Seventy-five days after 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie vanished from her Arizona home, the Pima County Sheriff's Department broke weeks of silence on the case, and managed to make things worse. A social media post late Thursday declared, "Update: Nancy has been located," complete with a photo stamped "LOCATED." The Nancy in question was not Nancy Guthrie. It was Nancy Radakovich, an 82-year-old woman from an unrelated case.
The post landed like a match in dry brush. Guthrie, the mother of "Today" show host Savannah Guthrie, has been missing since Jan. 31, and the case has drawn intense national attention. Followers of the investigation, already frustrated by what they see as a slow and poorly managed response, erupted on X, accusing the department of "clickbait" and worse.
The Pima County Sheriff's Department had not shared any official statement on the Guthrie case since March 24, nearly a month of public silence on one of the most closely watched missing-persons investigations in the country. When it finally did post a case update on Thursday, it addressed reports that DNA evidence had been sent to an FBI lab for advanced analysis.
The "Nancy has been located" post did not arrive in a vacuum. Sheriff Chris Nanos has faced sustained criticism over his handling of the Guthrie investigation. Days after Guthrie disappeared on Jan. 31, Nanos ordered the crime scene at her home to be released, a decision that drew sharp questions from law enforcement observers and the public alike.
Earlier in April, Nanos sat down for an interview in which he defended his management of the case. The specifics of what he said were not detailed, but the interview itself signaled that the sheriff felt compelled to respond to mounting pressure.
The FBI's involvement in the investigation has been a point of contention. The department's Thursday post stated that the bureau's role was nothing new.
The Pima County Sheriff's Department posted on X:
"PCSD has worked with the FBI since the beginning of the Guthrie investigation. This is not new information."
That framing, dismissing news coverage of the FBI lab's work as old hat, struck critics as defensive rather than informative. The department also addressed the DNA evidence trail in the same thread.
"The private lab we utilize in Florida continues to share information with the FBI lab & other partner labs across the country. DNA analysis remains ongoing."
Hours after that update, the department's social media team shared the Radakovich post. The image featured the 82-year-old woman's photo with "LOCATED" stamped across it, under the words "Update: Nancy has been located." No last name. No case number. Just "Nancy."
For anyone following the Guthrie investigation, and by this point, that included a large and vocal online audience, the implication was unmistakable. It looked like the department was announcing that Nancy Guthrie had been found.
She had not. She remains missing.
X users did not hold back. One commenter, posting under the handle @RoJoe1968, put the complaint plainly:
"Of all the posts you've made about a missing person being located (Mr/Mrs last name, or first name/last name), you chose THIS ONE to use the first name only??"
Another user, @TrueCrimeKeith, was less diplomatic: "I swear to God this Twitter account is run by Mr. Magoo."
Whether the post was careless or deliberate, the effect was the same. It sowed confusion in a case where public trust in the department was already thin. The Pima County Sheriff's Department did not, as of the reporting, issue any correction or clarification regarding the misleading post.
The Guthrie case has been shadowed by doubts and unusual developments from the start. The decision to release the crime scene so quickly after the disappearance raised alarms among former law enforcement officials who questioned whether the department was treating the case with appropriate urgency.
The nature of the disappearance itself has been debated, with some former federal officials questioning the department's characterization of events.
NewsNation's Brian Entin reported that the evidence sent for DNA analysis includes hairs found in Guthrie's home. "I am told the evidence includes hairs found in Guthrie's home," Entin posted. That detail, if confirmed, suggests investigators are still working to identify who was present at the scene, more than two months after the 84-year-old went missing.
The department's use of a private lab in Florida for DNA work, rather than relying solely on FBI facilities, has also drawn scrutiny. The Thursday post appeared designed to push back on that criticism by emphasizing that the Florida lab shares information with the FBI and other partner labs.
Meanwhile, the case has attracted the kind of attention that brings its own complications. A previous PCSD post warned the public not to fall victim to "fundraising scams" falsely claiming to raise money for Guthrie's family. The department clarified that no legitimate campaigns were linked to Guthrie, a sign of how far the case's profile had spread and how many opportunists it had attracted.
Ransom demands and anonymous claims about Guthrie's fate have further muddied the waters, adding pressure on a department that appears to struggle with basic public communication.
A law enforcement agency investigating a high-profile kidnapping has one job on social media: provide clear, accurate information. The Pima County Sheriff's Department went nearly a month without any public statement on the Guthrie case, from March 24 until Thursday's update. When it finally broke that silence, it posted a defensive thread dismissing FBI lab involvement as "not new information." Then it capped the evening by posting a first-name-only "Nancy has been located" update about a completely different woman.
The sequence is difficult to explain as mere coincidence. At best, it reflects a department so disconnected from the public's interest in its most prominent case that no one on the social media team thought to flag the obvious confusion. At worst, it suggests an institutional indifference to the family and the public that has been watching this case for 75 days.
Suspicious activity near Guthrie's home has been a recurring concern throughout the investigation, and the public's appetite for answers has only grown.
The question of whether the department can handle this case competently is no longer just about forensic technique or investigative strategy. It extends to whether the agency can manage the most basic element of public accountability: telling people what is happening, clearly and honestly.
Former law enforcement figures have publicly weighed in on the case's direction, adding outside pressure on a department that seems to generate new credibility problems with each public statement it makes.
Nancy Guthrie is still missing. Her family is still waiting. And the agency responsible for finding her cannot even post on social media without causing confusion about whether she has been found. That is not a communication problem. That is a leadership problem.
