TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Investigators are pleading with people to share home surveillance camera footage from specific dates leading up to the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie as they deal with thousands of tips in their hope to crack the case of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie ‘s missing mother.
It was unclear Thursday where the investigation stands. Fresh surveillance images of a masked person on Nancy Guthrie’s porch the night she went missing, coupled with intense police activity across Arizona and the detention of a man, had raised hopes that authorities were nearing a major break. But then the man was released after questioning.
On Wednesday, FBI agents carrying water bottles to beat the 80-degree Fahrenheit (27-degree Celsius) heat walked among rocks and desert vegetation at Guthrie’s Tucson-area home. They also fanned out across a neighborhood about a mile (1.6 kilometers) away, knocking on doors and searching through cactuses, brush and boulders.
“They were just asking some general questions wondering if there was anything, any information we could shed on the Nancy Guthrie issue. Wanted to look around the property and after that, cameras and such,” Ann Adams, a neighbor of Nancy Guthrie’s other daughter, Annie Guthrie, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. Annie Guthrie lives several miles away from her mother.
“They did ask specifically for the 31st of January and the morning of the first of February and then they wanted to know if we saw anything suspicious on cameras since then,” Adams said.
Authorities have said Guthrie, 84, was taken against her will. She’s been missing since Feb. 1. DNA tests showed blood on her porch was hers, and authorities say she takes several medications and there’s concern she could die without them.
News stations in Tucson also reported Wednesday that people with Ring doorbell cameras in the area got an alert saying investigators are requesting footage from Jan. 11 between 9 p.m. and midnight regarding the Guthrie case. That’s nearly three weeks before Guthrie went missing.
Ring allows local public safety agencies to submit requests to users in the community that appear publicly on the “Neighbors” feed, according to the Ring website. Users in a designated area receive a notification.
The stations also reported that a pair of black gloves were recovered during agents’ search and have been submitted for DNA analysis.
Several hundred detectives and agents are now assigned to the investigation, which is expanding in the area, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department said.
Two investigators emerged from daughter Annie Guthrie’s home Wednesday with a paper grocery sack and a white trash bag. One, still wearing blue protective gloves, also took a stack of mail from the roadside mailbox. They drove away without speaking to reporters.
Adams, the neighbor, said she was out walking her dog earlier this week when, “it started to get really busy and then I heard about them searching, looked down the street, I saw them slowly moving this way.”
A day earlier, authorities said they had stopped a man near the U.S.-Mexico border, just hours after the FBI released videos of a person wearing a gun holster, ski mask and backpack and approaching Nancy Guthrie’s home. The man told media outlets early Wednesday that he was released after several hours and had nothing to do with Guthrie’s disappearance.
Authorities have not said what led them to stop the man Tuesday but confirmed he was released. The sheriff’s department said its deputies and FBI agents also searched a location in Rio Rico, a city south of Tucson where the man lives.
In the first significant break in the case, the FBI released black-and-white images and videos showing what the agency said was “an armed individual appearing to have tampered with the camera at Nancy Guthrie’s front door the morning of her disappearance.” But the images did not show what happened to her.
FBI Director Kash Patel said investigators spent days trying to find lost, corrupted or inaccessible images.
Even though the images don’t show the person’s face, investigators are hopeful someone will know who was on the porch. More than 4,000 calls came into the Pima County sheriff’s tip line within the past 24 hours, the department said Wednesday afternoon.
Longtime NBC host Savannah Guthrie and her two siblings have indicated a willingness to pay a ransom. It is not known whether ransom notes demanding money with deadlines that have already passed were authentic, and whether the family has had any contact with whoever took Guthrie.
___
Associated Press reporters Hallie Golden in Seattle, John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, and Ed White in Detroit contributed to this report.
