It’s been four months since the TODAY show host Savannah Guthrie’s 84 year-old mother Nancy Guthrie was kidnapped from her home in Tucson, Arizona. Sadly, no trace of Nancy has been found, and she remains missing at this time.
Human skeletal remains were just found miles from Nancy’s home. This led to widespread speculation that her body may have been recovered. Unfortunately, however, it seems that this was not the case at all.
Skeleton Found Near Nancy’s Home
Experts have revealed that the remains actually have nothing to do with Nancy’s case. Instead, they are the remains of a prehistoric human who likely lived up to 1,000 years ago. This was confirmed by James T. Watson, an anthropologist at the University of Arizona who responded to the scene where the remains were found.
“Whether it is a thousand years old or 50 years old, these are human remains,” Watson told Fox News.
A local YouTuber named AJ Wysopal came across a single bone that looked to be human while conducting an amateur search for Nancy less than 5 miles from her home. Authorities quickly confirmed that the bone was human, and they soon found that it belonged to a full skeleton that was discovered nearby.
However, the bones were then found to be prehistoric because they belong to someone who died before there was written language in the area, according to Watson.
“All of that contextual evidence allowed me to be pretty sure that this individual was in fact Native American,” Watson explained. “The ceramics really sort of drove home that point.”
The skeletal remains have since been handed over to the Tohono O’odham Nation, a Native American tribe with a large reservation just west of Tucson.
There May Be ‘Hundreds Of Bodies’ In This Area
This skeleton was found in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. There, Watson said that a dozen or more bodies can surface in a given year, as “there’s just so much space” to conceal them.
“The desert there is a pretty harsh environment, and obviously it’s been settled for hundreds, thousands of years,” Watson stated. “There are literally probably hundreds of bodies that are discovered every year out in the desert.”
“So there [are] a lot of places that an individual could get lost or pass away — or hide a body,” he continued. “I think…as people start to poke into some of these crevices that don’t normally get poked into across the desert, they’re likely to find more individuals.”
Nancy Goes Missing
This will all come as little comfort to the Guthrie family, who are still desperate to find Nancy. The beloved mother and grandmother was last seen on the night of Saturday, January 31. That evening, she had dinner with her daughter Annie and son-in-law Tommaso Cioni. They dropped her off at home afterwards at around 9:45pm, and she tragically hasn’t been seen since.
A masked intruder was captured on Nancy’s doorbell ring camera in the early hours of February 1. He managed to cover the camera with some plants before moving forward with the kidnapping.
The masked man was seen on the doorbell ring camera prior to the night Nancy was taken. This indicates that he may have been casing out her home.
No trace of Nancy has been found, and the desperate search for her continues.
Savannah Returns To TODAY
As for Savannah, she bravely returned to the TODAY show on April 6. She’d spent the previous two months in Tucson desperately trying to find her mother, to no avail. Finally, Savannah decided that she needed to get back to both her job and her family, which includes her husband and two young children.
“I will not fall apart,” Savannah, 54, defiantly told her former TODAY colleague Hoda Kotb just before her return. “I will not let whoever did this take my children’s mother from them, I will not let them take my joy.”
“They will not take my sister’s joy, they will not take my brother’s joy,” she continued. “They will not take our love, they will not take our faith. But our anguish is real. We need help. We need someone to tell the truth.”
This has clearly been an excruciatingly difficult time for Savannah and for her entire family. Please join us in saying a prayer for the return of Nancy Guthrie.