Six months after 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie was forcibly taken from her Tucson-area home, Arizona's monsoon season may have shifted the desert landscape enough to unearth evidence, and investigators are back outside her door searching the brush.
Law enforcement officers were recently spotted combing through vegetation and terrain outside Guthrie's home in the Catalina Foothills, a community north of Tucson. The renewed search comes as the Pima County Sheriff's Office publicly released two ransom notes sent to the Guthrie family in the days after her February 1 disappearance, notes that demand $4 million and, in one chilling passage, claim the elderly woman "is buried in nature now."
No suspects have been arrested. Nancy Guthrie's fate, alive or dead, remains officially unconfirmed. And the family of the 84-year-old mother of Today Show host Savannah Guthrie is offering up to $1 million for information that leads to her recovery.
Bob Krygier, a retired Pima County Sheriff's Department lieutenant, offered one explanation for why deputies returned to the scene. Tucson's monsoon season, which began roughly a month before the renewed search, dumped enormous volumes of water across the region in short bursts, flash floods that can reach depths of just a few inches to as much as 12 feet.
Krygier told the Daily Mail that the force of the water reshapes the landscape in ways that can expose previously hidden material:
"About a month ago, monsoon season started here in Tucson and a lot of water has come down, a lot of water at once, and it pushes things. So it's moved the environment. Rocks have been pushed away."
He went further, describing the flooding's destructive power in blunt terms:
"All that water, it's rushing fast and it's taken not only people, but it's taken cars, it's taken trees, branches, rocks, all of this stuff, and basically turned it into a big blender."
Whether investigators found anything during the renewed search has not been disclosed. The Pima County Sheriff's Office has reviewed tens of thousands of tips, videos, and forensic leads since February, and the case remains what Sheriff Chris Nanos calls "very active."
The sheriff's office and the FBI took the unusual step of releasing both ransom notes in full over the weekend. The first note arrived at Tucson television station KOLD-TV on February 2, one day after Nancy vanished. It demanded $4 million, in Bitcoin, the Washington Examiner reported, and set a deadline of February 9 at 5 p.m. for Savannah Guthrie to pay. The note included details about the interior and exterior of Nancy's home that only someone with access would know: a broken floodlight in the backyard and a white smartwatch found on her bedroom floor.
The second note, received February 6, struck a different tone. It claimed Nancy had died shortly after she was taken, "heart related," the note said, and included an apology. Its most disturbing line: "She is buried in nature now."
Sheriff Nanos said investigators released the notes hoping someone in the public would recognize the writer's voice. He pointed to what he called distinctive language patterns.
"There are a number of pieces of information in these notes that just might jar someone to say, 'You know, I've heard that.'"
The Pima County Sheriff's Department echoed that reasoning in a formal statement, saying, "We believe these distinctive linguistic characteristics may be recognizable to someone who knows or has interacted with the notes' writer."
Nanos also acknowledged that investigators still cannot confirm whether both notes were written by the same person. That uncertainty runs through the entire case.
Criminal profiler John Kelly analyzed the two ransom notes and concluded they appear inauthentic. Kelly told Fox News that the tonal gap between the two letters, one coldly transactional, the other more emotional, suggests they were written by two different people. His assessment was blunt:
"Bottom line is, I don't believe they're real."
Kelly described the abductor's behavior as consistent with a psychopath, based on the evidence available. But Savannah Guthrie has publicly pushed back on doubts about the notes' authenticity. She said she believes the two notes her family received and responded to are real.
"I believe the two notes that we received, that we responded to, I tend to believe those are real."
The FBI has not publicly confirmed or denied the notes' authenticity, though the bureau initially treated them seriously. Heath Yonke, the FBI Phoenix Division's special agent in charge, said earlier in the investigation that authorities were taking every lead seriously, including the ransom letters sent to local and then national media outlets. National Review reported that authorities made one arrest for a fraudulent ransom demand, a separate, copycat effort, while the primary investigation continues with no confirmed suspects.
The FBI previously released recovered doorbell camera footage showing a masked individual, approximately 5 feet 9 inches tall, wearing a backpack and what appeared to be a holstered weapon, tampering with the camera on Nancy's front porch at 1:47 a.m. on February 1. The figure appeared to block the camera with a plant. The Pima County Sheriff's Office said Friday that two doorbell camera videos may have been recorded on two separate days, a detail that could reshape the timeline of the abduction.
Nancy was last seen at approximately 9:50 p.m. on January 31, when her son-in-law dropped her off at home after dinner at Savannah Guthrie's Tucson residence, Just the News reported. She failed to appear for virtual church services the next day. When her daughter Annie walked through the home looking for her, the back door had been left propped open.
Blood found on the front porch was confirmed to be Nancy's. A retired bloodstain pattern analyst, Paulette Sutton, described the evidence as "a drip trail, which means it's a continuous source of blood dripping from an object or from a person." The Wall Street Journal reported that homicide detectives initially "gave little regard" to the blood on the porch for hours, a lapse that raises serious questions about the early handling of the scene.
Six months in, the investigation has generated an enormous volume of material, tens of thousands of tips, videos, and forensic leads, according to the sheriff's office, but has produced no arrest in the primary kidnapping. Authorities are asking the public to think about anyone in the Tucson area who changed their behavior around the time of the disappearance: someone who altered their physical appearance, suddenly left town, or showed an unusual level of interest, or conspicuous disinterest, in the case.
The Guthrie family's $1 million reward remains unclaimed. Media outlets, including the Associated Press, initially withheld the contents of the ransom notes at law enforcement's request so that future communications with the kidnapper could be authenticated. That strategy has now given way to a public appeal, a shift that suggests investigators need fresh eyes more than they need secrecy.
Savannah Guthrie posted a social media video on February 7, days after the ransom demands arrived, addressing the kidnapper directly and pleading for her mother's return:
"We received your message and we understand. We beg you now to return our mother to us.... This is very valuable to us, and we will pay."
Sheriff Nanos, for his part, offered a simple promise:
"We're still here. We are not going away. We've got a lot of work ahead of us."
An 84-year-old woman was taken from her home in the middle of the night. Her blood was on the porch. Her back door was left open. And after six months, the people responsible are still free. If the monsoon rains shake loose what investigators have not, it will be the desert, not the system, that delivered the break this family deserves.
