
The Abduction of Nancy Guthrie | Vanished from Tucson
Show Notes
Jinkies! When an 84-year-old woman vanishes from the same home she's lived in for half a century, and the only witness is a doorbell camera that someone deliberately disconnected -- the gang knows something deeply wrong has happened.
In this special combined episode, Shane brings the mystery of Nancy Guthrie's disappearance to Josh and Kim for a full deep-dive investigation and unmasking. On the night of January 31, 2026, Nancy was dropped off at her Catalina Foothills home outside Tucson, Arizona, by her son-in-law after a family dinner. By 1:47 AM, her Google Nest doorbell camera had been disconnected. By 2:28 AM, her pacemaker monitoring app lost its connection to her phone. By morning, she was gone.
Nancy Guthrie is the mother of NBC Today Show co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, a beloved community figure who spent 17 years at the University of Arizona creating programs that brought music to hospital patients and introduced high school students to medicine. She raised three remarkable children largely on her own after her husband Charles, a mining engineer, died of a heart attack in Mexico in 1988. At 84, Nancy lives alone with limited mobility, chronic pain, a pacemaker, and daily medication described as potentially fatal if missed.
Surveillance footage -- recovered by the FBI from Google's backend systems despite Nancy having no cloud subscription -- shows a masked figure on her front porch wearing doubled vinyl gloves sealed at the wrists, a ski mask, and a holstered handgun, carrying a flashlight in his mouth and an Ozark Trail Hiker Pack on his back. Blood confirmed as Nancy's DNA was found on the front porch in droplet patterns consistent with bleeding from the nose, mouth, or face. The trail leads into one of the most watched missing persons cases in the country, with a $100,000 FBI reward, a $6 million Bitcoin ransom demand of unconfirmed authenticity, a California man arrested for sending a separate hoax ransom text, and a public dispute between the Pima County Sheriff and the FBI over evidence handling.
Like, what if the very technology meant to protect us -- doorbell cameras, pacemaker monitors, smart home systems -- becomes the roadmap of a crime instead?
What You'll Hear
- The minute-by-minute timeline of Nancy Guthrie's abduction, from 9:50 PM drop-off to discovery the next morning
- How the FBI retrieved doorbell camera footage from Google's backend systems when no cloud subscription existed -- and what that means for everyone's privacy
- Blood spatter analysis of the porch evidence and what forensic experts say the droplet patterns reveal
- The $6 million Bitcoin ransom demand, the hoax arrest of Derrick Callella, and how investigators tell real ransom notes from fakes
- The growing tension between the Pima County Sheriff and the FBI over DNA evidence and a glove sent to a private lab in Florida
- A discussion of how AI, surveillance technology, and cryptocurrency tracing are changing modern investigations
Join the Investigation
If you have any information about the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or submit tips online at tips.fbi.gov. The FBI is offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to Nancy's recovery or the arrest and conviction of those responsible.
Want to keep investigating with the gang? Join us on social media and share your theories. Every episode, every mystery -- we're in this together.
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Credits
Shane Waters — Founder & Host
Josh Waters — Co-Host
Kim Morrow — Co-Host & Lead Editor
Produced by Myths & Malice