Nancy Guthrie Case Declared Cold by Retired FBI Agent Nearly Six Months After Tucson Woman's Abduction

Nearly six months after Nancy Guthrie vanished from her Tucson-area home, a retired FBI agent says the investigation into her disappearance has effectively stalled, even as authorities continue pursuing tips in one of the highest-profile missing-persons cases in the country.

Steve Moore, a former FBI agent who has closely followed the investigation, said in a video interview posted to YouTube on Tuesday that the case now meets the bureau's informal definition of cold.

"The case is cold. The case is completely cold," Moore said. He added that the FBI does not formally close such cases but often reassigns them: "They don't close those cases ever, but they'll give them to new agents who are coming in with a new set of eyes who are not indoctrinated into the way the FBI necessarily investigates everything. And sometimes people see them in a different light."

Moore suggested that a shift in approach, rather than simply more time, may be what the investigation needs. "What most people would do is start at the beginning and try not to take the same steps that the investigators did before because we know the result of that," he said. "Try going off in a different direction. Try anything you can to mix things up a little and see if you don't bump into something that they didn't."

He also said the lack of resolution is not something the FBI takes lightly, describing the bureau as operating under significant internal pressure. "What you're probably looking at is the FBI is evaluating not just the case, but how they work the case and trying to find what they can do to look at it from a different standpoint," Moore said. "And so I don't see right now that they are giving up on the case by any stretch of the mind, but I do believe if I were them, I'd be evaluating whether we had the right people on it."

Despite the bleak assessment, Moore said he does not believe the case will fade entirely from view. "I don't think this is going away," he said. "But it may go out of the public view for a while."

A case that has gripped the country

Guthrie, 84, is the mother of NBC "Today" show co-anchor Savannah Guthrie. She was reported missing on Feb. 1 after friends noticed she had not shown up for her scheduled church service in Tucson. She had last been seen the night before at a family dinner hosted by her daughter, Annie Guthrie.

Investigators with the Pima County Sheriff's Department and the FBI's Phoenix Division later recovered previously lost footage from a doorbell camera at Guthrie's home. That footage showed she had been taken from the residence against her will, confirming law enforcement's early suspicion that she had been abducted rather than simply gone missing on her own.

The FBI has described the suspect seen in that footage as a man of average build, roughly 5-foot-9 or 5-foot-10, wearing a face mask, gloves and a black backpack at the time of the abduction. No suspect has been publicly named in the nearly six months since.

A trail that has gone quiet

Substantive public updates in the case have been sparse since early April. Investigators have continued to ask for the public's help identifying the masked individual seen in the doorbell footage, but no major breakthroughs have been announced in recent months.

The case has, at various points, included competing threads that ultimately led nowhere conclusive. Purported ransom notes circulated in the early days of the investigation, one of which was reported to have claimed Guthrie had died after her abduction. A person was briefly detained during a traffic stop south of Tucson in the case's first two weeks, then released after being questioned, according to earlier reporting on the investigation. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos has also had to publicly deny reports at various points that additional individuals were being detained in connection with the case.

Search efforts have extended beyond Arizona's borders. In June, a Mexican volunteer search group, Buscando Corazones Nogales, searched two locations near Nogales, Sonora, after receiving an anonymous tip suggesting Guthrie's remains had been buried roughly 70 miles from her Tucson home. That search, along with earlier searches prompted by similar tips, did not locate her body. The same volunteer group has also discovered unrelated unmarked graves in the region during its searching efforts.

Savannah Guthrie has offered a $1 million reward for information leading to her mother's safe return or to an arrest in the case, and the Guthrie family has repeatedly appealed to the public for help. Retired FBI agent Moore and a retired Pima County SWAT commander have both suggested in recent weeks that a nearby Native American reservation could be worth further scrutiny in the search, though no evidence has publicly tied the case to a specific location.

Scrutiny of the investigation itself

The pace of the investigation has drawn its own share of criticism. Pima County Sheriff Nanos has faced questions from local officials over his handling of the department, and the Pima County Board of Supervisors has voted to formally question him about his management and background. Outside volunteer search organizations, including the United Cajun Navy and a Sonora-based group known as Madres Buscadoras, have separately sought permission to assist with searches, reflecting continued public frustration over the case's lack of resolution.

Authorities have said that DNA evidence, including hair samples recovered from Guthrie's home, remains under analysis, and that a forensics lab previously involved in cracking the Long Island Gilgo Beach serial killer case is believed to be assisting with the investigation.

The FBI has not announced any changes to how the case is being staffed or investigated, and it remains unclear whether Moore's assessment that the case has gone cold reflects any internal shift within the bureau or is simply an outside observation based on the pace of public updates.

Anyone with information related to Guthrie's disappearance is asked to contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or through tips.fbi.gov, the Pima County Sheriff's Department, or the 88-CRIME tip line. Investigators have said the case remains open and active, even as nearly six months have passed without a named suspect or a confirmed resolution.