Savannah Guthrie, co-anchor of the popular NBC News morning show “Today,” has posted several video messages with her brother and sister, appealing to their mother’s captors for her return, pleading for the public’s help in solving the case, and even expressing a willingness to meet ransom demands.
Nancy Guthrie was last seen on January 31, when family dropped her off at her home following an evening dinner with them, and relatives reported her missing the following day, authorities said.
Sheriff’s deputies, many in tactical gear, on Friday converged on a house in an affluent Tucson-area neighborhood less than 2 miles (3 km) from Nancy Guthrie’s home, in what appeared to be a search of that property.
A sheriff’s department spokesperson said the activity was connected to the Guthrie investigation.
CNN reported that no arrests were made during the operation.
Shortly after the reports of the police operation surfaced, Baird Greene started trending on social media.
The reason Baird Greene became social media trend was because the Tucson house that was the site of a SWAT operation was reportedly owned by the man.
It was also reported that law enforcement asked a man and a woman to come out of the home, Unconfirmed reports suggest the individuals may have been renting the property from Greene.
Pictures of a man named Manoj Saranathan were circulated with claims that he was detained from the property because investigators identified him using technology that can recognize people from skull measurements. However, authorities did not confirm the information.
While Greene’s name has circulated widely online due to the raid on his property, authorities have not named him a suspect. The FBI recently doubled the reward for information on Nancy Guthrie’s whereabouts to $100,000.
Several discarded gloves found during the investigation, including some found roughly 2 miles from Guthrie’s home, were undergoing forensic analysis, the department said.
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told Reuters that no proof of life has surfaced since the abduction but he was quick to add: “There’s not been any proof of death either.” He said his working presumption is that Nancy Guthrie remains alive.
“Hope is sometimes all we have, it really is,” he said. “I have a team of 400 officers from federal government, state government, local government. I have a community of a million people here who are invested in this, who want her back. Sometimes all we have to go on is hope. I’m not going to kill that.”
Meanwhile, speculation about the identity and whereabouts of Nancy continue online. A large number of social media users are convinced that the abductors might be someone she knew or someone in her circle.
Some people shared Nancy’s old social media posts against US President Donald Trump as they criticized the government’s failure to recover her.
