Nancy Guthrie: The Sheriff Says To SUE YouTube Commenters!

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

**Tony Brueski** (0:06)
Dominic Evans is 48 years old. He's an elementary school teacher, a father. He plays drums in a band with Nancy Guthrie's son-in-law, Thomas Socioni. And in mid-February, Stranger started showing up on his street. They'd seen his name in YouTube videos and comment threads claiming he was the masked figure on Nancy's doorbell camera. They weren't curious. They weren't asking questions. They were convinced, fully, publicly convinced, that this teacher had taken an 84-year-old woman from her home. Evans even sat in his bedroom with his wife and kids while it happened. He told the New York Times, I feel like someone's taken my name. I don't know. Monetary, clickbait to be relevant, entertainment. But there are innocent people that get hurt. He's already spoken to investigators, 40 minutes. They asked him about the band, about his relationship with Cione, about where he was the night Nancy disappeared, and they never called him back.
Checked out the theory that Evans.
The theory that Evans is being attached to has no legs, has no ground to walk on, is based entirely on nothing. The theory they put Evans in that bedroom didn't start with him. It started with a podcast. It's a couple days into the case, making a claim on the air that would set the entire investigation's public narrative on fire. And the sheriff, the same sheriff who gets criticized for almost everything in this case, said something about Evans that tells you everything you need to know about what the internet did to this man. Here's how it started. On February 3rd, three days after Nancy disappeared, there was a podcaster with a large following that said a source, a law enforcement source, told her that Tomasso Cione was the prime suspect in the case. It was reported that Annie Guthrie's car had been towed and that there was some connection to Annie Guthrie's car and Nancy Guthrie's son-in-law. On the air. And that claim detonated like a bomb in a case. It was already saturated with public attention.
Within hours, the Internet had built an elaborate theory. Tomasso was the last person to see Nancy alive. He dropped her off at 9.48 that evening. He had opportunity. Motive was assumed. Money, resentment, inheritance. He looked at her wrong or she looked at him wrong. Didn't like her slacks. I don't know. I mean, the theories have been insane and endless. The specifics didn't matter because the narrative was already moving faster than the facts. And his bandmate became the next target because someone online decided he physically resembled the figure in the doorbell camera. They were in a band together after all. And you know bands, the music of the devil, rock and roll. For the internet, that was enough to build a theory of co-conspiracy around a man who teaches children for a living. Here's what actually happened. On February 16th, less than three weeks into the investigation, Sheriff Nanos posted publicly on X, the Guthrie family, to include all siblings and spouses, has been cleared as possible suspects in this case. His statement went further. The family has been nothing but co-operative and gracious and are victims in this case to suggest otherwise is not only wrong, it is cruel. It's not a hatch. That's not, well, we're still looking at everything, you know. That was definitive public clearance and it wasn't based on a single alibi check or a handshake. The family fully co-operated, interviews, devices, access to their phones and records, DNA, the FBI processed all of it. The result was definitive enough that Nanos, a sheriff who was being cautious and vague about nearly everything else in this case, was willing to stake his credibility or what there was of it, on an absolute public statement less than three weeks in. He cleared the entire family, all siblings, all spouses, period. And for anyone who's like, well, they still don't have anybody. So why are they all cleared? You clear the closest people first. The first people that are going to be cleared in a case like this, are the people closest because they're typically the most likely. Which is why early on you may have someone saying, this person might be our prime suspect. I don't think that's the right word to use in a situation like this early on, because anybody close to the person who disappeared is going to be persons of interest. Maybe that would be that. But the other word, prime suspect got into the mix. Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe that was what was, I'm going to guess it probably is what was reiterated to that reporter from the police department. Seeing the department and how loosey goosey they are with their words and their phrases would not surprise me one bit if the source did say that to the reporter and the reporter reported on what they were finding out from law enforcement. That does not strike me as impossible. But who's going to be in trouble for that? Who's going to go down for that? The source or the reporter? And that's the scary thing with sources. You have to really believe them. And you can really believe them and still report incorrect information. It's a nightmare when that sort of thing happens.