The following is an original production of AZPM News.

Coming up, the latest timeline surrounding the investigation into the alleged kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie.

The world is laser focused on Tucson.

How did we end up here?

We've got two reporters who've been under ground zero from when the case began.

Plus, ballots have been mailed and we're less than a month away from election day.

We'll dig deeper into the RTA Next plan.

I'm David Lee and the Press Room starts now.

Welcome to the Press Room.

I'm AZPM News Director David Lee and the search continues for Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of Today Show host, Savannah Guthrie.

Joining me at the table, two of the folks who have been there since ground zero, L.M.

Boyd and Katya Mendoza, both of AZPM.

And L.M., take us through how we ended up from there to here and where we're at right now as of this taping Thursday afternoon.

Yeah, so keep in mind that some of these details were learned days later.

But to start from the beginning, the last time anyone saw Nancy Guthrie was Saturday night, January 31st.

She had dinner with her family.

Family dropped her off back at her home just before 10 p.m.

And we know that early Sunday morning, February 1st, the camera on her doorbell disconnected.

And a few other details have come forward.

The Nest app alert detected movement that could have been a person or an animal.

We later got footage of a masked person that we can talk about later.

But we also know that 15 minutes after that app alert, her pacemaker disconnected from her phone.

The next day around noon, family learned that she didn't show up where she was supposed to.

They went to the house to check up on her.

And shortly thereafter, they called 911.

And at 12:15 Pima County Sheriff's Department shows up.

And Sunday night, that's when it was announced that she was missing.

Okay.

Katya, you have been with L.M.

at a lot of these news conferences that have been held.

Sheriff Chris Nanos taking the lead on all of this.

How has it been at these news conferences?

A lot of outside media are in town for this.

The media presence has definitely grown exponentially since day one of Nancy Guthrie's disappearance.

There has been a large interest in terms of true crime reporters, influencers, national outlets, but also international.

Just yesterday, I saw a couple of Australian reporters doing live standups outside of the house.

Okay.

L.M., you know, earlier in the week, wasn't a lot going on until the FBI released some photos and video of an alleged suspect.

Yeah, we previously thought that the footage on the door camera was not recoverable.

That is what Sheriff Nanos had said last week.

But FBI and Pima County jointly released this footage.

They said that they were able to recover this data "on the back end" is how they phrased it.

Yeah, those stills and video were released to ask the public for help in identifying them.

Katya, there's been a lot of social media tied to this particular case.

And it's going not just from those who are covering it, but also the Guthries.

They've released several things on Instagram.

Certainly.

So these videos have been posted onto Savannah Guthrie's Instagram account.

A couple of them, you know, thanking the community for the outpour of prayers, thoughts, well wishes.

Everyone just wants to bring Nancy home, but also a couple of cryptic messages, which, you know, officials in the media have reported could be potentially addressing the alleged abductors.

The Guthrie family has also, you know, said that they will pay.

This is very valuable to them.

They just want to bring their mother home.

Okay.

Any final thoughts from either of you guys as we go into now, day 13, by the time this this particular show airs?

Yeah, I think there's been a lot of public concern about the way this investigation has been handled.

Those first couple days, there was really a lot of, there were a lot of statements made by the sheriff's department that had to be walked back or clarified.

Even Sheriff Nanos has acknowledged that the crime scene was turned back over to the family too soon.

Other people in the community have criticized the sheriff's department for not bringing in the FBI sooner or allowing the FBI to take the lead.

And we'll just have to see where this investigation goes.

In response to this criticism, Sheriff Nanos has called it "Monday morning quarterbacking."

But in this second week, where we see, you know, not any news conferences and the updates are more curated, this leaves a gap for people wanting to fill that with information.

And I think because of the tragic nature of this case, people want answers.

And unfortunately, a lot of people are going with premature answers, because that information hasn't been as transparent as some want.

Okay, L.M.

Boyd, Katya Mendoza, thank you so much for everything.

Thank you.

Thanks.

We are continuing our coverage of the Nancy Guthrie case.

Joining me here at the table Joe Ferguson of the Tucson Agenda; we have Tim Steller of the Arizona Daily Star, Paul Ingram from Tucson Sentinel and of course AZPM's Nick Rommel.

A lot has been going on, Paul.

We'll start with you Chris Nanos, Sheriff Chris Nanos was at the forefront at the beginning He's since kind of backed away from being the public face.

Is that a strategic reason, or is the FBI just kind of taking over?

Well, they have a hard problem I mean, they're they're in the midst of investigation.

They don't know a lot.

They don't want to start announcing things unless they have something and of course, is this the problem of like, what do you do?

If you hold a press conference, what are you gonna talk about?

They've been releasing as much information as they can.

But yeah, I mean Nanos isn't in the forefront because the investigation has, is really complex at this point and I think in part, yeah, I mean he had kind of some some kind of a painful press conference last week And so I think they in part they wanted put a little bit of information out there but not have a press conference that kind of, you know, really shows maybe how little they know about the case Okay, Tim you wrote a column a little bit earlier this week, talking about the intense spotlight that is on Tucson and how it maybe has compared to other kind of national situations.

How are we doing right now?

Well, I mean, it's it's a bad situation to be in.

You don't want to have news trucks lining your streets.

That means something terrible has happened and it's become a spectacle.

And that as you know, it has not to this stage shown any signs of waning, which is, I don't know, on the one hand being in the news business I totally understand wanting to be on top of a big story that is a story that people are very curious about.

On the other hand, I mean some of this stuff is just ridiculous, you know that we hit the point of absurdity when the, I guess it was a listener of a podcaster or an influencer who ordered a pizza for somebody, for that influencer or podcaster, to be delivered to the Nancy Guthrie home and then the Domino's pizza driver took it up to the door and that's kind of the level of absurd absurdity we've reached.

I'll pose this to the the table for anybody to answer: Have we gotten, I don't know, Nancy Guthrie fatigue?

There's a lot of stuff you pointed out there that's you can look on social media left and right, but do you think folks are feeling a little fatigue with all of the coverage?

I mean, I think at this point there's a lot, there's a lot of running around there was some you know, there was a investigation, momentary detainment and you see there was sort of like a rush of media down there.

There was a rush of interest for that it turned out to be not much.

I think there probably, for a while, there's gonna be a lot of interest in the story because it's got, I mean you've got kind of a strange kidnapping apparently, you've got a celebrity attached to it.

I mean, there's a lot here.

So it'll be but at some point, yeah, I think it's as this goes on into another week or longer hopefully, not hopefully, it will resolved in the best way possible.

But this may go on and then at one point, at some point yeah, the national media may kind of find the next thing to go chase.

Yeah.

Want to switch things up a little bit, you know the ballots for RTA Next, Propositions 418, 419 have gone out.

Early voting, it has begun.

But still a lot of questions surrounding the whole project.

One of those questions, public transit and how it looks overall in the new plan.

Nick I know you just got done doing some recent reporting on it.

When you look at it and when you look at the plan, what are some of the concerns about public transit you see?

I think the critics of the plan, their main concern is that the plan mostly keeps in place the existing public transit infrastructure and a lot of critics of that part of the plan say it could do more in terms of expanding transit like the first RTA did.

It helped create the streetcar, which is now one of the hallmarks of Tucson's infrastructure.

So I'd say that's probably the main concern and then there's also on the concern side, critics of the plan will say that the overall funding structure for transit in Tucson is kind of unusual compared to a place like Phoenix that has its own transportation authority that's just for public transit, has its own governing board, own sales tax all for buses and light rail Tucson doesn't have that.

So public transit is either funded through the RTA where it's like this 20-year commitment that's basically apportioned by all these local mayors competing for funds or it's out of the Tucson general fund, out of the city budget every year, which is somewhat unusual and it's almost, I think nine or ten percent of the general fund for example, this year is just for public transit, which is much higher than many other cities.

So those are, I'd say those are the concerns with that part of the plan.

Joe there also seems to be a lot of concerns with the RTA plan when it comes to, you know Urban versus...urban issues versus suburban versus rural.

What are some of the concerns you see in the plan?

I think there's a disagreement at the end of the day between urban residents and people who live outside their own whether the RTA is supposed to be a regional plan or a plan that helps them in their backyard, and so what they've concerned we've heard over and over again from the city is that they're not getting their share of it.

They put in this amount of money.

They want that money back out But you know as a Tucsonan, I go to Marana, I go to Oro Valley, go to Sahuarita.

I've been to Arivaca a few times and so I use those same roads.

They're being funded in part by the RTA and so there's a push and pull of that and people in Tucson don't want to build bridges in Marana and so Marana desperately needs those bridges to continue to grow.

And so there's that push and pull that's lead to this compromised plan that largely focuses on, you know, roadways and not transit as we talked about.

Tim according to some of your reporting the 2.67 billion dollars is the overall number but a hundred and seventy seven million is being set aside for rehabilitation of arteries and collector roads.

Is that enough to address the issues there?

No, I mean a $ 177.6 million will go a distance.

It'll fix some big roads and again, it's, we're talking about like Broadway, Oracle those kinds of roads.

Most of the money, almost $140 million, is dedicated to Tucson.

The way to understand this though is that basically, speaking of the conflict Joe was talking about the city of Tucson has a lot more interest in rehabilitating or repaving its roads than in widening them, whereas or building new intersections that sort of thing.

Whereas the outlying suburbs have more interest in widening or building new roads, that sort of thing.

So this was a way a to address the city's concern about repaving roads.

And be also to reapportion the money a little bit.

That is to balance the the spending within the plan so that the city gets a little more and South Tucson gets a little more Because the the percentages were a little low for Tucson.

So in the last minute wheeling and dealing this is one way that The the the plan was balanced out.

Paul if 418 and 419 do not pass what's the future in terms of development moving forward?

That's a really good question.

I mean there's a there's a pretty significant problem.

There's a structural problem for for the even for the city of dealing with like the cost of the bus system.

You know they're facing a like a 40 million dollar hole right now So they have to figure out how to make up that gap alone without the RTA before funding that gets even worse So you know everyone's gonna have to decide what to do about their infrastructure I mean do is everyone kind of do go back to trying to doing their own kind of the pre RTA compromise and I think it's worth thinking about like RTA originally was a compromise It was, nobody's entirely happy with this plan, but it's a good enough plan, right and RTA Next is another compromise So if you blow that up, what's the next step?

I don't think actually anyone knows that.

I mean at some point everyone's gonna have to.

Marana's gonna build its own bridges and Tucson's gonna build its own streetcar and Sahuarita is gonna lay out roads or some projects never get done because of that.

Nick alternative transit is a big part of this, or at least a part of the plan.

They want to try to do more things with bikes and pedestrian walkways.

Is there enough stuff in the plan right now to address those as well?

There is a lot in the plan In terms, I mean if you look at the roadway element like almost every road improvement or maybe not almost every, but many many road improvements include bike infrastructure, pedestrian infrastructure and if you just look at the roads that are being done for the first RTA, even if they're not finished like Grant, the parts that are finished you see have been turned from these extremely car-centric roads to a more kind of multi-use road.

So there is, the plan does provide for that I would say.

Go ahead.

Well, one of the interesting things that opponents have talked about is they are, they still think it's too car centric But the thing that really jumped out at me, especially as I was reading through that tome of RTA publicity pamphlet and the big theme in the opposition arguments is safety, that is that even though it does deal with safety improvements to some extent that it doesn't grapple with the problem we've had an incredible surge of traffic deaths not just pedestrians but vehicles and bicycles and motorcycles as well and and it doesn't grapple adequately and and that I think also has to do with this alternative transportation thing Just trying to get people to go different ways so they don't get hurt in crashes.

Joe We know the RTA wants this there are a lot of folks who want this who's opposed to this and what?

What are they saying right now as it you know, the ballots are out and it's just a couple weeks away before the vote is here.

So its pedestrian advocates, socialists and Republicans who are the largest groups to come out against this it is a Tucson group have you've ever seen one that have their own competing concerns as to why it's not there from it's too long.

It's too much.

It doesn't do the right thing.

So there are complaints everywhere you look for it at the end of the day.

So it's hard to pin down one But I think the largest group I've seen is been the people who want something more different in there and want a public process.

It still seems like there's some question about flexibility, whether or not it's a full 20 years or whether or not yeah, five years in we could look at it and maybe make some adjustments is is is that a thing or no?

I mean no They've and they have a list of projects that they have to do There's some money that's set aside for certain things like safety that they have some control to decide down the road, but those lists of a new myriad of projects, you know, Cortaro Farms interchange is a 250 million dollar project not all of its gonna be funded by the RTA.

But it's a big project and so they have to again finish it in 20 years if voters approve this So I think the flexibility is fairly small at the end of the day Does anybody see any possibility of flexibility?

I mean the, I think from our previous Press Room with this the the, my impression is that you got to take it back to the voters.

I mean the the big contrast was that they did change the Broadway plan early in RTA 1 and then later in RTA 1 basically decided that that wasn't a legal maneuver that we had done that that kind of flexibility was not permitted and so yeah, I don't see anything that is locked in changing without a vote.

You know, I would have to go back to voters Is that a couple parts the plan might be flexible I think like the arterial and collector roads It doesn't specify which ones whether it's Broadway, Oracle, Campbell, whatever And also the projections for this plan are more pessimistic than the last plan Which means that they're budgeting in some potential extra revenues And I believe those might be a bit more flexible than the parts that are already locked in.

Okay.

Staying in Tucson, but switching over to the police department a little bit of a shakeup chief Chad Kasmar retiring or kind of leaving moving out of work, but he's gonna be back at work pretty soon as the Deputy County Administrator overseeing public safety issues.

Tim, If you're the chief why make the move now?

I mean, I didn't expect it.

He's 48 years old.

He has earned his retirement He's got 25 years But he's only four-plus years into a term as chief that seemed kind of limitless in the sense that the council supported him, labor supported him.

He had the community support to a large extent in each case.

Obviously, there's certainly some detractors somewhere but He decided to, decided to call it a career in the police department.

There's been a lot of rumors that he couldn't deal with the city mayor or council or something in the city government structure.

When I talked to him, he said nope, that's not, not it.

You know, basically it was a personal thing.

He'd wanted a job that wasn't taking years off his life and that was allowing him a little more ability to deal with you know, to be present with his family and that sort of thing.

Okay Joe, Deputy Chief Monica Prieto takes over not on an interim basis.

She she's getting the job.

What do we need to know about her and what maybe some of her plans are?

She's a Tucson native She's been working for the police department and worked her way up from a patrol officer to being the second to Kasmar and was, you know appointed by the city manager.

So she's been here.

She knows the area and so she's a Tucsonan heart and heart through.

I spent a little time with her today talking about you know her next steps and what it was like and so she's focused on you know The same issues that Kasmar has been talking about in the press for the last two years.

Well Paul one of the things is with the move.

What does that leave in terms of holes of things that needed to get accomplished while he was there?

How much will Prieto be able to continue to do?

What he was doing if that was even a thing.

I I think there's my impression is that this is just a very clean handover.

Okay, actually really I mean, you know while he's stepping out of the job This isn't somebody being suddenly replaced and there's kind of a national search and there's an interim No, this is somebody who's long been in this position who understands the agency She's actually been there slightly longer than than Chad and so they, you know There just a seems like a fairly seamless handover in a lot of ways, which is sort of surprising.

I mean there's sometimes, when agencies do this, there's a little bit of a hangover, but you see with with TPD You know the previous chief Chris Magnus who was here for a bit I mean he handed over to Kasmar and there was kind of a very quick, you know No drama changeover and as when Kasmar went to run first and work for CBP for a little bit Yeah, so, you know, we just see this I don't think there'll be some big expectation that there's gonna be even a sea change in TPD There's not gonna be a change in policies I think we're gonna see the agency do what it's been doing for the last several years under Kasmar and the other predecessor, Magnus.

Tim quickly What will his role be now though with the Sheriff's Department?

It's not the sheriff.

It's Pima County.

Excuse me.

What kind of impact could he potentially have there?

Well, it's a it's a complicated situation at the top of the Pima County bureaucracy Jan Lesher has been the county administrator, county administrator for some years and is now planning to retire in January next year, 2027 and um she had only two, she has only two deputy county administrators.

Whereas a full complement is three so she wanted to get three in before she retires.

So that if they want to pull one out, there's not another huge mess at the top of the bureaucracy there.

He'll be overseeing not just law, is like public defense services and all those departments justice services, but also tourism and attractions is one, parks and recreation.

He's got the vehicle fleet so, you know they basically have a bunch of different departments and they have redivided them among the three different deputy county administrators.

Okay right now it is time for our viewer questions a reminder each week you can send in a question to azpm.org slash press room You can also comment on our YouTube channel and we will pull them up and ask the panel one of the questions So this week's question comes to us from our YouTube channel And it is, "Phoenix got all sorts of new freeways with the 0.5 percent sale, RTA sales tax tax up there.

You've seen a ton of new infrastructure We've got the same two freeways the federal government built decades ago and pointless, a pointless street car from this commentator.

They've decided that they're gonna vote no against the RTA Next plan.

How common it, how common is this sentiment about transit infrastructure here and anything else stand out from you guys on this question.

Nick?

Well, I have heard the, I haven't been in Tucson too long But I have heard the complaint about there not being a cross-town freeway, yeah, as far as I understand you'd have to tear up several neighborhoods to get that done at this point.

Which is why a lot of these urban freeways were built back in the 60s when there was more public support for tearing up neighborhoods and sending people off to live somewhere else.

I don't know if anyone else, I mean that is it It's it, you know, this is a bridge we didn't cross back in the 80s and and it's gonna be hard to ever do the freeway thing again.

As to the streetcar, you know, I would completely disagree with the the viewer's point.

It's, it's been a great success I mean you'd go on it any day and you'll find crowds of people Yes, mostly used by university students, but amply, like really a lot but that streetcar also led to a lot of economic revival downtown and Fourth Avenue and University that wasn't seen prior to that.

There's a lot of businesses there and and it's construction that happened because of it because of the streetcar.

And so maybe it failed for this person But at the same time it is used by and has generated billions in economic development.

Yeah, I think fundamentally I mean downtown changed radically after the streetcar and downtown was a fairly, there was there was not much downtown before the streetcar was built.

Let's put it that way and now there's dozens of businesses and there's also the apartment buildings There's also the complexes.

I mean all the way down to the you know, Mercado, Mercado, San Augustin and the Annex.

There's a whole kind of cultural connection and nexus that's happening there.

Is the streetcar, the, could it be bigger?

Could it be more connected?

Yes, certainly I think that would be one of the questions for some a future RTA Next is Do, what do we do?

Do we make the streetcar a bigger more complex system more akin to other cities that have streetcars?

I think that would be something that people really would want.

As for why did you know why Tucson doesn't have a huge freeway system?

I mean first Phoenix has a massive number of people, way more and way more investment way more money.

So part of that was that there's been a long time of infrastructure building all this kind of infrastructure into Phoenix building all these freeway systems that just Tucson hasn't been able to do because we just don't have the funds.

There is a radically different amount of, you know five percent of a million dollars versus five percent of a billion dollars is a radically different amount of money.

Yeah, right.

So I think that's been part and you know Tucson hasn't wanted a cross-town freeway.

Where are you gonna build it?

I mean, there's a fundamental problem though I will say you see ways of getting around this town using like Aviation Highway.

There are kind of sort of pseudo highways that you can use.

River to a point, Skyline to a part.

I mean you can go pretty far around this town and maneuver, but you just can't take a full-blown freeway.

Okay, Joe Ferguson, Tim Steller, Paul Ingram, Nick Rommel.

Thank you all for being with us today And thank you all at home for watching and listening.

I'm David Lee in The Press Room.

We'll see you next week.