Nancy Guthrie Update: Is It Hopeless A Case? Critics Scathe As Landscapers Enter 'Active Crime Scene'

He pulled up in a truck, grabbed his tools, and walked straight past a marked police car into the backyard. Just another Sunday morning for the landscaper at Nancy Guthrie's Tucson home. Except Nancy Guthrie has been missing for over two weeks, her property sits at the centre of a kidnapping investigation, and half the country is watching.

The 84-year-old mother of Today show host Savannah Guthrie vanished from her Catalina Foothills residence on 31 January. Nobody has been arrested. No suspect has been named. And on 16 February, a man showed up to trim the hedges.

KNXV-TV journalist Nick Ciletti captured the moment on video and posted it to X, TMZ reported. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos confirmed the Guthrie family had requested the service. Pool cleaners had been at the property the previous week, too. The family wants the house ready for when Nancy comes home.

Critics Question Nancy Guthrie's Crime Scene Access

Online, it went down badly. 'Let's contaminate the scene some more,' one X user wrote. Others demanded to know why the home had not been cordoned off. A third noted that delivery drivers and a pizza delivery had already made it onto the property, according to Radar Online.

Not everyone piled on. Some pointed out that the sheriff's department had released the home to the family after processing the scene. 'Whether you like it or not, this property needs to be maintained,' one user wrote. 'It has rained in Tucson since this case started.'

Nanos was unbothered. He told the Daily Mail he was not losing sleep over 'haters' who thought the scene was released too early. His officers spent nearly 20 hours processing the property, he said. The FBI swept it after that.

Sheriff Warns Nancy Guthrie Search Could Take Years

But the landscaper row is a sideshow compared to what Nanos told the New York Times. Asked about the timeline, he was blunt. 'Maybe it's an hour from now,' he said. Or it could be weeks. Months. Years. Around 400 people were working the case at the time. Leads have since ballooned from 32,000 to between 40,000 and 50,000.

Nancy was last seen on 31 January. Her son-in-law, Tommaso Cioni, dropped her home at around 9:50 p.m. She never made it to church the next morning. When relatives let themselves in around noon, they found her phone, her belongings, and blood on the front porch.

FBI doorbell camera footage from the early hours of 1 February shows a masked, armed figure on the porch carrying an Ozark Trail backpack sold exclusively at Walmart. The suspect appeared to be roughly 5'9 to 5'10 with a black moustache.

Forensic progress has been slow. DNA recovered from the property does not belong to Nancy or anyone close to her, but has returned no matches in CODIS, the FBI's national criminal database. Gloves found two miles away visually matched those in the footage. Their DNA came back empty, too, CNN reported.

TMZ has received a fourth email from someone claiming to know who took Nancy, demanding $50,000 (about £40,000) in bitcoin. Previous ransom-style messages have not been verified.

On the same day the landscaper turned up, Nanos publicly cleared every member of the Guthrie family. 'Not one single person in the family is a suspect,' he told local outlet KOLD. 'They are victims.' It was a pointed message to the army of online sleuths, accusing relatives without evidence.

Google is working to recover additional surveillance footage from Nest cameras at the property. Apple and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg have reportedly offered help. The FBI has doubled its reward to $100,000 (£80,000).

Three weeks on, the investigation has plenty of threads but no clear suspect. The family keeps the lawn mowed and the pool clean. The sheriff asks for patience. And somewhere out there, an 84-year-old woman who cannot walk 50 yards on her own is still unaccounted for.

Originally published on IBTimes UK

Tags

Disappearance, Tucson, Savannah Guthrie, FBI