TUCSON, Ariz. — Walking down a desert path carved through the neighborhood just a mile and a half from Nancy Guthrie’s home in the Catalina Foothills, retired Pima County Sheriff’s Lt. Bob Krygier points into the dense brush.
“You can throw something under the tree right there, in this brush right back here,” he says. “We could walk past…I guarantee you we’ve walked by things that are probably suspicious in nature, dead animals, things like that, and you’re just not going to see them the terrain itself acts as a natural hide for things.“
He’s in what locals call a “wash.” They are the pathways that water escapes during heavy rainfall, also known as ephemeral rivers, and they appear all over Tucson and the surrounding Pima County.
“Hundreds upon hundreds [of] these throughout the county and the city, if not thousands,” he told Fox News Digital earlier this week. “They’re just literally everywhere. It’s just the nature of the terrain, the way the geography was made.”
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They can also be natural escape routes, he said.
He spent almost three decades with the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, the lead agency in the search for the 84-year-old mother of “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie.
In that time, he said he chased countless suspects into the washes. Authorities have also recovered the remains of other missing persons many times over the years.
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Some are narrow. Some are wide, like one just east of Guthrie’s neighborhood, which at some points stretches more than an estimated 150 yards across. In a situation like that, a vehicle could fit inside.
“We’re here within five minutes. And you could, you saw, we could drive down this road for 10 seconds and be completely out of sight from any roadway,” he said. “So then you now have what you need, which is time, and some cover from prying eyes.”
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In the same area, deputies responded to an abandoned vehicle discovered on Feb. 2, parked just up the street from the entrance to the wash.
A Pima County Sheriff’s Department spokesperson previously said the vehicle was not connected to the Guthrie investigation. Fox News Digital has requested but not yet received records about how and why it was there.
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The route itself had been flagged to Fox News Digital by another neighbor — who said she saw a suspicious man walking in the area that same day. She asked not to be named due to concerns for her children’s safety amid the unsolved kidnapping investigation.
In the same neighborhood, Fox News Digital obtained Ring camera video from another resident that shows a vehicle headed in the direction away from Guthrie’s home a few minutes after her suspected abduction. The video was provided to the FBI in February, and there have been no updates since.
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Once inside, power lines lead toward nearby roads, Krygier said, providing guideposts along the way back out.
“I think they’d have to be very familiar with it because you’re not gonna stumble upon this area from Nancy’s house,” Krygier said. “But it’s close enough to where if you did some scouting days and weeks ahead of time, which there’s some evidence that says they might have been out here prior to that night, this would be an area that I would look at and say, ‘All right, let’s figure this out. I can get here to there without being seen.'”
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Guthrie is believed to have been taken from her home around 2:30 a.m. on Feb. 1. Her family discovered she was missing around noon. Searches on foot, plane and helicopter did not find her.
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“Even with airplanes, even with the FLIR that we have, the infrared, you’re looking down, you can’t see through a lot of different things, so it’s not going to see something that might have been stashed underneath some of this brush,” Krygier said.
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The federal government even provided a high-tech piece of equipment that attempted to pick up the Bluetooth signal from her pacemaker device, with no results.
“At this point, I can’t imagine saying no to anyone offering help, whether it be cadaver dogs, the Cajun Navy has popped up again,” Krygier told Fox News Digital. “Those are just extra feet on the ground that I don’t have to pay, quite honestly. Maybe if they find something, awesome. We probably wouldn’t have found it. If they don’t, great. I personally would be accepting some of that help. There’s no reason not to at this point.”
There is a combined reward of more than $1.2 million for information that cracks the case.
To remain anonymous, contact Tucson’s 88-Crime tip line at (520) 882-7463.
The family is also urging anyone with information to dial 1-800-CALL-FBI.
