Blood spatter found on Nancy Guthrie’s front porch indicates that she was still alive when a lone abductor forced her out of her home in the Catalina Foothills of Tucson.
A retired FBI profiler believes that the masked suspect made several mistakes that will ultimately lead to his identification.
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“We also know at least that she was alive at that time,” Jim Clemente, who spent 22 years in the bureau, told Fox News Digital.
His analysis is based on the blood discovered on Nancy Guthrie’s front porch, which revealed a concentration of round droplets near the front door, leading to a thinning trail toward her driveway.
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“She must have aspirated and then coughed up blood with her face very close to the ground, and I don’t believe that would have happened had two people been carrying her at that point,” he told the outlet.
Nancy, the 84-year-old mother of “Today” show co-host Savannah Guthrie, is believed to have been kidnapped from her home around 2:30 a.m. on Feb. 1.
Investigators initially had few leads in the case until the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Google recovered footage from her Nest doorbell camera.
The footage showed a masked man wearing gloves and a holstered pistol approaching her front door the night she disappeared.
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He is described as being above average in height and build. He was wearing a black Ozark Trail backpack, long sleeves, gloves, and a ski mask. He remains unidentified nearly 100 days later.
That said, the video is filled with clues, according to Clemente.
Although investigators believe the suspect may have surveilled the property beforehand, he ultimately attempted to obstruct the Nest camera by using nearby foliage to block the lens and may have inadvertently left behind facial hair fibers through openings in his ski mask, according to the former FBI profiler.
“In the process of doing that, I believe he revealed what looked like a tattoo on his wrist, which would not have been revealed had he adequately prepared for that camera being there,” he said.
“So it tells me that he is not a sophisticated offender. He was sort of bumbling his way through this, and he made other mistakes, and I believe those mistakes will directly lead to his capture,” he added.
While investigators have kept details about the interior of the home close, some have leaked, and they tell a story, Clemente said.
“I believe that what it means is he threatened her with his gun when he was at her bedside,” he told Fox News Digital. “He got her to come down, and at the front door is where she realized he’s going to take me, and this is very dangerous, and I should fight. And she did.”
The doorbell video does not show Guthrie being taken from her home, but there was clearly visible blood on her stone walkway. When deputies arrived the next morning, the camera was missing.
However, the fact that the FBI was able to recover video footage anyway likely surprised the kidnapper, according to Clemente.
He suggested that someone close to the kidnapper should have been able to notice the warning signs.
“Because of all the mistakes this guy made, because of his ineptness and non-professional behavior in this, I believe that he exhibited a great degree of stress when the images were first released,” Clemente said.
“Anybody around him should have noticed that change in behavior and potentially be able to identify him because of that,” he told the news outlet.
Investigators also recovered an unidentified hair sample from the home.
The sheriff’s department initially submitted the evidence to a private laboratory in Florida, which later forwarded it to the Federal Bureau of Investigation after 11 weeks for more advanced forensic analysis.