Crime Stories with Nancy Grace
Savannah Guthrie Mom Missing: Does Barking Dog Signal Abuction?
28 Mar 2026
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 this as Pima County helicopters, joined by Maricopa County helicopters, take to the air. headed toward the Phoenix, Arizona FBI headquarters. Tonight, a careful analysis of the lights that appear over the shoulder of the so-called porch guy.
Are they actually coming from the vacant house? now that we know where it is, or the construction site, now that we know where that is. And an expert joins us on the mysterious tracks outside Nancy Guthrie's home. Good evening. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories.
Chapter 2: What happened to Nancy Guthrie and when did the search begin?
I want to thank you for being with us.
directly from our home to Nancy's house, it would be rough brush, especially in the dark. She was just a pleasant, wonderful neighbor. And we're so saddened, of course, heartbroken about what's happened.
The catty-corner neighbor of Nancy Guthrie revealing a lot. Mr. LeMay tells us that the vacant home and the construction site We're very near Nancy Guthrie's home. We learned a lot. This is Helicopters Take to the Air from Pima County and Maricopa. Straight out to Dave Mack, Crime Stories investigative reporter. First, the helicopters. What happened and why?
Nancy, the Pima County Sheriff's Department has been using helicopters in the Guthrie investigation since early on. And yesterday they took off early and flew in a corridor between Tucson and the border with Mexico and flew back. But then. landed at the FBI office headquarters.
Now, as the day went on, Pima County was joined by Maricopa County Sheriff's Department helicopters, also joining in the travels between Tucson and the border and back to Phoenix again. So we've got evidence that has been transported by helicopters in this investigation.
and in other investigations and wonder if that's the same thing taking place now with Pima County going down toward the border and back to Phoenix.
Well, guys, this is for our friends at Fox News. This video you're seeing, you know, just got Morgan. I would discount it as being probative, but the fact that a Pima County helicopter went toward the Mexican border and was joined by a Maricopa County helicopter, but for the fact that the helicopters then went to the FBI headquarters, to me, that's just too much, too much of a coincidence.
So that says to me this was Nancy Guthrie-related.
Yeah, I would say that it was. Do you recall when we saw those individuals show up at the house? They were dressed in suits. We thought that maybe they were part of the prosecutorial team, perhaps feds. They're trying to assess the whole area in its totality. All right.
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Chapter 3: What insights did the neighbor provide regarding the barking dogs?
Plus, they're not going to go in a triangle. If it was just transferring personnel, they would go from Pima to Phoenix. They would not go a drive-by at the Mexican border. What? Brian, you've extracted a lot of people that were missing. Why did they need an aerial view? This is not like catching an Uber to carry somebody to FBI headquarters. They're looking for something. What?
Yeah, I disagree. I think that this is a movement of people, you know, whether those personnel are, you know, Pima County Sheriff's Office or a potential suspect in this case, that that flight pattern looked to me like they were moving people.
OK, I reject that. But maybe you're right before I totally throw out the baby with the bathwater. Dave Mack, tell me again what we know about the helicopter movements last night.
Well,
What we know, Nancy, is that it started with Pima County, okay? At first, it was just Pima County flying their helicopter from Tucson to the border, then coming back, landing near the Phoenix office for the FBI. Then later in the day, Maricopa County then joined the Pima County Sheriff's Department helicopter. So you had Pima County going alone,
then returning and going back with Maricopa County, two helicopters flying to the border from the Tucson area, and then, again, incorporating the FBI landing into that as well in Phoenix. Again, Pima alone, then Maricopa County together.
Todd Shipley joining us, digital cybercrime expert, and you can find him at darkintel.info. Former Detective Sergeant Reno, 25 years in L.A., author of Surviving Cyber Attack. Todd, what were they looking for? Why did they need helicopter vantages? Why did they need to look at why did they need an aerial view?
Well, they could have easily gotten new information that we didn't know about before, which leads to them looking for a path that the kidnappers could have taken. They're trying to verify locations. There may have been some evidence that they found near the border that they wanted to hurriedly get back to the FBI to go through. So there's a couple of different things that could have happened.
I mean, the transportation of personnel is definitely one of them, but There's a lot of other things that could have happened there.
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Chapter 4: How did the Pima and Maricopa County helicopters get involved?
I think that they still want to try to find signals from the pacemaker. If it's still active, they could be up doing that again. Again, they would be doing something more patterned. But if they had specific information about a location, they may have wanted to get down there in the air right away to try to see if they could get the signal.
Shipley, I agree with you on everything you said except one thing. I don't think it has anything to do with Nancy Guthrie's pacemaker because they started... Correct me if I'm wrong, Dave Mack. They started the pacemaker search with a signal sniffer, which is blue fly technology. They quickly transferred to drones with the sniffer attached because...
The Bluetooth signal from a pacemaker does not extend as high as many people think. So they had to get lower down to the ground. Therefore, I don't think they would make the same mistake of attaching signal sniffers to a helicopter and fly to Mexico. I see where you're going. I agree with everything you said before that. Is that Dave Mack jumping in? Go ahead, Dave.
And by the way, that's from our friends at Blue Flight YouTube.
I was just trying to point out that Bluetooth technology, it only reaches about 20 feet. And so once you're past that, you're not going to do a lot of good. And that's the case where they were able to use the drones because you can bring the drones in a lot lower than you can bring in helicopters. And they're less disruptive as well.
So I'm with you on that one with regard to what the helicopters were being used for yesterday.
Well, I'm so glad that there's an echo chamber, but the Bluetooth signal, as we learned at the time, goes much further than 20 feet. that was the Bluetooth signal. You're referring to correctly, Dave Mack, the Bluetooth signal from her phone and her Wi-Fi. Once she left the home, it cut that connection, that video from our friends at Fox News.
But Brian Fitzgibbons, didn't we learn upon a careful review that Bluetooth signals can go as far as a football field?
Yeah, so there'd been some work done on these antennas to increase the range of that signal sniffer up to 150 to 300 feet in some test cases that I saw online. So I believe that some of that technology had been deployed earlier on in this case to broaden the scope of that search.
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Chapter 5: What role does digital forensics play in missing person cases?
I want to use your brain on another issue. I want to talk about those tracks, those tracks. We got additional photos of the tracks outside Nancy Guthrie's home. Let's see the additional footage. There you go. There's one of them. Let's keep looking. And I want you to notice that's from Chilanoi on X. We've got several more. Keep looking. That's the one we showed you last night.
Now, very concerning how this scene was treated. How was the scene handled? When were these photos taken? When were the tracks left behind? Extremely significant. Had the pizza delivery guy come up there? Had the gravel been disturbed? What about it, Joe Scott Morgan? This is your belly wick.
Yeah, looking at these, Nancy, actually now if you take a look at that larger kind of panoramic view of the tracks, you can actually appreciate that it's got what we refer to as kind of a curved or curvilinear pattern. And this is a bilinear track. So you've got two tracks that are running parallel to one another. And it's hard to judge from this angle. It's hard to judge depth.
But what I can tell you, though, looking at this, and there's been a lot of speculation about this, is what we refer to in automotive terms when we're doing automotive work as far as investigations. It's got a wheelbase, very specific wheelbase. What can we deduce from that? Well, we've heard any number of things. I've heard people say a wagon. Don't think it's a wagon.
I think probably two-wheel. That could be a trash bin. I've heard a lot of chatter about that. And, of course, what we mentioned yesterday, a wheelchair. Of course, if you think about a wheelchair, you've got two separate tires, or you've actually got four, but they're on both sides. And so as you turn this thing, the radius of this thing is going to readjust.
This looks like you're talking about two wheels at this point in time. So what could generate that? If they do the wheelbase assessment on this, and I hope that they did this at the time because these tracks have probably been eradicated now. If they did a measurement on this, that could put them in the neighborhood of what it was, what conveyance actually generated.
And that could point back to something specifically. Did they show up with these items in tow? That is a perpetrator perhaps? Or is this something that was left behind as a result of dragging trash cans out on the road? But here's the problem, and this has been one of the problems all the way along, Nancy, is that if they didn't do it in the beginning,
There's a problem because you can't go back and undo what you haven't done. It just doesn't make sense. And the fact that he has stated, he being the sheriff, that these are of no consequence. I beg to differ, sir. They are significant consequences because every bit of information that you can glean from the scene is important to the investigation.
Fitz, the various conveyances that may have been used, for instance, I get the significance of a wheelchair. I get that. Did they bring it? Did she already have a wheelchair? But I don't get the significance of, for instance, a dolly. What would that be for? Now, one reason this could be critical is because it does seem as if a conveyance was used.
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Chapter 6: How can aerial views and technology aid in investigations?
Another issue that has reared its head is a previous armed robbery in the same area. Let's see the video footage of that. Interesting, this seems to have appeared in broad daylight. Very, very different from the MO in the current case. Dave Mack, explain to me what this prior robbery is.
Nancy, this group of robbers show up at the door, but they do it in a very tactical way. First, a woman goes to the door claiming to have a package from Amazon. The homeowners do not answer the door as they're not expecting anything from Amazon. So the person goes away. A couple of weeks later, OK, two weeks go by. This is all in September.
Two weeks go by and the same woman in the same outfit shows up again. But this time she's got a van that can be seen on the ring doorbell camera out by the road. And a guy is in it. Now she goes to the door again, claiming to have an Amazon. This time the occupants of the home are not there. So there's nobody in this house. The second time this woman shows up at the door. 45 minutes later, Nancy.
This woman comes back. This time she's got men with her in the van. The men go to the side of the house and break in. They go into the home. They get a safe. They get other jewelry and valuables inside the home. And again, remember, this home is not currently occupied. The owners are on vacation. The daughter is away from the house. The robbers, they ended up pepper spraying the little dog.
pepper spraying the dog. They then escape. And it took about two weeks for police to track down the woman who was pretending to be the Amazon delivery person. But the other three have not been arrested. And this happened in the Catalina Foothills area, not far, 10 minutes from Nancy Guthrie's house.
There are startling similarities, but overall, I would say a lot of dissimilarities in that case. I find it critical to you, Fitzgibbons, that the other three perps were not apprehended. And there are theories that as many as five perps are responsible in the Nancy Guthrie kidnap. But Fitzgibbons, this would mean that there are three perps still floating around from this last armed robbery.
There are a lot of dissimilarities as well, Brian. What do you make of it?
Yeah, certainly there's definitely enough here to at least tell us that what's possible and what's possible to avoid detection and apprehension by law enforcement, right? That there are three of these subjects still walking amongst the residents of Tucson right now.
Someone needs to do the right thing. We are in agony. We are in agony. It is unbearable. And to think of what she went through. I wake up every night in the middle of the night, every night. And in the darkness, I imagine her terror. And it is unthinkable, but those thoughts demand to be thought. And I will not hide my face. That she needs to come home now.
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