Sheriff Insists 'This Case Is Not Cold' Despite Massive Blunders in Nancy Guthrie Kidnapping

The Pima County sheriff is insisting the high–profile kidnapping case involving Today host Savannah Guthrie's mother is still very much alive, even as a new report lays bare a string of early missteps.

In Tucson, Arizona, investigators are still searching for 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie, who was abducted from her home on 1 February and has not been seen since.

Months into the investigation, no suspect has been publicly identified and no arrests have been made, fuelling frustration in the local community and beyond.

A detailed account of the probe, including how Guthrie's blood was initially treated as an accident and how a surveillance aircraft sat idle during crucial hours, has intensified scrutiny of Sheriff Chris Nanos.

The sheriff's office, however, maintains that 'this case is not cold' and that the kidnapping investigation remains active.

New Report Highlights Early Errors in Nancy Guthrie Kidnapping

A detailed account raised sharp questions over how deputies initially handled potential evidence at Guthrie's home. According to that reporting, officers from the Pima County Sheriff's Department arrived to find dried blood on Guthrie's front porch but did not at first treat it as a likely sign of violence linked to a kidnapping.

Instead, they reportedly spent several hours operating on the assumption it could have been from an accident, delaying the moment that the blood was collected and tested. When the sample was finally processed, it was confirmed to belong to Nancy Guthrie and is now believed to be connected to her abduction.

Critics argue that, in a kidnapping case where minutes matter, those lost hours are hard to defend.

Compounding that, the front of Guthrie's home was left largely open to the world while investigators debated whether they were dealing with a missing person or a crime in progress. Crime scene tape did eventually go up but, according to the same account, it stayed in place for only a few hours before it was removed for reasons that have not been publicly explained.

High–Tech Plane Grounded While Search Teams Fanned Out

Once the case was formally treated as a kidnapping, the sheriff's department deployed drones and search dogs around Guthrie's neighbourhood and wider desert areas. Yet one of its most sophisticated tools, a $1.7 million Cessna surveillance aircraft fitted with infrared sensors and powerful zoom cameras, stayed grounded at first.

The aircraft was not out of service, the problem was more mundane and arguably more maddening, there was no available flight deputy to operate the camera systems.

The senior pilot who normally worked those missions had reportedly been reassigned to routine patrol duty days earlier after a workplace complaint, leaving the department scrambling.

By the time a crew was finally in place and the Cessna was sent into the skies, it did not generate any meaningful leads.

Sheriff Nanos Defends His Team as FBI Stays in Support Role

The FBI has been clear that the Pima County Sheriff's Department remains the lead agency in the investigation.

An FBI spokesperson has said the bureau is assisting and that many of its requests to join particular lines of inquiry came later rather than at the outset.

Calls from some quarters for the FBI to assume full control have grown louder in recent weeks, especially after the latest criticisms of local handling of the case.

Sheriff Chris Nanos has pushed back, both in interviews and on social media, insisting his team is committed and engaged. 'I can assure everybody that we are working hard every day with all of our partners,' he told reporters, adding, 'This case is not cold.'

In a later message addressed to the Guthrie family and the wider public, Nanos said: 'We're still here, we're not going away. If you could just see the team working, you would see the energy, the concern. They're fired up, and we'll continue to work this case hard.'

He has also said he has 'no doubt' the case will ultimately be solved.

Trump and the Ransom Notes Add Pressure to Guthrie Kidnapping Probe

President Donald Trump weighed in from Air Force One on 2 August, telling reporters that 'the local community really runs' cases of this nature and that the FBI stands ready to assist when asked.

Trump acknowledged that 'some people haven't liked the way the sheriff's run it' but said he wanted to give local authorities the benefit of the doubt.

At the same time, the release of the two ransom notes in early August has reopened debate about what the sheriff knew and when.

On Thursday, in an interview, Nanos said: 'I have nothing to indicate she's dead. I don't have a body. I don't have a burial site. I don't have any note.'

Yet by Friday, his department was publicly sharing two ransom notes that had in fact been received months earlier, shortly after Guthrie's abduction.

The first message, sent on 2 February and addressed directly to Savannah Guthrie, read: 'We have your mother Nancy. She is safe but scared.' It demanded $4 million in Bitcoin and warned that Guthrie 'will be killed' if the payment was not made.

The second note, dated 6 February and sent to the wider Guthrie family, abandoned the ransom demand and delivered a stark claim: that Nancy Guthrie had died 'shortly after she was taken', that it was 'heart related' and that she was 'buried in nature now'.

The writer insisted: 'We never intended to hurt her, that was not our intention.' Both notes referenced specific details inside Guthrie's home, including a smartwatch near her bed and a damaged floodlight in the backyard, which investigators say led them to treat the messages as credible.

Retired FBI supervisory special agent Lance Leising called the eventual decision to release the notes to the public 'a great thing to do' to generate tips, but described the broader media strategy as 'a little haphazard' given the long delay.

Another former FBI agent, Jason Pack, pointed out that the second note's abrupt abandonment of any money demand was unusual for a writer supposedly motivated by profit. 'People motivated by money do not walk away from $4 million when the plan falls apart,' he argued.

Nancy Guthrie's disappearance began as a missing person report from her Tucson home before investigators concluded she had been kidnapped. The FBI says Guthrie was taken in the early hours of 1 February, a timeline that has since anchored a sprawling search across Pima County.

Within days, two ransom notes referencing Guthrie and her daughter, Savannah, began arriving at local media outlets and to the family, demanding millions in Bitcoin and later claiming Guthrie had died. Those notes, now deemed credible enough to be released publicly, have become one of the central threads in a case that still lacks a named suspect.

The sheriff's department has since said there was a 'slight increase' in tips after the notes were released and that all of them have been followed up, but none has cracked the case.

Savannah Guthrie, posting on Instagram as the six month mark approached, pleaded again for help, saying: 'We need someone to come forward. Someone knows something. Someone suspects something.'

She added: 'We are real people, facing real grief. We will never stop looking for answers.'

Investigators therefore find themselves in a familiar, uncomfortable place, juggling contested evidence, bruised public confidence and a family that wants, at minimum, the truth.