The investigation into Nancy Guthrie’s apparent abduction is now in its seventh week, with no significant breakthroughs in the search for the mother of Today cohost Savannah Guthrie.
The Pima County Sheriff and the FBI have not publicly identified a suspect or a motive, though Sheriff Chris Nanos told NBC Nightly News that investigators believe they know why Nancy Guthrie’s home was targeted.
Former FBI special agent Harry Trombitas told Yahoo that while the motive could be for ransom, it's “appearing less and less” likely.
“There's too much involved,” Trombitas said. “There are too many ways people can get caught.”
Despite Hollywood movies depicting high-stakes kidnappings for ransom, they’re pretty uncommon in the United States and have “really decreased over the years,” Trombitas said.
While the FBI tracks kidnapping and abduction cases broadly in the U.S., there is no publicly available data broken down for ransom-specific cases.
“[The motive] could be for revenge of some type, anger or it could be for a third purpose that we're just not even aware of,” Trombitas explained.
Latest on the investigation
Nancy Guthrie, 84, was last seen at around 9:45 p.m. on Jan. 31, when she was dropped off at her home in the Catalina Foothills north of Tucson, Ariz., by family members following dinner, police said. She was reported missing around noon the next day after she did not show up at a friend’s house to watch an online church service.
Investigators are working to process “mixed” DNA recovered from Nancy Guthrie’s home and are also investigating a damaged utility box they believe could be connected to a reported internet outage that occurred around the time she disappeared. Authorities are also reviewing doorbell camera footage outside of Nancy Guthrie’s home of a masked individual who the FBI said was “armed,” as well as video of a speeding car around the time of her abduction and a backpack possibly bought online.
“The FBI and law enforcement will continue to work this case as though she's still alive,” Trombitas said. “I know that with her age, 84 years old, and some of her health conditions that she has, the prospects of her being found alive are not as great as they were originally.”
“We're still hopeful that we will be able to identify who's responsible,” Trombitas said.
As far as how long the FBI will continue to investigate Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance, Trombitas said, “They’ll continue as long as there is an investigation to conduct.”
The former FBI special agent recalled one case he worked on in which 5,700 tips came in, and it was tip number 5,444 that led to its resolution.
“I can assure you that the FBI and the sheriff's office are still extremely busy following up on the thousands of leads and tips that have come in, and my understanding is more every day,” he said.
Trombitas said investigators will also likely return to interview the same people more than once, hoping that, over time, it will jog their memories of some details. “Sometimes people forget little things, and it turns out to be significant information,” he said.
Why more billboards are going up now
In an effort to keep the case in the public eye, the FBI has extended its outreach to “missing person” billboards, with Nancy Guthrie’s photo and description displayed in high-traffic areas across multiple states, including Texas, New Mexico and California.
“I'm sure there are still people out there that have never heard about this case, as hard as that is for us to believe,” Trombitas said, adding that it’s possible that someone who is just learning about Guthrie’s disappearance may have information they didn’t realize could be useful to investigators.
The former FBI special agent also pointed out that relationships between people can change over time, and a person who is close to potential kidnappers may end up sharing crucial information with authorities in exchange for a substantial reward. “Maybe they're not as friendly as they were with that individual before, and now they're willing to come forward and pass that information along,” Trombitas said.
The Guthrie family is offering a $1 million reward for information that could lead to Nancy Guthrie’s recovery, while the FBI is offering a $100,000 reward.
“That money is still out there,” Trombitas said. “The first one on the bus gets the reward.”
The former FBI special agent also said the silence surrounding the case isn’t necessarily a sign that it has stalled, but it could be quite the opposite.
In high-stakes investigations like this one, investigators don’t want to tip anybody off, including the potential kidnappers, on the progress being made in the investigation, which could cause them to panic or overreact.
“If Nancy's still alive, it may cause them to decide that we're getting too close and they're going to go ahead and kill her and dump her body somewhere,” Trombitas explained.
Trombitas remains hopeful that Nancy Guthrie will be recovered alive, pointing to a number of kidnapping cases that took months, sometimes years, to resolve, where the victims came back alive.
“I don't think people should be making the assumption that we'll never get [Nancy Guthrie] back at all,” he said. “I think we've proven over and over again that we can recover people after a significant period of time. So at this point, it's still considered a missing person's case.”
Anyone with information is encouraged to call the Pima County Sheriff’s Department tip line at 520-351-4900 or the FBI tip line at 1-800-CALL-FBI.
