Nancy Guthrie disappeared from her Tucson, Arizona, home two weeks ago, setting off a potent chain reaction of federal and local criminal investigation, amateur sleuthing and public obsession that – so far – has resulted in neither the 84-year-old grandmother being located or anyone named as a suspect or, indeed, arrested.
It is a case that is both enthralling and baffling the American public, casting doubts on the ability of investigators to get to the bottom of the mystery that each day generates a fresh 24-hour news cycle – but seemingly little in the way of solid fresh leads likely to solve the case.
On Thursday suspicions grew that the case may not be a kidnap-for-ransom scheme focused on the mother of the NBC Today show host Savannah Guthrie – or at least that her abduction did not start out as a kidnapping – but perhaps a burglary gone wrong.
Related: Arizona sheriff denies withholding key evidence on Nancy Guthrie from FBI
Guthrie’s family have ceased issuing appeals to the would-be kidnapper or kidnappers. No communication is recorded. No ransom has been paid. But the FBI has doubled the reward for information leading to an arrest to $100,000, offered a description of a man 5ft 9in or 5ft 10in tall with an average build, and given a description of a black 25-liter Ozark Trail Hiker backpack he was wearing.
“We hope this updated description will help concentrate the public tips we are receiving,” the FBI stated in the X post. The agency said it had collected more than 13,000 tips since Guthrie was taken from her home on 1 February.
Donald Trump was asked Friday whether the drug cartels or potentially another “nation state” could be involved in Guthrie’s disappearance.
“You can’t say that yet”, he responded outside the White House. “It’s a little bit early. But it’s somebody [who] either knew what they were doing very well, or they were rank amateurs. Either way, it’s not a good situation”.
The Pima county sheriff’s department said it had fielded more than 18,000 calls and asked residents living near Guthrie’s home for video surveillance footage going back weeks. Then surveillance video circulated online of a man attempting to scale a wall five miles away, wearing similar clothes and backpack to a man seen in video recovered from the doorbell camera at Guthrie’s home on the night of the crime. Officials told NBC News that law enforcement officers had cleared the man.
That video, recovered from Google archives, showed the presumed abductor, or an accomplice, in a ski mask and neoprene gloves carrying what appeared to be a pistol in an oddly placed holster, attempting to block the lens with vegetation from Guthrie’s garden.