You would really think they’d have found Nancy Guthrie by now. Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of NBC Today host Savannah Guthrie, was abducted from her home in the Catalina Foothills area near Tucson, Arizona, sometime over the night of January 31, 2026.
110 days later and, despite the combined efforts of multiple branches of law enforcement, nobody knows what happened or who kidnapped her. As brutal as it sounds, after 110 days with no credible ransom demands made, the search has transitioned from rescue to locating a body.
So there was some excitement earlier this week when a mysterious human bone was discovered buried near her home. Could this be Guthrie’s body? The discovery was made by YouTuber Alec Wysopal, who was livestreaming while walking through the Catalina Foothills desert and came across a weathered bone poking from the ground.
HISTORIC DISCOVERY
— Simo Saadi (@Simo7809957085) May 21, 2026
Update on bone found near Nancy Guthrie home as new warning issued over interference in her disappearance pic.twitter.com/kNYGpXoptS
With around 10,000 people watching on his stream, he exclaimed, “Oh, what is that? That’s a bone… It looks like a leg bone” and poked at it with a stick. Wysopal called the cops, and it was soon confirmed that this was indeed a human femur.
Case cracked? Well, probably not, unless it’s a very, very, very cold case. Tucson police investigated, but said the discovery was around a thousand years too old to be connected to Guthrie’s disappearance, and confirmed that a “prehistoric anthropological investigation would take place.
“You shouldn’t be poking at them with a stick”
Arizona State Museum curator of bioarcheology James Watson confirmed to The New York Times that the bone is from an individual who died between 650 and 1250 AD, was likely a member of the Hohokam people, and that this was an archaeological site known for the tribe’s remains.
Watson also lightly scolded Wysopal for the way he treated the remains:
“Whether it’s Nancy Guthrie or an ancient individual, you shouldn’t be poking at them with a stick. It’s common decency. Would you do that with your grandmother’s remains?”
Wysopal has clarified that he had no idea he was disturbing an ancient burial ground and that he’d have stayed away from the unmarked area if he’d been aware this was a possibility.
All of which makes this a good day for Tucson archaeologists, but yet another frustrating dead end for Nancy Guthrie’s family. Surely sooner or later, there’ll be an actual development in this case… right?
Here’s hoping that she’s found before she’s been in the ground for a thousand years, and some inhabitant of the year 3026 isn’t poking her skeleton with whatever the futuristic equivalent of a hiking pole is.
