How Investigators Fumbled the Kidnapping of Savannah Guthrie's Mother Nancy

Six months after 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie was abducted from her Tucson, Arizona home in the early hours of February 1, 2025, federal and local investigators remain no closer to finding her or identifying her kidnappers. The case has exposed a cascade of law-enforcement failures — bungled crime-scene management, departmental infighting, and delayed resources — that may have cost investigators their best early chances at a breakthrough.

Nancy, a retired university administrator and the mother of Today show co-host Savannah Guthrie, was last seen alive when her son-in-law watched her garage door close at 9:50 p.m. on January 31. A Nest doorbell camera — which Nancy had installed to watch for the javelinas that raided her trash — captured a glimpse of a masked man on her front porch. The camera itself was later found missing. Her daughter Annie discovered the next afternoon that Nancy's purse, iPhone, and car were all still at the house, and a back door had been left propped open. Dried blood was visible on the front porch tiles.

The initial response was riddled with errors. Pima County Sheriff's detectives arrived late in the afternoon but spent hours dismissing the dried blood as a possible nosebleed or minor injury — blood DNA analysis later confirmed it was Nancy's and is now considered directly connected to the kidnapping. The department failed to seal the property with crime-scene tape even after officially declaring it a crime scene on February 2, allowing reporters, livestreamers, and even Amazon and pizza delivery drivers to walk onto the blood-stained porch. A camera operator for cable news network NewsNation recorded the blood trail on camera while an Amazon package sat nearby. The sheriff's department's $1.7 million Cessna surveillance plane — equipped with infrared and zoom-lens cameras — sat grounded until around 6:30 p.m. on the day of the abduction because the senior pilot had been recently demoted to patrol duty following a workplace complaint; he had also backed Nanos's political opponent. By the time it launched, darkness had already rendered its zoom cameras nearly useless. Nancy's pacemaker had stopped sending Bluetooth signals at 2:28 a.m. that Sunday — hours before investigators even thought to request doorbell footage, and when they did, they asked neighbors only for recordings between 7 a.m. and 1 p.m.

The kidnapping quickly attracted a ransom demand. On Monday, February 2, a CBS affiliate in Tucson received an untraceable online message addressed to Savannah, containing details only the abductors could know — a white Apple Watch by the bed, a broken backyard floodlight. The note demanded $4 million in bitcoin by 5 p.m. Thursday, rising to $6 million if missed, with a final deadline of February 9 — after which the kidnappers threatened to kill Nancy. The TV station shared the note with investigators but did not broadcast it.

The political backdrop adds another layer of dysfunction. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos, 70, had just won a bitter reelection fight, placing a political rival on administrative leave weeks before Election Day and subsequently sidelining deputies who had backed his challenger. The appointed head of homicide, Sgt. David Stivers, had been formally reprimanded just two months before Nancy's kidnapping for poor judgment and delays in securing evidence in a separate homicide case — charges in that case were ultimately dropped. A joint FBI-local task force is now running the investigation, but FBI Director Kash Patel, who initially promised to personally lead the charge, has since gone largely silent. The FBI insists the state remains the lead agency. Nanos, in a recent interview, disputed reporting about early missteps and maintained the case is not cold.