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True Crime Today | Daily True Crime News & Interviews

Why Is The FBI Now The Only Voice Talking To The Guthries?

True Crime Today | Daily True Crime News & Interviews

Tony Brueski

News, News Commentary, True Crime

4.2612 Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2026

⏱️ 11 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When the lead sheriff in a high-profile case stops talking to the victim's family more than 100 days in, something has shifted. In the Nancy Guthrie investigation, that shift just got confirmed on the record.

Sheriff Chris Nanos told People magazine he is no longer personally communicating with Nancy's family. Savannah Guthrie and her siblings are now reached only through the FBI. He framed the change as something that "works both ways." Whether anyone in the family agrees with that characterization is a different question entirely.

Tony Brueski brings in retired FBI Special Agent Jennifer Coffindaffer to read what this actually means. With 28 years of Bureau experience across SWAT, organized crime, and complex investigations, Jennifer knows what these handoffs typically look like. Some are routine. Some are protective. Some signal that something deeper has fractured.

She breaks down which category this one belongs to. She talks about what kind of family-investigator dynamic was operating in the early weeks of the case, what changed, and what indicators in Sheriff Nanos's public conduct line up with that change. She also tackles the awkward question of who initiated the cut-off — and why neither side seems eager to say.

The Guthrie family is still offering a $1 million reward. They've been publicly cleared. They are doing the painful, public-facing work of trying to bring Nancy home. Losing direct access to the official running the investigation isn't a small administrative update. It's a meaningful signal about where the case actually stands.

Jennifer reads that signal honestly. She also addresses what should give the family — and the public — actual hope at this stage, and what shouldn't.

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This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.

#NancyGuthrie #SavannahGuthrie #FBI #ChrisNanos #PimaCountySheriff #JenniferCoffindaffer #TrueCrimeToday #TucsonMissing #MissingPersons #JusticeForNancy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brewski and Robin Dree.

0:08.8

Now more than 100 days after Nancy Guthrie was abducted from her Tucson home, Pima County Sheriff, Chris Nettos made a striking admission recently.

0:18.7

He is no longer communicating directly with the victim's family.

0:24.4

What does that mean for this? There's a lot of ways to read that. A lot of people have been

0:29.9

talking about it online and over on Break the Case with Jennifer Coffendaffer. Who happens to be

0:36.8

with us today?

0:52.0

I'm curious, Jen, as we begin discussing all this and this development of Nanos no longer in direct communication with the Guthrie family, including Savannah and her siblings.

0:56.4

What exactly does that mean? I know you've been tweeting a lot about it in this last week.

0:59.7

Well, you know, it's interesting, Tony,

1:01.3

because these are spontaneous utterances

1:04.7

that Sheriff Nanos is so well known for.

1:09.3

And I really think he wishes he could just rewind and either not address that

1:14.1

question or address it more opaque. But basically, to me, that's just saying they don't want to

1:22.7

talk to him because I've never been in a situation ever where the family doesn't want to talk to you or

1:29.3

you don't have the lines of communication. And remember, he does say they're speaking with the FBI.

1:34.9

So it says a lot. Yeah. And you know me, like always, I just looked up the stat on this. So this

1:41.2

only happens where the sheriff breaks contact with the victim's family, like only 15 15, 20% of the time max. I mean, it's kind of like that office, if anyone ever watches the office, the sitcom, where they give Michael Scott a practice run first with answering a phone and it's fake, and then he hangs up and he starts again, and it's better the second time. I think that's Nanos incarnate. He really needs a do over on everything he says. He needs a mute button is what he needs. And he needs to he needs to exercise the mute button and then take a second before things come out of his mouth. Some people just don't really have that very well. I feel like he's one of them where it's like maybe well intentioned but let's let's's learn how to message more effectively. You think that'd be the self-awareness aspect of it. He's been able to hide, I think, behind a lot of successes in the past by his department, I think. And also like Jen always says, is that you know, you always go down to the people on the ground doing the gritty hard work, and he's got some

2:34.4

decent people, at least in the past he has. But in this one, no, he is way as an outlier by

2:39.8

breaking comms with the victim's family. He had said it works both ways. Okay, I guess that, you know,

2:47.7

that makes sense if the family doesn't want to speak with him.

2:51.4

You know, we're getting into the territory of conjecture and opinion here, but why do you, why?

2:56.6

I mean, maybe I have some ideas, but I'm curious what yours are, Jen.

...

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