Police Address Woman’s Body Found Near Nancy Guthrie’s Hometown After Reports Searchers Were Looking for ‘Something Decomposed’
Jason Pham
A woman’s body has been found in a canal in Arizona more than a month into the search for Today host Savannah Guthrie‘s missing mother, Nancy Guthrie.
The remains were discovered on Friday, February 6, in a canal in Phoenix, Arizona, around 100 miles from Tucson, where Nancy went missing in the middle of the night on February 1. “Details on the call indicated that an adult female was on the nearby canal bank and was unresponsive,” police said in a statement. “When officers arrived, they located the woman, who was ultimately pronounced deceased on scene.”
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department, which has led the investigation into Nancy’s abduction from the start, told Fox News that it has not received any confirmation that the woman’s body was Nancy or connected to her case. “PCSD says it has not been advised of any law enforcement activity at the canal in Phoenix this morning being connected to the Nancy Guthrie case,” Fox News reporter Michael Ruiz tweeted.
The discovery of the body comes after reports that the volunteer search group, Madres Buscadoras de Sonora, was looking for “something decomposed” on Nancy’s property. In an interview with USA Today February, Lupita Tello, a Tucson resident and a member of the group—a Mexico-based volunteer organization made up of mothers who lost their own searchers—demonstrated how she poked the dirt outside of Nancy’s home with a sharp metal rod soldered to a handle in hopes of finding a lead. After wiggling the rod in the dirt, Tello pulled it out and smelled the sharpened metal tip for anything rotting. “If it smells bad like something decomposed, that’s where we start,” she said.
Also in February, Savannah told her followers that she believed her mom “may already be gone” in an emotional Instagram video. “We also know that she may be lost; she may already be gone. She may already have gone home to the Lord that she loves, and is dancing in heaven with her mom and her dad and her beloved brother, Pierce, and with our daddy,” Savannah said. “And if this is what is to be, then we will all accept it. But we need to know where she is. We need her to come home.”
Rob Shuter reported in a post on his “Naughty But Nice” Substack on March 3 that Savannah officially said “goodbye” to her mother and returned to New York City, where she lives, after 30 days in Tucscon. “She didn’t want it to be a goodbye,” the insider said “But she knows she can’t live in limbo forever.”
The report came after Savannah, her sister Annie, and brother-in-law Tommaso Cioni were photographed standing in front of a memorial outside Nancy’s home with signs that read, “Please come home.” “That sign breaks her every time she sees it,” the source said. “She still believes. She just doesn’t know what she’s believing for anymore.” The insider continued, “There were no words left. Just love. Just heartbreak.”
