LEILA FADEL, HOST:
For more on this investigation, we're joined by Katherine Schweit. She's a former FBI agent. She once worked on a similar case involving the disappearance of a woman in her 80s in the middle of the night. Good morning, Katherine, and thank you for being on the program.
KATHERINE SCHWEIT: Oh, good morning. I wish I was here under different circumstances.
FADEL: Yeah, it's a really tough story. It's been now more than a week since Nancy Guthrie was last seen. Based on your experience, how big of a factor is time in cases like this?
SCHWEIT: Well, time is the most critical factor. You know, every moment that goes by, every day that goes by, it's harder to keep - if there is, in fact, this is a true kidnapping, it's harder to keep the person you abduct alive. It's harder to take care of them and not be found out and discovered. And for the family, it's harder every day. Every minute seems like a year. And for the investigators, they're running every lead, and you're running again, and you're checking again, and you're rethinking what you did, and maybe I should have done this or maybe I should have done that. So time is just really so critical.
FADEL: Now, Katherine, there are all these ransom notes. How does law enforcement evaluate the authenticity of a ransom note?
SCHWEIT: Well, there's kind of two factors, I think, to it. One is that part of it is the - as you said, the law enforcement validates it. And I just want to - I want to put on top of that the layer of the family makes the decisions about ransom. The family makes the contribution. You know, the government doesn't put up ransom. So if the family chooses to do something, the best that law enforcement can do, the best that we do in the FBI is provide the best guidance we can. So with that in mind as the overlay, I think then you look at how do you validate whether or not somebody is making - is trying to scam you, which there's already been a person who's been arrested because they were trying to communicate with the family and scam them out of money.
And with the idea that there's requests coming in, but none of them apparently are coming into the family, at least as far as we know, they're all third party. It's very difficult to determine whether or not these are just people spoofing the family, trying to get money. And you have to look to what kind of information you have, and that's where I think we get to that proof of life discussion because the family investigators traditionally always get some sort of indication from a kidnapper that they, in fact, are the right target.
FADEL: Does law enforcement coordinate public statements with the family, typically?
SCHWEIT: Yes. Yes. I mean, certainly, I'm not standing on the inside working on this, but every situation where you have this, you want - the family wants that coordination. They want to know what are the words that we can say that will best encourage the abductor to assist us and not discourage them or make them fearful and run away. And so I think that all the language that the Guthries are using is language that has been vetted through law enforcement.
FADEL: As I mentioned earlier, you had a similar case more than 20 years ago in Wisconsin. I mean, a lot has changed since then, including the AI factor, when you could manufacture something to look real. But what did you learn then that could be applied to this case?
SCHWEIT: Yeah. And I think the point about the AI factor is, you know, 25, 20 years ago, we were dealing with, you know, literally somebody who was a kidnapper who was running into an internet cafe, which is where they used to have computers you could rent for 10 minutes. And they would send an email message. And also the initial conduct was a phone call. So whether it was 20 years ago today or now, it's really about, are you getting communication back and forth? And I think the frustrating part for law enforcement and the Guthries is they're not getting communication back and forth now. But back then, we never gave up hope. And five days later, we found Hattie Brown alive. So I think that that's the important message right now is don't give up hope.
FADEL: That's former FBI agent Katherine Schweit. Thank you for your time.
SCHWEIT: Thank you.
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