Welcome to The Watch Floor. I'm Sarah Adams. In every high-profile case, you get two things. You get evidence and you get noise. I am probably the expert in this category because obviously I've worked one of the most high-profile investigations, Benghazi, which I can tell you has a lot more noise at times than evidence. The biggest and most high-profile case in the country right now is that of Nancy Guthrie, the missing mother of Today Show co-host Savannah Guthrie. The one thing to be very clear about is evidence always moves slowly, or at least it moves so much slower than you want it to. And then of course, noise is instant and it never stops. These two things are occurring in the same world and they arrive together in the same space. They could move at different speeds and they don't and shouldn't carry equal weight if you're of course investigating it. Obviously in the world of public opinion each piece can carry its own weight which can be complicated and it gives you a little bit of a distorted view of what might be happening on the ground or behind the scenes. Let's just quickly cover what is publicly known about this case. It's, of course, the home is being treated as some sort of crime scene. There was blood evidence at the residence. This disappearance is clearly not voluntary. We have no proof of life, right, since Nancy was taken from her property. And then we have multiple ransom communications. We received your message and we understand. We beg you now to return our mother to us so that we can celebrate with her. This is the only way we will have peace. This is very valuable to us and we will pay. And one actually ended up being a fake ransom demand. And that, of course, is a really good point to bring up as well, because that is one of these pieces that we call noise. So when we look at just some of those small pieces, the blood evidence at the residence, right, that's a signal. That's real evidence. And then the confirmed hoax shows you not just that there's a noise, but there's now this information environment you have to deal with because there's bad actors who want to take advantage of the situation. So the noise layer, if you're an investigator, you have to realize, oh, it's been activated. And now this is another thing I'm going to have to deal with, you know, as I work through this case and hopefully get a resolution on it. Now, let's just zoom out for a minute, because there are a lot of people frustrated with the fact that this case is getting a lot of news coverage. And of course it is because, you know, there's a celebrity involved in it. And I know it can be very frustrating for families who do still have missing persons out there. And I want to acknowledge the fact that there are a lot of cases that need to be highlighted and there are a lot of people that we really need to save. A lot of people aren't aware that in the United States yearly, there are 600,000 cases of missing persons. Luckily, a lot of them, you know, get solved on their own or they resolve themselves. stranger abductions for ransom is incredibly rare and adult abduction for ransom is even rarer still. So this is already an interesting case and it also is likely another reason why it's getting some of the attention. Now, when we talk about these cases, they do usually fall into certain categories. And I just want to run through, you know, on the books what those are. So the first one is it's a person who's involved and gets wrapped up in some sort of domestic or interpersonal relationship that leads to, you know, this event where they're a missing person, right? This is a known person to them. Another thing is we have these known offenders who commit repeat crimes and they impact people in certain ways. That's a really other great example. We have persons who just become part of this mental health crisis, and that crisis, you know, causes them to flee or disappear in some way. Another thing is just environmental exposure. Remember, in this case, we're talking about Arizona. Unfortunately, there are people who get lost or die in the desert there. I mean, it's actually not as uncommon as you would think. And then lastly, you know, people have tough lives. And one of the things that can happen is you might have some sort of stress in your life. The majority of the times it is a financial stress or a financial burden, and that can lead you to disappearing or try to find a solution to that stress that ends up being termed like a missing person case. So these explain, I'd say, the majority of cases. Now, when we have a case like this, this is really a structured kidnapping for ransom that is an outlier. And it doesn't mean it's not true or anything like that, but it sets the bar higher because actually when we say these are rare, it also means law enforcement does not work on them regularly. You know, this isn't something like everybody's an expert on dealing with. You know, we need to be honest about that. Because there's a baseline pattern when you're working an investigation, you go off of, and now if you don't have that normal pattern because this is an outlier, it is a much more complicated case. Now, I work on a very high-profile missing person case. It an American and his name is Mahmoud Shah Habibi So Habibi was kidnapped in Afghanistan by the Taliban He was held by them for a short time and then the intent was to kidnap him to hand him over to al-Qaeda. So he then gets handed over to al-Qaeda. Now, it's a very interesting thing. Usually when you work terrorism, kidnapping cases, the main purpose is for ransom, And then usually secondary, it might be the terrorists want to get involved in some sort of like hostage detainee swap. Right. So they take an American and hope to get a terrorist released from prison. Well, the interesting thing in the Habibi case is we don't have any sort of ransom note. We really haven't got a direct request that aligns with, hey, if you do X for us, we'll get Habibi. The other issue is the Taliban do not want to take responsibility for the fact they obviously captured him. They know he's alive and they gave him to Al Qaeda. So we have what I call the noise side of this, where the Taliban are saying he's a missing person. We don't know what happened to him. We don't know where he is. We don't even know if he's alive. You know, all very dishonest things, but it's still another piece of information coming in on top of another piece of information coming in on top of another piece of information. And then it's like, who is looking at this information, you know, and what assessments are being made? So it's an important thing to walk through. Now, let's talk about, you know, Nancy's case and at least walk through some of the key pieces. So when we talk about the fact that there is this ransom claim, you know, obviously there's been a few letters. Some has gone to the press like TMZ. Some have gone directly to the families. What we do know, right, is in the letters they're asking for six million dollars and then they have set different deadlines. Now, it went haywire for a bit because we did have these fake ransom requests from Derek Kalala. He was over in California. He sent it to the family to insert himself in the case. He had no involvement in it. But of course, that takes time away from the investigation. They had to track him down, arrest him, charge him. And of course, that does impact things. In cases like this, you know, you don't have time on your side. Her health, her heart is fragile. She lives in constant pain. She is without any medicine. She needs it to survive. She needs it not to suffer. And so it is really frustrating to watch bad actors like this take advantage of it You know when we really do have an elderly person here As you know when you get up in that age if you have any sort of injury Which we know she probably does there was blood Or you have certain medications you might have to take regularly You know once you get past this over a week long in disappearance It makes survivability extremely hard Now, the other problem is we had that noise of that ransom, but the regular ransom is also causing a noise because it's different than most ransom letters we see or ransom requests because there's not proof of life. So it's a very frustrating thing. So this happened right on the 31st of January, but none of these individuals saying or claiming they're holding her has shown, you know, she is alive and she is safe or even have like recorded her voice. So this makes for a very difficult situation. The other thing is usually in these cases, there is some sort of back and forth negotiation and communication, right, to get to where everyone's happy. Both sides really know where they stand before, of course, handing over something like a six million dollar payment. Now, we have seen the video, the family say we're going to pay it. This is very valuable to us and we will pay. Again, they're saying we're going to pay it, right? They don't have proof of life. We obviously have a host of other issues around this, of course, because this isn't where you're going to take the cash and hand it to someone. And then the mother is going to come the other way. This is, you know, a Bitcoin transfer. Now, these Bitcoin hostage situations aren't very common. They have occurred in a number of places, and it's usually in Europe. But in most of those cases, they ended up kidnapping people who they knew had large cryptocurrency holdings. So you kidnap a person with a lot of crypto. And then, of course, you have direct communication with them. You tell them exactly what you want. There's like immediate coercion. And then there's this transfer of money under threat. So this case is a lot different from that because the motivations are still somewhat unclear while they're asking for this money. Because there's not the back and forth, there are a lot of questions, especially from investigators, as to what is the goal here? And then there are other issues. So first off, I just want to explain this quickly, you know, not to be morbid in some way, but, you know, we don't even know if Nancy's alive. The other issue you have to imagine if you're thinking from like, let's say, NBC executive level. So they might offer to give up this money. You know, I don't know all the details behind. But then you open a door, right? You open this door to these bad actors and they're like, hey, now we know when we go and kidnap people on a certain level. Right. We can get paid. And, you know, that can be a very dangerous thing. The U.S. used to have this line, for example, we don't negotiate with terrorists. Well, then they started doing it. Right. Americans started being kidnapped They handed over lots of money They started releasing people Even when Benghazi happened against us it was to kidnap U Ambassador Stevens to request the release of a number of terrorists one in Iraq a couple being held by the United States etc So that opened the door and now that's a continual problem when Americans get captured overseas. Obviously, these bad actors want something from the government. So if you open the door in this case, you know, will this then become a motivation for others? And people are really concerned about this. Now, we talk quickly about this other fake, you know, ransom letter. But the unfortunate thing is when a case gets this much, much coverage and press and attention, you likely will get copycats and hoaxes that can put other people at harm. So we do have to be honest that there are cascading effects as well of this media attention. So, you know, there might be more false ransom claims. We don't even really know if the six million dollar Bitcoin, how legitimate it is. Yes, we've heard it's a real Bitcoin wallet. But again, because we haven't really gotten a proof of life from Nancy, it's really hard to say, OK, 100 percent the people holding her have her. She's safe. And when you pay the money to this wallet, it is going to go exactly to the people holding her. So, you know, it's a very unpredictable situation. Now, there's other questions, as you can imagine, as to why FBI is involved. Well, even just the hoax ransom letter already shows it. So remember, that was an individual in California communicating these demands across state lines to press and family in Arizona, etc. So FBI, of course, has to be involved just from the crossing of state lines. But also, this is a complex case, even though it is confusing. We don't have lots of answers. Again, we have the interstate communications. We have possible extortion. And then there really is a need for more case resources because, like I said, this is not normal. This isn't cases everyone is working on. So when we talk just about Arizona and like its regional average missing person cases, they fall into four categories. It's domestic violence. It's a criminal act that might have a ransom motive. It's, of course, as we said previously, environmental exposure. And then it's some sort of crime because there's like a transient population that moves through this area at all times. Of course, there's pipelines all through Arizona to the rest of the country. So kidnap for Bitcoin is not even a regional issue. So you do have to bring in some federal resources because this is, of course, complicated. It's not like you're going to wire money to the Tucson National Bank to pay this ransom. So again, it's a big problem and it's an anomalous situation. And of course, when you have these type of anomalies, you really need collaboration of what's happening. And of course, when you bring the FBI in or anybody, that then gives you that extra layer and more eyes and more specialty and technical expertise working on something. So when you're an investigator in a case like this, you're constantly sorting the information into three buckets. First is what information is going to narrow in and help kind of focus in this case? The other bucket is what information is like distracting from this case? And then the third is, OK, what is misinformation or what is actively trying to undermine the case? You have information coming in in all these categories. So it's not really a checklist you're going through. It's almost like a continuous weighing of the information. So I have this problem all the time. So I, of course, have, you know, source networks I work on to do my investigations. And then all these outside actors will come at me from multiple different ways to provide information for me to get me to put it out so they can say I receive false information. And of course, I never do it. So then they go to people who they believe are closely associated with me or connected to me and give them the false information. And then they put it out. And it's just this constant mess that honestly, I can't sit there all the time and go around and tell everybody, hey, you know, you got terrorist misinformation and you put it out. But it is something that is constantly occurring. And in a case this high profile, like Nancy's, right, we don't even know that level of misinformation. We already see a ton of it online, but what is going into investigators? And it is something they have to go through. So here are some questions they're asking in those cases. First off, does this reduce uncertainty or does it just add information, right? So does it make it clear what's going on, or is it just kind of another piece in the puzzle, but it didn't really move us forward? So you have to kind of bucket it in the right spot. Another thing is, does it connect independently to physical evidence? So do we have this new piece of information and, oh, we actually collected evidence, they marry together, and then now it makes this one assessment stronger because we now have this new piece of information and this physical piece of information. Then if someone made assumptions about what's going to occur in the information, does it really predict what happened? Or did it really happen in the way this piece of information is saying, you know, once we broke down the timeline, looked at cameras, et cetera. So that's really important. And then lastly, Does it kind of offer Fewer assumptions Than alternatives So lots of times you get a piece of information that can put you down six more rabbit holes And you might have to go down those rabbit holes, but you have to make assessments early about that because you can't, of course, run after every piece of information that comes in. Now, when we talk about the key information, think of it then as this signal versus noise. So we told you, of course, the blood spatter is a strong signal. But another very strong signal is the fact this ring doorbell camera was disconnected, you know, at 147 a.m. I mean, that is an excellent piece of evidence to go off of. Now, it doesn't tell you who is there. And unfortunately, even if the camera was left on, you know, we found out Nancy doesn't really have the paid subscription to put the videos into the cloud. So we might not have got something anyway, but we know deliberately the ring was deactivated. So again, it just shows you another signal that is really important in this case. So we need to contrast that then with each thing going on, and that's how you put the pieces of this case together. Now, when a case goes into the public sphere, as this case has, you don't just have like the physical piece of the case. You now have this information ecosystem that unfortunately you have to control and manage in some way. There is now a lot of outside entities involved in your investigation, not just people making comments online, But now you have people on the ground. You have press on the ground. You have independent investigators that showed up. You really just have curious onlookers. You know, all this now becomes, you know, a part of the equation you're working with. So in that ecosystem, other issues come up. You get things like speculation. You can potentially have some sort of financial exploitation. You get copycat behaviors. And then there's a lot of people saying things with certainty without verification. You know, the other thing is in these high profile cases, the ecosystem activates incredibly quickly. It's like it's you're almost incentive based if you're in a media outlet, you know, to make this your top story and focus on it and send your your key reporters to it. And that attention creates opportunity, but it doesn't always create opportunity to solve the case. It sometimes creates opportunity for these bad actors to come in, and we have to talk about that. So volume, you know, is not a signal. And then, you know, of course, the emotion around this doesn't give you any sort of evidence. And then, you know, the repetition of saying things over and over again doesn't equal the truth. So there's a lot of lessons that we can just look at from outside this case that we can now understand. OK, this is a signal. It's evidence. You know, it's something important to understand. And oh, look at this. This is noise. Was this misinformation I was supposed to see? You know, is this accurate? Because people get really invested in these investigations from the outside, but it is a great learning point to kind of think through, you know, how this works and just see those type of elements and now know how an investigator looks at each piece of this. So, of course, the public wants answers fast. The family wants answers a lot faster. We need your help. So I'm coming on just to ask you, not just for your prayers, but no matter where you are, even if you're far from Tucson, if you see anything, you hear anything, if there's anything at all that seems strange to you, that you report to law enforcement, we are at an hour of desperation. Investigations then want alignment, right? We got to stack all this information we have together to make sense in the case, right? There has to be physical evidence, right? We need to align these behavioral patterns. And then, of course, we have to put a whole structure on top of this to solve this issue or even to at least make appropriate assessments. You're going to have to tell a family, hey, we never got proof of life and they have to make a decision. Well, do we still pay the ransom without that? It's a complicated thing. You're working to a solution. when you don't do all of that properly and in the right order, you know, things don't line up, they don't work out well. And that's one thing we really wanted to be clear with you on the watch floor today. You know, signals hold up under pressure. This noise collapses, you know, especially when you stop feeding it, right? If someone's making something up and they're not getting the intention they need, it will die off. And it's just an important thing to watch when something is this public. And we saw a ton of that with Gabby Petito, right? A lot of assumptions came out. A lot of things came out as fact-based evidence. And it really wasn't. At the end of the day, the best piece of evidence, of course, was someone else filming in the park and saw the van pass by, right? And that was, you know, an important signal in this case. So your job, no matter if you're a viewer of all this or an investigator is, let's not reward drama in these cases. Let's reward discipline, right? Proper investigative work, you know, call it out when it's not. This has been the Watch Floor, and here we like to follow the signals. Thanks for tuning in.
