Key questions surrounding abduction of Savannah Guthrie’s mother as ‘Today’ host asks for prayers

We have *** lot of work in front of us. We, we have *** job to do and we have someone’s life who is at in jeopardy and so job number one is we gotta find her and we gotta, we gotta work hard to do that. I understand there’s great attention on this and and rightfully so, and I appreciate it and I thank you for it because it has generated *** lot of leads for us um and so we’re tracking those leads and we’re doing things with evidence that that you would expect us to be doing um so having said that we’re going to set this up. I know that *** number of you yesterday um you guys drove me crazy yesterday I was going from. Uh, AM to all the way to 9, 1011 midnight, uh, answering concerns and questions and and it’s just too tough, um, and it’s, and it’s not fair to the case. So what I’m going to tell you is today we’re gonna do this similar to what we’re doing right now here we’ll, we’ll take questions. It’s not really my briefing, it’s your briefing. You’ll be able to ask us some questions. We’ll probably shut you off after *** while because I just can’t be here all day. We have work to do. But we’ll take some questions and then in *** couple of days unless something breaks we’ll do this every couple of days so uh and we’ll set up with you through our PIO teams to give you uh anything that comes up that might change but clearly they will notify you on these. What I call media briefings. So with that I’m gonna ask uh John to come up, um, if you’ve got *** statement to say, John, and then we’ll take some questions and we’ll get back to work. Hello, I’m uh John Edwards. Uh my spelling is J O N E D W *** R D S. I’m the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s office here in Tucson. Um first, we want the community to know that the FBI is doing everything in our power to bring Nancy Guthrie home to her family. The FBI is working alongside the Pima County Sheriff’s Department on this incident. In terms of what the FBI is doing, we are providing the following support. Primarily it’s analytical and technical support in the following ways. We’re downloading and analyzing cell phones, obtaining cell tower information, conducting interviews, and providing any and all investigative support that the sheriff’s department needs. We’re looking at this from every angle, but we need your help. If you live in the area or saw something on Saturday night, the 31st of January or Sunday morning, the 1st of February, please report it to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department or the FBI at 1-800-CAL-FBI. Every lead and tip is important. We are aggressively pursuing and looking into every single one. Again, please help us bring Nancy Guthrie home. Thank you. We’ll take some questions. Sheriff, Sheriff, is there any indication so far as to whether this was *** random abduction or targeted? It’s like I said earlier, you know, we’re looking at all the leads and we, we don’t know. We’re going, we’re going to assume both sides of that. We’ll look at both sides of that idea what Nancy Guthrie was wearing or the type of car that she might have left from or any identifiable information that the public could use to help with those tips. We do not. Sheriff Sheriff, do you believe that one or more than one person was involved in the? I just no clue. It could have been one. It could have been more. I don’t know. Let me get. Is there any indication that Nancy Guthrie is still alive? We know the medication played *** critical role here. It’s been 48 hours. She needs it every single day. Are you looking for someone that is still alive? We hope we are. We hope we are. Sheriff said earlier that you don’t believe there’s *** wider threat to the public. If you’re not sure if it’s targeted, why do you believe there’s no wider threat to the public? Well, we have crime in Tucson all the time, right, like any city, and so when you say *** threat to the public, is there somebody out there who’s kidnapping elderly people in the middle of the night every night? We’ve not heard that. We don’t believe that’s the case. We do believe that Nancy was taken from her home against her will, and that’s where we’re at. Sheriff, Sheriff, when you reference violence at the site. Can you elaborate on that? And also, was there *** sign of forced entry? Any valuables taken, any bank or ATM cards used after her disappearance? We don’t, we’re not getting into that. What I tell you is like any crime scene, we process this crime scene. We gathered all the evidence we could to include looking for what fingerprints, DNA, camera images, everything you can imagine, and we gathered that out. Those things have been submitted forward to the Labs to technological companies to help us and that’s we’re like you we’re waiting for those returns to come back. Did you find DNA that did not belong in that house, the window of time from when she was last seen to when she was reported missing, and I know you guys are asking for help from the public. Is there any way to Narrow down what time you might be up. I know there was *** report about *** pacemaker, uh, dinging like around 2 o’clock in the morning. Is there any way to indicate to people, hey, look around 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. to help them you know, I, I, I, I really don’t want to get into narrowing down the time because narrowing it down means we could miss some tips and leads. We’re working on with the data we’ve we’ve submitted for, for, uh, investigative analysis. Working to see if that time can be tightened up, but for now we’re going with what we told you earlier. She was dropped off at 9:30 and she was found to be missing at about 11 o’clock Sunday morning. anyone else in the house, we’ve submitted all kinds of samples for DNA and we’ve gotten some back but nothing to indicate any suspects. Anybody in the neighborhood? I know you’re looking at video, different surveillance cameras or anything that we should be looking at. Different cars. I have nothing in that regard. Have any demands been made by kidnappers? We have all kinds of investigative leads we’re working on, Sheriff. We noticed that Sheriff, we noticed that the camera on the front of the house is missing. Do you believe the perpetrator purposely took the camera? Don’t know that. We’re looking into that as well. Has that scene been fully processed now. We saw deputies leave around 6 o’clock last night. We didn’t see tape go up, you know, an Amazon driver was able to walk right up to the. Is that pretty standard for how you handle this? The scene is done. We’re done with the residents. If we need to go back to get maybe we want to do something with some other piece of evidence there, we contact the family and let them know, but we have turned that over to the family. I don’t have the time, but it was sometime yesterday, I believe. tire tracks or any ma’s around the house? No. Was there any, would you please take us through the timeline that you’ve established of the events so far and 9:45, 9:30, 9:45, we were told she was left at her home by the family at 11 o’clock in the morning. The family got notice from somebody at church that she was not at church. They went to the home, found her to be missing. That’s, that’s the timeline from Saturday night 9:45, we’ll say to Sunday morning 11 o’clock. Let me get somebody back here please. That’s the family from the church as well. We’re doing all kinds of interviews. Yes, I’m sure we have. Have you been able to access the footage from the cameras at the house? Well that’s all been submitted and we’re doing our best with those companies who own those cameras or built those cameras. Are those videos from the cameras from the surveillance? Are there any plans to release the video from the cameras, surveillance footage? We don’t even have them yet, so no, not at this time. This active investigation. Of *** suspicious man *** few doors down last week, is that anything that you guys are aware of? I’m not aware of it. My detectives may be. There’s *** lot of detective work being done, and I just can’t get into those weeds or even discuss with you what they may or may not have learned from the board yesterday. Are there specific resources that maybe the board has not granted that would have made *** difference responding to? Well, you know, that’s that’s getting into my own local politics. I apologize. Yes, the board *** few weeks ago denied *** request for more cameras, more drones, more, more AI capabilities with our own body worn cameras, all those things, you know, that you’d have to talk to the board. Um, I, yeah, I’m, I’m not probably not the right time to go into this. Sheriff Let me, let me get, let me get somebody else here. Yes, she’s still in this area. Do we believe in this area or is there somewhere else? We don’t know where she is, so we’re we’re like any investigation, you start from the from the point of where we last saw her and we work out and we’re working as far out as we can go. Sheriff of forced entry at the house, like any broken windows or whatever. Does it seem like people just went in and out? There are concerns at the house that concerned us from the early on part of this. Investigation and that’s all I will tell you. Yes ma’am. Sheriff, is there any history with Nancy meeting police at her place or concerns that she was worried about somebody following or, you know, we, our investigative team has looked into all of those things and that has not been brought to my attention, so she may have had something like that, but I’m not aware of it. What is the extent of collaboration with the federal government? Obviously FBI is here, CBP, are there other agencies also? CBP’s role in this was in our search and rescue mission where they, we constantly use them. They have great, great dogs too. Our dogs aren’t, aren’t, aren’t tracking dogs for this. Theirs are. And so they came out and did that. Uh, anybody else though that we’ve asked for help from, whether it’s the FBI, uh, I know if, if we needed help from CBP or DEA or ATF, they would gladly give it. I’ve heard from leadership from all sorts of. Agencies not just at the federal level but across the state, every one of them saying, Sheriff, you need anything, we’re here. So you obviously said investigators when they got on scene, they found suspicious circumstances when the family called originally to report her missing. Did they say anything about the state of the home? I don’t know that. That I don’t know. Let me, let me make sure I’m getting some different people here. Yes ma’am. Yes, so there was blood that was found inside the house and you’re testing it for DNA. How much blood and where was it? I’m not saying there’s blood inside that house or outside that house. What I’m saying is our team processed *** scene like you would think of any crime scene. We go in and we process it. We look for things like that blood, DNA, any kind of, any kind of physical evidence, fingerprints, anything, and all of that is gathered and submitted to *** lab. That lab will report back to us what they find. So far what we found from that lab is nothing that would tell us this is who did this. We’ll take *** couple more questions and then the sheriff’s got to go. Sheriff, can you walk through the evidence that was found at the scene in as much detail as possible? No, I cannot. What is the bottleneck of the surveillance footage? I know you said some of it is in the cloud, but you’ve also been reached out to tech companies that are saying they’re cooperating. Why do you not have the surveillance? That’s what I tell them. How come I don’t have this? Where’s my evidence? It is *** process and I’m sorry, but, but you know, we’re grateful that there’s large corporations and companies who have leaned over, bent over backwards to help us, to say, Hey, sheriff, tell us what you need. And, and, and so yeah, I’m not, I can’t slam them and, and, and we’ve asked them. They know the urgency here. But I’m like you. What do you mean I don’t know that now? Yes, it’s tough on you earlier. You were asked if there were any question, last question. You were asked if there was any ransom, and you didn’t say no. You said we’re following all leads. Does that mean *** ransom has come in? We’re following all leads we have. That’s all I can tell you. We get, we’ve got hundreds of leads, and it’s from you that produced those. Leads by telling people we need help and I’m grateful for that. But yeah, I’m not going to get into all that. We have *** team designated to deal with all of our leads. They’re looking into all of that. We are sharing all of our leads with the FBI. They are helping us in evaluating those leads, how good they are, where their priority should be, and so we’re just Look, I know you guys are, are, are doing your job and you’re doing *** great job, um, but we have *** job to do too, and I have, I, I really need to back away from this for *** while and we’ll see you uh unless something breaks. Unless something breaks, we’ll see you Thursday morning. Uh, PIO will give you *** time frame. I’m guessing somewhere around 11, 11:30, but I need your emails. If you are not on the email list, get with me in the corner. I’ll be right by the sheriff’s, OK. OK. you go.