(NEW YORK) — Authorities in Tennessee said they’re searching for a murder suspect who escaped from a county jail.

Joshua Wayne Metcalf, 48, is wanted for escaping from the Hancock County Jail in northeast Tennessee, the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department said on Thursday.

Metcalf was arrested for second-degree murder in the death of his brother, Jared Metcalf, in January 2024, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said, and now he’s been added to the TBI’s Most Wanted List.

A local school district, Hancock County Schools, said its buildings will be closed and students will have remote learning on Friday due to the escape.

A $2,500 reward is being offered for information leading to Metcalf’s arrest, the TBI said. Anyone with information is asked to call the TBI at 1-800-TBI-FIND or the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department at 423-733-2250.

ABC News’ Ahmad Hemingway contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie is begging for answers in the abduction of her mother, Nancy Guthrie, saying that “someone knows something.”

“How can someone vanish without a trace?” Savannah Guthrie said in the final part of her emotional interview with her friend and former co-host Hoda Kotb.

Nancy Guthrie, 84, was abducted from her Tucson, Arizona, house in the early hours of Feb. 1, authorities said. Investigators have released surveillance images from outside Nancy Guthrie’s house, but the person who took her remains unidentified.

“Our anguish is real. We need help,” Savannah Guthrie said. “We need someone to tell the truth. I have no anger in my heart — I have hope in my heart. I have love. But this family needs peace — I don’t think we deserve anything more or less than any other person.”

“It is never too late, and when you do, the warmth of love and forgiveness that will come will be greater than can be imagined,” she said.

As she waits for answers, Savannah Guthrie said she’s leaning on her faith, and is inspired by the deep faith her mother’s had through hard times, like after Savannah Guthrie’s father died when the “Today” host was a teenager.

“I saw her grieve, I saw her world shatter,” Savannah Guthrie said.

“And I saw her get up and I saw her believe and I saw her love. And I saw her hope and I saw her smile and I saw her laugh. I saw her joy. … I saw her faith,” she said.

“She taught me, she taught all of us,” Savannah Guthrie continued.

“I may not do it as well as her, but I will do it. I will do it for my kids. I will. I will not fall apart,” she said through tears. “I will not let whoever did this take my children’s mother from them. I will not let them take my joy.”

“Faith is how I will stay connected to my mom. … And I won’t let sadness win for her,” she said through tears.

Kotb has been filling in for Savannah Guthrie on “Today” since Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance. Savannah Guthrie plans to return to “Today” on April 6.

“I’m not gonna be the same,” she said.

But she added, “I want to smile, and when I do, it will be real. And my joy will be my protest.”

Anyone with information is urged to call 911, the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI, or the Pima County Sheriff’s Department at 520-351-4900.

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(KAUAI, Hawaii) — Three people are dead and two others were evacuated after a helicopter crashed off Kalalau Beach in Kauai, Hawaii, on Thursday, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

Bystanders and Kauai Fire Department crews rescued and medically evacuated two survivors to Wilcox Medical Center in Lihue, Hawaii, the Coast Guard said.

According to a preliminary report, the helicopter was carrying one pilot and four passengers when it crashed at Kalalau Beach, the County of Kauai said Thursday.

“We are greatly saddened by the loss of three lives in this helicopter crash and thinking of those individuals’ families and friends,” Cmdr. Andrew Williams, search and rescue mission coordinator with the Coast Guard Sector Honolulu, said in a statement.

“We are also keeping the survivors in our thoughts as they begin their recovery. We remain grateful for close coordination with our partner agencies throughout this tragic incident,” Williams added.

Kauai Police Dispatch personnel reported a helicopter crash at around 4 p.m., with five people aboard. The helicopter landed on the sandbar 100 yards off Kalalau Beach, according to the Coast Guard.
The Kauai Fire Department responded with an Air 1 helicopter crew and Ocean Safety Bureau officers aboard jet skis from Hanalei Bay, according to the Coast Guard.

The helicopter is reportedly a Hughes OH-6 Cayuse operated by Aviation Airborne, according to the Coast Guard.

The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash.

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(WASHINGTON) — Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are seeking testimony from private investigators who removed and stored a trove of evidence from the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion before it was searched by police in 2005, according to letters reviewed by ABC News.

With the Department of Justice appearing to have never obtained the evidence — which included three desktop computers and more than two dozen phone directories — lawmakers want to interview the men about the removal of what could have been key evidence for police and prosecutors in their probe into Epstein’s sex trafficking.

“[T]he Committee requests that you make yourself available for a transcribed interview to provide insight into the contents, removal, storage, and location of the materials removed from Mr. Epstein’s Palm Beach home,” Oversight Committee ranking member Rep. Robert Garcia of California wrote in letters that were sent to the three private investigators, who were working for Epstein.

“The Committee also seeks information regarding the reason for the removal of these materials, the potential withholding of these materials from law enforcement, and any other information regarding the activities and crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and any of his co-conspirators,” Garcia wrote.

ABC News last month reported about the removal of the potential evidence, which may have shielded Epstein from legal scrutiny and contributed to how he was able to largely evade justice for more than a decade.

The Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) issued a report in 2020 that faulted Alexander Acosta — then the top federal prosecutor in Miami — for agreeing to a plea deal with Epstein on charges in Florida before securing the missing computers, including one that was believed to have video footage from Epstein’s home surveillance cameras.

“There was good reason to believe the computers contained relevant — and potentially critical — information; and it was clear Epstein did not want the contents of his computers disclosed,” the OPR report said.

In letters first obtained by ABC News, Garcia formally requested that private investigators Paul Lavery, Stephen Kiraly and William Riley appear separately for voluntary transcribed interviews. The deadline for the investigators to respond is April 9.

According to the letters, Epstein’s longtime attorney Darren Indyke — who sat for a deposition before the Oversight panel last week — told lawmakers that the evidence was likely never turned over to law enforcement.

“After Epstein’s conviction, after he served jail time, through conversations with defense counsel I became aware that there were computer hard drives in the possession of private investigators,” Indyke said in his deposition. “I just don’t know how they came into possession, but I knew of the existence of hard drives.”  

Documents released earlier this year by the Department of Justice shed new light on the removal of the potential evidence. According to a 2005 memo from private investigator William Riley to one of Epstein’s criminal defense lawyers, Lavery visited Epstein’s Palm Beach home to remove “items of potential evidentiary value” less than two weeks before police raided the mansion in October 2005.

Lavery removed more than 100 pieces of potential evidence, according to an index released by the DOJ, including the three computers, 29 bound telephone directories and a listing of nearby masseuses, as well as a trove of sexually explicit materials. Among the removed materials was a photo with a handwritten message saying, “You better never forget about me” from an unknown woman who signed her name “Class of 2005.”

When the Palm Beach Police Department searched Epstein’s home two weeks later, investigators noted that multiple computers from the property “were conspicuously absent” from the home, including one linked to Epstein’s surveillance system.

While federal prosecutors attempted to recover the evidence while investigating Epstein in the late 2000s — including subpoenaing Riley for testimony — law enforcement agreed to abandon the effort when Epstein agreed to the 2008 plea deal that allowed him to avoid a lengthy jail sentence. Documents released by the Department of Justice indicate Epstein’s attorneys continued to keep tabs on the evidence to ensure the materials were not disclosed to attorneys for Epstein’s victims in civil litigation.

In 2009, Riley confirmed that he would continue to store the materials in a “safe and secure location,” though the evidence’s location in the following decade remains unclear.

“If at any time, you are unable to maintain possession of those materials or have any concern whatsoever that Mr. Epstein’s possession may be compromised in any manner, please advise me immediately such that we can take the necessary actions to protect and preserve those materials as is required in the Non-Prosecution Agreement,” an attorney for Epstein wrote in a letter memorializing the conservation about the evidence.

Billing records of the private detective agency owned by Riley and Kiraly, both former Miami police officers, show that the firm’s invoices for Epstein and his attorneys spanned several years and included recurring charges for a storage facility, according to records included in the DOJ’s release of Epstein files.  

Riley and Lavery did not respond to requests for comment last month. Reached by phone, Kiraly said he would not discuss anything related to Epstein.

Garcia told ABC News “it’s incredibly troubling” that Epstein’s computers and hard drives were in possession of private investigators and may have never been seen by any law enforcement agency.

“This idea that now these private investigators have this enormous amount of information that has not been accessible to us on the committee or in Congress or the American public is pretty significant,” Garcia said. “They’re an important part of our investigation.”

House Democrats, in the letters, requested that the investigators “preserve all relevant materials” in their possession, including hard drives, storage devices, backup archived data, cloud-based storage accounts, financial records, videos, photos, audio recording and all communications.

The committee also requested any records “reflecting the transfer, custody, or handling of the above materials; and any physical items that were taken from Jeffrey Epstein’s home.”

While Garcia’s invitation is for voluntary testimony, if the men do not cooperate, the committee could vote to subpoena them, or the Republican chairman of the Committee, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, could also unilaterally compel them to testify.

“We are bringing in anyone that has any information that would be helpful to our investigation and hopefully we’ll be able to get the truth to the American people and provide some type of justice for the victims,” Comer said after a recent deposition with Epstein’s accountant Richard Kahn.

Marie Villafaña, the former assistant U.S. attorney who pushed to indict Epstein during the investigation in Florida, previously said if the evidence on the missing computers “had been what we suspected it was … [i]t would have put this case completely to bed,” according to the OPR report.

Acosta said he had “no recollection” of the efforts to obtain the computers, and objected to the report’s conclusion that he should have given greater consideration to pursuing the evidence before entering the deal with Epstein, the report said.

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(WASHINGTON) — Lawyers for the Trump administration will face serious questions for the first time on Friday about the search and seizure of more than 650 boxes of 2020 election records from a Fulton County, Georgia, election site.

Fulton County officials have argued the FBI “intentionally or recklessly omitted material facts” about purported discrepancies in the 2020 election in Georgia to secure a warrant for the materials, and a federal judge is considering a request to force the Trump administration to return the sensitive records.

“Despite years of investigations of the 2020 election, the [search warrant] affidavit does not identify facts that establish probable cause that anyone committed a crime,” lawyers for the Fulton County officials wrote in court filing. “The Affiant failed to include facts — including from the very sources he cited — that shut the door on even the faintest possibility of probable cause.”

U.S. District Judge JP Boulee, a Trump appointee, scheduled a six-hour evidentiary hearing for Friday to determine whether the Trump administration showed “callous disregard” for constitutional rights by executing the controversial search earlier this year.

After election officials raised concerns about the basis for the January 2026 search, Judge Boulee last month ordered the Department of Justice to publicly release the application for the warrant, which revealed that the investigation was triggered by an attorney and close ally of President Trump who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

According to the unsealed court records, the investigation centers on long-debunked allegations of voter fraud that have already been thoroughly investigated.

Fulton County election officials have since pushed for the return of the records, arguing that the investigation focuses on “human errors that its own sources confirm occur in almost every election … without any intentional wrongdoing whatsoever.”

“The Affidavit omits numerous material facts — including from the very reports and publicly-disclosed investigations that the Affiant cites — that confirm the alleged conduct was previously investigated and found to be unintentional,” attorneys for the Fulton County officials argued.

Lawyers for the Trump administration have pushed back on the request, highlighting that the search was approved by a magistrate judge and arguing that the lawsuit was a “way to get a sneak peek at ongoing criminal investigations.”

“Petitioners’ attempt to turn a semantic dispute into a deliberate falsehood (with no citation to any offer of proof on this issue) is beyond the pale. And given the other evidence, probable cause would easily exist without the County’s admissions,” DOJ lawyers argued in court filings.

In a late setback ahead of Friday’s hearing, Judge Boulee quashed an attempt to force the FBI agent behind the search warrant to testify, concluding that questioning the agent could reveal “process and scope of the DOJ’s investigation,” which remains ongoing.

President Trump has long criticized the outcome of the 2020 election results in Georgia, personally pushing to overturn the results after his loss and later being indicted in two criminal cases over his actions. Those cases have since been dismissed, and Trump has continued to push for criminal accountability for what he baselessly alleged was a stolen election.

Through a call with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard — who was present at the January raid — President Trump personally addressed some of the agents who conducted the search and told them they were doing great work by investigating Georgia’s elections, ABC News previously reported.

“I was at Fulton County, sir, at the request of the president and to work with the FBI to observe this action that had long been awaited,” Gabbard told lawmakers earlier this month when asked about her presence at the search. “It is my role based on statute that Congress has passed to have oversight over election security to include counterintelligence.”

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