Twenty-six days after 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie was abducted from her Tucson home, the FBI has scaled back its search in the city and will relocate its command post to Phoenix, roughly 110 miles away. Some agents will remain in Tucson, but the nerve center of the investigation is moving on.
No suspects have been named. There have been no arrests.
Sources with knowledge of the investigation told ABC News Thursday that there was no more work to be done at the home, hence the relocation. The move, sources stressed, does not indicate investigators are giving up in the search. But the optics are hard to escape: the FBI is packing up from the scene of a violent crime that remains completely unsolved nearly a month later.
What We Know
Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of Today show star Savannah Guthrie, was taken from her home in Tucson's Catalina Foothills in the early hours of February 1. Nest doorbell footage captured an unidentified suspect in a ski mask in front of her door that morning, the Daily Mail reported. Drops of blood were found on the front porch. Before the abduction, Nancy's pacemaker suddenly stopped transmitting data to her iPhone.
Investigators are under the impression that Nancy was taken against her will. The FBI and Pima County Sheriff's Department deputies have spent weeks combing the property, scrutinizing security footage, DNA samples, and Walmart sales receipts. More than 1,500 tips have poured in. None has produced a breakthrough.
As recently as Wednesday, agents were seen outside the residence, going over portions of the home and lawn that had already been searched. Officials told NBC News the flurry of activity was related to an FBI effort to turn the home back over to the Guthrie family.
Pima County Sheriff's Department deputies continue searching Tucson with help from an unspecified number of federal agents. But the investigation's center of gravity now sits in Phoenix, more than 100 miles from where an elderly woman vanished.
A Family's Desperate Plea
On Tuesday, Savannah Guthrie posted an Instagram video announcing the family was offering up to $1 million for any information leading to her mother's recovery. It was the first time she publicly acknowledged that her mother may be dead.
"We also know that she may be lost, she may already be gone. She may have already gone home to the Lord that she loves."
That kind of candor from a public figure carries weight. Savannah Guthrie was not faking grief for the cameras. She was reckoning with the worst possibility a daughter can face, and still pressing forward with a concrete ask.
"But we need to know where she is. We need her to come home. For that reason, we are offering a family reward of up to $1 million for any information that leads us to her recovery. Somebody knows and we are begging you to please come forward now."
The reward triggered a quick surge of calls on Tuesday. Whether any of them contained actionable intelligence remains unknown.
The Uncomfortable Questions
This case raises the kind of questions that Americans, particularly those who live outside gated communities and don't have the resources to offer seven-figure rewards, have been asking for years. An elderly woman was snatched from her $1 million home in a quiet neighborhood. A suspect in a ski mask appeared on camera. Blood was left on the porch. And after 26 days, federal investigators have no one in custody and are relocating their operations to a different city.
Consider what that timeline communicates. Not just to the Guthrie family, but to every family in Tucson. To every elderly person living alone. The message, however unintentional, is that the FBI worked the scene, exhausted what it could find, and moved on to process the case from a distance.
That may be standard investigative procedure. Field offices consolidate. Resources shift. But the procedure offers cold comfort when a grandmother is missing and the people searching for her are now 110 miles away.
The broader reality is that violent crime against vulnerable Americans demands sustained, visible commitment from law enforcement. Not just in high-profile cases where a television personality can marshal public attention and a million-dollar reward, but in every community where someone disappears, and the local news doesn't pick it up. The Guthrie case has the spotlight. Thousands of others don't.
Somebody Knows
Savannah Guthrie got one thing exactly right: somebody knows. Abductions don't happen in a vacuum. Ski masks are purchased. Routes are planned. Vehicles move through neighborhoods with cameras. Somewhere in the more than 1,500 tips already received, or in a call that hasn't been made yet, is the thread that unravels this.
The FBI says it hasn't given up. The family is begging for information. The sheriff's deputies are still on the ground.
Nancy Guthrie is still missing. That is the only fact that matters.
