One week after 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie vanished from her home in the Catalina Foothills outside Tucson, Arizona, the Pima County Sheriff's Office has not identified a single suspect, a single person of interest, or a single credible lead — at least none it's willing to share. What it has produced is a cascading series of investigative missteps that have left the Guthrie family desperate and the public questioning whether the department tasked with finding her is up to the job.
FBI agents returned to Nancy's home on Friday for what Fox News infrared footage confirmed was the third time agents combed the residence. It was the fourth time crime scene tape had been put up and torn down from the property. During this latest search, investigators seized a vehicle from the garage and recovered a camera from the roof — a camera that had seemingly been missed in every previous sweep.
Three searches of a house before you find the camera on the roof. Let that sit for a moment.
Sheriff Chris Nanos, who has led Pima County's law enforcement since 2020, has spent the week oscillating between overstatement and retreat. On Monday, he told NBC News that Nancy had been "abducted" and "taken from her bed." By Tuesday, he was walking it back, clarifying he'd been speaking figuratively and that no evidence supported the claim she was literally taken from her bed. His explanation landed somewhere between confession and complaint:
"Sometimes I'm speaking in generalities and ... and ... I'm not used to everybody hanging on to my words and then trying to hold me accountable for what I say. But I understand."
A county sheriff — the top law enforcement official in a jurisdiction investigating the disappearance of an elderly woman — is not used to people holding him accountable for what he says. During an active missing persons case. On national television, as Daily Mail reports.
By Thursday's press conference, Nanos had abandoned even the pretense of projecting competence. Asked about potential suspects and motives, he offered this:
"My guesswork is as good as yours."
The Tucson Sentinel published an op-ed on Wednesday that captured the local mood, describing Nanos's Tuesday press appearance as a performance whose answers could be summed up with:
"For the most part his answers were exasperated statements that could be summed up with a Scooby Doo 'Ruh ROH...'"
Nancy was reported missing shortly after noon on Sunday, February 1. Police arrived at her home by 12:15 PM. The department's fixed-wing Cessna aircraft — a basic tool for a search operation in a rural area — did not get airborne until around 5:00 PM. That's roughly five hours sitting on the tarmac while the trail went cold.
Matt Heinz, a member of the Pima County Board of Supervisors, told the Daily Mail what anyone with common sense already understood:
"The initial few hours of any kind of search like this are absolutely crucial."
The failure to deploy the aircraft wasn't just a scheduling hiccup. Sergeant Aaron Cross, president of the Pima County Sheriff's Deputies Association, said trained aviators who could have crewed the Cessna had been transferred out of the Air Operations Unit in recent weeks. Kathleen Winn, the Pima County Republican Party Chairwoman, echoed that claim. Sources close to the department blamed Nanos directly for the staffing shortage that left no qualified pilots available when it mattered most.
So the plane existed. The need was obvious. The personnel had been moved. And an 84-year-old woman's best chance at a rapid aerial search evaporated on the tarmac.
The crime scene tape going up and down four times at the same residence in less than a week isn't just embarrassing optics — it raises real questions about the chain of custody and evidentiary integrity. When reporters pressed Nanos on whether the repeated sealing and unsealing could create problems in a future prosecution, his response was dismissive:
"I'll let the court worry about it. We follow the rules of law."
That's a remarkable posture for the lead agency on the case. Any competent defense attorney watching this investigation unfold is already taking notes. If a suspect is ever identified — a significant "if" at this point — the prosecution will have to explain why the primary crime scene was treated like a revolving door. Nanos is letting the court worry about it. The court may have plenty to worry about.
The Guthrie family has released multiple videos pleading for Nancy's safe return. Whoever is responsible for her disappearance has made no contact with the family — no ransom demand, no communication of any kind. Nancy's daughter, Savannah Guthrie, has been identified among the family members grappling with an investigation that produces more questions than answers with each passing day.
The circumstances of Nancy's disappearance remain stubbornly unclear. She vanished during the early morning hours of February 1 from her home in the Catalina Foothills, a rural stretch of Tucson. Who reported her missing has not been disclosed. How she was taken — or whether she left under other circumstances — is unknown. Nanos himself admitted his earlier characterization of an abduction from her bed was figurative, not factual.
Nanos acknowledged Thursday that he should have called in the FBI and regional teams sooner. That admission, while welcome, doesn't explain why basic investigative instincts failed in real time. Deploying aerial search assets in a rural area isn't an advanced technique — it's standard procedure. Securing a crime scene once and keeping it secured isn't a luxury — it's the baseline. Finding a camera mounted on the roof of the subject's home shouldn't require three separate searches.
Sources within Nanos's own department told the Daily Mail he made critical mistakes in the first hours of the investigation. That's not political opposition talking. That's his own people.
This case has drawn overwhelming national media attention, and Nanos conceded that the scrutiny is entirely new to him. That much is obvious. The question isn't whether the sheriff is uncomfortable with cameras. The question is whether his department can find an 84-year-old woman who vanished from her home a week ago.
As of Saturday afternoon, the answer remained no.
