As the investigation into Nancy Guthrie\u2019s disappearance continues with no suspect publicly identified and challenges with DNA evidence, experts may turn to digital forensics.<\/p>\n
Authorities have said little about digital evidence in the case, but one leading expert has no doubt that whoever is responsible for the 84-year-old\u2019s disappearance left a digital trail.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople forget how much their data spreads across devices. So the same thing that makes investigations hard make it hard for criminals to clean up,\u201d said Heather Barnhart, a digital forensics expert with the SANS Institute and Cellebrite.<\/p>\n
Barnhart helped investigate the University of Idaho murders<\/a>, for which Bryan Kohberger was sentenced to four life sentences. Barnhart is not involved in the Guthrie investigation.<\/p>\n \u201cYour phone is the silent witness to your life. It knows everything you do,\u201d Barnhart said. \u201cSo forming those patterns and then looking for any anomaly of someone trying to hide their digital footprint is key here.\u201d<\/p>\n More coverage of Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance<\/p>\n It\u2019s been nearly five weeks since Guthrie, the mother of \u201cTODAY\u201d co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, was reported missing on Feb. 1.<\/a><\/p>\n Since then, digital forensics has helped unearth<\/a> images of a masked man captured on Nancy Guthrie\u2019s doorbell camera in the hours before she was reported missing \u2014 but authorities have not publicly identified a suspect or person of interest.<\/p>\n Concern for Guthrie has only mounted, as her family on Tuesday announced a $1 million reward for her recovery.<\/a><\/p>\n Investigators appear to have faced some obstacles in the case: DNA evidence from gloves found two miles from Guthrie\u2019s home turned up no hits in CODIS<\/a>, the FBI\u2019s convicted offender DNA database.<\/p>\n Authorities are also examining DNA collected from Guthrie\u2019s home. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos has said he is hopeful they will be able to use investigative genetic genealogy<\/a> \u2014 a forensic tool that combines advanced DNA analysis with traditional genealogical research \u2014 but the lab that received the DNA has reported \u201cchallenges\u201d with the sample.<\/p>\n Nanos has said that his team is committed to chasing leads until they find Guthrie.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not going to give up. We\u2019re going to find Nancy, and we\u2019re going to find out who did this,\u201d he said earlier this month.<\/p>\n Chris Burbank, a former police chief in Salt Lake City, said that physical evidence is far from the only thing<\/a> that can crack a case.<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s really start combing every other bit of information that exists out there in the world,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He suggested that investigators could use artificial intelligence to track social media leads because \u201cmost of the time, people involved in this leave some sort of social media trail.\u201d<\/p>\n Barnhart, the digital forensics expert, said that eventually, when digital evidence in the Guthrie case becomes available, \u201cit will also paint a picture of truth.\u201d Digital evidence could arise with the naming of a suspect or a person of interest, or if a license plate reader or other form of technology picks up clues, she said.<\/p>\n Digital forensics involves the analysis of data from digital devices and the far-reaching corners of the internet and cloud services.<\/p>\n She said when she worked on analyzing the digital footprint of Kohberger in the 2022 University of Idaho murders case<\/a>, initially \u201cthe lack of evidence freaked everyone out.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy husband and I worked on that case, we really focused on the [laptop and phone] logs that tell the truth on why there wasn\u2019t evidence. And that became the bookend of Bryan Kohberger being awake at those hours, manually powering down a device that was at 100% battery. So he created a perfect timeline for us to hone in on that investigation,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n