From Daily Mail: Savannah Guthrie’s most recent video appealing for information about her missing mother Nancy marks a ‘significant strategic pivot’ appealing to the greed and guilt of her mother’s captors or killers.
Guthrie posted a video to her Instagram account Tuesday morning – marking her first public communication in nine days and the 24th day since her 84-year-old mom’s disappearance.
In it, the visibly emotional Today show host addressed whoever has taken her mother telling them: ‘We need to know where she is, we need her to come home.’
And, for the first time, she acknowledged this could now be an exercise in recovering her mother’s body rather than returning her home alive saying, ‘We need to know where she is,’ and stating that, if Nancy is dead, ‘we accept it.’
‘We also know that she may be lost. She may already be gone,’ she said.
A former FBI special agent and crisis negotiator, Jason Pack, dissected Savannah’s language in the video.
“We believe in the essential goodness of every human being, it is never too late,” Savannah said.
Pack says, “That is a theologically grounded appeal to conscience, and it is one of the most powerful tools in a negotiator’s kit. When someone is holding a secret that heavy, the belief that redemption is still possible is sometimes the only thing that moves them. The family’s visible, public faith is not incidental to this case. It is a strategic asset.”
The family is also offering an increased reward of up to $1 million for the recovery of Nancy Guthrie.
Pack says that upping the ante at this stage serves a dual purpose. It reignites flagging public interest and may sow discord between any accomplices.
“A million-dollar announcement generates a new news cycle and sends people back to their phones scrolling through memories of anything unusual they saw in the Catalina Foothills in January,” he said. “It applies psychological pressure on any accomplices. Ransom schemes involving multiple people are inherently unstable.
“The more time passes, the more financial disparity between holding out and collecting $1 million starts eating at the weakest link.
“And, whether she is alive or dead, someone knows something. That is the message. Bottom line.”
Retired homicide detective Chris McDonough, who now works with the Cold Case Foundation, said the possible multiple visits by the perpetrator is a major clue.
“This shows he had an uptick in behavior as he came back the second time with a weapon and a backpack, containing we don’t know what,” he said. “He came back prepared – and prepared to use deadly force. So his thinking changed.
“The backpack and gun could indicate the plan has changed and he is now coming prepared to escalate the event.”
The suspect may have planned to abduct Nancy the first night but was deterred by security cameras or was testing the waters before executing the real thing.
Whatever his intentions were, McDonoug strongly believes this was a “targeted” and that Nancy crossed paths with her abductor in advance.
“This guy was wearing a mask. He didn’t want to be identified – not only by the public but also by Nancy,” he explained. “We don’t know if Nancy got alerts on her phone when someone was at her door. But she could have watched the footage from the first time and seen the guy. He didn’t want her to see his face.”
She likely would have recognized him, McDonough believes.
“She was a targeted victim and the perpetrator had an association at some point with her house or the victim.”
Pack concurred.
“That’s a pattern. And a pattern tells investigators this wasn’t impulsive. This took planning,’ he said.
“When you see someone appearing in video at different locations, different timeframes, potentially different phases of the same criminal act, investigators immediately begin asking: what was the purpose of each appearance? Was the first video a surveillance run, checking the environment, checking the exits?
“And that matters significantly from a legal standpoint, because premeditation and planning elevate the severity of what investigators are looking at.”
Read more at Daily Mail
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