Surrender or Get Caught—The Legal Fork Facing Nancy Guthrie's Abductor
True Crime Today | Daily True Crime News & Interviews
Tony Brueski
4.2 • 612 Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2026
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Whoever is responsible for Nancy Guthrie's disappearance is sitting on a decision that will shape the rest of their life.
The evidence released so far doesn't suggest a mastermind. It suggests someone who cased the house, came back, and got surprised by a doorbell camera they didn't know existed. Someone who improvised with plants from a pot to cover the lens. Someone who may not have intended for an 84-year-old woman to die—but is now three and a half weeks into hiding the result.
Eric Faddis was a felony prosecutor. Now he's a criminal defense attorney. He's seen what happens on both sides when cases like this finally land in a courtroom.
Arizona's felony murder statute doesn't require intent to kill. If Nancy Guthrie died during a burglary, that's a murder charge. Add body concealment, evidence tampering, and weeks of flight, and the legal exposure is already catastrophic.
But there's still a fork in the road.
Faddis explains what walking into a police station with a lawyer and the location of the body actually buys—versus getting caught cold through genetic genealogy or a tip. One scenario gives the defense leverage for negotiation. The other lets prosecutors paint a portrait of someone who hid, lied, and let a family suffer while they calculated their odds.
The hardest part: without the body, neither side can prove how Nancy died. The defense can't establish it was accidental. Prosecutors can't establish it wasn't. And the person who created that evidentiary black hole is the one who hid her.
Faddis gives the honest answer on what the range of outcomes looks like now—and how fast that range is narrowing.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Hidden Killers with Tony Brewski. Here now, Tony Bruske. |
| 0:06.1 | Let's talk about the prosecution in the case of Corey Richens. Prosecutor Brad Bloodworth |
| 0:11.5 | opened by telling juries that Corey Richens murdered her husband for his money and a fresh start at life. |
| 0:19.3 | The prosecution's case is built on layers. Four and a half |
| 0:22.0 | million in debt fraudulently obtained life insurance policy. A Caribbean vacation booked months |
| 0:27.3 | in advance with her boyfriend. And text messages expressing love to that boyfriend the same night |
| 0:33.4 | Eric died. They've shown the jury body camera footage of the morning Eric was found, presented |
| 0:38.9 | testimony from his devastated family, and laid out a timeline suggesting premeditation, |
| 0:43.8 | going back to an alleged Valentine's Day poisoning attempt. Eric Fattis, defense attorney, |
| 0:48.7 | drawing on his own prosecutorial background, is with us to help analyze whether this mountain |
| 0:53.8 | of circumstantial evidence can |
| 0:55.5 | carry a conviction and where the case might be vulnerable. Eric, welcome prosecutor Brad |
| 1:02.4 | Bloodworth told jurors that Eric Richon had several times a lethal amount of fentanyl in his system, |
| 1:08.8 | 15 nanograms per millimeter. And that, this level, proves intent, |
| 1:14.7 | not an accident. The medical examiner confirmed that this was a toxic dose. How does the |
| 1:20.6 | prosecution use dosage to quantify and to argue premeditation and is five times a lethal dose genuinely as dispositive as they're arguing here we are talking fentanyl and just the tip of a needle is enough to kill basically so we're talking five tips of needles again not a whole lot It's very easy to overdose and die from this. |
| 1:45.9 | What's your thoughts on that argument that they're bringing to the jury? |
| 1:49.3 | It is, and I think they're smart to sort of leverage that dosage. Every case is good facts and |
| 1:54.3 | bad facts, and that's a good fact for the prosecution. Because, you know, especially if defense |
| 1:58.6 | gets up there and says this was an accidental overdose, you know, usually accidental overdoses are, you know, one time the lethal amount, two times the lethal amount. Someone usually doesn't just take, you know, some monster amount of substance unless they were, unless it's a non-accidental overdose, |
| 2:18.1 | they were trying to commit suicide, which is another possibility. |
| 2:21.0 | But I think prosecution is going to argue that, hey, this dosage was something that was calculated. |
... |
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