There was food left on the table. Dishes filled the kitchen sink.
It looked like 25-year-old Wellington resident Brittany Nunn, her husband Peter Barr, and her two young girls had gone out for ice cream, said Drew Weber, an investigator with the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office.
Instead, the woman — about to lose primary custody of her young daughters — fled to Mexico with Barr. That spurred a seven-month local, state and federal search for the abductors and 6-year-old Eden Marie Nunn and 4-year-old Gemalynne Nunn-Mcmorrine.
Early indications suggested the family may have been in Minnesota where Nunn had family. But those tips never panned out, leaving Weber and other investigators with a search unlike thousands of other custody disputes.
The case inched forward as days turned to weeks. Then, a break.
Drawing on new investigative tactics, Weber executed a search warrant and pulled records from Nunn’s Spotify account. He found it was being used from an IP address in Mexico. He later pulled search records from Netflix and Nunn’s other accounts and eventually tracked a package that Nunn had ordered to be shipped to Cabo San Lucas.
A private investigator soon joined Weber and helped monitor the family for months while agents with FBI, customs officials and the U.S. State Department worked with the consulate in Mexico on a plan to bring the children and alleged abductors home.
FBI agents met Barr and Nunn at the gate at DIA on Wednesday, and arrested them on suspicion of fleeing the country to avoid prosecution and felony custody violation counts.
