Nancy Guthrie, 84, (mother of TODAY Show host Savannah Guthrie) missing - last seen in the Catalina foothills area on Jan 31, 2026

[RedHaus]

True. Also, I believe the native tribe people would catch anything or anyone moving through a dark or full moon night desert. Firmly believe that.

-Nin

With respect, I do not believe that.

For anyone who has not been there, I can assure you it is a truly vast terrain, mostly unpopulated. At ~3am the odds of a vehicle with head lights off, driving down an Arroyo for instance, being noticed by any human are slim to none,

That said, I still wonder if NG is actually at the bottom of a deep nearby lake.

 

[Cryptic]

I don’t watch SG’s show, but I gather she has a pretty huge audience and I gather could be considered to be quite influential / wield a certain amount of power.

Is it possible that perhaps through her Show, something or someone has been ‘brought down’ .

Though @cherryleaf mentions one incident which SG reported on possibly career ending / dampening mis-conduct, I wonder if your idea could be expanded to what she did not report?

I have a vague understanding that their reporting can include presenting say, fashion trends and trending home products, maybe extending to say, trending, "Fall Family Fun locations in LA"? Perhaps a product creator or a location owner got engaged when their material was not selected to be actively presented on the Today Show- then gets unhinged?

As an additional sub possibility I do remember reading once that: "Buy advertising time with us, and your stuff can get worn, mentioned- or even subtly hyped by us" type agreements are pretty common between news networks and advertisers. Maybe such an agreement went off rails with an owner / operator product developer.

SG might not have even been involved in a possible "promote this, not that" discussion. Rather, she could have just been the most visible "face" of the Show and the perp then identified a vulnerable relative via googling?

 

[Serononin]

I think front door guy was walking slowly and gingerly and favoring his right hand and elbow because he'd just tripped and fell over that two foot tall pile of rocks outside the house. No matter how fast he was going (walking or half jogging to hurry), and whether or not he landed in the rocks or a cactus or yucca, a fall in the dark is disconcerting and I'm sure he was frustrated both at the landscape (stupid rocks! stupid cactus!) and at himself for not using that bite lite to at least check the path.

If the people who've said they think they see holes in the right glove are correct, that could definitely be explained by something like what you describe

 

[Scorpiette]

I think a male/female combo makes sense, it explains:

1. Why SG appears to be talking to a woman in her videos, appealing to someone who may have some empathy, sympathy, and identify with a parent/child bond.
2. Why no one has come forward for the reward.
3. Arrogant ruthless alpha male perp likely to relegate care of the hostage to a woman.

I wonder also since SG made mildly religious references in the video to ransomer could the perp's mother be connected to NG's church and perp heard her say she knew NG?

 

[slowpoke]

It's not black and white, it's IR, which means you can't estimate colour. What looks like depth of colour is more about absorption and reflectivity of the IR light. If what I've read on here I've understood correctly. Please, science nerds, correct me if I'm wrong. The light spectrum and its photography are not my areas.

MOO

From what I read, that is right, that you cannot guess at colors. These pictures illustrate that fact:

“These are typical infrared images. As we will see, you should not use them to get any color information. To convince you, let me show you a couple of pictures. On the left, you have the visible light version of a shirt, on the right the infrared image version of the same shirt in the same scene and same everything.”

More at link

Infrared Images: Don't Trust the Colors of Most CCTV Footage at Night

Learn about infrared (IR) images, how they could be misleading and some potential IR-related issues that may involve even "normal" videos.

blog.ampedsoftware.com

 

[Napoli]

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of
Righteousness for his name’s sake.

BBM Ok, where in Arizona, in the area of Tucson, are there green pastures near a lake or pond? Going with the literal here. MOO

 

[Sakura2Sophia4Lucia]

Perp knew there would be attention, fame, money from this crime. Maybe he wanted all of that.

I think that's true. Choosing NG meant that he would get enormous attention. And, if he was a loner with low self-esteem and a sense of inadequacy, he could bask in the attention and feel a sense of confidence about himself since he planned and executed such a successful crime.

JMO

 

[Sakura2Sophia4Lucia]

[I bought SG’s book and therefore no link]

[Reposting]

Page 90 of Savannah Guthrie’s book ‘MOSTLY WHAT GOD DOES’ :

‘About once a year, in the summertime, cousin T… orchestrated a kidnapping of my sister and me. It went down like this: the cousins would visit for a few days at our house in Tucson, and then, on the morning they were to leave, T…would wake us up early, searching us in the predawn darkness as we made our escape. We would all pile into her rickety station wagon and head north, the sky streaking with bright oranges and pinks as the sun rose over the colors, desert landscape. Somewhere between Phoenix and Tucson, T…would make a pitstop and let Annie and recall home at a payphone.“Mom! Cousin T… kidnapped us to take us to her house! “My mother would faint shock, protest, how terrible she would miss us, then assure us she’d drive up to retrieve us in a few days.’

(No link, because I own the book and am quoting this short passage from it. Hope that’s alright.)

The cousin’s name was deleted by me. Family is not to be discussed and has been cleared. The mentioning of a kidnapping as a children’s play in SG’s book has been mentioned on MSN and here. Nothing new. However, if we even think of an individual wanting to hurt SG, I would hope LE was and is still checking out that area between Tucson and Phoenix.

It would be roughly here:

It would be worth to have the heli out there and perhaps talk to the native Navajo/Apache. They would have seen a lit up car in the middle of the dark night out in the desert..MOO!!

Just a thought.

ALL IMO

-Nin

Recommend calling in this idea to LE. Seems quite plausible.

 

[monkey_mochi_234]

It's not black and white, it's IR, which means you can't estimate colour. What looks like depth of colour is more about absorption and reflectivity of the IR light. If what I've read on here I've understood correctly. Please, science nerds, correct me if I'm wrong. The light spectrum and its photography are not my areas.

MOO

I made an account because this topic has been bugging me ever since I saw the Ring camera images. I believe melanin absorbs IR light. So, brown eyes would appear darker than blue or green eyes in IR footage. I doubt the Ring camera has enough resolution to see the difference, though.

All MOO.

 

[RubbleDog]

Remember - there was no burglary- $$ was not the motive.

 

[Sakura2Sophia4Lucia]

Would love to see experimental results from anyone with a similar Google Nest in night mode, using a thin, mesh mask and a hyper-realistic mask (silicon or similar). I’ve skimmed many articles explaining that the IR reflectance levels would be quite different from human skin but haven’t seen images or footage.

The point most of those articles make is that the neck and ears (bare skin) would look different from the mask. The mask would be brighter, more washed out and lacking in detail.

In the specific footage we see here, it could be that the only bare skin visible is from eyelids and wrists. The latter are close to the camera’s IR source when we see them, so they’re brighter (inverse square law). If it’s a thin, mesh-type mask, the mouth could be covered.

(Edited to add for clarity: so it’s harder to compare skin with the mask’s material in the footage we have, because the ski mask and the jacket cover most of the inner mask, if there is one. We don’t see hands, neck or ears so can’t use them to compare.)

Would love to see some test results

This is an interesting idea if anybody with a Nest cam might want to do some experimenting. MOO

 

[Sakura2Sophia4Lucia]

I made an account because this topic has been bugging me ever since I saw the Ring camera images. I believe melanin absorbs IR light. So, brown eyes would appear darker than blue or green eyes in IR footage. I doubt the Ring camera has enough resolution to see the difference, though.

All MOO.

Thanks for joining and posting. Welcome!

 

[Curiousobserver]

It's not black and white, it's IR, which means you can't estimate colour. What looks like depth of colour is more about absorption and reflectivity of the IR light. If what I've read on here I've understood correctly. Please, science nerds, correct me if I'm wrong. The light spectrum and its photography are not my areas.

MOO

And in addition to the excellent summaries posted by others- you also have software processing that alters the colors.

 

[buffalogal]

Though @cherryleaf mentions one incident which SG reported on possibly career ending / dampening mis-conduct,...snip

Is this the point where we all turn to acknowledge the really nasty elephant in the room, the biggest 'career ending/dampening mis-conduct' story of the 21st century?

We know SG has not been working due to surgery in December, but we've also seen an explosion of that nasty story in the last three months, and we're in the very earliest stages of reprecussion, with resignations starting to flutter down like the first leaves of fall. Any interviews or investigative reporting SG did on that story is already out there, maybe scheduled to be re-aired, maybe not. Maybe the point wasn't to silence *her*, as much as send a warning to other journalists who might be considering joining the elephant hunt?

 

[wibbleflea]

This is an interesting idea if anybody with a Nest cam might want to do some experimenting. MOO

I don’t have a Nest, or I’d do it, but buying a Walmart ski mask, a mesh face mask and a hyper-realistic silicone mask might get you into a couple of lists that you don’t want to be on, especially if you live in Tucson

 

[Eli9]

I think that's true. Choosing NG meant that he would get enormous attention. And, if he was a loner with low self-esteem and a sense of inadequacy, he could bask in the attention and feel a sense of confidence about himself since he planned and executed such a successful crime.

JMO

And riding a high always comes to an end inevitably. Will it lead to a bigger 'get'? I hope not but having been on here so long I'm afraid of an escalation. JMO

 

[Chili Fries]

This is not a random opportunist's crime. She was targeted. And not just FBI-defined targeted, but specifically targeted. And not just specifically targeted, but specifically targeted for kidnapping. And not just specifically targeted for kidnapping, but for all intents and purposes she was specifically targeted for kidnapping for ransom. And not just specifically targeted for kidnapping for ransom, but specifically targeted for kidnapping and a $6 million dollar ransom.

Going with this as the underlying assumption and likely motive, we can posit:

Nancy doesn't have 6 million dollars, or if she does it isn't something that would be known or implied. She's 84, lives in the same house she's lived in for 40 years, drives an Outback (I think), and at 84 is in the denouement of her 'society' life and her routine now is more mahjong and video church with a few close friends.

Annie doesn't have 6 million dollars, or if she does there isn't any indication that she or her husband live that way. Like her mom, she has a normal to quasi-upscale home in a nicely manicured neighborhood and with normal non-luxury cars in the garage. We're not talking mansion and there is no obvious rich here either.

So that leaves one person with the means to satisfy a ransom demand that substantial - Savannah.

Young men don't watch The Today Show. Middle aged working men don't watch the Today Show. Burglars don't watch the Today Show. Psychopathic run of the mill kidnappers don't watch the Today Show. Sure, one of these types may have seen the Today Show in passing while switching between channels a time or two, but it isn't very likely that when he did he just happened upon the segment with Nancy. And even if one of these types did happen onto that segment, it isn't likely that he would consider the two of them 'prime pickens' for a payday when there are far more wealthy folks worth far more money, who are far more easily available, and who are far easier to manage in captivity. And probably even in Tucson. And perhaps even close by.

So what in the world is going on here? Why in the world did the perpetrator choose Savannah to fleece? And, most importantly, how did he arrive at that conclusion, and from whence?

JMO.

There is the possibility that Nancy bragged about Savannah to someone she came in contact with. We all know that older ladies tend to do that.

 

[RedHaus]

And riding a high always comes to an end inevitably. Will it lead to a bigger 'get'? I hope not but having been on here so long I'm afraid of an escalation. JMO

And as that CNN Live guest, a Former FBI Specialist, opined 10 or so days ago, the perp may have taken his life in the face of the public and LE attention, or as I glean from your possible profile of the perp, the high from his crime has worn off.

 

[Han]

How would the message in Psalm 23 be a connection?

 

[monkey_mochi_234]

Thanks for joining and posting. Welcome!

Thanks!

I wonder if it is possible to guess the suspect's eye color by 'recreating' the scene. For instance, (1) capture footage of men with different eyes colors who are wearing one or two ski masks and (2) make sure you capture footage with the men using various strength mouth lights. Way more factors to consider, but this is a very basic outline of my idea.

Any comparisons are probably useless unless the footage retrieved by Google of the suspect are of the same resolution, compression, and IR image quality as the ones someone can get from their nest camera.

MOO.