On Saturday evening, 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie was dropped off by her son-in-law at her sprawling home in the affluent neighbourhood of Catalina Foothills in Arizona.
But as opposed to falling asleep like usual, something unthinkable happened that night to the beloved mother of Savannah Guthrie – one of America’s best-known TV anchors.
By morning, attentive members of Nancy’s church community noticed she was missing, and notified the grandmother’s family who – panicked – immediately called 911.
Federal officers from Border Control and homicide detectives arrived at the $1 million Tucson home, where they confronted a scene of ‘grave concern’ – complete with signs of forced entry, a missing doorbell camera, and splatters of blood.
Nancy was nowhere to be seen, but her phone and Apple Watch remained, alongside an alleged ransom note.
‘We do believe that Nancy was taken from her home against her will. And that’s where we’re at,’ Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said Tuesday. When asked whether authorities were still looking for Nancy alive, he replied: ‘We hope we are.’
As the days went on, an increasingly distraught Guthrie found herself pushed to the previously unfathomable, and filmed a video addressed to her mother’s unknown abductors, telling them: ‘We are ready to talk.’
Tearful and flanked by her equally emotional brother and sister, the NBC host pleaded with the potential kidnappers, saying: ‘We need to know, without a doubt, that she is alive and that you have her.’
But the search for Nancy is running out of time, with family and officials warning that she may be in dire health without her medication.
Savannah Guthrie recorded a message to her mother’s potential kidnappers alongside her siblings and posted it on Instagram
NBC host Savannah Guthrie with her 84-year-old mother Nancy Guthrie
Tearful and flanked by her brother and sister, the NBC host pleaded with her mother’s potential kidnappers
Despite a round the clock effort to find Nancy, investigators are yet to identify a possible suspect in the kidnapping.
Cops said on Tuesday that they had turned the adobe-style house back over to the Guthrie family, however the FBI had returned to the property by Wednesday as K-9 units combed its insides, looking for clues.
While Guthrie and her siblings put on a powerful united front to her 1.4million Instagram followers, Jason Pack, a certified crisis negotiator, said that the clip reveals a devastating detail about the case.
He described the plea as a ‘modern-age proof of life request’, and a calculated emotional appeal designed to reduce the risk of harm to the elderly woman.
‘They want to open the line of communication, so they’re speaking directly to any potential kidnapper,’ he told the Daily Mail.
But crucially, the video likely reveals that authorities do not have a direct line of communication with any potential kidnappers, and are urgently seeking to make verifiable contact.
‘If they’ve had contact, they haven’t heard back, they want to slow things down and you also want to let them know they’re ready to do business,’ he said.
‘Our mom is a kind, faithful, loyal, fiercely loving woman of goodness and light. She’s funny, spunky and clever. She has grandchildren that adore her and crowd around her and cover her with kisses,’ Guthrie said in the clip, before delving into Nancy’s physical state.
‘She is 84 years old. Her health, her heart is fragile. She lives in constant pain. She is without medicine, she needs it to survive. She needs it not to suffer,’ the mother of two added.
US President Donald Trump, who dubbed the case a ‘very unusual situation’, has ordered all federal law enforcement to help ‘get her mother home safely’.
In a social media post on Wednesday the sheriff’s office warned that ‘the sharing of unverified accusations or false information is irresponsible and does not assist the investigation’.
Investigators said Nancy’s $1 million home in Tucson, Arizona (pictured on Tuesday) showed signs of forced entry, and forensic teams found blood inside the property
Outside Nancy’s Arizona home, where neighbours left a sign saying they ‘stand with’ the 84-year-old and her family
Investigators said they do not believe Nancy walked out of her Arizona home (pictured), and said she would not have been able to walk ’50 yards’
Police and anxious family members are attempting to piece together precisely what occurred on Saturday night, to build a clear timeline of events that led to Nancy’s shock disappearance.
At the moment, nothing is being ruled out by investigators – including the possibility that she was abducted due to the high-profile of her daughter, who is said to earn $8 million-a-year at NBC.
A $2,500 reward has been offered for information into the crime, as officers continue to do ‘all we can to try to locate her,’ Sheriff Nanos said.
‘Every tool we have, we will use.’
What officers do know is that Nancy’s pacemaker had stopped transmitting data to her Apple Watch around 2am Sunday.
She wasn’t wearing the watch, meaning it had disconnected from her pacemaker when she was taken out of range, giving investigators an indication of when she left the property.
She cannot walk more than 50 yards by herself, and Sheriff Nanos believes she was ‘driven away in a vehicle’ from the house, located roughly six miles northeast of Tucson.
In an interview with AZFamily, he also admitted that he was still waiting for DNA results from the residence, because his Tucson laboratory was ‘down’ and he had to send samples to Phoenix.
The sheriff offered no further details over the form of DNA evidence seized from Nancy’s residence, and could not say whether more than one person had been involved in the alleged abduction.
In an earlier post on the Pima County Sheriff’s Facebook account, the department said it was ‘aware of reports circulating about possible ransom note(s)’, without elaborating on any details.
Sheriff Nanos said his office had received a copy of a ransom note and was collaborating with the FBI to authenticate it.
The siblings referenced the note during their Instagram plea. ‘We too have heard the reports about a ransom letter in the media,’ Guthrie said.
However, ‘we live in a world where voices and images are easily manipulated’, she added, before urging the kidnappers to confirm whether her mother is still alive.
Officials say Nancy, 84, is frail and has poor mobility, and suffers from a condition that requiries her to take medication daily
Eerie photos from Nancy Guthrie’s Tucson, Arizona home show blood splattered on the walkway and her Ring doorbell camera missing
Lisa McIntire, one of Nancy’s neighbours, called the disappearance of the grandmother ‘bizarre’, emphasising that the neighbourhood is ‘very safe’.
‘It doesn’t appear to be a good situation,’ she said, adding that it’s ‘tragic’ for the family.
Many American homes now have doorbell or exterior security cameras that offer crystal clear footage of what is going on outside their properties.
Nancy was among them, according to Fox News.
But when investigators arrived at her property on Sunday, there was no sign of that camera.
There is a possibility that the doorbell camera was removed by the person who abducted Nancy, or it had simply been taken down for a repair.
Moreover, the camera wasn’t connected to a software ‘cloud’, meaning investigators have to go through the lengthier process of getting a warrant to access data from a server that stores its recordings.
Nancy and her neighbours live in large, well-spaced lots on a very dark street, offering her captor a very discreet exit route.
Guthrie’s network NBC News reported on Monday that Nancy ‘lives alone and employs staff members.’
It is unclear what these staff members did, or what hours they worked – although ‘living alone’ strongly suggests none of them were live-in workers.
She was last seen outside her house at 9.45pm on Saturday night, after being dropped off by son-in-law Tommaso Cioni – the last person to see her.
She was reported missing when she failed to show up to church at 11am Sunday.
There’s no suggestion any alarms were raised by her staff members.
Savannah Guthrie’s mother Nancy was abducted late Saturday or in the early hours of Sunday morning, with multiple troubling questions about what might have happened to her
Neighbours of Nancy Guthrie show support for the family
Guthrie is said to now be travelling with a ‘security team’, although there is no suggestion of any direct threats to her.
The presenter of the Today show has not been on air this week, and NBC confirmed she would no longer co-host the Winter Olympics opening ceremony on Friday.
‘Our hearts are with her and the entire Guthrie family as the search continues for their mother,’ a spokesperson for the network said.
The 54-year-old journalist was born at Sandringham Hospital in Melbourne on December 27, 1971, not far from Beaumaris, where her father, Charles, and mother, Nancy, lived.
She is the youngest of three children – she has a sister Annie and brother Camron, who were both born in the US.
Charles and Nancy moved to Victoria in about 1970 when he was relocated for work by Phelps Dodge, a mining company based in Phoenix, Arizona.
Guthrie’s father was a mining engineer who was believed to be involved in a project which tested new technology for extracting copper from the ground.
Meanwhile, Nancy was a stay-at-home mother, taking care of Guthrie and her siblings in their Beaumaris home for three years before the family moved back to the US.
Guthrie was just two years old when her family moved back home, settling into Tucson where the former attorney spent most of her childhood and adolescence.
The TV star returned to Australia for a visit with her mother in 2015 to visit the place where she was born, for a special Mother’s Day celebration with Nancy.
On Instagram with her siblings, she graciously thanked everyone across the country who offered prayers and support for her ‘beloved mom’.
‘We feel them, and we continue to believe that she feels them too,’ she said.
Guthrie then attempted to speak directly to her missing mother: ‘Mommy, if you are hearing this, you are a strong woman. You are God’s precious daughter, Nancy.’
