Person detained in Guthrie abduction case following release of masked man video
A ‘subject’ was detained during a traffic stop in Arizona, marking a turning point in the search for missing 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie
Authorities on Tuesday released video of an armed man in a ski mask tampering with the doorbell camera at the Arizona home of US television journalist Savannah Guthrie’s elderly mother shortly before she was abducted nine days earlier in a presumed kidnapping for ransom.
Retrieval of the images came hours before another major break in the search for 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie – the first known arrest in the case following days in which investigators reported making little progress.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department said in an online statement on Tuesday night that its deputies had “detained a subject during a traffic stop” south of Tucson and that the person was “being questioned in connection to the Nancy Guthrie investigation”.
The sheriff’s office declined to provide further details. A US law enforcement official separately told Reuters late on Tuesday that a “suspect” in the investigation had been taken into custody in Arizona but did not elaborate.
Later still, the sheriff’s department reported that its deputies and an FBI forensic team conducted a court-authorised search of a “location” in Rio Rico, Arizona, about 95km (60 miles) south of Tucson near the Mexico border.
A woman identifying herself as the mother-in-law of the man who was detained told CNN late on Tuesday that authorities searched her Rico Rio home after telling her they were acting on a “tip that the lady was in my house”.