A retired Arizona law enforcement official told Fox News Digital he believes 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie, the mother of NBC Today anchor Savannah Guthrie, may have been taken across the border into Mexico after she was kidnapped from her Tucson home on February 1. Dave Smith, a former lieutenant with the Arizona Department of Public Safety, pointed to the city's proximity to the border and details from surveillance footage as the basis for his theory.
Police believe Guthrie was kidnapped from her home. No arrests have been made. No proof of life has ever been provided. And the FBI is still offering a $50,000 reward for information about her whereabouts, as the Daily Mail reported.
Smith's comments add a new dimension to a case that has already drawn national attention, and sharp public friction between local and federal investigators.
Tucson sits roughly 60 miles from the Mexican border, and Smith said that geography shapes every major criminal investigation in the region. He described Mexico as a natural destination for someone trying to evade American law enforcement.
"My first thought is always Mexico in a major crime, because it's a great haven, and it's hard for us to follow up on."
Smith called the possibility a "strong possibility," citing his years of experience working cases near the border. He noted that the city of Nogales, Sonora, just across the line, has a population of roughly 300,000, making it far easier for a suspect to disappear.
He also pointed to surveillance footage recovered from Guthrie's home. That footage showed a masked person outside the front door who appeared to tamper with the doorbell camera before it was snatched off. Smith said the suspect appeared to be carrying a holstered pistol in what he described as a "Mexican carry" style.
Investigators have also uncovered blood drops on the porch, gloves, and the ripped-off doorbell camera, physical evidence that, combined with the footage, led police to conclude Guthrie was taken against her will. A retired FBI profiler has previously analyzed the blood evidence and suggested a single attacker may have carried her from the scene.
Smith described the Tucson terrain as uniquely hostile to investigators. The desert around the city is not the smooth, sandy expanse most people imagine. It is broken by arroyos, dry riverbeds that cut through neighborhoods like natural corridors.
"The whole Tucson Valley is literally built around these arroyos, these ephemeral rivers. It's like a giant alley through the neighborhoods."
That terrain, Smith said, makes it easy to move unseen, and makes evidence fragile. Rain washes away footprints. The sun degrades other physical traces. He called the desert "a great place to dump a body" but stressed that this case appeared to involve someone taken with deliberate intent, not discarded.
"The evidence is transitory. Once it rains, your footprints go away, the sun is hard on other forms of evidence and frankly this is a tough place to investigate crimes."
That difficulty was on full display recently when FBI agents and police searched a desert area about 15 minutes from Guthrie's home after bones were discovered. The find briefly raised hopes, then Tucson Police confirmed the remains were "prehistoric" and entirely unrelated to the Guthrie case.
The investigation has involved FBI agents and Pima County detectives probing ransom messages that demanded bitcoin payments. But no proof of life was ever provided in connection with those demands, a detail that raises serious questions about whether the messages were genuine or opportunistic.
Smith drew on his career experience to frame the Mexico theory in practical terms. He told Fox News Digital that his agency had recovered "hundreds and hundreds of stolen vehicles across the border" during his tenure.
"If you kidnap someone, why wouldn't you take them over there?"
The question is pointed. And it leads directly to the most politically charged element of Smith's analysis: his suggestion that local investigators may have resisted the Mexico angle precisely because it would have shifted jurisdiction.
Sheriff Chris Nanos and FBI Director Kash Patel have publicly disagreed over how quickly federal authorities were brought into the case. That friction has become a story in its own right, with Pima County supervisors pushing to remove the sheriff over perjury allegations as the investigation has dragged past the three-month mark.
Smith offered his own reading of the dispute. He suggested the tension between local investigators and the FBI may be tied to concerns that evidence pointing to Mexico would have automatically made the case a federal investigation, pulling it out of local hands.
"My personal theory is, if Mexico was suspected, that would make it a federal investigation. There seemed to be a great deal of effort to keep the feds out of this case."
That is Smith's assessment, not an established fact. But it aligns with the visible public disagreements between Nanos and Patel, and it raises a troubling possibility: that jurisdictional pride or political considerations may have slowed the response in a case where every hour matters.
Meanwhile, a forensics lab known for cracking the Gilgo Beach case has been eyed in connection with the Guthrie investigation, suggesting that advanced forensic techniques may eventually play a role in breaking the case open.
Savannah Guthrie recently returned to NBC's Today after stepping away during the search for her mother. The family has offered no public comment reflected in the reporting reviewed here, and the investigation remains open with no suspect identified.
Criminal profilers have offered competing theories about what happened. One profiler has suggested the kidnapping may have been an act of retribution against the Guthrie family, though no official evidence has been cited to confirm that motive.
Smith's theory about Mexico remains unconfirmed. But the facts he marshals, Tucson's proximity to the border, the style of weapon carry he identified on the surveillance footage, the difficulty of the terrain, the bitcoin ransom demands with no proof of life, and the visible friction over federal involvement, form a coherent picture that deserves serious investigation, not dismissal.
The open questions are stark. Who took Nancy Guthrie? Where is she now? Were the ransom messages real or a diversion? Did jurisdictional disputes cost investigators time they could not afford to lose?
Three months in, an 84-year-old woman remains missing. The FBI's $50,000 reward remains uncollected. And the border, just 60 miles away, remains an open question that no one in authority has publicly answered.
When a retired lawman's first instinct in a major crime is "Mexico," and the people running the investigation seem determined not to look in that direction, taxpayers and families alike deserve to know why.
