Veteran forensic scientist Barbara Butcher has suggested a local service worker, or handyman, was behind the abduction of Nancy Guthrie, who has now been missing for more than four months.
Speaking to Fox News Digital on Saturday (May 30), Butcher, who hosts Oxygen’s The Death Investigator, said, “I find it flabbergasting that anyone would take a woman her age, but what I think is probably the case is that someone in the area, maybe a handyman, maybe a service person, had known, had found out that Mrs. Guthrie was the mother of Savannah Guthrie and said, ‘Oh, she must be rich.'”
Nancy, the 84-year-old mother of Today‘s Savannah Guthrie, has been missing since February 1, when police believe she was abducted from her home in Tucson, Arizona. Investigators have released doorbell camera footage of a masked suspect and sent DNA for testing at the FBI lab in Quantico, but no suspects have been named.
Butcher, who described the suspect as “not well,” noted the lack of follow-up on ransom demands, leading her to believe that Nancy died after the alleged kidnapping.
“My second thought was that after time, when there was no valid ransom demand or any information forthcoming that it’s probably likely that Mrs. Guthrie died of shock, fright, heart disease, whatever it was, very soon after being taken from her home,” she explained.
Early in the case, an alleged ransom note was sent to TMZ and other outlets offering to return Nancy in exchange for the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. According to TMZ, the value of the Bitcoin demanded was in the “millions,” and the wallet address provided in the letter was legitimate.
Other alleged ransom notes and letters were sent later in the investigation, though their authenticity has not been confirmed. This included a letter where the sender allegedly apologized, claiming they didn’t realize how serious Nancy’s heart condition was and that she had “gone to be with God.”
“That’s just horrifying to me,” Butcher added on the thought that Nancy could have died during the alleged abduction. “And so now this kidnapper had nothing and probably, unfortunately, took her body into the desert and buried her there.”
This past weekend, former prosecutor-turned-criminal-defense attorney R.J. Dreiling told Hello! that he believes the ransom letters were nothing more than a distraction. “The lack of follow-through on any ransom demand makes it look like it was a distraction meant to throw off investigators,” he told the outlet.
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