Sgt. Aaron Cross

You are about to get an inside look at what's currently going on in the Nancy Guthrie investigation from an insider, a sergeant who worked very closely with Sheriff Nanos and the Pima County Sheriff's Department. I'm going to be interviewing Sergeant Aaron Cross, who is the president of the Pima County Deputies Organization and what he reveals about the way this investigation was conducted and all of the gaps in the investigation that were put in place from the very beginning is shocking. He also goes on to reveal personality conflicts within the department between Pima County Sheriff's Office and the FBI, and it paints a very interesting picture and shed some light on what's going on today. Thank you so much for joining me today, Sergeant Cross. Yes, sir. Thank you for the invite. What do you do for Pima County exactly, and what's your connection to the Nancy Guthrie investigation? So currently I'm a sergeant, and while I'm not in charge of the investigation or in investigations, I'm the president of the union, so I'm kind of the mouthpiece for the deputies and detectives for Pima County Sheriff's Department. We are the largest union of the three. Walk me through what you were told about the sergeant put in charge that first week of the investigation. Six months as a sergeant, no prior homicide case of his own. Who made that assignment, and did anyone flag that beforehand? No, he was placed in there nearly immediately. He was promoted to sergeant only in 2023, if I remember correctly. So he very rapidly went inside from patrol and then was assigned to homicide. I don't believe he put in for that. Usually those assignments are made by command. So command, for whatever reason, decided that despite the fact that he hadn't been in homicide before, that he was the right person for that unit. And so of the detectives on the scene, how many had homicide experience, if any at all? They all had, because they were in the homicide unit, but it was very limited. It was three years or less, all of them. Three years or less. And so would you say they were novice homicide detectives? Is that experienced in your field? That's a fair characterization. You need a lot of time in homicide to learn. It's a complicated assignment. And so three years was not adequate in this case? No. And it was almost unheard of prior to Chris Nanos winning election, having someone with that little experience in homicide. If they were brought in, it would be one person being brought in, and the rest of the unit would kind of mentor that new detective to show them the ropes on how to be a homicide detective. I had a former homicide sergeant, a respected sergeant, explain to me that you can't even call yourself a homicide detective until you've been through trial. So it takes a while to learn the ropes. A lot of gaps in the initial investigation. Some detectives not even telling each other what witnesses they'd interviewed. Had you heard anything from the get-go about a certain moment, a witness that was missed, or anything like that? Can you point out a specific gap to us, if any? As far as missed, I don't believe so. The issue was that it was a lot of duplication of work because we weren't accurately tracking who'd been spoken to. So that was kind of the missteps in that part. The big misstep, in my opinion, the opinion of many of the detectives and people in the community, was just giving up the scene so quickly. I think the next day it was given back to the family, and there was really no reason for that. You've said that detectives, experienced detectives, were sidelined because of favoritism. What is this favoritism? And who is perpetuating this favoritism? Is it Nanos or is it somebody else? I don't know if I characterize it as favoritism. I would say what happened is our two most senior detectives in the homicide unit had been transferred out prior to this because they were handling investigations, and they had a suspect for a homicide, and they were building the case against them. However, they weren't quite there yet. And so they were making the case to make the arrest. However, their commander, one of Sheriff Nanos's, I would describe him as a favored son, was unhappy with how slowly they were building the case and demanded them to be arrested immediately. And of course, the probable cause wasn't there yet, so they didn't. And as a result of them moving too slowly, in his opinion, they were transferred out of homicide to cold case. In the Pima County Sheriff's Office, is this something that is a usual occurrence or? Very frequent, unfortunately. Very frequent. Very frequent. Okay. Besides intrinsic tension with the Pima County Sheriff's Office, there was also tension with the FBI. Was there a specific moment or meeting where it became clear the FBI felt maybe boxed out? For this investigation, that's unclear. I imagine probably pretty fairly early. It's well known, the sheriff's animosity towards the FBI and why. I believe you had former Chief Deputy Castegar explain that in great detail, and that animosity carries on to this day. Credit to the FBI, they so far have established the best piece of evidence we've had so far in this case with that ring camera footage. I'm not sure where we'd be in this investigation without it, frankly. I'm glad you bring that up because I think what a lot of people are looking for right now is an update with regards to what evidence the Pima County or the FBI has. Can you tell us, obviously without threatening the sanctity of the investigation, if there has been some kind of a meaningful development in the Nancy Guthrie case? Not to my knowledge, but again, I've purposely tried to stay away so I wouldn't risk endangering the investigation by accident somehow. So, they're hoping to solve this. Well, I should clarify, the sheriff and command staff are hoping to solve this case, in my opinion, from behind a desk. To your listening audience, the most surprising thing if you drove to Tucson right now would be, save for a single billboard along the freeway, you would have no idea that this crime even happened. There's not posters or reward pamphlets really being handed out, other than a few YouTubers took that upon themselves to do that recently. But typically on high-profile cases like this, and I've helped out in the past, homicide, we would combine both investigative efforts from behind a desk with also street detectives who would get out and speak with our criminal element, our local criminal element, because what people need to understand about Tucson is it's kind of a big little city and there's one degree of separation from everybody here. And so, what we would often do is the street detectives, those units that used to exist, would go out and just kick the bushes and rattle their cages frequently until something would kind of turn up because, you know, the bad guys all talk to each other by and large. And so, if there was discussion of this crime amongst that community, that criminal community in Tucson, oftentimes it would pop up because the criminals, after a while, they just wanted to be left alone. And so, you would kind of turn them into unpaid informants just to get the heat off their back. You've confirmed that one of the sideline detectives was brought back into the investigation and put on the task force. Can you tell me who this detective is or what kind of experience they have? Well, without mentioning his name, I'll tell you that he has over 10 years experience in homicide. He's a great detective. And so, I think the command staff and the sheriff felt a little heat about the lack of experience. And so, when they created the task force, they decided to, for this one case, to put it behind him and the animosity and bring him out of cold case and make him part of that task force, which is a great thing. So, the case is, I believe, still technically assigned to one of the homicide detectives that responded initially. However, they're really working at more as a collaborative effort. So, it's kind of a, it's a team case, I guess, at this point. And so, would you say this detective that was brought back onto the task force has the most amount of experience? Oh, certainly.