A retired Arizona Department of Public Safety lieutenant who spent decades working cases along the southern border says the most logical explanation for Nancy Guthrie's disappearance points south, toward Mexico, and that local investigators may have resisted that theory precisely because it would have forced them to hand the case to the federal government.

Dave Smith, the retired lieutenant turned law enforcement consultant, told Fox News Digital that the 84-year-old mother of "Today" co-host Savannah Guthrie was likely taken far from her Tucson home after her suspected abduction in the early hours of Feb. 1, and that the border town of Nogales sits just 60 miles away.

His comments land in the middle of a growing public dispute between FBI Director Kash Patel and Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos over who shut whom out, how long it took federal agents to gain access, and why a critical hair sample spent weeks at a private lab in Florida instead of at the FBI's own facility in Quantico.

A 60-mile drive and a 300,000-person city on the other side

Smith laid out the geography in blunt terms. Guthrie's neighborhood sits in the Tucson Valley, threaded with dry riverbeds, arroyos, that function like alleys between homes worth seven figures.

"The whole Tucson Valley is literally built around these arroyos, these ephemeral rivers. This is literally your green belt here, only instead of parks and things like the rest of the nation has, we have this wonderful desert area. But again, it works between houses. It's like a giant alley through the neighborhoods."

Those natural corridors, Smith said, make it easy for someone to move unseen. And once they move, the desert does the rest.

"The evidence is transitory. Once it rains, your footprints go away, the sun is hard on other forms of evidence and frankly this is a tough place to investigate crimes."

For Smith, the proximity to Mexico is impossible to ignore. He described the border crossing at Nogales as a gateway from a relatively small Arizona town into a major urban area of 300,000 people, a place where an abducted person could vanish quickly and where American law enforcement has little reach.

"My first thought is always Mexico in a major crime, because it's a great haven, and it's hard for us to follow up on. But in this case, obviously there was [somebody was taken with intent]. And I think that that's why we need to wonder, perhaps, was she taken to Mexico?"

Smith is not the only former law enforcement figure to raise the possibility. Former FBI agent Tracy Walder told the New York Post that Guthrie's disappearance appeared targeted, not random, and that the roughly nine-hour window before she was reported missing gave a kidnapper ample time to travel toward the border.

"I definitely think that they would be expanding out the search, particularly all the way towards the border," Walder said.

Why downplay the Mexico angle?

Smith went further than most commentators have been willing to go. He offered what he called a "personal theory", that acknowledging a possible cross-border element would have automatically elevated the case to a federal investigation, stripping Pima County of control.

"My personal theory is, if Mexico was suspected, that would make it a federal investigation. There seemed to be a great deal of effort to keep the feds out of this case. And the best way to do it was to deny any possibility of interstate or international transport of the person's body or kidnapped."

That theory gains traction when set against the timeline. FBI Director Kash Patel said publicly, on Sean Hannity's podcast, that the FBI offered help immediately and was rebuffed for days.

"What we, the FBI, do is say, 'Hey, we're here to help. What do you need?' What can we do? And for four days, we were kept out of the investigation."

The dispute over FBI access to key evidence has become one of the defining features of this case. Patel's account describes an agency ready to act and a local sheriff's department that waved it off.

The hair sample and the 60-day detour

The evidence-handling dispute goes beyond access to the crime scene. Early in the investigation, a hair sample collected from Guthrie's home was sent to a private lab in Florida, the Pima County Sheriff's Department's preferred facility. Patel said he had a fixed-wing aircraft on the ground, ready to fly the sample through the night to the FBI lab at Quantico.

"I had a fixed-wing aircraft on the ground ready to move it immediately through the night. And they said, 'we're sending it to Florida,' and then, I don't know, 60 days. They have jurisdiction, so it's their call."

Eleven weeks passed before the private lab finally shared the sample with the FBI for more advanced testing. Patel did not hide his frustration.

"We would have analyzed it within days and maybe gotten better information or more information. Our lab's just better than any other private lab out there, and we didn't get a chance to do that."

That is not a minor procedural disagreement. In a missing-persons case where the victim is 84 years old and may have been taken by force, every week of delay narrows the window for a rescue. Sending evidence on a two-month detour to a private lab while the FBI's own forensic operation sat idle raises questions that deserve direct answers.

Sheriff Nanos has pushed back. In a written statement, he said "coordination" with the FBI "began without delay." He added that an FBI Task Force member "was also notified and present at that scene working alongside our personnel" and that the FBI and the Pima County lab had "worked in close partnership from the outset."

Those claims sit uncomfortably alongside Patel's account of four days locked out and eleven weeks waiting for a hair sample. Both men cannot be right. And the person who pays the price for any miscommunication or turf war is Nancy Guthrie.

A crime scene briefly released

The questions about evidence handling extend to the scene itself. Fox News Digital reported that the crime scene at Guthrie's home had been briefly released before the FBI arrived, a lapse that allowed journalists and even delivery drivers to walk onto the front porch. In any serious criminal investigation, maintaining scene integrity is foundational. A premature release risks contamination and lost evidence.

The scrutiny facing Sheriff Nanos over his handling of this case has only intensified as weeks have turned into months with no arrest and no public identification of a suspect.

What investigators do have is doorbell-camera footage. On Feb. 10, photos were released showing an armed individual reaching toward a Google Nest camera at Guthrie's front door. The suspect appeared masked, carrying a backpack, and wearing a holstered pistol in what Smith described as a "Mexican carry" style. Within days of the disappearance, the FBI teamed up with Google to recover the video from the Nest system.

National Review reported additional details from the footage and timeline: Guthrie was dropped off at her Tucson-area home around 9:50 p.m. on January 31, her doorbell camera disconnected at 1:47 a.m. on February 1, and her pacemaker app showed it had been disconnected from her phone at 2:28 a.m.

Ransom demands and a trail pointing away from Arizona

The case took another turn when a ransom note surfaced, demanding millions of dollars in bitcoin for Guthrie's safe return. Newsmax reported that TMZ obtained details suggesting Guthrie may no longer be in Arizona and could be on the West Coast or in northern Mexico. The note included two deadlines and language indicating the writer was familiar with the Tucson area.

Harvey Levin of TMZ said the note claimed "they would return her back to Tucson" and gave "a time frame of how long it would take after they receive the money to return her to Tucson." The FBI's Phoenix Division confirmed awareness of the note and said it was being taken seriously.

Two men were briefly detained in connection with the investigation and later released. No charges have been filed. A combined reward of more than $1.2 million remains unclaimed. The family has urged anyone with information to call 1-800-CALL-FBI.

Other investigators have raised even more pointed theories. A private investigator has publicly pointed to a possible cartel connection in the disappearance, a theory that, if true, would make the failure to involve federal authorities early all the more consequential.

Eleven weeks, no answers

By mid-April, the case had stretched past eleven weeks with no arrest, no confirmed suspect, and no public indication that investigators know whether Nancy Guthrie is alive. In February, Nanos told reporters the investigation had not developed firm evidence that Guthrie was taken over the border. But Fox News Digital reported that the FBI had separately contacted Mexican authorities in connection with the search, a step that suggests federal investigators took the cross-border possibility more seriously than the sheriff's public statements indicated.

On Feb. 11, well-wishers left flowers outside Guthrie's home. By Feb. 23, deputies were examining a flyer taped to the mailbox. The gestures of a community desperate for answers while an investigation ground forward at a pace that frustrated the FBI director himself.

Meanwhile, questions have emerged about what Pima County deputies were focused on in the months before Guthrie vanished, a line of inquiry that adds another layer to the accountability questions surrounding the department.

The cost of turf

Dave Smith's theory may or may not prove correct. Nancy Guthrie may have been taken to Mexico, or she may not have been. But the facts that are not in dispute tell their own story: the FBI says it was locked out for four days, a hair sample sat in a private lab for eleven weeks, the crime scene was briefly released before federal agents arrived, and the sheriff's department chose its own lab over the FBI's offer of overnight analysis.

In a case where an 84-year-old woman was apparently taken from her home by an armed intruder in the middle of the night, the margin for institutional ego is zero. Every day of delay, every jurisdictional standoff, every evidence detour narrows the chance of bringing Nancy Guthrie home.

When local officials treat federal help as a threat instead of a resource, it is fair to ask whose interests they are protecting, and whose they are not.