Investigators ask for surveillance video from specific dates in Nancy Guthrie disappearance – Chicago Tribune

TUCSON, Ariz. — Investigators are pleading with people to share home surveillance camera footage from specific dates leading up to Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance as they process thousands of tips in hopes of solving the case of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie’s missing mother.

It was not clear Thursday where the investigation stood. New surveillance footage of a masked person on Nancy Guthrie’s front porch the night she disappeared, coupled with intense police activity across Arizona and the detention of a man, had raised hopes that authorities were on the verge of a major break. But the man was later released after questioning.

FBI agents carrying bottles of water to combat the 80-degree Fahrenheit (27-degree Celsius) heat walked among rocks and desert vegetation at Guthrie’s Tucson-area home on Wednesday. They also fanned out to a neighborhood about a mile away, knocking on doors and searching cacti, brush and rocks.

FBI searches desert for clues to Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance

“They were just asking some general questions, wondering if there was anything, any information that we could share about the Nancy Guthrie problem. They 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 from her mother.

“They asked specifically for the date January 31st and the morning of February 1st, and then they wanted to know if we had seen anything suspicious on the cameras since then,” Adams said.

Authorities said Guthrie, 84, was arrested against her will. She has been missing since February 1st. DNA testing showed the blood on her porch was hers, and authorities say she takes several medications and is feared she could die without them.

Tucson news stations also reported Wednesday that people with Ring doorbell cameras in the area received an alert that investigators were requesting footage from Jan. 11 between 9 p.m. and midnight regarding the Guthrie case. It was nearly three weeks before Guthrie disappeared.

Ring allows local public safety agencies to submit requests to community users who 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 was recovered during the officers’ search and subjected to DNA analysis.

Several hundred detectives and officers are now assigned to the area-wide investigation, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department said.

Two investigators left their daughter Annie Guthrie’s home Wednesday with a paper grocery bag and a white trash bag. One of them, still wearing blue protective gloves, also took a stack of mail from the roadside mailbox. They left without speaking to journalists.

Adams, the neighbor, said she was walking her dog earlier this week when “it started to get really busy and then I heard about them looking, I looked down the street, I saw them moving slowly in that direction.”

A day earlier, authorities announced they had arrested 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 Wednesday morning that he was released after several hours and had nothing to do with Guthrie’s disappearance.

Authorities did not say what led them to arrest the man Tuesday, but confirmed he had been released. The Sheriff’s Department said its deputies and FBI agents also searched a location in Rio Rico, a town south of Tucson where the man lives.

In the first significant breakthrough in the case, the FBI released black-and-white images and videos showing what the agency described as “an armed individual appearing to have tampered with the camera outside Nancy Guthrie’s front door on the morning of her disappearance.” But the images don’t show what happened to him.

FBI Director Kash Patel said investigators spent days trying to find lost, corrupted or inaccessible footage.

Although the images do not show the person’s face, investigators hope someone knows who was on the porch. More than 4,000 calls were received by the Pima County Sheriff in the past 24 hours, the department said Wednesday afternoon.

Longtime NBC host Savannah Guthrie and her two siblings have indicated their willingness to pay a ransom. It is unclear whether the ransom notes demanding money with deadlines already passed were genuine and whether the family had any contact with whoever took Guthrie.