Pima County Administrator Chris Nanos (left)
Jan Sonnenmair/Getty ImagesPima County Sheriff Chris Nanos is pushing back against claims that he is blocking the FBI from accessing evidence important to the search Savannah Guthrieyou are missing mother, Nancy Guthrie.
In an interview with NBC Tucson affiliate KVOA on Thursday, February 12, Nanos said the allegations are “not even close to the truth.”
Earlier on Thursday, Reuters and NewsNation reported frustration among federal agents over the handling of evidence, including a glove found in Nancy’s home. A law enforcement official told Reuters that Nanos sent the evidence to a private laboratory in Florida for testing instead of using the FBI’s national crime lab in Quantico, Virginia. “This is dumb. … It’s crazy,” NewsNation quoted an anonymous FBI source as saying.
However, Nanos told KVOA’s Jacob Owens that he spoke with the FBI as recently as Thursday morning about where to send evidence for DNA testing. He said the FBI and Pima County law enforcement have agreed to use a private lab in Florida, which Nanos said has worked with the department for years and handled the case pro bono.
A retired police sergeant from Phoenix, Arizona — just a two-hour drive from Nancy Guthrie’s Tucson home — says there are many new clues to analyzing the images recently released from her Nest doorbell camera. “Overall, it’s a big break in this case,” said Troy Hillman, a retired homicide sergeant. […]
“Actually, the FBI wanted to send one or two they found at the crime scene, right next to it – a mile, a mile and a half,” Nanos said of the gloves recently found in the area around Nancy’s Catalina Foothills home in Arizona. “I said, ‘No, why are we doing that? They agreed [that it] make sense.”
Us Weekly has reached out to the FBI and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department for comment.
Nanos told KVOA that he is still committed to the search Today show cohost’s mom.
“When all this is done, give all you want to criticize, but right now we have a job to do,” the sheriff said.
Nancy, 84, was first reported missing on February 1. Law enforcement officials believe she was abducted from her home outside of Tucson. He was last seen on January 31.
On Thursday, the FBI released new information about the suspect caught on a surveillance camera outside Nancy’s home on the night of her abduction. The department has also doubled the reward for information on the case.
“Today, the FBI is increasing its reward to $100,000 for information leading to the location of Nancy Guthrie and/or the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in her disappearance,” FBI Phoenix shared with X. “New identifying information about the suspect in the kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie has been confirmed after a review of the Operational Technology camera footage by the FBI Division.”
“The suspect is described as male, approximately 5’9″ – 5’10 tall, with a normal build. In the video, he is wearing a black, 25-liter ‘Ozark Trail Hiker Pack’ bag,” the post continued.
The search for Nancy Guthrie is far from over after the FBI released a surveillance camera that showed a masked man outside her front door the night she disappeared. Ten days into the investigation, law enforcement’s approach may have shifted from a “race against the clock” to what security expert Dan Donovan describes. […]
Earlier this week, FBI Director Kash Patel released surveillance photos and images of a possible suspect outside Nancy’s home on the morning of February 1. The photos show a man wearing a snow mask in the snow with a backpack and what appears to be a gun tucked into the waistband of his pants.
“We’re working with our partners — as of this morning, law enforcement has released new, previously unavailable footage showing an armed man appearing to tamper with a camera at Nancy Guthrie’s door the morning of her disappearance,” Patel wrote via X on Tuesday, February 10. “Anyone with information, please contact 1-800-CALL-FBI
