A retired Arizona law enforcement officer says the possibility that 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie was taken across the Mexican border is "a strong possibility", and that acknowledging it early on would have handed the case to federal investigators, something local authorities appeared determined to prevent.
Dave Smith, a retired lieutenant with the Arizona Department of Public Safety, told Fox News Digital that the proximity of Guthrie's Tucson home to the border, roughly 60 miles to the border town of Nogales, makes Mexico an obvious line of inquiry in any serious crime. And he offered a pointed theory about why that line may have been slow to develop.
Smith's remarks land amid an ongoing public dispute between FBI Director Kash Patel and Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos over when federal authorities were invited into the investigation, how evidence was handled, and whether critical time was lost in the early days after Guthrie vanished from her home in the early hours of February 1.
Smith, who spent his career in Arizona law enforcement, described the Tucson landscape as uniquely challenging for investigators. The desert wash system, dry riverbeds called arroyos, threads between residential neighborhoods and creates natural corridors that are difficult to surveil or search.
"The whole Tucson Valley is literally built around these arroyos, these ephemeral rivers. This is literally your green belt here, only instead of parks and things like the rest of the nation has, we have this wonderful desert area. But again, it works between houses. It's like a giant alley through the neighborhoods."
He described the evidence environment as hostile to investigators. Sun degrades trace material. Rain washes away footprints. "The evidence is transitory," Smith said. "Once it rains, your footprints go away, the sun is hard on other forms of evidence and frankly this is a tough place to investigate crimes."
But it was Smith's theory about Mexico, and about the jurisdictional consequences of pursuing it, that cut sharpest. He said his instinct in any major Tucson-area crime points south.
"My first thought is always Mexico in a major crime, because it's a great haven, and it's hard for us to follow up on. But in this case, obviously there was [somebody was taken with intent]. And I think that that's why we need to wonder, perhaps, was she taken to Mexico?"
Smith noted that once you cross into Mexico at Nogales, you leave a small Arizona border town and enter a metro area of 300,000 people, a place where someone could disappear quickly.
Then he connected the dots to jurisdiction. If Mexico were suspected as a destination, the case would become a federal matter. And Smith said local authorities seemed intent on preventing that outcome.
"My personal theory is, if Mexico was suspected, that would make it a federal investigation. There seemed to be a great deal of effort to keep the feds out of this case. And the best way to do it was to deny any possibility of interstate or international transport of the person's body or kidnapped."
That is a serious accusation from a veteran of Arizona law enforcement, not a pundit, not a podcaster, but a retired DPS lieutenant who understands how jurisdiction works and how it can be manipulated.
Smith's theory aligns with complaints FBI Director Kash Patel has made publicly. Patel said the Bureau offered its help immediately and was rebuffed for days. Speaking on Sean Hannity's podcast, Patel described the early standoff bluntly.
"What we, the FBI, do is say, 'Hey, we're here to help. What do you need?' What can we do? And for four days, we were kept out of the investigation."
The dispute extended to physical evidence. A hair sample recovered early in the probe was sent not to the FBI's Quantico lab but to a private lab in Florida preferred by the Pima County Sheriff's Department. Patel said he had a plane ready to move the evidence overnight.
"I had a fixed-wing aircraft on the ground ready to move it immediately through the night. And they said, 'we're sending it to Florida,' and then, I don't know, 60 days. They have jurisdiction, so it's their call."
Eleven weeks passed before that Florida lab shared the sample with the FBI for more advanced testing. Patel said the delay cost the investigation.
"We would have analyzed it within days and maybe gotten better information or more information. Our lab's just better than any other private lab out there, and we didn't get a chance to do that."
The growing controversy around Sheriff Nanos has only intensified as the case drags on without an arrest, a named suspect, or a confirmed location for Guthrie.
Sheriff Nanos responded to Patel's criticism with a written statement insisting that "coordination" with the FBI "began without delay." He said a member of the FBI Task Force was present at the scene and that both the department and the Guthrie family notified the Bureau promptly.
"The laboratory utilized by the Pima County Sheriff's Department and the FBI Laboratory in Quantico have worked in close partnership from the outset and continue to collaborate in the analysis of evidence."
Nanos also said in February that the investigation had not developed firm evidence to indicate Guthrie was taken over the border. Days later, Fox News Digital reported that the FBI had contacted Mexican authorities in connection with the search, a move that suggests federal investigators took the possibility more seriously than the sheriff's early public statements indicated.
The gap between Nanos's "no firm evidence" statement and the FBI's outreach to Mexico is the kind of contradiction that erodes public confidence. So is the fact that the crime scene was briefly released before the FBI arrived, allowing journalists and delivery drivers to walk onto the front porch where blood spatter had been found.
Nanos has faced scrutiny on other fronts as well. Questions about his prior departure from a law enforcement job in El Paso have added to doubts about his credibility while leading the highest-profile case in Pima County's recent history.
The FBI, working with Google, recovered doorbell-camera footage showing a masked individual on Guthrie's front steps. National Review reported that the footage had not been available initially because Guthrie did not have a Google Nest cloud subscription, but residual data was recovered after investigators served Google with a search warrant. The timeline from that reporting places Guthrie arriving home around 9:50 p.m. on January 31, her doorbell camera disconnecting at 1:47 a.m. on February 1, and her pacemaker app disconnecting from her phone at 2:28 a.m.
Blood evidence at the front door has drawn its own analysis. A retired FBI profiler suggested the blood pattern pointed to a single abductor, a detail that would narrow the investigative focus considerably if confirmed.
A ransom note demanding millions of dollars in bitcoin was sent to media outlets. Newsmax reported that the note suggested Guthrie may have been moved to the West Coast or possibly northern Mexico, based on the stated return time to Tucson. The note included two deadlines and said there would be no further communication or negotiation. Harvey Levin of TMZ said the letter indicated Nancy Guthrie was aware of the ransom demand.
Two men were briefly detained in connection with the investigation and later released. No charges have been filed against anyone. No suspects have been publicly identified. The Washington Examiner reported that the Pima County Sheriff's Department formally cleared all of Guthrie's siblings and their spouses, with Nanos stating the family "has been nothing but cooperative and gracious and are victims in this case." Investigators are also reviewing Walmart sales records tied to the suspect's clothing and analyzing a glove found near the home for DNA.
A combined reward of more than $1.2 million remains unclaimed. The family continues to urge anyone with information to call 1-800-CALL-FBI.
Savannah Guthrie, Nancy's daughter and co-host of NBC's "Today," returned to the program after more than two months away. The stalled progress of the case has drawn outside experts into the public conversation, with former FBI agents weighing in on everything from the ransom to the investigative strategy.
What emerges from the Guthrie case is not a single failure but a pattern of choices, each one defensible in isolation, each one adding up to lost time. The crime scene released too early. The FBI held at arm's length. A hair sample routed to a private lab in Florida instead of Quantico, with an eleven-week wait before the Bureau got access. A Mexico theory publicly dismissed by the sheriff even as federal agents were reaching out to Mexican authorities behind the scenes.
Dave Smith's theory, that the Mexico angle was suppressed to keep the case local, remains unproven. He called it a "personal theory." But the circumstantial pattern he describes is hard to ignore. Tucson sits 60 miles from the border. A ransom note hinted at locations outside Arizona. The FBI moved to contact Mexico. And the sheriff said there was no firm evidence pointing south.
Nancy Guthrie's home sits in a neighborhood where many houses cost seven figures. She is 84 years old. She has been missing for months. No one has been charged.
When local officials treat federal help as a threat rather than a resource, the people who pay the price are not the officials. They are the victims and the families left waiting.
