Today co-anchor Savannah Guthrie‘s mom, Nancy Guthrie, is still missing more than 10 weeks after the abduction from her Tucson, Ariz., home—and a forensic researcher just shared new insight into the perpetrator’s profile.
During an April 15 episode of Brian Entin Investigates, the NewsNation senior national correspondent sat down with Dr. Gary Brucato, a clinical psychologist specializing in criminal behavioral patterns.
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Brucato ruled out that the perpetrator was sexually motivated due to Nancy’s age, as sexual crimes involving someone breaking, entering, and targeting an elderly person are “profoundly rare.”
“When a person is breaking into a home to do that, generally it’s a serial offense that somebody is going to keep doing over time and involves a paraphilic behavior, meaning the person is kind of drawn to a certain inappropriate group sexually.”
Additionally, Brucato ruled out robbery, as nothing was taken except for Nancy.
“If you’re abducting somebody with the intention of putting them up for ransom, ransoms, statistically, generally, are requested within 24 to 48 hours and resolved in a week,” he pointed out. “There’s proof of life because you want the victim out of your hands ASAP to not incriminate yourself as much as possible.”
“Let’s say this is actually a homicide,” Brucato added, pointing out that up to 92% of of people who are killed in the U.S. know their killer in some way.
“This person who did this probably has some passing relationship, at least, with this victim,” he speculated. “And that matches some of the comfort level, potentially spending quite a lot of time in the house.”
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“If you take all of that information, you put it alongside what we’re glimpsing on the camera, what I was very struck by… a lot of what we’re seeing is somebody who is way too cool under pressure,” Brucato continued. “Not even flinching under pressure. And that kind of person, when we see that, we start thinking about a person who probably has some psychopathic character structure.”
He pointed out that the individual likely has a history of inappropriate behavior that people would remember and/or criminal behavior. Additionally, the forensic expert said that the perpetrator was likely local due to his comfort level.
In conclusion, Brucato profiled Nancy’s abductor/abductors as “probably at least one male, probably a group of people,” adding that they were “probably financially driven.” He also said it was either an abduction gone wrong or an outright homicide, with the perpetrators likely being local and having a passing connection to Nancy.
Nancy was last seen at her Tucson home on the evening of Jan. 31, with the Pima County Sheriff’s Department and the FBI embarking on the search on Feb. 1. As of writing, no suspect has been named.
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