The Pima County, Arizona, sheriff said the implication that one of the photos was taken on a date before Guthrie’s disappearance is “speculative.”
FBI Director Kash Patel released photos this month that he said were captured on Nancy Guthrie’s porch the morning she disappeared on Feb. 1. Two law enforcement officials told NBC News the photo showing a man without a backpack, left, was captured earlier. Kash Patel via X
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A series of widely circulated images of a man on Nancy Guthrie’s porch were not all taken the morning she disappeared from her Arizona home — one was captured earlier, two law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation said Monday.
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The image showed the person dressed in dark clothing with a mask and gloves and — unlike other images released by FBI Director Kash Patel — without a backpack.
Patel said the image came from the same camera at Guthrie’s front door in the Tucson area as other images captured the morning she disappeared on Feb. 1.
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A spokesperson with FBI headquarters declined to comment Monday on possible dates tied to the image or whether the person is the same person seen in the other security video released by the agency.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement Monday that there is no date or timestamp associated with the image and that any suggestion that it was taken on a different day is “purely speculative.”
“That’s all it is is speculation,” Sheriff Chris Nanos told NBC News. “We understand the thinking behind it, but again, I remind everybody, we follow the rules of evidence. And right now we have no evidence to suggest that it occurred that day or days before.”
Nanos said that the images do not come with dates or timestamps and that officials believe the majority of images were from Feb. 1 only because they show the doorbell being disconnected.
Guthrie, 84, the mother of “TODAY” co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, was last seen Jan. 31. She was reported missing at about noon the next day when she did not show up to watch a virtual church service with friends.
The weekslong investigation into her disappearance, which now involves local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, has drawn international attention. While authorities believe Guthrie may have been taken from her home, no suspects or persons of interest have been publicly identified.
The images the FBI released Feb. 10 were a significant development in the investigation into Guthrie’s possible abduction. They showed a masked, armed man later described as a suspect appearing to tamper with Guthrie’s Google Nest camera.
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Recovering those images appears to have been a challenge.
Guthrie did not have a subscription that would have saved the video, and Nanos has said the camera was disconnected at 1:47 a.m. There were multiple cameras inside Guthrie’s home, he said, and a person was detected at 2:12 a.m., though it is unclear which camera was responsible for detecting that motion.
Patel has said the FBI and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department worked with “private sector partners” to recover the images from “residual data in backend systems.”
Based on the images, officials have offered identifying details about the man, describing him as being of average build, 5 feet, 9 inches to 5 feet, 10 inches tall. He was wearing a black, 25-liter Ozark Trail Hiker Pack backpack, sold exclusively at Walmart, authorities have said.
Investigators discovered multiple sources of DNA in and around the crime scene, but testing has yielded no results.
Officials are working to test samples found at Guthrie’s home — which did not match her or anyone who was known to have been there recently — through a process called forensic genetic genealogy in the hope of identifying a suspect.
Nanos has said the DNA sample is mixed and contains genetic information from at least two people, which could take longer to test.
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