Investigators ask neighbors about internet outages in Guthrie case

TUCSON, Ariz. – The task force investigating the February kidnapping of the “Today” show host Savannah GuthrieA mother reportedly began asking neighbors about a possible internet outage on the morning of her kidnapping, sparking speculation that the kidnapper may have used a Wi-Fi jammer.

A move like that would add a layer of complexity to the masked suspect who appeared as an 84-year-old man Nancy GuthrieHis front steps carrying a Walmart backpack and an oddly placed wallet.

“It shows an amazing amount of planning if it was used,” said Joshua Ritter, a Los Angeles defense attorney and Fox News contributor.

In Savannah, neighbors told NBC that a team of investigators who re-combed the neighborhood on Thursday specifically asked about the internet outage.

Savannah Guthrie and her mother, Nancy Guthrie. (Courtesy of NBC)

according to NBC NewsA couple who live next door to the Guthrie home said they had four cameras on their property, noting that the camera closest to the missing 84-year-old woman’s home “was not available” during the overnight hours of February 1, when she disappeared.

The neighbor said it seemed “weird” that security video was not available during that time frame. “This is really strange, isn’t it?” They said.

This raised speculation about the so-called Wi-Fi jammerswhich is illegal in the United States under FCC guidelines.

They are not particularly high-tech. They can be obtained online, which is something investigators can track.

But the truth is that Federal Bureau of Investigation Google was able to recover the video from Guthrie’s Nest doorbell camerawhen the device was actually missing, and she did not have a cloud subscription, suggesting that a Wi-Fi jammer may not have been deployed at her front door.

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A Wi-Fi jammer was used in an alleged February 2025 home burglary. (Western University Place Police)

“If they were using Wi-Fi jammers, I expect we wouldn’t be able to see any video from the front door cameras,” said Morgan Wright, CEO and founder of the National Center for Open and Unsolved Cases. “I looked at some videos with other gangs using Wi-Fi jammers, and if one of them had been up and running, I wouldn’t have gotten the clear images we got from the front.”

Wright said Guthrie’s router wouldn’t detect the presence of a signal jammer either, unless its internal logs recorded sudden disconnections of multiple devices at the same time, such as Guthrie’s outdoor cameras.

“The router won’t see the jammer as a device,” he told Fox News Digital. “It’s not trying to communicate…all the RF jammer does is flood the frequency band with noise so that legitimate signals can’t be decoded.”

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These two photos were released by the FBI and were recovered from Nancy Guthrie’s doorbell camera. It is unclear whether they show the same person. (FBI)

So, unless the router in Guthrie’s home registered disconnections, which not all makes and models do, the jammer would have no digital fingerprint that investigators could detect.

“Whether investigators are able to detect the jamming device, the answer is definitely no,” Wright said. “It works at the radio layer. The router logs events at the network layer.”

Jammers work by sending unwanted messages onto the airwaves on the same frequencies as Wi-Fi devices, interrupting their connections to the Internet.

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Annie Guthrie, her husband Tommaso Cione, and Savannah Guthrie at the home of their missing mother, Nancy Guthrie, on Monday, March 2, in Tucson, Arizona. (Fox News)

Early users of home Wi-Fi may have experienced similar outages if they made a call on a wireless landline while browsing the Internet. People who live in densely populated apartment buildings can also experience interference from their neighbors. More advanced routers are more resilient to conflicting signals.

Commercial jammers have a range of 10 to 30 yards, and their effectiveness increases the closer they are to the victim’s router, Wright said. From a distance, they can cause lag and glitches, but they may not completely block the camera signal.

While the devices used by the US Army and Secret Service have a much greater range, they are also larger and consume more power.

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Members of the press work outside the home of Nancy Guthrie, the missing mother of “Today” host Savannah Guthrie, Thursday, February 5, 2026, in Tucson, Arizona. (AP Photo/Caitlin O’Hara)

For that reason, he said it was unlikely that neighbors would have seen the effect of a jammer deployed at Guthrie’s home.

“If they say, ‘Well, the Internet went out,’ it has nothing to do with the radio frequency jammer,” he said of the neighbors. “It would have to be a high-powered, military-grade RF jammer to impact a neighbor.”

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Wi-Fi jammers do not affect wired security cameras or alarm systems. Some wireless cameras can store video locally and upload it once the dropped connection is restored. It depends on the make and model.

Jamming devices have been used by organized burglary gangs to overwhelm home security systems in recent months, including a group linked to South America. Busted in Houston, Texaslast month. Authorities said the same gang has ties to similar robberies in California, New York, Florida and Wisconsin.

The illuminated versions of photos released by the FBI show a “subject” on Nancy Guthrie’s property. (Provided by the FBI)

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“We all know that South American robbery groups are using them in robberies all over the country,” said Lisa Miller, a retired detective and law enforcement director for the Colorado Attorney General’s Office.

“I find it a plausible theory but not a likely one,” she told Fox News Digital. “Here’s why: The video of the balcony monster released by the FBI didn’t appear to be glitched. At all. I mean, even police car laptops malfunctioned during a traffic stop for someone with a jammer.”

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Savannah Guthrie visits the Today Gallery at Rockefeller Plaza in New York on Thursday, March 5, 2026. (Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

The antenna shown in the suspect’s pocket is on it Nest Video can She said it was likely part of a portable radio.

“I think it’s smarter to use that than a regular phone,” she said. “Criminals know what the FBI…can do. Of course, I see, based on experience, and this fits my theory, that the balcony monster had an accomplice.”

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Other experts also question the additional level of complexity a jammer might bring.

“If they were thinking forward enough to buy and use one of these jammers, I think they would have done better than what we saw at the front door,” Betsy Brantner Smith, Retired police sergeant And the official spokesman for the National Police Association. “It’s certainly a possibility, but it would require a lot of forward thinking and work, which brings us back to someone who knew her and specifically targeted her.”

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On the other hand, if the suspect knew her well enough, he might have known that she didn’t have a cloud subscription for the cameras she did.

The Pima County Police Department declined to comment on any possible internet outages in Guthrie’s neighborhood at the time of her kidnapping.

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