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As multiple agencies collect tips in the Nancy Guthrie case, the man funding a $100,000 reward says Crime Stoppers — not the sheriff — offers the safest path for witnesses to come forward and an enticing one for people who want to get paid for credible information without giving their name.
“I believe that people will come forward if they’re anonymous and if they get a reward,” said Wisconsin attorney Michael Hupy, who is the president of Crime Stoppers Milwaukee.
In Pima County, Arizona, the local Crime Stoppers affiliate is known as 88-CRIME, and the number is 520-882-7463.
Hupy has paid out $75,000 in rewards and posted another $200,000 in an effort to solve crimes in his hometown. But he told Fox News Digital this week he put up six figures in the Guthrie case due to the alarming circumstances of her disappearance.
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She is believed to have been taken from her bedroom in northern Tucson around 2 a.m. on Sunday, Feb. 1. Responding officers found a thin trail of blood droplets from her front door to the edge of her driveway. Her back doors were propped open. Her Nest doorbell camera was missing. And the trail seemingly ended there, until the FBI and Google recovered home security video showing a masked man on her doorstep — who is still unidentified.
“I was very sad that an 84-year-old woman in poor health was taken from her home, without her medication, her heart pacemaker stopped [synching], there’s blood at the crime scene, and I thought something had to be done quickly,” he told Fox News Digital. “And I thought this is a place I could step in, as I have in Milwaukee.”
He also criticized the early handling of the investigation, saying the sheriff released the crime scene too quickly and made other missteps.
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“I don’t think they secured the scene long enough to process it,” he said. “They went in, looked, opened it up, then they had to come back later.”
Hupy said he believes that the anonymity guaranteed by Crime Stoppers can’t be matched by the county sheriff’s tip line or even the FBI, whose tip line the Guthrie family has promoted publicly.
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Tipsters can avoid being labeled “snitches” or facing retaliation, he said.
“That’s the point of it,” he added. “They get a reward anonymously, and they help society by getting criminals off the street.”
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And with the investigation entering its third month this week, Hupy said the chance that someone who knows something about Guthrie’s suspected abduction told someone else has only increased.
“Somebody will learn something,” he said. “An ex-girlfriend will get mad and tell the authorities or Crime Stoppers that her boyfriend confessed to her. A bartender will say a drunk came in and spilled the beans on himself or someone else. So the longer it goes on, the more likely we are to get the criminal.”
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Tipsters who use Crime Stoppers can also avoid getting in the middle as both the PCSD and FBI vie for information on the case independently, Hupy said.
“Avoid the bickering and avoid the nonsense and call Crime Stoppers,” Hupy said. “We know how to handle this. We have solved thousands of cases, and we’re not in the middle of something.“
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And because Crime Stoppers is not a government agency, Hupy said it is not subject to freedom of information laws and does not keep identifying records of the informants it pays.
Tipsters are not asked for their names and receive a unique code number when they give information instead, he said. If there’s an arrest based on that information, they can collect by giving the code, not their name.
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“If your tip results in an arrest, you get a reward,” he said. “We don’t even know your name or your address or your phone number.”
And there are no records kept of those details either, he added.
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The national crime fighting organization has given out tens of millions of dollars in reward money over the years, he said.
The Crime Stoppers reward is $102,500 for information that leads to an arrest. The FBI is separately offering a $100,000 reward for information that leads to either Guthrie’s recovery or an arrest and conviction. And “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie is offering $1 million for information that brings her mother home.
“Come forward, you’ll be anonymous…and if you have the right information, you’ll get a reward,” Hupy said. “It’s that simple.”
