What If Nancy Guthrie Was Never the Intended Target?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Drake.

**Tony Brueski** (0:09)
Here we are, we're going to solve the case as we always do every Friday.
I'm the Nancy Guthrie investigation. Nancy Guthrie is 84 years old. She has no known cryptocurrency holding. She lives in the Catalina Foothills, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Tucson, and a $2 billion cybersecurity company has classified her alleged abduction as a wrench attack by proxy, a crime built around crypto extortion. So here's a question that nobody's been asking out loud yet, and I want to ask it today. What if whoever showed up at Nancy Guthrie's door that night was at the wrong house?
And it's a wrench attack, and this is a mope. And once they were there, once an 84-year-old woman had seen them, they had a problem they couldn't walk away from. If that's what's happened, this isn't a case that the public thinks it is, and the real target may still be living in the neighborhood. Again, it's coming from the ethers of my brain. It's not coming from any verifiable information. But since we're hitting dead ends everywhere, I wanted to throw it out there. And joining us to have this conversation, Jennifer Coffindaffer, retired FBI Special Agent, and Robin Drake, retired FBI Special Agent, for the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program. So there you go. That's my layperson idea that came to my mind when I was like, what if it just was the wrong house? It would kind of lean in to the wrench attack and a mope in somebody that's not super experienced in this. And those to the wrong house. Is it a crazy idea, Jen?

**Jennifer Coffindaffer** (1:47)
You know, look, everything has to be on the table at this point with what we have. But I don't think that that's probably very likely. And this is why. Part of the reason is, I really believe this was well planned out, even in terms of the fact that they did those ransom demands the day after. I don't think it was just something like, whoa, I think now I'll do a ransom demand. I think it was well thought out. They knew the two Tucson stations they were going to send that to, which happened very quickly, 12 hours later, TMZ. I think this was just too well planned.
Savannah and her husband are worth over 45 million. It's the perfect target.

**Tony Brueski** (2:28)
I agree. Let me ask you this about the ransom, because if we're connecting the ransom, and I've been always so probably too cautious on connecting the dots of the ransom to the actual crime itself. I immediately been thinking this is all opportunists trying to get money. How do we know this? And maybe Robin could run a stat on this.
When someone is kidnapped, how quickly, especially like in a higher profile, how quickly do those ransom demands start coming in? And how quickly do the fake ransom demands start coming in? Is this a relatively short period of time for the initial ransom demands to be an opportunist? Is it just too quick for someone to go, I'm going to take advantage of that?

**Jennifer Coffindaffer** (3:16)
Well, I can't wait to see what Robin comes up with, but I think they're going to be within three days.
That's my kind of recollection without stats in front of me. Three days that a ransom demand and obviously some are sooner. And it also depends on who took them. Are we talking about…

**Robin Drake** (3:37)
24 hours.

**Tony Brueski** (3:40)
For legitimate ones?

**Robin Drake** (3:42)
60 to 75% within 24 hours, 48 hours, 85 to 90%. So everything within 48 hours for legit ones.

**Tony Brueski** (3:50)
And if 12 hours is where they hit at, put some weight on them.

**Robin Drake** (3:54)
Yeah. So it's within the legit.
I'll do a reverse now.

**Jennifer Coffindaffer** (4:01)
It's within the legit. And I would say too that the majority of those demands are gang bangers, drug dealers, people demand right away.
Because that's the majority of ransom demands that come in. That's just...

**Robin Drake** (4:20)
Within 24 hours for fake ones as well.

**Tony Brueski** (4:25)
Interesting. Robin, what's your take on this idea, this theory that I have before we go to the next question? So I'm curious to get your thoughts on me throwing that one out into the table.

**Robin Drake** (4:37)
So I like the idea that we're throwing another idea out there definitely. The... Only because every single theory we have makes sense at the get-go and then it falls off because it doesn't quite fit. What we've seen from the background of Nancy, Savannah, I know we can make it fit with a lot of things, but still if you're looking at averages, it just keeps falling off. Now, if they completely got it wrong because...