Nancy Guthrie case: Unclaimed $1.2M reward suggests ‘very small circle’ of suspects, retired FBI agent says
EXCLUSIVE: TUCSON, Ariz. — The fact that a seven-figure reward remains unclaimed nearly six months after the suspected abduction of Nancy Guthrie from her home in Tucson's Catalina Foothills neighborhood tells one veteran investigator that if the masked intruder on her porch had help, it came from a small, tight-knit group.
"That tells me the circle who knows is very small, and whoever is in it is bound by something stronger than money: blood, fear, shared exposure," said Jason Pack, a retired FBI negotiator and supervisory agent who has been closely following the case. "Those bonds hold. Until they don't."
The more people who know about a crime, the more likely someone would come forward and claim the reward money, he said. The combined sum of rewards in the case is over $1.2 million — and none of it has been claimed 179 days after Guthrie's suspected abduction.
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"Money like that usually pulls somebody loose from almost any group," Pack told Fox News Digital. "It hasn't."
Rather than a dead end, Pack sees the untouched reward as another clue.
"In my experience, a meaningful share of cases like this break sideways," he said. "Somebody gets arrested for something unrelated and starts talking. A relationship ends badly. Somebody's conscience finally outruns their fear. Six months is a long time to hold something this heavy, and the people around whoever did this have had six months to notice the change in them."
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Pack said it looks like the abductor or abductors tried to plan the crime — and did it poorly. At least one suspect is believed to have cased out the house. He wore a ski mask, long sleeves and gloves, and covered the lens of her Nest doorbell camera — which was missing when police arrived the next day.
"When it went wrong, and I believe it went wrong fast, they had no plan for that either," he said. "Everything since reads to me like improvising around a failure, not professionals executing a plan."
Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of "Today" co-host Savannah Guthrie, is dependent on heart medication and has a pacemaker. She has limited mobility — and a close-knit family.
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"She had dinner with her family on a Saturday night, went home, and never made it to church the next morning," Pack said. "That's who we're talking about. Not a case number. A mother who was supposed to be at church."
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While the suspects made critical mistakes, he said, that doesn't mean the investigation has stalled.
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Pack also shared a direct message for Guthrie's neighbors and residents of the surrounding communities:
"Go back and check your own cameras from that time period. Doorbell, security, dashcam," he said. "A lot of systems archive further back than people realize. If you drove through the area that night, pull your dashcam files."
If you saw something but don't have video, it's still worth speaking out, he said.
"And think about the people in your own life. Somebody who left town. Somebody whose behavior turned in February and never turned back," he said. "You don't have to be sure. That's not your job. Sorting it out is [the investigators' job]."
In May, a source with knowledge of the case told Fox News Digital that the FBI was bringing new technology into the investigation.
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Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos, whose department is the lead agency, said in an interview this week that he still believes the case will be resolved.
"We have so much DNA to sort through," he said in an interview aired on "Today." "We have so much, in terms of video evidence, to look at."
And they've spent months learning things from the DNA and the video and other forensics that the public hasn't seen, Pack noted.
"I've watched cases break in month eight, month 14, month 30," said Pack, whose FBI career lasted 21 years, 11 of them as a negotiator. "Most every one of those families had stopped believing it was ever coming."
Anyone with information on the case is asked to dial 1-800-CALL-FBI. An anonymous reward can also be obtained by calling 520-88-CRIME with information that leads to an arrest in the case.
