Police in Phoenix have identified the woman found dead near a canal on Friday as 42-year-old Alex Fleming, ruling out speculation that the victim was Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of Today presenter Savannah Guthrie, who vanished from her Tucson home on 1 February and has now been missing for 37 days. Phoenix police said Fleming had signs of trauma and was pronounced dead at the scene, while homicide detectives opened a separate investigation into her death.
Questions about the Phoenix discovery surfaced because it was made more than 100 miles from Tucson, where Nancy Guthrie is believed to have been abducted in the early hours of 1 February. The Pima County Sheriff's Department, which is leading the Nancy Guthrie inquiry, said it had not been alerted to any connection between the two cases, a point worth underlining given how quickly rumour has filled the gaps left by a slow and often uneasy investigation.
