A former FBI agent has told The Post that Nancy Guthrie may have been abducted and taken to Mexico, as further clues point to the theory that the mother of \u00ab\u00a0Today\u00a0\u00bb host Savannah Guthrie was the victim of a targeted attack.<\/b>
\nNancy Guthrie could have been abducted and taken to Mexico, a former FBI agent says \u2014 as further clues point to the theory that the 84-year-old mother of \u201cToday\u201d host Savannah Guthrie is the victim of a targeted kidnapping.
The search for the missing grandmother was in its fifth day Thursday, and the Pima County Sheriff\u2019s department in Tucson, Arizona, has no suspects.
Officials best lead seemed to be a random note that was sent to TMZ and two local TV stations \u2014 which included some insider details about the crime as well as a demand for millions of dollars in Bitcoin.
\u201cI feel that this was targeted,\u201d former Special Agent Tracy Walder at the FBI\u2019s Los Angeles Field Office told The Post.
\u201cHer house is set pretty far back\u2026 It\u2019s on almost an acre of land. This isn\u2019t a place where the houses are really close together and people are looking for whatever\u2019s an easy opportunity,\u201d she said.
\u201cI don\u2019t think some kind of botched robbery, because if it\u2019s a robbery, you don\u2019t want to burden yourself with a person that you\u2019re taking out,\u201d added Walder, who also previously served as Staff Operations Officer at the CIA\u2019s Counterterrorism Center.
\u201cI think this is someone who probably established a pattern of life for Nancy. Sat in her neighborhood, figured out her comings and goings. Was this Sunday dinner a thing she always did? It\u2019s known that she had staff who helped her because of her mobility issues. It sounds like she doesn\u2019t have staff 24 hours a day. So when do they leave? When do they come?\u201d said Walder.
So far, authorities have focused their visible search efforts on the immediate vicinity of Nancy\u2019s home in the Catalina Foothills, low-crime suburb of Tucson that was carved out of desert decades ago.
But, Walder believes that behind the scenes, law enforcement are looking further afield.
\u201cI definitely think that they would be expanding out the search, particularly all the way towards the border,\u201d Walder said.
\u201cTucson\u2019s just about an hour\u2019s drive, 60 miles-ish to the border, because you have to remember if this is a kidnapping, the kidnapper had at least nine hours until she was reported missing. You can get really far in nine hours,\u201d she added.
\u201cI would imagine they are working with all of their border states, California and New Mexico, and I think they\u2019re probably working with Mexican authorities as well,\u201d Walder said.
Fellow former FBI agent Michael Harrigan added that the fact that an investigator at the house was seen carrying a Cellebrite briefcase \u2014 a digital forensic repository used to extract data from computers and cell phones \u2014 was a key clue in the investigation.
\u201cAny cell phone that was in that area is going to have pinged off a tower. It\u2019s going to leave a signature or date timestamp that it was there. You see the Marshals use that a lot,\u201d Harrigan told The Post.
\u201cMarshals are phenomenal with tracking fugitives with that, but the [FBI] and other law enforcement use it also. They download the cell phone data from towers to identify what cell phones may have been in the area. And then they can go back with subpoenas. They can go back or search warrants to the providers and then get the information on who that was,\u201d he explained.Cops under fire
Local law enforcement raised eyebrows earlier this week when they left Nancy Guthrie\u2019s home, before returning to the crime scene on Wednesday.
\u201cI am very upset that they did that,\u201d Walder said.
\u201cClearly it\u2019s a potential kidnapping situation. We don\u2019t know if they have a suspect. We don\u2019t know if Ms. Guthrie is alive or not. If you have all of these questions, I don\u2019t care if you have fully processed a crime scene; you still wanna keep the crime scene.
\u201cI think it\u2019s incredibly frustrating that it was released. It was probably Pima County that did it. I don\u2019t blame them. I think they probably haven\u2019t worked a crime of this magnitude, but when I was an FBI agent, you can hold onto crime scenes as long as you need to,\u201d she added.
However, Harrigan told The Post he believes police know a lot more than they have revealed.
\u201cNormally, once you surrender a crime scene, you\u2019re saying, \u2018I\u2019m done with it, see you later, we\u2019ve got everything we need.\u2019 But the decision to return indicates that from the time they surrendered the crime scene, some information, either forensic information or testimonial information, pointed to something in the residence that they may have missed or didn\u2019t consider at the time,\u201d he said.
Maybe there\u2019s an item missing, and they\u2019re going to be able to collect potential DNA evidence around where that item was taken.That to me points that something came up after they cleared the scene,\u201d Harrigan added.
\u201cI think law enforcement has a pretty good grasp on what happened at this point. They\u2019re just grinding through a lot of information here. Maybe they have an idea who it is, but their primary focus is always going to be, \u2018Let\u2019s preserve life, let\u2019s get this person back, even if we have to delay an arrest or an interview of somebody who might be a suspect’,\u201d he said.
\u201cOnce you arrest somebody, Miranda Rights kicks in and they don\u2019t have to say a thing. So you want get that person back alive, or worst case scenario, recover the remains. If that, God forbid, was the worst outcome, you\u2019ve got to have that closure for the family so you can wait on the actual arrest or sensitive interview as you\u2019re trying to get that location identified and get that closure for the family,\u201d added Harrigan, who was formerly the chief of the FBI\u2019s Firearms Training Program.Proof of life
On Wednesday, Savannah and her two siblings appeared in a video apparently addressed to an alleged kidnapper, begging for those who took her to give proof Nancy is still alive.
Authorities said Thursday that so far the ransom note writer have not been in contact again, and have not provided proof of life.
\u201cThe number one goal is to attempt to get proof of life and to hopefully spur those who took the victim, if that\u2019s the case, to communicate and enter into a dialogue,\u201d Harrigan said.
\u201cIf the ransom note is valid, it\u2019s critical they establish a communication line with the kidnappers. That\u2019s their best-case scenario. They need to know that she\u2019s still alive and that she\u2019s okay,\u201d he added.
\u201cSecondarily, that provides more opportunity to identify who they are and the circumstances of the abduction,\u201d Harrigan said.<\/p>\n