The search for Nancy Guthrie continues as investigators work to piece together what happened the night the 84-year-old disappeared from her home. A former FBI agent recently weighed in on the case, pointing to one detail that he says could suggest Guthrie was alive when she was taken from the residence.

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While talking to NewsNation’s Brian Entin, Jim Clemente said that the droplets of blood on Guthrie’s front stoop suggest that she wasn’t killed before she left the property.

“It tells me…that she was probably alive when she left the house. If you saw a dragging pattern, smear patterns on the floor, that would be another issue. But that’s just not what we’ve seen…we haven’t heard anything about that. But this blood spatter pattern that appears to be from droplets, that tells me that somebody was walking and bleeding, not mortally wounded,” Clemente said.

Clemente’s thoughts on the blood spatter may debunk the theory that Guthrie had a heart attack and died after being woken up from a deep sleep. Speaking about the case on the March 7 episode of Nancy Grace’s Crime Stories podcast, sleep specialist Pat Byrne said that he was concerned with that might have happened if Guthrie was woken up by the perp inside her home.

“The research just shows that elderly people who, even without heart conditions, are at a high risk of heart attacks and being violently woken up from a deep sleep. So that’s what the scientific research shows. And so you add on the fact that she has a pacemaker, which means she has a heart condition, makes it worse,” he said on the podcast, adding that Guthrie would be at a “very high risk of a heart attack.”

The Pima County Sheriff’s Department has confirmed that the drops of blood on Guthrie’s front stoop do indeed match her DNA. In an interview with Fox News Digital, forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden said that he thinks that Guthrie was bleeding from the hands or face, based on the nature of the spatter.

“The nature of the blood spots with little pale centers or donut shapes are typical for drops that come from the nose or mouth, because they’re mixed with air,” he told the outlet in February.

Guthrie has been missing since Sunday, Feb. 1. Anyone with information is asked to contact the FBI (1-800-CALL-FBI).