A missing granny, a TV anchor and masked intruder – inside the Nancy Guthrie mystery
It should have been a normal Saturday evening. On 31 January, 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie had dinner and played games with her daughter Annie and son-in-law Tommaso Cioni at the couple’s house in the Catalina Foothills in Tucson, Arizona. When they called it a night, Cioni dropped his mother-in-law back at her home just a couple of miles away, waiting to make sure that she entered safely.
The following morning, though, Nancy didn’t show up to her usual church service. This wasn’t like her; friends soon got in touch with her family to raise the alarm. She was reported missing to the police that afternoon, and officers soon discovered that her doorbell camera was missing. Droplets of blood, later confirmed to be Nancy’s, were found on her front porch. Her phone and her vital heart medication had been left behind.
The sheriff’s office soon concluded that she had been taken against her will, and in the fortnight or so that has followed, Nancy Guthrie’s mysterious disappearance has gripped America, a true crime story unfolding in real time.
A case like this one would surely have made the news on its own, tapping in as it does to our worst fears – that we, and those that we love, might not be as safe as we think in our homes. However, the fact that Nancy’s youngest daughter is Today show anchor Savannah Guthrie, a fixture on American morning television for more than a decade, has only heightened the attention, both from the press and from the public who’ve watched the presenter on NBC every weekday for years.
Savannah, the 54-year-old who started out as Today’s legal correspondent before becoming the show’s co-anchor in 2012, is one of America’s most well-respected and well-liked broadcasters, adept at balancing the morning show blend of hard-hitting interviews and softer, often sillier human interest stories. For a British audience, perhaps our closest equivalent would be someone like Good Morning Britain’s Susanna Reid.
She has spoken at length of her bond with her mum, who she has described as her “rock” and her “inspiration”; the family only seems to have been brought closer together by the sudden loss of her father (and Nancy’s husband) Charles, who died when she was just 16. And Nancy will be a family face for Today viewers, too, having previously appeared on the show a handful of times, most recently in a November segment filmed in Tucson.
Savannah’s celebrity status has ensured that her and her siblings’ impassioned pleas for their mother’s safe return, posted on social media every few days since Nancy’s disappearance, have generated headlines across America and beyond. “Our mother is a kind, loyal, fiercely loving woman of goodness and light,” Savannah said in one tearful message shared on Instagram in the week after the abduction, shortly after it was confirmed that she would no longer be travelling to Italy to host NBC’s Winter Olympics coverage, in order to be with her family at this harrowing time.
The New York Times has branded the case “the true crime drama that Americans cannot look away from”. It has also, inevitably, become the focus of conspiracy theories from armchair sleuths and self-appointed social media detectives, many of whom have descended upon Nancy’s Catalina Foothills neighbourhood to livestream their updates. But as the investigation enters its third week, what is striking is just how many questions relating to the case remain unanswered.
So what do we actually know about Nancy’s disappearance? Law enforcement officers have been able to discern that her doorbell camera was disconnected at 1.47am on 1 February. About 20 minutes later, movement was recorded on her home security system. And at 2.28am, her pacemaker app disconnected from her phone, suggesting that this was when she left the property.
A day or so after the sheriff’s department revealed that Nancy was missing, local news stations and the gossip website TMZ received a purported ransom note, allegedly asking for millions of dollars in bitcoin in return for her release. The FBI said that the note included specific details about the crime scene, which an imposter would not have known about. It’s thought that it set two deadlines for payment, 5 February and 9 February, which have since passed. Three further notes have since emerged; the FBI, meanwhile, has told the press that it is not aware of any communication between the Guthrie family and any alleged kidnappers.
Perhaps the biggest update in the case – and one which may yet prove crucial to the investigation – came on 10 February, when the FBI and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department unveiled grainy black-and-white video and images of a masked prowler approaching the porch and tampering with Nancy’s doorbell camera. In the chilling footage, the slumped, shadowy figure’s features are obscured by a balaclava; as well as wearing gloves and carrying a backpack, they also seem to be armed with a gun in a holster.
I believe that somebody out there knows who this is
Chris Nanos, Pima County Sheriff
Initially, it had seemed that security footage from Nancy’s home had been lost, as the family didn’t have a full subscription for the Google Nest camera. But the FBI and Sheriff’s Department, after “working closely with our private sector partners”, eventually managed to recover the footage “from residual data located in backend systems”, according to FBI director Kash Patel.
Sheriff Chris Nanos, who is leading the search for Nancy, believes that this footage could be the key to unlocking a case that has so far proved opaque. “I believe that somebody out there knows who this is,” he told the Daily Mail. “I believe that somebody out there can look at that video and go, ‘I know exactly who that is.’ And that’s what our plea is to our community.”
The FBI has since released a description of the suspect, based on the video, as a male who stands between 5ft 9in and 5ft 10in tall, with an average build. The rucksack worn by the intruder is from Walmart’s Ozark Trail Hiker brand, and has been described by Nanos as “one of the most promising leads”; the sheriff has also confirmed that the supermarket chain has provided the authorities with online and in-store records for items purchased from the Ozark brand, as well as surveillance footage from Walmarts in the local area.
Another potential clue that seemed particularly promising? The discovery of a glove, which resembled those worn by the suspect in the video, a few miles from the crime scene. DNA from the item was sent off for testing last week, but on Tuesday (17 February), the authorities revealed that there were no matches on Codis, the combined DNA index system that serves as the FBI’s DNA database. DNA found at Nancy’s house is still being analysed.
Progress, it seems, has been slow, beset by false leads and setbacks. Investigators have yet to confirm a motive, and although police are thought to have searched a residence near Nancy’s house on Friday 13 February, no one was arrested.
Combine Savannah’s fame with the steady drip-feed of new information, the victim’s vulnerability and images of that eerie masked figure – plus a $100,000 FBI reward – and it is hardly surprising that the case has become a public obsession in the States. What is just as grimly predictable is that the Guthrie family have been subject to upsetting speculation and conspiracy theories, with some true crime sleuths casting entirely baseless suspicions upon them.
To quash these theories, Sheriff Nanos was forced to release a statement at the start of the week, confirming that Savannah, her siblings and their spouses had all been cleared of any involvement. “The family has been nothing but cooperative and gracious, and are the victims in this case,” he said. “To suggest otherwise is not only wrong, it is cruel.”
As the investigation drags into its third week, with seemingly few updates, it’s hard to imagine how the case must be weighing upon Savannah and the rest of her close-knit family. But in another video appeal shared earlier this week, the broadcaster stressed that they “still have hope, and [they] still believe” that they’ll be reunited with their mother. “We believe in the essential goodness of every human being,” she said. “And it’s never too late.”
