Nancy Guthrie's Sheriff Emailed A Reporter THIS

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

**Tony Brueski** (0:07)
He tapped on the camera first. Little taps.
The way a man checks to see if something is loose. It didn't come off. So he reached over to the potted plant sitting on her front porch, pulled the leaves off of it, and used them to cover the lens. Then he went inside. Masked, armed, gloved, a backpack on his shoulders, two o'clock in the morning on an 84-year-old woman's front step, calmly doing a little gardening. He wasn't rushed. He had time. And he knew he had time.
He was right about that because the two agencies that were supposed to find her have spent every day since blaming each other in public. The FBI director went on a podcast and accused the sheriff of locking him out. The sheriff in the middle of the search answered a reporter asking about his own record by telling him to enjoy his hit piece. Hit piece simply describing the employment history and lies of Nanos. Nancy Guthrie was 84 years old. She had a pacemaker. She needed medical attention every day. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said publicly that she could not walk 50 yards by herself. On the morning of February 1st, the app connected to her pacemaker stopped transmitting. That's the edge of the map. Everything past 228 is a question nobody has answered. We welcome your thoughts in the comment section on Substack and YouTube. The links are in the description. Her blood was on that front step, confirmed as hers. Her phone was still inside the house. Her essential belongings were still inside the house. The FBI released four black and white images from her doorbell camera on February 10th. They described the man on her porch as roughly 5'9 to 5'10. Medium build. He carried a distinctive gun holster and a 25-liter Ozark Trail backpack sold at Walmart. He may have been wearing a ring. That's the description. That's what they have.
The search set followed. Pulled in the FBI. Customs and Border Protection. Arizona State Investigators, Search and Rescue Teams. Dogs, drones and aircraft. Tens of thousands of tips came in. The Guthrie family offered a million dollars of their own money. And the total reward combined passed $1.2 million. There is no suspect. There is no arrest. There is no Nancy. The man on that porch was the most disciplined person involved in the case. And he still is.
There are three things here that nobody in Tucson wants to talk about. A note that arrived on the 6th of February, a glove that went for a trip, and a sentence. One of these men said on live television that he can't take back. Cases like this almost never die because the person who did was brilliant. They die because the people hunting him got distracted hunting each other.
It happens four ways. It happens the same four ways every time. There is the clock and the one only hours that really belong to you are the first 48 on that clock. Then there's the ego where somebody decides the case belongs to them and being right quietly gets replaced by being seen to be right. There's a silo where evidence goes to the wrong lab, the wrong desk, the wrong database and awaits. And then there's the story because when the people holding the facts go quiet, the vacuum fills with grifters. All four are on the record here. On the 1st of July, the FBI's Phoenix Office put out a public statement on the Guthrie investigation in it. The Bureau said local authorities remain the lead. 45 minutes later, the Pima County Sheriff's Department put out a statement of its own. It directed all questions about the ransom notes to the FBI. Same night, under an hour apart, the federal agency points at the locals and the locals pointed at the feds. NewsNation has reported that both agencies have at times sent questions to the other and denied being the lead. Retired FBI agent Steve Moore's read is that both may be positioning to avoid getting stuck with the blame.
That's two institutions playing hot potato with a missing 84-year-old woman. Catch! The day before those statements, Reuters reported that an FBI official said none of the ransom notes were believed to be genuine. A second law enforcement source confirmed it. 24 hours later, FBI Phoenix said publicly that while some notes were extortion attempts, others may still be legitimate and are being investigated as such. The Bureau contradicted the Bureau inside of a day.
Asked about it at a Justice Department briefing when they were. FBI Director Cash Patel declined to comment. Steve Moore spent 25 years inside the FBI. His assessment was that there's a significant disagreement within the investigation, right down to whether certain pieces of evidence are real. Attorney Mark Garagos went further and said he believes the story was planted by somebody inside the Bureau. In May Patel went on a podcast and criticized Nanos for sending DNA evidence to a private lab in Florida rather than the FBI lab at Quantico. He made sure the audience knew he had a fixed-wing aircraft on the ground, fueled and ready to fly that evidence out overnight. Nanos answered that the decisions were made on scene based on operational needs and that the Florida lab in Quantico had worked in partnership from the start. Two men, one podium fight, Nancy Guthrie is still missing.