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

[nycpizzaparty]

Son in law.

Got it. Brain activity low. Sorry.

 

[DS2021]

Who is MK? Marie Kondo?

Megan kelly

 

[Alkali13]

Who is MK? Marie Kondo?

I'm guessing Megyn Kelly.

 

[Wsimm]

Based on her landscape, I don't know if it was weekly. It looks like she has astroturf in the back. Hence there is no mowing. We don't mow very often at our house. We have turf on the side, but it grows really slow because we're always under water restrictions. We do everything ourselves, which is a hedge trimmer no more than twice a year. (We cut our mowing to once a month due to a three year drought) However, some xeriscapes are trimmed more frequently to keep them looky tidy. The fact that her lantana is short indicates that she may have quarterly timming. But I think weekly would really be too much for a natural style landscape.

Interesting. You must be fairly local to this area? I am not. I do have several relatives that live in Phoenix, who are in their late 80’s, and in excellent physical health compared to NG. They no longer do any landscaping maintenance, but will walk several miles in the early morning. The landscape service regularly blows due to the debris and dust from the desert conditions. I’m told it’s a constant battle I can’t visualize NG physically blowing or trimming the way her medical limitations have been described?

 

[nhmemorymaker]

Can’t say if it’s the same place but there is a convenience store on oracle road where there is a gas station that also has a drive thru Dairy Queen and maybe a domino’s as well, can’t recall offhand.

is it a Cirkle K?

 

[Donswife48]

Looking at the neighborhood on goo maps, the homes are somewhat hidden from the streets, all have curved driveways, so I'm assuming that even if homeowners have cameras, they probably can't even pick up cars driving by.

My ring (brand) camera is set for a 20 ft distance, I live rural with a highway 50ft from my house. If I set it to pick up longer distances, it would be alerting on every car.

 

[thefragile7393]

I'm sorry, someone told her that and she reported it , because she is very scoop motivated and an inquisitive journalist.
so she reported something from a "reliable " source. This is absolutely NOT the end of her career and also it is obvious in an investigation like this that the last person to see the victim alive is often the first suspect to be looked at followed by family, husbands etc...you may not like a sensationalist approach to journalism but..

she did nothing wrong.

mOO

she did when she reported that someone was a suspect when as of yet they have not been named. We all know family is looked at first but she blatently said they were a suspect. None of that strikes you as wrong?

 

[whitelilac]

This "unidentified male" ....might he be the same as the trespasser a neighbor reported?

 

[nhmemorymaker]

So we either have:

1) someone in the family, most likely SIL and/or Annie motivated by some kind of financial gain that they hoped to gain from her passing, and the ransom stuff is just someone trying to capitalize on the situation. Or I suppose the responsible family member(s) could have orchestrated the ransom hoax as a distraction.

2) an actual professional kidnapper who has experience doing this and saw NG as a good target (at least in part because SG wealth).

3) someone not in the inner circle, but someone who is familiar with NG and her house and was in her extended circle somehow. Either a lawn guy, an electrician, a pool guy, etc. that knew who she was, knew who her daughter was, and hatched some half baked plan to either rob her, kidnap her, murder her, etc and then sloppily executed it. The motive here would be money as well in the form of ransom.

4) some deranged politically motivated person who disagreed with SG or felt slighted by SG somehow and was interpreting her on TV from his basement and decided to lash out in this way. Similar to a politically motivated mass shooter or incel type.

5) I hesitate to even write this, but a sexually motivated rapist, murderer, kidnapper who saw her, stalker her and executed a plan on her that night. You wouldn’t think that this would happen to an 84 yo but sadly it does.

Taking everything we know currently into account, I would rank them 1,3,4,2,5.

What say you, WS?

My strongest feelings right now are:
3) someone not in the inner circle, but someone who is familiar with NG and her house

 

[Cardgame]

I’ll take door number 3.
I have a hard time imagining a family member hurting her…I know it happens, but my brain can’t process it.
The kidnapping scenario seems to be superficially implemented.
Number 3 for me.

Or it's a combo of 3 and 4, 3 does the abduction, 4 sends the ransom note

 

[Sadi]

I'm sorry, someone told her that and she reported it , because she is very scoop motivated and an inquisitive journalist.
so she reported something from a "reliable " source. This is absolutely NOT the end of her career and also it is obvious in an investigation like this that the last person to see the victim alive is often the first suspect to be looked at followed by family, husbands etc...you may not like a sensationalist approach to journalism but..

she did nothing wrong.

mOO

Thank you, I just wanted to ask because to me, it would seem to cause more harm than good. We’re all different and if it were me, no way would I go on record making any kind of statement unless I was provided factual documentation of evidence, but that’s just me.

 

[SMK777]

My strongest feelings right now are:
3) someone not in the inner circle, but someone who is familiar with NG and her house

I think there's a very high possibility of this being the case

 

[bestill]

Thank you This is both fascinating and utterly terrifying.

Without wishing to send you down another hole...

Please could you explain to me how the person who sent the ransom note could be hiding their source from FBI?

I keep hearing VPN but I myself have a VPN. Surely it can't be as simple as that?

I am curious about this too, thanks for asking.

 

[AZLocal]

That's interesting that a neighbor who had been watching some drone search footage noticed that NG's roof looked pretty clean and that she told LE that she thought NG had resurfaced her roof lately and that maybe they should look into the people who redid the roof. Just as a possibility, since LE were asking about any work that may have been done on her property lately. Very observant neighbor and trying to help find NG.

I live here and agree about the roof coating. I also noticed that it looked pristine. This is very much something I’d look at.

 

[Cassie P]

But if it's not a legitimate ransom and was just some random stranger abduction, I fear Nancy is no longer with us. What would that prove? They reportedly didn't take anything of value from the home. That makes no sense to me, none of this does.

Yes we know that random stranger abduction has a higher risk of violence and fatality than abduction by a known person. It is more rare however.

 

[Sadi]

https://twitter.com/x/status/2020210223689130012

Did they take the yellow tape down?

 

[lucegirl]

I posted a few pages back about a handyman case and the motive was to silence an elderly woman before she exposed him for a minor fraud. I think we should include silencing her to cover up something as a motive versus robbery, What if someone in the family or extended family did something bad or illegal and NG found out. She is religious and a kindly, moral woman. She couldn’t keep the secret much longer; she wanted to go to her priest; it was eating at her, so the person silenced her in an act of desperate self-preservation. She was 84 - so the person justifies that she was old with limited years to live - versus themselves with a lot more life to live at risk if whatever damaging information became known?

 

[SouthernSummer]

The thought that NG was murdered to get to the funds in her estate seems poorly thought out. Having recently been through the death of my mother and the settlement of her estate, it takes YEARS to get the full funds disbursement, even with very the very good planning my late mother had done.

Assuming the home is NG's primary asset, selling it can be quite a long process, and usually a good realtor will recommend upgrades to bring the property up to date, improve it's appearance, and make it competitive in a market. People who are buying $1 million + homes do expect contemporary styling, appliances, and features and you can really lose out by just trying for a quick sale. I suppose it also depends on who really ends up with control of the estate, and my guess would be that SG would have more authority in terms of organizing the settlement of the full estate, and the three apparent heirs.

In otherwords, murdering NG to get a lot of money is not a quick and easy way to get money.

Agreed. If it was someone close to her it could’ve been anything. She could’ve become aware of something and they needed to keep her quiet. The possibilities are endless. Especially for true crime followers and anyone who likes murder mysteries. I could literally list off a thousand different scenarios and end up being completely off. It is usually Occums Razor but I feel like there’s been at least one recent COMPLETELY random crime. Oh Brian K being the person who murdered the 4 college students. Occums razor would be someone known to the victim. But every now and then it’s someone totally out of left field.

 

[Friday Fan]

There is a driveway that leads to the right side of the house where the garage is. Like most homes you can drive right up to the garage door. Nancy could have been let out of the car right near the garage door. She would then only need to walk a little ways to get inside of her garage, turn around and wave her SIL off, and then close the door. This taking a couple to a handful of minutes to achieve is doable.

The most time consuming part of this is getting out the vehicle. I pretended like I had been after I had back surgery and it took me a minute to gets out of the vehicle and get my cane. The slow walking part took about 30 seconds. Of course, it depends on when the garage door was opening in all of this. If they open it after she gets out of the vehicle then it would take much quicker than if they open it when she is still in the vehicle.

 

[Herat]

Makes total sense! I am just in Idaho in the foothills!

Yes, there is the Mt Lemon Observatory is about 12 miles as the crow flies from central Tucson.

The larger, and really amazing Kitt Peak National Observatory is about 56 miles from central Tucson and is affected by the nightime glow from Tucson.