Latest / Heroes Behind the Badge / The Nancy Guthrie Case: What Investigators Got Wrong - And the AI That Could Solve It - Pt 1

Transcript

The Nancy Guthrie Case: What Investigators Got Wrong - And the AI That Could Solve It - Pt 1 · Heroes Behind the Badge

• 0:00
  Dennis Collins: Every major investigation has a moment.
• 0:03
  The experienced detective looks at the evidence, looks at their notes,
• 0:07
  and then thinks to himself 'This case is not what everyone thinks it is.'
• 0:12
  Today.
• 0:12
  We're bringing in someone who had that moment with the Nancy Guthrie case.
• 0:16
  Morgan Wright, former state trooper, former detective technical advisor
• 0:21
  to America's Most Wanted and one of the most innovative investigative
• 0:25
  minds in law enforcement today.
• 0:27
  When Morgan looked at the Guthrie case, he didn't just
• 0:30
  rehabilitate the existing narrative.
• 0:32
  He demolished it, and what he found will change the way you think about this case.
• 0:38
  This
• 0:38
  is Heroes Behind the Badge.
• 0:52
  When you studied the Nancy Guthrie disappearance, and I'll call it
• 0:56
  disappearance 'cause I'm not sure what it is, but it is a disappearance.
• 1:00
  Okay.
• 1:01
  Did you have that moment of truth?
• 1:03
  And what triggered that?
• 1:06
  Morgan Wright: So to kind of.
• 1:08
  Frame this up correctly about the way I approached it.
• 1:11
  Uh, look, I'm a huge fan of Elon Musk one 'cause he is really, really rich,
• 1:15
  which means he's really, really smart.
• 1:16
  You know?
• 1:17
  Dennis Collins: Yeah.
• 1:17
  Morgan Wright: When you build all that stuff.
• 1:18
  But I was listening to one particular episode, this is years ago, and he was
• 1:22
  talking about how we built batteries.
• 1:24
  And the way he built batteries.
• 1:25
  He said, H how you know, the way you did it cheaper says,
• 1:27
  what are batteries composed of?
• 1:29
  Nickel, cadmium, lithium ion, you know, he broke it down.
• 1:31
  He said, I can go buy those on the market at spot price.
• 1:34
  But it was the process of rebuilding it from the ground up.
• 1:37
  So I got to thinking, you know, what we're missing really in law enforcement.
• 1:40
  'cause I, you know, I used to, I was a state trooper, I was a detective.
• 1:42
  I did stuff in the justice and intel space.
• 1:45
  But you know what we're missing, there's a lot of good things out there, but.
• 1:48
  It's like when a new technology comes along, like DNA, we have to figure it out.
• 1:52
  Uh, biometrics, we have to figure it out.
• 1:54
  Drones, we have to figure it out.
• 1:55
  So I said, but something that really hasn't been refreshed in a long
• 1:58
  time is investigative methodology.
• 2:00
  So I started applying what I called first principles.
• 2:02
  So the way I looked at the Guthrie case is the way I would look at you and I
• 2:05
  were just talking beforehand, Dennis.
• 2:07
  It's like, if you want it, you can either rehabilitate a house or you can.
• 2:11
  Uh, remodel a house, rehabilitating a house.
• 2:13
  You go in, you paint the walls, okay.
• 2:14
  It looks good, right?
• 2:16
  And that's what happens with narratives.
• 2:17
  You just, you take a narrative and it, you know, Hey, let's rehabilitate
• 2:20
  the narrative, make it fit, fit our view of the case, right?
• 2:23
  What I instead do is it, it is like if you watch those things on HD TV or
• 2:27
  when they come in and they remodel a house, but it's demo day, they tear out
• 2:30
  the walls, they tear out everything.
• 2:31
  You tear out everything.
• 2:32
  Dennis Collins: Yeah.
• 2:33
  Morgan Wright: Down to the structure.
• 2:34
  You fix all the structural problems and then you rebuild from the ground up.
• 2:37
  So that's what I do on cases.
• 2:39
  So with Guthrie.
• 2:41
  I think what separated me from the other folks is I, I don't,
• 2:44
  I don't go in for narratives.
• 2:45
  I don't go in for speculation.
• 2:46
  I don't go in for theories.
• 2:48
  Craig Floyd: Sure.
• 2:48
  Morgan Wright: When I looked at the Guthrie say Case, I said
• 2:50
  either it's a burglary that went wrong or it was never a burglary.
• 2:54
  It can't be both.
• 2:55
  And so what you do is you create your hypothesis for each
• 2:58
  case and then you stress test.
• 2:59
  It to the point of failure.
• 3:01
  And the more that you start, look, because look, uh, I've
• 3:04
  investigated enough burglaries.
• 3:05
  You say if somebody's gonna burgle a house, um, what are the signals of,
• 3:09
  what are the signals of a burglary?
• 3:11
  What's the signals of theft?
• 3:12
  Right?
• 3:12
  Are they moving around things or is it a staged crime scene?
• 3:15
  Is it a. Is it a abduction designed to look like a burglary?
• 3:18
  Right?
• 3:18
  And then you have factors that make it look like that.
• 3:20
  So in the Guthrie case, here's what you would have to believe in the Guthrie
• 3:24
  case where all the people say, well, it was a burglary that went wrong.
• 3:27
  So if it was a burglary that went wrong, you have somebody whose mindset
• 3:30
  is, I'm in here to take something.
• 3:31
  They have an encounter with the victim.
• 3:34
  And then in that short timeframe, which we know it's from two 12 when the one of
• 3:38
  the sensors went off inside the house, one of the cameras to 2 28, when is the
• 3:42
  last ping from her pacemaker to her phone?
• 3:45
  Dennis Collins: Right.
• 3:46
  Morgan Wright: In 16 minutes, somebody whose sole intention was to
• 3:49
  burgle a house now become somebody who's going to, who's decided
• 3:52
  abduction is less risky than fleeing.
• 3:54
  And so they have to arrange transportation, they have
• 3:57
  to arrange logistics.
• 3:58
  You have to arrange control, so.
• 4:00
  When you do an abduction, there's three things you have to look at.
• 4:03
  You have to look at entry, was it forced or consensual?
• 4:06
  Then you have to look at control.
• 4:07
  What's your mechanism for control of the the target, and then what's
• 4:10
  your method for egress exfiltration?
• 4:13
  So when I looked at it, I said, I'm not saying it's one or the
• 4:16
  other, but I'm saying, but if you stress test it and collapse it.
• 4:20
  The whole thing about it was a burglary that gone wrong doesn't survive in a
• 4:23
  lot of the stress tests because it's not, it's not the same indication
• 4:26
  as opposed to a targeted abduction.
• 4:29
  And you can tell by where the blood trail goes, uh, but it, to me,
• 4:32
  it's that very short time window from where there was, we know that
• 4:35
  there was motion inside the house.
• 4:36
  Look burglars there, there, uh, and look, having investigated enough,
• 4:41
  and in your audience, they know too.
• 4:43
  It's about get in, get your stuff, get out, get off the x,
• 4:46
  the longer you're in a house.
• 4:48
  The higher the risk goes, right?
• 4:50
  You want to get in, you want to get out.
• 4:51
  But when you're doing a targeted abduction, if you've done your
• 4:54
  reconnaissance, if you know like patterns of life, you're
• 4:56
  more comfortable sitting around.
• 4:58
  That's why when you look at the video of the, when they recovered the video,
• 5:02
  the behavior of that person, that person was comfortable where they were at.
• 5:07
  I mean, and they be at their, yeah, you look at their trade craft a lot.
• 5:11
  See, here's the other thing.
• 5:11
  Two people made a mistake on Dennis.
• 5:13
  Everybody said, well, this is an amateur.
• 5:15
  Now, I tell you, I was in Tucson.
• 5:16
  I talked to, um, people that were on Tucson PD and the sheriff's
• 5:20
  office and DPS, and I've talked to people on a TF and Marshalls.
• 5:24
  That's called the, it's called the Mexican carry.
• 5:26
  And second of all, people got it all wrong because they said it's a white holster.
• 5:29
  Now, that's infrared.
• 5:30
  People even didn't understand the technology of how infrared works,
• 5:34
  so they got the colors all wrong.
• 5:36
  But this, this guy had no, this guy was relaxed.
• 5:38
  He was not in a hurry.
• 5:40
  And you can tell that because 1 47 to 2 28, you know, 47 minutes, is that,
• 5:47
  so I'd simply ask, is that typical behavior of a burglar, uh, who's
• 5:52
  looking to steal something and get out?
• 5:54
  Dennis Collins: Probably not.
• 5:55
  Yeah,
• 5:55
  Bill Erfurth: probably.
• 5:55
  No.
• 5:56
  And you know, you know, I, I, I think it's pretty evident, especially if you
• 5:59
  really think it out and if you have any law enforcement background, just like
• 6:03
  you said, Morgan, you know, you're in and out, you just want to grab something.
• 6:06
  You're a thief basically, right?
• 6:08
  But all of a sudden, if you're a thief and you decide, uh oh, I ran into this woman.
• 6:12
  Now I'm going to abduct her.
• 6:14
  Well, where are you gonna put her?
• 6:15
  You know, you haven't thought it through already.
• 6:17
  You gotta go home and live somewhere where other people are around.
• 6:20
  You haven't had any kind of pre-thought, uh, you know, plan.
• 6:24
  So I, I, I agree with you a hundred percent on that.
• 6:27
  Craig Floyd: But, So Morgan. So, okay, so we we're ruling out burglary.
• 6:32
  It sounds like after you've gone through this whole process.
• 6:35
  So where in, in your mind are we today?
• 6:38
  What kind of crime was it?
• 6:39
  Uh, are we ever gonna solve this crime?
• 6:41
  I mean, couldn't Nancy Guthrie still be alive?
• 6:44
  I mean, where, where is your head right now?
• 6:47
  Morgan Wright: Um, so I told you I was gonna bring a couple props.
• 6:49
  Before I answer that question, I have to thank Craig.
• 6:51
  So I did some fundraising for you guys on the, uh, ride and run to remember.
• 6:54
  So this is something I've kept with me always.
• 6:57
  Dennis Collins: Oh, look at that.
• 6:58
  Morgan Wright: And then I got this from you too, Craig.
• 7:02
  Craig Floyd: Oh, yes.
• 7:03
  Yeah.
• 7:04
  Commemorative coin.
• 7:05
  The whole very,
• 7:07
  Morgan Wright: and I do that because right back here.
• 7:11
  And you know what this is, this is one of my best friends.
• 7:15
  I was there when his name was read out on the wall.
• 7:17
  So, uh, everything you do, I just want you to know everything you do is
• 7:21
  personal for me, and I'm, I'm honored to have for you to consider you a
• 7:24
  friend and for you to have me on this.
• 7:26
  So
• 7:26
  Dennis Collins: that's
• 7:27
  Morgan Wright: great.
• 7:27
  Now that I've got my props out of the way, let me get to your question.
• 7:30
  Dennis Collins: Thank
• 7:31
  Morgan Wright: you.
• 7:31
  So here's what I think.
• 7:32
  I think, um, all of these folks are looking at it incorrectly.
• 7:36
  Because they're, they're, they, once you get wedded to a narrative,
• 7:39
  then the narrative becomes canonical, it becomes sacred.
• 7:42
  You can't, you know, and so as an investigator, then you're less
• 7:45
  likely to dispute the narrative because it goes against what
• 7:49
  everybody else has put out there.
• 7:50
  So, Craig, to your point where I think we are.
• 7:53
  When I look through that model and I say, is it a burglary gone
• 7:56
  wrong or was it never a burglary?
• 7:58
  I find very few things to show that it's a burglary gone wrong and back.
• 8:01
  What you were saying about, you know, like, burglars want to get
• 8:03
  off the X. So I think it's, I think, um, at some point later we will
• 8:08
  find this was more of a targeted abduction than everything, because
• 8:11
  like you said, where's your car at?
• 8:13
  So if you're gonna do an abduction, you have to arrange for a car, you
• 8:15
  have to arrange for transportation.
• 8:16
  We know there was a car.
• 8:17
  How do we know that?
• 8:18
  Because of the blood droplets stop at the end of the driveway.
• 8:22
  And so there was a car there.
• 8:24
  Um, now one of the, one of the cool things we did, a friend of mine, um, this
• 8:28
  ties into everything about what I think happened, but a friend of mine, we, him
• 8:32
  and I both testified before Congress back in 2013 on healthcare.gov safety
• 8:36
  and security of big government systems.
• 8:37
  He's, he's a NSA hacker, Marine bright guy.
• 8:40
  But I was flying to Tucson actually for Fox News to go on scene for a while,
• 8:45
  and we were going back and forth.
• 8:46
  Uh, I actually over starlink, first time I flew on an aircraft with starlink,
• 8:50
  it was like amazing, the speed.
• 8:52
  Dennis Collins: Oh, okay.
• 8:52
  Morgan Wright: But we got to, but we got to talking about,
• 8:54
  you know what a Bluetooth is.
• 8:55
  Bluetooth is nothing more than a transmitter.
• 8:57
  Right?
• 8:57
  A transmitter with a unique idea signal.
• 9:00
  So we were going back and forth.
• 9:02
  He started already while I was in the flight, he was writing code.
• 9:05
  For how to detect this Bluetooth 'cause really.
• 9:08
  But the FBI now had developed some rudimentary stuff, but Dave's stuff
• 9:11
  actually improved what they had.
• 9:12
  But they were doing it in a helicopter.
• 9:14
  So the reason I say that, Craig, is I know everybody was out there saying,
• 9:18
  Hey look, well she could still be alive.
• 9:20
  She's this.
• 9:22
  I was the one saying.
• 9:23
  The part out loud that nobody wanted to say.
• 9:25
  I said at some point, you gotta start treating this as a no body homicide.
• 9:28
  Yeah.
• 9:28
  You have to change your investigative mindset.
• 9:30
  Are we looking for a clandestine grave site?
• 9:32
  Which that's tough in those hills there.
• 9:34
  You cannot dig in that area.
• 9:35
  It's baked.
• 9:36
  Are we looking for a, uh, open grave site, you know, a body dump?
• 9:40
  Are we looking for a concealed grave site?
• 9:42
  Maybe somewhere inside a building?
• 9:43
  And I simply said, if people thought she was alive and that was their
• 9:47
  operating theory, then why is the FBI up in a helicopter looking for
• 9:50
  a ping from a Bluetooth device?
• 9:53
  Dennis Collins: Hmm.
• 9:53
  Morgan Wright: Because they understand too, is that you can't
• 9:55
  take anything off the table.
• 9:56
  You can't get wedded to a narrative.
• 9:58
  So I kind of bring all of that to say this.
• 10:00
  Craig is a, um, I looked at all the egress routes.
• 10:03
  I did a whole analysis of how you get outta there.
• 10:05
  That area is like a bowl of spaghetti.
• 10:07
  If you turn a bolus, spaghetti upside down the roads, there is no rhyme or reason.
• 10:11
  Right?
• 10:11
  Um, so somebody had to have local knowledge, or at least
• 10:15
  some kind of a navigation app.
• 10:16
  Well, if you have a navigation app, chances are there may be a
• 10:18
  signal that, that we could collect.
• 10:22
  W if I were investigating the case, it's like I would treat
• 10:25
  it as a no-body homicide.
• 10:26
  That's the way I would investigate it, and I would look at what are the
• 10:28
  possible egress routes out of there.
• 10:31
  I know a lot of people said, Hey, they could have gone across the
• 10:33
  border maybe, but to your point, I think we're making earlier.
• 10:37
  She's 84 years.
• 10:38
  So here's, here's my final kind of capstone point.
• 10:42
  Uh, everybody says, well, we wanna hold out hope.
• 10:44
  Well, I'm a realist, right?
• 10:46
  Uh, it is like, if I'm investigating, hope is not a strategy.
• 10:49
  Uh, hope is an outcome, but it's not a strategy.
• 10:51
  So you have an 84-year-old woman who is confronted at two o'clock
• 10:55
  in the morning who has a pacemaker.
• 10:57
  There's obviously a violent confrontation because there's blood.
• 11:00
  Whether she had was on Coumadin and was easy to, doesn't matter, you had some
• 11:04
  kind of violence 'cause you had control.
• 11:07
  The cha so the chances of a 30-year-old surviving for 14 days, they could do it.
• 11:12
  They'd be pretty weak at that.
• 11:13
  The chance of an 84 cardiac compromised woman who was, uh, attacked basically,
• 11:19
  or confronted in the middle of the night in her own home by herself, um,
• 11:23
  I would question whether or not she was able to survive the drive out of there.
• 11:27
  Dennis Collins: Yeah, so that, that kind of answers the question.
• 11:30
  This case is not what everyone thinks it is.
• 11:34
  You've kind of flipped the script and saying, no, my narrative would
• 11:38
  be a lot different than what the common narrative is, is out there.
• 11:42
  And that's what good investigators do, right?
• 11:45
  You flip the
• 11:46
  Morgan Wright: script.
• 11:47
  They do.
• 11:47
  But you know what happens too, but even some investigators, they
• 11:50
  fall victim to certain things.
• 11:52
  In other words, it's like, um, Craig and I are investigating
• 11:54
  a case and he's got a he.
• 11:55
  He comes to me and he says, Hey, here's what I've got, and there's already a
• 11:57
  narrative, and I accept his narrative.
• 12:00
  And then I, then the district attorney accepts that narrative,
• 12:02
  and you build upon that.
• 12:03
  But what happens if it's wrong?
• 12:05
  Right?
• 12:05
  There's two things.
• 12:06
  Either the premise of the case is wrong or we've got the wrong.
• 12:09
  Premise to begin with.
• 12:10
  And that's why I call 'em hypothesis.
• 12:12
  Alright?
• 12:13
  If you have a hypothesis and you're testing that you know something's gonna
• 12:16
  fail, in fact you want it to fail, I want one of these two models to fail.
• 12:20
  Either it's the model of a burglary gone wrong, or it was never a burglary.
• 12:22
  Yeah.
• 12:23
  I want one of those to fail so I can collapse this binary model down to,
• 12:27
  uh, a, an investigative path forward.
• 12:30
  So, um.
• 12:31
  Yeah.
• 12:32
  You know, and the other thing too is I think the problem with narratives,
• 12:34
  again, it's like we get locked in on 'em and then well, uh, Craig,
• 12:38
  I know you were in the DC region.
• 12:39
  I was, if I said
• 12:41
  Craig Floyd: white van,
• 12:42
  Morgan Wright: yeah.
• 12:43
  Mm-hmm.
• 12:43
  White narrative right there.
• 12:44
  You said it white.
• 12:45
  Everybody's looking for a white van.
• 12:46
  And I, I told the FBI all the data we needed to solve, you
• 12:49
  already had, and guess what?
• 12:50
  They did a. Malvo and Mohammed were, had their plates run 13 times
• 12:56
  in 33 days by law enforcement.
• 12:58
  Their tag was in the system four times Are
• 13:00
  Craig Floyd: we're talking about the beltway snipers.
• 13:02
  The
• 13:02
  Dennis Collins: beltway sniper.
• 13:03
  Right.
• 13:03
  Craig Floyd: The beltway snipers killed 10 people in this area.
• 13:06
  Dennis Collins: Yeah, we've done a podcast on that.
• 13:07
  Yeah.
• 13:07
  Morgan Wright: Yeah.
• 13:08
  Well, I got the data behind it.
• 13:09
  I did the presentation.
• 13:10
  I went out to FBI and I said, look, you got all the data.
• 13:12
  'cause I was doing stuff on serial killers about low level contacts and looking at.
• 13:16
  N-C, what's called NCIC Offline.
• 13:18
  So, but, but four times a dark colored or dark colored or burgundy
• 13:22
  colored caprice was seen leaving the scene of one of those shootings.
• 13:25
  And guess what?
• 13:26
  It's the only vehicle in the United States whose plate was running the
• 13:29
  National Capital Region and in Alabama.
• 13:31
  And how do we tie those two together?
• 13:32
  'cause ballistics tied the shootings in the National capital region to the
• 13:35
  one in Alabama, right, Montgomery?
• 13:37
  That's where people got it confused.
• 13:38
  They thought they were talking about Montgomery.
• 13:40
  Uh, county, Montgomery
• 13:41
  Dennis Collins: County.
• 13:42
  Yeah, right.
• 13:42
  Morgan Wright: As opposed to Montgomery, Alabama.
• 13:44
  Yeah.
• 13:44
  So, wow.
• 13:44
  That's, that's my point.
• 13:46
  So when you get locked in, what was everybody looking for?
• 13:48
  Every time a shooting happened, we were shutting it down,
• 13:50
  looking for a white panel van.
• 13:51
  Dennis Collins: Yeah.
• 13:52
  So is there something, Morgan, in your, uh, in your experience,
• 13:56
  in your, with your expertise.
• 13:58
  Is there something hiding here in plain sight?
• 14:01
  As in so, so many cases?
• 14:03
  Because kind of what you're saying is, Hey, look over here.
• 14:06
  Look over here, and we should be looking over here.
• 14:08
  Is there something hiding in plain sight here?
• 14:11
  Morgan Wright: Yeah, there probably is.
• 14:12
  And one of the things I start working I did is um, I do a lot of work.
• 14:15
  A friend of mine owns a company called Fog Data, and they do a lot
• 14:19
  of work with what's called ad tech.
• 14:20
  So you have two things, cell site location information, that's where the ping's
• 14:23
  off the cell phone, but those require subpoenas to each individual carrier.
• 14:27
  Then you have to aggregate it.
• 14:29
  Ad tech is different.
• 14:30
  That's based on the app on your phone.
• 14:31
  It doesn't matter.
• 14:32
  Your carrier doesn't matter what model you have because those apps now centralize
• 14:36
  the collection of data and that data becomes is something that's sold.
• 14:40
  You agree to it when you download your app.
• 14:41
  So everything I'm talking about here is perfectly legal.
• 14:44
  So I think that there are some mo patterns of movement and, and here's
• 14:48
  the, here's the reason I say that.
• 14:49
  I was telling somebody, if you think about what some of these gangs do, or
• 14:54
  even even people who have at least.
• 14:56
  Some modicum of, of tradecraft, they actually follow the same thing
• 15:00
  the terrorist planning cycle does.
• 15:02
  When you commit a terrorist act, you do things like broad target selection, um,
• 15:05
  initial reconnaissance, final target selection, uh, rehearsals, uh, and
• 15:10
  final, uh, then final, um, reconnaissance actions on the objective, escape and
• 15:14
  exploitation, escape innovation, I mean.
• 15:17
  That's human behavior.
• 15:19
  So what I'm saying, Dennis, is we need to look at what human behavior does.
• 15:21
  How would somebody leave that area?
• 15:23
  Dennis Collins: Yes.
• 15:23
  Morgan Wright: And what we need to do is focus on what are the
• 15:25
  most likely areas they left.
• 15:26
  Focus a signals analysis on all of those areas.
• 15:29
  Because it is out, I think it's out there somewhere, but, you know,
• 15:32
  criminals have gotten smarter.
• 15:34
  The, the, the damage CSI did for, uh, collecting DNA and evidence cases.
• 15:38
  Well, 'cause they told 'em just pour bleach on stuff or get rid of it.
• 15:41
  Dennis Collins: Yeah, they showed them.
• 15:42
  Yeah.
• 15:43
  Morgan Wright: Yeah, but what's the expectation?
• 15:45
  The expectation is you can run DNA and have it back in 44 minutes.
• 15:48
  Why?
• 15:48
  Because that's the amount of time a one hour show on TV gets
• 15:51
  at 16 minutes of commercial.
• 15:52
  So right, all DNA comes back in 40, solved in 44 minutes,
• 15:56
  Craig Floyd: right?
• 15:56
  Morgan?
• 15:57
  One of, one of the things that interests me is that, um, you know, most of these
• 16:01
  kind of cases are solved in, in the first.
• 16:04
  Few days, uh, and if they go cold, it, it's much less likely that we're gonna
• 16:08
  get a, a good outcome anytime soon.
• 16:11
  Um, in the early days of this investigation, we, we saw, uh,
• 16:15
  sheriff Chris Nanos, uh, Pima County Sheriff down there in Arizona.
• 16:19
  He took, seemed to take the lead, his agency took the lead, then the.
• 16:23
  BI came in.
• 16:25
  Look back at the, those early days.
• 16:27
  Were there mistakes made or do you think this crime was just done so well that,
• 16:31
  uh, we may never have a, a good outcome?
• 16:36
  Morgan Wright: Um.
• 16:37
  So I don't wanna, I don't wanna disparage any agency.
• 16:41
  Um, but, but I will say, let me put it to you this way.
• 16:44
  Um, it's not unusual for an agency to maintain the lead on something
• 16:47
  when there's not a federal nexus, if there's not a federal predicate.
• 16:50
  Right?
• 16:50
  But the FBI comes in and helps on a lot of things now.
• 16:54
  Technically, if it's kidnapping, would the FBI have jurisdiction
• 16:56
  to the extent that it violates the Hobbs Act or goes across state lines
• 17:00
  and you're so close to the border.
• 17:02
  But I think the appropriate relationship was the Sheriff's Office takes the lead.
• 17:06
  I would've taken more advantage of the FBI early on, only for
• 17:09
  the reason because Nancy Guthrie.
• 17:12
  This was gonna be a national case.
• 17:14
  Everybody knew it because of Savannah Guthrie.
• 17:16
  This was gonna get the attention, right, that it obviously did.
• 17:19
  And so what you wanna do is take advantage of the resources.
• 17:22
  Look, a friend of mine, Michael Miller, um, uh, chief Police down
• 17:25
  there in Texas, where they had the shooting at the synagogue.
• 17:28
  They, HRT, he said he was so impressed.
• 17:31
  HRT, I mean, FBI flew out HRT, these folks, they had a standoff,
• 17:35
  but he's, but look, I, I've worked with the bureau enough too.
• 17:38
  When they roll, they've got the toys.
• 17:40
  I mean, they, they're somebody who brings some serious toys to the game, right?
• 17:44
  And so I would've done that.
• 17:46
  I think, um, just me personally, I would've done that earlier, but the
• 17:48
  other strategy I would've taken.
• 17:50
  Um, here's the other thing that happens, and it gets to the
• 17:53
  narrative we were talking about.
• 17:54
  When you don't hold any kind of a regular.
• 17:57
  Touchpoint with the press you have to feed the beast and reporters will start.
• 18:01
  I can't tell you how many times I was reached out to by local reporters just
• 18:04
  looking for some new angle, right?
• 18:06
  Because there wasn't, and, and I'm not knocking it.
• 18:08
  That's his style.
• 18:09
  He, he can certainly do that just for me, the way I would've done it, even
• 18:12
  if he didn't have enough to report, I would've at least had somebody, a
• 18:15
  public face out there, a PIO so that people come and talk to them and say,
• 18:18
  Hey look, here's what we're doing.
• 18:20
  Here's the update.
• 18:20
  And as people, you reach a point to where the case peaks.
• 18:24
  Where that's, and I could tell too who was out there by looking at the amount
• 18:27
  of, uh, media that was there, just lining the road, I'd actually drove the house.
• 18:32
  'cause I wanted to at least say I've been there.
• 18:34
  I saw the scene, I saw, I talked to the deputy guarding the house.
• 18:37
  I checked the area.
• 18:39
  Well the other thing too, here's the other thing that got me.
• 18:43
  Uh, you were talking about mistakes.
• 18:47
  I think when they, the New York Post was following the FBI when they found
• 18:50
  the glove on the side of the road.
• 18:51
  Oh my God.
• 18:52
  It's the glove and, and everybody's a well.
• 18:55
  But lemme tell you, I was on, um, I think it was News Nation with Elizabeth Vargas.
• 18:59
  Elizabeth and I were actually designed to be on the second generation of
• 19:02
  America's Most Wanted together.
• 19:04
  Uh, and COVID hit.
• 19:05
  So that kind of went, but we were talking, but I, I said
• 19:09
  something and she repeated it.
• 19:10
  I said that glove means absolutely nothing until it's tied to the crime scene.
• 19:13
  Otherwise, it's just a data point.
• 19:15
  And what did we find out?
• 19:16
  Has nothing to do with it.
• 19:17
  Nothing.
• 19:17
  They ran the DNA as a restaurant worker, and, but yet we exhausted so
• 19:21
  much cognitive energy and so much.
• 19:23
  Press and focus, but that's the role of a PIO to say, Hey look guys, tone it down.
• 19:28
  This is nothing but a data point.
• 19:30
  And, but I tell now, there is one constructive criticism I
• 19:34
  would give in this whole thing.
• 19:36
  If you're a first responder, if you're a searcher and you're out there,
• 19:39
  for God's sakes, take everything out that you brought in with you.
• 19:42
  Do not discard, discard gloves.
• 19:45
  Cigarette butts, gum wrappers.
• 19:48
  Quit doing that.
• 19:48
  You know why?
• 19:49
  'cause everybody thinks, oh, that could be potential evidence.
• 19:51
  So
• 19:52
  Dennis Collins: yeah,
• 19:52
  Morgan Wright: that, that would be my only constructive criticism.
• 19:54
  It's like camping.
• 19:55
  When you go camping and you're in a national forest, you clean up
• 19:58
  your campsite, you take, you pack everything out, including your trash.
• 20:01
  So, um,
• 20:03
  Dennis Collins: yeah.
• 20:03
  Morgan Wright: But you know, structurally well, one more point here real quick.
• 20:06
  Yeah.
• 20:06
  Here's the biggest mistake, though.
• 20:07
  We, we only know what we know.
• 20:09
  A lot of people are making too many assumptions when you don't have.
• 20:13
  Regular contact and they're trying to infer what law enforcement knows
• 20:16
  and they're getting it all wrong.
• 20:17
  We don't know what's inside the house.
• 20:19
  We know that there's mixed DNA, but that's the other thing.
• 20:22
  There's a whole big chunk of this missing.
• 20:24
  It's like a DNA strand that they did on Jurassic Park, and they filled it
• 20:27
  in and we saw what happened there.
• 20:28
  You know, dinosaurs went wild.
• 20:30
  So you gotta be careful about filling in that DNA strand.
• 20:33
  Craig Floyd: Yeah.
• 20:33
  Well when, um, uh, one of the criticisms early on was that they
• 20:37
  opened up the crime scene, uh, too early and, uh, investigators.
• 20:42
  Kept going back into the house, kept going, looking for more evidence in,
• 20:46
  in the surrounding area, and, and perhaps, uh, some of the evidence
• 20:50
  might have been lost because they opened up the crime scene too soon.
• 20:53
  Reporters, uh, curious Onlookers started going to the house, looking at the blood
• 20:59
  on the, on the porch and in the driveway.
• 21:01
  What, what's your thought on that?
• 21:03
  Morgan Wright: So here's, here's a bit of forensic trivia.
• 21:06
  How many people know what Locard's Principle is?
• 21:11
  Dennis Collins: Billy notes.
• 21:12
  Billy.
• 21:12
  Billy.
• 21:12
  Raise your
• 21:13
  Morgan Wright: hand.
• 21:13
  There you go.
• 21:13
  Trivia for 300.
• 21:14
  For $200.
• 21:15
  Locard was a, was actually a forensic scientist.
• 21:18
  I think he was French, but Locard's exchange principle that says anytime you
• 21:21
  come in contact with something, you leave something and you take something with you.
• 21:24
  Oh, so the, this is why you control crime scenes.
• 21:27
  And to your point, Craig, actually that's another constructive criticism.
• 21:30
  It's like the military.
• 21:31
  Once you, once you, you don't wanna fight for the same ground twice.
• 21:36
  And if they develop a suspect, what you, what have you automatically
• 21:39
  started building in reasonable doubt.
• 21:41
  'cause you can say that evidence wasn't there.
• 21:43
  That's not him that was introduced.
• 21:45
  That's why you have to be so careful with touch.
• 21:47
  DNAI shake hands with you, Craig.
• 21:49
  I get what's called touch, DNA epithelial cell.
• 21:52
  I go and I pull a door open.
• 21:55
  I've just put your DNA on a door in a building you've never been in.
• 21:58
  But yet now I've put you at the crime scene.
• 22:00
  Yeah.
• 22:00
  So people, people leap to that conclusion, right?
• 22:02
  So, yeah, you're right.
• 22:03
  I think I would've, here's the other thing.
• 22:06
  As much money is gonna be spent on this case, and time and attention
• 22:09
  simply stationing a deputy there and keeping the crime scene
• 22:11
  locked down until you were sure.
• 22:13
  Um, I, I, no, look, I understand budgets.
• 22:16
  You gotta be careful about how you do stuff, but I also understand.
• 22:19
  That if you don't keep that crime scene secure, the cost to come back in
• 22:22
  and then do all these other things to account for it will far exceed the cost
• 22:25
  of stationing a single deputy out front.
• 22:28
  I work crime scenes to where we had to station somebody.
• 22:30
  We had a gang related, um, murder.
• 22:32
  Uh, he was actually a dope deal gone bad.
• 22:34
  A guy got run over with his own car, left in the middle of a field.
• 22:38
  We didn't find it till almost five 30 or six o'clock at night.
• 22:41
  So we had to secure that area until daylight the next day.
• 22:44
  'cause there was no way to go into that crime scene and
• 22:46
  be effective at searching it.
• 22:47
  So sometimes you just have to secure the scene and hold it.
• 22:50
  But I go back to what I said earlier, Craig.
• 22:52
  It is such a national case.
• 22:54
  With national visibility, I would've gone the extra mile because guess what?
• 22:58
  Every potential defense attorney, if they find a suspect, and I hope they
• 23:02
  do, every defense attorney is gonna be, you know, the biggest mistake
• 23:05
  they made in the OJ case when it came to DNA, when they were showing their
• 23:08
  videos, and I remember this, and they were showing how they collected videos.
• 23:13
  One of the, one of the demonstrations where they're showing actually, and
• 23:16
  I remember seeing this, this lady blonde, I think a ponytail glasses.
• 23:19
  She was showing how they got swabs off the concrete.
• 23:22
  She bent down, she touched her fingers on the concrete just to balance
• 23:26
  herself, and then took a swab and the defense attorneys pounced on that.
• 23:30
  'cause they said, you just touched the ground with your gloves.
• 23:33
  But those gloves are supposed to be sterile now.
• 23:35
  What if, what other DNA have you introduced into this that
• 23:37
  wasn't there to begin with?
• 23:39
  Wow.
• 23:39
  This is what's gonna happen when you don't control the scene.
• 23:41
  Defense attorneys are gonna pick this apart and have a
• 23:43
  field day, and guess what?
• 23:45
  They get the luxury of being a Monday morning quarterback.
• 23:47
  They can sit back and judge everything that you did.
• 23:50
  But again, Craig, I, I agree with you.
• 23:52
  Like I said, I, I know, you know, my heart's still, I'm still a cop.
• 23:55
  I bleed blue, so I hate to say, but if I could offer constructive, uh,
• 23:59
  improvements for people in the future, if you have a high profile case.
• 24:03
  Lock the scene down early, don't let anybody in.
• 24:06
  And there's nothing wrong with staying too long at a crime scene.
• 24:09
  Right.
• 24:10
  You know, if you, especially if you've got consent to search and
• 24:13
  keeping that thing locked down.
• 24:15
  Bill Erfurth: So I just, I just wanna chime in now.
• 24:17
  Go ahead, bill.
• 24:17
  Because I, I, I, I think that ultimately we're all gonna be surprised in the end.
• 24:23
  I think something is gonna surprise every one of us that
• 24:27
  maybe we didn't think about.
• 24:29
  Dennis Collins: You know, Bill's, right.
• 24:31
  And in part two, Morgan Wright goes even deeper, not just on the Guthrie case,
• 24:36
  but on the investigative technology that could solve cases like this one for good.
• 24:42
  We're talking about a platform that found a six month fugitive in just 36 hours.
• 24:47
  Artificial intelligence that gives one detective the output of 10.
• 24:51
  And a way for you as a citizen to help solve cold cases
• 24:56
  without ever leaving your home.
• 24:58
  And if you wanna support the men and women of law enforcement,
• 25:01
  visit CitizensBehindtheBadge.org.
• 25:04
  This is Heroes Behind the Badge.