A delivery man has told news outlets he was the person detained for questioning over the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie before being released, hours after the FBI shared surveillance videos of a masked person wearing a handgun holster outside Guthrie’s front door the night she vanished from her Arizona home.
Authorities have not confirmed that the person they picked up was released.
Officers detained a person during a traffic stop south of Tucson, according to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. It did not immediately provide details about the person or the location. The FBI referred questions to the sheriff’s office.
A Phoenix television station, KNXV-TV, known on-air as ABC15 Arizona, interviewed a delivery man who said he had been detained by police on suspicions of kidnapping Guthrie. He said he and his wife pulled the car over when they noticed that police were following them.
The man, who gave only his first name and said he lived in the town of Rio Rico, said he was innocent and that police released him after several hours.
In a separate interview, the man told The New York Times: “I hope they get the suspect because I’m not it.”
His account could not be independently verified. Local and federal authorities have not confirmed that the person who they had detained was released.
The department and the FBI were conducting a court-authorised search on Tuesday night at a location in Rio Rico, about an hour’s drive south of Tucson, the department said in a statement. It was expected to take several hours.
Guthrie disappeared on February 1 and since then the case has gripped the nation. Until Tuesday, it seemed authorities were making little headway in determining what happened to the 84-year-old mother of Today show host Savannah Guthrie or finding who was responsible.
Savannah Guthrie and her two siblings have released a series of video statements pleading for the return of their mother and indicating a willingness to pay a ransom. Authorities have described Nancy Guthrie as mentally sound but with limited mobility. She takes several medications and there was concern from the start that she could die without them, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos has said repeatedly.
The community of Rio Rico — population 20,000 — is roughly an hour’s drive from Guthrie’s home and about 15 miles (24 kilometres) north of the US-Mexico border.
The videos released earlier on Tuesday show a person wearing a ski mask and a backpack. At one point, they tilt their head down and away from a doorbell camera while approaching Guthrie’s front door. The footage also shows the person holding a flashlight in their mouth and trying to cover the camera with a gloved hand and part of a plant ripped from the yard.
The videos — less than a combined minute in length — gave investigators and the public their first glimpse of who was outside Guthrie’s home in the foothills outside Tucson. But the images did not show what happened to her or help determine whether she is still alive.
FBI Director Kash Patel said the “armed individual” appeared to “have tampered with the camera.” It was not entirely clear whether there was a gun in the holster.
The videos were pulled from data on “back-end systems” after investigators spent days trying to find lost, corrupted or inaccessible images, Patel said.
“This will get the phone ringing for lots of potential leads,” said former FBI agent Katherine Schweit. “Even when you have a person who appears to be completely covered, they’re really not. You can see their girth, the shape of their face, potentially their eyes or mouth.”
Investigators have said for more than a week that they believe Nancy Guthrie was taken against her will. She was last seen at home on January 31 and reported missing the next day.
DNA tests showed blood on Guthrie’s front porch was a match to her, and a doorbell camera was disconnected in the early hours of February 1, police have said.
AP
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