LAS VEGAS (Court TV) — More than 100 days after Nancy Guthrie was last seen, investigators are considering bringing in new tools to help them find her.
Nancy Guthrie was reported missing in Pima County, Arizona. (Pima County Sheriff’s Office via Scripps News Group)
While speaking at a CrimeCon panel focused on the disappearance of the 84-year-old, Fox Digital reporter Michael Ruiz revealed that he got new information just minutes before taking the stage. “I heard from a really good federal source that they are now discussing bringing in new tools to the investigation,” he said, specifying that the tools would be technological.
Defense attorney Donna Rotunno, also on the panel, revealed that she learned Savannah Guthrie, Nancy Guthrie’s daughter and the host of Today on NBC, has now spent $500,000 of her own money hiring investigators to help with the case. “So that tells me she’s not satisfied,” Rotunno said. “And I don’t think she has a lot of faith in where law enforcement has taken us to this point.”
“Initially, everyone thought this was a missing person case,” Rotunno said. “And the way [investigators] walked into it initially probably wasn’t with the right set of lenses.”
MORE | Savannah Guthrie on her mother’s kidnapping: ‘It’s just totally terrifying’
Rotunno criticized the way investigators handled the case, including failing to gather certain pieces of evidence and failing to block people from the crime scene. In fact, Ruiz was able to walk directly up to the door of Nancy Guthrie’s home. “The deputy told me to!” he explained.
Michael Ruiz, Josh Ritter, Donna Rotunno and Paul Mauro speak at CrimeCon 2026. (Court TV)
Fox Nation’s Paul Mauro said the failure to secure the scene and gather the appropriate evidence quickly will make it harder to prosecute any potential case down the line.
A potential key piece of evidence in Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance is a hair found at her home. The Pima County Sheriff’s Office, the lead agency investigating the case, wanted to examine the hair for potential DNA at a lab in Florida rather than use the FBI’s lab in Quantico, Virginia. “It looks to me like they were not cooperating,” Mauro said. “The DNA should have gone right to the FBI.” Despite the FBI sending a plane to fly the hair from the scene to the Quantico lab, it took 11 weeks for federal agents to get access to the evidence.
Discussing the ransom notes in the case, the panelists all agreed that it’s unlikely any were penned by the kidnapper. “The last place you go to is TMZ,” investigator Josh Ritter said. “To me, that was someone looking for attention rather than looking to gain a ransom in a legitimate kidnapping.” The notes also lacked any urgency or proof of life, which is unusual in kidnapping cases.
