How People Talk Themselves Into A Crime: A Thought About the Nancy Guthrie Case
Savannah Guthrie’s mother, Nancy, is missing. And like everyone else, my brain immediately starts running worst-case scenarios.
Because when police say a person with limited mobility didn’t simply “wander off,” we’re not talking about someone who took a wrong turn on a morning walk. We’re talking about something planned. Predatory. Human.
This situation makes me think of a case I know about from my incarceration.
I was in prison with a woman. When she was a young mom, she was living with her boyfriend. They made the decision to rob someone. And I’ve wondered for years how that decision actually formed—because my guess is it rarely starts as “Let’s destroy someone.” It probably starts as a slow boil.
Maybe it started with the money pinch.
Not “we’re starving,” but that grindy, humiliating pressure: bills, rent, feeling behind, feeling embarrassed, feeling like everyone else got the luck and you didn’t.
Then maybe it turned into talking.
Not one big conversation. Hundreds of little ones. Complaining. Comparing. Keeping score.
I work hard and I’m not getting anywhere.
It isn’t fair that they have things and I don’t.
The rich get richer.
My son deserves to have nice things too.
And maybe this is where it shifted into resentment.
Resentment is sneaky because it doesn’t sound criminal. It sounds like a grievance. A justification. A “life isn’t fair” rant. But if you feed it long enough, maybe it stops being a feeling and starts becoming a worldview. Ya know?
Then I think the resentment becomes a shared story.
Two people feeding the same ugly narrative:
Can you believe he has a new car? He’s probably selling drugs.
Oh look at that handbag. Who is she sleeping with?
Must be nice to live like that.
They didn’t earn it.
People like that don’t even appreciate what they have.
Because after enough repetition, the story doesn’t just sit in your head. It starts to change what feels possible. What feels allowed. What feels “reasonable.”
The next step might not be action yet. It might be rehearsal, though.
Not an actual plan typed out and taped to the fridge. More like letting certain thoughts hang around without shutting them down. The kind of talk that maybe sounds like:
I’m just saying… somebody could do something at that corner store…
People get away with things all the time.
No one would even notice if…
And my guess is that’s where thinking turns into permission-ish. Not full permission. Not “I’m a criminal.” More like: it’s not that crazy. It’s not that wrong. It’s not that big of a deal.
There are names for some of this. I looked them up, because I wanted language for what I’ve seen.
Moral disengagement is the mental gymnastics that make robbing or harming someone feel acceptable:
They can afford it.
They had it coming.
It’s not really that bad.
I’m not the real bad person here.
Cognitive distortions (a CBT term) are warped thinking patterns that can fuel bad decisions:
Catastrophizing: My life is over anyway.
Blaming: If they hadn’t done X, I wouldn’t be doing this.
Minimizing harm:
No one’s really getting hurt.
Everyone does it.
I had no choice.
I’m the real victim here.
Now, back to my friend and what they did.
They somehow made a choice. A terrible choice. They didn’t just pick a random target. They looked at parked cars, found a very nice SUV with a child safety seat in the back, and decided that was the one. A “soccer mom” type. A mommy-mobile. In their minds, that target probably felt “safe.” Less likely to fight back. Less likely to be armed. Easier. They didn’t choose a pickup truck with a gun rack in the back.
When the mother came back to her car, she was taken. Thankfully, she did not have her children with her.
She was driven around to banks. They stole her money. She begged for her life. Begged to see her children again. The couple showed her a picture of her children—taken from her own wallet—as a comfort? A threat? I still don’t know.
They killed the mom.
And the woman I knew was sentenced to prison for life.
So when I hear about Nancy Guthrie, my mind goes there.
Savannah Guthrie isn’t Kardashian-level famous, but she’s famous enough that the same issue applies: people around you can know things—your routines, your home, your patterns, your “normal.” And when someone already has grievance thinking, that proximity can become a spark.
It must be hard to be Kardashian-level wealthy because you end up with nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) and confidentiality clauses for everything—contracts that legally restrict employees, contractors, and staff from sharing private details about the family. But even with contracts, I don’t know how quiet you can keep a life that visible. People talk. People brag. And you never know who’s listening.
I had a family member who did domestic help for the Post family in Battle Creek, Michigan (the cereal family) more than 50 years ago. It still comes up in conversations because it’s interesting. And I’m a talker. Is it likely that caretakers and family mention those kinds of connections too? Maybe?
To be clear: I’m not claiming that’s what happened in this case. We don’t know. Speculation can be reckless.
But is it possible someone was thinking like my friend? Put-upon, humiliated, convinced life owed them something—and then they talked themselves into a terrible action?
That’s why I keep coming back to prevention, even when the story is still unfolding.
I looked up how to stop this kind of escalation in terrible thinking, and here’s what I found:
Name the story out loud: “I’m in a resentment story.” And now that I know I’m in a resentment story, the next question is: how can I rewrite a better story?
Really think about outcomes. How does this story end? There are plenty of true crime stories out there. They almost never end the way the person imagined in their head. It’s a whole genre of cautionary tales.
And way more ideas… I won’t list them all here.
And one more thing I need to say out loud—because it’s true even if it sounds complicated: after being justice-impacted, I feel sadness and outrage for victims of crimes. Like we all do. But for the perpetrators… oh my gosh. I also feel sick about what they did to their own lives. Not sympathy that excuses anything. Not “poor them.” More like: I can’t believe you threw your whole life away for this. Because you wanted something, or were mad about something, or felt humiliated, or wanted to feel powerful for five minutes… and now your whole life is a sentence.
Because I want to recognize myself and in my own criminal case I had my own share of wrong, desperate, and catastrophizing thinking. My brain living in doom scenarios. But in my defense… it was doomy. I wrestle with this so much. How could I have stopped myself and how can I help others not get into this terrible thinking whilst living in a terrible situation.
A lot of crimes aren’t some cinematic, pure-evil moment. I was in prison for a long time, and I don’t believe there is evil in some otherworldly sense. I think it’s mainly catastrophic stupidity.
And I can’t help wondering where that went wrong.
Parenting?
Schools?
A low IQ diagnosis—or an undiagnosed limitation?
Addiction, trauma, untreated mental illness?
A partner who escalates everything?
None of that erases responsibility. But it does matter if we actually want fewer victims in the future.
Right now, Nancy Guthrie’s family is living every person’s nightmare. I’m praying she’s found alive. And I’m praying that whoever is responsible—if there is someone responsible—didn’t just destroy her life and theirs.
Because that’s the part I can’t unsee anymore: the victim loses everything… and then the perpetrator adds their own life to the pile, and their family’s life too. For nothing. For a story they let get comfortable in their brain until it felt… ok-ish.
And one last story, because entitlement doesn’t always show up as grand evil. Sometimes it shows up as something so small and so weird you almost laugh—until you realize it’s the same root.
When I first arrived at prison, a very good friend sent me 16 books. I was walking to my room when a woman down the hall asked to borrow one. I told her she could—after I read it first.
Oh did she get mad.
She cussed me out! Like the books belonged to her. For days she was cruel and angry about it. Super entitled, couldn’t tolerate being told “no". It was so beyond shocking.
But that’s the thing. It exists on a spectrum. Sometimes it’s petty. Sometimes it’s violent. Sometimes it’s “give me your book,” and sometimes it’s “give me your money.”
And I can’t stop thinking about how often the first step is invisible: a thought sitting down in someone’s mind and getting comfortable.
Thank you for reading.
