Six weeks after 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie vanished from her Tucson, Arizona, home, the FBI is now drilling into two specific dates that may reveal whether someone was surveilling her neighborhood long before she went missing.
NewNation's Brian Entin reported that FBI agents have been canvassing Guthrie's Tucson neighbors, specifically asking for home security footage from Jan. 11 and Jan. 24. According to Entin, agents were insistent on those two dates, even watching over neighbors' shoulders as they scrolled through their archived footage.
Guthrie, the mother of "TODAY" show host Savannah Guthrie, disappeared from her home on Feb. 1. The FBI's focus on dates roughly three weeks and one week before that night raises an obvious investigative question: whether whoever took her had visited the area beforehand.
The physical evidence at Guthrie's home tells a grim story. Signs of a struggle were found inside, and drops of blood were discovered splattered across her front steps. Her phone was left behind. Her pacemaker disconnected from that phone, and that disconnection, combined with security footage, suggested she was taken sometime soon after 2 a.m. on Feb. 1.
The strongest lead in the case came from Guthrie's own Nest security camera, which captured a masked individual carrying a pistol while attempting to force entry into the house on the night she vanished. That footage, however, almost never surfaced at all. Guthrie had not paid for her Nest camera subscription, and investigators had to retrieve the recordings from Google's databases.
No one has been identified as the masked individual. Several people were detained during the investigation, but each was released after questioning. No charges have been filed against anyone.
Guthrie's neighbors have also released their own home security footage from the night she disappeared. Those clips showed various vehicles moving through the dark neighborhood streets. Additional footage from the surrounding area in the days before Feb. 1 captured individuals apparently attempting to break into other homes, though investigators have not publicly confirmed whether any of those incidents are connected to Guthrie's case.
Guthrie was last seen after having dinner with her daughter and son-in-law, who dropped her off at home and watched her safely enter the house. When she failed to arrive at a friend's house the following day to watch their church's livestream, police were contacted.
The FBI's involvement itself carries a pointed implication. The Pima County Sheriff's Department, which handled the initial response, has faced accusations of mishandling the investigation. No public accounting has been offered to explain what specifically went wrong or who leveled those accusations in any formal proceeding, but the FBI's decision to go door to door collecting the same type of neighborhood footage that local investigators should have secured weeks ago speaks for itself.
Authorities have not publicly confirmed any suspect, any motive, or any working theory of the case. They have not said whether the Jan. 11 and Jan. 24 footage requests are tied to specific individuals captured on camera or to vehicle movements or to something else entirely. No arrest appears imminent based on anything that has been made public.
The list of open questions is long and serious. Investigators will need to determine whether the Jan. 11 and Jan. 24 footage reveals identifiable persons or vehicles connected to the Feb. 1 disappearance. They will need to establish whether the masked, armed individual on the Nest footage can be linked to any of the people previously detained and released. They will need to determine whether the pattern of attempted break-ins in the surrounding area is related or coincidental. And they will need to account for the time gap between local law enforcement's initial response and the FBI's current canvas of the neighborhood.
An 84-year-old woman was taken from her home in the middle of the night. Blood was left on her doorstep. A masked figure with a gun was caught on camera. Six weeks later, no one has been charged, no one has been named, and the federal government is now collecting footage that should have been locked down on day one. If that does not constitute a failure of local law enforcement's most basic obligation to protect its residents, it is difficult to imagine what would.
