An enormous cactus looms over the gazebo Damian Enderle has erected on the verge opposite Nancy Guthrie’s red-brick bungalow.
It protects him from the worst of the afternoon sun, which this week sent temperatures in this dusty corner of Arizona to 105F (40C) – and turned visiting America’s most famous unsolved crime scene into a gruelling endurance sport.
Damian, a middle-aged YouTuber who runs a channel named 857 Tucson, is one of several ‘livestreamers’ who have been coming to Guthrie’s house daily for almost seven weeks.
Armed with a cold-box full of energy drinks and a deckchair, he uses his iPhone to video a steady trickle of well-wishers. They come to leave flowers, light candles and say prayers outside the property, which is situated in the Catalina Foothills, a suburb on the city’s northern outskirts.
As we spoke, at around 3pm on Wednesday, three elderly women pulled up in a car and announced that they’d just ‘popped over’ from San Antonio in Texas. It’s a 13-hour drive away.
Meanwhile more than 6,000 viewers were at that moment watching Enderle’s livestream, using its message board to bombard him with elaborate and sometimes lurid theories about Nancy Guthrie’s baffling disappearance.
‘Some people are saying it’s got to be a burglary gone wrong. Others that there’s a kind of psychopath lone-wolf stalker out there. Quite a few are going with kidnap for ransom,’ he said. ‘What’s the truth? At this stage, who knows!’
To fully understand the intoxicating combination of intrigue and hysteria that surrounds the Nancy Guthrie case, one must appreciate two important facts.
Picture provided by the FBI shows a masked man at the home of Nancy Guthrie the night she went missing in Tucson, Ariz
Savannah Guthrie and mother Nancy Guthrie together in the television studio on Thursday, June 15, 2023
I’m Tom Rawstorne, and nearly 30 years ago a 12-year-old murderer, with a gold crucifix hanging round her neck, gave me a moment I’ll never forget.
Sharon Carr is to this day Britain’s youngest-ever female murderer, having killed an 18-year-old hairdresser in an unprovoked act of gruesome violence. I watched her up close in court for three weeks and it is something I’l never forget. I’ve written about it in The Crime Desk newsletter – sign up to read it for free.
Firstly, the 84-year-old victim is no ordinary missing pensioner. Instead, she’s the mother of Today host Savannah Guthrie, one of Middle America’s most popular and wholesome TV anchors: a breakfast-show legend who is perhaps best described as a trans-Atlantic equivalent of Fiona Bruce or Holly Willoughby.
‘Savannah has been the face of morning TV in this country since 2012,’ explained Lynden Blake, host of the Finding Nancy podcast, when we spoke this week. ‘It’s a programme where she and her co-hosts share their lives, good and bad. So people feel like they really know her family.’
Nancy has, to this end, been on Today several times over the years. And affection for her extends all the way to the White House.
‘We are deploying all resources to get her home safely,’ declared President Donald Trump, who has said he feels ‘pure disgust’ at her disappearance, and instructed the FBI’s top brass to place themselves at Guthrie’s ‘complete disposal’. The second crucial factor that underpins the ongoing media circus involves the circumstances in which Guthrie vanished during the early hours of February 1. They are not merely unusual, but truly and utterly bewildering.
Nancy’s apparent abduction seems to have involved a sinister, balaclava-clad man caught on a doorbell camera, a pool of blood on the doorstep and various – possibly fake – ransom notes. There is also evidence of forced entry, plus a struggle inside the home.
Yet despite the very best efforts of a small army of detectives – roughly 100 belonging to the local Sheriff, Chris Nanos, plus dozens of top FBI sleuths – no suspects have yet been identified.
Whoever took her hostage left precious few real clues. And their motive remains unclear.
What we do know, for sure, is that this unsolved crime took place on an outwardly normal Saturday night.
An aerial view shows the home of Nancy Guthrie, the missing mother of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie
Savannah Guthrie’s 84-year-old mother was abducted from her $1million Tucson, Arizona home in the early hours of February 1
Nancy, who lived alone (her late husband died when Savannah was a teenager), had travelled via an Uber to her daughter Annie’s home, around ten minutes away, at 5.32pm on the afternoon of January 31. There, she enjoyed a few games of mahjong (she’s a keen player) plus a family dinner, before she was driven home by Annie’s husband Tommasso in a blue Honda SUV. They arrived at 9.48pm and said their farewells. Nancy’s electronic garage door closed at 9.50pm.
At 1.47am on the morning of Sunday, February 1, Nancy’s doorbell camera appears to have been suddenly disconnected. There followed a 25-minute hiatus.
Then, at 2.12am, movement sensors linked to the now-defunct camera detected something happening on the front porch. Finally, at 2.28am, an app controlling Guthrie’s pacemaker shows it lost contact with her mobile phone.
Since the phone remained in the building, it follows that Nancy left – or was removed from – her property around this time.
On Sunday morning, Nancy was due to drive to the nearby home of a friend called Vicki Edwards, with whom she would often watch a livestream of a church service. When she didn’t turn up, Edwards called a member of the Guthrie family, who drove to her home.
At 12.03pm they called 911 to report her missing. Police arrived 12 minutes later and immediately recognised signs of foul play. ‘There were things at that home that were of concern,’ said Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos. ‘That scene, there were things that, I thought, this doesn’t sit well.’
Nanos hasn’t elaborated on what exactly those ‘things’ were. But it’s understood that Nancy’s wallet, keys and undisclosed ‘important’ daily medication were left behind, along with several other items of evidence which are now being examined by forensics teams.
In the ensuing days, as America’s rolling-news media descended on Tucson – a normally sleepy city of roughly 500,000 inhabitants 70 miles north of the Mexican border – several other potential clues emerged.
Catalina Ochoa visits a memorial for Nancy Guthrie in front of the KVOA news station
The first involved a patch of dried blood, just outside the front door, where the porch meets the driveway. It was consistent with the sort of trail that might be left if someone had a nosebleed and, according to DNA tests carried out in short order, belonged to Nancy.
It suggests that she was removed from the property via the front door, following some sort of altercation which occurred during the 40-minute period between the doorbell camera being disconnected, and her phone losing contact with her pacemaker.
A second crucial development came via alleged ransom notes.
One, saying Nancy was ‘OK but scared’, was sent via email to two local TV stations and the celebrity news website TMZ on the Tuesday after she went missing. It demanded $4 million (£3 million) in the cryptocurrency bitcoin by Thursday, rising to $6 million (£4.5 million) by the following Monday, for her safe return.
What the demand didn’t contain, however, was any ‘proof of life’ indicating that the author had genuinely abducted Nancy. And despite public requests from Savannah and her siblings – Annie and a brother named Camron – no such evidence was provided.
It therefore remains unclear whether the demand, sent from an encrypted email address, was genuine or formed part of a hoax by a conman seeking to extract cash from the Guthrie family.
A separate ransom message, sent via text to Annie’s husband Tommasso that Thursday, was immediately identified as fake. Its alleged author, a fortysomething Californian named Derrick Callella, was swiftly arrested on suspicion of sending an ‘imposter’ note.
The Guthrie family’s regular public statements, made via Savannah’s Instagram account, meanwhile seem to have evolved in ways that suggest they, too, are unsure whether any of the ransom demands have ever been genuine.
A former Pima County detective believes Nancy’s abductor conspired with up to four accomplices
Initially, they directly addressed Nancy’s kidnapper, with phrases such as ‘we need to know without a doubt that she is alive and that you have her’, and ‘we haven’t heard anything directly’.
Six days into the search, Savannah appeared to suggest there had been some direct communication, saying: ‘We received your message and we understand. We beg you to now return our mother.’
Over the ensuing weeks, that tone has shifted, with Savannah appearing to give up on speaking to a criminal and instead appealing to members of the public to share any possible information about her mother’s whereabouts, saying the family will pay $1 million (£750,000) for information leading to Nancy’s recovery. Around 40,000 people have since called the phone line set up to handle potential tips.
By February 10, the abductor had a face. Or, at least, a profile. For with the help of Google, which owns Nest, the firm which made Nancy’s doorbell camera, digital forensic experts were able to retrieve previously deleted footage from her front porch.
It showed a man, between 5ft 9in and 5ft 10in tall, wearing a balaclava and carrying a torch in his mouth. He had gloves on, was carrying a seemingly full five-litre Ozark Trail Hiker rucksack on his back and had a gun holstered around the front of his waist.
Footage lasting just over 40 seconds showed him approaching the front door of Nancy’s home, noticing the doorbell camera and raising a gloved hand to block it. About ten seconds later, he walked off, bent down to pick up some foliage from a shrubbery, looked around, and then returned to the camera before trying to use the vegetation to block the lens.
While most of the man’s face was covered by the balaclava, parts of his mouth, eyes and eyebrows were visible.
Police said the film was taken in the early hours of the morning Nancy went missing.
Candles and flowers are placed at a Nanthy Guthrie memorial in front of the KVOA news station on March 03, 2026 in Tucson, Arizona
Officers also shared four photographs of the individual but have refused to comment on when these were taken. That led to speculation that at least one of those images (in which the man is not carrying a rucksack) came from an earlier date, which would indicate that the suspect was, as the old saying goes, casing the joint.
What still remains unclear is the exact motive. At his last press conference, Sheriff Nanos told reporters: ‘We believe we know why he did this, and we believe that it was targeted.’ But he refused to elaborate.
The most obvious explanation would, of course, be that the abductor was after some sort of ransom. But kidnapping is an extremely rare crime, since it’s incredibly hard to first abduct someone and then exchange your hostage for cash.
While the Guthrie family is undoubtedly well off – Savannah earns a purported $8 million (£6 million) per year from NBC, the makers of Today – kidnappers usually tend to target either billionaires or employees of wealthy companies with generous insurance policies. On which front, there are likely to have been many far more suitable targets in and around Tucson.
Chip Massey, a former FBI special agent who worked as a hostage negotiator, further points out that in Latin America (where this crime is more common) kidnappings tend to be carried out by organised crime syndicates. Yet, he argues, the man in the video looks strangely unprofessional.
‘The way he tries to get lower to disguise his gait and height, how he tries to cover up the camera, that’s not something an experienced criminal would do. His gun holster is problematic. It doesn’t fit, and you would never wear it there, on the front, where someone can grab your weapon. And those gloves are too big for him to use the gun anyway.
‘The fact blood was on the exit tells me there was a struggle inside. If he was a professional that wouldn’t have happened, so that tells me he’s an amateur, as does the whole back and forth afterwards where they don’t provide proof of life.’
One alternative explanation is that Nancy, who was purportedly unable to walk more than fifty yards unaided, was accidentally killed during some sort of burglary gone wrong.
Investigators are also hoping to recover deleted images from surveillance cameras around the property (pictured), which continue to be scoured for what detectives describe as ‘residual data’
Yet no items seem to have been taken from the scene. And while Nancy was comfortably off (her house, in which she’d raised her family, is worth around $1 million), she lived a relatively unostentatious existence and had few valuable possessions.
Ann Burgess, a criminologist whose work inspired the Netflix series Mindhunter, points out that burglars don’t generally arrive at a property with a full rucksack. And those who injure or kill a victim tend to simply flee the property, rather than taking a ‘hostage’.
She further believes that the abduction was a team effort, involving at least two people.
‘It would be extremely difficult for one person to have got her out and into a car on their own,’ Burgess tells me. ‘We know she went out via the main door, so I think this man knows what’s going on in the house and is waiting for her to be brought to him.’
A third possibility is that she was abducted by a celebrity stalker.
Interestingly, Savannah published a memoir in 2024 in which she wrote of a ‘kidnapping’ game she and her cousins used to play as children. That raises the possibility that a deranged fan might have staged the crime to get attention. But a deranged stalker is unlikely to have got away with such a high-profile crime. Or to have had an accomplice.
Whatever the real motive, the culprit, or culprits, are certainly one step ahead of Sheriff Nanos, whose investigation has lately hit a series of dead ends.
A black glove, apparently similar to the one the man caught on camera wore, was found by a roadside and subjected to extensive DNA testing. But it turns out to have belonged to a local restaurant worker who had nothing to do with the crime.
Meanwhile two men – a food delivery driver named Carlos Palazuelos, and a local named Luke Daley – were briefly detained following tip-offs but released without charge soon afterwards.
A banner with notes from hundreds of well-wishers and an image of Nancy Guthrie
In the absence of further progress, the scene around Nancy’s house has, at times, been utterly chaotic. On one occasion, a pizza delivery boy attempted to visit the property. It later emerged that he’d been summoned there by a fan of a TikTok streamer.
On another, a scantily-clad ‘influencer’ wearing a leather bikini posed for photos next to the pile of yellow flowers and condolence messages left outside the property.
While most broadcasters have ended live coverage of the scene, a large audience still follows daily proceedings online. When I spoke with Enderle, his YouTube following had already generated $550 (£412) in revenue that day. Earlier in the Nancy Guthrie saga, when he was attracting around 25,000 viewers, he was making up to $4,000 (£3,000) per day.
Many ‘super fans’ who follow his channel are hugely critical of Sheriff Nanos, who, following Nancy’s disappearance, made several contradictory public comments and failed to properly lock down the crime scene.
Indeed, his officers put down then took up police tape on the property no fewer than four times in the first seven days.
Nanos also appears to have clashed with the FBI over which lab should handle forensics in the case (he’s sending evidence to a private facility in Florida, whereas the Bureau would rather use its own facility in Quantico), while a hostile local newspaper has accused him of visiting the gym more frequently than police HQ.
A cowboy hat-wearing local Republican politician has meanwhile launched a ‘recall petition’ to have him removed from office.
Online sleuths have occasionally behaved abominably, too. At one point, after a podcast host falsely suggested Nancy’s son-in-law Tommasso was the focus of police inquiries (a claim the Sheriff’s department described as both ‘reckless’ and untrue) an angry mob descended on various locals with vague connections to him.
At one point, they arrived in the middle of the night at the home of Dominic Evans, an elementary school teacher who plays drums in a band with Tommasso. ‘I was scared numb,’ he told reporters.
A ‘no trespassing’ sign was posted at the home of Nancy Guthrie amid a growing memorial in Tucson
Any chance of a more meaningful breakthrough may now lie via a tip-off from someone who knows the abductors (interestingly, missing person billboards have been erected lately in Houston, El Paso and San Diego, which are near the Mexican border and boast large Latino populations).
Investigators are also hoping to recover deleted images from surveillance cameras around the property, which continue to be scoured for what detectives describe as ‘residual data’.
Most promising of all is a sample of DNA taken from items left at the scene of the altercation inside Nancy’s house, which analysts are currently paying close attention to. However, it is believed to be ‘mixed,’ meaning it contains genetic material from more than one person.
Professor April Stonehouse, who used to work in Tucson’s DNA laboratory and now
teaches forensics at Arizona State University, tells me that extracting a usable profile from such a sample is usually possible. But it can be extremely complex and time-consuming, ‘so I think you will have a lag time’ in getting results.
Those following the strange case of Nancy Guthrie await such a development with bated breath.
After a week pounding the scorched pavements of this desert town, I must admit to still being utterly perplexed by the whole thing.
Not one of the various mooted explanations for this 84-year-old grandmother’s disappearance entirely adds up.
But some do feel more credible than others if we apply the principle of Occam’s Razor, and choose the least unlikely option, I would be tempted to place a small wager on a botched kidnapping being to blame.
Nancy, who was already frail and had sustained an injury during the abduction is, sadly, likely to have perished soon afterwards.
As for the culprits, I, like most informed observers, think there were probably two of them. Given the fact that most of the missing person billboards are written in both English and Spanish, not to mention Tucson’s location, only a fool would bet against them having have connections to Mexican organised crime groups.
Whatever the truth, one sad fact remains: with every passing day, the chances of her returning to that red-brick bungalow on the outskirts of Tucson get a little smaller.
