Speaking with Jack Posobiec on Human Events Daily on Friday, former Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb revealed that in cases such as the ongoing case of Nancy Guthrie, whom authorities believe was abducted, the vast majority of the time the person responsible is someone familiar to the victim.
Speaking on how the case has unfolded, Lamb said, "this is a very high-profile case because of whose mom she is, and there’s a lot of cases like this that happen, and oftentimes the people don’t have the name recognition, and those cases go unknown to the community."
He noted a case from when he first became sheriff that "turned out to be a catfish thing." The victim was unfortunately found deceased, but the person responsible is facing life in prison plus additional years. "So I’ve seen it firsthand, and we’ve been involved in some of these other cases, but this is a really high-profile case."
Posobiec noted that the house where authorities say 84-year-old Guthrie, the mother of Today host Savannah Guthrie, was abducted from "is kind of on the outskirts. This is not the center of town. This is a more, you know, more specific area. This isn’t something where you’re just sort of driving down the street and you see the house."
He noted hoax ransom notes and how people have pointed towards family members in the case, asking Lamb, "how do you parse that out when it seems like there’s so much incoming all at once?"
Lamb said that with the nationwide attention the case is receiving, "what we have to do when we take a case like this is we have to remove the feelings of it. I mean, obviously we feel for the family in that sense, but we also have to, we can't let it cloud our judgment or cloud the evidence."
"And honestly, in these cases, 90% or more, I don't know what the exact number,I know it's over 90%, end up being somebody that's familiar to the person, or maybe even sometimes family. And so what you're going to look for is, you're going to look for who had the means, who had the opportunity, and also who had the motive, and the family oftentimes falls within those three the most."
He said "you have to cast a wide net, because you don't want to lose her either you want to be able to catch anybody that might be trying to get out of town. So you cast a wide net. But honestly, you're going to really focus in and hone in until you can clear them. You've got to look at the people that have the means and the opportunity, and unfortunately, that falls to the family most often."
