1:59
  a suspect who seems to be a ghost.
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  Speaker 2: We've got the police reports, we have the FBI field
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  updates from their Phoenix office, and the forensic logs. We're
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  going to basically reconstruct this investigation from the ground up
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  to see why the standard silver alert protocol were just
• 2:14
  thrown out the window in the first hour.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's start with a geography the Catalina foothills.
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  I think to an outsider or maybe someone listening from
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  the east coast, the word foothills sounds I.
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  Speaker 2: Don't know, gentle, gentle, Yeah, like a gentle slope.
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  Speaker 1: Right, maybe some nice suburban lawns, a few pretty hills
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  in the background.
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  Speaker 2: It's completely deceptive. I've spent time analyzing the topography, maps
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  and the satellite imagery there. This is high desert. We
• 2:39
  are talking about really strict zoning laws that prioritize the
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  natural landscape over everything else.
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  Speaker 1: What does that mean practical terms, It means you.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: Don't have street lights, you don't have sidewalks. You have
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  these massive acre sized lots separated by deeper royos, which
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  are basically dry river beds that can become raging floods
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  during the monsoon season. It's all surrounded by dense mesquite
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  and siguaro cactus forests.
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  Speaker 1: So privacy isn't just a feature of living there, it's
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  the entire product.
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  Speaker 2: Privacy is the religion there. That's the best way to
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  put it. You buy a home in the foothills specifically
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  so you cannot see or hear your neighbor. Wow. The
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  houses are set way back from the road, often hidden
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  behind natural berms or you know, thick vegetation. Wow. And
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  that is the first critical insight here. The very architecture
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  of privacy becomes the architecture of vulnerability.
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  Speaker 1: That's a great point because if you scream in a
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  dense urban grid, a city block, you might have fifty witnesses.
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  You have people living above you, below you, right across
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  the street.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly if you scream in one of these setback estates
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  in the foothills, the desert just absorbs the sound. The
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  nearest neighbor might be two hundred yards away through thick,
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  dense scrub. It's an acoustic black hole.
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  Speaker 1: And Nancy Guthrie was living right in the heart of that, right.
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  Speaker 2: In the middle of that absorption. She's a widow that
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  her husband Charles passed away way back in eighty eight.
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  So she's lived there alone for decades.
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  Speaker 1: And by all accounts, she loved that independence.
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  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 1: This wasn't a case of someone who was, you know,
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  clinging to a home they couldn't manage. She was the
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  queen of her castle.
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
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  Speaker 1: But let's look at the timeline, because this is where
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  it gets chilling. The window of opportunity here is incredibly tight.
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  Speaker 2: It is. So we start on Saturday, January thirty first,
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  twenty twenty six. This is our baseline. This is normal.
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  Nancy's doing what grandmothers do. She's with family, Okay, she
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  has dinner with her other daughter Annie and her son
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  in law. It's a completely normal, uneventful evening. They drop
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  her off at her home around nine point four five pm.
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  Speaker 1: And this is the last verified visual. Correct we aren't
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  relying on a neighbor saying, oh, I think I saw.
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  Speaker 2: Her porch light on terrified entry. Daughter Annie watches her
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  go into the house. The door shuts. Now, Statistically, when
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  an eighty four year old goes missing after a drop
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  off like this, investigators immediately pivot to like three main theories.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, what are they?
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  Speaker 2: One A fall inside house, two a sudden incapacitating medical
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  event like a stroke or three. A wandering incident may
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  be triggered by some kind of confusion or dementia.
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  Speaker 1: The classic silver alert scenario precisely.
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  Speaker 2: And usually those things resolve in twenty four hours. You
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  find the person you know dehydrated in a nearby wash,
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  or a neighbor spots them walking down the road looking confused.
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  Speaker 1: But that's not what happened here, not even close.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, we moved to Sunday morning, February first, first red flag.
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  She misses a virtual church service.
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  Speaker 1: Which for Nancy, from what I've read, is a major
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  broken routine, and in criminal profiling, broken routines are the
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  very first smoke signal.
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  Speaker 2: It's all about pattern of life analysis. Nancy was devout,
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  she was consistent. She didn't just decide to skip it.
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  So the family starts calling no answer.
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  Speaker 1: They get worried, so they call for a welfare check.
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  Speaker 2: Right and when the Puman County deputies arrive, they find
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  a scene that one of them later described as being
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  frozen in time.
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  Speaker 1: Frozen, that's a haunting way to put it.
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  Speaker 2: It's chillingly accurate. The car's in the driveway, her purse
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  is on the kitchen counter, her wallet is in the purse,
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  her cell phone is inside the house.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, I want to push on the phone aspect for second.
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  In twenty twenty six, we track everything. I mean, leaving
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  your phone behind is like leaving your heartbeat behind. But
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  for an octagenarian, does that hold the same weight? My
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  grandmother sometimes leaves her phone in the other room for hours.
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  Speaker 2: That's a fair question, but I argue it holds more
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  weight in this case. For a digital native, a phone
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  is entertainment, it's social media. For an elderly person living alone,
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  particularly one with known medical issues, that phone is safety.
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  It is the lifeline, the emergency button. Exactly. If Nancy
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  just walks to the mailbox at the end of her
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  long driveway, maybe she leaves it. If she goes anywhere else,
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  even to a neighbor's house, that phone goes with her.
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  Finding the phone and the wallet is what investigators call
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  negative evidence, meaning it proves what didn't happen. She didn't
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  plan to leave, she didn't get into a car to
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  go somewhere, she didn't call for a ride, she didn't
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  have a medical event and try to call nine one one.
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  The absence of that action tells a story, and that's.
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  Speaker 1: When Sheriff Nanos makes the call. He locks it down
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  as a crime scene almost immediately. There's no let's wait
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  twenty four hours. No, oh, maybe she's with a friend
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  and forgot to tell anyone. And he was absolutely right
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  to do it because he had the other half of
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  the puzzle, the medical context. And this is the second
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  key insight. We need to understand what I call the
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  mobility paradox.
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  Speaker 2: Let's unpack that because I think people here eighty four
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  years old and they think slow, but they don't necessarily
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  think immobile.
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  Speaker 1: Right. Nancy Guthrie had severe chronic back issues. We're talking
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  about a woman who, according to her medical records and
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  the sworn testimony from her family, could not physically walk
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  more than about fifty yards without assistance. Fifty yards.
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  Speaker 2: Let's have a football, feel barely and now picture the
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  driveway of a million dollar estate in the foothills. The
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  driveway alone might be forty yards long.
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  Speaker 1: Okay.
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  Speaker 2: The distance from her front door to the nearest public road,
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  and then from that road into this kind of rugged
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  desert terrain where she could arguably get lost, it far
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  exceeds her physical capacity. It's not a matter of opinion.
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  It's a matter of biomechanics.
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  Speaker 1: So the physics just don't work.
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  Speaker 2: The physiology doesn't work. It's impossible. And then you add
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  the other medical layers. She has a pacemaker, she is
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  on a strict daily medication regimen for high blood pressure. Ah,
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  this creates a ticking clock. This isn't just a missing person,
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  it's a missing medical patient. Without those meds, within twenty
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  four to forty eight hours, she would likely enter a
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  hypertensive crisis. Cardiac risks go through the roof.
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  Speaker 1: So the sheriff knew this within hours.
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  Speaker 2: Within hours, he knew she didn't walk away, and she
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  couldn't drive away because the car was still there. Therefore,
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  by simple process of elimination, she was taken.
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  Speaker 1: And on top of all that, her mental state was.
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  Speaker 2: Fine, perfectly sound. Sheriff Nanas made a point to state
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  this very clearly in his first press conference. He said,
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  she had no dementia, no cove confusion, no signs of wandering.
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  Speaker 1: So you have a sound mine and a frail body.
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  The combination makes that wandering off scenario completely.
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  Speaker 2: Impossible, impossible. And this is where we get that crucial
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  quote for the shriff. He said, we know she didn't
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  just walk out of there. There are other things at
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  the scene that indicates she did not leave on her own.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, so if she was taken, we have to look
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  at the how. And this is where the forensics get
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  incredibly specific and at the same time incredibly frustrating. Let's
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  start with the digital witness, the Google Nest camera.
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  Speaker 2: This footage is the Rosetta stone of the case, but
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  it feels like it's written in a language we can't
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  quite read yet.
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  Speaker 1: It's grainy, right, like most of these things are at night.
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  Speaker 2: It's not crystal clear, but it's good enough. We have
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  a suspect captured on video, likely in the very early
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  morning hours of February first, or late late night on
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  the thirty first.
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  Speaker 1: We know it's a male, estimated height around five foot
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  nine five foot ten.
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  Speaker 2: He's masked, but look at the behavior. This is what
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  the FBI's behaved Vial Analysis unit, the BAU, would be
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  all over. The suspect approaches the front door. He doesn't
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  smash the camera with a rock. He doesn't try to
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  cut the Wi.
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  Speaker 1: Fi, which an amateur might do a.
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  Speaker 2: Panicking amateur might. Instead, he does something very subtle. He
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  tilts his body. He uses the foliage, the decorative plants
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  on the porch to partially obscure the lens.
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  Speaker 1: What does that tell you is that professional level tradecraft?
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  Speaker 2: I would call it tactically aware, but not tier one professional.
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  A true pro kills the power to the whole house
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  from the street, or maybe finds a way to loop
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  the video feed right and a total amateur just walks
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  right up, looks into the camera and rings the bell.
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  This guy's in that uncanny valley, that middle sophistication bracket.
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  Speaker 1: So what does that imply?
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  Speaker 2: It implies he knows what an s camera is. He
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  understands its general field of view. He knows that if
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  he angles his body just so, the facial recognition algorithms
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  that law enforcement uses will fail. He's denying them a
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  clear shot of his face, his eyes, his gait.
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  Speaker 1: It feels practiced, like he knew the layout of that porch.
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  Speaker 2: Or at least familiar. It strongly suggests he might have
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  scouted the location beforehand. He knew exactly where that camera
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  was mounted. He didn't just look up see it in panic.
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  He managed his exposure relative to the lens. That implies premeditation.
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  Speaker 1: And then there's the backpack. A detail that seems so
• 11:18
  mundane but feels so important, the Ozark Trail twenty five
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  liter hiker pack.
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  Speaker 2: This is a crucial data point. Ozark Trail is a
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  Walmart private label brand. It's ubiquitous, it's affordable, it's everywhere.
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  This tells us something potentially about the socioeconomic profile of
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  the suspect. This isn't the guy carrying a four hundred
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  dollars tactical mystery ranch bag like a former Special Forces
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  operator might. This is off the shelf every day year.
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  Speaker 1: It grounds the suspect a bit. He's not some mythical ghost.
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  He's a guy who shops at Walmart.
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  Speaker 2: And you have to ask what's in the backpack? A
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  twenty five liter pack is small like a day pack.
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  Is it for carring tools, restraints?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah?
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  Speaker 2: Or is it just part of his disguise to look
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  like a hiker who got lost.
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  Speaker 1: So many questions from just that one detail. But let's
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  move from the digital to the biological, because cameras can
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  be fooled, but DNA is math. They found blood on
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  the porch.
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  Speaker 2: They did possible blood, which was then confirmed by the
• 12:14
  Pima County Forensics Lab. They got a DNA hit on
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  it fast and it was Nancy's confirmed Nancy's blood. Not
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  a lot, but enough. This tells us a struggle or
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  at least some kind of violent event happened right there
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  on her front porch.
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  Speaker 1: But and this is the part that I just can't
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  wrap my head around. The police have been adamant. There's
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  no forced entry, no broken glass, no splintered door frame,
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  no kicked in door.
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  Speaker 2: This is what I call the entry anomaly. It's a
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  huge contradiction. If you have her blood on the porch,
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  it means violence occurred outside the threshold of the home,
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  right But we know she was safely inside at nine
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  four or five pm. So you're left with a few scenarios.
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  Scenario A, she opened the door later that night.
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  Speaker 1: Why would she do that?
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  Speaker 2: A lure, a ruse, someone addressed the delivery driver, a
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  knock on the door, and someone saying, ma'm I'm with
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  the water company. We have a leak something to get
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  her to open that door.
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  Speaker 1: Or what about Scenario B she was intercepted before she
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  got inside at nine point four or five.
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  Speaker 2: That's less likely, just given that her daughter dropped her
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  off and saw her go in. Unless someone was hiding
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  on the porch in the shadows when she arrived. But
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  you'd think the car's headlights would have illuminated the area.
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  Her daughter would have seen.
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  Speaker 1: Something, so a llure seems more plausible.
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  Speaker 2: It does. Or scenario C the one investigators hate to
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  consider but have to, which is someone had a key
• 13:31
  or code to the garage. Look. The sheriff has basically
• 13:35
  ruled out a random burglary. He said it wasn't a
• 13:37
  crime of opportunity. Random burglars break things they want speed,
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  they use a crowbar. Access via a key or a
• 13:45
  keypad code implies a relationship or at least a compromise
• 13:49
  of her personal security ecosystem like.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: Who housekeepers, maintenance workers, previous owners, all of the above.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: They'd be pulling records for anyone who had legitimate access
• 13:59
  to that in the last say, five years. It's a massive.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Undertaking, But so far they haven't found that link.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: Not publicly.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: No.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: But let's move from the porch to what might be
• 14:08
  the most cinematic piece of physical evidence they have the.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Glove found miles away from the house.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: Miles away in a random desert field, A single black
• 14:17
  glove that when they checked it visually matched the one
• 14:20
  scene in the nest video.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Now, wait a minute, finding a single glove in the
• 14:24
  desert can't be that rare, can it. I mean, people hike,
• 14:26
  they go off roading, they drop things.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: It's not rare at all. And that's why by itself,
• 14:30
  it would just be a curiosity. But the DNA results
• 14:33
  on this glove, they are the pivot point of this
• 14:36
  entire investigation.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: They found male DNA on the inside.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: They found what forensic scientists call a mixture profile, which
• 14:43
  means DNA for more than one person. But and this
• 14:47
  is the critical part, the dominant profile on the inside
• 14:50
  of the glove is male, and it excludes Nancy and
• 14:54
  all of her immediate family members.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: So if that glove is the suspects, then.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: We have his genetic code, we have his d And
• 15:00
  this is where the CSI effect meets grim reality. People
• 15:05
  on TV think you just plug the DNA into a
• 15:07
  big computer and a face with the name and address
• 15:09
  pops up on a.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Screen, And that's not how it works.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: That only happens if the person is already in the system.
• 15:14
  Codis the combined DNA index system. That database is primarily
• 15:19
  populated by people convicted of felonies.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: And if he's a first time offender, he's never been
• 15:23
  arrested for a serious crime, then.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: You have a complete genetic profile with no name attached
• 15:28
  to it. You have a blueprint of a ghost. At
• 15:29
  that point, your options are limited. You can wait for
• 15:32
  a familial match.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: What's that.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: That's where you get a partial match to say, a
• 15:36
  second cousin who submitted their DNA to a genealogy website
• 15:41
  like twenty three am meters that law enforcement later subpoened.
• 15:44
  It's controversial, but it has solved cold cases. Or you
• 15:47
  just wait, or you wait for them to screw up again,
• 15:49
  get arrested for something else, get his DNA swabbed, and
• 15:52
  then months or years later you get a hit.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: That's terrifying. The evidence is right there, but it's mute,
• 15:57
  it can't speak.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: It's the ultimate frustrat And that's why the sheriff is
• 16:01
  making this controversial move sending some of the evidence to
• 16:04
  a private lab in Florida.
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: I saw that that sparked a huge debate online and
• 16:10
  in the media. Why bypass the FBI? I mean, Quantico
• 16:15
  is the gold standard for this kind of work. You'd
• 16:18
  think for a high profile case, involving the mother of
• 16:21
  a national news anchor. They'd use the best of the bet.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: It is the gold standard, absolutely, But Quantico is also
• 16:27
  a federal bureaucracy. They have a backlog of thousandsupun thousands
• 16:30
  of cases from all over the country. Terrorism investigations take priority,
• 16:34
  mass shootings take priority. A single missing person case, even
• 16:38
  a high profile one, enters a queue.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: So this is about speed.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: It's a pure calculation. Sheriff Nanos is trading the chain
• 16:45
  of custody, prestige and ironclad reputation of the FTI for
• 16:49
  the speed of a private, for profit lab that can
• 16:52
  put his evidence at the front of the line because
• 16:54
  he's paying them to.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Is that risky though from a legal standpoint.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Incredibly risky. A sharp defense attorney in a future trial
• 17:01
  is going to hammer that decision. They'll ask, Sheriff, why
• 17:04
  did you send this crucial evidence to a for profit lab?
• 17:07
  Did you pay for a specific result? Was the sample
• 17:11
  contaminated during the cross country shipping. It's a huge gamble.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: So what's the bet?
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: Nanos is betting that finding Nancy now alive is worth
• 17:19
  the potential legal headache later in a courtroom.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: It just screams desperation or urgency.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: He knows the survival statistics for an abducted elderly person
• 17:27
  with medical needs drop off a cliff after forty eight hours.
• 17:30
  We're day sixteen. He needs a lead today, not a
• 17:32
  perfect iron cloud report in six months.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the sheer scale of this hunt, because
• 17:37
  it is massive. Four hundred officers involved.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: Four hundred from local, state and federal agencies. They've used
• 17:44
  helicopters with thermal imaging drones to map the arroyos, search
• 17:48
  and rescue teams on foot.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: And then there were the SWAT raids.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was just a few days ago. They hit
• 17:53
  at least two residences on February thirteenth and fourteenth. We're
• 17:56
  talking flash band grenades, tactical gear, battering rams, full scale raids.
• 18:02
  They detain several people, but no arrests, questioned and released.
• 18:06
  This includes that one person of interest they named, a
• 18:09
  man called Carlos, who was initially stopped in a traffic stop.
• 18:14
  This tells me they're casting a very wide net but
• 18:16
  coming up with empty holes. They have these circumstantial leads,
• 18:21
  maybe someone who drives a similar car or vaguely fits
• 18:23
  the description, but nothing solid enough to hold them.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: On and all the while they're just drowning in data.
• 18:29
  The tip line has received over thirty thousand calls.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: Thirty thousand, and this is what's known as the signal
• 18:34
  to noise problem in a major investigation. Explain that when
• 18:37
  a case goes national like this, you get basically three
• 18:40
  types of calls. First, you get the well meaning but
• 18:43
  usually wrong public I saw a white van near the neighborhood.
• 18:47
  I think my strange neighbor looks like the sketch. Ninety
• 18:49
  nine percent of that is a dead end, okay. Second,
• 18:52
  you get the psychics and the clout chasers, who are
• 18:54
  never helpful and just clogged the phone lines. And third
• 18:57
  you get the malicious trolls and prank callers. Filtering thirty
• 19:01
  thousand calls to find the one maybe two that are
• 19:04
  actually useful requires a massive algorithmic and human effort could
• 19:08
  actually paralyze an investigation.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: You spend more time chasing ghosts than chasing the actual suspect. Precisely,
• 19:14
  speaking of ghosts, let's talk motive, because this is where
• 19:17
  the logic of this case just breaks down completely. I mean,
• 19:20
  usually in a crime like this, you can follow the money,
• 19:23
  or you can follow the anger.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: Right criminology one on one, motive means opportunity. We know
• 19:29
  the means abduction when we know the opportunity her isolation.
• 19:32
  But we have a complete and total vacuum when it
• 19:34
  comes to motive.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Let's run through the obvious ones.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: Burglary ruled out. The house wasn't ransacked. The sheriff said
• 19:41
  nothing of value was missing, jewelry, art, cash. You don't
• 19:45
  kidnap the eighty four year old resident if you just
• 19:48
  want to grab the silver and the TV. You take
• 19:50
  the goods and you run.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, So what about ransom?
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: They did get ransom notes demands for bitcoin sent to
• 19:56
  the family, but the FBI's analysis was that they were
• 19:59
  almost certainly hoaxes. How had to know no proof of life.
• 20:03
  The abductor never sent a photo of Nancy holding a
• 20:06
  current newspaper or answering a specific question only she would
• 20:09
  know the answer to. It was just generic demands. These
• 20:12
  were likely opportunistic scammers just scanning the headlines and try
• 20:15
  to capitalize on the family's pain to a secondary crime
• 20:19
  known as virtual kidnapping fraud.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: So if it's not money, what's left revenge?
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: This is what sheriff nanos has openly speculated about. He
• 20:26
  actually said in a press conference, revenge for something, but
• 20:29
  against who and for what. They've looked into Savannah Guthrie's
• 20:33
  reporting history. Did she anger a cartel, a political extremist group.
• 20:36
  Did she do an expose on a dangerous corporation? They
• 20:39
  found nothing that correlates, and Nancy herself, by all accounts,
• 20:42
  she lived a quiet, benevolent life, a church goer, a grandmother,
• 20:47
  no known enemies, no business disputes, no secret grudges.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: So we are left with what what could possibly be
• 20:54
  the motive?
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: We are left with the irrational, and that's the most
• 20:57
  terrifying possibility. Fix a stalker who had been watching her
• 21:03
  or the house, or and this is the darkest timeline,
• 21:06
  a thrill crime. Someone who did it simply to see
• 21:09
  if they could, someone who chose the house because of
• 21:11
  its isolated location, not because of the person who lived inside.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: That is a chilling thought which brings us to Savannah.
• 21:18
  I mean, she posted that video on the two week mark.
• 21:20
  It didn't just feel like a plea. It felt like
• 21:22
  a very deliberate strategy.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: It was a textbook proof of humanity appeal in hostage
• 21:27
  negotiation and abduction cases, You never ever threaten the perpetrator
• 21:32
  on camera. You never say we will find you and
• 21:34
  you will pay. Why not, because it can cause them
• 21:36
  to panic and harm the victim. Instead, you do exactly
• 21:40
  what she did. You humanize the victim with home videos.
• 21:43
  You show Nancy laughing with your grandkids, and you offer
• 21:46
  the abductor an off ramp.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: She said it is never too late to do the
• 21:49
  right thing.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: That phrase is a direct message to the person who
• 21:53
  took her mother. She is signaling, if you return her now,
• 21:58
  we can talk about leniency, we can work with you,
• 22:01
  but if she dies in your custody, it's capital murder
• 22:04
  and there is no way out. She's trying to trigger
• 22:07
  the suspect's own instinct for self preservation.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: It must have been guided by the FBI.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Oh almost certainly. Yeah, it's a very sophisticated psychological.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Play, and it's just a gut wrenching pivot for her
• 22:18
  to go from being the one asking the tough questions
• 22:20
  on national television to the one begging for an answer.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: And it forces that entire community to look in the mirror.
• 22:27
  The residents of the Catalan of Foothills are, by all accounts, terrified.
• 22:31
  They suddenly realize their gates and their private security patrols
• 22:34
  and their long driveways don't stop someone who is truly determined.
• 22:38
  The illusion is shattered.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: It really highlights a specific vulnerability of the wealthy elderly,
• 22:43
  doesn't it.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: It absolutely does. I think of it as the asset
• 22:46
  isolation triad. You have high assets, or at least the
• 22:49
  perception of wealth, You have high isolation because of the
• 22:51
  desire for privacy, and you have physical frailty due to age.
• 22:56
  That combination makes you the perfect target for a very
• 23:00
  specific and very dangerous type of predator.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: Nancy valued her independence since she should have been able to.
• 23:07
  But that very independence is what created the operational window.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: For this crime, the tragic, tragic irony.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: So here we are February sixteenth, We're sixteen days in.
• 23:17
  What is the next shoe to drop? What are we
• 23:19
  waiting for?
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: It all comes down to the DNA, the results from
• 23:22
  that glove, specifically the comparisons to the code of database
• 23:25
  and potentially the genealogical databases. If that DNA profile gets
• 23:29
  a hit, the case brace wide open. In an hour,
• 23:31
  they'll have a name.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: And if it doesn't, if he's not in any system,
• 23:34
  then so them.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: We're looking at a long, long haul. Sheriff Nanos himself
• 23:38
  said it could take weeks, months, or years. He's preparing
• 23:41
  the public for the very real possibility that this becomes
• 23:44
  a cold case.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: That's a heavy thought. The reward is up to one
• 23:47
  hundred thousand dollars. Now, the family is begging, the police
• 23:50
  are stuck.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: It is heavy. But think about all the technology we've
• 23:53
  discussed today. Drones mapping every inch of the desert, Rapid
• 23:58
  DNA sequencing from private labs, digital forensics pulling data from
• 24:02
  a next camera. We have built this technological panopticon, this
• 24:06
  all seeing world where we think nothing can go unnoticed.
• 24:09
  And yet, and yet, a man in a Walmart backpack
• 24:13
  can walk up to a house, tilt his head just so,
• 24:16
  and vanish into the desert night with a human being.
• 24:19
  It just proves that human unpredictability, human malice. It's still
• 24:24
  the one variable that our technology cannot fully solve.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: So the final analysis is just a question mark. A
• 24:29
  targeted abduction of an eighty four year old with no
• 24:32
  clear financial or personal motive. The contrast between this high
• 24:35
  tech investigation and the absolute lack of a basic answer
• 24:39
  the one question no one can answer is why.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: That's the billion dollar question.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: We're going to keep watching those DNA results. As soon
• 24:45
  as that lab in Florida reports back to the Pima
• 24:47
  County Sheriff, we will have an update. For now, the
• 24:50
  mystery of the Catalina Foothills and the silence remains.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: It does.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: If this wasn't for money, and the ransom notes were
• 24:57
  fake and there is no known grudge to be found,
• 25:00
  what does that leave you with? I think that's the
• 25:01
  thought we should leave our listeners with. You're left to
• 25:04
  ponder the terrifying possibility of a motive that is completely
• 25:07
  invisible to the family, to law enforcement, and to us.
• 25:10
  In a world where cameras are everywhere and DNA tells
• 25:13
  a story, how does someone vanish without leaving a trace
• 25:16
  of why,