Detectives searching forNancy Guthriereturned to her Tucson, Arizona, neighbourhood on Thursday and asked residents whether their internet service failed around the time the 84-year-old is believed to have been taken from her home, according to reports published 34 days into the case.
Nancy Guthrie was reported missing on 1 February after she failed to arrive at a friend's home for a livestreamed church service. Authorities believe she was taken against her will during the night, and investigators have spent weeks trying to identify a masked man seen ondoorbell footageoutside her house in the hours before she vanished.
The new line of inquiry is notable because the public investigation has, until now, moved through more familiar territory. Search teams have combed the area, the FBI has circulated images, and detectives have chased physical clues that did not hold. On Thursday, officers knocked on doors with a different question: had anyone noticed their internet cutting out in the early hours of 1 February.
Three homeowners toldNBC Newsthat they had been approached by investigators about possible service disruptions. None could say for certain whether anything unusual happened, as they were either asleep or away at the time. That leaves the latest development in a familiar place for this case, somewhere between a potentially useful lead and another troubling unknown.
There is, plainly, a reason detectives are asking. If devices across the area dropped offline at the same moment, investigators may be trying to determine whether that was a coincidence, a technical failure, or something more deliberate. Nothing has been confirmed, and there is still no public evidence that any outage was linked to the disappearance.
The Pima County Sheriff's Department was asked whether investigators were looking into the possibility that the suspect carried a Wi-Fi jammer. The department did not confirm that theory and said only that investigators were examining all angles.
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What the public knows is still limited. Nancy, the mother of Today presenter Savannah Guthrie, was last seen walking into her home after dinner with her daughter Annie Guthrie and son-in-law Tomasso Cioni. She was reported missing the next afternoon. Authorities later said the family had been ruled out as suspects, while the man on the doorbell footage remained the focus of the inquiry.
Other leads have already thinned out. A glove found about two miles from Nancy's home appeared, at first, to offer a possible break in the case. But afterDNA testing, Sheriff Chris Nanos said it belonged to an innocent man who had nothing to do with the investigation.
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Source: International Business Times UK
