Police examine ‘confederate’ idea in Nancy Guthrie case as neighbors hand over new surveillance video
Police investigating Nancy Guthrie‘s disappearance are considering the theory that multiple people were involved in her abduction.
This new direction in the probe comes as the Pima County Sheriff’s Department continues working to identify the masked person that appeared on Nancy’s doorbell camera the night she disappeared nearly three weeks ago.
‘Investigators are not ruling out the possibility that more than one person may be involved,’ Pima County Sheriff’s Department spokesperson Angelica Carrillo said in a statement seen by the Daily Mail on Friday.
Nancy, the mother of NBC ‘Today’ co-host Savannah Guthrie, was last seen on January 31 after being dropped off by a family member at her home near Tucson, Arizona.
Police believe the 84-year-old was taken against her will during the early hours of February 1. After she failed to show up at a friend’s home that day, her family reported her missing.
The search has now dragged into its 20th day with no definitive breakthroughs, although multiple law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, are working the case.
Nancy’s neighbors in the Catalina Foothills, a suburban community northeast of Tucson, have given the Pima County Sheriff’s Department access to surveillance video of the area around her house, Carillo said Friday.
Carillo also said DNA analysis is underway on biological material that was recovered. Blood found at the scene was already determined to belong to Nancy.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Office considers it a possibility that multiple people were involved in the kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of Savannah Guthrie
Police are still working to identify the suspect that was captured on her doorbell camera during the early morning hours of February 1, the day Nancy disappeared
Earlier this week, police said gloves found two miles from the scene matching those worn by the suspect in the doorbell camera video did not match anyone in the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS).
CODIS contains nearly 27 million DNA profiles, with more than 19 million of them coming from convicted offenders.
‘Investigators are currently looking into additional investigative genetic genealogy options for DNA evidence to check for matches,’ the Pima County Sheriff’s Department said on Tuesday.
‘CODIS is one option of many databases that are available.’
Police can submit the DNA profile to publicly available DNA databases. Companies like Ancestry.com or 23andMe do not allow law enforcement to upload data on their websites to search for matches.
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told NBC News on Tuesday that the DNA authorities currently have may belong to the suspect, who has been described as a 5’9” to 5’10” male. He was seen with a distinct gun holster and an Ozark Trail backpack from Walmart.
Investigators are also hoping Nancy’s pacemaker will eventually lead them to her. The device, which regulates one’s heartbeat, was disconnected from an app on her phone at 2:28am. This was shortly after the suspect was seen on her doorbell camera.
Nanos has previously said that the pacemaker still has six or seven years of battery life based on information he was provided by the manufacturer.
The company that made the pacemaker has been working with police to help detect any possible signals the device could be emitting.
President Donald Trump, who has commented on the case multiple times, appeared to suggest on Thursday that Nancy’s kidnappers may have killed her so the pacemaker would be disabled.
Police investigating Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance are considering the theory that multiple people were involved in her abduction. (Pictured: Savannah and Nancy Guthrie)
Nancy’s home (pictured on Friday) is still a crime scene and investigators have searched it multiple times since her disappearance
Signs and flowers from neighbors remain outside the residence as of Friday. The search has dragged into its 20th day
‘I didn’t like where they were talking about going after the pacemaker. And, you know, before they even started going after it, they’re coming and reporting it. So if, in fact, they could do it that way, the person would say, “Well, I’m not going to let that happen,” right? So bad things would happen,’ he said on Air Force One.
He continued: ‘I can’t imagine why they would have done that, just in terms of strategies. One little piece, I don’t know.’
Trump also said the media needs to report on additional subjects other than Nancy’s disappearance, while acknowledging that it’s a ‘very sad situation’.
Nanos has been criticized extensively for how he has handled the investigation so far.
Among other things, he has been accused of being imprecise with his language when updating the public. He also took down crime scene tape around Nancy’s home multiple times, potentially contaminating the area since journalists were let in at one point.
The Daily Mail was the first to report that the sheriff’s department failed to deploy its fixed-wing Cessna aircraft to search the area around Nancy’s home immediately after she was reported missing.
The aircraft, equipped with high-resolution thermal imaging cameras capable of scanning vast swaths of desert terrain, remained on the tarmac for roughly half a day, sources close to the sheriff’s department told the Daily Mail.
There was a staffing shortage that left the department without qualified pilots to fly the plane – a shortage people familiar with the situation blamed directly on Nanos.
