Will Nancy Guthrie’s abductor strike again? Retired FBI special agent thinks it’s likely - day 40

Hey guys, thanks so much for checking out my show. I really, really appreciate it. Please click to subscribe. I appreciate all your support since I've been here in Arizona today. It's day 40 in the search for Nancy Guthrie, which I can't believe it's now been 40 days. I'm actually on I-10 right now, driving back to Tucson from Phoenix. This is Mo, who's been with me the whole time. Shout out to Mo, Doing an amazing job behind the scenes. We were actually in Phoenix.

I'm gonna have more on this tomorrow, but doing a story about DNA and what might be happening in the Guthrie case. Really, really fascinating. But I'll have that for you tomorrow. In this episode though, I'm looking into

something that I hadn't thought about much until now, and it's kind of disturbing to think about. But the question of whether the person who is responsible for this, the person who is responsible for Nancy Guthrie's disappearance, could they do this again? Will they reoffend? Could them reoffending actually be when they get caught? I'm going to dig into it in this episode of Brian Enten Investments. I'm joined now by Steve Moore, a retired FBI special agent. It's nice to see you, Steve.

Thank you for joining me again. Always enjoy talking to you. The first thing I wanted to ask you about that I was thinking about today that a lot of people have been asking me is, why do you think no one has come forward yet? I mean, when this $1 dollar reward came out plus the you know hundred thousand dollars from the

FBI, I think there was this thought that an accomplice or that someone would make a phone call would want the money. Yeah. Why do you think we are where we are on that front? It could you

know if I think if the Bureau knew that they'd be a long a a long way down the road. But I think the reason is most likely the fact that the only people who have knowledge of this are culpable, culpable. And so I think what's gonna happen here is that whatever they've done, they've done it in such a way, the bad guys have done it in such a way

that they've kept it from other people. And there may be people out there who have provided information that will one day be determined to have been valuable, but it wasn't viewed as such at the time.

But you don't think that an accomplice at this point would have been tempted by the money? And you and I have talked before, I mean, there's ways that they can also get the money and also get

get a deal. Yeah, they can get a deal, but if and the horrible thing is true that that Nancy is no longer alive, there's not going gonna be a good deal for you. And how are you gonna spend a million dollars when you're gonna be in prison for most of the rest of your life?

So you're not surprised that no one has come forward at this point?

No, and rewards usually have pretty strong limits on the fact that if you're involved in it, if you're culpable for it, you're not going to get the reward.

Yeah. Yeah. Another big question that I've been getting that I wanted to ask you is Annie Guthrie, who is Savannah's sister, her car was towed early on, like, you know, days after this whole thing started. So more than a month ago, by law enforcement. The sheriff has said that they are officially, everyone in the family is officially cleared as suspects. But as recently as yesterday, when we checked in with investigators,

they still haven't returned the car. They say, oh, we're in the process of returning the car. Why do you think that is? I mean, why wouldn't they just give the car back?

There's several reasons. Honestly, I can't tell you why they haven't done that already. Frequently, you'll get situations where you keep a vehicle for a long time to where the people are just pushing on you

and knocking on your door and saying, where's my car? But I've not had a problem in eventually getting those things back, especially when they are important to the person who is who is the owner. I mean, maybe they have another car that they're not using or they are using now and they're not pushing the FBI to return it. So the FBI is

Taking their time about it. But if it is something a car that they need You know, it's it's kind of curious maybe the FBI has provided them with a rental those things happen and so then you know her sister's family wouldn't be as

Interested in getting it back right now. It just seems like if you went out of your way to put out a statement saying you've officially cleared the family 100%, why wouldn't they just get their car back?

Well, yeah, and I understand that, but there are issues, and I'm not justifying it, I'm just saying that that specifically it takes manpower to go through all the processes of releasing it back to you and maybe they are more interested in having that manpower working the cases. Could be that the FBI is just has been dragging their feet, maybe they've partially disassembled the car, maybe parts of it they don't want to give back. Maybe they took the carpets out and don't want to return the carpets, or, and this is not unusual at all, say they did take the carpets out or a seat out or anything like that, then they would have sent it to the lab in Washington, D.C.

So what's happening now is maybe half the cars in Quantico, Virginia.

Really? So you think they would have even sent parts? I remember when the pictures finally came out of Brian Koburger's car after the FBI went through it. I mean, like the seat cushions were taken out, the steering wheel was taken apart,

the gear shifter was, it looked like they had, like you said, basically disassembled the inside of the car. But I never thought about them maybe even sending parts of Annie's car to Quantico. I guess that could explain the delay.

Yeah, frequently, say you have a blood stain on a piece of carpet, the FBI doesn't want to, the FBI policy is don't cut that out, you know, send the entire unit to Quantico. They're not going to do all the lab work in Tucson so it is going to be sent there. So you might have to send an entire car seat, which they probably won't disassemble, because if you disassemble the car seat,

you're contaminating what you touch. So I think it's very possible that large portions or large pieces of the car went to Quantico, and then Quantico has to go through, you know, the middle name of FBI is bureaucracy. It's a bureau. And so they have to go through all sorts of hoops.

They have to jump through hoops to return it. And it's not just up to the FBI. The FBI can't release evidence on a case until the United States Attorney's Office has authorized the release of evidence that they might potentially

want someday for trial.

Do you think we should be worried at all that the person responsible for this could do this again? I mean, is there a public safety concern here?

Yes, yeah, I think so. I'm no longer in the 100% in the camp that this was a planned ransom kidnapping. The ransom note came kind of late and they didn't really try to provide proof of life. So I think it's possible that this was something different. And if that is the case, and even if to a certain extent it was a ransom kidnapping, it could happen again because they've apparently, at least they think they've gotten away with it. They may have gotten away with it for a while before they're caught. But the thing, if it's not a kidnapping, the things that drove them to this crime will recur. Reoccur. Those, you know, if they needed money, they'll need money again. If they are deviant in

any way, shape, or form, they're still going to be deviant after not being caught. So there's nothing to tell me that these people won't try again. In fact, if it was an actual kidnapping, the only thing that would make them want to do it again is that they didn't get caught. If it was a kidnapping, they went through an immense amount of trouble, immense amount of planning, risked their lives essentially,

got through all of this and didn't get a dime. So I don't think they're gonna look favorably. They're not gonna say, hey, that worked great. Let's do it again. So I think the least chance of them recurring is if it was a kidnapping because it didn't work.

But I think it's very possible and getting more possible every day that they were driven by money or the problems of a human brain.

What do you mean by that?

I think it's possible that this was, that this has to do with violence or sexual activity or pure robbery or randomness.

Yeah, and I hate to, I've talked about this a couple of times, but I, just in my brain, I hate to go down that road when we've talked about different motivations for this and obviously, sexual reasons are one of them. And you just don't like to think about that with an older,

really anytime, but especially with an older woman. But I guess statistically that is, I mean, that is a thing, right?

It is so horrible to me, I don't even like to discuss it. So all I will say is that it is not statistically irrelevant at all. It is something that society has to deal with and it's so horrible that the media doesn't even publish stories about it usually. Yeah, and I get it. I mean, you don't even publish stories about it usually.

Yeah, and I get it. I mean, it's, you don't even want to, it's like, there's just certain things with like old people and kids, you just don't even want, your brain doesn't even really want to go there.

Yeah.

But do you think that there should be more of a responsibility? Like we don't hear anyone in law enforcement saying that people should be careful because this could possibly happen again. You know what I mean? That element of it isn't really coming out

in the dialogue. And I guess that would be an ethical question that people could wrestle with forth. When you are an FBI agent or a detective for the sheriff's department, you tend to work to focus on the crime and not be philosophical about what's next unless it hits you right in the face. Like, they will definitely do this again, we've got to do something, or they tried something, they didn't get away with it, and we know they're going to try again. Yes, then, but if you don't know exactly what the whole situation is yet, because you haven't caught the people, then it's hard to come up with more than a thought that, yeah, I can't rule it out. And you have to weigh

the possibility of frightening an entire populace over this. Yeah, that's what I always feel like. Like sheriffs and police chiefs are always more worried about sort of people being scared and just trying to keep everybody calm instead of saying like, yeah, it's possible that this person could strike again. Right. But it makes sense. The FBI doesn't case you're not you're just focused on what you're investigating. Yeah. And, you know, when I worked counterterrorism, things like that, I'll just give you an example where you had a bombing or something, a terrorist bombing, and it was interdicted, but we didn't recover the explosives.

And so at that point, we realized explosives are like fresh food. You can't just let them lay around. They tend to get destabilized depending on the explosives. So especially the cases I was working overseas, you knew that they had to dispose of the explosives within several weeks.

And they did that by putting in other terrorist attacks. So if and when we interdicted a case and didn't get the explosives, we would put the word out. You've got a two-week window where they've got to get rid of the explosives. And the best way to do it is another terrorist attack.

Yeah, makes sense. There was this interesting situation, Steve, that I found out about. I was talking with one of the neighbors. And a lot of these people have lived there for a long time, you know, decades. And her sister also lives down the street. And she was telling me that the Friday after Nancy went missing,

two people showed up to her sister's house, identified as FBI, asked to come inside, asked some questions in her house, wanted to look in the garage, asked if she had a pacemaker, which I thought was interesting, and then left. The sister thought there was something strange, specifically about it was a man and a woman about the man, and called some family who said, you should just

call the police if you think there was something weird about it. So she called authorities. She actually called 911. And the sheriff's office and the FBI came out to her house. They ended up spending four hours there taking fingerprints. They DNA swabbed her and they said,

we don't believe that these were real FBI agents. And this was right in the beginning, like, you know, just days after Nancy went missing. I'm surprised I hadn't heard about this till now, but it was a four hour ordeal. They leave, she goes to bed frightened, thinking, oh my God, I let these people in my house. Then they call the next day and say, we actually did more checking, and they are legit FBI. You have nothing to worry about. But I guess I was just really, I'm still taken by that story. Like, I don't understand how, I know there was a lot of FBI agents here and everybody flooded in, but I would have just thought

that it would have been more organized, that they would have been able to figure out who's who. And then also that they took four hours doing a crime scene investigation at her house,

which just was a whole waste of time. Yeah, yeah, that that seems ridiculous to me. But keep in mind that what you're dealing with is Tucson up until that, and you're talking about very close into the time of the abduction or the missing person. So what you have had up until that crime is the Tucson office, which is relatively small, they're all, the agents are all gonna be known to the Sheriff's Department. And so then you fly in agents from all over the country.

Some are checking in, some are checking in as surveillance, some are checking in as lab people, and you get this massive influx of people. So then they send these agents, likely not from Tucson or somebody would recognize the names. And they don't clear that the people who are doing the investigation

don't make a notification that they're sending agents out to do investigation. So I can see how that would happen. I don't understand why if the sheriff gets this call and they say these are the agents who they said, these are the names they gave or this is the business card they left or this is what they look like. Why the sheriff didn't call, or maybe he did, but

why they didn't call the command post and say, do we have people already out there running leads? As far as agents getting I mean, all they have to do is find one fingerprint and agents fingerprints are about as visible. I mean, from a data data standpoint as ever, I mean, FBI agents fingerprints are everywhere in databases, so they could fix that almost immediately. The other thing is you can always call the FBI generally,

and they'll respond and at least get somebody to get back to you. As an aside, I think my dad was an FBI agent, and I was an FBI agent. I think we were the only father-son teams that, during their careers were reported as impersonating FBI agents, because, you know, 40 years ago when I started in the FBI,

longer than that, I had a kind of a baby face and my dad did also. And on one case of his and one case of mine, we went out to do an interview and the person called the FBI and says, there's somebody here who claims to be an FBI agent and I don't believe him. So, you know-

Why did they say that?

Because you look young.

With my dad, I think it was him looking young and he came alone to an interview and they expected agents to come with groups and the person was concerned. And in my case, I was driving an undercover vehicle and used a government credit card to fill it up at a service station.

Oh, interesting. Do they, would an FBI agent ever show up alone or do they usually come in pairs?

They usually do, yes. But it's not unusual to do that. It just depends. If you're going to be interviewing somebody and the value of that information is extremely important, you're going to bring other agents along so nobody can dispute what they said or didn't say. If you're doing a background investigation on somebody, you'll probably come alone. There's no criminal case that depends on it.

When I heard this neighbor's story, though, and especially that it was early on, I was just thinking of we were reporting a lot that there was a breakdown in communication between the sheriff's office and the FBI, especially early on, that the sheriff's office wasn't sharing information with the FBI and that there

was sort of this issue there. And I wondered if maybe that had something to do with it.

Oh, I'm absolutely sure that had something to do with it. And it could have been that the Sheriff's Department was a little miffed that agents might have been out already. Maybe they didn't notify the Sheriff's Department that they were out there interviewing and the sheriff didn't do due diligence to find out if that was the case. I don't know.

But the fact that the Sheriff's Department and FBI agents showed up to me means that it's the Sheriff's Department and the Tucson agents that they already knew were coming to this area and saying, hey, we know all the agents in Tucson here and those don't match the description. And I think one of two things happened or should have happened at that point. Either they should have made a call to the command post. And if they did, the command post should have had the information more readily available. I think what it sounds like to me is that that there was some, you know, when when you're a say you're a Tucson FBI agent and this is your case, actually.

And the FBI, you know, comes in like the hundred and first airborne parachuting agents in all over the place. That's a that's an analogy. You're going to feel a little bit cut off just the same way the sheriff is, because this is your town, this is your office, this is your case, and now Washington is flying hundreds of people in. So there is both, there can be a disconnect at the field office level, at the Tucson level, I'm not alleging it, I'm just saying that I've seen it. And the sheriff could have been upset, and the fact that they showed up together might

have been a little bit of a combined miscommunication and or irritation.

One other thing I was wondering about is she said that when they showed up, when we found out they were real FBI agents, they asked her if she had a pacemaker.

Yeah, I don't get that. I wonder why they would be doing that. Yeah. I don't know unless there was a question of whether they thought a pacemaker signal could be tracked somehow or had been tracked. That's the only thing I can think of. It doesn't make sense to me, but that doesn't mean it doesn't make sense to somebody. As agents, we were sometimes given lists of questions that we didn't really understand the reason for, because we didn't have every little bit of information

in the case. So they would just say, find out if anybody in the house has a pacemaker, or find out if anybody in the house has a cousin who drives a blue car. Things that we don't even know sometimes why we're asking it, because the people who are running the case and have the full grasp of the entire case

are not the ones who are out there generally in large cases like this doing the interviews. So if you're the

the agent on the street doing the interviews knocking on doors you don't have the full picture necessarily you're sometimes just asking the questions that

they told you to ask. Yeah there's no way you can keep everybody briefed up on the case on an hourly basis as to what information you have at that time. And sometimes, see, here's the other thing. FBI agents are a very independent group of people. They are trained, they're recruited to be that way. They're encouraged and trained to be that way. But at times, if this is not their case, you need to control their level of investigation into the case. You have to sometimes go from being a lone wolf agent to being a team player or being a lone wolf agent to being a team player. And so sometimes you don't want the entire case known to every single agent because they might take logical,

might, they would take logical steps to get information that they think is valuable. And maybe they don't want the agents to go down certain tracks yet.

Yeah, makes sense. It was also interesting. The other thing she said was that they wanted to look in her garage. What does that say?

Yeah, that makes. Again, they were probably looking to answer some questions that, you know, you'll you'll you'll do your normal questions, the normal the normal interview things that every agent knows to do, but then they would give them a list of specifics that would be of interest to the investigation. They might have been looking for a car, but the fact that they said garage doesn't necessarily

mean it's a car. So obviously there was, I would want to see what they looked at in the garage. Did they look at the garage door to see if it was locked? Did they, you know, things like that. Things that might not occur to us immediately might be things that they would be looking at. Yeah, the reason the garage

stuck with me is there's just people in the neighborhood, there's this feeling that the person who did this could be close, could be close by, might not be someone from far away. And even with some of the cell phone, and we don't know this for sure, but it doesn't seem like they've been able to find someone's cell phone that was there that didn't belong at this point, based on them not having any suspects, which would again lead you to believe like maybe it is someone who is normally in the area and their cell

phone is normally in the area. So when she said the garage thing, it just made me wonder that early on, were they already considering whether the person who did this could be someone very, very close by?

Oh, I think that's certainly, I mean, you're not going to go do interviews in all these houses and not answer the first question, could these people possibly be suspects? So they might have had a car description at that point that they wanted to look in, look at, you know, they had obviously already been outside the property. So maybe they wanted to look at, you know, they'd obviously already been outside the property. So maybe they wanted to look at that. Maybe there was golf carts, you know,

in some of those communities people drive golf carts around. Maybe they were looking at electrical junction boxes. You know, there's so many things they could be asking about. But one of the things that you want to answer pretty quickly is whether the person could have been involved. They say, here, we answered all the questions. And you find out later, yeah, there was blood on the floor, but those weren't one of the questions. So the agents

will want to take a good look at the house just to make sure that it's not an obvious suspect.

And one of the neighbors was telling me they were actually the the agents were actually asking them about other neighbors. You know, was this person a good person? What do you know about this person? So I guess it would make sense

that they would be using the neighbors that way.

Yeah, absolutely, they would, because, you know, one of the things you're doing is you're trying to get a feel of the entire neighborhood. And the neighbors generally know other neighbors and say, oh, that person's sketchy over there.

You don't even talk to them. They're just, you know, I think one of them did time in the pen for kidnapping or something. You know, you want that kind of information. And so in a way, they're not only looking at this house, but they're looking for background information.

They're essentially doing a background investigation on people in the neighborhood to find out if they are even potential suspects.

What do you think it means that we haven't heard much from the FBI at all or from the Sheriff's office in terms of like trying to keep this in the news, trying to keep this relevant? You know, when there's other missing people, there might be another press conference that we just want to remind everybody. We want to show you the picture again. We want to just get the word out

again. You know, we haven't seen that happen here. No, and, you know, honestly, Brian, I think sometimes I know it's true of agents. They don't want it in the press. I mean, it's so much easier and so much less work to investigate a case that nobody's really looking at from the outside. A lot of work is, a lot of case time is spent managing press, managing public questions, and things like that. And then you get tens of thousands of leads pouring in, 99% of which

are going to be, by definition, useless. And so I think they're seeing this as kind of a breather where they can really focus on the case and not have to do pressers every day.

And they can do more investigating without as much as much attention, you think?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. It's listen, when whenever your case hits the press, hits the media, hits hits anything, you roll your eyes and say, oh, gosh, now I got to deal with that. I'm not decrying the people's right to know. I'm just saying that the fact is just stark that it's easier to work a case when nobody's asking for updates every day and headquarters isn't second guessing every decision you make because they are feeling political pressure.

How closely do you think the person who's responsible for this is watching the coverage is watching all of this?

Oh, I think they're voracious. Because that's how they're finding out about the case. And that's worked a little bit in their favor because they know what the FBI is looking at. They know what the Sheriff's Department is looking at. And so it helps them anticipate law enforcement's moves. So I think they'd be foolish not to be the number one

taker of this information. They're probably just living off of it.

Is that typical in cases you've covered before? Have you been able to go back and find out like, oh my gosh, they were watching everything? That just always creeps me out to think about, you know?

Yeah, well, no. And really, I think when you go on the media like this and you you're known for covering this case pretty extensively, I would be surprised if the persons or persons who did it haven't been watching your podcast. When I talk to you, I assume that the person

who has done this might be listening. And so I think this is something you have to just accept that they will be a huge consumer of media. And that's one of the bittersweet things about freedom of speech and freedom of the press, which I would die for, is that nothing is free. Nothing is cost free. And the cost for freedom of speech and freedom of press is that some people might use it for nefarious purposes. Do you think the media has been used effectively from the beginning? I mean,

I mentioned that they haven't been doing press conferences lately, but do you think they did a

good job? No, I mean, the short answer is no, they didn't do a good job. Did they do an effective job? Maybe so. And, you know, the hot wash on that isn't going to occur until we eventually find out who did this. Then there'll be information that will allow the sheriffs and the FBI to determine what they could have done better, what they did absolutely wrong, what they will do better in the future, things like this. But right now we don't have the end data to tell us what was good and what was bad.

I will tell you what didn't work well is confusing messages back and forth saying some people saying one thing, some people saying another, I mean, different agencies. And any time you have a one agency, a local agency or a federal agency at war with the other, with their counterparts, you've already tied one arm behind your back. It's just that simple. And so I think the worst thing that happened in this case was the reported, I haven't met the people, I haven't talked to them, but I've heard a lot of reporting that the sheriff did not have any love for the FBI getting credit for what was done.

And so it's possible that no credit will ever be there to get because one agency was afraid of another agency getting that credit. I am not going to tell you that if I was an FBI agent and the sheriff was stiff arming me on information, that I might not have it in my heart to retaliate on that. So when you have kind of a battle between the two investigative agencies. Like I say, you're going into it with one arm behind your back.

As always, I really appreciate Steve for taking the time to talk with me. He's been an amazing resource. He had an amazing career in the FBI. And I appreciate you guys for following along. One thing, it's so sunny. I mean, it goes without saying, but it's just,

we were just talking, Mo and I were talking about it. It's so, like, the sun is so intense in Arizona. It feels like you can just never escape the sun. I'm from Florida, but it's just, I don't know, it has a different vibe here. Maybe because there's just developments. Got something really interesting cooking for you

guys tomorrow. And again, I appreciate you guys for following along and subscribing. subscribing. And I'll talk to you guys later.