Nancy Guthrie probe hit by critical early error as officers assumed she ‘wandered off’: Source

SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA: The investigation into the missing case of a popular news host, Savannah Guthrie’s mother, Nancy Guthrie, barely seems to have moved forward, even after over 60 days of her disappearance. While investigators believe that she was abducted, there has been no breakthrough in the case.

Nancy Guthrie disappeared from her home in Tucson’s Catalina Foothills in the early morning hours of February 1.

Early errors led probe in wrong direction

Investigators present at the crime scene during the early investigation reportedly took a critical misstep by treating the matter as a case of an old lady who wandered off rather than pursuing it with a criminal angle, revealed a source familiar with the investigation to New Nation’s senior national correspondent Brian Entin.

“Speaking with some people that actually know the intimate knowledge of this investigation, told me that there was a rush to judgment of what was happening at that scene, and it was that Nancy had somehow wandered off," the source told Entin.

The source revealed that investigators made a judgment in the early days of the probe that it was a missing and rescue case and pursued the case with the same lens instead of treating it as an abduction case, leaving the case hanging in balance.

Probe by inexperienced officials: alleges source

Besides the probe team investigating the wrong angle, the relatively less experienced officials leading the case have also raised concerns.

The officers at the scene "were not tenured homicide detectives" and "didn't have a lot of experience in homicide at that point, to include the supervisor, who, from my understanding, never investigated a homicide before being installed as the supervisor of the homicide unit,” the source said.

Department’s morale ‘extremely low’

The source, who provided inside information to a new outlet's correspondent, said that the probe team’s morale around Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos was ‘extremely low’ and there was no name in the case despite months of investigation.

The informer further added that the probe team was only pursuing the case because there are people who want to bring Nancy home safely.

"Just because we have an incompetent lead doesn't mean that we don't care… that we don't want Nancy to be brought home safely and that we're not with her in this. We are completely with her and her family on this," the source was quoted as saying in the report.

Speaking on Sean Hannity’s program, legal commentator and true crime broadcaster Nancy Grace strongly criticized the investigation and called for the sheriff to resign.

“By destroying the crime scene and by releasing the crime scene too early, they destroyed a lot of evidence,” she said.