Investigators are asking residents to provide home surveillance footage from certain dates before Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance as they comb through thousands of tips in an effort to solve the case of the missing mother of “Today” host Savannah Guthrie, the Associated Press reports.
It was unclear as of Thursday how far the investigation had progressed. Newly released images of a masked individual on Nancy Guthrie’s porch the night she disappeared, along with increased police activity across Arizona and the brief apprehension of a suspect, fueled speculation of a major breakthrough.
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But the man was later released after questioning.
On Wednesday, FBI agents carrying water bottles to beat the 80-degree Fahrenheit (27-degree Celsius) temperatures walked among rocks and desert vegetation at Guthrie’s Tucson-area home. They also ran around the neighborhood about a mile away, knocking on doors and searching cacti, bushes and boulders, the AP reported.
Here’s what neighbors have been asking
“They were just asking some general questions and wondering if there was anything, any information we could provide regarding the Nancy Guthrie matter. They wanted to look around the property and then the cameras and stuff,” Ann Adams, a neighbor of Nancy Guthrie’s other daughter, Annie Guthrie, told the AP.
Annie Guthrie lives several miles away from her mother.
“They asked specifically about Jan. 31 and the morning of Feb. 1, and then they wanted to know if we had seen anything suspicious on the cameras since then,” Adams said.
Authorities said Guthrie, 84, was taken against her will. She has been missing since February 1st. DNA tests showed the blood on her front porch was hers, and authorities say she was taking several medications and there were fears she could have died without them.
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Tucson news stations also reported Wednesday that people with Ring doorbell cameras in the area were alerted that investigators were requesting footage from Jan. 11 between 9 p.m. and midnight related to the Guthrie case. That’s almost three weeks since Guthrie went missing.
Ring allows local public safety agencies to send requests to users in the community that appear publicly on the “Neighbors” channel, according to the Ring website. Users in the designated area will receive a notification.
The station also reported that pairs of black gloves were found during the agents’ search and submitted for DNA analysis.
Several hundred detectives and agents are now assigned to the investigation, which is expanding in the area, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department said.
On Wednesday, two investigators were seen leaving Annie Guthrie’s home with a paper grocery bag and a white trash bag. One of them, still wearing blue protective gloves, also picked up a package of mail from a mailbox by the side of the road. They left without commenting to reporters, the AP reported.
Neighbor Adams said she was out walking her dog earlier this week when “it started getting really busy and then I heard them searching and I looked down the street and I saw them slowly moving this way.”
In the first major break in the case, the FBI released black-and-white images and video showing what the agency said was “an armed individual who appeared to be tampering with a camera at Nancy Guthrie’s front door the morning after she disappeared.” But the images did not show what happened to her, the AP reported.
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FBI Director Kash Patel said investigators spent several days trying to recover lost, damaged or inaccessible images.
Although the footage does not reveal the individual’s face, authorities are still hoping someone will recognize who was on the porch. The Pima County Sheriff’s Department reported receiving over 4,000 calls to its tip line in the past 24 hours.