Tommaso Cioni, the last person to see Nancy Guthrie before she disappeared from her Tucson home, hasn't been spotted in public since February 3. Meanwhile, police have searched the house he shares with his wife — Nancy's daughter Annie — multiple times without a warrant, exploiting a quirk in Fourth Amendment law that allows one resident's consent to override another's objection, as long as the objector isn't physically present.
Nancy Guthrie, mother of NBC Today host Savannah Guthrie, vanished in the early morning hours of February 1 from her $1 million home in the Catalina Hills neighborhood of Tucson, Arizona. As reported by the Daily Mail, her Nest doorbell camera was disconnected at approximately 1:45 AM. Her security camera detected movement less than thirty minutes later. Then her pacemaker stopped transmitting data to her Apple Watch and phone.
By the time sheriff's deputies arrived that morning, the doorbell camera was gone.
Cioni, a 50-year-old Italian schoolteacher married to Annie Guthrie since 2006, dropped Nancy off at her home around 9:45 PM on January 31 after dinner at the couple's $675,000 ranch-style house roughly four miles away. He reportedly watched his mother-in-law enter through the garage before driving off.
Four hours later, someone in a mask tampered with her camera. Shortly after that, Nancy's vital signs went dark.
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos has not ruled Cioni out as a suspect. He hasn't ruled anyone out. But Cioni's disappearance from public view — last seen by reporters on February 3, leaving and returning to his home with Annie — adds an uncomfortable layer to a case already thick with unanswered questions. The family is believed to be staying in a $1.2 million mansion inside a gated, residents-only compound.
FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed that investigators recovered images from the backend systems of Nancy's doorbell camera — footage that had been previously inaccessible:
"As of this morning, law enforcement has uncovered these previously inaccessible new images showing an armed individual appearing to have tampered with the camera at Nancy Guthrie's front door the morning of her disappearance."
The images show a masked figure on Nancy's doorstep. Some frames appear to show what looks like a gun in a holster clipped to the figure and what looks like a penlight in the person's mouth. Whether the individual is male or female remains unclear, though some images appear to show facial hair above the top lip.
The release of that footage prompted rapid action. Police detained a man during a traffic stop in Rio Rico, roughly 60 miles south of Tucson, only hours after the images went public on Tuesday. He was released on Wednesday morning. No further details have been made available.
Here's where the legal dimension gets interesting. Pima County deputies have searched Cioni and Annie's home multiple times — including a nighttime examination over the weekend during which investigators spent hours photographing the interior. Pima County and federal records show no applications for warrants to search the property.
They didn't need one. Annie gave consent.
Two Supreme Court cases govern this scenario. In Georgia v. Randolph (2006), the Court held that if one resident is physically present and refuses police access, officers need a warrant. But in Fernandez v. California (2014), the Court ruled that if the objecting resident is not physically present, another occupant can consent to a search.
Whether Cioni objected to the searches is unknown. But the legal math is straightforward: if he's not there when police knock, Annie's consent is sufficient. His absence from the home — and from public view entirely — creates a dynamic where every search proceeds without judicial review. Annie was spotted supervising officers during one of the searches.
For those who care about Fourth Amendment protections, this is worth watching closely regardless of the case's outcome. The Fernandez precedent effectively allows law enforcement to wait until a potentially objecting co-resident leaves — or is absent for any reason — and then gain access through the remaining occupant. In a case where one spouse may be a suspect, and the other is cooperating with investigators, the incentive structure is obvious.
The Guthrie family has publicly presented a united front. Annie has appeared in multiple videos alongside her siblings — Savannah and their brother Camron — pleading for whoever took Nancy to bring her back unharmed. On Tuesday, Savannah and Annie made a joint appeal for more information.
Savannah posted to Instagram:
"We believe she is still alive. Bring her home."
But the investigation's focus tells a more complicated story. Investigators asked Nancy's household staff to submit DNA swabs to check against samples found inside her home. Drone footage showed investigators removing a floodlight from Nancy's property — a fixture specifically referenced in a ransom note. A security camera was pulled from the exterior of Nancy's home on Monday.
The Pima County Sheriff's Department acknowledged the visible activity in a Monday statement:
"Many of you observed an active law enforcement presence at the Guthrie residences over the weekend."
The gaps in this case are as notable as the facts. A ransom note exists, but its full contents, when it was received, and who received it remain undisclosed. The evidence investigators collected from Cioni and Annie's home is unclear. Nancy reportedly didn't have a subscription to Nest, raising questions about what data was and wasn't being stored from her camera system. The identity of the masked figure is unknown. And the man detained in Rio Rico was released without public explanation.
Cioni remains somewhere behind gated walls. The searches continue with his wife's blessing and without a judge's signature. And Nancy Guthrie — a grandmother whose pacemaker went silent in the middle of the night — is still missing.
Every clock in this case is running.