Nancy Guthrie, the mother of “Today Show” host Savannah Guthrie, was kidnapped from her residence in Tucson, Arizona, in the early morning hours of Feb. 1. Guthrie’s whereabouts are still unknown, and the suspect involved has still yet to be identified. The case has now run over a month and counting, but we hope authorities will be able to resolve the case as soon as possible.
Guthrie was first reported missing when she didn’t show up at a friend’s house to watch an online church service, something very unusual for Guthrie to do. The police were contacted, and soon after it became a nationally recognized case that showed up on just about every news outlet’s breaking news.
The first break in the case came when authorities gained access to surveillance video taken from Guthrie’s Google Nest doorbell camera. According to an article from NBC News, Guthrie didn’t have a Google Nest subscription but authorities were still able to retrieve video evidence through “backend systems.”
This surveillance video was crucial to investigators at the time because they were able to see the masked suspect and what they were wearing. These investigators got a good look at the suspect’s eyes, their frame, their height, the gloves they were wearing, and a backpack which authorities were later able to identify as a 25 liter Ozark Trail backpack.
When this video was released to the public, tens of thousands of tips poured into the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and they are currently still working on reviewing each one of them.
The Guthrie family’s pleas for help have driven community members to come in and make an impact in any way possible. One of the ways that these people have helped out was by doing searches around Guthrie’s neighborhood, which is when another break in the case occurred.
People on one of the searches found a glove about two and a half miles away from Guthrie’s home which appeared to be similar to the same glove worn by the suspect in the surveillance video. DNA was found on the glove, and investigators ran it across national databases but no matches showed up. This finding was just recently proved to be unhelpful to the case as it belonged to a restaurant worker nearby and does not belong to the suspect in the case.
Investigators were able to find DNA at Guthrie’s home that did not belong to her, and it was sent to the lab for further testing. Again, no matches showed up in the national databases, and investigators turned to genetic genealogy, a strategy where DNA is tested and compared with other DNA samples on national databases in hopes of finding similarities. By doing this, they can make biological connections between the suspect and their family members.
Investigators have yet to make any connections yet, however, they are still trying their best and will keep continuing to do so.
Ransom notes came into the Guthrie family, providing information, a money amount, and a date when that money is due. Savannah Guthrie, along with her brother and sister, took to her Instagram account which holds over two million followers and posted videos stating that they wanted to talk with the suspects and negotiate with them. While this was happening, a man by the name of Derrick Callella of California was arrested for sending in a fake ransom note.
Three individuals have been detained so far in relation to this case, one being a FedEx delivery driver, and the two others being a man and his mother. The first instance was when the FedEx driver was detained, but he was then released after being questioned. The second instance was the man and his mother, but both were also released after being questioned. After both instances, the public thought the case had been solved before finding out that they had been released.
The family announced a one million dollar reward for anyone who has information that may lead to Guthrie’s whereabouts. In a recent video uploaded by Savannah Guthrie on her Instagram account, she said, “Someone out there knows something… Please bring her home”.
Soon after the one million dollar reward was announced, another break, the most recent one, arose. According to an article from Fox News, one of Guthrie’s neighbors recorded 12 cars passing by on a road near Guthrie’s home in the early morning hours of Feb. 1, the time and day that Guthrie was suspected to be taken.
Law enforcement have reviewed this video and will continue to review it because it will be very difficult to identify the cars seen passing by in the video. Investigators will also need to look back at footage from the same security camera to try to find continuities between cars driving on that same road from a while ago and the cars seen on the video that morning of Feb. 1.
If investigators can find cars on the footage from that morning and match them with cars on footage from the same security camera from prior days/weeks, they will hopefully be able to use the process of elimination to find cars from that early morning that didn’t drive on the same road consistently like the other cars did. If any of the cars fit that scenario, they could potentially be connected to the suspect in this case.
This case is very much still active and a top priority of the Pima County Sheriff’s Department and the FBI investigators on the case. We give the best of our wishes to the Guthrie family and hope that authorities will be able to find Nancy Guthrie soon and safely.
