Nancy Guthrie Update: Ed Smart Explains Why Transparency Matters

Nancy Guthrie has been missing for more than 170 days now. She disappeared from Tucson, Arizona, and her family is still waiting. Still hoping. Trapped in that terrible place of “not knowing.”

Brian Entin has been covering the case on his podcast. He spent months following the case and thinking about what the Guthrie family is enduring. The frustration. The waiting. The questions that don’t get answered.

Chatting With Ed Smart

On his Brian Entin Investigates podcast this Tuesday, Entin brought on someone who knows “exactly what that” feels like. Ed Smart. He is Elizabeth Smart’s father.

You probably remember Elizabeth Smart. She was fourteen years old when a stranger took her “from her house in Salt Lake City” back in 2002. She was gone for nine months. The whole country watched and waited, and against all odds, she was rescued safely.

Paying Attention Is Vital

As detailed in People Magazine’s coverage on Elizabeth Smart, Elizabeth turned that terrible ordeal into a life of purpose. Today, she is a mother of three and a prominent missing persons advocate who founded the Elizabeth Smart Foundation.

Reflecting on her own rescue, Elizabeth has repeatedly emphasized that ordinary people paying attention made all the difference.

Weighing In On Nancy’s Case

The reliance on an alert public is precisely why her father feels so strongly about how missing person cases are handled today. Ed Smart has been watching the Nancy Guthrie case closely. He has some thoughts, and he isn’t shy about sharing them.

First, he thinks police aren’t being open enough. He told Entin that holding back information from the public was “a mistake.” He knows this from personal experience. When Elizabeth was missing, he and his family had the same problem. They felt like law enforcement wasn’t telling them everything.

Smart said “the not knowing” is the worst part. He called it “an emotional wreck.” He compared it to an open wound that just keeps “bleeding.” You can’t close it up until you get answers.

Calling For More Transparency

He also pointed something out that might seem obvious but isn’t. If police had told the public earlier that they believed Nancy was likely dead, people would have been looking for different things.

Instead of imagining her in “some basement” somewhere, they could have been searching the desert. Looking for a body. Smart said “if that second letter came” out sooner, “somebody potentially might have seen her being buried.”

It is a difficult point, but one Smart believes deserves serious consideration.

Heavy Toll of Rumors & Accusations

Smart also spoke about the rumors and finger-pointing that often surround high-profile missing person cases. In Elizabeth’s case, people started looking at the family.

Even his own brother got accused. And that hurts. It makes people stop helping. It makes volunteers drop out. Why search for someone if you think the family might be involved?

That same thing is happening with Nancy Guthrie. Entin mentioned that a whole group of people online think the family had something to do with it. Even though there isn’t any evidence.

Smart remembers how that felt. At one point, police told his wife Lois that “they didn’t think I was telling the truth.” That caused problems between them. He had to go down to the police station himself and demand to answer every single question. He wasn’t leaving until they cleared him. He had to.

Walking A Fine Line

He said he doesn’t want to be “critical” of law enforcement. They have their reasons. They have protocols. They worry about destroying an investigation. But he also thinks there has to be a limit. You can’t hold everything back forever.

In his own case, his younger daughter Mary Katherine came forward with a name. She thought she knew who took her sister. But police didn’t take it seriously enough. It took four months before the family finally pushed to share that information publicly.

Smart definitely regrets waiting that long and he said if he could go back, he would have given police a month and then gone public anyway because he believes that delay cost them time. Maybe even cost them a chance to find Elizabeth sooner.

Making A Clear Distinction

Ed Smart is not accusing law enforcement of being bad at their jobs. And that’s an important distinction, but he believes they need to be more open. Much sooner.

He told Entin that “the sooner the information could have come out, the sooner people could have been looking for her.”

Mobilizing the Public

Brian Entin and Ed Smart agreed that, above all else, families need answers. They also agreed that the public can play an important role, particularly when investigators provide enough information for people to know what they should be looking for. And reaching out to the public makes sense because people want to help.

In the case of Elizabeth Smart, what struck her dad is the sheer amount of caring, compassion, and practical assistance. So now, he feels that many folks would like to know more and contribute more to the Nancy Guthrie case.

Finding Answers Helps

Toward the end of their chat, Ed Smart brought up something he calls “the new normal.” Despite the fact that Elizabeth eventually came home, he explained that life doesn’t just snap back and their family might never be the same again. But what was so precious was finding answers.

Ed Smart said he feels deeply for Savannah Guthrie and the rest of Nancy’s family because they currently sit in limbo and it’s a hollow place to be in. He reminded viewers that it’s terribly hard to move forward in life when there doesn’t seem to be any conclusion.

Overall, though, he hopes that the Nancy Guthrie case might help to change the way investigators disseminate information to the public.

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