Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Savannah Guthrie's mother, Nancy Guthrie, missing day 40. Tonight, an elite squad at Quantico, the FBI, tried to create a shoe cast. This, as we learn, the FBI has returned to a particular restaurant to re-interrogate restaurant employees. And what about the possibility of retinal scanning of the porch guy?
And this is APB, All Points Bulletin, on a male. trying to have a full sleeve removed, a full sleeve tattoo removed. I'm Nancy Grace, this is Crime Stories.
Chapter 2: What updates are there on Nancy Guthrie's disappearance?
I wanna thank you for being with us. Stalkers cannot help but write about the relationship with the victim and the victim's families. This perpetrator had gleaned a lot about Nancy Guthrie's life.
the perp likely has a criminal history maybe the stalker did glean a lot but what evidence did the perp i'm not convinced he's a stalker of nancy guthrie i think that he is a con trying to make a quick dollar or a million what clues did he unwittingly leave behind we have analyzed him from the top of his head to the soles of his shoes enter professor forensics jacksonville state university
Joseph Scott Morgan, death investigator, author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon and star of a hit podcast series, Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. I was concerned about any possibility of a shoe print because the walkway to Nancy Guthrie's home, if we could see that, I believe is gravel. But let's start with A and end at Z. What is a shoe cast and what is electromagnetic lifting?
OK, there's any number of ways to raise a shoe print, if you will. Traditionally, what we think of, and we still do this, Nancy, if you think about a foot going into a soft, malleable surface like mud, soft dirt, even sand, you leave behind an impression, OK? and we can cast that. We can put dental stone in there, let it dry, pull it out, and you have this image of the shoe print.
Here, we have an example, for instance, of an electrostatic lift. This is completely different. This is where we put down a charged sheet of mylar. And it actually goes over an area where there is a suspected print that's generally left in soil or dust. It's not really, you're not able to see it with the unaided eye very well.
But what it does is that there is a magnetic charge and that lifts that print off of that surface and you can pull it up and you can actually examine it. Here we have an example of an electrostatic lift being conducted just yesterday at Jacksonville State. And for my money in this particular case, Nancy, I'm leaning more into the electrostatic lift here.
because you know you don't have a lot of soft mud around there or soft dirt that you're going through but even if you look at that porch nancy look at that porch those are tiles out there now there would be a myriad of prints out there but what if they went in there and actually did electrostatic lifts there and also if they can determine
where the point of entry is in this house, go to the interior of the house and do those lifts there. If there's an area around her bed where you've got kind of a smooth non-porous or less than porous surface, like the ceramic tile there, which a lot of houses in the Southwest have, you do that around her bed.
You see if there's any kind of weird, weird prints that are there, like a man's sneaker imprint that's left. And that is possible. You can do that. I just hope it's not too late. I hope that they protected that scene initially. But I got to tell you, hope's dimming as far as I'm concerned. Just got Morgan. Don't you remember at the get go?
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Chapter 3: How is the FBI utilizing shoe casts in the investigation?
Look at that. Standing on that mat. Nancy, we saw images of that mat adjacent to the blood. They did not collect that mat the first time out. You know, I sit there and I think of it. Does your mind work? You know, that's crime scene 101. Why was not the mat collected at that point in time? Because you have any number of things that could be transferred onto that surface.
I hope somebody went back and collected it. But once you've taken the guard, the guardrails down at that point in time, it's open. Anybody can walk up and take a photo. Anybody can be argued in court that you can plant stuff at that point in time. It is paramount that you protect that scene.
And just by virtue of the fact that you did not value that mat any more than they obviously didn't, then you're at risk here from losing valuable evidence. And anybody can have access to it. Any lawyer worth their salt can say, yeah, stuff was planted. They secured it. They took the tape down. Lord only knows who got in there. What is an electrostatic lift system?
Okay, so what you're doing with this sheet of mylar is that you're actually placing a charge on that sheet, okay? And as you place that charge on there, what happens is it attracts the underlying dust particles, lifts it onto that sheet, and boom, it's permanently there, okay? And this is the beauty of it. For a moment, you have frozen in time
that image of that shoe impression that's there now here's the trick can you take that image that you've frozen on that sheet okay and take it back and compare it well can you profile that footprint like can someone that is a footprint expert say okay we're looking for somebody that pronates supinates can we categorize the shoe print can we say okay this manufacturer
created this soul okay and you can say whatever manufacturer you know insert company there all right and if you can begin and again as you know nancy with investigations it's a big investigative funnel you want to try to narrow narrow narrow narrow at all times we want to try to exclude as much stuff as we more stuff we want to try to exclude as much as we possibly can to narrow our field
Can they take images, for instance, of those shoes that we see right here captured at the scene in those still shots? Can they profile those shoes and say, okay, this is the manufacturer of those shoes? Automatically, you've narrowed your field. And can you say, if you do the electrostatic lift, can you say, is it a possibility?
Is it a possibility that that particular brand of shoe could leave this kind of impression? Well, now you have really kind of fine-tuned your target area at this point in time. The trick now is to find out who belongs to those shoes, who was wearing those shoes at that point.
I know it works in a lab, but given the fact that the general public could go right up onto her porch and how many people from the sheriff's office were in and out of the home on the interior floor, I don't know that we can get this type of evidence. There's still a chance. Straight out to Dave Mack joining us, Crime Stories investigative reporter.
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Chapter 4: What techniques are used for lifting shoe prints at crime scenes?
First off, I don't understand how they source that information particularly, but it's certainly because Savannah said it in one of her her pleas. She said my mom was taken out of her bed. Well, you have to take that and utilize that as, and I'm sure that they already have, because if she's saying that, that's rooted somewhere factually.
So you're going to look at any kind of physical evidence that might be associated with an outside party that's there. And it could be anything from dusty prints that are left behind by shoes. It could be any kind of trace evidence, any kind of fiber evidence where they're putting hands on somebody to move them around.
We also see that bedspread, if she still has the same one, and obviously an MVAC would have to be used on that. It is a porous material to get potential DNA. Straight after Brian Fitzgibbon is joining us. He is Director of Operations, USPA, Nationwide Security, leading a team of investigators today.
that specialize in missing people and go around the world finding them rescuing them particularly he has an expertise in extractions from mexico he is a former marine and iraqi war vet brian fitzgibbons i can learn a lot from that video and so could anybody including the perp Yeah, certainly. And we see that the perp would have access to this readily online.
You know, is he looking to see are there camera locations inside of the house? Are there avenues of entry or egress? in that room. And all of this should be caveated with the fact that there was an incredible amount of tension drawn to Mrs. Guthrie with Savannah's visit and the visit to that restaurant that the FBI is now conducting interviews again with restaurant staff.
At some point, he reaches up to dismantle or up the door can. I see black and gray work. I can see some subtle shading on the edges. And when he does that, much is revealed. Joining us now, a special guest, Jeff Garnett. Co-founder, Inkless Tattoo Removal Centers. InklessTattooRemoval.com. Jeff, I know that you, like me, have studied carefully the porch guy's wrist tattoo.
Got a question for you. Yes. Jeff, have you ever been asked by a perpetrator to remove a tattoo? No. Yes, actually, we have. We didn't know at the time that it was a perpetrator. But in 2021, there was a shooting outside of a famous hotel in Manhattan, and it was all caught on surveillance camera.
The perpetrator, his picture was shown on the news, and everyone kept commenting on the fact that he had these full tattoo sleeves. Later the following week, a detective came in and questioned us because they had arrested him and they found our aftercare instructions in his car. So what had happened is the shooting had happened, I think, on a Thursday.
It was all over the news the following morning. And that Friday, he came into one of our locations trying to get his sleeves removed. So we didn't know at the time, but they were able to show that that was his attempt to cover up the identifying marks. So the video caught him with two full sleeves? Yes. Wow. Okay. And in his car, they found your aftercare instructions. Okay.
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Chapter 5: Why is the electrostatic lift method significant in this case?
Yes, it could, but there would definitely be a large scar in the place. Once you have the tattoo completely removed, are there any traces left behind? You have an example on your neck, correct? Yes, I used to have a tattoo right here, and there's nothing. There's no scar tissue. There's no shadow or skin discoloration. You know, it depends.
Certain ink colors are easier to remove than others, but it looks to me like this is a black ink tattoo, and black ink responds really well to the laser. Black absorbs the full spectrum of light from the laser, so usually black ink can be removed quickly.
complete it's a black and gray which of course is just variations on black so you're absolutely correct i'm just curious what was the tattoo you had removed it was a bat it was a silly bat hanging upside down behind my back as in the bat that flies out of a cave and jumps in your hair and tries to bite you correct okay why did you have a bat on your neck
Um, I tend to, a lot of my tattoos are kind of timestamps of different parts of my life. And I had moved temporarily to Austin, Texas, and there is a bridge in Austin that has about a million bats that live underneath it. And at dusk, they all come flying out. So that was kind of my Austin, Texas tattoo. Okay. I'm not a shrink. I can't analyze that.
I'll just take it for what it is, for the probative value. But why do other people have tattoos removed typically? There's a wide range of purposes. Sometimes people get a tattoo and don't like the way it came out, so they almost immediately want to get rid of it. There's the stereotypical boyfriend and girlfriend, get each other's names and then break up.
The most common one is people just outgrow it. You get something in your teens or 20s, and then in your 30s and 40s, your tastes change and you're a different person. But there also are some really more psychological reasons as well. You have really sad things like victims of human trafficking that have property of tattoos. And that's some of the things that we do pro bono for people.
You have radiation tattoos for people, cancer survivors from when they had their procedures. So there really is a wide range. But the majority of the clients we see got something when they were younger, they've outgrown it and their tastes have changed and they're just in person. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Jeff Garnett is joining us.
He is the co-founder of Inkless Tattoo Removal Centers with multiple branches. Be on the lookout, please, Jeff Garnett, Full Sleeve Removal. That said, this leads me to another process, that process being AI. used to create a ransom note.
But first, before I get into that with Christian Hammond from Northwestern University, Dave Mack, what can you tell me about the last 48 hours where the FBI descends upon a Mexican restaurant to re-interrogate employees? A full two days of re-interrogation.
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Chapter 6: What new evidence has emerged from the restaurant interviews?
This would be quite an event for that restaurant and the people there. And I think it's important to mention, it's unlikely that it was happenstance that an abductor happened to be in the restaurant that day and saw Mrs. Guthrie. The most likely scenario is that somebody who was there, be it staff or a guest,
actually communicated about, hey, I saw Savannah Guthrie with her mother at this restaurant. Another thing that law enforcement is undoubtedly doing is looking at the checks from that day. Who else was in the restaurant? Who paid with a credit card? What information does the restaurant have about the other guests?
And then they're going to go out that that one additional layer and start asking everybody who was there who they communicated with about this. Another possibility, Brian Fitzgibbons, is surveillance video, if it can be pulled down from the cloud. what was happening in the parking lot. If there, let's just go with me on this.
We know we have that video from a neighbor of cars zipping by around the time that Nancy Guthrie's pacemaker stopped connecting to the Bluetooth in her home. You know, two, three o'clock in the morning, there are people heading back and forth toward her home, toward that street. This is from our friends at Fox News, by the way. We too have heard the reports about a ransom letter in the media.
As a family, we are doing everything that we can. We are ready to talk. Joining me now, Christian Hammond, artificial intelligence expert. He is a professor of computer science at Northwestern University. Again, not shabby, Christian. Director of the Center for Advancing Safety of Machine Intelligence. Christian, thank you for being with us.
What I'm getting at is I'm narrowing down who I'm looking for. I'm looking for a guy, what do we say, Jackie, between 5'9 and 6 feet? 5'9, 5'10. 5'9, 5'10. At least one sleeve, one full sleeve, likely two full sleeves. I'm looking for someone that has that Ozark backpack. I'm looking for that receipt.
I'm looking for someone from the Tucson area because they have a soft spot for two Tucson TV networks that maybe they grew up watching. I'm looking for someone that has a knowledge of Nancy Guthrie and her home. maybe, maybe connected in some tenuous way, not necessarily an employee of that Mexican restaurant. I believe we're looking for someone that may have a criminal record.
And now I'm looking for someone that may have conducted that Google search we talked about early on that looked for Nancy Guthrie's home address and Savannah Guthrie's salary address. Okay, that's a lot of data. Christian Hammond, think about the ransom note. Could the perp, if the ransom note is in fact connected, have used AI, artificial intelligence, to disguise their identity?
Well, certainly not. I mean, the power of the language models is that you can have them say something that you want to say, but in a tone and in a cadence of words that is not yours. And so you can certainly disguise yourself that way.
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