Like hundreds of federal and local agents She roamed the Arizona desert And I was chased Potential leads In the nearly two weeks since then Nancy Guthrie has disappeared From her affluent neighborhood, families of other missing people are reminded of how difficult answers can be.
On the one hand, the families who spoke to the AP shared the deep pain felt by Nancy Guthrie’s children, including the popular “Today” show host. Savannah Guthriehas Express publicly.
On the other hand, people like Tonya Miller — whose mother disappeared under suspicious circumstances in Missouri in 2019 — say they feel frustrated as they watch… Seemingly endless resources Floods in search of Guthrie.
“Families like ours that just have ordinary people missing, they have to fight to get any help,” Miller, 44, said.
Miller’s mother, Betty Miller, is one of thousands of people listed as kidnapped each year, according to federal statistics. In most cases, families like Tonya Miller’s say it’s a full-time job calling for a fair and thorough investigation.
The country has engaged in an apparent kidnapping Nancy Guthrieafter authorities said they believed it was Taken against her will. People in her neighborhood tied yellow ribbons to the tree to show their support.
Several media outlets reported receiving ransom notes, and the Guthrie family expressed a willingness to pay — although it is not known whether the ransom notes demanding money with deadlines that have already passed are real.
in the meantime, Several hundred investigators The Pima County Sheriff’s Department said agents have now been assigned to investigate Nancy Guthrie.
FBI spokesman Conor Hagan declined to reveal how many of these agents work in federal law enforcement, and how many have already been assigned to Arizona. He also did not explain how the federal agency prioritizes various missing persons cases.
However, he said agents from the Critical Incident Response Group, technical experts and intelligence analysts are working to bring Guthrie home. There is also a 24-hour command center where dozens of agents analyze 13,000 tips poured in from the public, among other responsibilities, according to a post by the agency.
The vast majority of people reported missing are believed to be runaways – not abductees or abductees.
Throughout 2024, the most recent year for which the National Crime Information Center published data, more than 530,000 missing person records were entered. By the end of the year, there were just over 90,000 cases that remained unresolved on that list, some dating back decades.
Nearly 95% of the hundreds of thousands of cases filed in 2024 were believed to be fugitives, and only 1% were listed as abductees.
The report said that often the kidnapper is a parent who does not have legal custody of the child. It is very rare for someone to be kidnapped by a stranger.
The FBI names five people kidnapped or missing, including Nancy Guthrie, of Arizona, in its online database of 125 missing or kidnapped people. All five from Arizona are listed as Native American or otherwise disappeared from tribal communities, with the exception of Guthrie.
This racist trend applies to the rest of the country as well.
A disproportionate number of Black and Indigenous people were among those kidnapped in 2024, according to a National Crime Information Center report. Nearly a third of the 533,936 missing and abducted people in 2024 were black, although the US Census indicates that only 13% of the US population is black. Likewise, approximately 3% of missing persons listed were indigenous, compared to 1.4% of the indigenous population in the United States overall.
“Everyone deserves to be safe, and when someone goes missing, there must be an immediate, coordinated and effective response,” said Lucy Simpson, chief executive of the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Centre. “For many Indigenous women, long-standing gaps in resources, coordination, and systemic support for tribal nations have made prevention and response more difficult.”
Experts said that sometimes attention can be high-profile issues Big obstacle For law enforcement operations. But Savannah Guthrie’s fame also garnered extensive resources from the federal and local governments — including a $100,000 reward from the FBI for accurate information about her whereabouts or it could lead to the arrest and conviction of whoever took her.
Miller said this is in stark contrast to the dearth of help she received in Sullivan, Missouri, where she had to use her time and money to search for her mother, who was last seen in her apartment in the town of about 7,000 people. A box containing fentanyl patches prescribed for Betty Miller was missing from the apartment, and her prescription glasses were left on an armchair, Tonya Miller said. There was a large scratch on her mother’s front door that wasn’t there before.
The Sullivan Police Department did not respond to an email request for comment Friday.
Despite those suspicious circumstances, Tonya Miller said, local police did not treat her mother’s apartment like a crime scene. She had to beg them to take fingerprints, and often urged them to follow advice given by the public. In the weeks that followed, Tonya Miller organized search parties, printed fliers and held fundraisers to raise a $20,000 reward for her mother.
Tonya Miller said it became more difficult over the years to figure out how to help find her mother. She has written letters to elected officials at all levels of government, including President Donald Trump.
“I feel so helpless, because you don’t know what to do anymore,” Miller said.
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Riedel is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America It is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.