Officials in Arizona said on Tuesday afternoon they were no closer to finding the missing mother of Savannah Guthrie, the Today show host, three days after the octogenarian disappeared from her Tucson home – which detectives are treating as “a crime scene”.
Nancy Guthrie, 84, was last seen on Saturday night and is believed to have been taken against her will, Chris Nanos, the Pima county sheriff, said. Media reports on Tuesday said blood was found at the residence, and there were signs of forced entry.
Nanos, at a Tuesday afternoon press briefing in Tucson, refused to address what evidence his department and the FBI had – but insisted there was “a lot of detective work being done”.
“We don’t know where she is,” he said. “We are, like any investigation, just starting from the point of where we last saw her and we work out – and we are working as far out as we can go.
“There are concerns at the house that concerned us from the early on part of this investigation. And that’s all I will tell you.”
Nanos said the search, which at one point involved a police helicopter, drones, dogs and teams of volunteers, had already wound down as investigators focused on the family’s residence in the Catalina Foothills area north of Tucson.
Overnight, authorities said it appeared she was probably kidnapped, perhaps when she was sleeping. She was reported missing on Sunday at lunchtime when a churchgoer called her family to say she was not there as expected, and a search by relatives of the home found no trace of her.
In his Monday briefing, Nanos said forensic analysts had finished working at the property and returned it to the Guthrie family.
“I’m not saying there’s blood inside that house or outside that house,” he said. “What I’m saying is our team processed a scene like you would think of any crime scene. We go in and we process it. We look for things like that – blood, DNA, any kind of physical evidence, fingerprints, anything, and all of that is gathered and submitted to a lab.”
In a briefing on Monday, Nanos said that Guthrie was of sound mind. “This is not dementia-related,” he said. “She’s as sharp as a tack. The family wants everyone to know that this isn’t someone who just wandered off.”
She does, however, have mobility issues and requires daily medications. “If she’s alive right now her meds are vital – I can’t stress that enough,” Nanos said. “It’s been better than 24 hours, and the family tells us if she doesn’t have those meds, it can become fatal.”
The sheriff’s office set up a tipline and online request for evidence. And the LA Times reported a $2,500 reward being offered by authorities for “images, videos or information that leads to the arrest of the person or people involved in her disappearance”.
Nanos said his detectives planned to review video footage from the home as well as neighborhood cameras – but they were still waiting to see much of it.
“It is a process,” Nanos said. “We’re grateful that there’s large corporations and companies who have leaned over, bent over backwards, to help us to say, ‘Hey, sheriff, tell us what you need.’ So, yeah, I can’t slam them and we’ve asked them – they know the urgency here, but I’m like you, ‘What do you mean we don’t know that now?’ Yeah, it’s tough.”
Asked if there had been a ransom demand, Nanos said: “We are following all leads we have. That’s all I can tell you.”
Savannah Guthrie, who has co-anchored NBC’s Today show since 2012, is in Arizona after canceling plans to travel to Milan, Italy, to cover Friday’s opening ceremony for the Winter Olympics, Page Six reported.
The 54-year-old presenter was absent from the Today show for a second day Tuesday. On Monday, she posted a religion-themed statement to Instagram asking for continued prayers.
“We believe in prayer,” she wrote. “We believe in voices raised in unison, in love, in hope. We believe in goodness. We believe in humanity. Above all, we believe in Him.
“Thank you for lifting your prayers with ours for our beloved mom, our dearest Nancy, a woman of deep conviction, a good and faithful servant. Praise your prayers with us and believe with us that she will be lifted by them in this very moment. We need you.”
Savannah Guthrie grew up in Tucson and has spoken about having a close bond with her mother, especially after the death of her father, Charles, when she was 16. She graduated from the University of Arizona and previously worked as a reporter and anchor at KVOA-TV in her home city.
In November 2025, Nancy Guthrie appeared in a story her daughter made. Over a meal, Savannah Guthrie asked her mother what made the family want to plant roots in Tucson in the 1970s.
“It’s so wonderful. Just the air, the quality of life,” Nancy Guthrie said. “It’s laid-back and gentle.”
Associated Press contributed reporting
