Masked Suspect Caught on Camera Blocking Lens With Flowers Before Savannah Guthrie's Mum Vanished

The FBI has finally got something. After 10 days of dead ends and unanswered questions about what happened to Nancy Guthrie, investigators have released surveillance footage showing exactly who they're looking for. And it's absolutely chilling.

The images and video released on Tuesday show a person in a ski mask, armed with a gun on their hip, standing right at Nancy's front door in Tucson. They're staring directly into her Nest doorbell camera. First, they try covering the lens with their gloved hand. When that doesn't work, they grab a handful of flowers from Nancy's own garden and shove them in front of the camera to block the view. It's the kind of thing you'd see in a film. Except this is real, and somewhere out there, 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie is still missing.

They Weren't Supposed to Have This Footage

Here's what makes this remarkable: this footage wasn't meant to exist. Nancy had Nest cameras around her property in the Catalina Foothills, but she hadn't paid her subscription. That meant when she disappeared on 1 February, there was no cloud storage. Police thought they'd lost it all.

But FBI specialists managed to pull the footage from what Director Kash Patel called 'residual data located in backend systems'. Basically, they went digging through Nest's servers and found fragments of video that hadn't been completely wiped. The video shows someone wearing a dark fleece jacket, light-coloured trousers, trainers, and a backpack. They're carrying what looks like a torch in their mouth. The gun's clearly visible on their hip.

Timeline of the Kidnapping

Nancy was dropped off at her home by her son-in-law around 9:45 pm on 31 January after dinner with family. Everything seemed normal. The front door camera was disconnected at 1:47 am on 1 February. At 2:28 am, Nancy's pacemaker disconnected from her phone—that's when investigators reckon she was taken. Her phone was left behind. By noon the next day, when she didn't turn up at a friend's house to stream Sunday church together, her family knew something was badly wrong.

Police found blood on the porch that tested positive for Nancy's DNA. They've been treating this as a kidnapping from day one, but until Tuesday, they had absolutely nothing to go on. No suspects. No persons of interest. Just a ransom note demanding $6 million in bitcoin that may or may not be genuine.

'Someone Out There Recognises This Person'

Savannah Guthrie, the 'Today' show co-anchor whose mother has been missing for 10 days now, immediately shared the FBI footage on her Instagram. She's got 1.7 million followers, and she's using every single one to try and find her mum.

'Someone out there recognises this person. We believe she is still alive. Bring her home,' Savannah wrote. She included the FBI hotline number and urged anyone with information to call immediately. It's the fourth video Savannah's posted since her mother vanished. The first three were increasingly desperate pleas directly to whoever took Nancy. Former FBI agents watching this case say the shift from addressing the kidnapper to appealing to the public suggests one thing: there's no established line of communication.

Multiple ransom notes have supposedly been sent to news outlets demanding $6 million in bitcoin, with deadlines that have now passed. The FBI said on Monday evening that they're 'not aware of any continued communication between the Guthrie family and suspected kidnappers'. Which raises the obvious question: if there's no communication, who sent those notes?

Time's Running Out

Nancy's 84 years old with health issues requiring daily medication. Her family has said she's in 'constant pain' without it. She's got a pacemaker, which is how investigators knew roughly when she was taken.

Savannah's stepped away from all her work at NBC to focus on finding her mother. She was supposed to be co-hosting the opening ceremonies of the 2026 Winter Olympics. Instead, she's posting desperate videos on Instagram and fielding calls from President Trump, who rang her on 4 February to offer additional federal resources. The White House has been publicly backing the search, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt saying Trump's reaction to seeing the footage was 'pure disgust'.

Nancy Guthrie's been living in the Tucson area for more than 50 years. Her husband Charles died back in 1988 while on a mining exploration in Mexico. She raised three kids largely on her own. She's mentally sharp, independent, lives alone. She loves playing mahjong with friends. She's just a normal grandmother living a quiet life in Arizona—and now she's at the centre of a national story.

The reward's up to $50,000 now for information leading to Nancy or to the arrest of whoever's responsible. And with these images finally out there, maybe someone will recognise this person. Because right now, Nancy Guthrie's family just wants their mum back. And this masked figure holding flowers from her garden is the only lead they've got.