Surveillance video capturing 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie inside an Uber on the night before she disappeared has been turned over to the FBI, nearly seven weeks after she was abducted from her Tucson home with no arrests and no suspects named.
The footage, taken on January 31, shows Guthrie riding to her daughter Annie's house. Police received it during the early stages of their investigation and have since found "nothing of substance." The Uber driver was interviewed at length. According to police, it was "just a regular pick up and drop off."
Guthrie returned to her home just before 10 p.m. that night, driven by Annie's husband, Tommaso Cioni, the Daily Mail reported. Hours later, in the early morning of February 1, she was gone.
A trail that goes cold at the front door
The facts of this case are sparse and deeply unsettling. Nancy Guthrie, the mother of NBC Today Show host Savannah Guthrie, had lived in her $1 million Tucson home since the 1970s. Police believe she was taken from her bedroom. Investigators found drops of her blood on the front porch.
On February 10, the FBI released surveillance footage showing a masked man at Guthrie's doorstep on the night she disappeared. Beyond that, authorities have released little evidence publicly. The Pima County Sheriff's Department and the FBI have conducted what has been described as a massive but so far fruitless search.
A Ring camera located 2.5 miles from Guthrie's home captured 12 vehicles passing around the time she went missing. The Pima County Sheriff's Department declined to say whether any of those vehicles were found to have been involved. The agency said investigators are reviewing hundreds of hours of surveillance footage.
Guthrie's home has been turned back over to her family.
A family left with nothing but questions
The human weight of this story is impossible to ignore. An 84-year-old woman, taken from a home she had occupied for more than five decades, in a city where she raised her children. The people closest to her that night, her daughter Annie and son-in-law Tommaso Cioni, were among the last to see her alive.
Savannah Guthrie has previously acknowledged the possibility that her mother may not be coming home. In a social media video, she said plainly: "She may be lost. She may already be gone."
That kind of public grief from a woman who appears on national television every morning is not something anyone should have to carry. Whatever one thinks of network morning shows, a daughter searching for her missing mother is not a media story. It is a human one.
Seven weeks, no suspects, and a reward growing louder than the answers
The Guthrie family has offered a $1 million reward for information leading to the recovery of their mother. The FBI has added $100,000 for information that leads to her rescue. Combined, that is over a million dollars on the table, and still nothing.
Nearly seven weeks with no arrests. No named suspects. A masked figure on a doorstep. Drops of blood. Hundreds of hours of footage are being reviewed by investigators who, by all appearances, are working hard but coming up empty.
Cases like this expose something uncomfortable about how crime is actually solved in America. We are told constantly that surveillance technology, data collection, and federal resources make us safer. An 84-year-old woman disappears from a home in a major metropolitan area, and after seven weeks, the public record amounts to a grainy video of a masked man and a ride in an Uber that led nowhere.
Investigators described the circumstances as "odd." That is one word for it.
The people of Tucson, and the family waiting for answers, deserve more than "odd." They deserve a resolution. Whether that comes from the hundreds of hours of footage, the million-dollar reward, or a break that nobody can predict, something has to give. Nancy Guthrie walked into her home on the night of January 31 and never walked out again. Someone knows why.
