LEILA FADEL, HOST:
For more on this case, I'm joined now by Wally Zeins. He's a retired NYPD detective sergeant. He spent 22 years supervising the department's hostage negotiation team. Good morning, and welcome to the program.
WALLY ZEINS: Thank you. Good morning to everyone out there, and thank you for having me on.
FADEL: Thank you for being here. Wally, I want to start with that heartbreaking video of these three siblings talking about their mom, begging for her release. How useful is it for the families to directly engage with the kidnappers this way?
ZEINS: Well, the most important thing out of that is using the video as a platform to raise awareness and to seek help from the public and to get - and to generate leads. That's the most important thing. They want to generate leads. They want to show how that particular video is hurting - how empathy is needed in this investigation. And it's important because that will let the community to see it or may raise attention to people out there who might have seen something throughout this investigation and also will bring in more leads to the investigative teams that are checking this case.
FADEL: We just heard investigators were taking items from Nancy Guthrie's home yesterday. What might they be analyzing now or seeing now that they didn't the first time they went in?
ZEINS: Well, keep in mind, whenever we have such a crime scene like that - and that's a big crime scene, not only internally at the house, but it's a big crime scene outside - it's not uncommon to go back to the scene of the incident and look for certain other areas within the crime scene that they might have missed. And also, they're also taking from tips that they might have received. And someone might have said on the left-hand side of the dresser, there was something, and they might want to go back and do some more fingerprinting. They might want to go back and look for something and - for instance, those letters that were sent to the TMX (ph) and also to the local TV station.
FADEL: The ransom notes.
ZEINS: Yes, the alleged ransom notes. They also might have had things that the public doesn't know but only the investigators know, and they might be verifying that to see if there's accuracy in that particular type of evidence that they're looking for. Also, they're expanding. I don't know if you've realized this, but the other day, there was a helicopter flying over the residency of Nancy Guthrie's home. And that's something - they were plotting out more of an investigative search, and we call that a grid search. A grid search is where you line up a lot of members of the investigative team, and usually they take people out of the police academy or any of the law enforcement academies. And they line up in a row, and they take one step at a time, and they look to see if they find anything that's unusual on the ground, whether it be a boot print, whether it be a cigarette butt, whether it be anything that doesn't belong in that particular area, or they have information what they're looking for. And once they find something of that nature, they'll then take it, bag it and put it in as evidence and continue the investigation. It's like a puzzle. Every little piece counts. Every little piece that they put together will come to some sort of area that will help them go further in the investigation.
Now, they're also, you know, looking at the family, too. That's one of the first things that - you know, that come into play when you're doing an investigation like this. You look into the family, the siblings. You look into the son-in-laws. You look into everyone, the past relationship. And another area they look into is, for example, say they had a nurse's aide or someone who's been with them for years. They'll look into that person also, and the family may say, oh, no, they're great. We've known them for years, and they're super honest. But, you know, when they go home, they may be talking to family and friends, and some of those friends may be miscreants. And maybe, you know, somewhere along the line, they'll have to look into that.
We do know that the license plate readers, which they do hundreds and hundreds of cars, so far has come back with negative results. And also, the ATMs. They check the cameras of all the ATMs in the area. So they - you know, they have to discount. When they say, for example, with the ransom notes, and they say, for example, they want this or they want that, you got to use every investigative tool you have to disprove it. And if you disprove it, you know you're going to another area. Another thing that's important is the family is getting ready with - should there be - they're calling out to the kidnappers that we want to talk to you.
FADEL: We'll have to leave it there, unfortunately. Thank you so much for your time. Wally Zeins is a retired NYPD detective sergeant and hostage negotiator.
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