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The blood spatter on Nancy Guthrie’s front porch suggests a single abductor took her out of her home, according to a former FBI profiler.
“If there was no blood spatter pattern inside the house, then outside by the front door or while she was going through the door this is where she put up a fight or refused to go any further,” retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent Jim Clemente told Fox News Digital Monday.
“This is where she was assaulted. Most likely struck in the nose or mouth. She fell to her knees or on the ground, aspirated, then coughed up blood, which also dripped around the same spot.”
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Guthrie is the 84-year-old mother of “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie. She had lived in her home in Tucson’s Catalina Foothills neighborhood for decades before vanishing under suspicious circumstances on Feb. 1.
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Sources with knowledge of the case previously told Fox News Digital there were no signs of a struggle inside. A masked intruder appeared on doorbell camera video taken at Guthrie’s front porch, and her back door was found propped open. Authorities have said they have not ruled out the possibility that multiple people could have been involved in her suspected kidnapping.
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Clemente said he believes her abductor then carried her away with her face up, which limited additional blood spatter. Video taken after local authorities released the crime scene shows a concentration of blood drops near the mat at her front door. The trail grows thin and ends where her front walkway meets the edge of the driveway.
“It rules out more than one person because if two people had control of her as they were leaving the house she would never have fallen to the ground,” he said. “They would have been in control of her body and prevented her from resisting and fighting and falling after she was struck in the face.”
She likely had her face down near the front door where images show the most blood, he said.
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“The larger droplets are low-velocity blood spatter that fell directly out of her mouth,” he said. “Her face was facing downward when she coughed up the medium velocity small droplets, and it was within inches of the ground facing straight down.”
There’s no indication of “cast off” blood spatter, he said, which appears when blood is flung off of a moving object.
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“The lack of directionality of the blood splatter says that those drops fell straight down, and she wasn’t moving fast,” he said. “So there is a contradiction in the evidence. I believe this was caused by the fact that she was carried from that first location to the car with her face up so only a minimum amount of blood was deposited on the walkway.”
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He said it doesn’t look like she was dragged and believes she had been struck in the face with a fist or possibly the butt of the suspect’s handgun.
“This was not done very quickly because if it had been, the blood should’ve had a tail moving the direction that she was traveling,” he said.
Dr. Michael Baden, a famed forensic pathologist, previously told Fox News Digital he suspected the blood drops came from Guthrie’s hands or face.
“The nature of the blood spots with little pale centers or donut shapes are typical for drops that come from the nose or mouth, because they’re mixed with air,” he said in February.
“These are not innocent droplets,” he added. “From the shape, number of droplets and the place of the droplets outside the house on the porch, they are entirely consistent and indicative of occurring during an abduction.”
Anyone with information is asked to dial 1-800-CALL-FBI. There is a combined reward of more than $1.2 million for information that cracks the case.
Fox News’ Julia Bonavita contributed to this report.
