All the clues that Nancy Guthrie was targeted, as ex-FBI agent offers chilling new abduction theory

Nancy Guthrie could have been abducted and taken to Mexico, a former FBI agent says — as further clues point to the theory that the 84-year-old mother of “Today” host Savannah Guthrie is the victim of a targeted kidnapping.

The search for the missing grandmother was in its fifth day Thursday, and the Pima County Sheriff’s department in Tucson, Arizona, has no suspects.

Officials best lead seemed to be a random note that was sent to TMZ and two local TV stations — which included some insider details about the crime as well as a demand for millions of dollars in Bitcoin.

“I feel that this was targeted,” former Special Agent Tracy Walder at the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office told The Post.

“Her house is set pretty far back… It’s on almost an acre of land. This isn’t a place where the houses are really close together and people are looking for whatever’s an easy opportunity,” she said.

“I don’t think some kind of botched robbery, because if it’s a robbery, you don’t want to burden yourself with a person that you’re taking out,” added Walder, who also previously served as Staff Operations Officer at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center.

“I think this is someone who probably established a pattern of life for Nancy. Sat in her neighborhood, figured out her comings and goings. Was this Sunday dinner a thing she always did? It’s known that she had staff who helped her because of her mobility issues. It sounds like she doesn’t have staff 24 hours a day. So when do they leave? When do they come?” said Walder.

So far, authorities have focused their visible search efforts on the immediate vicinity of Nancy’s home in the Catalina Foothills, low-crime suburb of Tucson that was carved out of desert decades ago.

But, Walder believes that behind the scenes, law enforcement are looking further afield.

“I definitely think that they would be expanding out the search, particularly all the way towards the border,” Walder said.

“Tucson’s just about an hour’s drive, 60 miles-ish to the border, because you have to remember if this is a kidnapping, the kidnapper had at least nine hours until she was reported missing. You can get really far in nine hours,” she added.

“I would imagine they are working with all of their border states, California and New Mexico, and I think they’re probably working with Mexican authorities as well,” Walder said.

Fellow former FBI agent Michael Harrigan added that the fact that an investigator at the house was seen carrying a Cellebrite briefcase — a digital forensic repository used to extract data from computers and cell phones — was a key clue in the investigation.

“Any cell phone that was in that area is going to have pinged off a tower. It’s going to leave a signature or date timestamp that it was there. You see the Marshals use that a lot,” Harrigan told The Post.

“Marshals are phenomenal with tracking fugitives with that, but the [FBI] and other law enforcement use it also. They download the cell phone data from towers to identify what cell phones may have been in the area. And then they can go back with subpoenas. They can go back or search warrants to the providers and then get the information on who that was,” he explained.

Cops under fire

Local law enforcement raised eyebrows earlier this week when they left Nancy Guthrie’s home, before returning to the crime scene on Wednesday.

“I am very upset that they did that,” Walder said.

“Clearly it’s a potential kidnapping situation. We don’t know if they have a suspect. We don’t know if Ms. Guthrie is alive or not. If you have all of these questions, I don’t care if you have fully processed a crime scene; you still wanna keep the crime scene.

“I think it’s incredibly frustrating that it was released. It was probably Pima County that did it. I don’t blame them. I think they probably haven’t worked a crime of this magnitude, but when I was an FBI agent, you can hold onto crime scenes as long as you need to,” she added.

However, Harrigan told The Post he believes police know a lot more than they have revealed.

“Normally, once you surrender a crime scene, you’re saying, ‘I’m done with it, see you later, we’ve got everything we need.’ But the decision to return indicates that from the time they surrendered the crime scene, some information, either forensic information or testimonial information, pointed to something in the residence that they may have missed or didn’t consider at the time,” he said.

Maybe there’s an item missing, and they’re going to be able to collect potential DNA evidence around where that item was taken.That to me points that something came up after they cleared the scene,” Harrigan added.

“I think law enforcement has a pretty good grasp on what happened at this point. They’re just grinding through a lot of information here. Maybe they have an idea who it is, but their primary focus is always going to be, ‘Let’s preserve life, let’s get this person back, even if we have to delay an arrest or an interview of somebody who might be a suspect,'”  he said.

“Once you arrest somebody, Miranda Rights kicks in and they don’t have to say a thing. So you want get that person back alive, or worst case scenario, recover the remains. If that, God forbid, was the worst outcome, you’ve got to have that closure for the family so you can wait on the actual arrest or sensitive interview as you’re trying to get that location identified and get that closure for the family,” added Harrigan, who was formerly the chief of the FBI’s Firearms Training Program.

Proof of life

On Wednesday, Savannah and her two siblings appeared in a video apparently addressed to an alleged kidnapper, begging for those who took her to give proof Nancy is still alive.

Authorities said Thursday that so far the ransom note writer have not been in contact again, and have not provided proof of life.

“The number one goal is to attempt to get proof of life and to hopefully spur those who took the victim, if that’s the case, to communicate and enter into a dialogue,” Harrigan said.

“If the ransom note is valid, it’s critical they establish a communication line with the kidnappers. That’s their best-case scenario. They need to know that she’s still alive and that she’s okay,” he added.

“Secondarily, that provides more opportunity to identify who they are and the circumstances of the abduction,” Harrigan said.