How Did Nancy Guthrie Vanish Without a Trace?

Summary

The Journal. — How Did Nancy Guthrie Vanish Without a Trace?
Episode Date: August 3, 2026
Hosts: Jessica Mendoza & Ryan Knutson
Featured Reporter: Valerie Borlein
Format: Investigative; True Crime; Media Analysis

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Episode Overview

This episode investigates the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie—mother to Savannah Guthrie, co-host of the Today show—and why, after six months, no credible leads have emerged. The Wall Street Journal’s Valerie Borlein joins host Jessica Mendoza to dissect the “perfect storm” that stymied the case: failures in the initial investigation, law enforcement infighting, the media firestorm, and the limitations of digital surveillance even in modern times.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Disappearance and Initial Investigation

• Timeline:
  • Last Seen: Nancy Guthrie, 84, was last seen entering her garage in Pima County, AZ, at around 9:50pm, Jan. 31 (04:28).
  • Discovery: Her daughter Annie found the back doors propped open and Nancy’s iPhone and purse left behind; 911 call made around noon the next day (04:44).
• Investigator Response:
  • Early debate whether she wandered off—family insisted this was impossible due to frailty and medical issues (05:50–06:00).
  • Critical error: Home was not quickly sealed as a crime scene, allowing many people to walk onto the property, contaminating potential evidence (06:15–07:05).
    • Valerie Borlein: “A crime scene is like a stove. It cools down almost immediately... precious time was lost in those 48, 72 first hours that couldn’t be recovered.” (07:05)
  • Additional missteps: Delay in deploying aerial surveillance further hindered gathering clues (07:39).
• Background on Nancy:
  • Journalism grad, globe-trotting mining family, settled in Tucson in the 1970s. Described as “mentally sharp but physically frail” (05:24–05:50).

2. Law Enforcement Dynamics and Infighting

• Local Sheriff’s Department:
  • Sheriff Chris Nanos described as hands-on, a micromanager. Department had recently undergone major leadership changes, including head of homicide (08:38–09:56).
    • The new homicide head had a record of poor judgment in prior cases (09:56).
• Jurisdictional Overlaps:
  • Multiple agencies involved—local sheriff’s office, FBI, and volunteers.
  • FBI vs. Sheriff Dispute: FBI Director Kash Patel claimed his team was “frozen out” for critical first days; Nanos flatly denied this, insisting “that’s the furthest from the truth” (19:07–20:18).
  • DNA evidence was sent to a private lab rather than the FBI’s Quantico lab due to departmental preference, causing more friction (20:39–21:05).

3. The Ransom and Negotiation

• First Ransom Note:
  • Sent via a CBS Tucson affiliate’s tip line, demanding $4 million in Bitcoin (10:27).
  • Family, acting on FBI advice, tried a “down payment” to verify the demanders—transaction was untouched, indicating no actionable lead (12:56–13:27).
• Notable Family Video Appeal:
  • Savannah Guthrie: “We need to know without a doubt that she is alive and that you have her... Please reach out to us.” (12:18)
  • Family deeply motivated by Nancy’s need for medication (12:02).

4. Massive Media and Social Media Impact

• Savannah Guthrie’s Fame:
  • Media attention turbocharged due to her prominent role on Today.
    • Savannah Guthrie: “I grew up there... My mom still lives there. And honestly, a part of me has really never left.” (15:08)
    • Emotional family reflection on whether her fame played a role: “Do you think, because of me?” (16:02)
• National & Social Media Circus:
  • On par with “the O.J. Simpson double murder case.”
  • Flood of social media influencers, YouTubers, and “amateur sleuths” swamped the neighborhood and social networks (16:56–18:05).
    • Led to misinformation, false rumors (e.g., ancient bone discovery hyped as a lead), and a chilling effect as neighbors closed ranks (18:05–19:07).

5. Evidence and the Main Breaks in the Case

• Key Surveillance Footage:
  • Recovery of doorbell cam footage, facilitated by the FBI’s tech contacts:
    • Video shows masked man with gun approaching Nancy’s home in the night (21:44–22:17).
    • Released by FBI Director Kash Patel himself on X (21:44–22:17).
  • Despite millions of views, no decisive leads emerged.
• Second Ransom Note:
  • Five days post-disappearance, the family receives a message that Nancy supposedly died soon after being taken:
    • “We did not realize how serious her health issues were. She perished very quickly after. There’s nothing you could have done...” (23:14)
    • Contextualized as coded language, interpreted by experts as an admission that Nancy had died (24:05).

6. Ongoing Efforts and Case Status

• Continued Search:
  • Law enforcement and volunteers continue combing through thousands of tips, video evidence, and new leads, but progress stalled (24:32–24:52).
  • The case is not classified as cold but relies on a potential “big break” from a new witness or information (25:02).
• Media & Attention Paradox:
  • “The attention to this case... it’s oversaturated. And instead of bringing more clarity, it seems to have obscured the truth.” (25:22)
  • Oversaturation breeds division and noise, not clarity (25:55).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Savannah Guthrie on Family’s Nightmare (00:39):

  “We will never stop looking for her. We will always ache for her and feel that hole in our hearts.”

• Valerie Borlein’s “Perfect Storm” Analysis (01:58):

  “Bad luck, bad calls, and bad blood.”

• On Crime Scene Preservation (07:05):

  “A crime scene is like a stove. It cools down almost immediately...” (Borlein)

• Guthrie Family Video to Kidnappers (11:43 & 12:18):

  “We are ready to talk.”
  “We need to know without a doubt that she is alive... Please reach out to us.” (Savannah Guthrie)

• Sheriff Nanos vs. FBI on Cooperation (20:18):

  “If Patel really believes that his office tried to block the FBI... that’s the furthest from the truth.” (Nanos)

• Social Media Chaos (18:05):

  “There were a number of false flags that were amplified on live streams... it created this kind of frisson in the air where it was hard to separate what was true and what was rumored to be true.” (Borlein)

• Second Ransom Note’s Impact (23:14):

  “She perished very quickly after. There’s nothing you could have done. She is buried in nature and you will not hear from us anymore.”

• On Media Oversaturation (25:22):

  “The attention to this case... has oversaturated. And instead of bringing more clarity, it seems to have obscured the truth.” (Jessica Mendoza)

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:05–00:48: Savannah Guthrie’s emotional statement and the family perspective
• 04:28–05:18: Timeline of disappearance and initial discovery
• 07:05–07:39: Critical failures in early investigation and crime scene management
• 10:27–12:18: Ransom note discovery and family/FBI response
• 14:29–16:02: Savannah Guthrie’s fame and the case’s national prominence
• 17:55–19:07: Impact of social media, YouTubers, and amateur sleuths
• 20:03–21:05: Law enforcement infighting between FBI and sheriff
• 21:44–22:17: Release of doorbell camera footage of masked perpetrator
• 23:14–24:05: Second ransom note and coded family Instagram response
• 24:52–26:22: Current state of investigation and reflection on media noise

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Takeaway

Despite massive investigative resources, public attention, and digital surveillance, Nancy Guthrie remains missing, her case mired in a tangle of investigative missteps, media sensationalism, law enforcement rivalry, and public confusion. The Guthrie case stands as a cautionary tale: more attention does not necessarily mean more answers—in fact, the glare can sometimes blind.

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For more details and ongoing updates, listen to the episode or visit The Journal’s official platforms.

Transcript

[Savannah Guthrie]

I'm coming on TODAY with a very specific message. It has been months since our mom was taken from us.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Savannah Guthrie, co host of the Today show, posted this message on Instagram last week about her mother, Nancy.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Our family is in agony. We, we are in a nightmare that will not end. Nothing about our situation has changed.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Nancy Guthrie was taken six months ago this past weekend. There have been no charges or credible leads in months.

[Savannah Guthrie]

And we will never stop looking for her. We will always ache for her and feel that hole in our hearts.

[Valerie Borlein]

This has been such a big story in American life. But can we just try to make sense of what happened here and answer this core question? How can someone disappear without a trace?

[Jessica Mendoza]

That's our colleague Valerie Borlein.

[Valerie Borlein]

How could this happen in this time of, like, digital surveillance, right where every move we make is recorded? How could we not know where she is?

[Jessica Mendoza]

Valerie has been working with a team in the newsroom to try to figure out why the Guthrie case has been so hard to crack.

[Valerie Borlein]

We've spent months digging in on the case, trying to find out everything that we could, building immense timelines just to see beat by beat, what was going on at key moments. We interviewed just dozens of people, lots of FOIA requests of personnel files and police records, lots of current and former investigators in the case, and as many people as we could.

[Jessica Mendoza]

If you could boil it down, what is at the root of why Nancy Guthrie hasn't been found?

[Valerie Borlein]

It's not just one factor, right? It was a perfect storm of factors. And in my mind, I've thought about it kind of in three ways. Bad luck, bad calls, and bad blood.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Welcome to the Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Monday, August 3rd. Coming up on the show, why has one of the highest, highest profile criminal investigations in the country gone nowhere? This episode of the Journal is brought to you by Harvey. An AI platform designed for legal and professional services. Built and tested by lawyers, Harvey is trusted by more than 60% of the AmLaw100. The platform dramatically reduces time spent on research, drafting and document review without sacrificing quality, all while meeting the highest industry standards for security and compliance. Harvey AI tailored for law. Visit Harvey AI to learn more and request a demo.

[Chris Nanos]

This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it, ready to make anything online make sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability various 18.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Nancy Guthrie's home is in Pima County, Arizona, on the edge of Tucson. It's a vast landscape, dusty and spiked with saguaro cacti.

[Valerie Borlein]

One of the shocking things to me about visiting there, I live in North Carolina, I've grown up in the South. It is so vast. So it's like 9,000 square miles. It takes three hours to drive across Pima county, that area and only 400 square miles of that 9,000 is developed. The rest of it is desert.

[Jessica Mendoza]

On Saturday, January 31, Nancy Guthrie had dinner with the family of her older daughter Annie. Afterward, her son in law drove her home.

[Valerie Borlein]

He watched her go in the garage and then watched the garage door shut at 9:48 9:50pm and so that's the last time anyone sees her alive.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The next morning, Guthrie was supposed to meet a friend, but she never showed up.

[Valerie Borlein]

So Annie went over to her mom's house and found things that immediately set off alarm bells. And you know, the family has said later that the back doors were propped open. Nancy Guthrie's iPhone and purse were there. And they realized pretty quickly that a lot of things were awry and immediately called 911 to say our mother's missing and we don't know what's going on here. And that was at roughly 12 o' clock on Sunday, local time on Sunday.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Let's take a moment here. Val, can you just tell us a little bit more about Nancy Guthrie? Who is she?

[Valerie Borlein]

She grew up in a small town in Kentucky and went to the University of Kentucky and studied journalism and married a man that she met there. He was a mining engineer. And they traveled all around the world as they started their family. And they were living actually in Australia when the youngest of their three kids, Savannah, was born in the early 1970s. And they decided, well, now it's time that we put down roots. And they decided on Tucson.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Nancy Guthrie has lived in Tucson ever since she was 84 and lived alone. Her family said she was mentally sharp but physically frail.

[Valerie Borlein]

She had a pacemaker and some heart issues and she had a very bad back that caused her difficulty walking. The family has said it was difficult for her to even walk to the mailbox and back unassisted. So they felt strongly it wasn't a wander off.

[Jessica Mendoza]

But that was exactly what the lead supervisor on the scene told the sheriff. At first in a text he called it a missing persons case. But there Were some very concerning signs, Most notably that her doorbell nest camera was missing, Seemingly ripped out. So the supervisor called in homicide. For a few hours, law enforcement seemed to be running the investigation, Both as a missing persons case and as a criminal investigation. But even though the sheriff's department seemed to think a kidnapping was possible, they failed to seal off the property as a crime scene to protect any evidence. That failure would allow reporters, live streamers, and even a pizza delivery person to walk right up onto the front porch. So why is it important that they didn't seal off the crime scene?

[Valerie Borlein]

A crime scene, particularly a violent crime, is totally different. Every. You have got to preserve every ounce that you can of information that's there to give you clues. And not realizing that's what had happened really delayed preserving evidence. I can't tell you the number of times you'll hear a criminologist say that a crime scene is like a stove. It cools down almost immediately right when you turn it off. So I think there was precious time that was lost in those 48, 72 first hours that couldn't be recovered.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Also, a search and rescue plane sat on the ground until dusk that first day because they couldn't find someone to operate its sophisticated surveillance system. According to the wall street journal's reporting, by the time they got it in the air, it was getting too dark for the plane's zoom lens cameras to be of much use. In a recent interview with the wall street journal, Pima county sheriff chris nanos disputed those findings.

[Chris Nanos]

We put our heads down and just do the work. I can assure everybody that we are working hard every day with all of our partners.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The sheriff's department launched drones. Border patrol agents went out with search dogs that first afternoon. Detectives released her photo and description and contacted a volunteer group to help search the neighborhood. Detectives worked through the night collecting evidence. Talk about the agency that was in charge of this investigation, the local sheriff's department, and who runs it.

[Valerie Borlein]

So the pima county sheriff's department is run by the elected sheriff, a guy named chris nanos, and he is a command and control guy. We have reporting that suggests that after his election, initially, he called his direct reports into his office and said, I'm gonna micromanage the out of you. He is a very hands on, decisive person and he doesn't shy from the

[Jessica Mendoza]

spotlight so much, in fact, that at the time of the guthrie investigation, the cable channel a and e had released a reality TV show called desert law. It featured nanos department with all the trappings of other popular police Shows it's

[Chris Nanos]

lawless out desert law premieres Wednesday, January 7th.

[Valerie Borlein]

You're out enforcing the law in the blistering heat during the day. You're out finding the bad guys in the dark of night. So he wanted to show the spotlight on his department.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Nanos had just won reelection as sheriff. It had been a tight and contentious campaign, and afterward, nanos overhauled the department.

[Valerie Borlein]

The sheriff had named new department heads in multiple departments in the months leading up to this kidnapping, including homicide, including cold case, including some critical decision making roles.

[Jessica Mendoza]

That new head of homicide had been reprimanded for poor judgment in a homicide investigation just two months earlier. According to his personnel records, he would go on to run the guthrie case. Charges in that case were dropped for insufficient evidence. The head of homicide did not respond to a request for comment. Doubts about whether or not Nancy guthrie had wandered off ended the next day. That's when the family found out about a ransom note.

[Valerie Borlein]

On that Monday night, our ransom note comes in, but not directly to the family, Right. It came in through a local. There's a big CBS affiliate in Tucson, and they're a big player in Arizona. And these folks send a ransom note in over the tip line through a masked IP address. Makes it very difficult to trace. But there are some clues in there that tell law enforcement pretty quickly. They seem like they might know what they're talking about here. So they share this note with the family. And it says, hello, Savannah, we have your mother. She's safe, but don't screw this up. Here's our demand. And they demanded $4 million in Bitcoin through this crypto address in three days time. And so that was a big moment. So that was that first Monday night, unbeknownst to the public yet. But this, this, that happens with this ransom note.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And then after they received the note, you know, so there's a clock ticking here. After they received the ransom note, Savannah Guthrie and her two siblings posted a video on instagram where they talked to the kidnappers directly. Can you describe that video for us?

[Valerie Borlein]

I mean, it is wrenching to watch.

[Savannah Guthrie]

We too have heard the reports about a ransom letter in the media. As a family, we are doing everything that we can. We are ready to talk.

[Valerie Borlein]

They know the clock is ticking in more ways than one. Right. Because their mother has significant health problems.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Her health, her heart is fragile. She lives in constant pain. She is without any medicine. She needs it to survive.

[Valerie Borlein]

So they're very, very. In addition to being heartbroken, they're very highly motivated to talk.

[Savannah Guthrie]

We need to Know without a doubt that she is alive and that you have her. We want to hear from you and we are ready to listen. Please reach out to us once that

[Valerie Borlein]

ransom note comes in because it's, it's electronic, that is, that is FBI's jurisdiction, right? Jurisdictional lines. It crosses digital communication. So immediately that becomes the FBI's part of the case to deal with.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Okay, so what did the Guthrie's do in response to the ransom note?

[Valerie Borlein]

My understanding is they were very much taking the counsel of the FBI, the folks who are experienced in dealing with this. They did not want to send $4 million to someone without some sort of proof of life. Right. They wanted to know she was alive. And so our understanding is that at the advice of the FBI, they authorized the FBI to send a small transaction, a kind of a down payment on that, to that bitcoin address and then trace, like if someone, if someone accessed it, try to find that person. Nobody ever touched it.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The Guthrie's never sent the full ransom. And as the family was going through this private agony, the world, it seemed, was arriving on Nancy Guthrie's doorstep. That's after the break.

[Chris Nanos]

Foreign. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it, ready to make anything online make sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses Setup required compatibility and availability various 18.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The Nancy Guthrie case exploded onto the national stage almost immediately. Even President Trump got involved posting about it on social media. The main reason the case has gotten so much attention is Savannah Guthrie. She's one of the best known broadcast journalists in the country. Approximately 3 million Americans wake up with her every morning.

[Valerie Borlein]

Part of the reason that we feel so close to these big public figures is we feel like we know them and we're invited into a glimpse of their family. And she had done a hometown segment in Tucson where she did, you know, an eight minute kind of montage of all of the things in town that mean a lot to her.

[Savannah Guthrie]

I grew up there, went to college there. My mom still lives there. And honestly, a part of me has really never left.

[Valerie Borlein]

And it closed with an interview with her mom.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Well, mom, you guys came here in the 70s and you'd been moving all around. What made you want to stay in Tucson? And plant roots? It's so wonderful. Just the air the quality of life is laid back and gentle. Yeah, I liked it.

[Valerie Borlein]

And I think there was some sense. Did I bring this on? Did I bring this? To her bedside in the middle of the night? This violent kidnapper who took her after her mother disappeared.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Savannah took two months away from the show. When she came back, she gave an interview about her mother's kidnapping. She was emotional as she remembered a conversation she had with her brother about how her fame might have led to the crime.

[Savannah Guthrie]

And he said, I think she's been kidnapped for ransom. And I said, yeah, what? What? And then, I mean, it sounds so, like, how dumb could I be? But I just. I didn't want to believe. I just said, do you think because of me? And he said, I'm sorry, sweetie. But, yeah, maybe.

[Jessica Mendoza]

As Savannah Guthrie struggled with the possible impact of her fame on her mother's disappearance, people from around the country were flocking to Tucson. The case had become a media circus on par, Valerie says, with the wall to wall coverage around the O.J. simpson double murder case.

[Valerie Borlein]

It's fascinating to me because I've been a reporter for 30 years, and I've covered a lot of big stories, major national stories. And over the years, you got used to seeing the satellite trucks and the reporters. But this time, the ratio of social media and YouTube influencers, true crime people, just accompanying the traditional press corps was remarkable. New bombshell stuff out. Holy smokes, folks, I am more than happy to look at any and every theory, okay?

[Chris Nanos]

But something tells me there's more to

[Valerie Borlein]

it, and they don't have.

[Chris Nanos]

They didn't release everything to the public.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Yeah.

[Valerie Borlein]

There's like entire lanes of traffic that are blocked by people with, you know, tripods and ring lights sitting in the. In the road. It created an environment that the neighbors felt very much under siege and kind of shut down to talking about the case.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Besides all of them just being there, you know, adding to the crowd, how else did the presence of all of these live streamers, these YouTubers, affect the case?

[Valerie Borlein]

Amateur sleuths bring so much attention to a case and a lot of good questions a lot of times. But it also creates so much distraction. And what that meant was, even in times when there was a vacuum of information, which has been a lot of the time, in this case, you still had this one very prolific YouTuber, for example, who broadcast just in the first month, something on the order of 400 hours of material, there were a number of false flags that were amplified on live streams. And I'm not casting aspersions here, but I'm saying like a hiker found a bone in the desert, a human bone. The recent discovery of human bones sparked true crime theories across the country. And there's a lot of, like, hours and hours and hours of conjecture about this. And the University of Arizona anthropology department pretty quickly said, y', all, that bone is like a thousand years old. But it just created this kind of frisson in the air where it was hard to separate what was true and what was rumored to be true.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Beyond the confusion caused by the amateur sleuths, the investigation itself was also messy. On February 5, five days after Guthrie had vanished, the FBI announced it had moved from a supporting role to a partner in the case. But the Wall Street Journal's reporting shows that FBI Director Kash Patel and Sheriff Nanos never spoke to each other.

[Valerie Borlein]

There is some disconnect about the FBI's role and what they say their involvement was and what the sheriff says their involvement was and when. So I want to be clear about that. The sheriff has said that the FBI was involved starting that Monday morning. Hey, we've got a violent crime here. We're going to bring this task force together. So that process is started early in the week, according to the sheriff's office. But Cash Patel said, look, we were blocked out. They froze us out. We would have gotten a lot more information and maybe could have solved this case. But for the sheriff.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Kash Patel made this point in a media appearance in May.

[Chris Nanos]

The first 48 hours of anyone's disappearance are the most critical. And here's how these cases works. It is a state matter. It's a state and local law enforcement to matter. What we, the FBI, do is say, hey, we're here to help. What do you need? What can we do? And for four days, we were kept out of the investigation.

[Jessica Mendoza]

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Nano said there wasn't any delay. If Patel really believes that his office tried to block the FBI, Nano said, quote, I 100% want him to call me because that's the furthest from the truth. One major point of tension was around DNA testing of evidence that turned up

[Valerie Borlein]

the FBI wanted it sent to Quantico, Right? They wanted it sent to the FBI lab. We can do. We've got the most sophisticated technology. And the sheriff sent it to the lab. He wanted to.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Nano sent DNA samples to a private lab in Florida that the sheriff's department routinely contracted with.

[Valerie Borlein]

And that's not just like, bad feeling. That's actually like, decisions that were made that may or may not have affected the outcome of the case.

[Jessica Mendoza]

None of the DNA samples have turned up useful findings. Nano said he used the Florida lab instead of the FBI's because it already had samples from family members and others known to have visited the house. The FBI's work did lead to perhaps the biggest break in the case. The sheriff's department had struggled to recover video from Nancy Guthrie's missing doorbell camera.

[Valerie Borlein]

What Kash Patel has said they were able to do was go to tech partners and say, help us here recover this video that nobody thinks can be recovered through bits and bytes that are in kind of back end systems. And they were able to.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And the way Patel decided to release the footage was through his own X account.

[Valerie Borlein]

He blasts out on X these shocking video and still footage of a man in a mask with a visible gun and a backpack. Coming up, walking up onto Nancy Guthrie's front step, walking up in the dead of night, leaning over the camera. And it's just. It's shocking to watch. And it was viewed on his social media channels millions and millions of times.

[Jessica Mendoza]

This kind of evidence is critical. Getting an image of a perpetrator is often what breaks a case. It helped identify the Boston Marathon bombers, for example, and Luigi Mangione, who's been charged in the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO. But this video footage didn't generate any decisive new leads in the Guthrie case. Since then, Kash Patel, who had promised to lead the charge, has gone largely silent. An FBI spokesperson said that the state has always been the lead in this investigation and that, quote, the FBI has met every assistance request asked of us, even when requests came late. The most we now know about Nancy Guthrie's whereabouts comes from the kidnappers. Five days after she was taken, the Guthrie family received another ransom note. And what did that second note say?

[Valerie Borlein]

We know now, we did not know at the time, but we know now that that second note said, effectively, we did not realize how serious her health issues were. She perished very quickly after. There's nothing you could have done. She is buried in nature and you will not hear from us anymore.

[Jessica Mendoza]

In response to this second noteworthy, which was not made public at the time, the family made another Instagram video that was pretty cryptic.

[Savannah Guthrie]

We received your message and we understand. We beg you now to return our mother to us so that we can celebrate with her.

[Valerie Borlein]

She posts a video seated on a couch between her brother and sister.

[Savannah Guthrie]

This is the only way we will have peace. This is very valuable to us, and we will pay.

[Valerie Borlein]

And for people that had experience in kind of hostage negotiation, language, code and language, it Was widely read to be okay. There was some sort of message that the mom had died, and we now know that she had, according to these kidnappings.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And since then, six months since Nancy Guthrie disappeared, more than five months, essentially, since that last note, what have the authorities done to find Nancy Guthrie?

[Valerie Borlein]

I mean, in fairness, they have worked around the clock. They really have. There are dozens and dozens of people, as I understand it, still actively working this case, looking into other DNA leads, according to the sheriff. But thousands and thousands of hours of video surveillance came in sorting through that, sorting through tips.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The pima county sheriff's office says the kidnapping is not a cold case. Still, there's seemingly been no new information for months.

[Valerie Borlein]

It's going to take a big break in the case, according to our sources. Someone coming forward and saying what they know or giving enough of a clue. If someone who knows something came forward, they're optimistic that they could find her.

[Jessica Mendoza]

In kidnapping cases, the common sense logic is that getting as much attention as possible can only help. The higher the awareness, the more likely there'll be a break. That's the reason there are amber alerts and pictures of missing kids on the back of milk cartons. But the attention to this case, the perfect storm of Savannah Guthrie's fame, the social media frenzy, and the public feuding between law enforcement agencies, it's oversaturated. And instead of bringing more clarity, it seems to have obscured the truth.

[Valerie Borlein]

There are a lot of people seeking the spotlight here. There become sort of allegiances and teams. Are you pro this side or anti that side? Who do you think did it? There are all these theories that get a lot of oxygen, and we see that in all elements of social media. Right. You can say what you want, but it becomes like this immense amount of noise, and it gets very hard to separate the signal from the noise.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Right.

[Valerie Borlein]

And there are consequences to that, but it's just such a human tragedy at the core of it.

[Jessica Mendoza]

That's all for today. Monday, August 3rd. The Journal is a co production of Spotify and the Wall street journal. Additional reporting in this episode from Hannah critchfield and Jared Mitovich. Thanks for listening. See you, Tom.