TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos says fewer people are involved in the day to day search for Nancy Guthrie but it is still an active, aggressive search and he is still optimistic she will be found.
He says, “I think when this thing first kicked off, we got up to close to 400 officers and FBI agents and from all over the valley working this. Today, I think we're probably down to a task force of 10-20, detectives, FBI agents, that are really just assigned to work the investigative piece of this.”
But the Sheriff says those numbers can go back up if developments call for more people back on the case.
A lot of evidence has been collected like fingerprints and DNA. The Sheriff says investigators are waiting to see how much help that evidence will provide.
“There's a lot of work to be done by labs and analysts to look at and get us that data.”
Volunteer groups have offered to help search but Sheriff Nanos is reluctant to bring in people not trained in his department procedures. One concern is if someone does find evidence, and they handle it wrong it could be thrown out of court.
Nanos says, “But I hear, ‘Well, Sheriff would be crazy not to accept free help.’ Sometimes you have to be careful with that, because even though they may be very talented and very skilled, we still have an investigation to protect.”
The Sheriff says he appreciates the public’s help but a lot of the tips that come in are really theories investigators can’t act on.
“Everybody has an opinion, and that's okay. We take them in and we listen to them. But to me, a tip is, is, I wish someone would call and say, I know this. I saw this, I heard this. That's the tip we're waiting on that hasn't come to us yet.”
