I mean, does, does someone have to be criminally responsible?

Part of me says yes, when you have three dead babies, somebody's gotta be held responsible, but then you look at the other side.

She was reaching out to everyone.

It seems to me more and more that Lindsay was the type of woman that was, um, an overachiever.

She didn't complain or whine about a bunch of stuff, and people just had this general assumption that she could handle anything that, that came her way.

And I know a lot of women like that, and I, I'm sure a number of us know women like this, where, a- and even me, sometimes when I'm in a vulnerable position, I'm like no one ever sees me as vulnerable, and here I am, you know, being vulnerable.

So I'm wondering if something like that was happening with, with her also.

Like, I, not that I would turn the other way, but it's like it's when someone's such a good mom and such a good person, maybe you don't worry as much wh- even, even when they say something so shocking.

If you showed up out there, wouldn't you have thought that it was like something that may have had to do with her being gone?

Well, when you consider that they haven't had any kidnappings or murders in a very, very, very long time, and they ...

I think whatever that number was, over 90% of calls like this end up being someone that just walked off, especially when she's an elderly person.

But once the other stuff started coming together ...

So I could see initially that they would be like, "This could be something else," because with all that cacti around her, she could easily get cut.

She was on blood thinners.

You can, you can, you can bleed like you can't believe when you're in that type of situation.

I mean, do these issues now all go back to the way it was processed initially?

But anyway, my whole point is I'm worried with him saying so many labs and so much DNA that this is still needle in a haystack territory, that they don't have a DNA profile that they're linking to the perp.

Well, like any other investigation, you have leads that go to the top of the pile and leads that you work your way down to after those leads are exhausted.

And I think in this case what he's saying, and hopefully what he means, is that there are a number of people that they have done familial genealogy on and they have proven, found out who they were because they have to go all the way back to common grandparents and then work their way back down this way to the current generation.

And then they have to work in concert with law enforcement to go out and interview relatives of, a- as you mentioned earlier.

So it's law enforcement working with these genealogists, working with the DNA labs.

And the reason they have s- these, these numerous labs is because there is, for example, one lab in California that specializes in getting full DNA profiles from a single hair w- an unrooted hair, before you had to have the root.

Otherwise, you only get the mitochondrial, which is the mother's line of, of that.

What does that mean?

D- is that making any sense?

Yes, you make perfect sense given the information that we were given from Savannah.

The, um, the hiccup I have, Nancy, is when you watch Savannah deliver that line, um, e- everything else, she's looking right at Hoda.

She's speaking, um, y- you know, in a streamlined way, and you're right.

She's very smart.

She's a lawyer.

She's very good on screen, et cetera.

I find that probative.

Did you ever work any cases where there was a body that was buried? And what is that like? I don't want to go too graphic, but what does that look like?

Well, it depends on a lot of things.

It depends on the weather.

How wet is it? How arid is it? How deep did they bury the body is one of the main things.

If they have a backhoe or something, then they can really put it down and put it down deep and the remains will... theoretically last a lot longer than if they were on the surface if it's on the surface of the sand in the heat and the dryness and with animal activity you can lose a corpse in a short period of time um but if they're buried and they're buried well and they're buried deep and you know under a shady tree versus out where it's where it's if there's water running you're close to the water table there are so many things to consider that um That it's a lot to take in.

The FBI evidence response team, we often go, we send team members all the time to a place called the Body Farm.

And the Body Farm is a place down south where they have all kinds of people that donate their body to science.

be useful even though they processed it

What?

Yeah.

Things are happening, and, um, but w- but one of the reasons it's taking so long is because whatever defense attorney takes this investigation and, and represents whoever they charge in this case, w- y- you have to operate under the assumption, like, from day one, uh, y- you're doing your trial prep practically.

Everything you do is geared toward trial and prosecution.

And if, um, if y- you, w- you're gonna have the greatest defense attorney in the world handling this case, whoever, whoever takes this case.

So you have to operate under the assumption that a couple of big chunks of your evidence may get tossed.

So you have to put a case together in such a way that it would withstand losing some, some of these chunks of evidence, depending on how you got them or, or how vulnerable they might be to getting tossed.

Um, what do you make of the possibility that this is more than one person, Maureen, and the theory that porch man is not the sophisticated Bitcoin and letter writer?

The sheriff has said, "That's not true, because we have someone on the FBI task force that's within our office who, who was there within the first 48 hours."

Okay.

Well, okay.

Yeah, that... those are two different things.

Having...

When the FBI is on scene and there's, um, a h- 100 or more of them in a nearby hotel, and they're, um, briefed up, packed up, have all their gear, and they're ready to roll, th- and sitting there waiting for four days, that is entirely different than an FBI agent on your t- task force, probably a fugitive task force, so they're not ev- he's not an evidence guy.

He might be, you know, like I was an evidence person, and I worked criminal matters my whole career, so there is that.

I know it went to Quantico at one point, but I think they also use other private labs that specialize in certain different techniques, right?

And maybe if, if-

And if they're not talking to each other, then those agents, uh, the FBI knew that those agents were there, and the only thing, th- the only hiccup could have been they said, "Start at the northwest corner and go, you know, north from there," and they went to the northeast corner or something.

But the Bureau knew where these people, where these agents probably were.

So that could be a breakdown in communication.

That could be a, a really good example of how bad that breakdown was because if you're sitting in a command post, we're all sitting next to each other.

We have, we have tables set up.

So there's this thing called ICS, which is Incident Command Systems, and, and how we work them and everything.

What did you think about it? I mean, um...

Like, at this stage you wouldn't be starting to get frustrated, or would you?

Yeah, we're frustrated, but we're, we're a rare breed in that we have to be able to move dynamically.

We have to be able to just jump into a fluid situation.

We're used to going towards things that everyone else is running away from.

So we're, we're ...

It's just this strange dichotomy or trichotomy of, um, the way we handle different situations.

But the one thing we know, and we learn it from all the people before us and the, the experienced people when we're brand-new, from that time, you learn just be patient.

It seems like in some, I just think about, like, in my reporting world, sometimes when it's just me and a producer really working on something, it's better than 10 people all over the place.

And also, wouldn't you have just called her to say, "Have you heard from her?" H- like, it is very strange, the more I think about it, that Annie Guthrie did not call Savannah Guthrie for hours, apparently, un- after she knew that something had gone very, very wrong with the mother.

She was probably just, y- you know...

I, I mean, she's gonna say, Annie's gonna say that she was trying to figure it out and that she and Tomaso were.

But to your point, it, you know, I would absolutely...

One of my first phone calls would be, like, to one of my sisters, "Hey, get on the phone and call these three hospitals.

I'll have Eileen call the other three hospitals." And, you know...

Or, or, "Divvy up these hospital- nearby hospitals between the two of you.

So is it time to completely move on from Annie and Tomas, Maureen? What do you think?

Shouldn't the instinct be, as soft a heart as you may have, that everyone is a suspect until you have a suspect in custody?

Yes.

So much of law enforcement goes against, um, what you would do in a normal situation as a, you know, member of the public.

Y- we have to ask real hard questions.

We have to m- make it as comfortable as possible and, um, and then there are times where it has to go to a totally different level where you don't care how uncomfortable someone is.

However, in a situation like this, I would absolutely agree with Fitz.

I would also say that if, if we were taking this case over today, uh, you know, they already gave up the crime scene so early, but my focus would've been on the house.

Thoughts on that, Maureen? On either one of those points?

Mm

... little handheld radios or something.

So th- they, they looked at that.

They found out who those people were.

They could've dispatched agents to those houses last night at midnight for all we know.

And they could have followed their phones wherever they went, uh, all the way to a, to a, um, a, a, an investigative end, so to speak.

So they, you know, they could've done a lot of work last night and, and, you know, it wouldn't be the first time a police officer or an FBI agent showed up at your door in the middle of the night because they probably wanted to really hammer this down.

"I asked Pima County Sheriff's Department today and just received this response, quote, 'All we can say at this time, the vehicle is still part of the investigation.'" WTF, Maureen?

That doesn't, that doesn't sound the same to me as all of the family members have been ruled out as suspects from day one.

No, it doesn't, and he acts as if we're all being unreasonable for even questioning whether or not, uh, uh, Nancy or, um, Annie and her husband are involved, when, as I've said numerous times, and I...

You know, all of us on this, on this panel here, we've done a number of rollback w- warrants to different locations, but I've never done six on one location.

I mean, we're just following...

We're the ones following the facts.

When law enforcement shows up at a house over and over and over and seizes a vehicle, [scoffs] it, you know...

And then the, the one, uh, her husband, Tomaso's, been completely out of pocket.

Go ahead, Maureen.

Maureen, I'll start with you.

First and foremost, we can expect the FBI's ERT team to be showing up at that location to conduct a comprehensive search.

I think we can all agree on that.

Secondly, if he had...

I, I, I agree, those jeans are looser than in, in the videos we have of the actual offender on Nancy's front porch.

Let's call him the Gunslinger.

So the Gunslinger had on tighter jeans, and he could have had, he could have had those skinny jeans on over these pants.

D- do you have any thoughts on whether that makes it more or less likely? Like, uh, sh- should I have the opposite analysis? No, that's got to be him scouting it out in advance, because post-crime, we know this person, whoever it was, had Nancy.

So you tell me why law enforcement was flooding the field around Annie Guthrie's home last night.

I've said it before.

I've done a lot of rollback warrants on locations.

I have never, ever even heard of anyone going back four or five times.

I believe this is the fifth time last night.

It, it's got to do with new information coming in, and the good sign, the good part of this, of them going back there, is they obviously are receiving more information that they feel is actionable, and you have to...

You know, we have to look into it.

Why?

What does that mean to you, Maureen?

That means that, um, um, stuff that...

For example, when you, uh, get that alert on your phone that says, um, "We've detected someone in your- at your home," or something, even if you don't have a subscription, they, the company should have a thumbnail of that, of, of those images, and th- they should be able to get them.

It was really surprising when I heard that they didn't have the, um, any images, because I have a guy on my team that is a world-class expert, I mean, scary, he's so good, and he told me that i- he's shocked that they weren't able to do that.

So my guess is the FBI was able to do this, because this is, this is rather, um, um, sophisticated.

But so they have to store that type of a, um, um, of a image when they put it out as a thumbnail.

So if nothing else, it's on their system, not on Nancy's, if that makes any sense.

The odds of him having touched nothing are slim.