Nancy Guthrie case: Retired lieutenant suggests Mexico ties were downplayed to keep feds off case early

Just a couple of miles from Nancy Guthrie’s home in Tucson is a desert “wash,” a natural drainage ditch, thick with brush so dense that one can barely see the surrounding homes, many of which cost seven figures.

That terrain is typical of the region — carved through the city and the rest of Pima County. Outside town, the desert stretches for miles in every direction.

That expanse is one of the challenges facing investigators trying to locate Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie, said Dave Smith, a retired lieutenant with the Arizona Department of Public Safety and a law enforcement consultant.

“The whole Tucson Valley is literally built around these arroyos, these ephemeral rivers,” he said. “This is literally your green belt here, only instead of parks and things like the rest of the nation has, we have this wonderful desert area. But again, it works between houses. It’s like a giant alley through the neighborhoods.”

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They can make good hiding places, but evidence also washes away quickly in the rain, he said.

“The evidence is transitory,” he told Fox News Digital. “Once it rains, your footprints go away, the sun is hard on other forms of evidence and frankly this is a tough place to investigate crimes.”

However, he said, he believes the missing woman was taken farther away.

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The suspect, who appeared on surveillance video recovered from Guthrie’s Nest doorbell camera, appeared to be wearing his holstered pistol “Mexican carry” style, Smith said.

“My first thought is always Mexico in a major crime, because it’s a great haven, and it’s hard for us to follow up on,” Smith told Fox News Digital. “But in this case obviously there was somebody was taken with intent. And I think that that’s why we need to wonder, perhaps, was she taken to Mexico?”

Sheriff Chris Nanos and FBI Director Kash Patel have traded barbs over the timing of when the bureau was asked to assist in the case. Federal authorities have said it was days before they were brought in, and before they arrived, the crime scene had been briefly released, allowing journalists and delivery drivers to walk up on the front porch, where there was a trail of blood spatter.

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“My personal theory is, if Mexico was suspected, that would make it a federal investigation,” Smith said. “There seemed to be a great deal of effort to keep the feds out of this case. And the best way to do it was to deny any possibility of interstate or international transport of the person’s body or kidnapped.”

It’s only about 60 miles from Guthrie’s neighborhood to the border town of Nogales, he said.

“You cross that border, on the Arizona side, it’s a small town, relatively small town,” he said. “You cross that border, it’s major urban area, 300,000 people.”

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That could make it easier to blend in, he added.

No suspects have been publicly identified since Guthrie’s suspected abduction on Feb. 1. Two men were briefly detained and later released in connection with the investigation. No charges have been filed and Guthrie’s whereabouts remain unknown.

In February, Nanos said the investigation hadn’t developed any firm evidence to indicate Guthrie was taken over the border.

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Days later, Fox News Digital reported that the FBI had contacted Mexican authorities in connection with the search for Guthrie.

Patel said on Fox News’ Sean Hannity’s podcast “Hang Out with Sean Hannity” that the FBI wasn’t asked to help for days.

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WATCH: Nancy Guthrie’s Nest doorbell cam records masked suspect

“What we, the FBI, do is say, ‘Hey, we’re here to help. What do you need?’” he said. “What can we do? And for four days, we were kept out of the investigation.”

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Within days, the FBI teamed up with Google to recover video that showed a masked suspect on Guthrie’s front steps — despite the fact that her Nest doorbell was unaccounted for and she didn’t have a cloud subscription to store images.

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However, tensions quickly emerged between the feds and the sheriff’s department over how to handle physical evidence, including DNA recovered inside the home.

“I had a fixed-wing aircraft on the ground ready to move it immediately through the night,” Patel told Hannity. “And they said, ‘we’re sending it to Florida,’ and then, I don’t know, 60 days. They have jurisdiction, so it’s their call.”

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A hair sample was sent to the sheriff’s preferred private lab in Florida early in the probe. Eleven weeks later, with no publicly visible progress, the lab finally shared the sample with the FBI for more advanced testing.

“We would have analyzed it within days and maybe gotten better information or more information,” Patel said. “Our lab’s just better than any other private lab out there, and we didn’t get a chance to do that.”

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Nanos responded with a written statement saying “coordination” with the FBI “began without delay.”

“The laboratory utilized by the Pima County Sheriff’s Department and the FBI Laboratory in Quantico have worked in close partnership from the outset and continue to collaborate in the analysis of evidence,” he said. “A member of the FBI Task Force was also notified and present at that scene working alongside our personnel. The FBI was promptly notified by both our department and the Guthrie family.”

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There is a combined reward of more than $1.2 million for information that breaks the case, and it remains unclaimed.

The family is urging anyone with information to dial 1-800-CALL-FBI.