What to know about the search for Nancy Guthrie
Over 4,000 calls have been made to a tip line for the Arizona sheriff’s department investigating the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie in the last 24 hours, officials said Wednesday.
The FBI said agents were conducting an “extensive search” along roadways in the part of Tucson where Guthrie lives.
A man who says he was detained in the investigation Tuesday night has been released. He told reporters early Wednesday, “I didn’t do anything. … I’m innocent.”
Nancy Guthrie, 84, the mother of “Today” show co-host Savannah Guthrie, has been missing since Feb. 1. Authorities believe she was abducted from her home in Tucson in the middle of the night.
The FBI on Tuesday released images and video of a person in a ski mask and gloves at Nancy Guthrie’s door the night she went missing.
Details on FBI’s search of nearby roadways
The FBI said Wednesday it was conducting an “extensive search” of nearby roadways near where Nancy Guthrie went missing.
Authorities are focusing on roads, washes and pulloffs between Nancy Guthrie’s home and any major roadways leading out of Tucson. They’ve also canvassed nearby gas stations and pulled surveillance video from surrounding neighborhoods. Investigators were following up on many of the thousands of tips that have come in over the last 24 hours in Wednesday’s search.
The neighborhood where Nancy Guthrie lives sits in an area with a lot of thick brush and long, winding, narrow streets. There’s a considerable distance between houses in the neighborhood. There are also no streetlights because of local laws aimed at cutting down on light pollution.
How bitcoin might connect to the Nancy Guthrie case
An apparent ransom note for Nancy Guthrie demanded payment in bitcoin. While authorities have not confirmed if the ransom demand is legitimate, they have previously said they are taking the note seriously. Ben Weiss, a crypto reporter for Fortune, joined CBS News for analysis.
“Historically, criminals flocked to bitcoin because they thought it was anonymous,” Weiss said. “But what’s happened over the past few years is that there are these blockchain whizzes that can look at the networks of transactions and they can also look at the transactions and often see where they’re coming from.”
“So there are some clues … you can get by looking at the blockchain and looking at that data,” he added.
Over 4,000 calls made to tip line in last 24 hours, sheriff’s department says
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department has received more than 4,000 calls to its tip line in the last 24 hours, officials said Wednesday.
The department said in a statement that since Feb. 1, when Nancy Guthrie was reported missing, it has received a total of nearly 18,000 calls.
“The Pima County Sheriff’s Department and the FBI continue to follow up on all leads,” the sheriff’s department said. “We thank the media and the public for the thousands of tips submitted through the various tip lines.”
Anyone with what the department described as “actionable information” was urged to contact 1-800-CALL-FBI or 520-351-4900.
Several hundred detectives and agents have been assigned to the investigation, the department said.
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FBI conducting “extensive search” along roadways
FBI agents were conducting an “extensive search” along multiple roadways Wednesday morning in the part of Tucson where Nancy Guthrie lives, the bureau said.
The FBI’s Phoenix field office said on social media that numerous agents were carrying out the search in the Catalina Foothills area.
“We are asking the media and motorists to follow all traffic laws and to remain especially cautious when passing law enforcement personnel near the roadways,” the FBI said.
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Cybersecurity expert explains Nest camera cloud storage
Cybersecurity expert Alex Stamos says data from Nest cameras — like the one that captured video of a person outside Nancy Guthrie’s door — is streaming constantly to Google and may not be deleted for some time, even for non-subscribers.
“Internal storage uses a very lazy deletion mechanism, so the data wouldn’t be available to users who didn’t pay,” Stamos said. “The video for non-subscribers would be marked for deletion, but depending on the exact implementation details the actual files might not be deleted for days and the actual data wouldn’t be overwritten until the storage was needed.”
Huge cloud companies like Google have many layers of abstraction in their storage systems, and each layer usually adds some mechanism of data backup/safety, which means there is some way to retrieve data within a window.
According to Google’s cloud storage protection backup recovery overview, “Cloud Storage offers a variety of options to help you protect your data from accidental or malicious deletion and recover your data in the event of a disaster. These options can be useful for legal or regulatory compliance, as well as for protecting data that is critical to your business.”
Two law enforcement sources told CBS News the FBI worked with Google to get the Nest camera video that was released by authorities on Tuesday.
Read more here.
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Surveillance video is a “gold mine,” forensic analyst says
A forensic analyst called the video showing a person at Nancy Guthrie’s door a “gold mine” and said three things stood out to him that haven’t “really been discussed in the media.”
The first thing is that there is no audio with the video, which could be “by design based on law enforcement’s release of that information,” or indicate that the audio was turned off and not functioning, said Edward Baker, a forensic analyst certified by the Law Enforcement and Emergency Services Video Association.
The second thing is that the person appears to have “what could be described as facial hair” seen around their mouth in the opening of the ski mask. He noted that the man who said he was detained and released by authorities also had facial hair.
“I’m not saying that that’s the individual,” Baker said. “I’m saying there are similarities there observation-wise.”
The third element that stands out is that the video has no color. And while the jacket in the video appears to be grey, for example, it could actually be blue, red, orange or another color, which is important for people to remember as they watch the video.
He said the video could help law enforcement “get over the edge” if someone is on their radar and allow them to use information from the video in a search warrant.
“In general, that video itself is a gold mine, not just in making the observations that we see, but if there were to be an arrest that takes place, there’s a lot of information there post-arrest that you could make a comparison analysis to — the design of the clothing, the zipper, how it appears under infrared light, the backpack design, the reflective material on the backpack, and the ski mask as well,” he said.
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No press briefings scheduled in the case
No press briefings were scheduled as of Monday morning local time, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department said.
A press conference will be scheduled if a “significant development” does occur, the department said in a post on X.
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How many days has Nancy Guthrie been missing?
Nancy Guthrie was reported missing 10 days ago — on Sunday, Feb. 1, after she missed church.
The search for her started that night, and authorities confirmed the following day that her disappearance was being treated as a crime.
As of today, authorities have not identified any suspect.
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Former FBI agent believes person in video is not a career criminal
Lance Leising, a retired supervisory special agent with the FBI, says he thinks the individual caught on video outside Nancy Guthrie’s home is “not a career criminal” but added, “they have to have a criminal mindset in order to commit a heinous crime like this.”
The video, which authorities released on Tuesday, shows a masked person carrying a backpack and what appears to be a weapon.
“If you look at the two still photos and the videos that [FBI Director] Kash Patel released, one of them, the subject is not even wearing the backpack or the weapon, potential weapon,” Leising said on “CBS Mornings” Wednesday. “So what that says to me is he approached that door and turned around and got the backpack and got the weapon and then came back. The weapon is held in a very unusual way, it does not look very professional, looks very amateur.”
He also notes that when the person approached the door “they have their head down as if they’re expecting a surveillance camera above them, but then they also feel surprised that there is a doorbell camera there, which anyone who has done any reconnaissance would know that’s there.”
He described the subject’s actions as “extremely amateurish.”
“I do think that it gives investigators hope that if they’re amateur at the door, they’ve made other mistakes and they’re looking for that break,” he said.
Read more here.
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Retired FBI special agent: “The pressure is on”
Jason Pack, a retired FBI special agent, says “the pressure is on” after authorities released photos and video of a person at Nancy Guthrie’s home. The person can be seen wearing a ski mask and gloves and carrying a backpack, and appears to be armed with a gun holstered on their belt.
The Pima County sheriff’s office and the FBI are “looking for these next mistakes to happen, and they’re gonna be ready to capitalize on them when they do,” Pack told CBS News.
Pack notes the video shows where a weapon is located and the person’s gait, adding “he doesn’t appear to be moving very quickly.”
“All of those things will tell profilers certain things that they’re gonna look for and kind of narrow that timeline down,” he said.
