FBI now playing a 'bigger role' in Nancy Guthrie investigation, expert says

All right, now let's bring in retired FBI supervisory agent James Galeano live outside of Nancy Guthrie's home. Good morning What can you tell us James about what you're seeing there now? And what do you make of these overnight developments?

Well Griff a lot of frenetic activity last night and obviously these are the way these kind of complex investigations go. They're typically fits and starts and ebbs and flows. And you're trying to read the investigative tea leaves from this side of the crime tape. I got to tell you, last night, I think the investigation has moved in a direction where they could possibly have some probative value evidence. And what happened last night? Well, we saw the Pima County Sheriff's Office rolling out their big Bearcats or their SWAT vehicles.

Now, there's two options on the tactical end. We know that the FBI's hostage rescue team is also on the ground. They've got great capabilities. They've got explosive breaching capabilities. And I imagine if they believed,

authorities believed that Mrs. Guthrie was on site, they would have used HRT for that. In this instance, it looks like it was the execution of a search warrant, and then somebody else was pulled over in a vehicle and detained there. So there had to be enough probable cause

to be able to get a judge, a court-ordered search warrant, to go in and try to find evidence. What could that be? Could it be something that we saw in that video, that black grainy video that the FBI released this past week, quite possibly, something like the backpack, something like a pair of gloves or something like that. Now, it's very interesting, and I'll wrap with this, that the FBI is cautioning the

Pima County Sheriff's Office not to release more information at this juncture, which means they're sitting on this, they're trying to see if this is a development that is going to lead to something more substantial, and they obviously don't want to tip the abductors off

to anything.

How are these agencies cooperating together? I mean, interesting that the FBI is saying, hey, we don't want you to release this information. Are they working hand in glove? Are you sensing tension or frustration with how each one is running the investigation?

Yeah, Rachel, that's a tough one. And through 25 years in the FBI, I worked across many different task forces, along with the NYPD and upstate New York police departments and sheriff's office. It's always tough when there's a little bit of territoriality in there, where people are trying to determine, What's my role? Kidnapping is a federal crime since 1932. However, in this instance, the Pima County Sheriff's Office does have the lead

So the FBI has to be asked into the investigation and Rachel you can see the frustration yesterday I believe in a presser where President Trump was asked about that and he acknowledged the same. The FBI can't wrest the investigation away from the Pima County Sheriff's Office. They can only be there to assist.

You said a minute ago that a hostage rescue team operation would have looked differently if they had been going into that house. How would that have looked different?

Okay Charlie, so here's the difference. The hostage rescue team, the FBI's HRT is a tier one asset. What is a tier one asset? It's on the level of the Army's Delta Force or the Navy Seals, you know,

Seal Team 6, the dev group, so they have capabilities that local SWAT teams may not have. Now the Pima County Sheriff's Office has about 1516 100 personnel, 600 sworn officers, I'm fairly certain they've got a full-time SWAT team they may

not have explosive breaching capabilities and what does that mean well in a hostage rescue if there's a determination that missus Guthrie might be alive. You're going to use things like speed surprise violence of action because what you want to do is you want to overwhelm the bad guys. SWAT teams are good, but the HR T is a different level the let last thing is

this there's only 3 outcomes here right to more positive one of his negative so she's either released she is rescued or this is a recovery operation obviously we're praying for one of the first two.

Yeah, James, so we've talked about this house and that operation. Let's go to the other scene of interest. And that is of course, this Range Rover. This individual stopped in the Range Rover in the Culver's parking lot.

He's detained. And of course they were very interested in the Range Rover. They took it away on a flatbed. At one point, we saw the authorities holding a tarp up, keeping the media's view away from whatever was in the rear of this vehicle. What does that tell you, that they actually removed it, took it on a flatbed?

What are we possibly looking at? And to be clear for our viewers, authorities have not confirmed that this incident was tied directly to the Guthrie investigation.

Well, again, you're looking for probative value here and you got to understand again, the synergy that's going on between the FBI and the Pima County Sheriff's office here in Arizona, there is a district attorney or in Pima County a county attorney. So they're handling this case from that perspective which means they would get the search warrants for this. If it was happening on the federal level there's only one federal district in Arizona. I'm sure they're talking to each other, they're figuring out the best way to do

this and get the most bang for the buck. On the probative value of the vehicle, they're probably going to be searching that if they think it had any connection to the abduction of Nancy Guthrie from her home right over my shoulder here. They're probably going to be testing it for hair and fiber, see if there's any blood spatter inside, any DNA that can be pulled off of it. So if they are impounding it, and that's clearly what that scene explained to me, they're going

to be going through that thing with a fine tooth comb.

What new evidence do you think they've collected out of that home? And also, just from your own experience, do you feel like we're reaching a crescendo here in this case? That this is, you know, you described the activity as, you know, know frenetic there's a lot of stuff going on right now is this what happens right

before we figure this out we solve this mystery Rachel it could be now again when it when the investigation begins you have this really wide aperture and you've got to kind of be looking in all different directions. You've got to look at a potential connection to Mexico. You've got to look at, you know, did somebody cross state lines? You've got to look at, you know, you've got to go through retail purchases.

You've got to go through the telemetry of the situation. You have to go through so many different things. Once you start to narrow that down, and I'll use as a perfect example earlier this week we were on scene down in Rio Rico where an individual stopped and detained down there and a search warrant was executed on a home down there. Okay at this point it looks like the home was released back to the people

that live there and the person was released. So there's no guarantee that's what what went on last night and what's currently ongoing is going to be the margin of victory that's going to get us missus Guthrie back and the perpetrators arrested, but it does seem like they're narrowing their focus down and this is only 2 miles from here

this is about I think to change from about Northwest of where I'm standing here in front of missus Guthrie's House so very close by think about this in historical terms many times kidnappers remain close by and God forbid, it's a body recovering or a release

happens. It could be within this very neighborhood that we're standing in right now.

So so James these developments come after a day where you had the sheriff announced that DNA that did not belong to Nancy or anyone close to her was found in the House. It also comes announced that DNA that did not belong to Nancy or anyone close to her was found in the house.

It also comes after TMZ reports that another, a third note, was sent to them, upping the amount of money that they want to identify the person. Do you think that what we're seeing right now unfold on our screens is related to any of that?

Charlie we have still not heard from authorities that the ransom notes are connected in any way with the actual abductors of Mrs. Guthrie. So I'm sure that the investigators obviously know more than we do about this and whether or not there are any ties there. They're not going to ignore those notes even if they believe that this is just a horrible person opportunist that look at this and says I can take advantage

of this. This is something called a virtual kidnapping happened all the time down in Mexico when I was stationed down there where people would find out that somebody was at a cell phone service or out of pocket and they would contact the family and extort them because the family couldn't get in touch with their loved one in this

instance, we just don't know if those 2 pieces of match up. I'm hoping that we get some more information soon, but I've said all along on this less is more here only have a press conference and release things when you think it is of such value to the public to help in crowdsourcing or the public needs to know it. So I think we may hear something today. I was surprised that again last night, another unforced error. Pima County makes an announcement that

you know, we're gonna, we're gonna make a statement. Then they walk that back and say, we're going to release a written statement. And then they walk that back and say, well, on the advice of the FBI, we're not going to be saying anything at this moment. That tells me that the FBI is not playing a bigger role in this.

James, really quick, I'm interested because my ears were sort of paying really close attention to when you said you dealt with a lot of kidnapping south of the border. Is there anything in this case that makes you think this could be something

international, transnational versus local?

So Rachel, I know Mexico well, and obviously where we're standing right here is about 60 or 70 miles from the border. The border town is Nogales, and Nogales is in the Sonoran region in Mexico, which is also covered by the Sinaloa cartel,

think Chapo Guzman. These type of abductions happened all the time down there, and it was generally people that were rich and had the means to be extorted that way. Could there be a nexus? I'm not certain, but when I was in the role as the deputy legal attache and the acting legal attache in the embassy in Mexico City, Many, many, many times we dealt with these

kind of cross border transnational organizations and gangs that did things like this. I'm sure the investigators are looking into it. It's not ruled out, but nothing yet, except for the one glove that was found about two miles south of here indicate that anything's headed down that way.

And James, we were just showing on our screen there the details about the suspect in that surveillance camera images recovered. They believe the individual is about 5'9", 5'10", tall. And I think the most significant thing is they've identified specifically the backpack he was wearing,

which by the way seemed to be packed, it was full, was an Ozark trail hiker pack backpack. And there's a suggestion that that might be something that they could trace to a purchase

at a local Wal-Mart or somewhere. And maybe there would be surveillance of the individual

purchasing it.

What do you make of that lead.

Well retail purchasing and following that trail has gotten exponentially more more difficult grift now that we've moved into the air where many people shop online. So it's not just brick and mortar

stores that you got to go back and wear out shoe leather. You know, talking to managers trying to get, you know, videotape and and having them going through their credit card receipts

to find out who might have purchased this. Somebody had said on air the other day that well if it's not purchased by a credit card then you can't track it and that's not true. The stores have inventory control, they know what dates and what times different things are sold, then they go back and they can pull up the video and the FBI and the Pima County Sheriff's Office can go back and review that video to see who came into the store then and who made that purchase. But I just want you to think about the resources that are required for that.

This is going to require just a monumental amount of folks. And look, when President Trump says we're going to give the, you know, the FBI the ticket to help out on this and whatever the Guthrie family needs or the Pima County Sheriff's Office needs, that is a huge push. The resources that are deployed down here out of the Phoenix office, which is the main office that covers the state of Arizona and also the Tucson Resident Agency, which is like a

satellite office. There are agents and Pima County Sheriff's detectives out running all of those leads down. And I'm telling you right now Griff that may also prove to be the margin of victory tracking this down finding out who purchased that backpack. And heck it may have had something to do with last night's

execution of the search warrants.

So this current scene this new scene is about two miles away from the Guthrie house. The glove that was found on the side of the road is about a mile

and a half.

And earlier you mentioned that oftentimes in a kidnapping or disappearance case, the kidnappers or the perpetrators usually remain within a close area. Why is that?

You know, it's the same reason that whenever there's violence or an abduction, you always look at intimate family members first and then you build out in concentric circles and what I mean by that the people that have the closest contact with someone are always persons of interest in cases like this because the statistics prove it out there out there now then you move to OK who did this person come in

contact with and that's why you've been hearing things like the landscapers that have been you know interviewed and voluntarily agreed to give a DNA sample, the person who cleans the pool, the gentleman that was pulled over down in Rio Rico you know down closer to the border earlier this week. Possibly one of the things that went into that search war was the fact that we use a thing called geofencing or geolocation, which means his cell phone

pinged in this area. And then maybe you match that up with another piece of evidence, like somebody going, hey, I looked at that picture, that image, and I know somebody that looks like that. I saw the eyes, and I think it's this person.

Could that have been enough to trigger a magistrate signing off on a search warrant? Absolutely.

James, so just because we saw the video, that creepy video of the guy in the mask at the front of the house, does that mean that we're no, and we saw this arrest or these detainments of these people a few miles away, does that mean that we're still not looking at family members or are family members still being looked at?

Yeah, you never completely close the door. There's a saying in this, there's a saying in this business that you follow the evidence bereft of fear or favor. So no one has been definitively ruled out. And I think a number of times the Pima County Sheriff's, uh, uh, sheriff has, has stated on the record that we are not ruling anybody out at

this juncture. And is there I mean just as you look at the case is there any like you know family members that you you know things that you think are unusual that you go yeah you know this they should probably still be looking at this and a lot of people talked about the son-in-law I've also heard you know online people going I think it's strange that, you know, Savannah Guthrie's husband,

not that he's one of the people, but that he's not really, you know, up front and center in this, you know, as much as, you know, the other family members. Is that something they look at as well?

Sure, well, Rachel, let's remember, you know kidnappings happen for one of 2 reasons for profit or for revenge and sometimes they can have an ideological bent to them, but you have to start playing all that out. We don't appear to have a motivation yet and of course you're going to look at intimate family members, but I think law enforcement has to be super careful and why is that what law enforcement mentions hey we

think that this could have a possible connection without the facts to back that up, you've now smeared somebody. And then you've put that person in a bad, bad position. So they've got to be super careful about not sharing that information publicly unless they have enough for an arrest

warrant or they want to crowdsource a person of interest they may want to talk to. That is the only time you should ever share somebody's name or make a supposition that you can't back up.

Such a great point. James Galeano, former FBI supervisor agent, thank you for that great insight to start us off. us off.

We'll check back with you throughout the morning.