Guthrie, Murdaugh, Clancy: The Same Agencies Investigate Themselves

**Tony Brueski** (0:01)
This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Dre.

**Tony Brueski** (0:09)
Six months now, since Nancy Guthrie was taken from her Tucson home, and the biggest break in the public's understanding of this case did not come from a press conference, it came from a mistake. Maybe this shouldn't be a surprise. The Sheriff's Office put out a media release with the ransom Bitcoin address attached, a dress printed right on it, and my guest traced every transaction on that wallet. Jennifer Coffindaffer is with us, retired FBI special agent, joining me to discuss what she found. So the Pima County Sheriff's Office sent out its own media release with the alleged kidnapper's Bitcoin wallet address at the bottom. They pulled it back, but it was already screen-shotted out there on the Internets. That address is the only reason the public knows what the money actually did. I want to talk about what was in it, but I also want to talk about how.
How does the office that's running this case leak that? I mean, nobody's checking work here anymore, are they? There's no proofers, there's no editors, there's no, hey, let's just get a second set of eyes on this before we post it. It just seems to be like, click, done. Oops.
Is that really pretty much what we're talking about?

**Jennifer Coffindaffer** (1:26)
It kind of seems like, right? It's just a tweet or something like, yeah, I've thrown this out, here's a couple of thoughts here.
It's really unfortunate in a sense that that happened. I mean, for all of us that followed this case, it was for me at least a huge epiphany. I was able to really understand the transactions, know the links, which were really important. And so it really shed a lot of light on the case, on the case for sure.

**Tony Brueski** (2:00)
It's almost like it has the importance of the local school district tweeting out the lunch menu of that week. You know, I mean, I don't know. I mean, it's just baffling. The amount of thought that goes into just like, when we put something out, when you tweet something out, I mean, you proof it a little bit, you make like, OK, does this make sense? You know, it's not just, oh, shoot, I shouldn't have put that out there, but they did. And it is out there now. So it is what it is.
Your tray showed the FBI moved 0.0022 Bitcoin, roughly $300 at the time, into that wallet on February 10th. And it's still sitting there untouched today, from what I can understand. No ransom was ever paid, not $4 million, not a dime. So when Savannah Guthrie has come out and said, we did our part, what part is she exactly talking about?

**Jennifer Coffindaffer** (2:54)
Well, I tell you what, Tony, with that small amount of Bitcoin that went in, and I'm not sure exactly why they chose that amount, but I don't think it was tickling the wire, obviously. The whole idea of tickling the wire means you tickle and you get a reaction. That amount of money would do nothing to get a reaction, but it did make it obvious that you could do deposits into that account. It assured that, but this is the big thing it did.
It allowed a message to be attached to that deposit, and that message had a secret link that once it was opened, I believe by the bad guys, it blew up, gone, disintegrated into the ether. So in other words, that opened up a line of communication between the Guthrie's and the abductor's, and we can't see what happened from that point on. So it's possible that Savannah did make the deposit like she alludes to in her message.

**Tony Brueski** (3:56)
So there is a link, is that link, because I was getting somewhat educated in this as I was learning about it. I didn't know you could send messages and things like that through the wallets.
This is very valuable to us and we will pay. That's the message that was there. Is that the area? Is that where there was a link included with that message? Help me understand.

**Jennifer Coffindaffer** (4:19)
Yes. This is very valuable to us and we will pay. And then there's a link that they could press that took them into a whole other communication system.
But the minute it's opened, it blows up. In other words, no one else can open that link ever again. Now, that can be put on a timer, like six months, two weeks, whatever. But I don't think the Bureau would have put that on a timer. They would want to keep communication open. So if that is correct, then the bad guys would have had to have opened that link or TMZ or the media outlets, which I don't think they would be that stupid to do that. And so I think that at least they opened it.