Law enforcement officers remained outside of Nancy Guthrie’s home in Tucson, Ariz., late Tuesday night. She disappeared early on Feb. 1.Credit…Cassidy Araiza for The New York Times
Pinned
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
Reporting from Tucson, Ariz.
Here’s what to know.
F.B.I. agents were scouring roadways in the foothills near Nancy Guthrie’s home north of Tucson, Ariz., on Wednesday, hours after the release of a man who was detained during a traffic stop near the Mexican border and questioned in relation to her disappearance.
The man’s release, hours after chilling video footage of a suspect was provided to the public, appeared to leave investigators no closer to solving the case that has mesmerized much of America since Ms. Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of the “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie, vanished 11 days ago.
A sheriff’s department spokeswoman said the man was apprehended late Tuesday by deputies following up on “incoming leads.” In an interview early Wednesday after he was released by the authorities, the man, who identified himself only as Carlos, said he had not heard about the Guthrie case.
“I hope they get the suspect, because I’m not it,” he said, speaking on the doorstep of his home in Rio Rico, Ariz., about an hour’s drive south of Nancy Guthrie’s suburban home just outside of Tucson.
Footage released by law enforcement authorities on Tuesday revealed a masked person on Ms. Guthrie’s porch about the time that she is believed to have vanished from her neighborhood early on Feb. 1. The person is wearing a ski mask, gloves and a backpack, and appears to be armed with a pistol.
The authorities have said they are investigating Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance as a kidnapping, and Savannah Guthrie and her siblings have released a series of videos pleading with whoever is involved to reach out to them. They said they were prepared to listen to ransom demands.
Here’s what we’re covering:
Rio Rico search: The F.B.I. and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department carried out what they described as a “court-authorized search” in Rio Rico, which had been completed by early Wednesday morning. A woman at the home being searched said that her son-in-law, the man detained for questioning in the case, had been delivering food when he was stopped by the police. Read more ›
Chilling video: The 44 seconds of silent, black-and-white surveillance footage released on Tuesday shows a masked figure approaching Ms. Guthrie’s house and raising a gloved hand to block a Nest doorbell camera. The camera was eventually disabled, making the footage initially inaccessible until it could be recovered from backups. Read more ›
Timeline: Ms. Guthrie’s older daughter, Annie, and her son-in-law, Tommaso Cioni, were the last people to see her before she vanished. Mr. Cioni drove Ms. Guthrie home from dinner on Jan. 31. Hours later, at about 1:47 a.m., the front door camera was disconnected. Investigators believe that she was most likely taken soon after. Read more ›
Ransom demand: The authorities had said last week that they were reviewing a message sent to a Tucson television station, but did not confirm that it was related to a purported ransom note sent earlier, which demanded millions of dollars in Bitcoin. Read more ›
Feb. 11, 2026
Anushka Patil
88-CRIME has received more than 1,000 anonymous tips about the Guthrie case, according to Fabian Pacheo, who oversees the tipline for the Pima County Attorney’s Office. More than 200 have come in since authorities released images of a masked suspect from doorbell camera footage on Tuesday. The hotline typically receives no more than a couple dozen tips a day, Pacheo said.
Feb. 11, 2026
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
Reporting from Tucson, Ariz.
The man detained in Rio Rico, Ariz., last night was apprehended by deputies following up on “incoming leads” related to the Guthrie disappearance, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman says. The man was released after several hours of questioning. Investigators are still searching for the masked person seen on footage from Nancy Guthrie’s doorbell camera on the night that she was abducted.
Feb. 11, 2026
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
Reporting from Tucson, Ariz.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department has received a rush of calls after the release yesterday of footage from Nancy Guthrie’s front doorbell camera. A department spokeswoman, Angelica Carrillo, says the agency has received 4,000 calls in the last 24 hours (not all related to the Guthrie search). She said there are several hundred agents and detectives assigned to the investigation.
Feb. 11, 2026
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
Reporting from Tucson, Ariz.
The F.B.I.’s Phoenix field office said agents are carrying out “an extensive search along multiple roadways” this morning in the Catalina Foothills, the area just north of Tucson where Nancy Guthrie lives.
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Feb. 11, 2026
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
Reporting from Tucson, Ariz.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department said it has no plans to update the public with a news conference today on the search for Nancy Guthrie. Officials have not commented on what led them to detain a man for questioning in the case last night after a traffic stop. He was released about 10 hours ago.
Feb. 11, 2026
Laura Chung
Digital currencies like Bitcoin are hard to track and often used by extortionists.
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A Bitcoin wallet listed in a note claiming to be from Nancy Guthrie’s kidnapper received a small payment, according to a Tucson, Ariz., television station.Credit…Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
A Bitcoin wallet listed in a note claiming to be from Nancy Guthrie’s kidnapper has received a small payment, according to a Tucson, Ariz., television station, thrusting cryptocurrency into the center of a case that has gripped the nation.
The episode highlights why digital currencies have become a common tool in ransom demands, and how difficult they can be to trace.
Several news outlets received a supposed ransom note last week demanding payment to a Bitcoin wallet. One of them, KGUN, a Tucson television station, said on Tuesday night that the wallet had received a payment for less than $300. It remains unclear whether the person who sent the note is actually connected to Ms. Guthrie’s abduction.
Since Bitcoin emerged in 2009, it has become a common payment method in extortion schemes, including ransomware attacks and kidnappings, because it allows transactions to be conducted outside the traditional financial system.
Unlike bank transfers, Bitcoin transactions do not require names or physical locations. They rely instead on a string of characters known as a Bitcoin address.
“The other alternative option that you have if you’re a kidnapper, for example, or you’re engaged in some other form of ransom demands, is you ask for a briefcase brimming with cash to be dropped off somewhere,” said Anton Moiseienko, an associate professor of law at Australian National University.
“But that requires physical contact. Someone needs to leave cash. Someone needs to pick it up. Bitcoin can operate across countries, geographies, continents and so on,” he said.
Tracing a cryptocurrency transfer presents two main challenges: identifying who owns the account and where the money ultimately goes, said Dennis Desmond, a cyber-intelligence lecturer at Australia’s University of the Sunshine Coast and a former F.B.I. special agent.
He likened the challenge to searching for a needle in a stack of needles.
“If the funds are immediately transferred to other wallets, aggregated, consolidated, and then again shipped out to other wallets, or hundreds of wallets in different countries, it’s very difficult to recover those funds,” said Mr. Desmond.
Still, cryptocurrency transfers are not as difficult to trace as criminals may assume. Each transaction is recorded on a publicly viewable ledger known as a blockchain.
The authorities, often working with specialized cryptocurrency-tracking companies, can monitor transactions from a particular wallet and determine whether the money is moved to other wallets or digital exchanges, Mr. Desmond said.
From there, the authorities may be able to gather identifying details, such as associated IP addresses, when a wallet was created and how frequently it has been used.
For example, in 2021, federal officials recovered most of the Bitcoin ransom paid by Colonial Pipeline after a ransomware attack shut down the company’s computer systems, prompting fuel shortages and a spike in gasoline prices. The authorities did not disclose how they retrieved the funds.
Feb. 11, 2026
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
Reporting from Tucson, Ariz.
A man who was detained in the search for Nancy Guthrie was released after a few hours.
Video
Carlos, who declined to provide a last name, told reporters on Wednesday that the police detained him for several hours before releasing him.CreditCredit…Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
A man was released from custody early Wednesday morning after being detained for questioning in the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of the “Today” show anchor Savannah Guthrie.
The release of the man was a blow to investigators, who are entering their 11th day of trying to determine who may have abducted Ms. Guthrie’s 84-year-old mother and where she is now.
The man who was released, a 36-year-old named Carlos, said that he had been in his car on Tuesday evening in Rio Rico, Ariz., about an hour’s drive south of Tucson, when police officers asked him his name and then detained him.
He was held for several hours, he said, before eventually being released with wrists swollen from handcuffs.
Carlos, who declined to give his last name, gave an account of his detention in a brief interview on the porch of the home he shares with his wife and mother-in-law in Rio Rico just before 1 a.m. on Wednesday, after the police had combed through the house.
He said he had not heard of Nancy Guthrie, who was abducted from her home near Tucson on Feb. 1, but hoped that the police found the culprit.
“I hope they get the suspect, because I’m not it,” he said. “They better do their job and find the suspect that did it so that they can clear my name.”
A spokeswoman for the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, which is leading the investigation along with the F.B.I., said only that investigators had finished searching a property in Rio Rico, which is near the U.S.-Mexico border.
The detention and release of the man came a day after what appeared to be the biggest break in the case, when the authorities were able to recover footage from Ms. Guthrie’s doorbell camera that showed a masked, armed person at her doorstep on the night she went missing.
Savannah Guthrie has pleaded with anyone who recognizes the person in the video to reach out to the authorities.
Feb. 10, 2026
Jacey Fortin
Why the Guthrie doorbell footage took more than a week to retrieve.
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Images provided by the F.B.I. show surveillance footage taken at the home of Nancy Guthrie on a Nest camera.Credit…F.B.I. via Associated Press
Doorbell camera footage of a masked man at Nancy Guthrie’s front door was made public on Tuesday, 10 days after her family last saw her.
The video — silent, grainy and in black-and-white — shows a person approaching Ms. Guthrie’s doorstep on the night she was abducted. The person wears a ski mask, gloves, a backpack and what appears to be a holstered handgun.
The authorities have known since last week that the camera was disconnected at 1:47 a.m. on Feb. 1. But in a statement on Tuesday, the F.B.I. and the Pima County, Ariz., Sheriff’s Department said that the footage had been uncovered only “as of this morning,” and that the images had been “previously inaccessible.”
It was unclear why the footage took more than a week to retrieve. The Pima County Sheriff’s Department referred questions to the F.B.I., which declined to offer more information.
The video does offer a clue. It is stamped in the upper right corner with a name: Nest, a home electronics brand that is part of Google.
An internet-enabled Nest doorbell, which sells for about $150, can record video and alert homeowners to sounds and movements on their doorsteps. Owners can pay a monthly subscription to get premium features, like long-term video history.
If Ms. Guthrie had had a paid subscription to a premium package, the authorities might have had access to footage stored on her account, said Adam Wandt, an associate professor and the deputy chair for technology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.
But Ms. Guthrie did not pay for a subscription that would have stored the video, according to Chris Nanos, the Pima County Sheriff. So while she may have been able to access real-time video, historical footage would probably be stored only on a server somewhere in one of Google’s vast data centers.
It is unclear whether investigators used a warrant to obtain the footage. They may not have been required to, because the kidnapping of Ms. Guthrie, who is the mother of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie, might be considered an exigent circumstance — a legal exception to the warrant requirement under the Fourth Amendment.
Google did not immediately respond to questions about the footage, but Mr. Wandt speculated that finding the data could have taken days.
First, investigators would have had to request the data from Google.
“Sometimes those requests are clear and simple,” Mr. Wandt said. “However, they often are not, and they might take more than one back-and-forth. And then the company might need a day or two, or three, to figure out how to get that data.”
Feb. 10, 2026
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
Reporting from Tucson, Ariz.
The 44 seconds of video that show the Guthrie abduction suspect.
Three snippets of video released by the authorities on Tuesday gave the first glimpse of a suspect in the kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of the “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie.
The silent, black-and-white doorbell camera videos total just 44 seconds, but what they depict is frightening: a masked, armed person approaching Nancy Guthrie’s doorstep late at night, shortly before she was abducted.
For the past 10 days, it appeared that the footage had been lost, but the F.B.I. and Pima County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement that they had managed to get it on Tuesday morning after working with private companies and accessing “residual data” in “back-end systems.”
Here is what the videos show:
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Credit…@FBIDirectorKash, via X
The person approaches the front door of Ms. Guthrie’s home, just north of Tucson, Ariz., seemingly holding a flashlight in their mouth. The F.B.I. declined to provide the exact time of the footage, but said it was on the morning that Ms. Guthrie was abducted.
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Credit…FBI, via Associated Press
The person at the front door is wearing a ski mask, a backpack, gloves and a jacket. The person also has what appears to be a handgun holstered at the waist.
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Credit…FBI, via Associated Press
The person looks around the porch and notices the Nest doorbell camera, quickly raising a gloved right hand to block it.
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Credit…FBI, via Associated Press
Despite trying to block the camera, a few of the person’s features are visible: eyes, eyebrows and part of the mouth. About 10 seconds after blocking the camera, the person turns around.
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Credit…@FBIDirectorKash, via X
The masked suspect walks off Ms. Guthrie’s porch and bends down to pick up some foliage. The person quickly looks around before returning to the front door.
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Credit…F.B.I, via Associated Press
There, the person, once again holding a flashlight in their mouth, tries to drape the plant around the camera to occlude its view.
The police have said that the doorbell camera was disconnected at 1:47 a.m. on Feb. 1.
At 2:28 a.m., Ms. Guthrie’s pacemaker lost contact with her cellphone, which was later found at the home, suggesting that she was taken at that time.
She has not been heard from since.
Feb. 10, 2026
The New York Times
A timeline of Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance.
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The authorities in Pima County, Ariz., have repeatedly closed and reopened the crime scene at Nancy Guthrie’s house near Tucson since she was reported missing on Feb. 1.Credit…Rebecca Noble/Reuters
For more than a week, the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of the “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie, has confounded the authorities. And because it involves the possible abduction of a celebrity’s relative, it has captivated much of the nation.
Investigators have spent days analyzing notes from people claiming to be the kidnappers, including one that demanded millions of dollars in Bitcoin. In the latest development, the authorities on Tuesday released black-and-white surveillance video and images from Ms. Guthrie’s doorstep.
The video was taken by a disabled doorbell camera. They show a person wearing a ski mask, gloves and a backpack early on the morning of Feb. 1.
Here is a timeline of the major developments in the case.
9:48 p.m., Jan 31.
Nancy Guthrie Is Last Seen
Just after 5:30 p.m., Ms. Guthrie took an Uber to the nearby home of her older daughter, Annie, and her son-in-law, Tommaso Cioni. The three spent about four hours together, eating dinner and playing games, before Mr. Cioni drove her home.
Ms. Guthrie’s garage door opened at 9:48 p.m. and closed two minutes later, according to the authorities. Mr. Cioni watched to make sure Ms. Guthrie made it safely inside. That was the last time anyone in her family saw or heard from her.
1:47-2:28 a.m., Feb. 1
Ms. Guthrie’s Front Door Camera Is Disconnected
Ms. Guthrie’s front door camera was disconnected at 1:47 a.m. About 25 minutes later, a camera somewhere on her property detected motion, but recorded no video, because she did not have a subscription to the device’s service provider.
At 2:28 a.m., about 15 minutes after the camera was set off, Ms. Guthrie’s pacemaker lost contact with her cellphone, which investigators would later find inside the house, suggesting this may have been about the time she was taken.
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Chris Nanos, the Pima County sheriff, said that his deputies saw “something at the home that didn’t sit well,” and that it became clear that Ms. Guthrie had been forced out against her will.Credit…Jan Sonnenmair/Getty Images
Feb. 1, morning
Ms. Guthrie Is Reported Missing
When Ms. Guthrie did not arrive at a friend’s house to watch a live-streamed church service on Sunday, the friend notified Ms Guthrie’s family. Family members went to her house just before noon to check on her, discovered she was missing and called 911.
The authorities found her phone, wallet, hearing aid, daily medication and car. At her front stoop, they found an empty mount where a doorbell camera had once hung, and on the tile below they saw spatters of blood, which DNA analysis later confirmed to be Ms. Guthrie’s.
Sheriff Chris Nanos of Pima County, Ariz., told The New York Times that investigators found even more worrying signs of violence at Ms. Guthrie’s home. “There were things at that home that were of concern,” he said. “That scene, there were things that, I thought, this doesn’t sit well.”
He declined to elaborate, but investigators spent the week combing through the home, its garage and the surrounding scrubland.
Feb. 2
A Ransom Note Arrives
Roughly 24 hours after the sheriff’s department first posted a missing-person bulletin for Ms. Guthrie, a Tucson television station, KOLD, received a note claiming to be from her kidnapper. The station forwarded it to the authorities.
The celebrity gossip site TMZ, which received a copy the next morning, reported that the letter demanded millions of dollars in Bitcoin for the release of Ms. Guthrie. Harvey Levin, the outlet’s founder, described the letter on a broadcast as “very well constructed.”
Feb. 3
Savannah Guthrie Withdraws From NBC’s Olympics Coverage
As investigators acknowledged that they had few answers about who may have kidnapped Nancy Guthrie, NBC Sports said Savannah Guthrie would not be part of the network’s coverage of the Winter Olympics in Italy. Mary Carillo took her place alongside Terry Gannon as a host of the network’s coverage of the opening ceremony on Friday.
Savannah Guthrie also has been absent from the “Today” set to be in Tucson with her family. Hoda Kotb, her co-anchor on “Today” from 2018 until 2025, returned to the show to fill in for her former colleague.
Feb. 4
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The “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie, flanked by her siblings, Annie and Camron, said in an emotional video that she wanted to hear directly from anyone who may have taken her mother.Credit…Savannah Guthrie, via Instagram/UGC, via, via Reuters
Ms. Guthrie’s Children Plead for Her Safe Return
Ms. Guthrie’s children recorded their first emotional address to their mother’s kidnapper and posted it to Savannah Guthrie’s Instagram account. Savannah Guthrie, trying to hold back tears as she read from a paper, said her family had heard about purported ransom letters that had been sent to news organizations.
She said that they wanted to hear directly from anyone who may have taken their mother, but that they first needed proof she was alive.
“We are ready to talk,” she said, flanked by her older siblings, Annie and Camron Guthrie. “However, we live in a world where voices and images are easily manipulated. We need to know, without a doubt, that she is alive, and that you have her.”
Feb. 6
Another Note and Another Video
KOLD received another message from the supposed kidnappers. The message, which the station forwarded to the police and did not describe publicly, came from a different IP address than the ransom note, but the senders appeared to have used the same methods to mask their location and identity, the station said.
Harvey Levin, the founder of the celebrity gossip site TMZ, which received a copy of the note the next morning, said it did not come with proof that Ms. Guthrie was alive, but it did begin by saying she was “safe but scared.”
The next day, the Guthrie siblings released another video. It was 20 seconds long and cryptic. Savannah Guthrie, speaking without a visible script, said into the camera: “We received your message, and we understand. 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.”
Feb. 9
Savannah Guthrie Says Her Family Is at ‘An Hour of Desperation’
As the search entered its second week, Savannah Guthrie implored the public for help in finding her mother, saying in an Instagram video that she and her siblings believed that she was “still out there.”
“We are at an hour of desperation,” she said.
Feb. 10
Surveillance Images Reveal a Masked Figure
New images and videos released on Tuesday showed a masked, armed person at Nancy Guthrie’s doorstep on the night she was abducted, the first significant break in the investigation.
The black-and-white footage, released by the F.B.I. and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, depicts a person wearing a ski mask, gloves, a backpack and what appears to be a holstered handgun outside Ms. Guthrie’s home, just north of Tucson. Investigators said the person was armed.
Late in the day, the authorities detained a main for questioning in the case but released him early on Feb. 11. In an interview, the man said he had not heard about Ms. Guthrie’s disappearance but hoped that she would be found safe. “I hope they get the suspect, because I’m not it,” he said, speaking on the doorstep of a home in Rio Rico, Ariz., about an hour’s drive south of Tucson.
Feb. 6, 2026
Michael Levenson
Kidnappings by strangers in the United States are exceedingly rare.
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The disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of the “Today” anchor Savannah Guthrie, is the latest case of its kind to capture the nation’s attention, reviving fears about kidnappings.Credit…Jan Sonnenmair/Getty Images
The authorities in Arizona have said they are investigating the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of the “Today” show anchor Savannah Guthrie, as a possible kidnapping and are examining purported ransom notes sent to several media outlets.
If she were abducted by a stranger, at age 84, that would make her case extremely unusual. Most kidnappings in the United States involve family or custody disputes, and a vast majority of the victims are children, experts say.
Investigators in Ms. Guthrie’s case have said they have not identified any suspects since she was last seen at her home outside Tucson, Ariz., on Saturday night. Savannah Guthrie and her siblings have released emotional videos in which they say that they are ready to talk to anyone who may have taken her, but that they first need proof she is alive.
In general, kidnappings targeting older people are extremely rare and often involve a scam or financial motive, said Carrie Landau, a retired F.B.I. agent who focused on crimes against children and human trafficking investigations during her 21-year career. She recalled two cases she worked on in which adult victims were abducted and driven to A.T.M.s to withdraw money. One of the victims was also sexually assaulted, she said.
Dr. Mark S. Lachs, a geriatrician at Weill Cornell Medicine, who studies elder abuse, said he was not aware of any studies about the prevalence of adult kidnappings in the United States. In general, reported abductions of older people usually turn out to be cases in which a family member or another person close to the victim has taken them and isolated them as part of some sort of dispute, he said.
“A stranger abduction is unusual in my experience,” Dr. Lachs said.
Most kidnappers also have some connection to the victim in cases of child abduction.
Elizabeth Smart, for instance, was 14 when she was taken from her bedroom in Utah at knife point in 2002 and held captive for nine months. She was rescued after her sister realized that the voice she heard during the kidnapping belonged to a handyman who had worked at the Smarts’ home.
“For the most part, there is a knowledge of the family; there is an awareness” among kidnappers, said John E. Bischoff III, vice president of the missing children division at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Cases in which a stranger grabs a victim on the street or takes someone from their home are “exceedingly rare,” and particularly challenging to investigate, Mr. Bischoff said. “For example, there is no built-in suspect pool,” he said. “Where is the starting point if it is a true nonfamily abduction?”
Ms. Guthrie’s disappearance is the latest case of its kind to capture the nation’s attention, reviving fears that have been stoked by the abductions of Charles A. Lindbergh’s baby, Charles Augustus Jr.; Patty Hearst; J. Paul Getty III; Etan Patz; Adam Walsh; and Polly Klaas, to name a few.
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Adam Walsh was 6 when he was abducted from a Florida mall and murdered in 1981. His father, John Walsh, later became the host of the television series “America’s Most Wanted.” Credit…Associated Press
By the mid-1980s, such cases, combined with misleading claims that as many as 50,000 children were being abducted by strangers every year, had fueled a panic that left “a residue of anxiety about stranger abductions that lasted quite a while,” said David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.
The Denver Post won a Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for a series that examined the myth that most missing children had been abducted by strangers, and found that a majority were runaways or involved in custody disputes.
Since then, Dr. Finkelhor said, the number of kidnappings has decreased, partly because the crime has become much more difficult to carry out in an era of surveillance cameras, license plate readers and cellphone tracking data.
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Elizabeth Smart was 14 when she was taken from her bedroom in Utah at knife point in 2002 and held captive for nine months.Credit…Jim Young/Reuters
Research has shown that a few dozen to 100 children in the United States are kidnapped by strangers every year, compared to hundreds of thousands who are taken by family members, Dr. Finkelhor said.
The National Crime Information Center logged the circumstances of 263,079 missing-person cases in 2022 and found that 95 percent had been coded as runaways, 0.9 percent as kidnapped by a noncustodial parent and 0.1 percent as kidnappings by a stranger.
Mr. Bischoff said he was among those who grew up with the stereotypical image of a kidnapper being a stranger with aviator sunglasses and a van. “I can’t say those cases never happen because they do,” he said. “But they’re much rarer than the fear we were raised with.”
Feb. 6, 2026
Reis Thebault and Neil Vigdor
The sheriff at the center of a chaotic search.
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Sheriff Chris Nanos of Pima County, Ariz., has at times seemed surprised at the intense attention given to the search for Nancy Guthrie, the mother of the “Today” show anchor Savannah Guthrie.Credit…Rebecca Noble/Reuters
It was Day 5 in the search for Nancy Guthrie, and the international media were packed into a small briefing room on the south side of Tucson, Ariz. Reporters had lined up early to hear Sheriff Chris Nanos of Pima County, and they were bursting with questions. Had the police made any headway? Did they have a suspect? Most of all: Was Ms. Guthrie still alive?
Sheriff Nanos stepped to the lectern: “I want to begin by offering our condolences,” he said, pausing as the room collectively tensed.
But, no, he was not breaking grim news in the case of Ms. Guthrie. A separate tragedy had occurred the night before, some 200 miles north, where an Arizona Department of Public Safety helicopter had crashed, killing two state troopers who were responding to a gunfight.
The hunt for Ms. Guthrie was still stalled, turmoil was all around, and Sheriff Nanos was trying to navigate the maelstrom.
On Thursday, as he addressed the growing horde of journalists for the first time in 48 hours, the pressure to find Ms. Guthrie was mounting and the story was only getting weirder. There was the impending deadline, imposed by a possibly bogus ransom note, demanding millions in Bitcoin by early that evening. The unsubstantiated reports of a person of interest. The removal, return and re-removal of crime scene tape around Ms. Guthrie’s home.
There was also the imminent arrival of the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel. The possibility that artificial intelligence might make any proof of life from a kidnapper difficult to trust. And, hovering over it all, the celebrity of Ms. Guthrie’s daughter, Savannah Guthrie, a host of the “Today” show, whose association with the case has made it a national obsession.
Sheriff Nanos has seemed surprised at the intense attention.
“I’m not used to everybody hanging on my words and then trying to hold me accountable for what I say,” he told reporters, somewhat sheepishly, at an earlier news conference.
The sheriff is the face of an investigation that has the press and the public desperate for answers, refreshing social media feeds and flooding department inboxes with requests for information. And yet, until there’s a break in the case — one that won’t tip off the perpetrators if he reveals it — he can’t offer much. So he rehashes and declines to elaborate, sometimes apologetically, noting the continuing nature of the search.
Some wish he’d just stop talking altogether.
“It’s important to have a reason to have a press conference, and not just have one,” said Dr. Matt Heinz, a fellow Democrat who is a member of the Pima County board of supervisors. “I can’t watch them. I don’t find them helpful, productive or reassuring.”
But Thursday’s briefing did yield some key clarifications.
The F.B.I. said the authorities were taking seriously a ransom note sent to at least three news outlets that included facts about the crime scene and a specific timeline for its monetary demand.
The initial deadline for payment was 5 p.m. on Thursday, said Heith Janke, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Phoenix office. The note did not specify a time zone. Compounding the confusion, a second deadline was set for Monday. Mr. Janke declined to say what was threatened if the money were not sent in time.
After consulting with the F.B.I., Ms. Guthrie’s children recorded a video saying they were ready to talk with her abductors. As of Thursday evening, they had heard nothing.
It was not clear whether the ransom note was genuine, but officials said at least one man had been arrested and charged with sending a different phony demand to the Guthrie family. The notoriety of the case and the digital tools that enable such fakery have added to the frenzy around the investigation.
The handling of the crime scene has done the same. This week, after the police finished an initial sweep of Ms. Guthrie’s house, officers removed the yellow tape that cordoned off the property. Journalists then took turns walking up to the front stoop and examining a splatter that Sheriff Nanos later confirmed to be Ms. Guthrie’s blood.
Private security eventually arrived to ward off trespassers. The police returned Wednesday afternoon and once again strung up crime scene tape. Officers spent a couple of hours searching the property, removed some items and left. They took the tape with them.
Sheriff Nanos said on Thursday that, in hindsight, he should have instructed officers to keep the perimeter up to preserve the scene. When asked whether he was concerned about the possible contamination of evidence, he said, “I’ll let the courts worry about that.”
Sheriff Nanos, whose elected position puts him over a department with about 1,500 employees, was born and raised in El Paso, Texas, where he began his career as a police officer in 1976. After about eight years working the beat in his hometown, he moved to Pima County, started as a corrections officer and steadily rose through the ranks.
This week is not the sheriff’s first time at the center of the news. Almost exactly 15 years ago, he was staring down a similar throng of television cameras as he answered questions about the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords.
More recently, he has made headlines for his handling of a series of scandals.
The F.B.I. has probed his department for misuse of funds, inmates at Pima County jails have died at an alarming rate, the state attorney general’s office has investigated his handling of a reported sexual assault by a deputy, and he has been accused of retaliating against his 2024 election opponent, who was a lieutenant in his department.
His track record has alienated members of his own party, such as Dr. Heinz, the county supervisor, who has called on Sheriff Nanos to resign and endorsed his Republican opponent in the latest contest.
But Sheriff Nanos has also won plaudits in his liberal county for refusing to aid federal immigration raids and for criticizing agents who conduct operations in masks. He thanked President Trump for committing so many federal resources to Ms. Guthrie’s case, but he said in an interview that he wasn’t holding his breath for a phone call from the White House.
The sheriff has been working on the case constantly, triaging tips sent directly to his cellphone and carrying on a text exchange with Savannah Guthrie. “This is just going to be really devastating for her if we can’t find her alive,” Sheriff Nanos said.
At the Thursday briefing, the biggest gathering yet, reporters peppered him with questions about the minutiae of the investigation. When asked if he should have called in regional and federal reinforcements sooner, Sheriff Nanos replied with a candor that was by then familiar.
“You know, it’s Monday morning quarterbacking,” he said. “I do it all the time, so you have the opportunity to do it for me. I’ll take that hit.”
Feb. 4, 2026
Reis Thebault
Reporting from Tucson, Ariz.
The mysterious disappearance has a nation fixated on a desert subdivision.
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Nancy Guthrie’s home became a focus for the fascination of neighbors and the nation alike.Credit…Jan Sonnenmair/Getty Images
It began with the type of call the Pima County Sheriff’s Department fields every day: An 84-year-old woman gone from her home, a family in panic.
But when the deputies arrived at the low-slung brick house in a quiet desert neighborhood north of Tucson, Ariz., on Sunday, they quickly realized that this was no routine missing persons case.
There was the red splatter on the doorstep and damage, inside and out, that indicated an abduction. Then there was the identity of the lost woman, Nancy Guthrie, mother of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie, one of the most-watched morning television anchors in America.
Before long, news of the investigation was everywhere. It flooded social media feeds and ricocheted around group chats. Reporters from across the country descended on Tucson, a city of about 500,000 that is home to the University of Arizona and 70 miles from the Mexican border. Citizen detectives bombarded the sheriff’s office with tips and theories, and President Trump on Wednesday called Savannah Guthrie with words of support.
As the search slogged through its fourth day, much remained murky. The few details that emerged seemed ripped from a Hollywood script or a history book. The possible kidnapping of a celebrity’s loved one — and the fixation that followed — conjured memories of the Lindbergh baby and Patty Hearst, crimes of a bygone era.
But Ms. Guthrie’s case has come with modern twists: Her abandoned cellphone and in-home security cameras, the drones that overflew the cactuses and palo verde trees of her subdivision hunting for clues. The supposed ransom note, first reported by the celebrity news site TMZ, demanding millions of dollars in Bitcoin. Local officials say they have a copy, and the F.B.I. is investigating.
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Savannah Guthrie, here with her mother in 2015, is one of the Arizona city’s most recognizable exports.Credit…Don Arnold/WireImage, via Getty Images
The intense interest the case has yielded many new leads, but it has complicated the investigation as well.
“This is really, for me, pretty new, all the media attention,” Chris Nanos, the Pima County sheriff, told a phalanx of reporters at a Wednesday news briefing. He said he was receiving so many media inquiries that it had become a distraction. “It’s just too tough, and it’s not fair to the case,” he added.
Later that day, in an interview with The New York Times, Sheriff Nanos said that the spotlight has made this case unlike any other he has handled, but he has told his deputies to concentrate on their urgent work.
“The reality is, it’s another crime,” he said. “We need to focus on the mission. We want to find Nancy, first and foremost. And we want to find her alive.”
Authorities have said every hour is crucial. If Ms. Guthrie does not take her daily medication, they warned, the consequences could be fatal.
The episode has shaken Tucson, where Ms. Guthrie moved with her family when her daughter Savannah was a baby. After her husband died in the 1980s, Ms. Guthrie raised her three teenagers there alone. Savannah Guthrie stayed close, attending college in Tucson and working there early in her career.
The star anchor is a hometown hero, one of the city’s most recognizable exports, who was poised to play a key role in NBC’s coverage of the Olympics, whose opening ceremony is Friday. Since Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance, her daughter has taken an absence from “Today,” and she has pulled out of the Winter Games. A church planned to hold a candlelight vigil for the family on Wednesday evening.
“She’s part of our community,” Sheriff Nanos said. “She hasn’t lived here for years, but boy, everybody watches that ‘Today’ show.”
One of those longtime viewers, Connie Cohn, had not known that she lived next door to Savannah’s sister and Ms. Guthrie’s older daughter, Annie Guthrie. On Wednesday, as police officers and journalists canvassed the street near her house in north Tucson, Ms. Cohn peered out her window and wondered what the commotion was about.
She called her husband, who took a guess: “Maybe it has to do with Savannah Guthrie’s mom,” he told her.
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Chris Nanos, the Pima County sheriff, said that the national spotlight has made this case unlike any other he has handled.Credit…Jan Sonnenmair/Getty Images
Ms. Cohn had been tracking developments in the search obsessively, refreshing news and social media. She grew up in Tucson, too, and followed Savannah Guthrie’s career.
“I feel like I know her,” she said.
She was saddened to learn that the home next door was one of the last places Ms. Guthrie had been seen.
On Saturday evening, Ms. Guthrie had dinner there with Annie Guthrie and her husband, Sheriff Nanos said. About 9:45 p.m., Ms. Guthrie’s son-in-law dropped her off at her home a few miles away and made sure she made it inside safely, the sheriff said.
When Ms. Guthrie did not show up for church Sunday morning, someone there contacted her family, who went to the house to check on her. Ms. Guthrie’s wallet, cellphone and car were still there, authorities said, but she was missing.
Police ruled out the idea that she might have mistakenly wandered outside and gotten lost: She has a medical condition that limits her mobility and “is of sound mind,” Sheriff Nanos said. When his deputies arrived, they saw “something at the home that didn’t sit well,” he added, and it became clear that she had been forced out against her will.
Authorities have been in close contact with relatives, who have all cooperated with the investigation, Sheriff Nanos said.
The sheriff said it was too soon to say whether the abduction was random or targeted, but he called the case extraordinary.
“We don’t see those kinds of monsters here,” he said.
On Ms. Guthrie’s block, an affluent area where the homes have large lots and views of the Catalina Mountains, neighbors have shared security camera footage with police and have even helped search for Ms. Guthrie in the foothills themselves. Police have not said whether the footage has turned up new evidence.
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Reporters from across the country descended. Group chats exploded. Credit…Jan Sonnenmair/Getty Images
The scene on Tuesday blended the ominous and the everyday. After the police finished their work at Ms. Guthrie’s home, dried red liquid remained visible on the front doorstep. An Arizona Republic reporter watched an Amazon delivery driver drop off a package at the stoop. It was addressed to Ms. Guthrie.
Jorge Gomez, a recent retiree who has lived in the area for about 10 years, said the news was unnerving. “We are heartbroken,” he said. “I can’t believe what the family’s going through.”
Mr. Gomez’s own house has an alarm system and outdoor cameras, but since Ms. Guthrie was taken, he has been double-checking that they work every night. He has found himself on edge in a neighborhood that has always been tranquil.
That serenity is what drew many of his older neighbors to live there, including Ms. Guthrie. In a November “Today” segment, filmed in Tucson, she said the family decided to settle in the city in part because of its natural beauty.
“The air, the quality of life,” she said, smiling at her daughter. “It’s laid back and gentle.”
Lourdes Medrano contributed reporting from Tucson.
Feb. 3, 2026
Claire Moses
Details about the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie.
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Law enforcement officers outside the home of Nancy Guthrie near Tucson, Ariz., on Feb. 2.Credit…Sejal Govindarao/Associated Press
The authorities in Arizona are searching for Nancy Guthrie, 84, the mother of the “Today” show anchor Savannah Guthrie, who has been missing since Feb. 1. Her disappearance, which has gripped the nation, is being investigated as a kidnapping.
Ms. Guthrie was last seen at her home near Tucson on Jan. 31. Earlier that evening, she had dinner at the home of her older daughter and her son-in-law, who dropped her off at her house around 9:50 p.m., said Chris Nanos, the Pima County sheriff.
