Nancy Guthrie’s Neighbor Recalls ‘Suspicious’ Activity in Yard as Case Takes New Turn

While the Pima County Sheriff’s Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) continue to search for Nancy Guthrie, multiple people have taken it upon themselves to find the 84-year-old woman.

A number of YouTubers and independent journalists are circling Nancy Guthrie's home in the Catalina Foothills near Tucson, Arizona, searching for clues about her disappearance. Meanwhile, her neighbors are struggling to keep these people away.

One of Nancy Guthrie's neighbors, Laura, recently reported seeing an unauthorized man lurking around a nearby home in the middle of the night. Laura spoke in an interview with NewsNation senior correspondent Brian Entin, where she said that a woman in the community was shocked to find a man in her backyard at 3:00 a.m.

The man was a YouTuber who was trying to gather clues in the neighborhood. Laura said, “I know that there was somebody poking around in my neighbor's backyard at 3:00 a.m. last week. And he wasn't like one of you kind of media guys. He was a new media guy, you know, like a YouTube guy.”

Laura said her neighbor noticed the man while letting her dogs out and asked him, “Who are you? What are you doing on my property?” The woman then spoke with the YouTuber and told him, “You can't be there. You're trespassing on somebody's property. And people have guns around here, you know.”

Talking about how independent investigators are giving the community a hard time, Laura said, “I think people see all this open space and think, ‘I'm going to find her. I'm going to claim that money, and I want to be the one to find her, and so I'm going to step over there because there are no houses and there's all this open land,’ but it's actually somebody's property.”

Since the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie on February 1, several YouTube investigators have reached Catalina Foothills. Authorities have already warned that their frequent livestreams are hampering the official investigation.

Talking about the presence of independent journalists at the scene, broadcast journalism expert Kate Winkler Dawson said in a statement to The Guardian, “One of the biggest problems [with this behavior] is the sentiment behind it. It’s not to help the case or to inform people. It’s clickbait, a way to make money, and stay relevant in the true crime world.”

Meanwhile, it has been more than 45 days since Nancy Guthrie went missing, but authorities have not been able to track her or her alleged kidnapper. The FBI recently recovered thumbnail images from motion-activated cameras at Nancy Guthrie's home, but no suspicious activity was captured on the night of her abduction.

The FBI is currently on the lookout for a man who was seen wearing a mask and carrying a black Ozark Trail backpack in surveillance footage recorded by Nancy Guthrie's Ring camera before it was disconnected.