It has been six months since 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie vanished from her Tucson home, and the Pima County Sheriff's Department has managed to find zero suspects while somehow still finding time to arrest two innocent men and trash their houses. Now those men want $3.25 million, and honestly, it's hard to argue with their math.
Six Months In, the Score Is: Zero Suspects, Two Lawsuits
Nancy Guthrie, mother of Today show anchor Savannah Guthrie, was last seen safe at her Tucson, Arizona home on February 1st. According to The Guardian, authorities including the FBI believe she was kidnapped. There is blood evidence at the house. There are no suspects. There is no Nancy.
What there is, as of this week, is a notice of claim, a legal precursor to a full lawsuit, filed against Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos and a detective on the case. The filing was dated Monday and obtained by Tucson NBC affiliate KVOA. Two men who were detained and questioned in the days immediately following Guthrie's disappearance say the sheriff's office wrecked their reputations, ransacked their homes, and locked them up without cause. They want $3.25 million in damages.
The Pima County Sheriff's Department marked the six-month milestone this week by posting on social media that the investigation "remains active and ongoing." Great. Very reassuring. An elderly woman is missing, possibly dead, and the agency running point on the case has been busy picking the wrong guys and feuding with the FBI.
Meet the Two Men Whose Lives the Sheriff Blew Up
The plaintiffs are Carlos Palazuelos and Daniel Maddox. Neither was ever charged with anything. Both are now suing.
Palazuelos was detained on February 10th for questioning and released without charge. That part is annoying enough on its own. But Sheriff Nanos, according to the notice of claim as reported by NBC News, then posted on social media that a person had been arrested and was "currently being questioned in connection to the Nancy Guthrie investigation." The notice says his home was "ransacked" by investigators. The lawsuit alleges physical, emotional, and reputational harm. Palazuelos is seeking $2.5 million.
Maddox got it in a slightly different flavor of awful. He was handcuffed outside the home belonging to his mother, Josefina, which investigators then searched and allegedly damaged. He was released after several hours of questioning, also without charge. He is seeking $500,000. His mother is separately claiming $250,000 for the property damage. So in total, this one botched investigation cost two families their dignity, their property, and potentially their reputations, all while the actual perpetrator remains completely unidentified.
The Sheriff Who Can't Stop Fighting the FBI
If the wrongful arrest allegations weren't enough, Sheriff Nanos has been running a remarkable side operation this whole time: a very public feud with the FBI. The Guardian reports he came under scrutiny early in the investigation over claims he had withheld crucial evidence from federal investigators, which he denied. In May, a move to remove him from the case failed.
This week, Nanos reignited the fight. FBI Director Kash Patel claimed in June that agents "showed up immediately and offered our assistance. We were not let in for four days." Nanos went on the Sharpe Exchange podcast to call Patel "misinformed" and to note the two have never even spoken face to face. "When information is put out there that's not accurate, it hurts the case," he said, apparently without irony, given that he posted on social media that a suspect had been arrested when no one had actually been arrested.
To be clear: this is the law enforcement environment surrounding one of the most high-profile missing persons cases in the country right now. A turf war between local and federal investigators. A sheriff who live-tweets suspects who aren't suspects. Two men whose lives got upended. And still, not a single break in the actual case.
Savannah Guthrie Says It's 'a Nightmare That Will Not End'
Savannah Guthrie, 54, posted a video to her Instagram account earlier this week saying her family had "done our part" and was still in agony over her mother's disappearance. She called it "a nightmare that will not end." That description covers rather a lot at this point.
The Guthrie family has offered a $1 million reward for information leading to their mother being found. The FBI has added another $100,000. The Bureau, according to The Guardian, has said it is looking for a man approximately 5 feet 9 to 5 feet 10 inches tall with an average build. That is the physical description of roughly one-third of the male population of the American Southwest, but it is what investigators have to work with after six months.
The Dingo Take
You are supposed to look at this case and see a tragic mystery, a family in pain, investigators doing their best under difficult circumstances. That framing collapses the second you look at what the sheriff's department actually did. They grabbed two men. They searched their homes. They broke things. They posted about an arrest on social media when no one had been arrested. They got into a months-long shouting match with the FBI. And they have produced zero movement on an active kidnapping case while an 84-year-old woman is missing and presumed in serious danger.
Carlos Palazuelos and Daniel Maddox did not disappear Nancy Guthrie. The sheriff's office apparently had exactly zero evidence they did, because they let both men go without charges after a few hours. What the sheriff's office did have was the irresistible temptation to appear like it was doing something, anything, in front of a watching national press corps. So they made arrests that weren't arrests, posted about them publicly, and left two innocent men to clean up the wreckage of their reputations. The $3.25 million price tag is the bill for that performance.
Somewhere out there, a real suspect is walking around free. The FBI thinks it knows what he looks like. The Guthrie family has put up a million dollars to find him. The agency that should be leading that charge is instead preparing to defend itself in civil court over what it did to the wrong guys. This is not a story about a cold case. It is a story about how badly a law enforcement agency can blow a case while the clock runs out on a missing elderly woman, and how little anyone seems able to do to stop it.
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