Savannah Guthrie's 84-year-old mother has been missing for nearly 3 months.
The sheriff running the investigation just had a secret buried for 40 years exposed.
Now you know why Nancy Guthrie hasn't been found.
Chris Nanos Suspended Eight Times and Lied About It for 40 Years
Arizona Republic reporters obtained employment records through a public records request and found that Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos was suspended eight times during his early career at the El Paso Police Department – missing 37 days of work between 1976 and 1982.
The longest suspension came after a March 1982 incident in which Nanos threw a handcuffed robbery suspect against a patrol vehicle and struck him in the face multiple times until the man suffered severe blood loss and was hospitalized.
A supervisor's notice stated: "Your reactions went beyond reasonable force. With your fist, you struck subject Urias several times."
Pima County Supervisor Matt Heinz described it on national television this way: Nanos "beat, almost to death, a handcuffed robbery suspect who was in the back of a squad car, with a flashlight" – and the injured man ended up in the ICU.
Nanos was also disciplined for threatening a witness who filed a complaint against him – telling that witness "One of these nights I will waste you" – then lying to his superiors about it.
Dispatcher logs caught him.
Ten-day suspension for the lie alone.
And here is what should end his career permanently.
Nanos was forced to resign from El Paso in lieu of termination in 1982.
His publicly posted resume said he worked there until 1984.
He maintained that lie for 40 years – through his hire at the Pima County Sheriff's Department, through his rise to Sheriff in 2020, and through his reelection by 481 votes in 2024.
Heinz told NewsNation this week: "We should not know the name Nanos. He has perpetrated a fraud for four decades upon my community."
His attorney called his El Paso disciplinary record "minimal."
Thirty-seven days suspended, a man beaten nearly to death while handcuffed, a witness threatened in the street, and a lie he carried for four decades.
That's what his attorney called minimal.
How the Pima County Sheriff Sabotaged the Nancy Guthrie Investigation
Nancy Guthrie – the 84-year-old mother of NBC's Savannah Guthrie, the same media that has spent years telling you to trust institutions – was abducted from her Tucson home and the man assigned to find her shouldn't have been allowed to carry a badge.
Doorbell camera footage captured a masked, armed suspect at her door at 2:12 a.m. on February 1.
Her pacemaker stopped syncing with her Apple devices at 2:28 a.m.
She hasn't been seen since.
Nanos released the crime scene before investigators finished working it.
He grounded a search-and-rescue aircraft in the early hours because he'd clashed with the only deputy who could fly it – and reassigned that man to street patrol.
DNA evidence was sent to a private lab instead of the FBI lab in Quantico.
The FBI's assistant director posted publicly that his agency had asked to test that same evidence two months earlier.
Nanos said no.
Heinz said Nanos "has held a grudge against the FBI and refused to fully work with them."
The United Cajun Navy – the organization that rescued thousands during Katrina, Harvey, and Michael – submitted a 41-page search plan offering cadaver dogs, scent-tracking dogs, heat-sensing drones, and volunteer EMTs ready to sweep the Catalina Foothills terrain where Guthrie vanished.
Nanos never responded.
A law enforcement insider told NewsNation the most experienced homicide detective on the case had three years of experience.
The veterans had already left the department because of Nanos.
Nanos Faces Recall and Perjury Accusations as Nancy Guthrie Remains Missing
Nanos is a Democrat.
He won reelection in November 2024 by 481 votes after a recount.
Before the election, he placed his Republican challenger – a lieutenant named Heather Lappin – on administrative leave and ordered her not to discuss why.
He did the same to union president Sgt. Aaron Cross, who had held a sign on a street corner that read "Deputies Don't Want Nanos."
When the secret came out, his own people made their judgment official.
The Pima County Deputy's Organization – representing more than 300 of his officers – held a formal vote.
The options were "No Confidence & Resign" or "Confidence & Continue."
Two hundred forty-one voted him out.
Sixty-five abstained.
Not one deputy voted to keep him.
The union was direct: "Deputies cannot serve effectively under leadership with such a history of repeated disciplinary problems, considering it is unlikely he would have been certified as a peace officer in Arizona if it was properly disclosed."
Chris Nanos should never have been allowed to become sheriff.
Instead he rose to the top of the department.
And when an 84-year-old woman was kidnapped from her home and the nation turned to Tucson, he was the man holding the badge.
The Left spent years telling you the system works — that institutions are trustworthy, that elections have consequences, that the right people end up in charge.
Chris Nanos is what that looks like in practice.
An 84-year-old woman was kidnapped from her home in the middle of the night, and the man voters put in charge of finding her had beaten a handcuffed suspect into the ICU and lied about it for 40 years.
She's still missing.
He still has no regrets.
Sources:
- Will Potter, "Nancy Guthrie sheriff's appalling past revealed," Daily Mail, April 21, 2026.
- Matt Heinz, Pima County Board of Supervisors, interview with NewsNation's Elizabeth Vargas Reports, April 24, 2026.
- "Nancy Guthrie case: Sheriff Chris Nanos urged to resign after no-confidence vote," NewsNation, March 2026.
- "Pima County sheriff no stranger to controversy as criticism in Nancy Guthrie case ramps up," Fox News, February 14, 2026.
- "Nancy Guthrie Sheriff Nanos suffers 'no confidence' vote," Newsweek, March 2026.
- "Major mistakes made by Sheriff Nanos in Nancy Guthrie investigation," NewsNation, March 13, 2026.
- "Sheriff in the Nancy Guthrie Case Left a Massive Search Team on Hold," Conservative Underground News, April 20, 2026.