Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe said it is unclear what led law enforcement to stop the person detained in the Nancy Guthrie case, but officers had enough reason to bring them in for questioning.
“We don’t know the lead that brought law enforcement to that person. We don’t even know if that lead was derived from the public airing of the video and the surveillance photo,” McCabe told CNN’s Laura Coates on Tuesday.
The person could have been pulled over for a traffic violation, he added.
“During that process, you’re going to try to talk to that person. You’re going to try to build some rapport, you’re going to try to convince them to open up and start telling you even innocuous details about their life,” McCabe said. “And from that seemingly innocuous conversation you are trying to build towards probable cause.”
Retired FBI Special Agent Peter Lapp, who was also in conversation with Coates, said that “time is of the essence,” however, and police released the door cam footage because they likely needed help identifying the individual.
“I can’t say that that led to the car stop, but it’s the timing is just too coincidental,” he told Coates.
If investigators don’t get probable cause for a search warrant or information to hold the person longer, “they’re going to have to come to a point in sometime in the near future that they have to release him,” Lapp said.