This week FBI sources said kidnapped Nancy Guthrie may be in Mexico, while the Pima County, Arizona, Sheriff claimed his team’s evidence puts her in Tucson.
It’s just one of many rifts between the local cops and the feds, which critics say is a major reason why little progress has been made in finding “Today” host Savannah Guthrie’s 84-year-old mom, who was abducted from her home on Feb. 1.
“[The FBI] should have taken the case over within the first few days. We have been treating this as a kidnapping and the FBI is the premier agency to deal with kidnappings,” Aaron Cross, president of the Pima County Deputies Association, told The Post earlier this week.
But hard-headed Pima Sheriff Chris Nanos is keeping a tight grip on the case, even though it’s been over a week since recovered doorbell footage of a masked man at Guthrie’s door was revealed, and cops are no closer to finding her.
Here’s how the evidence in the case has been handled — and bungled — in the desperate search for answers.
Early errors
The FBI wasn’t called in for the first couple of days, despite the high-profile abduction needing resources beyond what Tucson can offer, critics say.
There is also criticism local cops surrendered the scene too early — with everyone from reporters to true crime sleuths able to walk right up to Guthrie’s front door with no security or crime scene tape.
“It looks unprofessional. It doesn’t look good for our department when we’ve had reporters walking up and essentially contaminating the scene,” Cross said.
On top of that, a roof-mounted camera was overlooked during the sheriff’s cursory review and only found by the FBI in a thorough sweep.
“In my professional opinion, I believe they released the crime scene too early. And that was on Sheriff Nanos,” Brantner Smith, a former cop, previously told The Post .
Pima Sheriff’s Department announced Wednesday they are “analyzing biological evidence” found at Guthrie’s home, and had potentially retrieved new DNA left by the suspect. However, their search for DNA evidence has so far proven unfruitful.
DNA
A miles-wide dragnet around Guthrie’s home in Tucson recovered 17 discarded gloves — 16 of which turned out to have been abandoned by law enforcement themselves during the manhunt.
One glove found on a roadside two miles from Guthrie’s home visibly resembled the black gloves worn by the man in the Nest doorbell video, cops said.
However, it was sent to Florida-based DNA Labs International — instead of FBI labs in Quantico, Virginia — causing more contention between cops and feds.
“Nanos has insisted instead on using a private lab in Florida,” an anonymous law enforcement source told Fox News Digital.
The lab — which cost around $200,000 — was chosen because of its specialization in forensic genealogy, Pima County officials said.
Colleen Fitzpatrick, who has worked with the Florida lab, explained it would generate a multitude of leads.
“If the guy’s from Morocco [for example], you’re not going to find out who he is, but you’ll know he’s from Morocco, which is an investigative lead,” Fitzpatrick told The Post.
However, it was announced this week DNA on the glove did not fit with that of an unknown male DNA found at Guthrie’s home. Nor did the DNA from either return a hit in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), the FBI’s national DNA database of convicted offenders and arrestees.
Sheriffs also said this week all of Guthrie’s family have been cleared of any involvement in her kidnap.
Ransom notes
Multiple notes have been delivered to news outlets. At least two notes have asked for a ransom to be paid in two different cryptocurrencies to different crypto wallets.
However, the notes provided no proof of life and their deadlines have come and gone, making many doubt their authenticity.
Experts told The Post that asking for crypto is an amateur move, as it’s easily traceable.
Email addresses of the senders are also unlikely to yield much.
William Odom, a digital forensics expert formerly with the FBI, said smart criminals don’t use Gmail or Yahoo, for example, but communicate by “burner email” accounts.
“They’re impossible to trace back because there’s no way to tell where the source is coming from,” Odom told The Post. “It would look like different email addresses coming through every time.”
Those free, disposable email addresses are usually hosted on servers outside the US —in places like Montenegro and Germany, Odom said.
Video evidence
It took 10 days to recover crucial footage from Guthrie’s Google Nest doorbell camera of a masked, armed man — about 5’9″ to 5’10” tall, average build, wearing gloves and an Ozark Trail backpack — tampering with the device in the early morning of her disappearance.
The backpack is sold exclusively at Walmart, which is now cooperating with authorities to try to pinpoint the sale.
It took a team of digital forensics investigators from the FBI, alongside cooperation from Google, to get the doorbell footage, as Guthrie did not subscribe to a storage service. If the assailant hadn’t crushed the camera, the video would have been written over.
That’s exactly what happened with the other Nest cameras in her home. Experts told The Post more video could be coming, but investigators are sifting through mountains of information.
“It’s the equivalent of a digital landfill at that point, so they’ve got to dig through that. It’s not necessarily that they will find where all of this [data] is. It’s going to take time to figure it out,” Odom said.
Pacemaker
The Pima Sheriff Department’s aviation unit launch was delayed due to unstaffed crew, leaving vast airspace unsearched in the critical early hours of the investigation.
Now, cops are deploying a new tech: flying over the Tucson desert with a Bluetooth signal detector, called a “signal sniffer,” in an attempt to locate Guthrie’s pacemaker, which stopped communicating with her iPhone at 2:28 a.m. on Feb 1.
Using a helicopter to fly in a low, slow, grid pattern, the sheriff is deploying advanced FBI technology to try and pick up a ping from Guthrie’s heart device. But the chopper will have to get very close to catch a signal—within 800 feet, the device’s inventor told CBS News, adding it will still work if she is deceased.
However, the whole project attracted President Trump’s ire: “I didn’t like when they talked about going after the pacemaker before they even started going after it,” he told reporters Thursday.
Arrests
No arrest has been made in the case so far. Felon Luke Daley, 37, and his 77-year-old mom were detained by police for questioning on Feb. 13 after FBI agents and a SWAT team swarmed their home, two miles from the crime scene, but he was later cleared and let go.
Another man, Carlos Palazuelos, was also briefly detained on Feb. 11. He was stopped by police as he drove toward the US border. However, the delivery driver was also let go after a short time.
Mexico
The motive for the apparent kidnapping isn’t even clear. Officials have ruled out a burglary gone wrong, and Nanos has said Guthrie could have been snatched as “revenge for something” but little else has been made public.
Social media users have speculated the kidnapping may be linked to Mexico’s notoriously ruthless drug cartels — citing a profit motive and Tucson’s proximity to the border.
Unnamed sources told TMZ the FBI had been in contact with Mexican officials about the case, but Border Patrol Officer and expert on Mexican security, Leon Boyer, told The Post he doesn’t think that if she had been taken there, cartels would be involved.
“[Cartels] are going to target people in Mexico. They’re not targeting people in the US. Why would they bring attention to themselves?” he questioned, adding cartel kidnapping schemes usually relate to local extortion plots and business interests.
Suspect pool
Authorities don’t give away certain key information if it could harm their investigation, but an Arizona gun store owner says the FBI recently came to him with a list of approximately 18 to 24 individuals with photos, asking if he had sold them a weapon. He said he agreed to help out of concern for Guthrie’s family.
However, Sheriff Nanos has disputed reports of the suspect pool being narrowed.
“We haven’t narrowed it down to anything other than we have pieces of evidence,” he said on Tuesday.
A reward for information leading to Guthrie’s return now stands at $202,000.