Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos is sharing an update on the Nancy Guthrie investigation, as the search for Savannah Guthrie’s mom continues for a third week.
In a Tuesday, February 17, interview with NewsNation’s Brian Entin, Nanos was asked, “How long can this go on for, in terms of the investigation at this level?”
“Because of the media, we’ve generated so many leads. Last Wednesday, we had 18,000 leads. The FBI had 14. So you’re talking over 30,000 [leads]. We’re probably closer to 40 or 50,000 [leads],” Nanos said. “As long as those leads keep coming, we’ll keep at it.”
The search for Nancy, 84, began on February 1 when she was reported missing in Arizona after failing to attend a virtual church service. Nancy was last seen on the night of January 31 when she was dropped off at home in the Catalina Foothills, just outside of Tucson, by her daughter, Annie Guthrie, following a family dinner.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department and the FBI have been treating Nancy’s disappearance as a suspected kidnapping.
The FBI revealed a break in the case on February 10 when the bureau’s director, Kash Patel, released recovered surveillance camera footage and images of a masked suspect at Nancy’s home on the night of her apparent abduction.
“New images in the search for Nancy Guthrie,” Patel shared via X alongside four black-and-white photos of the masked individual, recovered from a Nest doorbell camera at the entrance of Nancy’s home. “Over the last eight days, the FBI and Pima County Sheriff’s Department have been working closely with our private sector partners to continue to recover any images or video footage from Nancy Guthrie’s home that may have been lost, corrupted, or inaccessible due to a variety of factors – including the removal of recording devices. The video was recovered from residual data located in backend systems.”
The post continued, “Working with our partners – as of this morning, law enforcement has uncovered these previously inaccessible new images showing an armed individual appearing to have tampered with the camera at Nancy Guthrie’s front door the morning of her disappearance. Anyone with information, please contact 1-800-CALL-FBI or visit http://tips.fbi.gov.”
The individual in the photos and footage can be seen wearing a ski mask and backpack. The person also appeared to have a firearm holstered in the waistband of their pants.
Two days later, the FBI released more details about the suspect, describing the individual as likely being a “a male, approximately 5’9’’ – 5’10’’ tall, with an average build.”
“In [a newly-obtained security] video, he is wearing a black, 25-liter ‘Ozark Trail Hiker Pack’ backpack,” the FBI added in a February 12 update.
In a Monday, February 16, interview with CBS News, Nanos said that investigators believe the face mask and clothing worn by the individual in the footage were purchased from Walmart.
On Tuesday, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department confirmed that DNA found on a pair of gloves two miles from Nancy’s home did not match DNA profiles in the FBI’s national database.
In Tuesday’s interview with NewsNation, Nanos also weighed in on a theory that Nancy may have been abducted by someone with a grievance against Today show host Savannah, 54.
“Anything’s possible,” he said. “There was talk [that] this was a burglary gone bad, this was that … those things have never come out of this office. We recognize that anything is possible and we’ll allow that evidence to show us what that is.”
“The time to ask that question [about] motive is when we actually know who’s done this,” Nanos added.
Read the full article here
