Search for Nancy Guthrie Reaches Second Week With No Suspects and Plenty of Questions About Local Cops

The search for the 84-year-old mother of “Today” show co-host Savannah Guthrie has stretched into its second week, with local authorities seemingly no closer to finding the missing Arizona woman than they were a week earlier, and the adult Guthrie siblings releasing another video plea, this time promising to pay a ransom for Nancy Guthrie’s return.“The Nancy Guthrie investigation is ongoing. No suspects, persons of interest, or vehicles have been identified,” the Pima County Sheriff’s Department said in a post on X on Sunday. The department added: “No scheduled press briefings. If any significant developments occur in the case, a press conference will be called.”Furthermore, despite comments by President Trump on Friday evening, on Air Force One, that “we are doing very well” in the investigation, have “very strong” clues and that “definitive” answers could come “fairly soon,” the local authorities and not the FBI still appear to be in charge of the investigation. On Saturday evening, Ms. Guthrie and her two siblings said in a second Instagram video that her family was willing to pay the ransom to guarantee her mother’s safe return. “We received your message, and we understand,” Ms. Guthrie said in the video while joined by her brother and sister. Ms. Guthrie added, “We beg you now to return our mother to us so that we can celebrate with her. This is the only way we will have peace. This is very valuable to us, and we will pay.”An FBI spokesman told the Associated Press that Ms. Guthrie was responding to a note sent to Tucson-area television station KOLD on Friday. Over the weekend, investigators returned to the home of Savannah Guthrie’s sister, Annie and Annie’s husband, Tommaso Cioni, and stayed inside for several hours, with flashes of light seen from the road suggesting they were taking photographs. Last week, they visited the house carrying a silver-colored Cellebrite case, an Israeli device used to extract deleted or otherwise hidden data from cellphones and computers.Back at Nancy Guthrie’s house over the weekend, the authorities could be seen poking around her uncovered septic tank with a poll.Authorities say they believe Nancy Guthrie was removed from her home against her will after her mysterious disappearance on February 1 from her Tucson home. Before her family discovered her missing, authorities said Ms. Guthrie’s doorbell camera had been disconnected, and a pacemaker app was no longer connected to her phone. Blood that was discovered on her front porch was confirmed by a DNA test to belong to Ms. Guthrie. On Tuesday morning, the first ransom note was received by TMZ demanding a “substantial amount” of Bitcoin to be sent to a specific Bitcoin address that TMZ confirmed was real. The so-called kidnappers laid out two deadlines in the note — the first of which passed at 5 pm last Thursday, seemingly without incident. A second deadline set for Monday will be “far more consequential,” TMZ founder Harvey Levin told Fox News host Sean Hannity last week. One note “talked about an Apple watch, and one talked about a floodlight,” the FBI special agent in charge in Phoenix, Heith Janke, said last week.“This is not a letter that was thrown together in a couple of minutes. It is a very specific, well-organized, layered letter that really lays things out,” Mr. Levin told Mr. Hannity last week.With the second deadline now fast approaching, many are questioning the ability and integrity of Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos’ department.“FYI, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department is notoriously corrupt and incompetent. Spans decades,” NewsNation anchor Katie Pavlich, a Phoenix native who went to college in Tucson, wrote in a February 4 post on X.The department had been subject to recent investigations — including a 2024 investigation by the Arizona State Attorney General’s office over the department’s handling of an alleged 2022 sexual assault by a female deputy by her supervisor. The investigation found no criminal wrongdoing but said the department may have violated four rules, including failing to secure evidence and failing to follow proper documentation and reporting requirements. In October 2025, Pima County Sheriff’s Department Bureau Chief Harold “Buddy” Janes resigned suddenly after he was under investigation for possible fraudulent use of comp time.“In this case, we looked at it from all sides, all angles, we found Chief Janes did not violate policy, nor did he violate the law,” Mr. Nanos said in October. With so many questions surrounding the Pima County Sheriff’s office, many have called for the FBI to take command of the case. “This is what the FBI is designed for in these cases, to be able to come in and bring in professional and high-level and investigative and police skills, law enforcement skills,” Townhall Media editor Larry O’Connor said on a podcast with former aide to Andrew Cuomo, Melissa DeRosa. But the FBI is still only supporting the investigation, with Arizona authorities still taking the lead, an FBI spokesperson tells the Sun. The FBI Director, Kash Patel, is slated to visit Tucson this week for a trip that was planned before Ms. Guthrie’s disappearance, the spokesperson adds. Mr. Patel has been receiving regular updates from his team on the investigation.Mr. Patel has been notably restrained in posting about Ms. Guthrie’s investigation — he reposted the FBI’s missing person poster for Ms. Guthrie, along with a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to her recovery and/or the arrest of those involved in her disappearance. In December, Mr. Patel was criticized for touting on social media that a suspect in the Brown University shooting that killed two students had been detained, only for that suspect to be released a short while later. Mr. Patel had made a similar announcement during the early stages of the FBI’s investigation into the Charlie Kirk assassination, which he was also forced to walk back.“When you’re trying to manage FBI operations over social media, and you’re trying to keep the public informed to a point where it actually can provide insight for the bad guys, it creates a credibility problem,” a retired FBI supervisory special agent, Christopher M. Piehota, tells the Sun. When it comes to a high-profile case like Ms. Guthrie’s disappearance, law enforcement can’t afford to be focused more on feeding the news media and posting regular updates on social media accounts. Instead, “cops should be out there, putting foot to gas, finding this lady and bringing her home,” Mr. Piehota tells the Sun.

Search for Nancy Guthrie Reaches Second Week With No Suspects and Plenty of Questions About Local Cops

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