Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos didn’t have much to say about the status of the Nancy Guthrie investigation on Friday, but he did give an optimistic update.
When a Fox News Digital reporter asked Nanos if he had a Mother’s Day message for the Guthrie family, the sheriff declined. But when the reporter asked whether investigators were any closer to solving the case, Nanos said, “We are.” He also said developments were “really great,” according to the outlet.
It’s been more than three months since Nancy, the mother of Today co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, was reported missing from her home near Tucson, Arizona, on February 1.
Nearly two weeks after the 84-year-old’s disappearance, Nanos told The New York Times the case could take years to solve — or, perhaps, just minutes. “Maybe it’s an hour from now,” he said. “Maybe it’s weeks or months or years from now. But we won’t quit. We’re going to find Nancy. We’re going to find this guy.”
Savannah Guthrie/Instagram
Nanos’ NYT interview came shortly after officers detained a delivery driver and then released the man. “This has [to] be it, the evidence, everything’s there,” Nanos told the newspaper as he described that seeming breakthrough in the case. “Then you talk to people, you learn, you do your search, and you think, ‘Maybe not.’”
In another false alarm, Nanos last month shot down social media reports that investigators had denied a person of interest.
Dave Smith, a retired lieutenant with the Arizona Department of Public Safety and a law enforcement consultant, recently told Fox News Digital why the case is so challenging to crack.
“The whole Tucson Valley is literally built around these arroyos, these ephemeral rivers,” he said. “This is literally your green belt here, only instead of parks and things like the rest of the nation has, we have this wonderful desert area. But again, it works between houses. It’s like a giant alley through the neighborhoods. … The evidence is transitory. Once it rains, your footprints go away, the sun is hard on other forms of evidence, and frankly, this is a tough place to investigate crimes.”