This is the transcript from Sheriff Nano's on October 9th 2026 pertaining to the Nancy Guthrie Case. "Buckmaster Show" Investigation into the Disappearance of Nancy GuthrieHost: Our Friday Focus interview is with Chris Nano, Sheriff of Pima County. Where he's been serving as the county's top cop since January 2021 he won re-election in 2024 sheriff nanos who's been in law enforcement for 52 years right sheriff is that about right i started in january of 76. Okay so it's coming up it's your 50 year anniversary uh yeah 51 this june okay you've become a familiar face to people all over the world Let's say all over the country for sure and many places in the world because of the Savannah Guthrie's mom, Nancy Guthrie, abduction, disappearance, made news in just about every newspaper in the world. And you've been leading the investigation into the February 1st disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, 84-year-old mother of NBC Today show host Savannah Guthrie. Is there anything new on that story?Sheriff Nanos: There was some news that came out about... A note and it turned out to be bogus about a week or so ago. Yeah, we continue to get basically scams, attempts at scams for ransom notes and that. And, you know, the FBI gets those and they work them up pretty good. I think we've had at least two or three arrests from those individuals that just – trying to take advantage of somebody's misfortunes. And the best I could tell you is if you do that, we're going to look for you. Host: Do you think this case will be solved eventually?Sheriff Nanos: You know, Bill, I do. And, you know, I get asked all the time, is it a cold case or not? First of all, a cold case is really kind of a... But the term that i i'd i'd just don't really care for it it it just basically means you've got nothing and that's not the case it means that if you think of a file somewhere yeah that we've closed their and yeah yeah cabinet file on that you know we we eat You may call us on something stolen out of your driveway and we just can't find it. And so maybe that's not much work to do on that. But a homicide, that's our cold cases. They're homicides. There is no statute of limitation on those cases, just like rapes. There is no statute of limitation. We retain all the evidence and constantly scour through it. In fact, it's kind of... When you think of cold case, you think, well, then it's done. But it's not because most major law enforcement agencies have a cold case squad. And their dedication is to all those cases that others thought were cold. They continue to work. I think just in the last probably end of the summer, we solved a 50-year-old homicide case. Really? Yeah, with some...Host: So you have an active cold case unit?Sheriff Nanos: Yes. Yeah. It consists of about a sergeant and three or four detectives. But if they need more, they get them when they need them. But that's separate from this case. This case isn't cold because we still have evidence that we're working with. I think just last week we sent a team of investigators to our labs in Florida to meet with those lab techs. You know, the labs... Ours is in Florida, but we work with Washington and the FBI lab. There's a lab in Kansas that's working with us. There's a lab in San Francisco. And, of course, the DPS lab here in Phoenix. All of those labs. And so we're constantly talking about... What we can do with the evidence we have and how can we get to a point where we're comfortable that we can make an identification. Paul, I mean, at some point, I mean, it's sort of the cold case was like you tested all leads, you've tried all the things. And in some cases, cold cases came back because there was new evidence or there's no ways of evaluating evidence. In this particular case, it sounds like you You're following the leads, but is there a point at which you, for lack of a better term, somebody has to move on and work other cases?Sheriff Nanos: Well, no. So you're correct in what you're saying to some degree. So a cold case, I have no leads. I have no evidence. I've got all the tips I was going to get. We've looked at them, chased them down. I've got all the evidence in front of me, and it cannot be developed further. We're done. Okay. But to be honest with you, so we're waiting. We're waiting for maybe somebody will call us with a tip. Who knows what it is. In the 50-year-old, it was nothing more than a break in DNA that said, this individual's... The DNA break really was from genetics. We've seen those cases now start. The genealogy, it was a relative of the decedent who pushed and pushed and pushed and yet It was another relative of the suspect in the case who we found DNA on and was able to match through the relative. Doesn't mean that, for example, it might say we've got DNA that from pick up a website that does genealogy that says this person, genetic DNA belongs to Bill Buckmaster, but we know Bill Buckmaster isn't the one you're looking for because it's two degrees from Bill. It might be Bill's cousin's brother's you know, that kind of thing. So you got to break that down. And then we go and we talk to Bill and we ask Bill, Bill, did you have any relatives that lived in Tucson? Do you know anybody that could have done this, that? And it starts up again. So DNA really is so expansive. In this case, we're learning, you know, It is a science and science has to go by their own research studies that put guardrails in place as to what they can and cannot do. It's not very common to police. We have guardrails constitution. We can't do this and we can do this. Well, in the world of science, they're now at a point where they're leaning into, you walk in a room and you leave DNA. And so, wow, that's pretty incredible. But how long does that DNA exist? And what is the science to breaking down that cell structure? How does it work? You have to trust at some point in time your scientist to put together a practice that says, we believe this is true and here's why. That then comes to the courts to say, yeah, I'm not buying it. Or, boy, that's pretty amazing. Yeah, we get it. I think you're right on. And so, you know, evidence is a tricky thing, particularly when you're dealing with sciences, DNA. Our team went up to speak to the labs about, I think we've talked about mixed DNA and where we're at with that. We're hopeful that someday soon we'll find out that they can extrapolate DNA further than just two people's touches. Maybe we have an overlayer of four or five. That's what we're looking at with our DNA. We know we have DNA. We know that the DNA is not being eliminated by all the people we've come to put at that home. There are some pieces of DNA. We know that They're not resolved. We need to resolve them and to do that. What do you think happened? Can you speak as not as the sheriff or just give your theory?Sheriff Nanos: Yeah, I think my theory is very much like everybody. We know certain things. We know that she was kidnapped from that home. We believe she was alive when she left. So you believe she did not die in the house? That is our belief. We have nothing to show that yet, but we believe that she left that home. So she was forcibly taken from her home. But after that... Now it's all speculation because we don't know what happened after that. We just know she was in her home at a certain time of night, in bed asleep, and was woken up to what we see in the cameras, the videos, and is removed from the home. From there, now it's all speculation. Host: Yeah, I just remember, you know, there was a book that talked about sort of the CSI effect, it was sort of the crime scene investigations, all the television shows that showed how, you know, they... Fictionalized crime scene investigations and that kind of summed to short how the public sees how crime scenes investigations are done, how much can be done and sort of undercuts or doesn't really show the limitations of all this sort of technology. You know, the kind of like the camera where you can zoom in on a picture and you can, you know, repixelate it and oh, there's the killer, right? So it seems like there's for you, you're still following leads, but there sounds like there's some inherent limitations and what evidence is available. There's certain things you just don't know. You know that her pacemaker is responding at a certain time. Her phone was there at a certain time. But after that...Sheriff Nanos: Right. That gives us timelines to work in and work around and look at different things. Gives us a little bit of a base to our thinking as to the strategy of what actually occurred at that home. But yes, correct. We still get tips. And, you know, some of the tips are, you know, kind of way out there. Right. But we don't dismiss them because we've heard that before, right? Oh, that's way out there. And the next thing you know, six months later, you go, you have to go back to that tip. You know what? Somebody knew something. So we just catalog them. And we continue to tell people, call us if you know something. I was... Online yesterday was some lady out of California who had some information she thought was fruitful to us. I wouldn't dismiss it, but it's certainly not solid to say there's our killer. That's who we got. So we take those, catalog them, put them in the back because those tips, that kind of information, just like cell phone dumps or cameras capturing a red sedan in the neighborhood, all of those things are valuable information. But it's really just kind of wait and see. Because when we do find the person, DNA says, ah, here's who it is. And we go see that person. Now we take that individual and we look at, does he own a red car? Do we have photos of a red car? Yeah, you're looking for connections. Yeah, exactly. It's pretty basic. You're right, CSI, TV, movies, it does pique the interest and does give some idea of what goes on in the world of crime scene investigations and analysis, but there's so much more. I mean, we're dealing with the dark web and different things like that, worldwide stuff, talking with people all over the country, whose minds are so big into some of this stuff. And that's part of the reason I have such confidence that this case will be solved. When you throw the people into this that are looking at it, that have such one great passion for their work and trying to help us, but also a great amount of knowledge of what they're looking at in front of them.