Gary Brucato

“quite a cool-headed character under pressure.”

Gary Brucato · said 2026-07-31 · reported 2026-08-03

Brucato described the masked figure loitering on Guthrie's porch as a cool-headed character under pressure.

“Ultimately nobody got anything out of this. The way this is going to feel to a basically normal individual, not a psychopath, is like the way you would feel if you put all of your money into a slot machine and it went up in smoke,”

Gary Brucato · said 2026-07-31 · reported 2026-08-03

Brucato added that nobody got anything out of the situation and compared the feeling to losing all your money in a slot machine.

“I think [it] is clear was some sort of goon that was put there to give the impression of a totally outside agent who never met this woman who came in to do the dirty work,”

Gary Brucato · said 2026-07-31 · reported 2026-08-03

Brucato said the masked figure on Guthrie's porch was a goon placed there to give the impression of an outside agent.

“We’ll see there was a person who did the deed, who I’ve called the waiter who served it, and I think that’s ‘porch guy,’ and behind the scenes I think there are at least two people with different psychologies and motives.”

Gary Brucato · said 2026-07-31 · reported 2026-08-03

Brucato suspects the porch figure carried out the deed while at least two people with different psychologies and motives operated behind the scenes.

“The first one is demanding money and the second one is undoing the ability of the first person to get money, which suggests to me that the first person would’ve been kinda mad that the second person wrote the note,”

Gary Brucato · said 2026-07-31 · reported 2026-08-03

Brucato explained that the second note undermined the first author's ability to get money, suggesting conflict between the two note writers.

“These two ransom notes… do suggest to me two different people who are perhaps experiencing some kind of rupture in terms of their attitude about what happened,”

Gary Brucato · said 2026-07-31 · reported 2026-08-03

Brucato told NewsNation journalist Brian Entin that the two ransom notes suggest two different authors with differing attitudes about what happened.

“I got nothing and now on top of it I’m even in more trouble than I was to begin with.”

Gary Brucato · said 2026-07-31 · reported 2026-08-03

Brucato voiced what a basically normal individual involved in the case would feel about getting nothing and being in more trouble.

“When I look at the note with the modicum of sympathy and the distancing, it seems to me a risk was taken in writing that because it would’ve been written from the same place that the first one was written,”

Gary Brucato · said 2026-07-31 · reported 2026-08-03

Brucato described the language in the second ransom note as florid and said writing it from the same location as the first note was a risk.

“There’s something going on in the dynamic that’s causing a rupture and yet for some reason no one has come forward.”

Gary Brucato · said 2026-07-31 · reported 2026-08-03

Brucato noted that something in the dynamic caused a rupture and yet no one has come forward.

“It was money and something else, emotion, something that was preyed upon and the person regretted it because it all went up in smoke,”

Gary Brucato · said 2026-07-31 · reported 2026-08-03

Brucato said the motive of the porch guy was probably money but the author of the second note may have been inspired by emotion.