Exclusive | Sheriff Chris Nanos accused of turning Nancy Guthrie case into bungling ego trip — and FBI is desperate to take over

TUCSON, Ariz. — The hunt for Savannah Guthrie’s 84-year-old mother Nancy has been doomed by Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos’ ego and his vendetta against the FBI, according to a rising chorus of critics.

The high-profile case has seen missteps like leaving Nancy Guthrie’s house unguarded in the hours after the crime, baffling press interviews and a protracted investigation that so far has yielded no clear suspects or strong leads after more than two weeks.

The FBI is desperate to take over the investigation, but cannot unless the Guthrie family specifically asks, multiple law enforcement sources told The Post.

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“It is a common belief in this agency that this case has become an ego case for Sheriff Nanos,” said Sgt. Aaron Cross, president of the Pima County Deputies Organization.

Doomed from the start

From the moment the “Today” show host’s mom was reported missing from her million-dollar Tucson home, Nanos — the top cop in Arizona’s second-most populous county — took center stage hosting press briefings with a charming, down-to-earth demeanor.

Nanos has been the primary source of information in the case, granting multiple interviews to news outlets across the country, and continuing to hold court with rambling press briefings in the aftermath of Nancy’s Feb. 1 disappearance.

His decision to move away from general briefings to cozy chit-chats with individual journalists has led to conflicting reports, confusion and a general sense that the sheriff is more interested in “damage control” than in clarity, as one law enforcement source put it to The Post.

“The sheriff turned a serious investigation into a rolling spectacle, from questionable decisions to shifting narratives and a disastrous media cleanup tour that raised more questions than it answered,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“Leadership in moments like this requires discipline, not damage control,” the source added.

Betsy Brantner Smith from the National Policing Association said that Nanos’ failure to provide regular press briefings has added to the confusion.

“This is Public Information Officer 101. I used to teach these classes. As a law enforcement organization, you have to communicate with the media,” she said.

“You can’t just stop talking to them or piecemeal out information.”

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Nanos did not respond to a list of questions from The Post Wednesday — or to previous attempts to speak with him.

One outspoken critic of Nanos has been Cross, of the sheriff’s deputies association.

Cross, who has twice sued Nanos in federal court, accused the sheriff of badly mishandling the communications aspect of the case.

“If you’re going to spend all day talking to media, instead you can do a one-hour press conference with someone capable of speaking clearly and professionally,” Cross told The Post.

FBI feud

At the center of Nanos’ apparent unwillingness to relinquish control of the case appears to be a long-running feud with the FBI dating back to 2015 when he was appointed chief of Pima County Sheriff’s Department.

That same year, the FBI began investigating the department for misuse of civil asset forfeiture funds. Nanos was never charged but the sheriff at the time was indicted, and Nanos lost the subsequent 2016 election for sheriff.

“It is widely believed he thinks the FBI cost him his election,” Cross said.

Nanos was visibly furious in 2016 as he hit back at the FBI over its overspending allegations against his department, calling the claims “total BS” in an interview with KGUN9.

“You can just see him seething with rage against the FBI,” Cross said, referring to the clip. 

“That’s the real Sheriff Nanos — the angry, vindictive guy. That’s who we experience inside the department. The ‘aw shucks’ kinda persona that he portrays is kind of the character that he puts on.”

Nanos was finally elected sheriff in 2020.

Election controversy

Nanos is in the job after winning reelection over his Republican challenger, Heather Lappin, amid controversial circumstances and a slim margin in 2024.

The Democrat won by fewer than 500 votes, after a bitter campaign that saw him place Lappin, then a lieutenant at the Pima County Jail, on administrative leave just weeks before the election.

Cross was also placed on administrative leave at the time.

Lappin filed a lawsuit against Nanos, claiming that after she decided to run for office, “Sheriff Nanos and PCSD leadership waged a retaliatory campaign against Lieutenant Lappin’s career in order to undermine her candidacy.”

Both Cross’ and Lappin’s cases are ongoing.

Shortly after Nanos’ victory, the Pima County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted for an independent investigation into whether Nanos was responsible for criminal wrongdoing during the election.

The case was referred to Arizona’s Democratic attorney general, but no charges were ever brought.

One member of the Board of Supervisors told The Post that they, too, were “deeply frustrated” with how slow the case had been progressing.

FBI wants to step in: ‘They would if they could’

More than two weeks into the case, and the FBI is “growing frustrated,” a federal source familiar with the case told The Post.

“Over two whole weeks into this, the police have made no leads, no progress,” the source said.

“They were never confident in the glove,” the source added, referring to the latex glove that rendered no DNA matches.

“The press conferences are not going well. Giving press conferences without saying anything. It’s not helpful.”

The timeline of the disappearance of Savannah Guthrie’s mom:

The source also noted Nanos’ conflicting statements — confusing the media and the public.

“One minute he exonerates, the next he doesn’t exonerate,” the source said, referring to speculation that Nancy’s family was somehow involved, until he finally cleared them this week.

Cross said the FBI should’ve been the lead on the probe from the get-go.

“They [the FBI] should have taken the case over within the first few days. We have been treating this as a kidnapping, and the FBI is the premier agency to deal with kidnappings in the world,” Cross said, adding that Pima County has 400 commissioned deputies and detectives.

“The FBI has way more resources than that, way more personnel. They should have taken the lead, in my opinion, and the opinion of many. We should have gone through a supporting role.”

If the FBI had been in charge of the case from the start, the bureau would have been able to send DNA taken from the glove found 2 miles from Nancy’s house to its own laboratory in Quantico, Va., instead of one in Florida picked by the sheriff’s office.

Instead, the search has been “haphazard,” with authorities “getting lucky” with the discovery of surveillance footage showing a masked suspect.

“If I were a sheriff and had no forensic capability, I’d use the FBI,” the FBI source said.

“Authorities happened to get lucky with the surveillance video, because there was no video backup. The FBI is trying to backtrack and it’s tricky,” the FBI source said.

At the same time, multiple law enforcement and FBI sources reiterated that the bureau can only take over the case with the expressed permission of Nancy Guthrie’s family.

“The FBI can’t take over a case just because it gets national attention,” another exasperated law enforcement source told The Post. “Believe me, they would if they could.”

For his part, Nanos has denied that he hasn’t cooperated with the FBI, telling Green Valley News that the bureau hasn’t picked up anything that was not already found by his detectives.

“We’re devoting everything we’ve got to it,” Nanos said.

Scene surrender

One of Nanos’ early moves, which baffled many experts, was his decision to surrender Nancy Guthrie’s home just days into the investigation.

“In my professional opinion, I believe they released the crime scene too early. And that was on Sheriff Nanos,” Brantner Smith, a former cop, told The Post.

In the confusing first few days of the investigation, reporters and internet “true crime” sleuths descended on Nancy Guthrie’s dusty Catalina Foothills neighborhood outside Tucson — and found to their shock that they were able to walk straight up to her front door.

“Every reporter I’ve spoken with that’s here on the ground could not believe that they were allowed to walk up to the door the next day,” Cross said.

“I think it was completely predictable that we would have to go back out there again,” he said, adding that the house should have been locked down with crime scene tape and security.

“It looks unprofessional. It looks amateurish to have to repeatedly go out there,” he said. “It doesn’t look good for our department when we’ve had reporters walking up and essentially contaminating the scene.”

Nanos has denied that his department had relinquished the crime scene too early.

“First of all, we didn’t release the crime scene too early. We finished. We completed our crime scene. Done. Ask my investigators. I don’t go out there and do that. They did it and they felt confident they retrieved everything,” he told Green Valley News.

Plane wrong

Nanos has also faced criticism for not immediately launching his department’s high-tech aircraft when Nancy went missing, delaying the aerial search for hours during the crucial first day of the investigation.

The apparent holdup in deploying the Cessna plane, known as Survey 1, was due to a staffing shortage, according to insiders, who have blamed the sheriff for the snafu.

Pima County’s most experienced and trained search and rescue deputy was moved out of the unit in September 2025 “without replacement, simply for just being there too long,” according to Cross.

The week before Nancy went missing, another pilot tasked with flying Survey 1 was also moved out, reportedly due to staff shortages.

“Moving the pilot out the week before left us without our airplane to immediately respond to this missing person,” Cross said.

“It was just a matter of time before something terrible happened, and it exposed the self-imposed weakness that Nanos created,” Cross added.

Good cops under bad leadership

Behind the scenes, many Pima County deputies reportedly share the frustrations of the FBI and experts on Nanos’ handling of one of the most bewildering kidnapping cases of our time.

“These officers are being called the Keystone cops, and told they don’t know what they’re doing,” Brantner Smith, who served in law enforcement in Chicago for three decades before moving to Pima County, told The Post.

“And it’s very frustrating because these are very good police officers. They’re just not working under the best leadership,” she added.

The Pima County Sheriff’s Department handled 12 homicides in 2024 and solved them all. Deputies police the county of more than a million.

“[Nanos] is not a good communicator. And in my opinion, that is fueling so much of this consternation and speculation, as well as the unnecessary abuse of our Pima County Sheriff’s Department,” Smith added.

“The detectives are embarrassed by the press conferences,” Cross added.

Nanos previously hit out against his critics over their attacks, singling out Cross directly.

“Aaron Cross is just being Aaron Cross. He is manipulative and he is a liar, OK? He best be careful because the further this goes for him, the deeper he’s digging himself,” Nanos told Green Valley News.

Additional reporting by Caitlin Doornbos