Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / Derrick Callella pleads guilty to making fake Nancy Guthrie ransom demand

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Derrick Callella pleads guilty to making fake Nancy Guthrie ransom demand · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: I really want you to picture a winter night in
0:02
the Catalina Foothills of Tucson, Arizona. Like, if you've never
0:06
been there, you kind of need to understand the geography
0:10
to you know, really grasp the atmosphere of this whole thing.
0:14
Speaker 2: Right. The environment is a huge character.
0:15
Speaker 1: In the shah. Yeah exactly. It is this incredibly beautiful, super
0:19
affluent area tucked right up against the Santa Catalina Mountains,
0:22
and it is very quiet, like very isolated.
0:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, the kind of place where people go specifically for privacy.
0:28
Speaker 1: Right, It's the kind of place where the absolute silence
0:31
of the desert feels less like, I don't know, an
0:34
absence of noise, and more like a heavy physical blanket
0:37
on top of you. You expect to hear maybe the
0:40
wind moving through the siguaros or you know, maybe a
0:42
coyote somewhere miles in the.
0:44
Speaker 2: Distance, and that's usually all you would hear, right, But on.
0:47
Speaker 1: The early morning of February first, twenty twenty six, beneath
0:50
all of that absolute physical silence, there were these invisible
0:54
digital alarm bells going off, just.
0:57
Speaker 2: One by one, silently screaming into the void.
1:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, screaming into the void that something horrific was
1:03
happening in the dark right then and there.
1:05
Speaker 2: It is a really profound juxtaposition. Honestly, you have this
1:09
ancient absolute stillness of the Sonoran desert outside, while this
1:15
highly sophisticated, entirely technological nightmare is just unfolding in the
1:20
invisible data streams inside the house.
1:22
Speaker 1: It's terrifying to think about.
1:24
Speaker 2: It, really is. It completely redefines what a crime scene
1:27
actually looks like in the twenty first century.
1:29
Speaker 1: Well, that invisible crime scene is exactly what we are
1:32
unpacking today. So our mission for this deep dive is
1:35
to look into the abduction of eighty four year old
1:39
Nancy Guthrie.
1:40
Speaker 2: A case that has just paralyzed the local community, paralyzed Tucson,
1:44
and really gripped the entire nation for five agonizing months.
1:48
Speaker 1: Now we're going to examine the very chilling timeline of
1:51
her disappearance. We're going to explore the incredibly complex double
1:55
edged sword of this being a massively high profile investigation.
1:58
Speaker 2: Because of the family connection, right.
2:00
Speaker 1: Right, given that Nancy is the mother of the Today
2:02
Show co hosts Savannah Guthrie, and most specifically, we're going
2:07
to break down the July two, twenty twenty six guilty
2:11
plea of a man who just decided to cruelly exploit
2:14
this family's absolute worst agony for his own amusement. So, okay,
2:18
let's unpack this.
2:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, And as we navigate this, i'd really encourage you,
2:21
the listener, to sort of set aside the traditional framework
2:25
of how you might normally consume true crime stories. What
2:28
do you mean by that, Well, historically these narratives focus
2:31
almost entirely on the physical evidence, right, the broken glass,
2:35
the tire tracks, and the dirt, maybe fingerprints on.
2:38
Speaker 1: A door frame, the classic forensics stuff exactly.
2:41
Speaker 2: But the Nancy Gethrie case is essentially a masterclass in
2:44
how modern investigations are fought on two entirely different, simultaneous fronts.
2:48
Law enforcement is absolutely conducting a massive physical hunt for
2:51
the victim, but they are also engaged in this grueling,
2:55
highly technical, psychological battle against public opportunists.
2:58
Speaker 1: Opportunists who basically weaponize the digital landscape to inflict pain.
3:02
Speaker 2: Precisely, they use the Internet to inject themselves into the trauma.
3:06
Speaker 1: Well before we can even begin to understand the cruel
3:09
hoax that just played out in a Federal courtroom recently.
3:13
I think we have to establish the exact facts of
3:15
the abduction itself, because the mechanics of how this happened
3:19
really set the stage for everything that followed.
3:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, the methodology here is crucial.
3:23
Speaker 1: And frankly it is terrifying. Let's just walk through the
3:25
last known hours of Nancy's freedom.
3:27
Speaker 2: Okay, So the chronology is really the skeleton of this
3:29
entire investigation. Yeah, we need to start on the evening
3:32
of January thirty first, twenty twenty six.
3:35
Speaker 1: This was a Saturday, right, and from everything we know,
3:38
Nancy was having dinner at her daughter Annie Guthrie's home.
3:41
From all accounts, it was a completely normal, warm family evening,
3:45
nothing out of the ordinary at all, just.
3:47
Speaker 2: A standard weekend dinner. Yeah.
3:49
Speaker 1: Her son in law, Tamaso Shone, drives her home and
3:52
drops her off. And the time window we have for
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that drop off is super tight. It's between nine point
3:56
four five and nine four eight pm.
3:58
Speaker 2: And we know this with absolce precision.
4:00
Speaker 1: We do because neighborhood surveillance captures her garage door closing
4:04
at exactly nine to fifty pm.
4:06
Speaker 2: And that nine to fifty pm time stamp that is
4:09
essentially the last verifiable moment of normalcy. The garage door
4:13
goes down. She is securely inside her home, the physical
4:17
perimeter is locked and secured.
4:19
Speaker 1: But then, you know, the timeline shifts into the early
4:22
hours of February first, and this is where those digital
4:25
breadcrumbs I mentioned earlier start dropping, and it just paints
4:28
a horrifying.
4:29
Speaker 2: Picture digital silencing.
4:30
Speaker 1: Exactly. At one four seven am, Nancy's doorbell camera goes
4:35
offline and it doesn't just like stop recording motion or whatever.
4:38
The connection itself completely goes.
4:40
Speaker 2: Dark, right, which is highly anomalous.
4:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, Then twenty five minutes later, at two to twelve am,
4:45
residual surveillance footage from the surrounding area, so we're talking
4:49
likely a neighbor's camera or maybe a street camera, it
4:52
picks up movement near her home.
4:54
Speaker 2: Let's analyze the actual mechanics of that camera going offline,
4:56
because I think it's vital. A typical smart doorbell, it's
5:00
hardwired into the house's electrical system, usually through the old
5:03
doorbell transformer, and then connected to the local Wi Fi.
5:06
Speaker 1: Network, so it has a constant power source exactly.
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Speaker 2: For it to simply go offline at one four seven
5:12
am strongly suggests a deliberate intervention. I mean either the
5:17
power was physically cut, the Wi Fi was jammed using
5:20
a relatively sophisticated device, or the camera itself was physically
5:23
destroyed or covered up.
5:25
Speaker 1: Wow, so they blinded the house.
5:27
Speaker 2: They did. And when you pair that deliberate blinding of
5:29
the system with the movement that gets detected twenty five
5:32
minutes later, it tells us that whoever is on that
5:35
property is moving with tactical intent.
5:37
Speaker 1: They aren't rushing, no, not at all.
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Speaker 2: They have disabled the primary exterior security measure and now
5:43
they are just taking their time maneuvering around the property,
5:46
basically waiting for the optimal moment to breach the house.
5:49
Speaker 1: And I'm looking at this timeline and the detail that
5:52
just absolutely stops my heart happens at two point two
5:55
eight am. The medical device, Yeah, Nancy's pacemaker, disconnects from
5:58
its monitoring appet two point two eight am.
6:01
Speaker 2: It is arguably the most visceral, deeply unsettling data point
6:05
I've seen in modern forensic history.
6:07
Speaker 1: I really want to stop and think about the mechanics
6:09
of this, because we talk about the Internet of things
6:11
all the time, right.
6:12
Speaker 2: Smart fridges, smart thermostats, all that.
6:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it usually feels so mundane, like, oh, my
6:17
fridge knows I'm out of milk. But here it's acting
6:20
like a digital century. The machines, the camera on the porch,
6:24
the medical device implanted inside her actual chest. They were
6:28
the only witnesses to the monster that took her.
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Speaker 2: It's a very chilling way to frame it, but it's accurate.
6:34
Speaker 1: How does a pacemaker even connect to an app anyway?
6:37
And what does it actually mean when that connection just
6:40
drops in the middle of the night.
6:41
Speaker 2: So the technology relies on something called Bluetooth low energy
6:45
or BLE. Modern pacemakers don't just regulate the heartbeat anymore.
6:50
They constantly log diagnostic data. Historically, you had to go
6:54
to a cardiologist's office and they would wave this heavy
6:57
wand over your chest to download the data.
7:00
Speaker 1: I remember my grandfather having to do that.
7:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an in person, physical process. Yeah, but today
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these devices are specifically designed to pair with a smartphone
7:08
app or at a dedicated base station that just sits
7:10
on the patient's nightstand.
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Speaker 1: So it's constantly talking to the station exactly.
7:14
Speaker 2: They ping that receiver at regular intervals, acting as this
7:18
continuous digital tether. So when the logs show the pacemaker
7:23
disconnected at two percent eight am, I want to be clear,
7:25
it doesn't necessarily mean her heart stopped.
7:28
Speaker 1: Oh thank god, but it means the.
7:30
Speaker 2: Tether was broken precisely. Bluetooth has a very limited physical range,
7:34
usually about thirty feet indoors depending on the walls.
7:37
Speaker 1: Wait, thirty feet, that's really nothing.
7:39
Speaker 2: It's a very tyradius. So if the pacemaker suddenly drops
7:42
its connection at two pitsy eight am sharp, it means
7:45
Nancy Guthrie was physically removed from the proximity of her
7:49
smartphone or her home base station at that exact minute. Wow,
7:53
it is a precise, indisputable timestamp of the exact moment
7:57
she was taken through the threshold of her home and
7:59
moved in to the night.
8:00
Speaker 1: That is just It completely shifts the paradigm of a
8:03
missing person's investigation, doesn't it. Like think about twenty years ago,
8:07
if an eighty four year old woman living alone wasn't
8:09
at church the next morning, the police would have this massive, vague,
8:12
twelve hour window to work with.
8:13
Speaker 2: Sometime between dinner and breakfast.
8:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, good, look exactly, But here the severing of those
8:20
specific tech connections tells a terrifyingly precise story of a
8:24
targeted strike.
8:25
Speaker 2: You look at the sequence and it's undeniable. The perimeter
8:28
security is blinded at one point four to seven am,
8:31
the perpetrator's weight and maneuver until two point new am.
8:35
The extraction, the physical removal of the victim from the
8:37
digital stateety net, occurs exactly at two point two eight am.
8:41
Speaker 1: It's practically military.
8:42
Speaker 2: It really is a random burglar looking for I don't know,
8:45
jewelry or silver. They don't typically not to disable a
8:48
doorbell camera, lurk outside in the cold desert for nearly
8:51
half an hour, and then extract the homeowner in a
8:54
way that severs a medical proximity connection. That entire sequence
8:58
is the undeniable scene fignature of a calculated, organized operation.
9:02
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, the physical evidence the next morning absolutely confirmed
9:06
that I mean, Nancy was expected at church. When she
9:08
didn't show up, a church member flag the family, which
9:10
is thankfully pretty quick action on their part.
9:13
Speaker 2: Very lucky they had that community check in.
9:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they went over to check the house around
9:18
eleven am, and they officially reported her missing by noon.
9:22
But when Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos and his investigators arrived.
9:26
They immediately confirmed signs of forced entry, and tragically they
9:30
found blood drops on the porch.
9:32
Speaker 2: And that synthesis right there, of the physical evidence and
9:35
the digital forensics is exactly why law enforcement immediately classified
9:40
this as a kidnapping for ransom.
9:42
Speaker 1: They didn't even entertain other theories for long.
9:45
Speaker 2: Right, you have a shattered door, you have physical evidence
9:48
of violence on the porch with the blood, and you
9:50
have this incredibly calculated digital silencing. This wasn't the case
9:54
of an elderly woman wandering off due to cognitive.
9:57
Speaker 1: Decline, right, which is often the first assumption.
9:59
Speaker 2: Exactly this She wasn't a standard home invasion that just
10:01
panicked and went wrong. The perpetrators took her with a specific,
10:05
highly organized purpose.
10:07
Speaker 1: So knowing how she was taken forces us to really
10:10
ask who was taken. The victimology here is just so
10:13
important to understanding why this specific case exploded into a
10:16
national media event almost overnight.
10:18
Speaker 2: Who is Nancy Guthrie.
10:20
Speaker 1: Right, exactly who is the woman at the center.
10:22
Speaker 2: Of this Well, to understand the gravity of the crime,
10:25
you really have to understand the life of Nancy Ellen Guthrie.
10:29
She was born Nancy Long on January twenty seven, nineteen
10:31
forty two, in Fort Wright, Kentucky, and by the early
10:35
nineteen seventies she and her family had relocated to the
10:38
Tucson area.
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Speaker 1: So she's been there a long time, a very long time.
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Speaker 2: She has been a deeply ingrained, beloved fixture of that
10:45
community for over fifty years.
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Speaker 1: And she is a woman who has lived a life
10:50
with its own profound share of tragedy and resilience. Long
10:54
before this current nightmare even began. She was married to
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Charles Guthrie, who tragically died back in nineteen eighty eight
11:01
during a mining exploration trip down in Mexico.
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Speaker 2: Right, so she was widowed relatively.
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Speaker 1: Young, yeah, she was, and she raised three children essentially
11:08
on her own after that, including of course her daughter Savannah.
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Speaker 2: And the picture painted of Nancy by her family, her friends,
11:14
her church community, it's one of a remarkably vibrant, independent woman.
11:18
I mean, despite being eighty four years old, she was
11:21
incredibly mentally sharp, very active, highly active in her social circles.
11:26
She fiercely maintained her independence by continuing to live alone
11:30
in her home. She was not someone fading into the
11:33
background of a nursing facility. She was very much the
11:36
matriarch of her family.
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Speaker 1: But there is a crucial, really tragic vulnerability here that
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we absolutely cannot ignore. While her mind was sharp, she
11:46
did have limited physical mobility, and obviously she had a
11:49
chronic medical condition that required daily medication and that pacemaker, and.
11:54
Speaker 2: That physical vulnerability is what makes her abduction so profoundly predatory.
11:59
The perpetrator didn't take an able bodied, you know, thirty
12:02
year old individual who could fight back or run out
12:04
the back door.
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Speaker 1: No, they went for the easiest possible mark physically right.
12:08
Speaker 2: They targeted an eighty four year old widow who required
12:11
a pacemaker and daily medication just to survive.
12:14
Speaker 1: I want to pose a difficult question here about the
12:17
nature of this investigation, specifically regarding the massive spotlight it's under,
12:21
because we know the family has been making incredibly emotional
12:24
public appeals.
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Speaker 2: It's been heartbreaking to watch.
12:27
Speaker 1: It, really has. Savannah Guthrie has utilized her platform on
12:31
national television, describing the last five months as agony and
12:35
unending trauma. And when a national television personality is on
12:39
camera crying, pleading for the return of her mother, the
12:43
whole world just stalks and watches. Naturally, yes, but does
12:46
having a celebrity family member actually help a tactical kidnapping
12:50
investigation or does it just create a chaotic media circus
12:54
that actively gets in the way of the police trying
12:57
to do their jobs.
12:58
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate double edged and honestly, it is
13:01
one of the most difficult dynamics for law enforcement to
13:03
manage in the modern era.
13:05
Speaker 1: How so, because you think more attention equals more tips.
13:08
Speaker 2: Well, on one hand, the celebrity connection is undeniably a
13:11
massive asset in terms of resources. The FBI gets involved
13:15
immediately at the highest levels. You get national broadcast coverage instantly.
13:18
If someone at a gas station in say, New Mexico,
13:21
saw a suspicious vehicle that night, they know exactly who
13:24
to call.
13:24
Speaker 1: The situational awareness is.
13:26
Speaker 2: Huge, unparalleled. You aren't fighting to get a tiny column
13:30
buried in the back of the local newspaper. You are
13:33
the lead story on every major network.
13:36
Speaker 1: But I'm guessing there's a pretty dark flip side to that.
13:39
Speaker 2: The flip side is terrifying that exact same intense spotlight
13:44
acts as a massive beacon for predators and opportunists everywhere.
13:48
Speaker 1: Because they see a vulnerability.
13:50
Speaker 2: Exactly, when you broadcast the nation that an eighty four
13:53
year old woman with mobility issues who lives alone has
13:56
been taken, you are highlighting a systemic issue of elder
13:59
vulnerabiley to a certain time of malicious individual watching at home.
14:03
She isn't a beloved mother or a tragic victim. She's
14:06
simply an easy target.
14:08
Speaker 1: And they see money.
14:09
Speaker 2: Absolutely, the high profile nature of the victim's family signals
14:13
to the criminal underworld that there is massive attention and
14:16
potentially massive financial resources circling this.
14:19
Speaker 1: Case, which provides just the most disturbing bridge to the
14:22
villain of the recent court up day we promised to
14:24
discuss today. Because the case was so incredibly public, it
14:27
attracted a man named Derek Kollella.
14:29
Speaker 2: The opportunist, right, This is.
14:31
Speaker 1: A guy who is looking to play a twisted psychological
14:35
game with a family that was already living in absolute hell.
14:39
Speaker 2: The intense media glare drew in someone who was entirely
14:44
unconnected to the physical abduction in Tucson. I mean, he
14:47
was hundreds of miles away, but he recognized an opportunity
14:51
to exploit the Guthrie family's vulnerability for his own perverse satisfaction.
14:56
Speaker 1: So let's lay out the hard facts of what Derek
14:58
Kollella actually did. He is forty two years old. He
15:01
lives in Hawthorne, California, which for context, is in Los
15:04
Angeles County, So that's a solid seven or eight hour
15:07
drive from Tucson.
15:08
Speaker 2: He's nowhere near the crime scene.
15:09
Speaker 1: Nowhere near it. He's just sitting in his residence following
15:12
this tragedy on television like it's some sort of fictional
15:14
drama series. He's binging.
15:16
Speaker 2: He was a spectator, but he was a spectator who
15:19
made the conscious, deliberate decision to cross the line from
15:22
passive observation into active, malicious participation.
15:26
Speaker 1: Right shortly after the family made their initial public please
15:29
for information, Kalelas somehow manages to obtain the direct contact
15:33
information for Nancy's daughter Annie and her son in law Tomasocioni.
15:37
Speaker 2: And if you are wondering how a random man in
15:39
California gets the cell phone numbers of a high profile
15:42
family in Arizona, you really have to look at the
15:45
dark reality of open source intelligence and data brokers.
15:49
Speaker 1: I was going to ask about that, like you can't
15:50
just look them up in a phone book anymore.
15:52
Speaker 2: No, But in our modern digital ecosystem, privacy is largely
15:56
an illusion anyway. If a family owns property, if they
15:59
regis to vote, or even just sign up for standard
16:02
online services, their phone numbers and addresses are scraped and
16:05
sold by data brokers.
16:07
Speaker 1: So it's perfectly legal for these companies to do.
16:09
Speaker 2: This In many cases, yes, it's totally unregulated. Anyone with
16:13
an Internet connection and a few dollars can run a
16:15
background check and pull the direct contact information for almost anyone.
16:19
Kalela likely use these basic, legally gray online tools to
16:23
bypass the police tip lines and target the family directly.
16:27
Speaker 1: That is just sickening. And on February fourth, we are
16:29
talking just three days after Nancy was abducted. While the
16:33
family is in the absolute frantic peak of their panic,
16:36
literally waiting by the phone for the real kidnappers to call.
16:39
Kalela reaches out.
16:40
Speaker 2: Three days they are incredibly raw.
16:44
Speaker 1: He uses a voiceover Internet Protocol or VoIP service to
16:49
start texting and calling Annie and Tamaso directly, And the choice.
16:52
Speaker 2: To use a VIP service is a critical detail regarding
16:55
his actual intent here.
16:57
Speaker 1: What makes a VIP service different from just calling them
16:59
for his.
17:00
Speaker 2: Cell phone VoIP technology things like Google Voice, Skype, or
17:04
various burner apps. They transmit voice and text data over
17:08
Internet packets rather than traditional cellular towers.
17:11
Speaker 1: Okay, so it uses Wi Fi instead of cell service, right, and.
17:15
Speaker 2: This allows the user to easily spoof their phone number,
17:18
making it look like they are calling from a completely
17:20
different error code, or to hide their identity entirely behind
17:23
proxy servers.
17:24
Speaker 1: Ah, so he was trying to hide exactly.
17:27
Speaker 2: Kalola wasn't just drunkenly dialing from his personal AT and
17:30
T cell phone. He was taking deliberate, calculated steps to
17:33
mask his digital footprint. Yeah, he absolutely knew what he
17:36
was doing was illegal.
17:37
Speaker 1: And the message he actually sends it is just chilling
17:40
in its casual, bureaucratic cruelty. He texts them, did you
17:43
get the bitcoin? Or waiting on our end for the transaction?
17:46
Speaker 2: It is a message crafted specifically to mimic what average
17:50
people think a modern sophisticated kidnapper sounds like like from
17:54
a movie. Right, he is adopting the persona of a syndicate.
17:58
Speaker 1: He admitted in court later that he knew about prior
18:00
ransom demands that had been reported in the media. His
18:03
stated intent was to harass the family and to quote
18:07
probe the investigation. And I am looking at this and
18:10
I'm really struggling to understand the baseline motivation here. Why
18:14
do this? It defies logical empathy because there is no
18:18
actual money to be made here. If Kalela doesn't actually
18:21
have Nancy Guthrie, he can never produce a proof of
18:24
life photo or video. He is never going to get
18:27
a bitcoin transfer because the family and the FDI are
18:30
obviously going to demand proof before sending.
18:32
Speaker 2: A dime, or they aren't going to just blindly send
18:33
crypto to a random text.
18:35
Speaker 1: So if financial gain is functionally impossible, the only actual
18:39
outcome of sending that text is inflicting pure, unadulterated psychological
18:43
torture on a family whose mother has just been stolen.
18:46
Speaker 2: You are hitting on one of the most confounding and
18:49
disturbing aspects of modern digital crime, which is the psychology
18:53
of the hoaxer. It is incredibly difficult for the average
18:57
empathetic person to comprehend inflicking that kind of secondary trauma
19:02
for absolutely zero financial game.
19:05
Speaker 1: It just doesn't compute. What is the currency he's even
19:08
dealing in.
19:09
Speaker 2: The currency is power. It's power and narcissistic supply.
19:12
Speaker 1: Break that down for me, How does terrorizing a family
19:15
he's never met give him power?
19:17
Speaker 2: When a true crime case dominates the national media, certain
19:20
anti social individuals watching from the sidelines can feel a
19:24
deep sense of powerlessness and significance, or just profound boredom
19:29
in their own lives. So they want to feel important exactly,
19:31
They develop a parasocial relationship with the tragedy by inserting
19:35
themselves into the narrative. By forcing this famous grieving family
19:39
and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to react to them,
19:42
they achieve a momentary, twisted sense of omnipotence for a
19:45
few hours. Derek Kollella wasn't just a guy sitting in
19:47
a room in Hawthorne, California. He was the master of
19:51
ceremonies for a national news event. He controlled the emotional
19:54
state of a famous family. That feeling of control is
19:58
highly intoxicating form someone with severe antisocial traits.
20:02
Speaker 1: But the FBI didn't just throw up their hands because
20:05
he used ap app right. I mean, they traced the
20:08
communications back to the phone number, link to his personal
20:11
email and his physical residents in California, and they arrested
20:14
him that same month, in February twenty twenty six.
20:17
Speaker 2: Right. While VoIP services offer a veneer of anonymity, they
20:21
are rarely fool proof against a federal subpoena.
20:24
Speaker 1: How do they actually trace it? If it's over the internet.
20:27
Speaker 2: Federal cyber analysts can trace the Internet Protocol or IP
20:31
address of the device that initiated the VIP packet, the
20:34
subpoena the VIP provider for those IP logs, and then
20:37
they cross reference that IP address with the local Internet
20:40
service provider like a Comcast or a Spectrum to find
20:43
the exact physical router that data originated from.
20:46
Speaker 1: So it's basically a massive game of connecting the dots.
20:49
Speaker 2: It takes immense interagency coordination. But yes, they unmasked him
20:53
relatively quickly.
20:54
Speaker 1: Okay, so he initially pleaded not guilty and was released
20:57
on conditions pending trial. Here is the detail from the
21:01
documents that completely shifts the paradigm of who this guy is.
21:05
He subsequently violated those pre trial release conditions by testing
21:09
positive for methamphetamine.
21:11
Speaker 2: And that positive drug test is not just a footnote
21:14
in this story. It is the skeleton key to understanding
21:17
his behavior. The methamphetamine use is an incredibly important piece
21:22
of the psychological puzzle.
21:23
Speaker 1: Really, how does meth connect to sending a fake ransom
21:26
note to a kidnapped woman's family.
21:29
Speaker 2: It speaks directly to the destruction of impulse control. When
21:32
you combine pre existing antisocial tendencies with active substance abuse,
21:36
particularly a powerful central nervous system stimulant like methamphetamine, you
21:40
create a highly toxic behavioral.
21:42
Speaker 1: Cocktail because it changes the brain chemistry drastically.
21:45
Speaker 2: Methamphetamine floods the brain's reward pathways with dopamine, which can
21:49
induce extreme grandiosity, severe paranoia, and a profound inability to
21:53
foresee long term consequences.
21:55
Speaker 1: It makes them feel invincible, right.
21:57
Speaker 2: It literally suppresses the prefrontal cortex, which is the part
22:00
of the brain responsible for empathy and filtering bad ideas.
22:04
So he sees the family crying on TV. The chemically
22:07
induced grandiosity tells him he can outsmart the FBI and
22:11
the drugs remove whatever internal filter might have usually said,
22:14
do not do this. You will absolutely go to federal prison.
22:18
He acts entirely on immediate destructive impulse.
22:21
Speaker 1: It is just infuriating because his impulse doesn't just harm him.
22:25
You know, it paralyzes the Guthrie family, It gives him
22:28
this awful false hope that they are finally communicating with
22:31
the people holding Nancy, and critically, it wastes invaluable police resources.
22:36
Speaker 2: It's a massive drain on the system.
22:38
Speaker 1: Every single hour a team of FBI cyber analysts spend
22:41
subpoenaing ip logs to track down Derek Kleell in California
22:44
is an hour they aren't spending analyzing the actual digital
22:47
breadcrumbs left by the people who broke down Nancy's door Intucson.
22:50
Speaker 2: That is the ultimate tragedy of the digital hoaxer. They
22:53
act as a smokescreen. They are actively, even if unintentionally,
22:57
running interference for the real kidnappers, drawing federal resources away
23:01
from the actual physical hunt.
23:02
Speaker 1: Which brings us to the present day and how the
23:05
justice system actually penalizes this specific type of psychological violence.
23:10
On July two, twenty twenty six, in a US District
23:13
court in Tucson, Kalala finally pleaded guilty. He pleaded to
23:17
two counts of harassment using a telecommunications device.
23:21
Speaker 2: And it is a federal case specifically because he utilized
23:25
interstate commerce, meaning the Internet routing across state lines from
23:29
California to Arizona to commit the harassment right, and.
23:33
Speaker 1: I am looking at the federal statutes for these charges,
23:36
the maximum penalty is two years in federal prison and
23:39
a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars fine per count.
23:42
So theoretically he is looking at four years behind bars.
23:45
Speaker 2: That's the statutory maximum, yes.
23:46
Speaker 1: But the plea agreement that was actually reached and accepted
23:49
by the judge five years of probation on each count
23:52
running concurrently, he is scheduled for final sentencing on September tenth,
23:56
twenty twenty six. And let me just stop you right there,
23:58
because I have to push back on this outcome.
24:00
Speaker 2: Factly, what you're going to say.
24:01
Speaker 1: Five years of probation, he does not spend a single
24:04
day in a federal penitentiary for exploiting a family in
24:07
their darkest hour and diverting FBI resources during an active kidnapping.
24:12
Is this not just a massive systemic slap on the wrist.
24:16
What kind of message does this send to the next
24:18
opportunists watching a high profile missing person's case.
24:21
Speaker 2: It is entirely understandable to feel a deep sense of
24:24
outrage at that sentence. I mean, the emotional damage he
24:27
caused is truly incalculable. But if we want to understand
24:31
why this happened, we have to strip away the emotion
24:34
and examine the very rigid legal realities. The federal prosecutors
24:38
were constrained by.
24:39
Speaker 1: Okay, walk me through the legal calculus, because I'm not
24:41
seeing a justice here.
24:42
Speaker 2: First, we have to distinguish between the federal statutes for
24:45
telecommunications harassment and the statues for actual kidnapping or extortion.
24:49
Exhortion generally requires a credible threat of physical violence and
24:53
the actual means to carry it out.
24:54
Speaker 1: But he implied he had her.
24:56
Speaker 2: He implied it. But Koalola didn't kidnap Nancy. He had
24:59
no physical proximity to crime whatsoever. The law categorizes his
25:04
specific action as a non violent telecommunications.
25:07
Speaker 1: Offense, but the emotional violence he inflicted is staggering. He
25:11
literally made them think he had their mother.
25:13
Speaker 2: The emotional violence is profound, yes, but the American penal code,
25:18
particularly the federal sentencing guidelines, relies heavily on physical metrics
25:23
and financial metrics.
25:24
Speaker 1: Like physical harm or stolen money.
25:26
Speaker 2: Exactly did you physically injure someone? Did you steal a
25:30
quantifiable amount of money. Emotional distress, while it is recognized,
25:35
does not carry the same weight in calculating mandatory minimums
25:38
for prison time under this specific statute.
25:41
Speaker 1: That feels incredibly outdated.
25:43
Speaker 2: Furthermore, prosecutors always have to weigh the strategic legal benefit
25:47
of offering a plea deal versus taking a case to
25:49
a full trial.
25:50
Speaker 1: What could possibly be the strategic benefit of letting this
25:53
guy walk on probation.
25:54
Speaker 2: By securing a guaranteed guilty play, the prosecution completely avoids
25:58
a highly public trial. If this case went to trial,
26:01
Annie Guthrie, t Masocione, and potentially even Savannah Guthrie would
26:05
have been subpoena.
26:06
Speaker 1: Oh God, they would have to testify.
26:08
Speaker 2: They would have had to travel to a federal courthouse,
26:10
sit on a witness stand, face the man who psychologically
26:13
tortured them, and testify under rigorous cross examination about the
26:18
absolute most traumatic week of their lives.
26:20
Speaker 1: That's horrified.
26:21
Speaker 2: The plea deal, even one that feels far too light,
26:24
spares the family that brutal secondary victimization, and the defense
26:28
attorney likely leaned heavily into Kollella's complete lack of involvement
26:31
in the actual physical abduction, presented his severe methamphetamine addiction
26:36
as a mitigating factor regarding his state of mind, and
26:40
successfully negotiated the probation outcome.
26:43
Speaker 1: I mean, I understand the pragmatism of sparing the family
26:46
a trial, I really do. But you have to admit
26:48
this outcome entirely validates the critics of our current cyberlaws.
26:52
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, it highlights a massive gabing blind spot in
26:56
our legal system. The critics argue, very reasonably, I think
27:00
light sentences for nonviolent digital hoaxes provide virtually zero determs. Right.
27:05
If the penalty for inserting yourself into a national kidnapping
27:08
case and torturing a family is just probation, malicious actors
27:12
will simply factor that in as the cost of doing business.
27:16
The law was written for a twentieth century world. It
27:19
is not caught up to the severity, speed, and massive
27:22
scale of digital psychological harm in the twenty first century.
27:26
Speaker 1: Well, while Kalella's legal chapter is closing and he just
27:28
returns to California on probation, we really have to force
27:31
ourselves to pull the focus back because Kalela is merely
27:35
a sideshow.
27:35
Speaker 2: In all this a very loud distraction.
27:37
Speaker 1: A cruel, distracting, drug fueled side show. The main tragedy
27:42
remains entirely unresolved. We have a transition back to the
27:45
actual search for Nancy Guthrie because she is still out there.
27:48
Speaker 2: That is the most sobering reality of all. The hoax
27:51
has been solved, but the actual crime has not.
27:53
Speaker 1: Right as of this month, July twenty twenty six, Nancy
27:57
has been missing for over five months. That means a
28:00
highly active kidnapping for ransom investigation led by the Pima
28:03
County Sheriff's Office with massive ongoing assistance from the FBI.
28:07
Speaker 2: They haven't scaled back the effort.
28:09
Speaker 1: No, They are still conducting daily roadway checks. They are
28:12
constantly analyzing local tips. There is a huge active financial
28:17
reward for information. But the crucial detail from the source
28:21
material that really caught my eye is that the FBI
28:24
is still actively probing other ransom.
28:26
Speaker 2: Notes, meaning Kalala wasn't the only.
28:28
Speaker 1: One notes that they have deemed potentially legitimate, unlike Kalela's text.
28:33
Speaker 2: Which tells us two critical things. First, Kalala wasn't the
28:36
only person communicating with the family or the authorities. There
28:40
were multiple actors attempting to make contact. And second, it
28:43
means the authorities genuinely believe the actual perpetrators may have
28:47
attempted to establish a real channel of communication.
28:51
Speaker 1: It is an issue of cognitive overload for the investigators.
28:54
Like imagine trying to hear a critical whisper at a
28:57
heavy metal concert while someone is actively screaming right into
29:00
your ear.
29:01
Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy.
29:02
Speaker 1: That is what trying to authenticate a real ransom note
29:04
feels like. When hoaxers are just flooding your tip line.
29:07
It drains the physical resources of the FBI cyber teams,
29:11
and I cannot even fathom the emotional energy of drains
29:14
from the family every notification on their phone, exactly every
29:17
single time the phone rings, every time a secured email
29:20
comes in, they have to endure that massive spike of adrenaline,
29:23
wondering is this the real one? Is this the actual
29:27
proof of life?
29:28
Speaker 2: And if you trace that reality out, you really start
29:31
to comprehend the immense, exhausting interagency coordination required to manage
29:37
a case of this magnitude over five long months.
29:40
Speaker 1: It must be a logistical nightmare.
29:42
Speaker 2: You have local sheriff's deputies managing the physical grid searches
29:45
in the rough terrain of the Catalina Foothills, literally looking
29:48
under rocks for physical evidence. And simultaneously you have federal
29:52
cyber analysts in Washington, DC or Quantico attempting to pierce
29:56
the encryption of ransom emails routed through servers in Eastern
30:00
Europe or Asia. Is massive two front war, and through.
30:04
Speaker 1: All of this noise, through the hoaxes and the dead ends,
30:07
the family's resilience is just astounding to me. Savannah Guthrie
30:11
and her siblings have maintained a constant, steady drum beat
30:13
in the press.
30:14
Speaker 2: They're keeping the pressure.
30:15
Speaker 1: They refuse to let the story fade away. They keep
30:17
reminding the public of the fragile human reality at the
30:21
center of this. Nancy needs her daily medication to survive.
30:25
They have explicitly stated they quote cannot be at peace
30:28
until she is found.
30:31
Speaker 2: And their media strategy really highlights a delicate, oft an
30:34
agonizing balancing act for society and law enforcement. You mean, well,
30:38
on one hand, the family has to utilize public attention.
30:42
They must use their celebrity ties to keep the pressure
30:44
on the perpetrators and to keep Nancy's face on the
30:46
evening news because the moment the public forgets the tips
30:50
stop coming.
30:50
Speaker 1: In, the case goes cold.
30:52
Speaker 2: Right. But on the other hand, law enforcement desperately needs
30:55
operational privacy and focus. They need the quiet space to
30:58
authenticate those potentially real ransom notes, to set up sting
31:02
operations or digital traps without the media analyzing and broadcasting
31:06
their every strategic move. It is a tightrope walk over
31:10
an absolute abyss of grief.
31:11
Speaker 1: So to summarize the journey we've been on today, we
31:14
started with that chilling, silent timeline on a winter night
31:18
in the desert, the severed digital connections of a doorbell,
31:21
camera and a pacemaker that marked the exact terrifying moments
31:25
in eighty four year old mother was violently extracted from
31:28
the safety of her home.
31:29
Speaker 2: The time stamps of a tragedy.
31:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, we looked at the tragic vulnerability of a woman
31:34
targeted precisely because of her age and medical needs, despite
31:37
her fierce independence. We explored the cruel methamphetamine fueled opportunism
31:43
of Derrek Kollella, who saw a family's agony on television
31:47
and just decided to make it his own personal playground,
31:49
completely exploiting the blind spots in our federal harassment laws
31:52
and getting probation for it right unbelievable. And we end
31:56
with the ongoing desperate search that is still happening right
31:59
now today in the foothels of Tucson.
32:02
Speaker 2: It is a profound tragedy that really operates on multiple
32:05
intersecting levels of human cruelty. You have the physical violence
32:09
of the actual kidnappers, and then you have the psychological
32:11
violence of the opportunists.
32:13
Speaker 1: I want to ask you, the listener, to really pause
32:17
and consider the human element behind the true crime headlines
32:20
you might normally just scroll past on your phone during
32:23
your morning commute.
32:24
Speaker 2: It's easy to detach from it.
32:25
Speaker 1: It is so easy to see a news alert about
32:27
a famous person's family member and just treat it like
32:30
a plot point and a fictional television show. It becomes entertainment.
32:34
But remember the family's own words, the very real reality
32:38
they wake up to every single day. There is not
32:41
a moment that goes by that we aren't actively trying
32:43
to find our mom.
32:44
Speaker 2: And as you consider the stark reality of this case,
32:47
I'd leave you with a final thought about the modern
32:50
digital world we have built for ourselves. We surround ourselves
32:53
with technology, we install high definition doorbell cameras to watch
32:57
our porches. We wear smart watches and in internal medical
33:00
apps to monitor our very heart.
33:03
Speaker 1: Beats to feel safe.
33:04
Speaker 2: We do this believing these devices create an invisible shield,
33:08
that they make us perfectly safe and connected. But when
33:10
a predator knows exactly how to blind those cameras and
33:13
bypass those networks, we really have to ask ourselves. Do
33:17
these devices actually protect us from the monsters in the dark,
33:20
or do they merely provide a precise, chilling time stamp
33:23
of the exact moment our safety is stolen. Wow.
33:26
Speaker 1: That is a terrifying thought to leave on, but a
33:29
deeply necessary one as we navigate a world where our
33:31
physical and digital lives are just completely intertwined. Thank you
33:35
for joining us as we unpack this incredibly complex, heartbreaking
33:38
and ongoing case. Stay curious, stay empathetic, and we will
33:41
talk to you next time.