Pima County Assessor Suzanne Droubie says Sheriff Chris Nanos confronted her after her office forwarded information about the Nancy Guthrie disappearance to the FBI, a claim that deepens questions about whether local leadership has obstructed federal involvement in one of the most closely watched missing-person cases in the country.
Droubie told the Arizona Republic that technicians in her office sent data the FBI had requested. What followed, she said, was not a thank-you but a dressing-down from the sheriff himself.
The account, reported by Fox News Digital, lands more than 100 days after 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie, the mother of "Today" co-host Savannah Guthrie, is believed to have been abducted from her home in the Catalina Foothills neighborhood of Tucson, Arizona, on Feb. 1. No arrests have been made. No suspects have been publicly identified. And the investigation has been marked less by progress than by a bitter, public feud between the sheriff's department and the FBI over who is running the case and why it has stalled.
Droubie, whose office handles property records in Pima County, described the exchange with Nanos in careful but pointed terms. She told the Arizona Republic:
"It was inferred that we were creating a lot of additional work for the sheriff's department, due to us providing this information to the FBI, and then them having the responsibility to follow up on all of those leads that were provided."
She added that Nanos appeared agitated during the conversation. "It seemed like he was very stressed, very frustrated," Droubie said.
Her full characterization of the encounter left little ambiguity about the tone. Droubie told the Arizona Republic:
"I wouldn't categorize it as yelling, per se, as much as kind of scolding and expressing frustration with all of the leads he was receiving, their obligation to follow up on them, and that my office was, was actually being more harm than good by providing more leads that they just had to follow up with."
The Pima County Sheriff's Department offered no rebuttal. A spokesperson said in an email: "We are not authorized to provide any information or comment regarding these claims." Droubie was out of her office on Tuesday and could not immediately be reached by Fox News Digital.
Droubie's account does not exist in a vacuum. It fits a pattern that has drawn sharp criticism from federal officials, county supervisors, and even members of the sheriff's own department.
FBI Director Kash Patel said last week that the bureau was kept out of the investigation for the first four days after Guthrie vanished. Just The News reported that Patel argued the first 48 hours are the most critical window in a disappearance case, and the FBI missed it. "For four days, we were kept out of the investigation," Patel said.
Sheriff Nanos has disputed that account, insisting an FBI Task Force member was present and that the two agencies have been collaborating from the outset. But the forensic record tells a different story.
Early in the case, the FBI wanted to send DNA evidence recovered from Guthrie's home to its lab in Quantico, Virginia. Instead, Nanos sent the sample to a contracted lab in Florida. Eleven weeks passed before that lab forwarded the sample to the FBI for more advanced testing. It has now been more than 14 weeks since the suspected abduction, and the DNA results remain pending. The New York Post reported that the sample is still undergoing extensive analysis at the FBI crime lab.
Retired FBI special agent Jason Pack told the Post: "That kind of work is slow because it has to be right." That may be true. But the 11-week detour through a private lab, a decision that has drawn scrutiny from forensic experts, is time the investigation will never get back.
The DNA delay is not the only friction point over evidence handling. Reuters reported that Nanos has not given the FBI direct access to key physical evidence, including a glove and DNA recovered from Guthrie's home. The Washington Examiner noted that the county has spent at least $200,000 on the private Florida lab contractor, and that FBI investigators will likely need to retest the evidence themselves, a process that could cause further delays.
For taxpayers footing that bill, the math is grim: a quarter-million dollars spent on a lab whose results the FBI may have to redo anyway.
Meanwhile, blood evidence on Guthrie's porch has led a retired FBI profiler to suggest a lone attacker carried her away. The FBI released surveillance images showing a masked person with a gun holster and backpack approaching Guthrie's porch and attempting to cover the doorbell camera. A man stopped near the U.S.-Mexico border was questioned in connection with the case but later released. AP News reported that several hundred detectives and agents are now assigned to the investigation, and thousands of tips have poured in.
Yet despite that manpower, authorities have not identified credible suspects or leads. The FBI doubled its reward to $100,000 for information leading to Guthrie's recovery or the arrest and conviction of those responsible.
The frustration has reached the Pima County Board of Supervisors. Two supervisors, Dr. Matt Heinz and Steve Christy, told Fox News Digital last week they plan to move to vacate the sheriff's office under a rarely invoked state law.
Christy reiterated his position on Tuesday morning, 100 days after Guthrie's disappearance: "I will make, second and/or support any motion or efforts to vacate."
The board was also expected to address unrelated allegations of perjury against Nanos at its meeting Tuesday night. The specific nature of those allegations was not detailed, but the timing, layered atop the Guthrie investigation failures and Droubie's account, puts the sheriff under pressure from multiple directions simultaneously. Nanos has already faced scrutiny over his disciplinary record alongside his handling of the Guthrie case.
Sgt. Aaron Cross, president of the Pima County Deputies Organization, offered a blunt assessment to the New York Post: "It is a common belief in this agency that this case has become an ego case for Sheriff Nanos." Newsmax reported that multiple law enforcement sources said the FBI wants to take control of the case but cannot legally do so unless the family requests it.
Nanos, for his part, has maintained that his department is working hard. "We are working hard with all of our partners to resolve this case, and we will," the sheriff said.
Nancy Guthrie's family says they believe she is alive. "The family believes their mother is still alive," Savannah Guthrie said in a social media post. That hope is all the family has after more than 100 days.
What they do not have is an answer. And the emerging picture, of a sheriff who scolded a county official for cooperating with the FBI, who routed DNA evidence away from the federal lab best equipped to analyze it, who spent $200,000 of taxpayer money on a private contractor whose work may need to be redone, and who is now fighting publicly with the FBI director over who dropped the ball, does not inspire confidence that one is coming soon.
Investigators were already probing a mystery incident at Guthrie's home weeks before her kidnapping. The questions keep multiplying. The answers do not.
An 84-year-old woman is missing. The agency responsible for finding her treats cooperation with federal investigators as a nuisance. That tells you everything about where this case went wrong, and who let it happen.
