Nancy Guthrie Case: Investigator Claims Nothing Inside Her Home Explains Her Disappearance 

Investigators in the baffling disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of Today show co-host Savannah Guthrie, have chillingly described the scene at her home as if she just disappeared, with little evidence of an actual crime inside her Tucson, Ariz., home.

On her “Drop Dead Serious” podcast, true crime reporter Ashleigh Banfield highlighted this eerie notion, suggesting there was almost nothing inside the home to explain the disappearance, making it appear as though she vanished.

“An investigator on the case has described Nancy Guthrie’s home this way: ‘But for the blood pattern in that front hall foyer — the droplets — that go over the threshold of the front door into her entrance …and then down the walkway, but for that, and this man appearing on camera and that camera being taken … nothing else inside the home appear as if a crime happened. 'But for those things, it’s as though Mrs. Guthrie got up in the middle of the night out of bed and walked out of her house and disappeared,'" Ashleigh explained.

Ashleigh explained that she thought there was so much evidence inside her home that investigators were proceeding. She referred to Savannah's emotional interview with Hoda Kotb, in which the TV host said the back doors at her mom's home were inexplicably left "open."

“Savannah has mentioned back doors propped open, plural — it might actually be two doors in the same entrance. I don’t know if it’s multiple entrances, because she has three back doors," Ashleigh said.

"We’re unclear what Savannah means by back doors, plural, propped open. But these clues, other than doors propped open, man on the camera, camera smashed, and this blood pattern, nothing else. That leaves me really flummoxed," she admitted.

Ashleigh wondered whether things looked less bizarre to the investigators who arrived at the onset of the ongoing mystery.

"But I will say this. Early in the investigation, they’re showing up. And maybe that’s how the scene presented … that’s the first thing they see — 'What the h--- happened here, because it doesn’t look like anything?' she mused.

"Weeks later, the FBI gets involved, crime scene, micro processing. Maybe things look different. But it’s as vexing to them as it is to the rest of us. If they didn’t have the blood and that man on camera, they might have thought she just walked out," she said.

Ashleigh focused on Savannah's candid interview in which some crime watchers criticized her for revealing too much.

"It’s frustrating and upsetting because I just wish they had so much more to go on …. the bewilderment Savannah talked about, wondering, 'Where are you?' Put yourself in her shoes, you can't even imagine what it’s like for them," Ashleigh said.

The podcaster also noted that on her show last week, she quoted an inside source in the investigation saying they are frustratingly coming up empty.

"If you saw my episode the other day, an investigator said to the progress, 'We ain't got s---.' That is also extremely frustrating," Ashleigh exclaimed.

"How does a guy who looks like a bit of a buffoon maneuvering his way around the front, how does that guy get away with this? How is it that the full force of the US government, the feds and Pima County Sheriff's Department, 400 staff members, agencies, agents, officers, etc., at one point on this case ... how is it that this guy, this guy, can outsmart them? Or has he?” she wondered.

On March 28, authorities identified a woman’s body found in a Scottsdale canal as 28-year-old Passion Schurz. This officially ruled out any link to Nancy's case, following days of public speculation.

That development followed the March 26 arrest of Travis Reynolds, a 22-year-old Pima County Sheriff’s deputy, who was charged with kidnapping. While the arrest occurred during the search for Nancy, the charges stem from an unrelated incident involving a woman he was transporting to jail.