FBI Director Kash Patel has slammed the sheriff’s department leading the investigation into the abduction of Nancy Guthrie.
Patel did not hold back as he called out the Pima County Sheriff’s Department for locking out federal investigators during the first few and crucial days of the search.
Patel claimed Sheriff Chris Nanos turned down help from the feds in an interview with Sean Hannity released on Tuesday.
Nanos has previously been accused of lying on his resume and hit with a $1million lawsuit in March from an inmate claiming negligence.
The FBI director said the sheriff’s department tried to keep the FBI out of the investigation, which has since spanned over three months as Today show co-host Savannah Guthrie’s 84-year-old mother still remains missing.
Guthrie was last seen by her daughter Annie Guthrie and Annie’s husband Tommaso Cioni, who have been ruled out as suspects after they dropped her off at her Arizona home on the night of January 31.
“The first 48 hours of anyone’s disappearance are the most critical,” Patel said.
“Here’s how these cases work: it is a state matter, it’s a state and local law enforcement matter. What we, the FBI do is say, ‘Hey, we’re here to help. What do you need? What can we do?”
Patel said the FBI was kept out of the investigation for four days.
He said as soon as the FBI got involved, they were able to obtain the security cam footage that gave officials its first big break in the case, a suspect captured outside of Guthrie’s home.
A masked man was seen bashing her doorbell camera and ruffling Guthrie’s plants right before she was taken.
“That’s why you have that image, because the FBI worked with Google to put that image out,” Patel said.
The top law enforcement officials went on to suggest the FBI could’ve obtained more data or got the photo days before if they were able to get involved in the case sooner.
Hannity asked Patel why the Pima County Sheriff’s Department sent off the DNA evidence found outside Guthrie’s home to a lab in Florida and not straight to the FBI.
“We were saying, ‘We’ll process it.’ I launched hundreds of agents and intel staff to Phoenix and Tucson just for this case, just to be on standby, just to do the canvassing and we said we’ll take the DNA,” Patel said.
“Again, it’s a state and local matter so it’s their call on where to send the DNA.”
Patel said he had an aircraft on the ground ready to ship off the evidence to Quantico immediately.
“What we can do is continue to offer support. We would have analyzed it in within days and maybe gotten better information or more information. Our lab’s just better than any other private lab out there.
“And we didn’t get a chance to do that. I understand everybody’s frustration.”
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department has come under fire several times since the investigation into Guthrie’s abduction began, with some claiming they botched the search.
One whistleblower recently told NewsNation, “From what I understand, that the people that were there on the scene were not tenured homicide detectives.”
“They didn’t have a lot of experience in homicide at that point, to include the supervisor who, from my understanding, never investigated a homicide before being installed as the supervisor for the homicide unit,” the source said.
The sheriff’s department recently asked again for anyone with information pertaining to the case come forward.
Officials told The U.S. Sun on Friday that the search for Guthrie remains “active and ongoing.”
The request for information came days after the private lab in Florida shipped off the DNA samples to the FBI following a retired agent sharing his thoughts that the blood pattern found outside Guthrie’s porch suggested there was a single abductor.
Officials had found a glove with a DNA profile at the scene after discovering a trail of blood and the back door of her home propped open.
The FBI previously received a hair sample from the scene 11 weeks into the investigation.
However, experts have said it could take weeks or even months to get any information from the sample.
Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/16318983/nancy-guthrie-sheriff-blew-case-slams-kash-patel/
