A crime expert has offered the sharpest theory yet in the four-month disappearance of Nancy Guthrie: the 84-year-old Tucson woman may have been taken by someone local, killed soon after the abduction and buried in the desert.
That theory has put Jon Buehler back in the conversation because the case is being searched now for a reason. Savannah Guthrie said in March that she wondered whether her celebrity status may have played a role in her mother's disappearance, and the new speculation reaches even farther, narrowing the suspect to a person who may have known the area and recognized the family name. Nancy Guthrie was reported missing on February 1 after she failed to attend a church service.
Barbara Butcher said she believes the kidnapper probably carried Nancy Guthrie's body into the desert and buried her there. She said someone nearby, perhaps a handyman or service person, may have learned that Guthrie was Savannah Guthrie's mother and concluded she must have money. Butcher also said the most likely outcome was that Guthrie died of shock, fright, heart disease or something similar very soon after being taken from her home.
Guthrie was last seen the night before she was reported missing, when her son-in-law dropped her back at her Tucson home after a dinner and games night at her daughter Annie's house. The Pima County Sheriff's Department has said only that she was targeted, and has not publicly said the kidnapper was a handyman. That gap matters because it leaves the new theory unsupported by investigators even as it appears to fit the circumstances raised by outside experts.
What has kept the case unsettled is how little has surfaced despite the passage of time. Guthrie has not been seen or heard from since, medications she needed daily were left behind, and experts believe the suspected disposal site could be in the desert near the Mexican border, roughly 60 miles from her home. If the latest theory is right, the question is no longer only who took her, but whether investigators are still looking for a living suspect and a body already hidden in the sand.
