It has been more than two weeks since Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of NBC News host Savannah Guthrie, went missing from her Tucson, Arizona, home in the early morning hours of February 1.
As reported on Tuesday’s AM Update, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos wrote in a statement Monday afternoon that he has ruled out members of Nancy’s family as suspects for the first time.
“To be clear, the Guthrie family – to include all siblings and spouses – has been cleared as possible suspects in this case. The family has been nothing but cooperative and gracious and are victims in this case,” the sheriff’s statement read. “To suggest otherwise is not only wrong, it is cruel. The Guthrie family are victims plain and simple. Please, I’m begging you the media to honor your profession and report with some sense of compassion and professionalism.”
The clarification came just one day after Nanos told The Daily Mail that no one had been cleared in this case and on the same day a senior member of law enforcement familiar with this case told The Megyn Kelly Show that no one had been ruled out. NBC News’ Tom Winter reported “there is no indication this is the result of any new evidence.”
AM Update reached out to the sheriff’s department to ask what changed between Nanos’ first two statements to allow investigators to definitively rule out the Guthrie family, but did not receive a response.
Fox News’ Matt Finn questioned the department on whether DNA evidence helped clear the family, to which Sheriff Nanos said he was “not going there” and characterized the Guthries in this way: “They’re victims and I will not stand quiet when they are re-victimized. It is not just my duty, it is every cop’s duty to stand up and be the voice for victims.”
Cuomo Chimes In
Amid the changing narratives, Chris Cuomo decided to enter the chat on his NewsNation show Monday night and took aim at Megyn, veteran crime reporter Ashleigh Banfield, and other “sloppy influencers and would-be sleuths” in “digital media” who have reported authorities may be looking into the Guthrie family, particularly Nancy’s son-in-law Tomasso Cioni, as part of the ongoing investigation.
“Now look, I’ve never heard law enforcement make this kind of a statement during an investigation, and I’m not calling for the family to be removed from suspicion. The job is the job, right,” Cuomo began. “But the job is also you don’t speculate just because you don’t care that you’re destroying this family; just because it may get you some clicks.”
He then expressed his scorn for independent media. “But I want to correct something the sheriff said: It’s not ‘the media.’ No one who pays attention to the law or any standard of decency is doing this – what these digital people are doing,” Cuomo claimed. “It’s the digital media. It’s those denizens. It’s people who get paid for clicks and rage bait, alright? These fugazi, sloppy influencers and ‘would-be sleuths,’ right?”
A series pictures of Megyn with the titles of some of her YouTube clips covering the case – like, “The TRUTH on Whether Nancy Guthrie Family is ‘Under Scrutiny’ and What Feds Believe Really Happened” from Monday’s show and “Why Nancy Guthrie’s Son-in-Law May Be the ‘PRIME SUSPECT’ in Her Abduction” from earlier this month – appeared on the screen as Cuomo continued his rant without naming names.
“The ‘truth about whether Nancy Guthrie’s family is under scrutiny’? She doesn’t know a damn thing. ‘The reason the cops are going back to the comb is because the police think she did it.’ Where’d she get that bullshit,” he said. “’The video messages from the family are like a movie.’ ‘It’s from Silence of the Lambs.’ Are they? Why are they doing that?”
Megyn Reacts
On Tuesday’s edition of The Megyn Kelly Show, Megyn responded to Cuomo’s criticism and broke down where the reporting stands. Below are her remarks, edited for length and clarity:
“The douchebag Chris Cuomo… is very upset that Ashleigh Banfield and yours truly have raised questions about the brother-in-law [Cioni]… based on Ashleigh’s reporting…
Let me tell you what Fredo is really upset about. Fredo No Rate-o. That is his real problem. Nobody watches his show on NewsNation, and I mean nobody. Nobody watches his failed podcast either. Nobody watched his SiriusXM radio show. Nobody watched him on CNN. And therefore, he gets upset at anybody who does well, like our show, which is always one of the top three conservative podcasts in the nation. It is currently number one on Apple.
Fredo doesn’t like that because, as I say, Fredo No Rate-o, so he gets upset and he gets jealous. Sometimes in the past on this show, we’ve called out Fredo for his terrible behavior, for his bad ratings, for his lies about bumping into people who just happen to be listening to his podcast because literally nobody does, and Fredo can’t take criticism.
I’ll tell you something I’ve never told before: Fredo actually called my lawyer, who he happened to use briefly on a legal matter, and begged the lawyer to get me to stop mentioning him. He didn’t want me to attack him because it hurt his little feelings. So, now Fredo sees an opportunity to attack yours truly, because, of course, we are doing well with this [Guthrie] story, as we do when we do other news, which Fredo can’t relate to.
Fredo is upset and Fredo is trying to play the protector of the Guthrie family. Meanwhile, there are few in news who have done more for the Guthrie family than this show. We have covered this story extensively since it broke.
Fredo doesn’t understand, but I too am a news woman like Savannah. I too worked at the Today show like Savannah Guthrie. I too have been the victim of a deranged stalker, which may be one of the possibilities here… I too know Ashleigh Banfield extremely well, and she has had extremely solid reporting for 20 years in crime and other fields. So, when she tells me she has got a solid source, I take her very seriously.
And guess where else I saw this matter being discussed? On NewsNation all around Fredo by Elizabeth Vargas, by Jesse Weber. Dan Abrams, who had the show right before Chris Cuomo for years, did a long segment on it with Ashleigh Banfield. It’s all over Fox News [with] Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity… Laura Ingraham. All of them have discussed whether the brother-in-law had anything to do with it because, in an investigation like this, you don’t rule out family because of your little feelings, Fredo.
I know you’re in the business of protecting your family. We learned that firsthand during COVID, when you put your loser brother [former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo] on there and ran cover for him. And then, ultimately, it was one of the things that led to your downfall…
You have a long history, I understand, of running cover for family, but that is not what we do here in the actual news. We talk about what the police are doing and we try to glean where the investigation is going. And we especially do that when we have a sheriff who repeatedly, when asked whether anyone has been ruled out, says, ‘No, no one’s been ruled out… Everyone remains a suspect until we have somebody in handcuffs.’ That is the way you do it.
And you especially do it that way when the sheriff tows the car belonging to the sister and her husband and impounds it; you do that when the sheriff and the FBI continuously return to the sister and her husband’s home, taking pictures in the middle of the night with the lights off, suggesting there may be something that they need to capture in the same hour of night as Nancy Guthrie went missing from her home; go back time and time and time again to search the home, and take belongings from the home, and take photographs of the home, which is not the crime scene. This is what a responsible reporter does.
What they don’t do is stage news. I need to help you, Fredo, because your little begging to my lawyer to get me to lay off of you didn’t work. This is what you are going to have to have to deal with – actual facts – when you try to come for yours truly…
We do cover facts. We do follow leads, but we don’t stage news. We do not pretend that we are walking out of our basement during COVID and haven’t smelled the fresh air in months when everybody knows you were on the street in an altercation involving your bicycle weeks earlier. Remember [that] moment on CNN? It was all fake. He’d been on the street. It had made The New York Post.
He humiliated himself, and he continues to humiliate himself, with his four viewers. Envy is a very unattractive thing, Fredo. Work on that.”
You can check out Megyn’s full analysis by tuning in to episode 1,254 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.