Nancy Guthrie Q&A — Pacemaker Signal, DNA Dead Ends, and Why No One Can ID the Suspect

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1:02What they captured launched a genre. This is one of many sounds in Tennessee with a story to tell. To hear them in person, plan your trip at tnvacation.com. Tennessee sounds perfect. As a world-leading research institution, the University of Rochester is where curiosity and creativity connect to spark wonder in us all. From humanities to health care, business to education and music to engineering, we advance ideas across disciplines to move people forward. Together, we keep asking big questions and seeking bold solutions, fueling discoveries that make our lives and the future ever better. Find better at rochester.edu slash wonder. This is the Big Breakdown. A long look back at some of the biggest stories we're covering for you at the Hidden Killers Podcast and True Crime Today. This is Hidden Killers with Tony Brusky. Here now, Tony Brusky. All right, we are going to be doing something a little bit different today.

2:06You of course have been flooding us with questions about the Nancy Guthrie case and the Courier Richens case. And a lot of them, we should address on the air. We should go through them. We should have an open discussion about all of them. So that's what we're going to do. It's Q and A day today. We're going to start with the Nancy Guthrie case. Eventually, we'll move over to the Courier Richens case and talk about things from the defense perspective and the prosecution perspective. But we're going to start with Nancy. So feel free in the comments section wherever you are watching us right now, whether it be on YouTube or whatever, give us your comments, give us your questions about the cases. And we will do our best to try and answer them as we go through this today. We'll start to, like I said, with the Nancy Guthrie case, 84 year old woman gone, a suspect on camera that nobody can identify DNA, it does not match anyone over 50,000 tips and

3:08that a single one has led to an arrest as of right now. We are about to, we're approaching week five, basically. We're recording this on a Friday, as we enter into that Monday, that will be week five into this some more than a month and so let's get into it. Your questions, my thoughts on it, no gas, no filter here, let's jump on into it. As such a Marcus in Las Vegas, I have to ask a question, nobody wants to answer. Is Nancy Guthrie still alive at four weeks with no ransom demand, no credible sighting, no contact, what does your gut tell you? It's a good question. Good question. Yeah, it is a great question. I mean, this far in, let me ask you Todd and let's, let's, let's reframe it for a moment and go all the way back to the, the beginning of this. Do you think Nancy Guthrie left her house alive?

4:11You know, and I've said this before, I'm kind of new to the whole crime, true crime stuff. First coming on board when the coworker was rolling out. And so that was the first time I had a chance to kind of really deep dive into this kind of stuff. Early on, it was kind of tough to know because we were getting information and the first information we got days later kind of changed when TMZ was out there, and other reporters were out there reporting and now there's, we're finding blood and all that kind of stuff. So I think early on, the first couple of days, you're like, you know, this, this could be something. They've got her, you know, they're probably holding air. I'm not sure that the ransom letters had come out quite at that point, but then you started getting more evidence and you started to, you heard about the blood on the front porch or by the door and as time progressed, very quickly for me, I just started believing that she was no longer with us like it didn't take me more than maybe the first week to go, something is not adding up here.

5:13And the fact that the ransom notes were coming in, but they were going to media outlets and not the FBI and not the police and not the family for certain, everything started to stink to high heaven pretty early on for me. It feels like when there's no information, you fill in the gaps and that's what everybody wants to do. And there, there was information that was coming out in the case. It just wasn't truly, I think, connected to the case. But like right away, I was like, hey, the ransom notes just seem like BS. I mean, they had to give them some credence at the beginning because you just don't know, you know? And then after that started getting weirder, I wrote those off pretty quick as being anything. Then you got, well, there's, there's all these gloves everywhere and we know how crazy that was. And then, well, there's a glove two miles away and I said, you can go anywhere, you're going to find rubber gloves on the sides of the roads. I don't know who's wearing rubber gloves and throwing them on sides of roads, but apparently

6:17everybody. Because they're all over the place. I know. But why? What is the crack? Is it drug use? I mean, but what would you be using the rubber glove? Why does everybody have rubber gloves? I'm not sure, but I think the moment that Chef started wearing them in the kitchen and stuff like that, I always said it became kind of this new, old thing to always wear rubber gloves, no matter what you do. Either that, we've got a lot of tattoo artists in the area. Why are they after that? I'm not sure. Because I wonder like, like, you do find them on the sides of the road all the time, but it's like, why? I can't, I can't think of a reason why I have rubber gloves. I mean, unless I'm like, I'm staining some wood in my garage or something, I don't really think of it or washing dishes maybe. I don't, I don't really use rubber gloves then my mom used to, but it's weird to me that there's so much rubber glove use everywhere that these items are just all over the place. But back to the question, I don't think she left the house alive.

7:20I think something happened and again, so no, I think for the beginning she hasn't been with us. But I'm not faulting anybody for going down the road and holding out hope, especially the family. You got to do that just in case, but at this point, I'm kind of doubtful on it. Jenzy actually had a question on that and she says, if something did happen, if it was a B&E and all that kind of stuff, why not just leave the body behind? And I think we've kind of touched on it a couple of times over the past several weeks. Yeah, I think because Nancy becomes the evidence and what we've, you know, from many other cases that we've covered, if there was some sort of a struggle, some sort of an incident, fingernails particularly, there would be maybe they were thinking far enough I had. They've that took place that somebody's DNA could be under Nancy's fingernails. Or whatever reason, whatever happened, we don't know.

8:21I think Nancy became part of the evidence and Nancy's remains could be something that could then reveal, excuse me, who did this or lead someone there possibly. That would be my guess. I mean, the only other thought process I have on it is if this was an attempt that was originally going to be for money, just very, very poorly thought out. And she died very early on. And then it was like, well, shit, what are we going to do? Right. Almost like a panic kind of situation. What do you do? Do we leave the body? Do we take the body? Whatever. And that's kind of where I'm leaning into it as well. Either way, I, whatever the reason is that this happened. I think there was a moment of pure panic and they just decided to take the body instead of leaving it behind. I did too. And I don't know that I don't think it was thought out. I really don't. Another observation that has been made in the last couple of days, the backpack, I was

9:31really, when I was on court, CV the other night talking about it. And the question I was given was, you know, what do you think was in the backpack? It's like everybody's just purely speculating. And my response was a fleece blanket, a yacht sea board, and Michael Bolton's greatest hits on vinyl. Because why not? He was planning a cozy night in that wind sideways. But no, I mean, we don't know, but what I was surprised by because, and they did, I was actually thinking of doing this myself, but Cody and Vinnie did this. They went to Walmart and they got the backpack. I was actually thinking of doing that so I'd have it ready for that segment, but I didn't. And so they actually had the backpack on camera, the actual model of it. And there's a lot you can get into that backpack. I mean, a lot. They pulled out, and you could tell, it was like just in their production room and it was,

10:34well, what do we got around here to jam in the backpack? So it was like some tarps and blankets and things of that nature. But they were big. I mean, they got a lot in that pack. The thought process I had, and it was, it comes down to what was the intent of what this person was doing. I mean, if this was intended to be a burglary gone, and I'm thinking there might have been a backpack and a backpack for hauling more stuff out, get it in there, take it out. There you go. Then you can open it up and go. For other tools you may need to have for a B&A. If it was targeting her, then it would be things to restrain her. Possibly, here's a thought process here. Possibly you could fit a large blanket in that thing or a tarp. So if you were to take a body. But again, this is be assuming that you're going into, and you're going to disable her in

11:35her home. And roll her up in a carpet or roll her up in a blanket or roll her up in a tarp and take her out. Which doesn't seem like that would make any sense. Like if you're trying to get her, I would think you'd be wanting to keep her alive and in decent shape. She's not being rolled up in a tarp. So if they're showing up with a blanket or a tarp for rolling a body out, that shows a very different intent. Which again, this doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. But who the hell knows? We had a comment from men's easy menus who said that they believe it looks like there's a drone inside the backpack. That person's seeing the outline of a drone. Now I'm not sure why you'd have a drone with you. I think that's a stretch to guess, but maybe, I mean, anything's possible. I also have the feeling that we might be seeing Boss Gags greatest hits in there, too. Little low down shuffle, low down shuffle, lead exactly. Yeah. It could be in there. Again, anything, we just don't know.

12:38But I was surprised by the volume that could be put in there. Diane in Portland, the gloves they found two miles from the house had DNA from an unknown male. It didn't hit encodus. What happens next? Are they running investigative genetic genealogy? How long does it actually take? From what we understand, they are running IGG on this. Does it matter? I wouldn't want to be the person on the end of that. But does it have any sort of investigative claws to it at the end of the day? Maybe they'll figure out whose glove it was, and they'll probably have an alibi. That's probably where that lands. If it lands anywhere, I just don't feel like those gloves meant anything two miles away. I can't imagine that they would. I feel like that is such a stretch, and it just seems to mean like a lot of what they're quote unquote, finding in this whole case seems like a stretch.

13:39Like there's nothing that's really evident. There's this, there's this, there's this. Everything is just like they're grabbing at whatever straws they can get at this point because there doesn't seem to be much of anything out there. It really does. Last night, and I haven't had a chance to really dive into this yet today. So if I'm ignorant on this, I'm apologizing. But I know that there was some video that's come out from what I understood. I saw Vinny, the politician from Court TV posted it and many others too of a vehicle, but it was like two and a half miles away around the same time. Two and a half miles is a long fucking distance. Yeah. I mean, it really is a long distance. I mean, it sounds short, but there's a lot of things within two and a half miles of Nancy Guthrie's house and a lot of possible vehicle. I mean, is it something to look at without a doubt? I guess my question is, why is it a month in?

14:42We're sitting like, look, here's some video of vehicles active in the area at that time of the night. When do you think that that would be like the first five days, that stuff would just yes. Right? I don't know. The other thought process would be did they already have this information, these videos, and they're running into brick walls on it and it's not going anywhere. So now the investigative thought processes, well, let's throw it out to the public and see if they can figure it out, see if they could, because sometimes it works that way. It all depends on the investigator and what their processes are individually. Some think let's throw it out to the public right away for identification and maybe we'll get it. Some hold it really tight to the vest and then because they want to get it or they think that if there's less people out there basically polluting the water with bunk, then the investigators can do a better job. It's kind of rolling the dice either way.

15:43I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what's going on with that video, but I did find it interesting. What do we got over here in our live comments, anything interesting? We got a message from Genzi, she's usually on top of stuff. She said, remember with the Cobra case, it took six weeks for them to find somebody with the genealogy DNA and she believes that they're not really, we're not seeing everything they're actually working on at this point, which is possible as well. Yeah. Yeah. It took less than that. It publicly, that's what we found out, but they knew, and that's a good point because literally, and I've been bringing this up to, during that whole process with Cobrager, and I hope that that's what's going on here. You had Chief Fry at the stand saying in his public addresses to everybody, we have no leads, we don't have this, we don't have that, but in reality, the FBI was tailgating Cobrager all the way to Pennsylvania while he's saying that. So they did know, they just weren't publicly stating it, and they actually lost him

16:47along the way, too. But could that be going on? Yes. I think you have so many different people in different areas investigating this case and their own ways, and that's where we get so much noise and so many contradictions because they're, again, it's lack of leadership, it's lack of a clear direction and a clear strategy, and this is what you get. What's interesting, I was talking to Robin, we were texting last night about this Robin Drake, and he's like, you know, what's really disturbing about this is, and I'm just kind of paraphrasing, he'll explain better on Monday. Everybody looks at this and goes, gosh, this seems like really disorganized and really kind of a cluster. It's really not like if you compare it to other cases that have been handled in this jurisdiction under nanos and such, they're all chaos. And if you compare it just to other cases in general, take nanos out of it, it's about par for the course. I mean, every so far, like a lot of the cases that were currently covering besides just

17:50this one, you're seeing a lot of like disjointed actions by law enforcement and bad investigations and things that were missed and all that kind of stuff. So I guess one of the things I've learned in the almost year that I've been doing this is, it seems like that's par for the course. It is. It's one of those things where don't look behind the curtain if you don't want to see what's going on because you're doing your, and we, we were brought up in this idea of like, oh, you know, they're smarter people behind the curtain doing things that need to be done. And they're working in our best interest. And we just, oh, and depending on how you're brought up, okay, if I trust that, that seems good. And I think the more we look behind the curtain, the less that's a true statement. And we're all kind of shocked by it. But I think that's true in like almost any, any profession, whether it's law enforcement, whether it's whatever radio, you know, that was, you know, I always laughed at like when

18:53we would have, I mean, I thought it was, I was shocked when I first started of like, what do you mean you're not actually tallying the votes for the top nine at nine? You're just picking these out of your ass of the songs you like, you know, all those sort of things, those facades that we see. And if you think like they're taking caller nine all the time, they're not, you know, they're like, they're going for the caller that's going to sound best on the air. There's, there's, there's so many things that are going on behind the scenes in ways that we don't realize in areas that we're just not familiar with. And it's no different in law enforcement. The difference in law enforcement is the fact that, you know, people's lives are on the line. They're not just winning a two leg and thigh chicken dinner. So right. And each instance is going to be different. Like you can plan for, you can plan for one of these situations to come about in your community. But each one's going to be a little bit different. Yes, there are things that are similar to other cases, other investigations, but each one is different. So I guess we have to keep that in mind.

19:54It's just nice, it's nice as a, as a, as a member of the United States as a, as a citizen here to think that our law enforcement is more like what we see on TV. I want it to be more like Hillsville blues or something like that. It's more like Reno 9-1-1. I'd be okay with that too, because there's some comedy with that. So yeah, I mean, and, and, you know, that's, I mean, that's the reality, but it's not an instance. I mean, it's just, it is what it is. There are many wonderful people that are trying to do their best. And in any sort of institution or any sort of structure, you know, you have leadership. Sometimes you have good leadership. Sometimes you have bad leadership. It is what it is. You have egos, you have personalities, you have people. And unfortunately, when time is of the essence in, in a case like this, if, if you, you're luck of the draw for wherever that jurisdiction is, and you got somebody with an ego that can't really see beyond it, that's my conjecture. Manos, I think a lot of others, this is what you get.

20:55And there's, there's not a lot of levers you can pull to reset that beast in the timely manner that you need to when time is of the essence. That's why it's so important to know who you're voting for and why you're voting for them. There you go. I mean, the guy won by like 400 some votes when 98% of his union was saying like no confidence. But the general public said, yeah, it seems like a winner. And, and I don't know, I mean, how many times, when you go into vote, you may go in and you're like, okay, I know I'm voting on like this one thing or this one person. And there's like 30 other things you got to vote for. How many times have you gone in and like, I'll do this one. And you don't really know what the fuck you're voting. I don't anymore. If I don't know what I'm voting for, I don't. But I remember like the first handful of times I ever voted in my life, I'm like, oh, I'll just go along party line or I'll just go along with whatever, whatever name seems most recognizable, which is really how most elections are one is who's most top of mind.

21:59Not the issues, not anything that's important, not a scandal, not a track record. It's just what name comes to your mind first. And that seems to be how these things are done, but that is why it is so important. Like if you're going to vote and know what the fuck you're voting for, because this is what you can get, this public service message brought to you by Hidden Killers. Exactly. What is that, what is a question in there? Identify the gun he has and someone will know who owns one, Long Barrel semi-auto. I have no idea, I don't think we have any identification on the gun. All I know is that they said the holster was odd and an oddly, oddly placed. Which I think spoke more to an experience of the individual more than anything else. I have never seen a holster like that before. Me either, I don't know what the hell that was. I'm not a holster, I don't know, I don't have a holster, I've never holstered a gun, but I know that that's not how you do it. That doesn't seem like a great idea the way it was set up there.

23:01You're kind of waiting for him to bend over with the foliage and the shot goes off and then suddenly it's an episode of America's funniest home videos and not what we had right there. And then it just sag its back and doing, whoa, doing the commentary of what's going on. From Michelle from San Diego, the footage shows the guy's face, it's been everywhere. Well, I mean, it shows him with the mask on. How is it possible that nobody recognizes him, not a coworker, not a neighbor, not a family member, not a single person who's ever met this guy that seems statistically impossible? I bet people know him. I bet there's plenty of people who recognize him. I mean, there's plenty of people who are like just aimlessly making accusations, too. But I would guess there's some folks out there that recognize it. But then you have to look at it just because they recognize that person. You got to consider, okay, doesn't mean you're just going to pick up the phone and call them in because what's the repercussions to you if you do that?

24:03What community are you in? How is that person part of that community? Is that person someone where if they were caught, that community would look down on you for turning that person in? There's a lot of the lot that goes into that decision-making process. And do you want a spotlight on you, period? If you are in a situation where someone who did this, whether it was a B&E gone wrong or someone who was kidnapping someone for ransom and that went horribly wrong, if that's the circle you're in, whether it's familial or your friends or whatever, the odds are you may not have the cleanest track record either. Or you may have something that may not look favorable to law enforcement. So all of those things are being weighed by anyone who may know this person, especially someone who knows that person closely because it may lead to other things and other people

25:11being caught for other crimes. So I think that's a big factor in all of that. Also, I mean, we've got some of the pictures up on our YouTube livestream right now. I don't know if I'd be able to recognize somebody I know just by the photos. I would have to have intimate knowledge of some of the clothing, I would have to have some intimate knowledge of where they hang out, where they may have been all that kind of stuff. Looking at that, except for the clothing and things like that, from the facial features, there's not a ton to really go on. I don't think. There isn't. I mean, we can say, well, he's got eyebrows. Well, you know, are those eyebrows sticking out? Are those just shadows from the holes in the mask? I don't know. And that's, I don't think I would know. I mean, we should do a test next week. I'll get one of those and then we'll see if you can actually tell it's me just by wearing it. I think you should go to random people's porches over the weekend.

26:12Great. And then go on the ring app and then see if you can find yourself on people's porches. That's great. And what have you got here? What's your next question? Tony, do you think multiple people involved? They ain't no way the single guy is carrying Nancy's body alone. This depends how well-built he is. I don't know. I mean, you can't really tell his muscle strength or density from that photo. If you're a strong guy or gal, although this looks like a guy, it could handle Nancy. Could I know? I mean, but the right person, I think, certainly could, don't you? I do. We have to remember she was small stature. If you look at any pictures where she's standing next to Savannah Guthrie, she is a short woman. She is not very tall. And I don't think she waited off a lot in some of the pictures that we've seen of her recently. So, I think even somebody as weak as I could probably walk away with a body if I needed to. I probably could have drug her out, but I mean, lifting her, carrying her, I've seen

27:16you lift a lot. I think you could, you'd be fine. You know, I, a couple of years ago, I had a small farm, it was an, I know, I know, I know. Like, what? Yeah, it was an idea of my ex-wife who played farmer for a couple of years. Trust me, I've known Tony a long time. When I found out he had a farm with farm animals, mind blown. Yeah, mind too, and I live here. And in that adventure of a couple years, we had some pigs, and one of the pigs passed away, and it was about, and I'm probably 150, 200 pounds somewhere in that range, maybe a little bit more, I've never, I don't know, I've never dealt with like dead weight of an animal other than like a cat or something like that. And oh my God, like that's some hard shit to deal with, because you can't just like

28:17necessarily pull it either, because if you pull on a corpse or something in the wrong way, I'm not trying to be gross here, but limbs can kind of, you know, pop rope come off, you know, I mean, it's not just like, it's not as simple as may look, but I had to get these pigs out of the, this one pig out of the cage it was in, or it's pen, and I had a four wheeler, and I managed to do it. But as I'm doing this, I'm like, thinking to myself about true crime, I'm like, my God, like the people who are like into like serial killing people and like all in bodies around like, that's a lot, that right there, like even if you're like so disturbed and crazy and you're like, this is fun, or like I love the thrill of the kill or whatever, I think the body part is where I'd be tapping out. I'm like, that's just too much work, like way too difficult to do the lifting in all of that. It's, it's horrendous, it's hard, it's horrible.

29:19So I can't imagine doing that with a human being. Well, I did have somebody message that they believe that they said she was 150 pounds, so that would be about what you're talking about there, you said 150 to 200. Well, maybe it's, maybe it's more to handle than I'm thinking, and it's not, it's distributed differently because it's now like a weight, you know, where it's like, it's all right here. It's, it's, it's concentrated over here and it kind of shifts and it's, you know, it's a body, so it's somewhat gelatinous in the way, you know, where it, I don't know. It's not an easy task, but I've seen a lot of people say, how could somebody do that? Because people do it all the time. Well, and if there's adrenaline going on, let's be honest, if this, if this was a mistake, if she was not supposed to, if this was not supposed to happen and they didn't actually think about take, you're going to have a little extra energy to do what you got to do to cover your butt. So yeah, it's possible that adrenaline helped them a little bit in this. Yeah. So I imagine that's at play too, but I mean, is it, could it have been done by more than one person? I guess. Sure.

30:19It does, is there really any evidence that points to that? No. Is there anything that points either way? No. There's just not a lot of evidence period. That's what we got. We got the doorbell. So for basing it slowly on the, so solely on the doorbell, there's one guy in it. Could there be another somebody in a car down the road? Yeah. Totally. Right. We just, we just don't know the answer to that question. Anything else on Nancy that's popped up here that we want to get to before we go over to Corey Richens? Nothing, I mean, I was, nothing that we haven't already really touched on. I would just say that there's a lot of people wondering about the timeline and the amount of time that that person was in the house. And they also say that that may be why there was such a long amount of time in the house was because they were trying to fumble around and all that kind of stuff. I agree with that. I kind of feel like that might have been a no shit moment where, what do we do? And that's when I'm curious about cell tower pings and all of that, especially at that

31:21moment. I wonder if, if that person that was in there, either they, they handled their old, their old shit moment by themselves. And okay, here's, I'm going to take her or if there was some phone calls made of like, what should I do? I don't know. Everyone's guess is as good as I, I think you're going to solve this with the cell tower and, and crossing that with something else. I don't know what I was thinking the Walmart receipts if they can find it. But again, it hasn't been any cross there yet. Let me ask you this because you've done this for a little while. That the fact that they're, they're stopping the constant updates now, those are going away. They've decided they're only going to update us when they need to. It's not going to be an everyday thing or whatever. What does that say about the investigation at this point? Is it getting so cold now that there's just not much to share? I think they should have been slower in that to begin, I mean, they were just saying random things constantly.

32:21The thing is I don't feel like anything they had been sharing was of much value to begin with other than like they felt like they needed to fill the dead air. So is it, is it slowing down? I don't know that it ever got really wound up quite honestly. I mean, I think they were trying and looking, but I just don't feel like they ever got traction anywhere. Yeah. Is there something behind the scenes that we are completely unaware of? So I don't know. At some point here, yeah, I mean, it is winding. The immediate search, the immediate issue, you know, somewhere within the general two-mile vicinity in someone's backyard or the desert somewhere, that's winding down because they've done it. They've looked, they've checked, she's not there. So that part certainly ending, and they got a lot of leads to track to run down. I mean, when you got like 50,000 leads coming in, these are human beings that are trying to chase them all down. So they're going to spend some time still doing that, but yeah, I mean, until they get

33:26something that has traction, it is slowing down, but again, like I said, I don't think it ever really got up to a good speed to begin with. Right. Some. It's a shame, but that's where that sits right now. Love to see more of your comments. We'll continue the conversation. In the comments section on our sub-stack and on YouTube, be sure to hit subscribe wherever you're downloading this so you don't miss any of our coverage on this case. Want more on this case and others, then press subscribe now and don't miss a moment of true crime coverage from Tony Brusky and the Hidden Killers podcast. This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brusky and Robin Drink. We spent many weeks now second guessing all the moves that are being made here. The crime scene was released before the FBI fully secured it. Evidence went to a private Florida lab and set a Quantico Federal sources accused the

34:27sheriff of blocking access. There's been public contradiction about basic facts, even where the doorbell images were from one day or two. The assumption is that this investigation is uniquely dysfunctional as we continue to break down what's going on here in the case of Nancy Guthrie. We were just talking about the criminal, the person themselves, the perpetrator in here, and we'll continue now to talk more in the line of the investigation and we've been touching on that a bit with Nannos. Those are some key things that the self-awareness, I think, is a shocking part to us who are watching this. Even by his own admission, he said, and I'm just paraphrasing, I don't know exactly what he said, but I'm not used to being held accountable for my words, basically, which is one of the duck. You're not used to speaking aloud, it sounds like, is what it feels like to me.

35:30If you're saying that sentence out loud as the sheriff of a county, you're not used to being held accountable for your words. That's a little weird. Then we have so many statements that have come out and the interviews that he's given where he contradicts himself or he just provides such bizarre information that makes little to no sense. Is the video doorbell, is it two different nights? We don't know. He says he doesn't either. It's like, you're the sheriff. You guys see the back end of this information. You guys can see the metadata on this stuff. What do you mean you don't know of it from two different dates? Of course, you would know of it from two different dates. The data would show it. How are we not knowing the answer to this question? Or are answers like that key to the investigation and he's just not revealing them and saying it in a different way that just gives no confidence where he should have just said, that's information that we're going to keep on our end for the investigative purpose.

36:35Right now it just sounds like he's like, whoa, yeah, we'd want him to sound better. But I've researched this as well, Tony, every single national case where you have a front man like him out front, he actually, the number of contradictions he's had, fits in the norm. Number of misdamements, fits in the norm, all these things actually fit in the norm. And you and I have talked about this. The sad thing here is that when you fit in the norm, what's the motivation to change or get better? Because you can just point the finger so I'm just like everyone else and my clearance rates are higher. So you mean it's not, nothing that's happened is forcing a behavior change and so that's why us as the public need to demand higher that you shouldn't be doing this. You shouldn't be settling for average, especially when we are paying your salary to keep us safe. You know, average is not good enough. You know, falling within norms is not good enough. You should be smarter about what you're doing. You know, instead of relying on your 50 years of experience, saying well, my clearance rate was 100%. Now, granted, he hasn't said that I'm the one that's saying it because he hasn't touted

37:37that. But at the same time though, yeah, he fell short like all the others have on all these other cases. I mean, I couldn't find a case of anyone actually did a great job. Where he's out there and he's saying what he's saying, I mean, this is, I just did a piece on this this morning too, about Nana's because there's a, you know, people are circling, well, how could we, how could he, somebody get rid of him? Where could they vote him out? Could they do this? Could they do that? Like, there's really no way to remove the sheriff. Like, the routes and the levers that could be pulled are slim to nil and very unrealistic in the possibilities to even like to trigger a recall election require like 140,000 some signatures on a county that's already very divided. I mean, it's not going to be very, what it makes sense to do, I don't even know how you could physically get it done. And they have to be verified signatures. On that, there's like no levers unless he gets, unless he gets like criminally charged

38:40with something. Right. And the head of the, I can't remember his name at the top of my head. I got a written down on my millions of notes. But the head of the, of the police union, of the sheriff's union actually brought him up on charge. Well, on charge him or filed a, the file lawsuit, I should say against him on, in 2022, I think it was. Yeah. And none of it found criminal anything. Right. And they dismissed it. But then to dismiss it, actually, the guy who filed it would drew it. Yeah. So, I mean, when you get that kind of scrutiny and you, and there's nothing there, well, there's not that there's nothing there. And nothing sticks. I mean, again, the probability of removal, they didn't happen. And, and, no, what do you go with then? You know, And I guess by, by point being with when you have this sort of a situation and he's not going anywhere, what incentive does he have to do better if he already thinks he's doing great? And he's not up for reelection. I mean, if he gets booted out, 2029, January was, was he believing 2028 would be the election.

39:43He'd be booted in end of January. It's like presidential time area where it would be changing of the office. So if he doesn't care, he already thinks he's doing good. And there's really no mechanism to get rid of him. All the criticism in the world doesn't matter to necessarily somebody like that. As long as you're not doing anything criminal. But if you think you're doing a great job and you don't give a shit, I mean, especially if you're like at his age, he might be thinking, I'm good and not 29, I'm ready to be done. So I'm going to, and that's, that's a scary place to be in if you're in that county, especially if you have a sheriff that is, and I don't say he's going rogue because he's really not. The track record in the path that he always has followed, which fairly is somewhat chaotic. But there's no mechanism. And I guess maybe that's where our system is broken a bit is when you have something where midway through a term or halfway through a term or whatever, it's like this guy really

40:46needs to go. There's really not a way to change the guy or to get him out. Right. Yeah. And that's, that seems to be where we're, where they're sitting right now. If anything, it's a lesson to the voters. You need to pay more attention to who you're going to die of, you know, because the, the, the things that are coming out on it, first of all, the investigative side of things, sending things to his lab first, the involvement of outside organizations, at least in the crime, so I'm not releasing the crime scene. That all fell within his pattern of behavior of what he always did. And so if you have the clearance rate that you've had and you've had the experience for 50 years, you're going to do things you've, the way you've always done them before because it's work for you in the past. And so it just hasn't had this kind of scrutiny in the past. So, and then all the, the most of the claims about him are because of cronyism, because of hostile work environments, and he promotes only his, his buddies and friends. Okay. Which, you know, show me no organization that hasn't. I mean, just, yeah.

41:47I mean, it's like shitty, not great, you know, but not necessarily illegal, either. It's common. Yeah. And that's where it's like, okay, this is, this is par for the course. And if you, if you are a person and look, I, I don't know the guy from Adam, other than what we're, we're talking about here. So I'm not making this statement directly at him, but if you are someone who may not be the greatest individual, you probably aren't surrounding yourselves with the greatest individuals either. So the folks that you may be promoting or doing this or that may also be very much in line with your way of thinking. I'm not saying that's what's happening here. But when you have that sort of trend going on, that's how you end up with a structure of folks that are all not the greatest and then leadership from the top, it just all kind of falls apart because you have very weak people in those, those positions. Yeah. And I don't know how the structure of his organization was. I don't know. Yeah. But at the same time, though, whoever, whoever the detectives were that solved those 12 cases last year, 12 and then and also at the last five years, the clearance rate

42:51wasn't 100% but it's in the high 90s. Yeah. And there's, I'm sure there are great people in there in that department. Unfortunately, we've also learned he's demoted several along the way that were very good detectives, people in key positions like the pilot that could have gone out there a little bit quicker and could have been looking for the heart device on Nancy. There's, I mean, one of those things where, you know, when he demoted them back, however many months ago that was, this obviously wasn't on his mind, but it's like, it's the two thoughts. It's like, okay, you do that. You get rid of the person who's really good at this or you move them to desk duty and they're not going to be able to do that for you. What happens when you need them? But that's two thoughts and that's, that's very much that sort of thinking though, we're going to act in the moment. I'm going to act what's going to make me feel best and do best for me right now. And that seems to be kind of his track record, not saying anything illegal, just very politician like. Yeah. And there was one other claim, I've researched all the claims against him at the time, yeah, they fell out.

43:52The other claim against him was also the turnover rate and retention rate inside the sheriff's apartment. That's the other claim that they made against him. I looked at state averages, Pena County is slightly higher than, only slightly higher than the average turnover rate in the state. So it's really, it's not that stand out. No, like this department has the issues that every department has. And most of the turnover rates because our other departments pay more, which is typical. So again, you know, when you, when you just do that deep dive and examine, it just forces everyone before these things happen to just, you know, watch who you're electing. But here's the thing too, the person ran against them, what was the, the female corrections officer that 20 years experience and he had 50 years experience and it was actually an investigation as she wasn't. So when you have limited choices, I mean, just look at our elections in the country. You're just like, well, what's the voice we have? Danny, put her on administrative leave right before is, I mean, there was a lot of shady things that were going on in the, I mean, and the thing is, and I think at the end of

44:55this, we're not saying this to be like, see, it's shady everywhere because it, but I think it is saying, see, it is shady everywhere. Let this be a wake up call to every one of this is what's going on behind the scenes. In your local departments, if you give a shit, start paying attention. And I think part of it, and I've said this in another case too, is we are in an interesting place in our time in terms of local reporting and people being aware of what's going on in their communities. We don't have local newspapers anymore. I mean, yes, we do, no, you don't, it's run by Gennett and it's just a, it's a reprint of USA today with a couple local sports scores in it. You're local, all that shit, all the stuff that we used to have locally, local investigative reporters for your newspaper, for your TV station, for your radio station. They don't exist because we've said we don't need these things anymore.

45:55We're good, we're going to get our information somewhere else. Well, guess what? Now, that shit's come to roost and these departments have not had any sort of, anyone keeping them accountable, which used to be local media, you know, media is the devil. Yeah, they also kept this shit in line too when nobody wanted to hear about it. And so they've been able to run rampant because there's nobody been holding truth to power until this sort of stuff happens. And they have a barrage of podcasters across the country all looking at the same shit going, this is insane. Yeah, where, where was local media for the last decade or two calling this shit out, making the citizens aware of what was actually going on around them? Oh, they weren't. So it's, it's like a media, it's an information desert as, as we have more information, we have less of it or it's in, it's in places that people for whatever reason are not informed enough to go get it or, or they choose not to go get it because it feels icky. And now we can very much choose what we want to consume in terms of news.

46:57It's not just here's a five o'clock news. Let's deal with what's going on. Now we only get news of what makes us feel good and special and, and then I think it creates these blind spots and then we end up in communities where we have this sort of infrastructure. Yep. No doubt. We just got to keep making a system better by calling it out. Yeah. Exactly. And being aware, everyone being aware of what's going on in your communities because there's far more of this going on than, than anyone is aware of, you got to hold them accountable and and. And that's a lot of questions. You know, just do a thing on a collective curiosity. Just be curious about what is actually going on and as you find an answer to one question, it should spur another one. And just, I mean, it's why 12 we can't long become so freaking obsessive for me. Yeah. You know, this is interesting. I saw it coming here. It says journalism is not what it used to be. You know, it, it isn't, it isn't. You know, it's not public curiosity and people wanting to, people giving a shit and understanding

47:58that there's consequences to the actions of who they put in power in their community. People actually used to care about that. There was people really paid attention a lot more to what was going on around them. Now they just want to be victimized. Now they want to be the victim. So when people get into power that are bad, they don't like, oh, we can complain about it and that becomes a sport of its own. People used to give a shit about what was going on around them and didn't just get outraged for no reason. There is cause and effect and you can't just live in a fat land. If you're not participating in the cause, you can't complain about the effect. And it's also interrogating the information that we get. And you know, because there's a lot more sources of information coming at us through podcasts like ours. And I mean, that's all over the place. But when you hear something, the most important thing to do is interrogate that information yourself. Go to ground truth of what actually is is, you know, and you and I talked about this actually. This is the case we talked the most about it is because there's so much conjecture going out there. There's so many conspiracy theories that are out there.

49:02And what you need to do instead of grabbing hold the one because it sounds sexy, it sounds creepy, it sounds whatever, you know, and this must be it because it feels right. No, no, no, no. If something is different, okay, let's explore it. That's exactly what I do every time. It's like every time, you know, with all our listeners, I try to consume all the information out there of all the different theories of everything that's coming in. And then as soon as it comes in, I play it the ground. It's like, all right, does this fit with intent? And then if it does fit with intent, all right, what are the mechanisms for this? What's the research sound is because that's all I do all the time is like, and then after I look at the research, does it fit the human behavior of things we've observed so far? And then maintain an open mind as new data comes in, new leads comes in, new tips come in, is it confirming or disapproving of where we are today? So it's always interrogating the information we have, the scene that makes sense, does it fit intent, and does it fit the human behavior patterns that we're seeing?

50:03Everyone has more resources to get as detailed information on any topic as they could possibly want today. There is zero excuse for being misinformed other than you don't give a shit. Or one that said, yeah, it's too easy, it's beyond, there's no excuse. There just isn't, other than laziness and not taking the initiative to do it. So it's there, it's just we don't do it collectively. And for whatever reason, we prioritize other things above some of these greater things in our world that we don't realize how great they are until they come to bite us in the ass. Yeah. And I know a lot of the listeners on Tony's, I mean, Todd is going to put the comments up there about the cartel involvement. I looked at that angle, I guess again, it's one of the angles. It just does not fit a pattern of behavior that the cartels have ever done before. So the cartel reductions, again, I looked at it, cartel reductions are typically for profit

51:04motive. And it's to put leverage on people that are distributors for them. And that's the only time they've gone outside the Mexican border. And they and they never have ever used media in any way for the abduction. In other words, TMZ or it's actually extremely quick turnaround for them because they want to abduct, keep the personal lives, sign of life, get my money, go. So it's boom, boom, boom, boom. And so it does not fit the profile of what cartels generally do, unless now granted, there's always outliers. And is there a possibility of all these things being outlier? Yes. But the laws of probability based on research says most likely now. Yeah. Unless it's 2026 and crazy things happen every day. We're going to find out Nancy's like some giant kingpin in the cartel. She's running her own like they're like, oh my God, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy, my good, no. But very true Mary, why they wouldn't. Exactly.

52:04Your thoughts in the comments section, we'd love to get them sub-stack in YouTube. You can join us in either place to weigh in and give us your feedback. We'd absolutely love to see it. Want more on this case and others? Then press subscribe now and don't miss a moment of true crime coverage from Tony Brusky and the Hidden Killers Podcast. That's the sound of a tree in Tennessee's great Smoky Mountains, releasing volatile organic compounds, which is just a fancy way of saying it's creating fog. And that makes the Smokies smokey. This is one of many sounds in Tennessee with a story to tell. To hear them in person, plan your trip at tnvacation.com. Tennessee sounds perfect. Some crimes are never forgotten. Others are lost to history. Those are the ones we focus on in crimes of the centuries. A history meets true crime podcasts revisiting murders, trials, and frauds that once dominated

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