Nancy Guthrie Sheriff Accused of Flubbing His Experience After ‘Catastrophic’ Fumble in ‘National Embarrassment’ Investigation
Six weeks into the Nancy Guthrie investigation, there are questions about why the case has seemingly gone cold so quickly. Police have released surveillance video and photos, plus recovered DNA. However, no suspect has been identified, and no theory about what happened has been made public.
A lot of those questions have turned on Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos, whose department is leading the investigation, with some reports going as far as examining his entire work history.
Related: Who are Savannah Guthrie’s siblings?
The Arizona Republic reported that Nanos stepped down from the El Paso Police Department in 1982 after being accused of a series of infractions, including excessive force, off-duty gambling, improperly using his siren, and tardiness. There was also an allegation that he kicked a suspect in the head so badly that they ended up in the hospital.
At the time, he was sanctioned with 37 days of unpaid leave and was reportedly told to either step down or get fired. That was in 1982; however, in his publicly posted resume, Nanos wrote that he was with El Paso Police Department until 1984. The Pima County Sheriff called this a clerical error.
Nanos wasn’t too happy to get asked about this particular issue. “That’s your ‘urgent’ request? You sure you don’t want to go back to my high school and ask why I got swats from the principal? Good luck with your hit piece,” he told the Republic.
If this is all surfacing now, it’s because a lot of people are taking issue with the way Nanos has handled the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie. A source told Radar Online that the investigation has been a “catastrophe” and a “national embarrassment for the whole department” due to Nanos. “He’s making us look bad,” the insider said. “The rank and file hate this guy’s guts, and now the whole country sees why – and it’s a tragedy that it has to involve, by all accounts, a good and decent 84-year-old woman who happens to have a famous daughter. That’s the real horror here.”
Nancy Guthrie was reported missing on February 1. As of today, the Pima County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI don’t have any serious leads, though new information suggests Guthrie might have been injured when she was taken.
Andrew Bringuel, aretired FBI agent who now operates a private security consulting firm, said the following, “Without knowing if anything of [value] was indeed stolen, my opinion is the subject’s intent was to kidnap Mrs. Guthrie but something went wrong, violence took place, and she was injured but not killed,” he explained in an interview with Newsweek. “If his intent was to murder her, he could have done so with the weapon on his person. He clearly wasn’t against the use of violence as the evidence suggests he caused an injury to Mrs. Guthrie.”
“If she resisted, he hurt her – how badly in her compromised state may have led to tragic consequences the subject didn’t plan,” he added.
The reward for information about Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance is up to $1 million.
