A retired police sergeant from Phoenix, Arizona — just a two-hour drive from where Nancy Guthrie lives in Tucson — says there are plenty of fresh clues to dissect in the newly-released images from her Nest doorbell camera.
“Overall, it’s a huge break in the case,” Troy Hillman, a retired cold case homicide sergeant with Phoenix Police Department, exclusively tells Us Weekly as the search for 84-year-old Guthrie continues.
The FBI has released six black-and-white photos and three video clips showing a potential subject involved, who was wearing a mask, black gloves and a backpack when approaching Guthrie’s residence on the night of her disappearance.
“You’ve got a lot of clues just baked in these, what seems to be a short amount of video,” Hillman notes to Us. “You’ve got the ski mask, you’ve got the eyebrows are distinctive. You’ve got what appears to be a mustache. You’ve got a height, a weight, they can guesstimate.”
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“They can kind of get biometrics on the facial features,” he points out. “There’s just a ton of information, the backpack, the way he wore his gun, what type of holster it is, what type of gun it was. The type of gloves he had on.”
Hillman spoke to Us hours before news broke on Wednesday, February 11, that FBI agents recovered a black glove from a roadside about one and a half miles away from Guthrie’s house, as first reported by The New York Post.
Authorities believe that Nancy, who is the mother of Today show host Savannah Guthrie, was taken from her $1 million home against her will after being dropped off at her home on the evening of January 31. She was reported missing on the afternoon of February 1 after she did not show up for virtual church services with a friend.
Savannah, 54, has pleaded for her mother’s safe return alongside her siblings, Annie Guthrie and Camron Guthrie, imploring anyone with information to come forward.
Meanwhile, the FBI has offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of Nancy.
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A man was detained in connection with the case on Tuesday, February 10, but he was released by police soon after, stating that he had no knowledge of Nancy’s disappearance while vehemently maintaining his innocence.
Hillman told Us that authorities are likely hopeful that with the public’s help, they will discover another lead in the case. The Pima County Sheriff’s Department has received nearly 18,000 calls to its tip line since February 1, and 4,000 calls in the last 24 hours, according to a new update on Wednesday, February 11.
“You can kind of assess all those things [in the footage] and then begin to kind of put those out and then you’re gonna get input from the community,” the Chasing Down the Zombie Hunter author shared. “Someone’s gonna say, ‘Oh, I know that guy’ or ‘Joe wears that particular jacket, and he fits the make and description of that particular person.’ So, it’s just a huge, huge break.”
“It doesn’t mean it’s solved,” Hillman clarified. “It doesn’t mean Nancy’s home safe, but it means it’s a break in the case.”
