Former FBI agent Maureen O'Connell told listeners of the "Megyn Kelly Show" on Tuesday that she is "75 percent" certain investigators are "getting close to" the masked, armed individual caught on 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie's doorbell camera the night she vanished from her Tucson, Arizona home.
Five months. That's how long it's been since Nancy — mother of NBC "Today" show anchor Savannah Guthrie — was abducted from her own bedroom in the middle of the night on February 1.
O'Connell predicted that once the suspect is detained, the "floodgates shall swing open." Megyn Kelly's response captured the weight of the moment: "That's big news. That's huge — big if true, as the kids say."
O'Connell didn't elaborate on her sourcing but said cryptically, "Things are happening." She explained the drawn-out timeline with a blunt observation about the legal stakes: "You're gonna have the greatest defense attorney in the world handling this case, whoever takes [it]. So you have to operate under the assumption that a couple big chunks of your evidence may get tossed."
The so-called "porch guy" has been the central figure in this investigation since the FBI and Pima County Sheriff's Department released security footage ten days after the abduction. The chilling video showed a masked and armed individual on Nancy's porch, appearing to tamper with the doorbell camera.
Savannah Guthrie, 54, called the footage "absolutely terrifying" and "unbearable" to watch in her first sit-down interview about her mother's disappearance back in March. She told colleague Hoda Kotb something that no daughter should ever have to articulate: "I can't imagine that is who she saw standing over her bed. I can't. I wake up every night in the middle of the night. And in the darkness, I imagine her terror. And it is unthinkable, but those thoughts demand to be thought."
That's not a media personality performing grief. That's a woman whose mother was taken from her bed by a stranger with a weapon.
Recent reports have added another layer. A ransom note, believed to be credible by investigators, allegedly indicated Nancy's inadvertent death. A message from the same I.P. address had previously referred to the 84-year-old as "safe but scared." Savannah addressed the reports with a careful "no comment," emphasizing that she is "not involved" in her networks' coverage of her missing mother.
Most recently, Savannah tearfully described her "agony" to "Today" show viewers. "We cannot be at peace [until she is found]," she said. "Please do the right thing."
Savannah has acknowledged publicly that her mother may already be "gone." That takes a kind of courage most of us never have to summon.
So where does this leave us? O'Connell's assessment — that investigators are assembling their case carefully because defense attorneys will challenge every piece of evidence — is exactly how serious criminal investigations should work. It's agonizing for the family, but it means prosecutors are building something designed to survive a courtroom, not just a press conference.
An 84-year-old woman was taken from her home in the middle of the night in Tucson, Arizona. The camera caught someone armed on her porch. Five months have passed. The former FBI agent who's been following this closely says they're close.
Sometimes the system works slowly because it's broken. Sometimes it works slowly because what happened was so serious that nobody wants to get it wrong.