Nancy Grace and Sean Hannity scrutinize the FBI’s handling of Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance, questioning why suspect Carlos Palazzo was released despite matching descriptions—mustache, goatee, deliveries to her Catalina Foothills home—and whether law enforcement has searched pharmacies within 100 miles for her needed blood thinners or heart meds. A $66K Bitcoin ransom demand via TMZ is dismissed as a scam, contrasting with earlier credible notes tied to Savannah Guthrie’s involvement. Hannity debunks pacemaker myths and proposes a $1.5M reward to shift focus from ransoms, exposing systemic failures in coordination and evidence retrieval that risk prolonging the case. [Automatically generated summary]
Hour two, Sean Hannity Show, toll-free at 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, I went over the latest developments.
If you're just joining us, FBI now conducting an extensive search in the foothills near Nancy Guthrie's house.
That is new today.
We have TMZ receiving a letter from someone claiming to be able to identify Nancy Guthrie's kidnapper.
Harvey Levin said, you know, we got a bizarre letter, an email from somebody who says that they know who the kidnapper is and that they've tried reaching Savannah's sister Annie and Savannah's brother to no avail.
And they said they want one Bitcoin sent to a Bitcoin address that we have confirmed is active.
It is bizarre.
You know, Bitcoin, last I checked, was at like $66,000.
It's at the low part, getting to the lower part of their cycle.
There's a whole cycle to that whole process, which I don't even want to talk about.
But an Arizona woman says police and the FBI raided her home.
Pima County ended up releasing the guy that they had detained last night.
I've been told by sources that they were very convinced this person was connected in some way to that.
Maybe they still are.
I don't know.
We'll find out over time.
But anyway, there's one person who I always want to hear from regarding this, and that is the one and only Nancy Grace.
And Nancy, great to have you back.
Boy, we got the breakthrough we wanted yesterday.
My hopes were high.
I'm going to be very blunt.
I probably woke up six, seven times last night just to check the news and see what was happening in the hopes that I might wake up and hear that they believe they've apprehended the person or persons responsible, and that didn't happen.
Same.
All of our hopes were dashed this morning when we realized that this guy, Carlos Palazzo, had been released, catch and released.
And it really got to me.
It really galled me when he's whining.
They held me against my will.
They didn't even read me my rights.
Well, that's because you weren't arrested.
Miranda rights are triggered when you are arrested.
Then he started whining that his wrist was swollen and he held up his wrist and it was not swollen.
It wasn't even red.
I mean, the whining.
That said, he'll probably go make a major TV movie about all he's endured in those two hours.
Think about what the Guthries are going through right now.
Now, the reason I believe he was pulled over, Palazzo made deliveries in Nancy Guthrie's area to her neighborhood, probably even to her home.
He had no recollection of her.
And he generally fit the description of the guy wearing the balaclava, the ski mask over his face.
So there's that.
That ended up being nothing.
The hostage unit was nearby, poised.
They thought maybe Nancy was nearby.
It was nothing.
Also, in addition to the searches around Nancy Guthrie's home right now, there are searches going on around Campbell, Cerrado Tulsa, Northridge, Estrada, the Catalina Foothills, along the roadway, Sean, along the roadway.
I've been watching them all afternoon, and they're about two, there's a lot of them, but they're in pairs, generally speaking, you know, 10, 12 feet apart.
And they're searching along the road.
And that leads me to the possibility of a tip that someone saw something thrown out of a vehicle.
Here's the good news.
There are no cadaver dogs.
That's good.
So they're looking.
That's really good news, actually.
Yes.
And I'm wondering, are they looking for a cell phone?
Are they looking, not hers, because hers is in the home.
Are they looking for that camera?
Are they looking for that weapon that the perp had hanging in a very bizarre way to the front, to the front, right over his crotch?
He looked right-hand dominant.
He did not look like he had carried a weapon before.
I don't know why he was carrying it that way.
It was dangling loosely.
But is that what they're looking for?
They're looking for an object.
So Campbell, Trota Tulsa, Northridge, Estrada, that's happening right now, as well as the searches in Nancy Guthrie's neighborhood in the Catalina Foothills.
Let me go back to the FBI director Kash Patel on my show last night.
You were on the show.
Harvey Levin was on the show.
This is him saying the FBI now has persons of interest in this case, which may explain a lot of the activity that you just laid out.
Director Patel, can I ask you just straight up, do you believe there are people of interest now?
Have we gotten to that point?
Are there potential suspects now out there?
Sean, without polluting the investigation, I will say we have made substantial progress in these last 36, 48 hours thanks to the technical capabilities of the FBI and our partnerships.
And I do believe we are looking at people who, as we say, are persons of interest.
But as you know, with any investigation, you are a person of interest until you're either eliminated or you're actually found to be the culprit or the culprits involved.
And that's the stage we're at right now.
Now, there's one little frustrating part that I'm going to spend more time, hopefully, after Nancy Guthrie is found and found alive.
I'm going to cling to that hope.
But I want to play for you, the Pima County Sheriff, because this is what he said early in the investigation.
2.12 a.m. software detects a person on a camera, but there's no video available.
They had no subscription.
That's what our analysis teams have told us.
The tech company that we sent that camera off to, yes, they've said they've run out of ways to recover any video.
Now, this infuriates me because I know that there was not a desire by local officials to coordinate and bring in and team up with the FBI, which has far more advanced investigative tools than any local police department or sheriff's department.
I would think they'd want all the help they can get in a case like this.
That part needs to be discussed a lot in more detail a lot later.
Absolutely.
And Sean, before I was a state violent crimes prosecutor in Fulton Superior Court, that's inner city Atlanta.
I was a fed for three years.
And I know the feds have far-ranging capabilities.
Yes, the feds bigfoot you.
They act like they know it all.
Guess why?
Because they do know it all.
I've been on both sides of that coin.
I get it.
But had they been brought in earlier, and that's woulda, coulda, shoulda.
Deal with that later.
Find Nancy now.
But clearly, the feds had the capability to get into that vast, vast bank of knowledge of Google, which has partnered with Nest.
Nancy Guthrie had a NEST surveillance system in her home, NannyCam, so to speak.
And they went through, I mean, think of it.
You remember, what's his name?
Indiana Jones and the lost art.
Remember at the end when the art was actually put in a box way down the end of a hallway at the end of a giant warehouse, never to be seen again.
All right.
That's what it's like times 10, the Google database.
And they got in there and they searched and searched.
Of all of that, they found Nancy Guthrie's door cam, the millions and millions of data points and they found those images.
Thank you lord, because to me that is a miracle and now we got something to go on right.
And as much as Paula Zuellos was flying and carrying on about his wrists last night, he bore a loose resemblance to the guy on the front porch.
He had the mustache.
He had similar eyes.
He had a goatee.
He had it all.
It fit.
And he delivered to that area.
So yes, pull him over and ask him questions.
And anybody that's double-guessing that is wrong.
Well, I mean, the other part is, I mean, any person with a heart, a conscience, and a soul would want to help.
And if for whatever reason they ever wanted to come question me, I'm going to sit and try to help them.
Instinctively, you want to do that.
Think about it.
Think about it, Sean, the rat.
We got a rat who wants to rat out the rat.
Hello, there's a $50,000 reward.
And you want to squeeze, if you really have information leading to the return of Nancy Guthrie and you want $66,000 in Bitcoin, really take the reward and give me something.
By the way, the reward's $50,000.
You know, there's a $16,000 difference.
Really?
You wouldn't just go right to the police.
You would have a demand for a single Bitcoin, which is bizarre.
What do you make of that letter that was received by TMZ?
For some reason, my instinct is it's BS.
I don't necessarily feel that way about the other ransom notes that Levin got, Kay Gunn got, K-O-L-D got.
I don't feel that way about them because Savannah Guthrie took them seriously.
And if she took them seriously and responded to them, that means law enforcement was taking them seriously.
There was something about them that had the indicia of reliability.
Not so with this.
This is, I don't know, I think it's somebody scamming for money.
Just like Kalella, the other dude.
Oh, oh, oh, one other thing.
They said this last person wanting the one Bitcoin, 66 grand, says, I tried to reach Annie.
I tried to reach Cameron.
Hello, again, Savannah Guthrie is on Insta with 1.
Whatever, 1.6 million followers.
I think you can reach her there.
So we didn't try very hard.
So, look, I don't want to get caught up, but maybe we did get our hopes up last night, and for good reason.
This was the big break.
It had taken 10 days to get there.
And now we're in day 11.
But we can't minimize how pivotal the retrieval of that video is because now we can cling to something and analyze something deeply.
And I would imagine with AI and facial recognition, I mean, we know a lot more than we knew the day before.
We know we can figure out the guy's height, his shoe size, different features that this individual has.
And maybe with reverse AI lighting, maybe someone would recognize these features.
Yeah, you know, that's a really good point you brought up last night about the reverse AI lighting because when I was looking at that before I joined you last night and it was so much more clear.
I was afraid I was seeing some type of an AI generated image and I didn't want to rely on it.
But it's really amazing how much more detail you can see.
And don't you know the feds are all over that, all over that.
And I'm just praying, especially the scheme as the Balaklav.
It's very unique and I think traceable.
I wonder if anybody's looked, and I know you think of every angle, if maybe somebody searched within that nine-hour radius.
Remember, they said if you pay the ransom, that Nancy would be returned within nine hours.
And then Harvey Levin did that radius map, which, by the way, does include Mexico.
I wonder if anyone has searched pharmacies to see if the medication she had, maybe somebody tried to pick them up.
I've been wondering the same thing because if you look at, and you've shown it, I'm pretty sure you've shown it.
There's a photo of Nancy Guthrie sitting in kind of an outdoor lounge chair.
She's sitting up and there's a child with her.
The child's face has been blurred.
And you can see, I recognize it because my dad had it, my father, Mac.
When you're on Blood Center, if you even bump your hand, a giant blood pool comes up under the skin.
It's a really dark purple bruise.
She's got that.
And I've noticed it in other pictures too.
So I would say that she is on blood thinner and that she is on heart medication for sure.
Both of those are easily obtained.
And you mentioned Mexico.
You can get anything in Mexico, right?
I've always wondered if they did a pill count because, you know, my mom, 94, lives with me.
We do pill counts.
I and the granny nannies, they know how many pills are left, specifically the oxys or pain pills for her back.
We know how many there are.
And we know when they've gone missing.
I wonder if they did a pill count for Mrs. Guthrie to find out if anything was missing.
Yeah, these are all good questions.
Look, my hope is that when we come on the air at 9 Eastern tonight, that we're going to have good news for people.
I am not giving up hope, and I'm not allowing my mind to go to that dark place that says, uh-oh, well, as time goes on, we're not going to find this woman.
No, I hope we find her and find her alive.
That's our hope.
That's our prayer.
And, you know, your knowledge and detail of all of this is pretty amazing.
Nancy Grace, we do appreciate you more than you know.
You've been amazing, and we'll see you tonight.
Oh, do you want to add one more thing, Nancy?
Yeah, and I'll be brief.
Very often in cases when I'd be trying cases in court, all felonies, all violent crime, I would get a setback.
And I remember I'd keep my face on for the jury to leave, and then I would just sit down and think, oh, dear Lord, now what am I going to do?
It feels like everything was lost.
And I felt that way this morning.
But we got to get back up and get back on that horse.
We got to pray.
Save Now00:02:46
We got to come up with ideas because they're listening.
We don't know more than the feds do, but we might have an idea that could help.
We've got to keep going, Sean.
No, I mean, and that was my feeling this morning when I got like, I woke up literally seven times.
And every time I had my TV on, and I just, you know, put the volume up.
And I'm like, oh, oh.
You know, and I was just hoping and hoping that this would be the break and the quick recovery.
But look, it's still a lot of hope out there.
Nancy Grace, we love you.
We appreciate you.
Thank you so much for your time.
We'll see you tonight, 800-941-SHAWN, our number as we continue.
Transmitting to over 700 radio stations.
Wow, wow.
This is the Sean Hannity Show.
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All right, now we have a lot to get to.
We're going to hit the phones when we get back.
Our toll-free number is 800-941-Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
We've got a lot to talk with Mr. Simple Man, Bill O'Reilly.
Apparently, he went to see Bad Big Bugs Bunny at the Super Bowl.
I'm not going to feign phony, you know, outrage.
The minute it was announced, I'm not sure why people were even surprised by it all.
Whole Story Ahead in Texas00:04:05
I was not.
But anyway, he was at the big game hanging out with all the liberal elites on the left coast.
It should be interesting.
I'm sure he has some stories to tell.
That'll be fun.
We'll get to your calls as well today.
800-941-Sean.
We'll hit the phones when we get back.
As we continue, we're still monitoring any updates in the disappearance and hopefully recovery of Nancy Guthrie straight ahead.
All right, let's get to our busy phones.
Howard is in the great state of Texas.
God bless Texas.
Howard, how are you?
Glad you called.
Good, sir.
Thank you for taking my call.
Sean, much like, I wanted to talk a little bit about Nancy Guthrie.
And much like her, I also have a heart condition.
So I am on a wide range of different medications.
And it would seem to me that if it was an acquaintance or family or friend that perpetrated this, they could have easily figured out what meds she takes and stocked up on them ahead of time.
So why don't they contact some of the various pharmacies within, say, 100 miles, you know, and say, look, you know, this is the combination.
These are the dosages.
Has anyone ordered these in the last, I don't know, 20 days or so?
Just a thought.
I think that I've raised that question earlier in the show.
I think that's a good point.
And that is, you know, Dave, because that was one of the big issues.
I'm imagining that whoever might have been involved in this probably has been following the news.
The strong belief of people like Harvey Levin and Nancy Grace are that this person is in and around the Tucson area.
If you remember, Harvey Levin, a TMZ, you know, created a radius, and that was based on the first ransom note that was sent to him and sent to TMZ.
And they said that if the money was transferred, that the person would be returned.
Nancy Guthrie would be returned within nine hours.
So they did a radius of where that person can be.
And obviously, I don't think any money was paid.
We don't know the whole story, nor probably should we know the whole story.
And I do believe Kash Patel.
I think this was a big breakthrough yesterday.
He was on TV last night.
They now have persons of interest in this case.
I think that's very critical.
And I'm just hoping for the safe return of this 84-year-old grandma.
It's terrible.
You know, the other thought, too, is I know on the few times that I've gone down to Mexico.
You can walk into almost any pharmacy and buy whatever you want over the counter.
So what would stop somebody who's of this mindset to abduct this poor woman from going down there, getting the necessary pharmaceuticals that she needs and bringing them back?
So that would put a kibosh on contacting local pharmacies.
However, I would think that if somebody was coming back over the border and they had these pharmacies on their person, Border Patrol would make a note of it saying, okay, this person, you know, John Smith had XYZ on them.
And you might be like, I don't think they go through everything that every person crossing that border has with them.
I've been down to that border.
I've been at those checkpoints.
I mean, the lines are massive.
And, you know, usually they'll have their drug-sniffing dogs.
They're usually looking for specific things.
And otherwise, they're just going to pass people through, you know, assuming that they have the proper identification, et cetera.
So, yeah, but you are correct.
You can get medicines that you can never get without a prescription here in this country.
That would show a lot of care on the part of the kidnapper if it's a kidnapped ransom.
I mean, at this point, we just don't really know.
I mean, that's the hardest part of all this.
Yeah, exactly.
I think we're getting closer, though.
I'm hoping.
Howard, great points, man.
Appreciate it.
God bless you.
God bless Texas, North Carolina.
Joanne is next on the Sean Hannity show.
Joanne, how are you?
Glad you called.
Oh, thank you.
I'm glad to talk to you, Sean.
I was just listening to you yesterday afternoon.
Pacemakers After Death00:02:03
You were interviewing a young woman about the Guthrie case, and she commented that if Miss Guthrie was dead, her pacemaker would have stopped.
And that's not true.
Pacemakers just keep on going until they are surgically removed or until the battery dies or at some point in time days afterwards.
So pacemakers can just keep on going.
I actually looked this up.
It's so funny you're asking me about this.
I looked this up.
I actually asked Grock about this.
And what they said, and you might be right, and I might be wrong.
Do you have a pacemaker by any chance or no?
I do not, but my mother-in-law had one and she passed away.
And they had to surgically remove it to get it to stop her heart from beating.
And I did some research myself and it confirmed what I said, but I didn't do it through Grock.
So I may be wrong.
No, I don't think anybody's wrong.
I think it might actually, if you look at Grock's answer, and I just pulled it up, a pacemaker does not meaningfully work to keep a person alive or functioning after death, though the device itself may continue to send electrical signals for a while.
In other words, it's not a life support machine like a ventilator.
It cannot restart a heart that has stopped or overcome severe organ failure.
But there is no effective heartbeat or blood circulation.
So while the pacemaker may continue to deliver impulses, you know, not knowing that the person has died, it doesn't have a sensor for that.
But according to reliable medical sources, pacemakers do not prolong the dying process.
They don't prevent death.
And at some point, it can, for example, for cremation, pacemakers are usually removed post-mortem because the battery can explode in high heat and not because they keep working indefinitely.
Accent Matters00:08:33
But you're right.
They do continue, although they're not functioning in any significant, meaningful way.
No, but she had made that point that if she were dead, it wouldn't be working.
And that's not true.
So that's the only reason I was calling in.
No, you're in sync with what Grock is saying.
It just doesn't do any meaningful work.
And it can stop over time because it's just not working.
But they don't have any indication that a person is alive or dead.
No, they don't.
It's so sad.
And I'm really glad to talk to you.
I've been listening to you for so long.
I remember when Linda used to say, let's go get some coffee.
And I say that.
I've been saying that to my friends.
I said, let's go to New York on in Linda and get some coffee.
Linda's not changed.
Although we did have a speech pathologist call yesterday and said she's willing to offer Linda some free lessons if she wants to.
Or you wants to offer Linda free lessons if she wants to lessen or eliminate her New York accent.
Oh, no, no.
Why would anyone want that?
That's a terrible thing.
Joanne, you do know that you have a southern accent, right?
Oh, no, you're kidding.
Gosh, my mom's going to be so disappointed.
Bless your heart.
Let me put it that way.
God bless you.
Bless her heart.
Which what I love about that saying, bless her heart, is it's just the nicest way in the world to say drop dead or something worse without saying it.
Exactly, yes.
And, you know, that's what I love about the South.
I began to realize when I was in Alabama.
And the funny part was, is my New York accent was very thick at that point in my life and career.
If I ever played tapes of myself from back then, and I do have them, you would say, wow, he sounds like Linda, Sean, New York, talk radio, coffee, all of that.
And I never took any lessons.
I just tried to eliminate it by articulating a little bit more.
And it just became, because I realized when the show went national that I wanted to appeal to as broad a base of people as I possibly can.
Some people find accents off-putting.
I happen to love them.
I love yours as much as I kid Linda.
And I am kidding.
I like her accent.
I like people from Great Britain, like Piers Morgan.
I love to talk to Piers because Piers has that English accent.
I mean, it's just great.
A spot of tea.
It's great.
Like Oliver.
Please, sir, some more.
Ask some more.
You got to stick to whatever it is your accent is, like American, regular.
I don't know.
How about I just, I'm being myself, and you just be yourself and you say sauce and I don't say sauce.
You say quarter.
I don't care if you say sauce and galf and all the weird things you say, but you can't say spotted tea.
That's no good.
Spotted tea?
No.
No.
But the favorite, I guess, when I do impressions, the one you like the most is the godfather.
Oh, dude, you crush that.
Listen.
I know it crushes your throat.
In fact, this hurts my throat, but I'm going to do it.
I know.
Don't do it.
Don't do it.
No, I'm going to do it.
I want to say to all of you in this room today that I will stand by the peace we have all agreed to.
I want my son Michael, who's been in Italy hiding out, comes back.
Did anything befall him?
Anything, an accident, I will hold all of you in this room accountable.
And I will chop your fingers and head off.
I think you added that last part.
I did a little ad live there.
I don't even think that's my ad.
That's so good.
I actually, well, some people like my Clinton the best.
I want to sell all the hot chicks.
You don't like the Clinton one.
No, I like it.
It's just not your best.
I'll say it.
Nobody else will say it.
There I said it.
Frankby.
Get off my phone, you big dope.
But the godfather crushes it for me.
Honestly, the first time you did the godfather, I forget.
You freaked out.
You couldn't believe it.
But I forget why we did it.
And you're like oh, you should hear, you should hear my godfather.
I'm thinking in my head, oh my god, what does this Irish guy know about this accent?
And you crushed it, man.
I was like, oh okay, some people when I'm on stage they kind of like when I do rush me well, I have your real rush tape from when you dropped the microphone.
All right, I don't want to talk about the real rush tape.
No, the best part of that story and I love we all miss Rush.
I mean, I said it then, I'll say it again today, nobody could ever replace him.
His nobody ever ever, ever.
I mean he was a true original and uh, but I was filling in for him and I'm doing an opening monologue and I remember I was nervous, I was sweating and I was super prepared, probably too prepared and I'm in the middle of the monologue and the golden EIB mic dropped.
Say that he lied is not gonna happen.
But stop stop no, don't stop playing it, stop.
I don't want to hear it.
I can't stand the sound of my own voice.
That's, like your mom's, not so good.
So the mic drops and I am literally.
It's on the table.
I put my head down and finished the monologue with the golden EIB mic on the table in front of me with my neck bent all the way down.
He heard about it, probably boast nerdly.
Our friend, you know, told him I think it was Kit Carson.
James Golden Carson gave me his side of the other story.
Oh, I don't know, I have no idea, but I mean he had a great team around him Mike Mamone, everybody and he uh, Sean Hannity dented the golden EIB microphone.
Um, and the funny thing is is like nobody.
There were so many people that never got it.
Talent on loan from God.
Now you think about that.
It's like the most humble statement of the world, I'm nothing without God.
That's what he's saying and people took it.
He's comparing himself to God.
I'm like, oh my gosh.
Or people going to New York City, where's the EIB building?
There was no EIB building.
It didn't exist.
But they would go to New York City thinking that there was an EIB building and searching the towers all over New York City in the hopes of finding it.
It just shows the theater of the mind and how great he was.
He was so good.
We miss him.
I wonder what.
I know what he'd want all of us to do today.
He'd want us to fight fight, fight for our country.
All right, quick break, right back.
We'll get to your calls 800-941 Sean, as we continue today.
All right back to our busy telephones.
800-941 Sean, if you want to join us Gary, in my free state of Florida.
What's up, Gary?
Hey, good afternoon Sean.
Hey, every time I tune in recently it's always about Bitcoin, Harvey Levin ransoms uh, you know demands or uh, everything about.
Uh uh, you know someone trying to collect some money.
I just wish the uh Guthrie family do it, do a twofer, offer a half million dollar reward for information, person or person, and offer a million if it means uh, they've got information on their mother that brings her back home, and uh, be done with um people reading off uh ransom notes or letters or there's 300 in an account.
It's tedious.
It's an older movie, it's called Ransom.
Mel Gibson stars in it and he actually it was a kidnapped ransom and he laid the money out on the table on tv, went to a local tv station And he said, he addressed the kidnappers and he said, you're never going to see this money.
He goes, this money, though, I am offering as a reward for anybody that gets us the information to find my son that you kidnapped.
And you will not rest because the entire nation is going to be looking for you.
Do I think that's realistic?
No, but it was kind of cool.
And then he doubled the amount of money.
Anyway, 800-941 Sean is a number if you want to be a part of the program.