Nancy Guthrie disappearance: Trump rips tech disclosures, reward hits $200K via anonymous donation

NPR public editor Kelly McBride addressed Thursday what she described was an "inappropriate remark" an NPR host made comparing the appearance of the potential suspect in the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie to an ICE agent.

Last week, NPR's "Morning Edition" co-host Steve Inskeep conducted an interview with a former FBI profiler to discuss the released doorbell camera footage of a masked individual who authorities suspect was involved in Guthrie's disappearance from her Tuscon, Ariz., home Feb. 1.

"So, let me think about this: we have this man. He walks up to the porch, he’s armed, and his face is covered, a little like a federal immigration agent — although it’s more covered even than that," Inskeep said in the exchange. "He’s wearing gloves, his head’s down, other times head up, something in the mouth, looks like a flashlight in the mouth, walks up to the security camera. That’s what I see."

McBride said that "many people" wrote to NPR about the comparison who called it "irresponsible."

"NPR news executives would not discuss this on the record. But no one defended it either," McBride wrote Thursday. "Comparing the intruder on Guthrie's porch to a federal immigration agent was both irrelevant and inflammatory. The short phrase was interpreted by listeners to be a commentary on the controversial tactics of federal law enforcement. Some news consumers who care deeply about the dramatic story of Guthrie's kidnapping felt like the comment was a sign of disrespect."

McBride revealed Inskeep's comment was not in the script and that an unnamed NPR executive told her that he did not intend the remark to be political commentary but rather it was an "off-the-cuff description" of the potential suspect.

She went on to express disappointment in NPR's handling of the comment.

"I wish they would have chosen to explain what happened to the audience. They could have done that here, or Inskeep could have done it on one of his social media accounts. NPR chose to let the interview stand, which means that unfortunate moment will be fuel for those who accuse NPR of anti-Trump bias," McBride said.

This is an excerpt of an article from Fox News Digital's Joseph A. Wulfsohn.

Investigators searching for missing 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie continue to review surveillance footage submitted by neighbors while forensic testing on biological evidence remains ongoing, according to a new update released Friday.

Officials said detectives and federal agents are actively following up on leads, but cautioned that DNA analysis can take significant time and that no additional information is being released at this time.

Authorities are still working to identify the person captured on doorbell surveillance video outside Guthrie’s Tucson home. Investigators are seeking information related to that individual but say they are not ruling out the possibility that more than one person may be involved.

Meanwhile, emergency call centers remain overwhelmed with reports related to the case.

The Pima County Sheriff’s Department said its 9-1-1 Communications Center continues receiving hundreds of calls daily, urging the public to submit only credible information. Officials stressed that opinions or commentary about the investigation should not be directed to emergency or non-emergency lines.

From Feb. 1 through Feb. 19, 2026, the department logged 32,906 total calls, including 23,971 administrative calls, sharply higher than the same period last year, when officials recorded 21,983 total calls and 8,968 administrative calls.

The FBI said it has received more than 21,000 tips related to the case so far.

Authorities also announced temporary roadway changes near Guthrie’s home as the investigation continues, and said no press briefings or media availability are scheduled. Media access to the 9-1-1 Communications Center has also been suspended to prevent disruption to emergency operations.

Officials say any major developments will be announced through formal press conferences.

The Embassy of Mexico to the United States told Fox News on Friday that there is “no indication” Nancy Guthrie is in Mexico.

It cited a response from Mexico Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection Omar García Harfuch to a question at a press conference. Harfuch was asked Friday about reports that the FBI has reached out to Mexico about the case, the embassy said.

“There is no line pointing to Sonora, nor any investigative group working jointly on that line regarding this case in Mexico,” Harfuch said, referencing the Mexico state that borders Arizona.

“There is therefore no indication that she [Nancy Guthrie] could be in our country — no indication, nor any line of investigation that would suggest she was in our country,” he added.

TUCSON, Ariz. — Investigators looking for the missing mother of "Today" host Savannah Guthrie have not ruled out the possibility that she may have been abducted by more than one person, according to authorities.

"The sheriff has said all along that while investigators are working to identify the person seen on doorbell video, they are not ruling out that that was the only person involved," a spokesperson for the Pima County Sheriff's Department told Fox News Digital Friday.

Surveillance video recovered from the 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie’s Nest doorbell camera shows a masked man tampering with the camera on her doorstep.

A separate still image also released by the FBI appears to have been taken by the same camera and shows a man wearing similar clothes as the one seen in the video.

However, he does not appear to be carrying a backpack or holster, prompting speculation from experts and web sleuths alike that he may be a second suspect.

"I’ve been wondering about this still picture," said Randy Sutton, a retired Las Vegas police lieutenant and the founder of The Wounded Blue.

The Fox Flight Team also obtained drone video showing what appears to be a pair of smashed floodlights at the back of the home. While it’s unclear when they were broken or if they were disabled in connection with the crime, it could be another indicator of multiple suspects, according to Sutton.

Retired Supervisory FBI Agent Jason Pack told Fox News Digital on Friday that there is “painstaking, precise work” happening involving DNA collected in the Nancy Guthrie disappearance. 

Pack pointed to biological evidence recovered from inside Guthrie's residence in Tucson, Arizona, that is currently being processed at a private out-of-state lab. 

“It was collected early in the investigation. But separating individual DNA profiles from a biological mixture is painstaking, precise work. It cannot be rushed,” he said. 

“When the private lab finishes, those completed DNA profiles go back to the Pima County Sheriff's Department. From there, the FBI takes the profiles and uploads them into CODIS. Within a short window after that upload, investigators will know whether there is a hit,” Pack continued. “If a profile matches a known offender in the national database, the investigation changes direction almost immediately.” 

“At the same time, investigative genetic genealogy is running as a parallel track,” he added. “Instead of looking for an exact match to a known offender, genealogy analysts upload the DNA profile to commercial databases and search for partial matches, relatives who share enough DNA to help map a family tree and work toward identifying the unknown contributor. It is slower and more complex than a CODIS hit, but it has identified suspects in cases where traditional database searches turned up nothing. Both tracks are running simultaneously. Investigators do not have to choose one over the other.” 

Pack also mentioned that DNA recovered from a glove found about two miles from Nancy Guthrie's home is being investigated as well. 

"Both tracks are running simultaneously. Investigators do not have to choose one over the other. Think of it this way: the glove DNA, If relevant, puts someone in the neighborhood. The residence DNA could put someone inside the house. Those are two very different things in a court of law and in an investigation,” Pack told Fox News Digital. 

He said the DNA profiles in the private lab “may be the closest thing investigators have to a name." 

“Everything is waiting on the science to finish,” Pack concluded. “And while Investigative Genetic Genealogy night be the road forward, the Guthrie family could sure use a short cut. Those usually show up in a tip from the public." 

Retired Supervisory FBI Agent Jason Pack told Fox News Digital on Friday that there is likely a “fresh set of eyes” checking the work of investigators in the Nancy Guthrie case.

“There is something else that happens around day 20 in a major investigation that rarely gets mentioned publicly. Investigators will sometimes have a fresh set of eyes check their work,” he said.

“When a team has been embedded in a case for three weeks, absorbing briefings and running leads every day, they develop assumptions. Details that seemed unremarkable in week one get normalized. A fresh set of agents and analysts who have not been living inside the daily grind of this case will look at the same timeline, the same evidence, the same video, and ask questions from fresh and alternative viewpoints. It is not a sign of failure. It is deliberate investigative practice,” Pack added. “And it happens around exactly this point in an investigation of this scale.”

Guthrie went missing from her home in Tucson, Arizona, since Feb. 1.

Forensics expert Sheryl McCollum is encouraging witnesses to submit more tips in the Nancy Guthrie case, saying investigators will make sure they are “run down properly.” 

“If you have any information, if think you saw something, heard something, if you overheard a conversation where you think somebody's talking about what they did to an old 84-year-old woman, call and tell them,” McCollum told “Fox News @ Night.” “They will funnel that through. They will make sure it's run down properly.” 

Cecilia Ochoa, a 911 dispatch manager, said in an interview with Fox News on Thursday that call-takers are working to carefully screen information before passing it along to investigators, who are reviewing thousands of tips related to the case. 

“When somebody calls in, a tip or a lead, we have call takers that are trying to ask very specific questions, they’re trying to be as detailed as possible,” Ochoa said. “We want to make sure that the tips and the leads that we’re receiving here are credible, that they’re a viable piece of information and it’s something that our investigators might be able to act on.” 

Fox News' Jasmine Baehr and Kitty Varnavides contributed to this report. 

James Gagliano, a retired FBI supervisory special agent, told Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” on Friday that the way Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos is releasing information in the Nancy Guthrie investigation is not “the best way to conduct the messaging in a case this large.”

“I'm super careful in how I criticize from the armchair quarterback perspective, but the thing that I think has really hurt this investigation, number one, that the FBI has not been offered the lead and number two, the fact that the information that's been put out through fits and starts, and things have to be walked back,” Gagliano said.

“Things were said incorrectly, and what the sheriff is doing is not operating through a public information officer or a public affairs office where there's a weekly or bi-weekly press conference. He's doing these individual interviews and each one of them provides a little something different. I don't think this is the best way to conduct the messaging in a case this large,” Gagliano continued.

He also reacted to President Donald Trump’s criticism of investigators working the case.  Trump on Thursday took issue with authorities telling the media they were flying a Pima County Sheriff’s Department helicopter equipped with an FBI Bluetooth "sniffer" to detect the missing woman's pacemaker.

"I didn't like when they talked about going after the pacemaker before they even started going after it," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on his way to Georgia.

“The question becomes, how much is too much? What should we let the public know that we are looking for or we need help in, and what are things we should keep close to the vest?” Gagliano said. “And obviously searching for the pacemaker, it’s a technology that's been around for a while, it operates off of Bluetooth, and there are things open source online about it, but the president's point was well taken, that sometimes we might give the bad guys too much information.”

The Attorney General’s Office of the State of Sonora (FGJES), a region of Mexico that borders Arizona, said Wednesday that to date, it had "not received any formal request for collaboration, assistance, or exchange of information from U.S. authorities or Mexican federal agencies” in relation to the Nancy Guthrie case.

The office said it issued the statement in response to “publications indicating that the FBI would have requested support from Mexican authorities for the search for Nancy Guthrie, as well as versions suggesting a possible presence in Mexico.”

"The FGJES reiterates that, should an official request be received through the appropriate institutional channels, it will be attended to with full willingness and within the framework of its legal powers and the existing cooperation mechanisms," it added. "The public is invited to stay informed through official sources."

Fox News Digital's Adam Sabes contributed to this report.

Authorities investigating the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie are looking into whether the suspect had an accomplice. 

"The sheriff has said all along that while investigators are working to identify the person seen on doorbell video, they are not ruling out that that was the only person involved," a Pima County Sheriff's Department spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added that Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos has indicated hope that "she is alive" and “doesn’t have any evidence to prove she’s not.”

The FBI has described the suspect seen in surveillance images and video outside Nancy Guthrie's front door around the time she vanished as a male between 5 feet, 9 inches to 5 feet, 10 inches tall, with an average build and seen carrying a 25-liter "Ozark Trail Hiker Pack" backpack.

Investigators searching for Nancy Guthrie are now turning to an advanced forensic tactic that has helped solve some of the nation’s most high-profile criminal cases.

National correspondent Matt Finn reported from Tucson that authorities recovered DNA and other biological evidence from inside Guthrie’s home and plan to analyze it using forensic genetic genealogy.

The technique, used in cases like the Golden State Killer investigation, allows analysts to search for distant relatives of an unknown DNA profile and build family trees to help identify a suspect.

“One thing we can do is search for distant relatives and use forensic genetic genealogy to figure out who someone is or who their nearest, you know, living relative is,” CEO of Othram, Inc. David Mittelman told Fox News.

Experts say the method can reveal far more than traditional offender databases.

“But there’s a lot of other things we can learn,” Mittelman said. “We can learn about the biogeographical ancestry of someone. We’re going to learn a lot details that can help steer the investigation into a more focused pursuit of the person that left that DNA.”

Authorities are still running the biological evidence through standard law enforcement databases as well.

Meanwhile, investigators say there is still no confirmed link to Mexico, despite speculation due to Tucson’s proximity to the border. Officials say it is standard procedure for the FBI to coordinate with Mexican authorities in cross-border regions.

Sheriff Chris Nanos has also publicly cleared the Guthrie family in the case.

President Donald Trump on Thursday criticized investigators probing Nancy Guthrie's disappearance, saying he was shocked that authorities told the media they were flying a Pima County Sheriff’s Department helicopter equipped with an FBI Bluetooth "sniffer" to detect the missing woman's pacemaker.

"I didn't like when they talked about going after the pacemaker before they even started going after it," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on his way to Georgia.

"If in fact they could do it that way, the person would say, 'Well, I’m not going to let that happen' ... I can’t imagine why they would have done that, just in terms of strategy," he continued.

"We have to start reporting on other subjects also and see what happens. It's a very sad situation," the president added.

Trump has also said he wants Guthrie's kidnapper to face the death penalty if she does not return alive.

A Tucson neighbor who knows missing 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie says the community is still struggling to process her disappearance and has taken new steps to protect his own home.

Lloyd Anderson, who lives near Guthrie and attended church with her, told Fox News Digital he recently installed security cameras following her disappearance.

“I have had alarms, and I just recently put cameras in too,” Anderson said, confirming the upgrades came after Guthrie vanished.

Anderson said the situation has been unsettling for neighbors.

“It’s certainly different. We’ve never gone through this before. It’s something we just have to live through,” he said. “And I knew Nancy, and I think she was a wonderful lady. And I think we just got to give her our best wishes and God’s help.”

He said he knew Guthrie from church and from seeing her around the neighborhood.

“She sat in church, and I knew her from the neighborhood here,” Anderson said. “And just like I’m doing now, walking by her house.”

He later noticed she stopped attending and reached out.

“I called her the first part of January and asked her why we hadn’t seen her,” he said, adding that she had begun attending other church gatherings and Bible discussions.

Like many in the area, Anderson said the uncertainty surrounding her disappearance weighs heavily on the community.

“Those things are all bothersome to all of us,” he said. “But I think everyone who knows about this is very concerned and hoping that she is returned to her family as she left.”

He added, “That’s getting less and less a possibility, I guess. I don’t know.”

Fox News Digital's Adriana James-Rodil contributed to this reporting.