Every major investigation has a moment.

The experienced detective looks at the evidence, looks at their notes,

and then thinks to himself 'This case is not what everyone thinks it is.'

Today.

We're bringing in someone who had that moment with the Nancy Guthrie case.

Morgan Wright, former state trooper, former detective technical advisor

to America's Most Wanted and one of the most innovative investigative

minds in law enforcement today.

When Morgan looked at the Guthrie case, he didn't just

rehabilitate the existing narrative.

He demolished it, and what he found will change the way you think about this case.

This

is Heroes Behind the Badge.

When you studied the Nancy Guthrie disappearance, and I'll call it

disappearance 'cause I'm not sure what it is, but it is a disappearance.

Okay.

Did you have that moment of truth?

And what triggered that?

So to kind of.

Frame this up correctly about the way I approached it.

Uh, look, I'm a huge fan of Elon Musk one 'cause he is really, really rich,

which means he's really, really smart.

You know?

Yeah.

When you build all that stuff.

But I was listening to one particular episode, this is years ago, and he was

talking about how we built batteries.

And the way he built batteries.

He said, H how you know, the way you did it cheaper says,

what are batteries composed of?

Nickel, cadmium, lithium ion, you know, he broke it down.

He said, I can go buy those on the market at spot price.

But it was the process of rebuilding it from the ground up.

So I got to thinking, you know, what we're missing really in law enforcement.

'cause I, you know, I used to, I was a state trooper, I was a detective.

I did stuff in the justice and intel space.

But you know what we're missing, there's a lot of good things out there, but.

It's like when a new technology comes along, like DNA, we have to figure it out.

Uh, biometrics, we have to figure it out.

Drones, we have to figure it out.

So I said, but something that really hasn't been refreshed in a long

time is investigative methodology.

So I started applying what I called first principles.

So the way I looked at the Guthrie case is the way I would look at you and I

were just talking beforehand, Dennis.

It's like, if you want it, you can either rehabilitate a house or you can.

Uh, remodel a house, rehabilitating a house.

You go in, you paint the walls, okay.

It looks good, right?

And that's what happens with narratives.

You just, you take a narrative and it, you know, Hey, let's rehabilitate

the narrative, make it fit, fit our view of the case, right?

What I instead do is it, it is like if you watch those things on HD TV or

when they come in and they remodel a house, but it's demo day, they tear out

the walls, they tear out everything.

You tear out everything.

Yeah.

Down to the structure.

You fix all the structural problems and then you rebuild from the ground up.

So that's what I do on cases.

So with Guthrie.

I think what separated me from the other folks is I, I don't,

I don't go in for narratives.

I don't go in for speculation.

I don't go in for theories.

Sure.

When I looked at the Guthrie say Case, I said

either it's a burglary that went wrong or it was never a burglary.

It can't be both.

And so what you do is you create your hypothesis for each

case and then you stress test.

It to the point of failure.

And the more that you start, look, because look, uh, I've

investigated enough burglaries.

You say if somebody's gonna burgle a house, um, what are the signals of,

what are the signals of a burglary?

What's the signals of theft?

Right?

Are they moving around things or is it a staged crime scene?

Is it a. Is it a abduction designed to look like a burglary?

Right?

And then you have factors that make it look like that.

So in the Guthrie case, here's what you would have to believe in the Guthrie

case where all the people say, well, it was a burglary that went wrong.

So if it was a burglary that went wrong, you have somebody whose mindset

is, I'm in here to take something.

They have an encounter with the victim.

And then in that short timeframe, which we know it's from two 12 when the one of

the sensors went off inside the house, one of the cameras to 2 28, when is the

last ping from her pacemaker to her phone?

Right.

In 16 minutes, somebody whose sole intention was to

burgle a house now become somebody who's going to, who's decided

abduction is less risky than fleeing.

And so they have to arrange transportation, they have

to arrange logistics.

You have to arrange control, so.

When you do an abduction, there's three things you have to look at.

You have to look at entry, was it forced or consensual?

Then you have to look at control.

What's your mechanism for control of the the target, and then what's

your method for egress exfiltration?

So when I looked at it, I said, I'm not saying it's one or the

other, but I'm saying, but if you stress test it and collapse it.

The whole thing about it was a burglary that gone wrong doesn't survive in a

lot of the stress tests because it's not, it's not the same indication

as opposed to a targeted abduction.

And you can tell by where the blood trail goes, uh, but it, to me,

it's that very short time window from where there was, we know that

there was motion inside the house.

Look burglars there, there, uh, and look, having investigated enough,

and in your audience, they know too.

It's about get in, get your stuff, get out, get off the x,

the longer you're in a house.

The higher the risk goes, right?

You want to get in, you want to get out.

But when you're doing a targeted abduction, if you've done your

reconnaissance, if you know like patterns of life, you're

more comfortable sitting around.

That's why when you look at the video of the, when they recovered the video,

the behavior of that person, that person was comfortable where they were at.

I mean, and they be at their, yeah, you look at their trade craft a lot.

See, here's the other thing.

Two people made a mistake on Dennis.

Everybody said, well, this is an amateur.

Now, I tell you, I was in Tucson.

I talked to, um, people that were on Tucson PD and the sheriff's

office and DPS, and I've talked to people on a TF and Marshalls.

That's called the, it's called the Mexican carry.

And second of all, people got it all wrong because they said it's a white holster.

Now, that's infrared.

People even didn't understand the technology of how infrared works,

so they got the colors all wrong.

But this, this guy had no, this guy was relaxed.

He was not in a hurry.

And you can tell that because 1 47 to 2 28, you know, 47 minutes, is that,

so I'd simply ask, is that typical behavior of a burglar, uh, who's

looking to steal something and get out?

Probably not.

Yeah,

probably.

No.

And you know, you know, I, I, I think it's pretty evident, especially if you

really think it out and if you have any law enforcement background, just like

you said, Morgan, you know, you're in and out, you just want to grab something.

You're a thief basically, right?

But all of a sudden, if you're a thief and you decide, uh oh, I ran into this woman.

Now I'm going to abduct her.

Well, where are you gonna put her?

You know, you haven't thought it through already.

You gotta go home and live somewhere where other people are around.

You haven't had any kind of pre-thought, uh, you know, plan.

So I, I, I agree with you a hundred percent on that.

But, So Morgan. So, okay, so we we're ruling out burglary.

It sounds like after you've gone through this whole process.

So where in, in your mind are we today?

What kind of crime was it?

Uh, are we ever gonna solve this crime?

I mean, couldn't Nancy Guthrie still be alive?

I mean, where, where is your head right now?

Um, so I told you I was gonna bring a couple props.

Before I answer that question, I have to thank Craig.

So I did some fundraising for you guys on the, uh, ride and run to remember.

So this is something I've kept with me always.

Oh, look at that.

And then I got this from you too, Craig.

Oh, yes.

Yeah.

Commemorative coin.

The whole very,

and I do that because right back here.

And you know what this is, this is one of my best friends.

I was there when his name was read out on the wall.

So, uh, everything you do, I just want you to know everything you do is

personal for me, and I'm, I'm honored to have for you to consider you a

friend and for you to have me on this.

So

that's

great.

Now that I've got my props out of the way, let me get to your question.

Thank

you.

So here's what I think.

I think, um, all of these folks are looking at it incorrectly.

Because they're, they're, they, once you get wedded to a narrative,

then the narrative becomes canonical, it becomes sacred.

You can't, you know, and so as an investigator, then you're less

likely to dispute the narrative because it goes against what

everybody else has put out there.

So, Craig, to your point where I think we are.

When I look through that model and I say, is it a burglary gone

wrong or was it never a burglary?

I find very few things to show that it's a burglary gone wrong and back.

What you were saying about, you know, like, burglars want to get

off the X. So I think it's, I think, um, at some point later we will

find this was more of a targeted abduction than everything, because

like you said, where's your car at?

So if you're gonna do an abduction, you have to arrange for a car, you

have to arrange for transportation.

We know there was a car.

How do we know that?

Because of the blood droplets stop at the end of the driveway.

And so there was a car there.

Um, now one of the, one of the cool things we did, a friend of mine, um, this

ties into everything about what I think happened, but a friend of mine, we, him

and I both testified before Congress back in 2013 on healthcare.gov safety

and security of big government systems.

He's, he's a NSA hacker, Marine bright guy.

But I was flying to Tucson actually for Fox News to go on scene for a while,

and we were going back and forth.

Uh, I actually over starlink, first time I flew on an aircraft with starlink,

it was like amazing, the speed.

Oh, okay.

But we got to, but we got to talking about,

you know what a Bluetooth is.

Bluetooth is nothing more than a transmitter.

Right?

A transmitter with a unique idea signal.

So we were going back and forth.

He started already while I was in the flight, he was writing code.

For how to detect this Bluetooth 'cause really.

But the FBI now had developed some rudimentary stuff, but Dave's stuff

actually improved what they had.

But they were doing it in a helicopter.

So the reason I say that, Craig, is I know everybody was out there saying,

Hey look, well she could still be alive.

She's this.

I was the one saying.

The part out loud that nobody wanted to say.

I said at some point, you gotta start treating this as a no body homicide.

Yeah.

You have to change your investigative mindset.

Are we looking for a clandestine grave site?

Which that's tough in those hills there.

You cannot dig in that area.

It's baked.

Are we looking for a, uh, open grave site, you know, a body dump?

Are we looking for a concealed grave site?

Maybe somewhere inside a building?

And I simply said, if people thought she was alive and that was their

operating theory, then why is the FBI up in a helicopter looking for

a ping from a Bluetooth device?

Hmm.

Because they understand too, is that you can't

take anything off the table.

You can't get wedded to a narrative.

So I kind of bring all of that to say this.

Craig is a, um, I looked at all the egress routes.

I did a whole analysis of how you get outta there.

That area is like a bowl of spaghetti.

If you turn a bolus, spaghetti upside down the roads, there is no rhyme or reason.

Right?

Um, so somebody had to have local knowledge, or at least

some kind of a navigation app.

Well, if you have a navigation app, chances are there may be a

signal that, that we could collect.

W if I were investigating the case, it's like I would treat

it as a no-body homicide.

That's the way I would investigate it, and I would look at what are the

possible egress routes out of there.

I know a lot of people said, Hey, they could have gone across the

border maybe, but to your point, I think we're making earlier.

She's 84 years.

So here's, here's my final kind of capstone point.

Uh, everybody says, well, we wanna hold out hope.

Well, I'm a realist, right?

Uh, it is like, if I'm investigating, hope is not a strategy.

Uh, hope is an outcome, but it's not a strategy.

So you have an 84-year-old woman who is confronted at two o'clock

in the morning who has a pacemaker.

There's obviously a violent confrontation because there's blood.

Whether she had was on Coumadin and was easy to, doesn't matter, you had some

kind of violence 'cause you had control.

The cha so the chances of a 30-year-old surviving for 14 days, they could do it.

They'd be pretty weak at that.

The chance of an 84 cardiac compromised woman who was, uh, attacked basically,

or confronted in the middle of the night in her own home by herself, um,

I would question whether or not she was able to survive the drive out of there.

Yeah, so that, that kind of answers the question.

This case is not what everyone thinks it is.

You've kind of flipped the script and saying, no, my narrative would

be a lot different than what the common narrative is, is out there.

And that's what good investigators do, right?

You flip the

script.

They do.

But you know what happens too, but even some investigators, they

fall victim to certain things.

In other words, it's like, um, Craig and I are investigating

a case and he's got a he.

He comes to me and he says, Hey, here's what I've got, and there's already a

narrative, and I accept his narrative.

And then I, then the district attorney accepts that narrative,

and you build upon that.

But what happens if it's wrong?

Right?

There's two things.

Either the premise of the case is wrong or we've got the wrong.

Premise to begin with.

And that's why I call 'em hypothesis.

Alright?

If you have a hypothesis and you're testing that you know something's gonna

fail, in fact you want it to fail, I want one of these two models to fail.

Either it's the model of a burglary gone wrong, or it was never a burglary.

Yeah.

I want one of those to fail so I can collapse this binary model down to,

uh, a, an investigative path forward.

So, um.

Yeah.

You know, and the other thing too is I think the problem with narratives,

again, it's like we get locked in on 'em and then well, uh, Craig,

I know you were in the DC region.

I was, if I said

white van,

yeah.

Mm-hmm.

White narrative right there.

You said it white.

Everybody's looking for a white van.

And I, I told the FBI all the data we needed to solve, you

already had, and guess what?

They did a. Malvo and Mohammed were, had their plates run 13 times

in 33 days by law enforcement.

Their tag was in the system four times Are

we're talking about the beltway snipers.

The

beltway sniper.

Right.

The beltway snipers killed 10 people in this area.

Yeah, we've done a podcast on that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I got the data behind it.

I did the presentation.

I went out to FBI and I said, look, you got all the data.

'cause I was doing stuff on serial killers about low level contacts and looking at.

N-C, what's called NCIC Offline.

So, but, but four times a dark colored or dark colored or burgundy

colored caprice was seen leaving the scene of one of those shootings.

And guess what?

It's the only vehicle in the United States whose plate was running the

National Capital Region and in Alabama.

And how do we tie those two together?

'cause ballistics tied the shootings in the National capital region to the

one in Alabama, right, Montgomery?

That's where people got it confused.

They thought they were talking about Montgomery.

Uh, county, Montgomery

County.

Yeah, right.

As opposed to Montgomery, Alabama.

Yeah.

So, wow.

That's, that's my point.

So when you get locked in, what was everybody looking for?

Every time a shooting happened, we were shutting it down,

looking for a white panel van.

Yeah.

So is there something, Morgan, in your, uh, in your experience,

in your, with your expertise.

Is there something hiding here in plain sight?

As in so, so many cases?

Because kind of what you're saying is, Hey, look over here.

Look over here, and we should be looking over here.

Is there something hiding in plain sight here?

Yeah, there probably is.

And one of the things I start working I did is um, I do a lot of work.

A friend of mine owns a company called Fog Data, and they do a lot

of work with what's called ad tech.

So you have two things, cell site location information, that's where the ping's

off the cell phone, but those require subpoenas to each individual carrier.

Then you have to aggregate it.

Ad tech is different.

That's based on the app on your phone.

It doesn't matter.

Your carrier doesn't matter what model you have because those apps now centralize

the collection of data and that data becomes is something that's sold.

You agree to it when you download your app.

So everything I'm talking about here is perfectly legal.

So I think that there are some mo patterns of movement and, and here's

the, here's the reason I say that.

I was telling somebody, if you think about what some of these gangs do, or

even even people who have at least.

Some modicum of, of tradecraft, they actually follow the same thing

the terrorist planning cycle does.

When you commit a terrorist act, you do things like broad target selection, um,

initial reconnaissance, final target selection, uh, rehearsals, uh, and

final, uh, then final, um, reconnaissance actions on the objective, escape and

exploitation, escape innovation, I mean.

That's human behavior.

So what I'm saying, Dennis, is we need to look at what human behavior does.

How would somebody leave that area?

Yes.

And what we need to do is focus on what are the

most likely areas they left.

Focus a signals analysis on all of those areas.

Because it is out, I think it's out there somewhere, but, you know,

criminals have gotten smarter.

The, the, the damage CSI did for, uh, collecting DNA and evidence cases.

Well, 'cause they told 'em just pour bleach on stuff or get rid of it.

Yeah, they showed them.

Yeah.

Yeah, but what's the expectation?

The expectation is you can run DNA and have it back in 44 minutes.

Why?

Because that's the amount of time a one hour show on TV gets

at 16 minutes of commercial.

So right, all DNA comes back in 40, solved in 44 minutes,

right?

Morgan?

One of, one of the things that interests me is that, um, you know, most of these

kind of cases are solved in, in the first.

Few days, uh, and if they go cold, it, it's much less likely that we're gonna

get a, a good outcome anytime soon.

Um, in the early days of this investigation, we, we saw, uh,

sheriff Chris Nanos, uh, Pima County Sheriff down there in Arizona.

He took, seemed to take the lead, his agency took the lead, then the.

BI came in.

Look back at the, those early days.

Were there mistakes made or do you think this crime was just done so well that,

uh, we may never have a, a good outcome?

Um.

So I don't wanna, I don't wanna disparage any agency.

Um, but, but I will say, let me put it to you this way.

Um, it's not unusual for an agency to maintain the lead on something

when there's not a federal nexus, if there's not a federal predicate.

Right?

But the FBI comes in and helps on a lot of things now.

Technically, if it's kidnapping, would the FBI have jurisdiction

to the extent that it violates the Hobbs Act or goes across state lines

and you're so close to the border.

But I think the appropriate relationship was the Sheriff's Office takes the lead.

I would've taken more advantage of the FBI early on, only for

the reason because Nancy Guthrie.

This was gonna be a national case.

Everybody knew it because of Savannah Guthrie.

This was gonna get the attention, right, that it obviously did.

And so what you wanna do is take advantage of the resources.

Look, a friend of mine, Michael Miller, um, uh, chief Police down

there in Texas, where they had the shooting at the synagogue.

They, HRT, he said he was so impressed.

HRT, I mean, FBI flew out HRT, these folks, they had a standoff,

but he's, but look, I, I've worked with the bureau enough too.

When they roll, they've got the toys.

I mean, they, they're somebody who brings some serious toys to the game, right?

And so I would've done that.

I think, um, just me personally, I would've done that earlier, but the

other strategy I would've taken.

Um, here's the other thing that happens, and it gets to the

narrative we were talking about.

When you don't hold any kind of a regular.

Touchpoint with the press you have to feed the beast and reporters will start.

I can't tell you how many times I was reached out to by local reporters just

looking for some new angle, right?

Because there wasn't, and, and I'm not knocking it.

That's his style.

He, he can certainly do that just for me, the way I would've done it, even

if he didn't have enough to report, I would've at least had somebody, a

public face out there, a PIO so that people come and talk to them and say,

Hey look, here's what we're doing.

Here's the update.

And as people, you reach a point to where the case peaks.

Where that's, and I could tell too who was out there by looking at the amount

of, uh, media that was there, just lining the road, I'd actually drove the house.

'cause I wanted to at least say I've been there.

I saw the scene, I saw, I talked to the deputy guarding the house.

I checked the area.

Well the other thing too, here's the other thing that got me.

Uh, you were talking about mistakes.

I think when they, the New York Post was following the FBI when they found

the glove on the side of the road.

Oh my God.

It's the glove and, and everybody's a well.

But lemme tell you, I was on, um, I think it was News Nation with Elizabeth Vargas.

Elizabeth and I were actually designed to be on the second generation of

America's Most Wanted together.

Uh, and COVID hit.

So that kind of went, but we were talking, but I, I said

something and she repeated it.

I said that glove means absolutely nothing until it's tied to the crime scene.

Otherwise, it's just a data point.

And what did we find out?

Has nothing to do with it.

Nothing.

They ran the DNA as a restaurant worker, and, but yet we exhausted so

much cognitive energy and so much.

Press and focus, but that's the role of a PIO to say, Hey look guys, tone it down.

This is nothing but a data point.

And, but I tell now, there is one constructive criticism I

would give in this whole thing.

If you're a first responder, if you're a searcher and you're out there,

for God's sakes, take everything out that you brought in with you.

Do not discard, discard gloves.

Cigarette butts, gum wrappers.

Quit doing that.

You know why?

'cause everybody thinks, oh, that could be potential evidence.

So

yeah,

that, that would be my only constructive criticism.

It's like camping.

When you go camping and you're in a national forest, you clean up

your campsite, you take, you pack everything out, including your trash.

So, um,

yeah.

But you know, structurally well, one more point here real quick.

Yeah.

Here's the biggest mistake, though.

We, we only know what we know.

A lot of people are making too many assumptions when you don't have.

Regular contact and they're trying to infer what law enforcement knows

and they're getting it all wrong.

We don't know what's inside the house.

We know that there's mixed DNA, but that's the other thing.

There's a whole big chunk of this missing.

It's like a DNA strand that they did on Jurassic Park, and they filled it

in and we saw what happened there.

You know, dinosaurs went wild.

So you gotta be careful about filling in that DNA strand.

Yeah.

Well when, um, uh, one of the criticisms early on was that they

opened up the crime scene, uh, too early and, uh, investigators.

Kept going back into the house, kept going, looking for more evidence in,

in the surrounding area, and, and perhaps, uh, some of the evidence

might have been lost because they opened up the crime scene too soon.

Reporters, uh, curious Onlookers started going to the house, looking at the blood

on the, on the porch and in the driveway.

What, what's your thought on that?

So here's, here's a bit of forensic trivia.

How many people know what Locard's Principle is?

Billy notes.

Billy.

Billy.

Raise your

hand.

There you go.

Trivia for 300.

For $200.

Locard was a, was actually a forensic scientist.

I think he was French, but Locard's exchange principle that says anytime you

come in contact with something, you leave something and you take something with you.

Oh, so the, this is why you control crime scenes.

And to your point, Craig, actually that's another constructive criticism.

It's like the military.

Once you, once you, you don't wanna fight for the same ground twice.

And if they develop a suspect, what you, what have you automatically

started building in reasonable doubt.

'cause you can say that evidence wasn't there.

That's not him that was introduced.

That's why you have to be so careful with touch.

DNAI shake hands with you, Craig.

I get what's called touch, DNA epithelial cell.

I go and I pull a door open.

I've just put your DNA on a door in a building you've never been in.

But yet now I've put you at the crime scene.

Yeah.

So people, people leap to that conclusion, right?

So, yeah, you're right.

I think I would've, here's the other thing.

As much money is gonna be spent on this case, and time and attention

simply stationing a deputy there and keeping the crime scene

locked down until you were sure.

Um, I, I, no, look, I understand budgets.

You gotta be careful about how you do stuff, but I also understand.

That if you don't keep that crime scene secure, the cost to come back in

and then do all these other things to account for it will far exceed the cost

of stationing a single deputy out front.

I work crime scenes to where we had to station somebody.

We had a gang related, um, murder.

Uh, he was actually a dope deal gone bad.

A guy got run over with his own car, left in the middle of a field.

We didn't find it till almost five 30 or six o'clock at night.

So we had to secure that area until daylight the next day.

'cause there was no way to go into that crime scene and

be effective at searching it.

So sometimes you just have to secure the scene and hold it.

But I go back to what I said earlier, Craig.

It is such a national case.

With national visibility, I would've gone the extra mile because guess what?

Every potential defense attorney, if they find a suspect, and I hope they

do, every defense attorney is gonna be, you know, the biggest mistake

they made in the OJ case when it came to DNA, when they were showing their

videos, and I remember this, and they were showing how they collected videos.

One of the, one of the demonstrations where they're showing actually, and

I remember seeing this, this lady blonde, I think a ponytail glasses.

She was showing how they got swabs off the concrete.

She bent down, she touched her fingers on the concrete just to balance

herself, and then took a swab and the defense attorneys pounced on that.

'cause they said, you just touched the ground with your gloves.

But those gloves are supposed to be sterile now.

What if, what other DNA have you introduced into this that

wasn't there to begin with?

Wow.

This is what's gonna happen when you don't control the scene.

Defense attorneys are gonna pick this apart and have a

field day, and guess what?

They get the luxury of being a Monday morning quarterback.

They can sit back and judge everything that you did.

But again, Craig, I, I agree with you.

Like I said, I, I know, you know, my heart's still, I'm still a cop.

I bleed blue, so I hate to say, but if I could offer constructive, uh,

improvements for people in the future, if you have a high profile case.

Lock the scene down early, don't let anybody in.

And there's nothing wrong with staying too long at a crime scene.

Right.

You know, if you, especially if you've got consent to search and

keeping that thing locked down.

So I just, I just wanna chime in now.

Go ahead, bill.

Because I, I, I, I think that ultimately we're all gonna be surprised in the end.

I think something is gonna surprise every one of us that

maybe we didn't think about.

You know, Bill's, right.

And in part two, Morgan Wright goes even deeper, not just on the Guthrie case,

but on the investigative technology that could solve cases like this one for good.

We're talking about a platform that found a six month fugitive in just 36 hours.

Artificial intelligence that gives one detective the output of 10.

And a way for you as a citizen to help solve cold cases

without ever leaving your home.

And if you wanna support the men and women of law enforcement,

visit CitizensBehindtheBadge.org.

This is Heroes Behind the Badge.