The press pack often have it all figured out within days of descending on a crime scene. Maybe it can’t be reported – the sourcing is too thin, or the risk of jeopardizing an investigation too great – but the answer is usually clear.

The Nancy Guthrie case, however, is very different.

‘No one really knows what has happened,’ said Brian Entin, senior correspondent with NewsNation, who was on the scene in Arizona within 24 hours of Guthrie vanishing.

Entin is a veteran of some of America’s biggest crime stories. He spent seven weeks camped out outside the house of Brian Laundrie’s parents following the disappearance of Gabby Petito.

He spent weeks in the frigid Idaho town of Moscow following the brutal killings of four college students there in November 2022.

But nothing that he has covered has left him as perplexed – or shocked – as the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie. Perplexed at the absence of any credible clues: shocked by some of the missteps made by Pima County sheriff, Chris Nanos, at the start of it all.

Speaking to the Daily Mail from Arizona, Entin said: ‘That’s what has everybody so gripped and so disturbed by it. Every day there’s a different twist and turn that makes you think something different – and even now, I can’t say that I secretly have a theory of who did it, or that I know who the suspect is.

‘We really just don’t know. And I think that’s what makes this really unique.’

Nothing that he has covered has left the veteran newsman as perplexed – or shocked – as the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie

Brian Entin outside the home from which Nancy Guthrie was abducted in the early hours of Sunday February 1

The details so far are sparse.

Eighty-four-year-old Nancy Guthrie – mother of Today host Savannah Guthrie – was last seen at 9:50pm on January 31, when she was dropped off at her $1 million Tucson bungalow by family, after dinner at the nearby home of her daughter Annie and son-in-law Tommaso Cioni.

Recently released doorbell camera footage shows a masked figure ripping the camera off the wall shortly before 2am on February 1.

Guthrie was reported missing around noon that same day and so the nightmare, for her family, began.

Since then, there have been a string of ransom notes – one exposed as fraudulent, others, sent to media outlets, still unverified.

Though Savannah has posted a series of emotional Instagram videos appealing to her mother’s abductors and assuring them ‘we will pay,’ no direct line of communication to any has so far been established.

In his week and a half in Tucson, Entin has been at the very forefront of the coverage, breaking a string of dramatic stories.

It was he who revealed that there was a trail of blood at Guthrie’s front door and his crew who obtained the vivid and disturbing footage of the spatter that, sheriffs later confirmed, belonged to Nancy.

Soon after arriving at the scene, Entin had heard from sheriffs that there was blood found at the home. But he was stunned when, on Tuesday February 3, he discovered the house no longer ringed round by crime scene tape, and realized that he and his crew could wander around freely to look for themselves.

‘In other big cases that I’ve covered, even if it’s not really an active crime scene any more they’ll at least keep a deputy out there,’ said Entin. ‘I’ve never seen that before, where it was just kind of like: “We’re done.” And they left, and everything was just opened back up.

‘We weren’t sure if any family members were in the house, so we realized, why don’t we just go knock on the door like we would in any other story. There’s no one here. There’s no one telling us that we’re not allowed to. We knock on doors all the time, so we should just go see if anybody’s home.

‘And so, the cameraman Nick actually went up before me and was the one who said: “Oh my gosh, there’s blood up near the doorstep.”

‘First of all, I thought, “This is really serious. This is not a good sign that there’s that amount of blood right outside the front door.”

‘My second thought was, “I can’t believe that the police aren’t still here, that the sheriff isn’t still here. How are we able to just walk up? How is anybody able to just walk up?” That shocked me.’

Twenty-four hours later, on the advice of the FBI, the crime scene was once again sealed.

Entin was the first to picture blood spatter on Guthrie’s doorstep. He said: ‘First of all, I thought, this is really serious. My second thought was, I can’t believe that the police aren’t still here, that the sheriff isn’t still here’

Twenty-four hours after Pima County Sheriff released the crime scene, and on the advice of the FBI, it was once again sealed

Entin revealed that he did not see any visible signs of forced entry to the house, but it struck him as odd at the time that plants were scattered on the doorstep. 

More than a week later the release of that eerie doorbell footage would show the masked intruder grabbing fistfuls of shrubbery in a clumsy attempt to obscure the camera’s lens.

On Thursday a white tent was briefly erected outside Guthrie’s front door. Entin admitted: ‘It was surprising to see that tent go up. It’s the exact spot where we filmed the blood. 

‘Why they would decide to protect that spot almost two weeks later I’m not entirely sure.’ Though he did note that rain was forecast. 

Looking back, Entin said: ‘It’s shocking that they wouldn’t want to preserve all of that [scene from the outset] and keep people from even walking in the driveway.

‘You’d think they wouldn’t have wanted everybody’s footsteps there, because they would have probably wanted to try to find footprints, right?’

To Entin, the failure was indicative of a sheriff’s office, ‘in turmoil.’

Indeed, at times Sheriff Nanos has appeared overwhelmed by the attention, remarking in a press conference: ‘I’m not used to everyone hanging onto my every word and then holding me accountable for what I say.’

Nanos, originally from El Paso, joined the sheriff’s office in 1984 and rose through the ranks to be appointed sheriff in 2015.

He lost the 2016 race to his Republican rival, but defeated him in 2020 and squeaked by in a bad-tempered re-election in 2024. The rancor of that campaign remains.

Many former employees have become valuable sources for Entin.

‘These are people who have decades of experience, who are now telling me that the homicide detectives working the case have two to four years’ experience, just because of all the turnover at the sheriff’s office,’ he said.

‘They’re concerned. They’re relieved now that the FBI is so involved, but they’re concerned about the way that it was handled initially.’

Many former employees of Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos are, Entin said, ‘Concerned. They’re relieved now that the FBI is so involved, but they’re concerned about the way that it was handled initially.’

Though Savannah has posted a series of emotional Instagram videos appealing to her mother’s abductors and assuring them ‘we will pay,’ no direct line of communication has so far been established

Tuesday brought the most dramatic developments to date and, for an adrenalin-fueled few hours, Entin, 40, thought the case was finally beginning to crack.

He heard from a source that a man had been detained for questioning following a traffic stop in the desert town of Rio Rico, some 60 miles south of Tucson and home to some 19,000 people.

Entin leapt into his car and sped ‘at like 100mph’ from Guthrie’s home to the town that sits just shy of the US-Mexico border.

When he arrived, the house of the man who had been detained was surrounded by police, and the residents forced out into the street. Entin came across the man’s mother-in-law, Josefina, who insisted that it was impossible he was involved.

She explained that her son-in-law had been delivering food with DoorDash when he was pulled over, with his wife – her daughter – and their children in the car.

The man, Carlos Palazuelos, was released after several hours of questioning, but according to Entin this does not mean the whole thing was a misstep by the investigators.

He said: ‘I’m not totally discounting that it may have helped them with some progress.

‘But my sense is: based on everything we know, it doesn’t seem like Carlos has anything to do with Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance.’

And so, on Wednesday morning, the investigation seemed to be back to square one. Or, at least, back to where it had been the previous day.

Nancy Guthrie has lived in the area since the 1970s and in the house from which she was taken since the 1990s, said Entin. She is truly beloved in Tucson – as is her daughter, Savannah.

Entin said that when he first arrived in Arizona, Guthrie’s neighbors in the affluent Catalina Mountains foothills were calm – seeing the suspected kidnapping as being targeted and not an act of random violence.

That feeling was very different, he said, to the aftermath of the November 2022 murders of college students in Idaho.

Carlos Palazuelos, was released after several hours of questioning but according to Entin this does not mean the whole thing was a misstep by the investigators

Entin said that when he first arrived in Arizona, Guthrie’s neighbors in the affluent Catalina Mountains foothills were calm

Nancy Guthrie had lived in the area since the 1970s and in the house since the 1990s, said Entin, and is truly beloved in Tucson – as was her daughter Savannah.

‘In Idaho, there was a good month where the whole community was in a panic,’ he said, remembering his time there on the ground. ‘College students were leaving town because they were so scared that there was this murderer on the loose.

‘The vibe here in Arizona was very different. I didn’t get the sense that people were as scared. It’s not like people are closed up in their houses with the doors locked, which is what the feeling was in Idaho.

‘But I do think that vibe changed a little when the photos [of the intruder at the doorstep] were released. I think people got a little more scared.

‘I mean, the photos are just so terrifying. It really does look almost like something you would see in a horror movie.’

Entin, whose home is in Florida, said the case was so devastating because it was ‘something we can all relate to.’

In between racing to investigate new tips and hitting the phones, Entin said it made him think of his own mother, and the decisions millions of families across America make every day: should they get the Uber? Are they safe? Should they still live alone?

He is reluctant to speculate how long the case will remain unsolved. Every day he receives new information from his sources and from members of the public.

But he said that he suspects the appearance of Kash Patel, the FBI director, on Fox News on Tuesday night, along with the release of the doorbell camera footage means the investigators are at a loss.

‘The fact that the FBI is putting pictures out and doing interviews – that, to me, makes me think they don’t have much to go on right now,’ he said.

‘But it’s impossible to predict. All it takes is one really good tip to go into the FBI and a few hours later we’ll have the answer. It could change literally at any moment.’