A veteran Tucson crime scene analyst said images released by the FBI Tuesday of an armed, masked person at Nancy Guthrie's door the morning she disappeared reinforce his theory that the crime did not start out as a kidnapping.
“He is dressed in a manner that will minimize if not prohibit deposition of trace evidence,” said Weaver Barkman, a crime analyst who spent 26 years as an investigator with the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. “This boy understands forensics. This goes toward planning a burglary, not a kidnapping.”
Several former FBI agents shared Barkman’s theory that the intruder who took Guthrie, the mother of NBC “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie, had not planned to kidnap the 84-year-old.
Gregory Vecchi, a retired FBI special agent/criminal investigator, said it might have started as a home invasion, robbery or burglary, and she woke up, and they panicked and took her.
He doesn’t think the abduction was done for profit reasons, unless something went wrong or they were just really bad at it.
“(If) in the middle of the night, I take you, and I’m doing it because I want money from your family, because your family has money, I’m not going to not communicate with you,” Vecchi told the Arizona Daily Star in an interview Tuesday. “I’m going to make sure that your family knows you’re alive and well, and that as long as you do what I tell you, you won’t get hurt.”
While alleged ransom notes were received by two local and one national media outlet, Nancy's son, Camron Guthrie, has said the family had no way to directly contact the ransom seekers. The FBI said late Monday it was not aware of any ongoing communication between the family and ransom seekers. Also, in two videos Nancy Guthrie's children posted last week, they begged the ransom seekers to provide proof they had their mother and that she was alive. There was no public indication they received such information.
Vecchi has said most ransom cases are private between the kidnapper and the victim’s family, and the kidnapper usually doesn't want publicity or law enforcement to be involved at all.
Barkman said the fact the person in the images was wearing a "substantial backpack" shows "that he came prepared to commit a nighttime burglary."
"Backpacks are usually used to carry transportable items from one point to another," he explained, allowing that the backpack could have contained restraints, gags and other items for a kidnapping, but he thinks it's unlikely the individual "would enter the residence wearing a cumbersome backpack and carrying a gun outside the front of his pants."
Barkman said he thinks the individual might have thought the home was unoccupied based on his actions.
"His approach was not stealthy or even cautious; it bordered on cavalier," Barkman said. "He seemed to be unconcerned with any active intruder alarms. He casually walked up to the front door."
The individual also did not appear startled by the camera, calmly attempting to compromise it, Barkman said. The individual also had a flashlight "in anticipation of dark areas around, as well as in, the house."
"He shined a flashlight on the dark front portico instantly revealing his presence," Barkman noted. "That flashlight beam could be seen from any window anywhere in the residence."
Another former FBI agent who spoke to the Star Tuesday, however, said nothing in the newly released footage and images of the potential abductor shows that it was a burglary and not an abduction or kidnapping.
“Clearly we don’t have all the information and we don’t know whether or not this was another criminal act that turned into a bad situation because the subject ran into Miss Guthrie, or whether or not it was straight up an abduction (or) kidnapping. I don’t think the film tells us that,” said Katherine Schweit, a former agent who once worked a similar case of the disappearance of a woman in her 80s in the middle of the night.
The black-and-white video and images the FBI released Tuesday were pulled from Nest camera video recovered from “residual data” uncovered by the agency’s private sector partners, according to a news release.
This combo from images provided by the FBI shows surveillance footage at the home of Nancy Guthrie the night she went missing in Tucson, Ariz.
The images show a person with a ski mask, covering hair and face, tucked into the neckline of a long-sleeved jacket. The crime experts the Star spoke to believe it was a man; traces of a moustache were visible under the mask in one of the images. The person is wearing puffy gloves tucked into the jacket sleeves, and long pants draped over the tops of shoes.
“All we see is a person coming to the door who clearly planned to commit a crime,” Schweit said. “Looking at the images of an individual coming up to the door in the middle of the night completely covered so no one can identify who he is, is a clear indication this was a planned event and likely a planned abduction of Miss Guthrie. Though it’s certainly possible that there could have been another type of criminal activity, such as breaking and entering, and that was planned and something went wrong.”
Schweit also mentioned the potential suspect’s backpack with the “tools of his criminal trade likely in it,” and said he clearly came intending to commit a crime. She said the portion of the video where the possible suspect “awkwardly appears to pull some plants from the garden to try to block the camera initially” shows a lack of sophistication in terms of planning for the crime.
“So this is not necessarily a career criminal and I would be looking for who might have familiarity with the house and the family and is committing this crime as a crime of opportunity — a planned crime of opportunity,” she said.
“Here’s why I’m saying I think that this looks like an abduction,” she said. “If this subject came to do a burglary in the home and ran across Miss Guthrie and it freaked him out, even if he drew his gun, why would he escalate the situation and turn it into (what could potentially be) capital murder instead of just fleeing the area? If we had found her deceased in the home or injured in the home, that might make sense. We didn’t find her there.”
Retired FBI agent Lee Fabrizio said the gloves look like the Neoprene gloves commonly worn by restaurant workers and people working in agriculture. He also noted that the person’s actions, including pulling vegetation from a plant at the entryway arch and walking up to the Nest camera at the doorway, showed it wasn’t planned.
“If I was planning to kidnap somebody I would make sure I wasn’t coming up on that camera at all,” said Fabrizio, who spent 27 years with the agency, including as lead investigator of Timothy McVeigh’s Kingman associates following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. “It seems to me it might be a burglary gone wrong.”
Vecchi said the possible suspect's firearm was in the right-handed draw position, which means the person is right-handed. Vecchi also concurred with Schweit that the person seemed to know the area and the house pretty well, since they went straight to the camera and tried to conceal themself.
“This is definitely targeted and planned for sure, you know. There seems to be a lot of pre-operational planning,” Vecchi said.
This image provided by the FBI shows surveillance images at the home of Nancy Guthrie the night she went missing in Tucson.
“It wasn’t just some guy that came in — he’s wearing masks, wearing (gloves), he’s got supplies. The timing of when he did it, he deliberately moved to the target location. He seems to have knowledge of the surveillance cameras, the placement of them,” he continued. “He wears gloves, so he’s somewhat aware of forensics, DNA, fingerprints, stuff like that. … There seems to be intense efforts to avoid identification.”
The FBI released the images 10 days into the investigation into Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance.
Family members reported her missing around noon on Feb. 1 after she failed to show up to church or virtual church services that morning. She had spent the previous evening having dinner at the home of her daughter and son-in-law, Annie Guthrie and Tommaso Cioni, who took his mother-in-law home.
A timeline from the FBI and Pima County Sheriff’s Department shows Nancy Guthrie arrived at her Catalina Foothills home at 9:48 p.m. and her garage door was shut two minutes later. At 1:47 a.m., the home's doorbell camera was disconnected. At 2:28 a.m., Guthrie's pacemaker disconnected from her cellphone. Her daily medications, wallet and cell phone were left behind at the house, near North Campbell Avenue and East Skyline Drive, investigators said.
This image provided by the FBI shows surveillance images at the home of Nancy Guthrie the night she went missing in Tucson.
KOLD, KGUN and TMZ later received alleged ransom letters. At least two set a pair of deadlines for payment — 5 p.m. Feb. 5 and 5 p.m. Monday, Feb. 9. KGUN reported the letter it received demanded $6 million by Monday.
“Kidnappings for ransom are very unusual in the United States and we don’t have a lot of other cases to compare it to,” said Schweit. “But if we look at the facts and circumstances of this case and look at it from the more broad perspective of an investigation, if somebody engaged in kidnapping Miss Guthrie, why is that individual not doing a better job of getting their money and getting her back to us? It doesn’t seem like this bad guy wants to effectively get his ransom and then return the victim to their family.”
Barkman said kidnappings for ransom are “extremely rare; their percentage is infinitesimal.”
“And most kidnappers or people that would do this, they want their money now,” he added. “They don’t want to (expletive) around.”
Barkman, who testifies as an expert witness on homicide cases throughout the state, said the images could help authorities identify the person.
“They will be able to identify the brand of that backpack. They will be able to get a good look at the gun. Possibly the holster,” he said. “They should have his height and weight.”
Barkman agreed that investigators also can conclude the person is right-handed, given the placement of the gun holstered at the waist.
“I’ve never seen anyone carry a gun like that,” he said. “That is highly unusual. No one carries a gun like that.”
