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The Story Is with Elex Michaelson

Latest On Nancy Guthrie Search; Pima Co. Sheriff's Dept. Says - A Written Statement Is Forthcoming Tonight; Aired 1-2a ET

Aired February 14, 2026 - 01:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN breaking news.

ELEX MICHAELSON, CNN HOST: And welcome to "The Story Is." I'm Elex Michaelson. We are following breaking news in Tucson, Arizona where there is a flurry of police activity happening right now. The Sheriff says they are, "Actively working a lead near Nancy Guthrie's home." The focus of intense police activity appears to be a home about two miles from Guthrie's home. The Sheriff says a written statement will be forthcoming. They don't expect a press conference. They do expect a written statement sometime soon.

We do know more than a dozen law enforcement vehicles have been seen at that location. We do know that investigators found DNA at Guthrie's home. It doesn't belong to her or those close to her. That was one of the headlines of the day. The Sheriff's Office says the evidence is being sent out to forensic analysis. Ed Lavandera is live in Tucson at the focus of where this investigation is happening right now. Ed?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR U.S. NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Elex, well, everything here is still developing and has been developing shortly after eight o'clock mountain time here in Tucson. We started hearing the rumblings that law enforcement vehicles were descending here on this neighborhood stunning in -- stunning fashion, not very far away from where Nancy Guthrie lives.

So I'll set the scene for you here. This is the road into this particular part. We're on the northern edge of Nancy Guthrie's neighborhood. But down past the Sheriff's vehicle. If you go down that way, the road kind of bends away to the right, and that's where we have seen a just a cavalry of law enforcement vehicles arriving here on the scene. We've seen SWAT vehicles. Most of those vehicles have already left the scene. We have seen forensic trucks. We have seen unmarked cars, presumably FBI agents arriving here at the scene. We have seen other evidence collection trucks that we have seen at other moments throughout the last two weeks, now that we are entering day 14 of this search, an investigation into the abduction of Nancy Guthrie. So, this is still very much active.

As you mentioned, the Sheriff said that this is a lead. I think that's probably kind of goes without saying. Clearly, something significant happening here. But remember, several days ago, there was a man detained about 50 miles south of Tucson. That person was questioned for several hours and then released and not doesn't believe to be connected to this case, at this point in any way. And this is another situation that is developing.

As you said, the Pima County Sheriff's Department says that they will not hold a Press Conference, which I think is significant, because if this was really monumental news in this, I think there would be a Press Conference of some kind. So that's the way I kind of read the way, the statement was put out tonight. But we are expecting a written statement, and we were told by local officials that that statement was awaiting kind of being finalized in conjunction with FBI agents here on the scene.

So we are awaiting that. But the amount of law enforcement vehicles that have been pouring in to this section of the neighborhood has really been stunning here this evening, and it is really shocking because it is so close to where Nancy Guthrie lives. It's -- as I've described over in the reporting over the last few weeks, this is a neighborhood. It's almost like a spider web of roads that make their way through this area, and we are on kind of on the northern edge of this neighborhood.

And so the amount of vehicles here, but what exactly brought them here? What exactly the lead is that the Sheriff is alluding to? We don't quite know yet, but I should also point out that we spoke with the Sheriff just a few hours ago, and he talked about how in the days since the release of the suspect video from the doorbell camera, they have been -- have seen an avalanche of tips more than I think the Sheriff told me earlier today, some 30,000 tips that have poured in as they have been making calls for video evidence.

We know that FBI agents have been going through this area, canvassing and recanvassing street after street in this neighborhood, talking to neighbors, looking for home video of any kind from these cameras in the neighborhood. So whether or not is if it's a piece of evidence like that that brought them back here, we don't know yet. Or if it was a tip that was called in, the Sheriff did tell us that that video of the suspect on the front porch there has been the most monumental, the biggest key piece of evidence that they've received so far, and that has sparked a great deal of feedback and tips that have been called into them. So presumably, this could be something that that came out of that the release of that video.

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So, again, we await here. It has been a cold chilly night, rainy for most of the night. Finally, the rain has slowed down, and the sky has cleared quite a bit. But this is the scene. This is a neighborhood that's kind of sits up on a bluff here in this neighborhood. You can see in the darkness in the distance way back down there is the city lights of Tucson as we sit here on the northern edge, and we sit here waiting for investigators here to give us the latest update on what has unfolded just down the street from where we are here tonight. Elex?

MICHAELSON: Ed, and since this has happened, have we ever seen this much of a law enforcement presence descend on any home?

LAVANDERA: Not like this, especially not this close to Nancy Guthrie's home. The scene down about 50 miles south of Tucson earlier this week where that one man was detained and questioned for several hours. That street was blocked and roped off. There was a large police presence there on this one. But the amount of vehicles that involve forensic evidence collection, the kind of machinery that we have seen kind of working the scenes as they've collected evidence and returned to Nancy Guthrie's home several times and also to other parts of the city, looking for evidence and trying to find clues. That kind of level, we have definitely not seen, Elex.

MICHAELSON: Which gives you an indication probably of the seriousness of this. Also, though, is interesting as you pointed out, Ed, that they're not holding a Press Conference tonight. If they did, you would think that would be the kind of thing where they would announce we've got our suspect at a Press Conference, but that is not happening at least not anytime soon. Ed Lavandera, thank you so much. Go ahead.

LAVANDERA: And also Elex, I should point out too -- the -- no, I was just going to say also, look the most important part of all of this entire investigation is the fate of Nancy Guthrie. That is the what people care about the most. It's obviously what the Guthrie family cares about the most. And so at this stage without having heard directly from investigators about -- more specific about what has unfolded here you wonder if it's a moment that's going to provide the kind of news and the kind of clarity on the question that people care about the absolute most.

MICHAELSON: Right. And so far, we have not seen any sort of ambulance or anything leaving that scene.

LAVANDERA: No. We have not. That's important to point out.

MICHAELSON: Yeah. All right. Ed Lavandera, thank you for being up all day long, day-after-day. We appreciate your reporting on this. If something happens there, we'll go back to you. In the meantime, we want to bring it in the conversation Retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent, CNN Law Enforcement Contributor, Steve Moore, who has been with us night after night after night on this. Steve, what do you think is going on right now?

STEVE MOORE, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CONTRIBUTOR: Well, first of all, this entire operation appears to me to be investigation driven rather than reactive. And to give you an example, the operation the other night appeared very reactive. People were getting there as quickly as they can, pulling people out of cars, doing things as quickly as they could get there. Why I think this is investigation driven is when you get a line of cars, 20 cars, 20 federal cars, plus all the equipment trucks, things like this. This is a preplanned operation. You'll have an -- somebody's written an operations plan. Otherwise, people would be just getting there when they got there. This seems to be a well-planned out operation. And so it's not reactive. It's proactive.

MICHAELSON: And what does that signify? MOORE: It signifies to me that they've got information that they think is important. They've got information that they think is important enough to get a warrant for, to get people's hopes up for, to expend lots of manpower and emotional energy on. That's a big part of this, keeping people in the game. And so they must believe it's a pretty good lead.

MICHAELSON: What do you read into the fact that this happened at night, and that SWAT moved in at night?

MOORE: Yeah. This is, I was on SWAT for five years, and I think I can count on two hands the number of ops that we didn't do between 4:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. That's how SWAT operates. If you let us, if you give us an assignment, go get this person, we're going to do it between, 4:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m.

MICHAELSON: Why is that?

MOORE: Well, we've learned that, people that's when they're in deep REM sleep. It's not just asleep. They're in deep REM sleep. They are less likely to, have an organized thought about how to resist things like that.

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And we can get in and out under cover of darkness. We don't like to go out at night, like in the early evening or mid evening. There's a lot of cars out on the street. You're doing things like --

MICHAELSON: On a Friday night especially.

MOORE: Yeah. I mean, you're getting out on the outside of trucks, riding on the boards, coming inside, and nothing is more risky for tipping the people off than cars in the neighborhood. So you don't like to go in, while people are up and around like on a Friday night. So that tells me that this was a decision, a command decision, that they wanted this location and these people looked at right then and there.

MICHAELSON: And there's an -- there's a real sense of urgency that this has to happen right now.

MOORE: Yeah. For some reason, they didn't want to do it in the morning.

MICHAELSON: Yeah.

MOORE: They wanted -- maybe they were waiting until they got -- it could be that you had all these people staged, ready to go, waiting until all the people or the right person was in the location and they decided to hit it then.

MICHAELSON: Or when they got -- we don't know when they got the warrant to potentially do this too, right?

MOORE: No. And I would love to see the time of the warrant versus the time they executed the warrant. And that would give you the amount of time they had to. Well, they're going to start planning before they get the warrant.

MICHAELSON: So as we look at this live picture, we're not seeing very much. And that's on purpose, right? They're keeping the media real far away. Had been great weather. There's no chopper shots above.

MOORE: Right.

MICHAELSON: What's happening most likely inside? You've been inside in these situations. What's going on there?

MOORE: Are grueling for the agents. First of all, for every person that's in that house, assuming there are people in the house, there's going to be an interview team. And that interview team is going to consist of three to five people, maybe only three talking, but five of them would be saying, hey, the person just said this. We need to check this out.

MICHAELSON: So -- and separate, right?

MOORE: Yes.

MICHAELSON: If there are different people that are being interviewed, there's different teams.

MOORE: Yes. If you've got two people, you got 10 agents if or detectives and agents. If you've got three, you've got 15. That's just the beginning because then you have the people searching the home on the short quick search, and then you have the friend mapping out of the entire place, meaning around just anywhere because the forensics peep it's kind of like walking around on somebody's floor that just got mopped. No, no, no, no. So it's very grueling. It's tense. They're going to be there all evening and into the morning. And I think right now, they're all probably undoing their top button and saying, let's get some coffee.

MICHAELSON: It's going to be a long night.

MOORE: Oh, yeah.

MICHAELSON: You're going to be with us throughout the next couple hours.

MOORE: It could be a long night.

MICHAELSON: As well, I still I got the tie going tonight. Steve, thank you. We'll get back to you in a moment. Want to bring in the conversation right now, CNN Senior National Security Analyst, Juliette Kayyem joining us. Juliette, your reading of what's happening right now.

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yeah. And, it's obviously hard to tell. I'll agree with everything that Steve said in terms of the timing and the sort of preparation for it means that there was some hint, some clues to get them to this home. We're seeing this in real time. The only question I have is, is anyone in custody? That is the most important thing right now. It's one, two, three people who are they? And why did law enforcement go into this home or building?

I should say that under any warrant, law enforcement is allowed to detain someone. So the fact that they got the warrant and the fact someone people are detained doesn't make -- doesn't necessarily prove that anything bad has happened, but it does mean that there was enough evidence to get law enforcement into that area. Lots of law enforcement as we're seeing and that the people there, if detained, that's the key question we have right now.

We should be hearing relatively soon, and we'll hear from media if they see that people have been detained. If its -- if there's nothing subsequent to this grade, we may be say seeing something similar as we saw a couple nights ago. Someone is taken as a person of interest. Maybe there's a clue that law enforcement is following, but it ends up being the inability just because of the number of clues coming in to separate the sort of the good noise from the bad noise. That's where we are right now. It's just ability to separate a lot of that information.

MICHAELSON: Yeah. And you mentioned the concept of people being detained. We know that there are reports on social media that there may have been some people detained.

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CNN has not been able to independently confirm that so far. The Sheriff's Department has not put out a written statement so far. Even though, they advertised that about an hour and a half ago or so. Not sure what the holdup is there. But some of that may be that this complicated arrangement right now, Juliette, that's happening between the Sheriff's Department and the FBI, which so far seems to have not been super easy day in and day out.

KAYYEM: Right. That's exactly right. And I will say that that no confirmation here. The only question one should have right now is, is there are there people actually detained? Because then that would suggest that whatever was in the warrant, right, would be something about the people who may know something about the case. And that I will tell you that's the only thing -- that's the only question I have right now is did this result in any detentions that are real?

The second question, of course, is then what does that mean for finding Nancy Guthrie? That's all that matters tonight. The fighting that you're seeing in law enforcement or the reporting that we're doing about some of those tensions, some of it is natural. I will tell you almost every case, you're going to see those natural tensions. The law -- the two things put a lot of pressure here on this case. One was just -- it's a long time now. It really is. I mean, think about that every day for Savannah Guthrie and the family like, to sustain this kind of horror for that long. And so the tensions tend to play out over the time.

The second is, of course, the interest -- the media interest. I think the human interest in this, I'll tell you, I've done a lot of stories for CNN, and I don't think it's voyeurism. I don't think it's bad. I think, I am amazed at how many people who aren't really don't really follow things like this will ask me about it. What do I think? I think there's -- I think there's just something so horrible for the family. People feel connected to Savannah Guthrie, but also your own fears about something like this happening in the middle of the night.

And so I think that -- that the focus of this also adds to a lot of tension. I wanted to say something. If you say you're going to have information, I don't know why you would ever say you're going to have information till you know what you're willing to say. It's not like it takes hours to build up the media. And so I never like delays in any of these cases between the promise of information and when the information comes because, that either means, it means that there is a story that they're trying to figure out how to tell, and I worry about that. If there was nothing there, we would have heard. So that's what we're waiting for right now.

MICHAELSON: Essentially saying, why say, we're going to tell you something, either tell us something or don't say anything, right?

KAYYEM: It's very -- it's yes.

MICHAELSON: -- expectations that are unnecessary.

KAYYEM: Yeah. Yeah. It's a habit of, I think, old media or of -- we're going to have a press conference in or we're going to tell you something as if 24/7 news did not exist. And I think in that vacuum, one does worry about what is going on. The law enforcement should either say we're going to have no information tonight or try to at least give some information like what you were just saying. Social media now creates it's -- in a new storyline that makes it very difficult to manage. It's where misinformation comes out, disinformation comes out, and lack of trust. And what we need is trust and confidence in institutions, especially, when dealing with such a horrible incident.

MICHAELSON: Well, we've got the entire team at CNN working overnight tonight to try to do the very thing you're talking about, which is to suss out what is misinformation, what's good information, what's verifiable, so that our viewers are getting that and not just a bunch of conjecture, which social media is full of on this night as we really are trying to figure out what exactly is happening there. Clearly, something big is happening.

Juliette Kayyem, thank you for sharing your perspective and helping us to go through that mission tonight. We appreciate it.

KAYYEM: Thank you.

MICHAELSON: We're going to sneak in a quick commercial break, and we will continue to follow this breaking news throughout the night here on CNN. Law enforcement focused on that area. More coverage next.

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MICHAELSON: We continue to follow breaking news in the search for Nancy Guthrie. Right now, there is law enforcement activity just two miles from Nancy Guthrie's home in Tucson, Arizona. We've seen more than a dozen law enforcement vehicles, including forensic trucks. Pima County Sheriff says a written statement is forth coming. They said that an hour and a half ago. We're still waiting.

We now know that DNA has been found at Guthrie's home. Now that includes, we also know that that DNA does not belong to her or those close to her. That includes her daughter, Today Show host Savannah Guthrie.

Joining us now live from New York is Scott Curtis, a Former FBI Agent. Thank you for staying up late with us. Scott, what do you think is happening right now?

SCOTT CURTIS, FORMER FBI AGENT: Well, clearly, they're executing a search warrant at this location here, and we know from law enforcement statement that, the individuals that resided at that location were detained and not arrested there.

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So the focus of law enforcement is that location and not the individuals that were living there.

MICHAELSON: And, of course, we are waiting to get official confirmation in terms of the detainment or the arrest. We're hoping to get that information soon. In terms of the focus at this point, we've seen the news about the DNA. We've seen the news about the backpack today. All those things probably give clues to the FBI, right?

CURTIS: Yeah. Well, the question I have is, how does this location fit into the investigation as a whole? Does this relate to the individual with the backpack that was seen on the video footage, in front of Nancy Guthrie's home? Does this location fit into a tip about other perpetrators that may be involved in this crime, or is this location related to the individual that was sending the demands of TMZ saying that they had information about the individual with the backpack? We don't know. That's what we have to try to get answered here. How does this location fit into the larger scheme of things?

MICHAELSON: You've been involved in some very complicated procedures with the FBI, including the biggest arrest day ever, a 127 arrests in one day on something you were heading up. Talk about the fact that we see so many FBI cars as part of this that sort of the most we've seen put out on any one incident throughout this entire investigation?

CURTIS: Well, one key component that people need to keep in mind is that besides locating Nancy Guthrie, hopefully, safely here, the next most important aspect of this is to make sure that we're collecting evidence that's going to survive all the way through a potential trial of those who will hopefully be arrested and prosecuted as part of this case. So what law enforcement is doing here is they're making sure they have all the appropriate manpower and resources at this location so they can effectively and efficiently collect all pertinent relevant evidence that could be connected to this crime and do it in accordance with the law and in accordance with policies and procedures there because they don't want to face a potential suppression of any evidence connected to this crime.

MICHAELSON: What do you see as what's next for this investigation, and what do you see in terms of the next few hours at this particular location?

CURTIS: That's hard to forecast right now. I mean, I've been involved in, like you said, a lot of high profile complex investigations, and you never can really predict where they're going to go from one minute to the next sometimes. What they're going to do is they're going to collect every bit of evidence from this residence here. They're going to process it. They're going to analyze it. They're going to review it. Also, the interviews of the individuals that resided at that location.

I'm sure an FBI agent is going to be part of that interview there because what that does is that creates additional leverage because lying to a Federal Agent is a crime. So we're going to make sure that we can get all the relevant information out of those individuals that we can. And based on that, that may lead us to additional search warrants. We just don't know at this point.

MICHAELSON: Scott Curtis, thank you so much for staying up late again with us and thank you for your expertise. Appreciate it.

CURTIS: Thank you.

MICHAELSON: We continue to follow breaking news. We're going to sneak in another commercial break. After the break, more on what is happening right now in Tucson. Trying to get answers. We're staying on this live all night long.

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MICHAELSON: We continue to follow breaking news this hour in Tucson, Arizona. The Sheriff there says they are actively working a lead in the apparent abduction of Nancy Guthrie. Law enforcement, forensic trucks out in force on a scene about two miles from Nancy Guthrie's home. The focus appears to be this home that you're looking at right there live. The Sheriff says a written statement will be coming at some point. We've seen more than a dozen law enforcement vehicles there. We're back now with Steve Moore, retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent, CNN Law Enforcement Contributor.

Steve, we've gotten a lot of information in the last few days.

MOORE: Yes. We have. MICHAELSON: And what does that do?

MOORE: Anybody who's done a crossword puzzle or a jigsaw puzzle, you know that for a long time things are -- you just feel like you're in a dry area. You're not going to get anything done. But they're starting to get individual pieces of evidence that should put big pieces together on the puzzle. And I mean --

MICHAELSON: Like what?

MOORE: Like the DNA they've got. They've got the backpack identified, and I understand some of the other clothing identified. And it's very likely that if they were purchased recently, they were purchased together. So you get a bunch of agents, FBI agents out of the Little Rock office, go over to Bentonville and say to the people in Walmart, help us out here. Show us in the within 50 miles of Tucson all your Walmart's where these backpacks have been purchased, and then show us times when the backpack was purchased in conjunction with this jacket and these pants.

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And once you start getting, and they say, oh, we got one of those down here in South Tucson. Boom. And so those kind of things, we're at the stage that those should be bearing fruit right now. So I'm not surprised that things are happening now. This could be a dry hole. We don't know. We may not be done with these things, but it could be the break we're waiting for.

MICHAELSON: What does your gut tell you what's happening right now?

MOORE: My gut tells me that this is a significant move forward, but it's probably not the end of it. But I think it will speed everything up, and I think the dominoes are starting to fall. I don't think this is going to go much longer.

MICHAELSON: What would be a sign that it's the end of it?

MOORE: Sign that the end of it is an ambulance going to pick Nancy up, calls to friends, calls to family saying hopefully we've got her. She's okay. It would also be the fact that they would stay there or have people remain in custody. If they take somebody into custody, arrest the person, and arraign them, that would be an interesting sign. As the guest before said, if you -- if it's more interesting about if you're looking for people than a place because all the evidence points to people. It's not so far pointing to a place.

MICHAELSON: So, and right now, we don't know that even for sure that people have been arrested at all.

MOORE: We don't.

MICHAELSON: Right.

MOORE: There's nothing I have heard, nothing that we can confirm that that any people have been even investigatively detained. I can tell you from being on SWAT though that when we went into a house to secure it, every adult was hooked up and sat down and detained for the safety of the everybody.

MICHAELSON: The other big headline of the day was that there was DNA in Nancy Guthrie's house that's not Nancy Guthrie's and not her kids.

MOORE: Yes.

MICHAELSON: So this is somebody else --

MOORE: Yeah.

MICHAELSON: -- that they don't believe was familiar with Nancy Guthrie.

MOORE: Yeah.

MICHAELSON: What do you do with that information?

MOORE: That's big information. Again, that could end up being a dry hole, but it has all the makings of a real good clue. So what you have to do is identify that. And I heard earlier from a forensics expert, you made a very good point. It doesn't matter if you get DNA if you have nothing to compare it to. So if the person that we're ultimately looking for has never had a DNA sample submitted to law enforcement, it means nothing except that you can get this familial DNA and start tracking it through, 23andMe and all those other types.

MICHAELSON: Yeah. So if this person was arrested or had a criminal background, they most likely would be in a DNA databank, right?

MOORE: It depends on the state where they were arrested and what they were arrested for. If they were arrested for a sexual crime, yeah, they'd be in there. And that hypothetically, they get the DNA, they make a quick match off of a criminal submission, and boom, they've got him. That's the home run that you're hoping for, right. But games are won by --

MICHAELSON: That's the law and order episode.

MOORE: Singles and doubles.

MICHAELSON: Right. That that you have this breakthrough moment and then all of a sudden, but --

MOORE: Exactly. You hear the chime.

MICHAELSON: Right. And then it's --

MOORE: You never hear that --

MICHAELSON: You end the episode, and it's on to the next. But that's not where we are right now. Let's hope, though, that we are able to get that happy moment that we were all hoping for. All right, Steve. Thank you so much.

MOORE: Thank you.

MICHAELSON: You'll continue to join us throughout the night. We have more expert analysis. As we continue to keep our eyes focused with live pictures from this spot about two miles from Nancy Guthrie's home. What's going on there? We know there's a big police presence. We know the FBI is there. It's possible people have been detained. We're trying to get more information. We're staying up all night to keep track of it. Stay with us.

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MICHAELSON: We continue to follow live pictures, residential neighborhood in Tucson, Arizona that the world is now watching. A law enforcement operation has been taking place just about two miles from Nancy Guthrie's home. The earlier DNA not belonging to Guthrie was found at that home. We are waiting for official word from the Sheriff's Department or the FBI of exactly what's going on here.

Law Enforcement & Litigation Expert, Sunny Slaughter, joins me now live from Washington D.C. She's joined us throughout our coverage over this last several days here on CNN. Sunny, what do you make of this?

SUNNY SLAUGHTER, LAW ENFORCEMENT & LITIGATION EXPERT: El, good morning. We're here again. So what I am focused on and following is operational integrity and what law enforcement is currently doing. They have goals, and they are focused while we are doing commentary and trying to speculate. They are, one, looking for Nancy Guthrie. That is their primary objective. They are, two, going in to locations, interviewing individuals, detaining them, questioning them, going through evidence, and trying to determine if where they are has any connection to Nancy Guthrie.

They are very focused. They are not being distracted by all of the things that we are currently seeing, all of the things that are currently being played out. And I concur with all of the previous experts and guests that you have had and your lens on this that we are there are things that we don't know.

[01:45:00]

Some of that is intentional, but the community and the world is watching, and they've never seen anything like this before. CNN's 24- hour day-to-day operational coverage and operational from a media standpoint has been really critical and putting a lens and language on something that most people have never seen play out in real life. This is not CSI and Law and Order. This is what happens in real cases, and that's what we're seeing right now.

MICHAELSON: What do you think are some of the biggest differences between what you would see on CSI and Law and Order, and how it actually works when people watch those shows? What do those shows get wrong? SLAUGHTER: I don't know if they get it wrong, because that is entertainment, but what happens between the show and happens in real life is that we have these ups and downs like the first, the first person Carlos that was detained 50 miles away, and nothing happens within a 24-hour period. We have a thirst for things happening quickly in these type of cases. They're not necessarily happening as quickly because we have been here for the last two weeks talking about where is Nancy Guthrie, and how this plays out and gathering information.

And I've said this with you before. Language matters. What we call an individual. If we identify them as a suspect, somebody gets detained, someone is in custody, those are not the same things. And from a litigation lens, is law enforcement doing everything that they need to? They're having to take inventory. They're having to count everything out. Those are critical things that are part of the investigation that can impact the litigation and prosecution of anyone that has been detained. So what do they get, right in the entertainment is that they give you a framework for the case.

What happens in reality is that things aren't going up and down. We are zooming in from one crime scene to another, zooming out to what the public can see, holding withholding information. And the fact that law enforcement has been up along with the media that on scene and all of you 24-hours a day covering this case. Nobody knows how daunting and exhausting this can be, but that's the reality of it. This is not a 24-hour, a one hour segment. This is real life in real time, and these are hours of people's lives and times. And the community is now with us, following it, and thanking CNN for everything that you're doing to cover the Nancy Guthrie disappearance and give the public the real education about what happens in law enforcement and what happens in litigation.

MICHAELSON: Well hopefully, this coverage helps to spur tips that help bring Nancy home. That's the whole purpose behind all of this. So where do you think we go from here?

SLAUGHTER: I think we have to see whether the person is in custody, detained, whether they are being questioned, what information is obtained from the crime scene, from Nancy's house first crime scene, and this scene that they are currently on because we're not getting any information from local law enforcement and the FBI. This is all speculation as to what's happening. I look forward to hearing from law enforcement. I concur with Juliette when she said that communication and the lack of communication creates a void and transparency and people's belief and competency around what we are hearing and then not hearing. So I think we're going to keep going forward. The coverage will continue, but I really like to hear where we are in this case right now without speculation. They know where we are, and they should really inform us.

MICHAELSON: Well and to your point Pima County Sheriff's Department put out a statement on X. There is no press briefing scheduled for tonight regarding the Nancy Guthrie investigation. A written statement is forthcoming. That was at 08:49 p.m. here in Southern California. It's now 10:49 p.m., so that was exactly two hours ago. And where's the statement? I mean, what is going on? SLAUGHTER: Exactly.

MICHAELSON: It doesn't take two -- I mean, when I hear forthcoming, I don't think two hours. So I don't know what do you read real quickly, what do you read into that? Because clearly something's going on behind the scenes.

SLAUGHTER: I read into that that they actually don't have a crisis communication person to put out information in real time and to do it quickly. The hesitation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The hesitation creates real tension for the community and with the long section.

[01:50:00]

MICHAELSON: Okay. There's a new statement literally as we spoke. Maybe they were watching. It says, long I'm going to read this out loud. This is from the Pima County Sheriff's statement. Law enforcement activity is underway at a residence near East Orange Grove Road and North 1st Avenue related to the Guthrie case. Because this is a joint investigation at the request of the FBI, no additional information is currently available. So again, because this is a joint investigation at the request of the FBI, no additional information is currently available. So how I read that, Sunny, is clearly the Pima County Sheriffs were planning on, wanted to put out more information, and the FBI clearly told them no, right?

SLAUGHTER: Yes. I read that in the same lens as you are. And as other guests have said, there's tension, and that's obvious. What I would like to see them do is coordinate, collaborate, and be able to communicate effectively to the public through the press and not put out things if they have not said that they're going to do that jointly. So I need them to pull back, get it together, communicate with one another so we can understand exactly where we are.

The tension we know is real. It happens. It's not unusual, but we really need them to -- I need a crisis communication person to be deciding what we're going to do collaboratively between FEMA and FBI so we don't have these kind of missteps. It really lacks professionalism, and I don't mean, Monday -- back on Monday morning quarterback anyone, but it really creates a problem for the community and the trust that is necessary to resolve these cases, because if this is not the real thread that needs to be pulled on where they are right now, then they still need the public's help, and they won't get it if they can't communicate effectively.

We need effective communication coming out of law enforcement, and they need to do it together. So my friends and colleagues --

MICHAELSON: Right. And if this turns into another situation of detaining somebody but releasing them right away, how that starts to play out in the public as well. Sunny Slaughter, thank you for your perspective. I know you're going to be staying up with us tonight as we try to get more information on this, and we continue to follow this breaking news in the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie. More coverage after a quick commercial break. Stay with us.

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[01:55:00]

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MICHAELSON: We continue to follow law enforcement activity about two miles from Nancy Guthrie's home in Tucson. CNN crews are on the ground. They saw marked Sheriff vehicles, federal evidence truck as well. This is usually the moment that we sign off from our nightly show, "The Story Is," here on CNN. But tonight, we're staying on an extra hour later, in order to continue our coverage of this. I know we had teased an interview with Bill Maher and some other segments. We hope to bring you those next week.

But in the next break, we will be back after that with more coverage of Nancy Guthrie. Stay with us. CNN for more breaking news.

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