The Disappearance of Nancy Guthrie: A Six-Month Mystery

On January 31, 2026, Nancy Guthrie—the 77-year-old mother of Today show anchor Savannah Guthrie—was taken from her home in the Catalina Foothills area of Tucson, Arizona. What began as a possible missing persons case quickly escalated into something far stranger: a kidnapping with ransom notes demanding millions in Bitcoin, a brazen surveillance video of a masked intruder, and six months later, still no arrest and no sign of Nancy. Crime Junkie's Ashley Flowers sits down with new breaking news reporter Brianna Whitney, who covered the case in real time from her former Arizona news station, to walk through everything that unfolded—and what might have actually happened.

The First Week: Blood, a Missing Camera, and Ransom Notes

The investigation took an unusual turn almost immediately. On the second day, the Pima County Sheriff's Department allowed reporters to walk up to Nancy's driveway and examine the front door—where drops of blood were visible on the porch. "I remember thinking this was odd," Whitney says. "Did they not see the blood?" The scene was released quickly, and the Nest security camera was gone, either taken by the abductor or collected as evidence.