- 2 days ago
Why Nancy Guthrie's Son-in-Law May Be the "PRIME SUSPECT" in Her Abduction, with Ashleigh Banfield
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00:00Ashley Banfield, who hosts her own podcast called Drop Dead Serious, is breaking exclusives on this case like nobody's business.
00:08And yesterday, she had quite a doozy.
00:12I'm going to bring her on.
00:14She's going to explain what she learned.
00:16But she reported exclusively that they actually do have a potential suspect in the case.
00:22And the identity is rather shocking.
00:26I'm going to bring her in now.
00:27Ashley Banfield, thank you so much for joining us.
00:30So tell us what your, you say, very reliable law enforcement source told you about a possible suspect in the case.
00:37Sure.
00:37So after almost four decades in this business, I have collected a few friends at the FBI and in local law enforcement all over the country.
00:44And the source that I have is impeccable.
00:47And he said that not only were the cameras smashed, plural, plural cameras smashed, so that the suspect likely knew about the locations of them,
00:56but that the car belonging to the sister of Savannah Guthrie, Annie Guthrie, was towed and pounded and taken into evidence.
01:06And that, and this is the wording.
01:10It's very important.
01:11The wording is very important.
01:12He said they now believe that son-in-law may be the prime suspect.
01:18Those are the words.
01:18Son-in-law may be the prime suspect at this point.
01:22And I'm very mindful.
01:24I covered the Elizabeth Smart case.
01:25I was out in Salt Lake City for five weeks while Elizabeth Smart had vanished.
01:29And I recall specifically a lot of language saying Ed Smart is likely the prime suspect here.
01:36And so you've got to be really mindful that, as you know, Megan, you're a lawyer, police investigations start in the middle of the circle,
01:44and they go out in concentric circles in terms of investigating family members, right?
01:49You start in the middle of the family.
01:51You investigate out from there.
01:52Then you go to contractors and friends and workers and everybody else who's had some contact.
01:56And then there's the randoms.
01:57So it is not surprising that someone in the family is being looked at.
02:00That language to me was pretty strident, though.
02:03It's surprising to me because there was forced entry.
02:08And from the beginning, I thought, well, they must have ruled out the family pretty quickly if this is a case of forced entry because the family wouldn't need to do that.
02:17The family would presumably have a key.
02:19And if they didn't have a key and they wanted to get in, they'd just knock on the door and Nancy Guthrie would open it.
02:25So this is super interesting.
02:27And I had a long conversation with my former colleague, Brian Enten, about this because Brian identified blood drops at the front door, right?
02:34And he's shown the video.
02:35It's pretty impressive.
02:37However, my source says the back door is wide open.
02:41Back door left wide open.
02:43That's what my source said.
02:44I had a, Megan, half hour conversation two days ago.
02:50I watched it.
02:50Sheriff.
02:51Sheriff, yeah.
02:51And I specifically said, so are you telling me when you said that she did not walk out of that house on her own?
02:58I said, are you telling me that she might have been carried out of that house?
03:02And I used the word over the threshold of the front door.
03:05And he said, I didn't say front door.
03:07But he didn't say he didn't say no carried.
03:09But when he said, I didn't say no to the front door, and then, you know, the next day I'm getting information about the back door, it's pretty safe to say, well, that makes perfect sense.
03:19However, why is there blood at the front door?
03:22And Brian Enten said he couldn't find the trail continuing past to the walkway that would take you to the driveway.
03:27Now, it is, you know, gravel, a little harder maybe to see any blood, but not impossible.
03:32So I'm trying to go through that.
03:34But couldn't they have gotten her in the car, Ashley?
03:36I mean, like, I'm picturing a scenario where couldn't all those facts be consistent with they came in through the back door, then they got her, then they brought her out the front door after injuring her.
03:45Could.
03:45Then the blood trail continued just to the driveway where they then put her in a car.
03:51That's the problem.
03:52It ended well prior to the driveway?
03:54Yeah.
03:54The blood trail is just at the front door on those tiles.
03:57Then the gravel starts right away, and it's a walkway to the driveway.
04:00And it's not close.
04:01I mean, it's a bit of a ways.
04:03Nancy Guthrie can't walk 50 feet, 50 yards, pardon me.
04:06Nancy Guthrie can't walk 50 yards on her own, so she would need assistance.
04:10And if you're bleeding and you've been in, you know, some sort of a melee, that would be even less.
04:15So I was going through the scenarios in my mind.
04:17Okay.
04:19Maybe the front door camera is smashed and the doorbell is rung to get Mrs. Guthrie downstairs, because that would be difficult.
04:29In the middle of the night, it would get her down those stairs.
04:32So the confrontation might happen at the front door, right there, at the tiles.
04:37There's a struggle.
04:38And then, because the car is not parked right out front where all that could be visible, potentially.
04:42Maybe the car is around the back, and that's why they go out the back door.
04:47Is that a possibility?
04:49I have no idea.
04:50Could a car be parked in the back?
04:50I'm surmising.
04:51I don't know, because I've been trying to see with drone video whether the car could get out into a darker spot or maybe out of camera view because the smashing has to happen.
04:59But I was told that the cameras were smashed and plural.
05:03So if there's a camera in the back, camera in the front, smashed.
05:06And then, of course, Brian Enten noticed it and asked the sheriff, did you take them?
05:10Or do you think the guy or the suspect took them?
05:13And the sheriff had a funny answer.
05:15He said, yes, I noticed that.
05:16He did.
05:16We're looking into it.
05:18Yes.
05:18So what he saw, what Brian Enten saw was, like, the remnants of a Nest camera, not even the Nest camera, right?
05:26Like, it was clear to him that they had been removed, which is not the same thing as destroyed.
05:30The sheriff is saying that they were destroyed right before we got to them.
05:35So he made it sound like they were destroyed by the perpetrator here, by the bad guy.
05:39So the sheriff didn't say on the news conference that the cameras were destroyed.
05:43Brian Enten shot that video and asked, the cameras are missing.
05:49Did law enforcement take them or did the perpetrator take them?
05:53And the response from the sheriff was, yes, we noticed that, too.
05:56We're looking into it.
05:58And so, look, I can tell you, you know this.
06:01Pima County, there's not a lot of crime there.
06:03I'm trying to think of the last major thing that happened.
06:06I think it was Gabby Giffords being shot there, what, 15 years ago, 20 years ago?
06:10And so I think he's working in real time, you know, and trying to protect his investigation,
06:16keep the integrity and answer real questions he wasn't expecting, maybe, and couching, you know, his verbiage as best he can.
06:23But he didn't say, oh, we don't know that we took the cameras or no, there never was a camera there.
06:29He said, yes, we noticed that, too.
06:30And we're investigating that.
06:31We've got that.
06:32It's your reporting that that has added that they were destroyed.
06:36But and multiple.
06:37Um, I don't know the location of the other one.
06:40My guessing, and it's just me, would be backdoor.
06:43But that's where you put the next camera.
06:46My source also said, and this is musings, not evidence or information.
06:51Who takes an 84-year-old woman who can't walk well on her own?
06:56It is a burden.
06:57It is a troublesome endeavor.
07:01It makes you more susceptible to being caught.
07:04You now have a problem on your hands.
07:06What are you going to do with this person without anybody seeing?
07:10And it stands to reason.
07:11It's very unusual for some random burglar to take the person if something happens.
07:17It's not a random burglar.
07:18No, I agree.
07:19So it's either somebody who's kidnapping her and wants money for a ransom or is kidnapping her as a revenge because they dislike her or maybe Savannah or another family member.
07:29Or it could have been a murder.
07:32Personal musings again.
07:33It could have been a murder.
07:34That they were then removing the body from the crime scene.
07:37That's even worse because, again, now it's on your hands to get rid of the body and the evidence is now in your car and all the rest.
07:42It's not that it hasn't happened.
07:43It has.
07:44It's more likely that a random person would leave that body in the house and get a clean getaway with no DNA evidence in the car if that's possible.
07:51But the other random musings was that something like this.
07:58And, again, these are the random musings.
08:00This is not evidence.
08:01This kind of a crime typically requires a benefit.
08:06And, like you mentioned, the ransom notes, musings are baloney.
08:12That, you know, you don't email a ransom note to TMZ or a local station.
08:16It's not normal.
08:18It's not usual.
08:18And that time frame as well.
08:20Ransom notes usually come pretty quickly.
08:23This was 72 hours later.
08:25So, and look, I can't wait for that investigation to yield some idiot that thought that they were going to get some Bitcoin out of a tragic situation.
08:33It makes me, they're just, they're just festering parasites when they do this.
08:36I mean, it does, we still don't know, though, whether Savannah Guthrie has received a ransom demand or law enforcement has because they've been very cagey about the ransom question.
08:47The first day he was asked, which was Monday, Sheriff Nanos said, no, I haven't heard anything like that.
08:56And he was kind of forthcoming.
08:57And then, as you know, yesterday, Tuesday, he was much more tight-lipped.
09:01He wasn't as forthcoming with answers.
09:03And the question of whether a ransom note had been introduced seemed more ambiguous on day two than it did on day one.
09:09You know, it's funny.
09:10I'm looking back at my notes from my conversation.
09:13I said, has there been a, and this was the Monday, as you said, has there been any demand for ransom?
09:18And he said, we don't know.
09:20He said to me, we don't know.
09:21Those are the words.
09:22However, this came out yesterday.
09:24You probably saw it.
09:25This was the QR code and the statement from Chris Nanos, the sheriff, saying, we are aware of reports circulating about possible ransom notes, parentheses, S, right?
09:34Note, parentheses, S, regarding the investigation into Nancy Guthrie.
09:38We're taking all tips and leads very seriously.
09:39Anything that comes in goes directly to our detectives who are coordinating with the FBI.
09:43We encourage anybody to use this QR code.
09:44So I think, and also our friend Harvey Levin at TMZ broke it yesterday.
09:50They got the email yesterday.
09:52So I don't think Harvey had it on Monday.
09:53And I would highly doubt that the local TV station had it Monday, didn't report it till Tuesday.
09:58All right.
09:59But that's sort of a red herring, we think, on the side.
10:02But the news about Savannah's brother-in-law is huge.
10:09Look, I have to be honest.
10:10A lot of people initially thought, should we be looking at the family?
10:14Because just that's 90% of the time that, yeah, exactly.
10:19That's who it is.
10:19Usually crime is not committed by some random person coming into a home and kidnapping an 84-year-old.
10:25Usually it's a tragedy that somebody may make a terrible-
10:26Knows where both cameras are.
10:28Yeah, exactly.
10:29Knows where both cameras are, front and back, and possibly manages to get her to open the door or somehow maybe has a relationship with her.
10:38But, of course, the thought of Savannah's not on the table.
10:41She was in New York.
10:42She had to fly out there after this all happened.
10:45The sister, I mean, like, it just seems beyond possibility that the sister had something to do with it.
10:51But now we're talking about the sister's husband.
10:52Yeah, you go.
10:53Spidey senses, Megan, with all your experience in being a lawyer and being in the media.
10:59Do you think that they would seize the vehicle of Savannah Guthrie's sister and impound it, tow it, not ask for it, come in, we want to take a look, tow it, impound it?
11:12The words that were used are, it is in evidence if they didn't have a little stronger feeling about this.
11:18Because that sends a massive message early in the investigation if you are taking the daughter of the victim's car.
11:25And a famous daughter's sister.
11:29That was another thing that I just, I'm just putting a lot of pieces together.
11:32No, you're right.
11:33And the other thing the audience should know, they probably already do know, is you're not some whack reporter.
11:40Like, this is your beat.
11:41You've been covering crime for 20 years.
11:43You're very solid.
11:45Your reporting standards.
11:4738.
11:47But who's counting?
11:4838 years this year.
11:49Reporting for many, many years.
11:50But, like, your reporting standards are very high.
11:52So you understand very well the gravity of reporting something like this.
11:57This is not just some slapdash operation.
11:59And you trust this source that told you right now he's the prime.
12:03High level.
12:04Yeah.
12:04High level.
12:05So, no, you're right.
12:06They wouldn't.
12:06When was it that they seized the car?
12:09Why was it they seized the car?
12:11When?
12:11When?
12:12I don't know the answer to that.
12:13But I do know that the FBI, according to Brian Enten, was over at Annie Guthrie's house yesterday for several hours.
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