How Nancy Guthrie Was Kidnapped — and How the Investigation Fell Apart

Savannah Guthrie, co-host of NBC's Today show, spent much of 2024 publicly celebrating her 83-year-old mother Nancy in elaborate on-air segments, culminating in a November episode that drew millions of viewers on a tour of the family's Tucson, Arizona, roots. Twelve weeks after that broadcast aired, Nancy was kidnapped from her adobe-brick ranch house in the Catalina Foothills suburb — taken in the night, her Nest doorbell camera gone, dried blood left on the front porch. The abduction sent shockwaves through the media world and left Savannah, 54, haunted by the possibility that her own televised spotlight had drawn the kidnappers to her mother's door.

The investigation ran into serious trouble almost immediately. Pima County Sheriff's deputies who arrived at 5820 North Camino Escalante on February 1 initially dismissed the dried blood on the porch as possibly from a nosebleed or minor bump. The property was never sealed with crime-scene tape — a standard protocol — allowing reporters, Amazon delivery drivers, livestreamers, and pizza couriers to walk up to the front door. A NewsNation camera operator actually filmed a trail of blood droplets on the porch tiles while an Amazon package sat feet away. Detectives sent out a doorbell-camera canvass request to neighbors, but asked only for footage from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday — hours after Nancy's pacemaker had gone silent at 2:28 a.m.

The department's $1.7 million Cessna surveillance aircraft, equipped with infrared and zoom-lens cameras, sat grounded for hours on the first day of the search. The reason: the senior pilot assigned to the Sunday shift had been demoted to patrol duty days earlier following a workplace complaint — and he had backed the sheriff's electoral rival. Flight data show the plane didn't begin searching until around 6:30 p.m., by which point it was too dark for the zoom cameras to function. That detail is part of a broader pattern of politically motivated personnel moves by Sheriff Chris Nanos, 70, who after winning his second term in a recount sidelined deputies who had supported his challenger. His appointed homicide head, Sgt. David Stivers, had been reprimanded just two months before the kidnapping for poor judgment and delays in securing crime-scene evidence in a prior homicide case — a case where charges were ultimately dropped.

A ransom note arrived Monday night, February 2, sent to the tip line of a Tucson CBS affiliate via a masked IP address. It opened "Hello Savannah. We have your mother Nancy," and included details only an insider would likely know — a white Apple Watch by the bed, a broken backyard floodlight. The kidnappers demanded $4 million in bitcoin by February 5, with the price rising to $6 million after that and a final deadline of February 9. The station shared the note with investigators but did not broadcast it. A second ransom deadline passed with no arrest. Six months later, a joint FBI-local task force is no closer to finding Nancy or identifying her abductors. FBI Director Kash Patel had initially promised to lead the charge but has since gone largely silent. Sheriff Nanos, in a Wednesday interview, disputed the Journal's findings about the botched early response, contradicting statements he had made in prior press conferences, while insisting the case is not cold.