Nancy Guthrie's disappearance has taken a new twist after a self-styled online detective claimed this week that someone was secretly staying in the guest house at her Catalina Foothills property near Tucson, Arizona, when she vanished on 1 February.
For context, 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie, mother ofTODAYshow host Savannah Guthrie, was reported missing more than three months ago. Investigators from the Pima County Sheriff's Department, supported by the FBI, believe she was taken from her home the night before she was discovered missing.
Despite intensive searches and forensic work at the hillside property, no suspect has been publicly identified, and authorities have released few specifics about what they found at the scene.
The latest claim came from Jonathan Lee Riches, who describes himself as an investigator and has been documenting the case from Tucson on social media. Posting on X, formerly Twitter, Riches wrote: 'It appears someone was staying in her guest house when Nancy Guthrie disappeared.'
It appears someone was staying in her guest house when Nancy Guthrie disappeared.
He did not supply photographs, documents, or independent witnesses to support that assertion, and there is no official confirmation that anybody else was living on the property at the time. Nothing is confirmed yet, so everything should be taken with a grain of salt.
Even so, the suggestion that an unidentified person might have been in the guest house when Nancy Guthrie disappeared was enough to reignite speculation around a case that has already become a magnet for online sleuths.
The news came after weeks of simmering questions about how closely detectives had examined the guest house and whether it could hold clues to what happened. An aerial photograph of Nancy Guthrie's home, released earlier in the investigation, showed the main residence and a separate, smaller structure, described by locals as a casita or pool house, on the well-kept desert property in the Catalina Foothills.
Under the version of events set out publicly so far, Nancy Guthrie was believed to be living alone. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said at the outset that there were no other known residents on the property and that his team had gone over the house and grounds carefully to gather DNA and other evidence. There was no mention from authorities of a second occupant, short- or long-term, in either the main home or the guest house.
The gap between that official description and Riches' post has fuelled a fresh round of argument beneath his feed. One commenter wrote: 'Bet she didn't even know it. Poor angel.' Another suggested that the condition of the outbuilding pointed to recent use, claiming: 'That is why the casida/pool house was a mess.' Others drifted towards a familiar name, speculating without evidence that Nancy's son, Camron, could have been there.
Source: International Business Times UK
