After 10 Days Missing: Nancy Guthrie has officially been found—just 500 meters from her home

The day after 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie disappeared from her home tucked away on a quiet street in Tucson, a local resident placed a small handmade sign at the edge of her gravel driveway. “Dear Guthrie family,” it reads, “your neighbors stand with you.” That simple message is one of the few things Nancy’s children—Today cohost Savannah Guthrie, 54, and older siblings Annie, 56, and Camron, 61—have had to cling to as teams of investigators descended on the five-bedroom house surrounded by saguaro cacti and wispy palo verde trees.

“Neighbors have been searching for her since she disappeared,” says Jeff Lamie, 59, who lives four houses down the street and often saw Nancy in her front yard. “Teams of volunteers have gone through backyards, looking in the bushes. People are very upset. Everyone wants her to be safe and found alive.”

Since Feb. 1, Nancy’s disappearance, which police soon classified as a kidnapping, has morphed into a terrifying mystery—with crime-scene clues including spilled blood and a disabled security system—that has captivated and horrified the nation. But even with more than 100 local, state and FBI investigators working the case, ransom notes demanding millions of dollars in Bitcoin and the family’s desperate videotaped pleas to their mother’s abductors, the question of where Nancy is—and whether she’s still alive—remains unanswered.

“We received your message, and we understand,” a drained but determined Savannah—flanked by her brother and sister—said in her second heart-wrenching video message to the kidnappers, on Feb. 7. “We beg you now to return our mother to us so that we can celebrate with her. This is the only way we will have peace.”

As the frantic search continued into its second week on Feb. 9, investigators tried to remain optimistic, announcing an expansion of the search and following up on new leads, but they also knew that with each passing day—and no official suspects or persons of interest identified—the odds of a happy ending grew increasingly remote.

Authorities were also racing against the clock, since Nancy needs daily medication for a serious heart condition. “You have to have hope,” Pima County sheriff Chris Nanos told a Today show interviewer in a trembling voice. “Come on, this is somebody’s mom. We’re gonna find her.”

It didn’t take long for police to nail down a timeline of how Nancy spent the hours before she vanished. On Saturday, Jan. 31, at 9:48 p.m., she returned home after having dinner and playing mah-jongg with her daughter Annie and son-in-law Tommaso Cioni, who shuttled Nancy back to her house. At 9:50 p.m., she entered through her garage and went to bed, per police.

What happened after that, authorities aren’t exactly sure about, Nanos tells People: “Did she get up and answer the door? Did she get up to go to the bathroom? Did she go to get something out of the refrigerator? I just know that this 84-year-old mom, grandma, went to bed that night, and in the morning she was missing.”

Investigators say the residence remained quiet until 1:47 a.m., when Nancy’s front porch camera disconnected after it was apparently removed from the doorframe. At 2:12 a.m., the software from another camera detected someone, but no video is available because Nancy did not have an active subscription, leaving investigators unable to tell who or what caused the alert.

At 2:28 a.m., 41 minutes after the doorbell camera went offline, Nancy’s pacemaker disconnected from the app on her phone, which investigators believe could have happened when she was forcibly taken out of range of her mobile device.

It wasn’t until 11 a.m.—when Nancy failed to show up at a friend’s house to watch an online church service—that someone noticed something was amiss. The concerned friend reached out to family members, who immediately drove to the house. Unable to locate Nancy there, they called 911. Sheriff’s deputies arrived at 12:15 p.m. and were alarmed to find her phone, watch and wallet, along with blood on the front porch that was later determined to be from Nancy.

The day after she was reported missing, police went public with their fears that Nancy was the victim of foul play. “We believe someone took her against her will,” Nanos said, describing her residence as “a crime scene” during the first of three press conferences held since her disappearance.

In the days that followed, the fast-moving case took a series of alarming twists that appeared to leave investigators scrambling. On the evening of Feb. 2 an email containing a ransom note was sent to Tucson’s CBS affiliate KOLD that reportedly contained information—including a description of a damaged floodlight and the location of an Apple Watch left behind in her house—that only her abductors would know.

The email demanded $4 million in Bitcoin by Feb. 5 for Nancy’s safe return and $6 million by Feb. 9 if the initial demand was not met, and the letter threatened severe consequences if the second deadline passed without payment, according to sources.

The following day, the same email was sent to the entertainment news website TMZ, and during an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, the outlet’s founder Harvey Levin discussed its contents. “The letter begins by saying she is safe but scared,” explained Levin, who added that the “carefully crafted” message emphasized that their ransom demands for “millions of dollars” were nonnegotiable. The two-tiered deadline, explains retired FBI hostage negotiator Kiernan Ramsey, “is just a classic pressure tactic because most kidnappers, if they believe that any payment is possible, are going to tolerate delays.”

Nevertheless, authorities and Nancy’s family evidently took the ultimatum seriously, and on Feb. 4 Savannah posted an emotional Instagram video pleading with her mother’s abductors to send them proof that Nancy was still alive and stressing that she was in desperate need of her medication. “We will not rest. Your children will not rest until we are together again,” she said.

But as the days passed, it became apparent that the trail leading to Nancy—and the hunt for suspects—was going cold. On Feb. 6, after authorities announced that a new message from Nancy’s captors had been received, Savannah and her siblings released a somber video begging the apparent kidnappers “to return our mother to us so that we can celebrate with her.” According to retired FBI agent Lance Leising, who now works as a hostage negotiator, the language used in the video may imply “that Nancy is no longer with us.”

The strain on Nancy’s family has been unrelenting. But those who know Savannah insist she’s leaning into her Christian faith. “She is steadfast in her faith, and so is Nancy,” says a source close to Savannah. “We are all praying endlessly and know that she and her family are lifted by prayer.”

As for Savannah’s family at NBC, where she’s been a staple for nearly two decades, “everyone here feels a connection with her,” adds the insider. “All of our hearts are with Savannah. It’s all everybody can think of. We all feel so helpless because we can’t take the pain away. But it’s helpless, not hopeless. We’re all holding out hope.”

On Feb. 1 Savannah rushed to her hometown of Tucson from her current home in New York City, where she lives with her husband, Michael Feldman, 57, and their kids Vale, 11, and Charley, 9. Savannah is celebrated as a hometown hero in Tucson, where she lived—in the same home where her mother was abducted—for most of her childhood (her father, Charles, died of a heart attack when she was 16) and while attending the University of Arizona. Along with her brother Camron, she initially stayed at her sister Annie’s home, located four miles from Nancy’s house, before the group relocated to a house in a gated community.

How the family’s nightmare ends is still anyone’s guess. In recent days the FBI—which is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to Nancy’s return—has conducted repeated searches of Nancy’s home, along with her daughter Annie’s residence. And although they have stated that they are taking the demands of potential kidnappers seriously, they are almost certainly investigating other theories about what might have -happened to Nancy, says Leising.

As powerless as they have felt since Nancy was last seen on Jan. 31, her family has tried to stay strong. “We believe our mom is still out there,” Savannah said in a Feb. 9 Instagram video. “We are at an hour of desperation, and we need your help.”