However, it was announced this week DNA on the glove did not fit with that of an unknown male DNA found at Guthrie’s home. Nor did the DNA from either return a hit in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), the FBI’s national DNA database of convicted offenders and arrestees.
Sheriffs also said this week all of Guthrie’s family have been cleared of any involvement in her kidnap.
Ransom notes Multiple notes have been delivered to news outlets. At least two notes have asked for a ransom to be paid in two different cryptocurrencies to different crypto wallets.
However, the notes provided no proof of life and their deadlines have come and gone, making many doubt their authenticity.
Experts told The Post that asking for crypto is an amateur move, as it’s easily traceable.
Email addresses of the senders are also unlikely to yield much.
William Odom, a digital forensics expert formerly with the FBI, said smart criminals don’t use Gmail or Yahoo, for example, but communicate by “burner email” accounts.
“They’re impossible to trace back because there’s no way to tell where the source is coming from,” Odom told The Post. “It would look like different email addresses coming through every time.”
Those free, disposable email addresses are usually hosted on servers outside the US —in places like Montenegro and Germany, Odom said.
Video evidence It took 10 days to recover crucial footage from Guthrie’s Google Nest doorbell camera of a masked, armed man — about 5’9″ to 5’10” tall, average build, wearing gloves and an Ozark Trail backpack — tampering with the device in the early morning of her disappearance.
The backpack is sold exclusively at Walmart, which is now cooperating with authorities to try to pinpoint the sale.
It took a team of digital forensics investigators from the FBI, alongside cooperation from Google, to get the doorbell footage, as Guthrie did not subscribe to a storage service. If the assailant hadn’t crushed the camera, the video would have been written over.
That’s exactly what happened with the other Nest cameras in her home. Experts told The Post more video could be coming, but investigators are sifting through mountains of information.
“It’s the equivalent of a digital landfill at that point, so they’ve got to dig through that. It’s not necessarily that they will find where all of this [data] is. It’s going to take time to figure it out,” Odom said.
Pacemaker The Pima Sheriff Department’s aviation unit launch was delayed due to unstaffed crew, leaving vast airspace unsearched in the critical early hours of the investigation.
Now, cops are deploying a new tech: flying over the Tucson desert with a Bluetooth signal detector, called a “signal sniffer,” in an attempt to locate Guthrie’s pacemaker, which stopped communicating with her iPhone at 2:28 a.m. on Feb 1.
Using a helicopter to fly in a low, slow, grid pattern, the sheriff is deploying advanced FBI technology to try and pick up a ping from Guthrie’s heart device. But the chopper will have to get very close to catch a signal—within 800 feet, the device’s inventor told CBS News, adding it will still work if she is deceased.
However, the whole project attracted President Trump’s ire: “I didn’t like when they talked about going after the pacemaker before they even started going after it,” he told reporters Thursday.
Arrests No arrest has been made in the case so far. Felon Luke Daley, 37, and his 77-year-old mom were detained by police for questioning on Feb. 13 after FBI agents and a SWAT team swarmed their home, two miles from the crime scene, but he was later cleared and let go.
Another man, Carlos Palazuelos, was also briefly detained on Feb. 11. He was stopped by police as he drove toward the US border. However, the delivery driver was also let go after a short time.
Mexico The motive for the apparent kidnapping isn’t even clear. Officials have ruled out a burglary gone wrong, and Nanos has said Guthrie could have been snatched as “revenge for something” but little else has been made public.
Social media users have speculated the kidnapping may be linked to Mexico’s notoriously ruthless drug cartels — citing a profit motive and Tucson’s proximity to the border.
Unnamed sources told TMZ the FBI had been in contact with Mexican officials about the case, but Border Patrol Officer and expert on Mexican security, Leon Boyer, told The Post he doesn’t think that if she had been taken there, cartels would be involved.
“[Cartels] are going to target people in Mexico. They’re not targeting people in the US. Why would they bring attention to themselves?” he questioned, adding cartel kidnapping schemes usually relate to local extortion plots and business interests.
Suspect pool Authorities don’t give away certain key information if it could harm their investigation, but an Arizona gun store owner says the FBI recently came to him with a list of approximately 18 to 24 individuals with photos, asking if he had sold them a weapon. He said he agreed to help out of concern for Guthrie’s family.
However, Sheriff Nanos has disputed reports of the suspect pool being narrowed.
“We haven’t narrowed it down to anything other than we have pieces of evidence,” he said on Tuesday.
A reward for information leading to Guthrie’s return now stands at $202,000.
