Additional Coverage:
- Authorities receive hundreds of ‘credible’ tips over Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance after family offers $1M reward: report (the-independent.com)
FBI Receives Hundreds of Tips After $1 Million Reward Announced in Nancy Guthrie Disappearance
Tucson, AZ – The search for Nancy Guthrie, the missing mother of Today host Savannah Guthrie, has intensified as the FBI reports a significant influx of tips following the announcement of a $1 million family reward. The disappearance, now entering its fourth week without an arrest, has prompted a widespread effort to locate the 84-year-old.
The FBI has received approximately 750 credible tips since Savannah Guthrie publicly announced the reward earlier today. In an emotional Instagram video, the Today show host expressed her family’s enduring hope.
“We still believe in a miracle. We still believe she can come home,” she stated.
“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.” She added, “Someone out there knows something that can bring her home.”
In a further gesture of support, Guthrie also announced a $500,000 donation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
This new family reward supplements existing incentives, including a $100,000 reward from the FBI and an additional $102,500 from the Pima County and Tucson-area Crime Stoppers organization, bringing the total potential reward for information to over $1.2 million. Since Nancy Guthrie vanished in the early hours of February 1, the FBI has fielded more than 22,000 calls related to her disappearance.
Local news stations have reportedly received unverified ransom notes, purportedly from Guthrie’s kidnappers, demanding millions of dollars.
Nancy Guthrie’s well-being is a growing concern, as she relies on daily medication and has several medical conditions, including high blood pressure, a pacemaker, and cardiac issues. These factors heighten the urgency of her recovery with each passing day.
Despite the extensive search, police have released few leads and have not publicly identified any suspects in the case. Investigators previously released security footage depicting an armed man in a ski mask with a backpack tampering with Guthrie’s security camera on the morning of her disappearance.
Further investigation into physical evidence yielded no definitive breakthroughs. A pair of gloves discovered two miles from Guthrie’s home in the Catalina Foothills near Tucson “did not trigger a match” in the FBI’s national database and “did not match DNA found at the property,” according to the local sheriff’s department.
Reports from ABC News and CNN, citing sources, suggested that the masked man, described as being between 5’9″ and 5’10” tall with an average build, may have visited Guthrie’s home on another occasion. However, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department dismissed such claims as premature.
“We are aware that doorbell images released earlier in the investigation depict a suspect in different stages of attire, including with and without a backpack. There is no date or time stamp associated with these images,” the department told The Independent on Monday.
“Therefore, any suggestion that the photographs were taken on different days is purely speculative.”
Police have reportedly requested residents in the vicinity to provide any relevant video footage from the beginning of January, with a particular focus on the late-night hours of January 11 and the morning of January 31.
While volunteers have joined the search efforts in the countryside surrounding Guthrie’s home, authorities have urged the public to defer such work to trained professionals. Nancy Guthrie was last seen on January 31.