How Was a Career Criminal Free to Allegedly Kidnap Someone Near Nancy Guthrie’s Home?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This is Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski. Here now, Tony Brueski.

**Tony Brueski** (0:07)
There is a woman named Coral Michelle Smith who was wanted, as of this recording, by the Pima County Sheriff's Department, for kidnapping and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The alleged incident happened at the intersection of River Road and La Coya Boulevard in Tucson, Arizona on May 29th. That intersection sits roughly 6.8 miles from the home where 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie was taken in the early morning hours of February 1st. Does it seem like I'm not really, truly, honestly, being excited about this? Good, because I'm not.
That was excitement.
Because this is a case where it's easy to get excited about information when you don't have any.
And you may be seeing some buzz about this story. We're going to explain this story. We're going to go through this story. Because when you hear, Oh my God, somebody who's kidnapped people before is wanted. And, and this is 6.8 miles from where Nancy Guthrie lives.
Whoa.
That's actually the whole reason you're hearing about Coral Michelle Smith, is because it's 6.8 miles from where Nancy Guthrie lives, which is not, I mean, truly, I mean, it's not super far, but it also encompasses a major metropolitan area with hundreds of thousands of people, and within the hundreds of thousands of people, there are criminals.
You're hearing about it, not because it's a connection. Authorities have said explicitly that there is no connection between Smith and what happened to Nancy Guthrie. The FBI has drawn no link. The Sheriff's Department has drawn no link. I know there's not a lot of weight on the Sheriff's Department. Every outlet that is reported on the story has included that disclaimer because it is the truth. There is no link. But the headline that puts the word kidnapping in the words, Nancy Guthrie's Home, in the same sentence, doesn't need a connection to land like a freight train. It just needs proximity. And right now, in a community that's been living without answers for months, proximity is enough. Doesn't mean it leads anywhere. But proximity is enough to get attention here in this case. So I wanted to do a story on this, not because, Oh my God, this is going to lead somewhere to find Nancy Guthrie. But no, because, Oh my God, let's stop the freight train of misinformation as quickly as we can, because I hate misinformation. I really it's a pet peeve of mine. I that's why I like to inform you on the cases at a deeper level so you can better understand them and better react and make better decisions with your own brain because you have the tools to do so, because you have the backstory, because you get how the machine works.
It may not always equal the most clicks for our channel, but it certainly informs you better. And that's ultimately the goal here.
That and bringing justice and truth to power. So let's be responsible of what this story is. Now let me explain it all to you so you get it. So you don't find yourself going down a rabbit hole for three hours going, oh my God, when there's really not a lot to go, oh my God, about. Okay? So let's talk about what the story actually is, what the evidence actually shows and why it matters, even though it has nothing to do with Nancy, because you may come across someone who's like, but what about this, what about that? But here's why. Here's everything the public knows about what happened on May 29th at River and Lekloa. I'm probably saying that street name wrong. Here's what happened. Almost nothing. The Pima County Sheriff's Department issued a Be On The Lookout alert for Coral Michelle Smith. They named the charges, kidnapping and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. They gave the location and a date, and then according to every outlet that pressed for more Fox News Digital, KOLD, News 13, every wire service that picked it up, the department declined to release additional details about the incident. No victim identification or identified. No circumstances described. No narrative of what actually happened at the intersection. Just to name two charges and a Bolo flyer with a physical description and a list of tattoos. That's the entire public record of the May 29th incident as of right now. What isn't a mystery is who Coral Michelle Smith is.
Her criminal history in Fema County stretches back more than 15 years and it tells you everything you need to know about the kind of offender she allegedly is, even if the sheriff won't tell you what happened on May 29th. According to KOLD, News 13's records check, Smith has been in prison four separate times in 2013, 14, 2020 and 2023, all for different cases. In 2011, she was convicted of robbery and sentenced to probation. That probation was revoked in 2014, a disorderly conduct conviction. In 2019, she faced kidnapping and drug charges in a case where court records listed the individual involved as under 15 years old. The kidnapping charge was dismissed through a plea deal. She was convicted of residential robbery instead and sentenced to prison. And in 2021, a criminal trespass conviction, probation. It was revoked. In 2022, she was convicted of attempted vehicle theft and a third degree burglary charge was dismissed. Probation again, revoked again. In 2023, she pled guilty to aggravated assault with physical injury, went back to prison. She's used multiple aliases over the years, including Coral Albright, Coral Albright Smith. And I'm not making this up under the C Smith. That is a record of someone cycling through the criminal justice system for an opportunistic, close-range, interpersonal offenses and probably a personality disorder or eight, in my opinion. Robbery, trespass, vehicle theft, assault, every crime in that history is chaotic, impulsive and connected to people or situations she was already near. This is not the profile of someone who conducts pre-dawn surveillance on a home and an affluent residential neighborhood arrives with a holstered handgun, a ski mask, gloves and a specific model of backpack purchased from a Walmart and removes an 84-year-old woman from her house in what the evidence suggests was a planned operation. Those are two completely different categories of criminal behavior and the physical evidence makes the gap even wider. The FBI's forensic analysis of the doorbell camera footage from Nancy Guthrie's home describes the port suspect as male, approximately 5'9 to 5'10 with an average build. He was wearing a black 25-liter Ozark Trail Hiker Pack, backpack, a ski mask, gloves and a zip-up jacket. During the footage, which the suspect reached up to cover the camera with brush, he'd grab from the yard because he wasn't prepared for the camera. He didn't know it was there and he improvised. What appears to be a tattoo became visible on his right wrist. That detail has been flagged repeatedly by analysts as a potential key identifier. Coral Michelle Smith, what does she look like? Does that meet her description? Well, she's described as 5'6, 136 pounds, is four and she's shorter than the person in Nancy's porch. She has blonde hair and blue eyes. She has several tattoos, a smiley face and a heart on her right ankle, a rose with flames on her right foot and the phrase love life family on her left leg. But she has no tattoo on her wrist. Fox News digital reporter Michael Ruiz flagged that specifically. Fox News, legal contributor Josh Ritter, who has been following the Guthrie case closely, noted the same discrepancy from the wanted person flyer. The person on Nancy Guthrie's porch appears to have a wrist tattoo, Coral Michelle Smith does not. She is four inches too short. And even the analysis and analysts have floated the possibility that Guthrie's, the Guthrie porch suspect could be female have acknowledged that Smith is notably shorter than the figure on the porch. So, it ain't her.