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One of Nancy Guthrie‘s Arizona neighbors has laid bare new details about a “strange” man she saw walking around their community around three weeks before the 84-year-old disappeared from her home—revealing that she saw the person “taking a long look” at the missing grandmother’s dwelling.
Aldine Meister, who lives in the Catalina Foothills, not far from Nancy’s $1 million property, opened up to NewsNation correspondent Brian Entin about the suspicious sighting in a new interview, explaining that she immediately noticed something off about the man she saw, revealing he was unlike anyone else that can normally be seen strolling through their quiet community.
When asked by Entin whether she had seen anything “strange in the neighborhood” before Nancy’s disappearance, Meister responded: “I did two weeks before,” although the date she then referenced was actually three weeks prior to the 84-year-old’s apparent abduction.
She went on to reveal that she had spotted a “strange guy with his hat down really low” while she was looking out of her bathroom window around Jan. 11—exactly three weeks before Nancy is believed to have been taken from her home.
“I have a picture window in my bathroom, and I see all the people walking by in the mornings,” she noted. “He was kind of hunched over, not in, you know, walking or hiking gear. He was dressed in a kind of street clothing. So I thought that was weird, because that’s not normal.”
Anyone with any information about Nancy Guthrie’s case should call 1-800-CALL-FBI, 520-351-4900, 88-CRIME, or visit https://tips.fbi.gov/.
Explaining that she is used to seeing strangers out for hikes or runs, Meister said that the man stood out even more because he appeared to linger near Nancy’s home for longer than she feels would be normal.
“I couldn’t make out his face, although his hat was way down,” she said. “And he was walking down the road. And I always see people, and I think, ‘Oh, that’s my friend, Nara, or that’s this person or that person.’ And I saw him, and I was like, ‘Oh, that guy doesn’t fit.’
“He was in kind of street clothes, not shoes that you’d walk in, and he had a baseball hat really low, and he was kind of hunched over, and he was kind of looking around, and he just didn’t fit.
“And he wasn’t going terribly quickly, like a normal person that’s getting exercise, he’s kind of going slowly. And when he walked by this street, he really took a long look at [Nancy’s home]. I noticed that.
“It freaked me out, and I’m not one of those people to be super freaked out by that. But I was like, that’s weird.”
Meister revealed that the sighting was so out of the ordinary that she “said something” to her husband and her mother, although she did not alert the authorities to the incident until after Nancy had been reported missing.
After she informed the FBI about the man, she said that they went to her house to discuss it with her—although it’s unclear whether the person has since been identified by the authorities.
The release of Meister’s interview came hours after it was revealed that local police in the Tucson area were examining a damaged utility box at a property near Nancy’s home, which officials believe could be related to an internet outage that was reported in the early hours of Feb. 1, the day that she disappeared.
That outage is believed to have disrupted “nearby surveillance systems,” “Today” host Craig Melvin revealed during the March 9 broadcast of the show.
Some of Nancy’s neighbors—all of whom were asked to submit any footage taken by their home security systems to the FBI and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department—had previously reported to the authorities that videos taken on the night that Nancy disappeared were “not available.”
Officials have reportedly been asking locals in Nancy’s community whether they experienced any unusual outrages with their internet service.
What is the full timeline of Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance?
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos noted during a media briefing on Feb. 5 that, while times are approximate, his team has pieced together several pieces of evidence that indicate Nancy’s movements—and the timeline of her apparent abduction.
Nancy, 84, was reported missing at around 12 p.m. local time on Feb. 1, around 14 hours after she was dropped off at the property following a family dinner. When she failed to turn up at her usual church gathering on Sunday, her friends alerted her family, who found her home was empty.
SATURDAY, JAN. 31
5:32 p.m. Nancy travels to Annie’s house in an Uber for “dinner and playing games with the family.”
9:48 p.m. A garage door at Nancy’s house opens when she was dropped off at the property by her daughter.
9:50 p.m. The garage door closes, indicating that Nancy was inside the home.
SUNDAY, FEB. 1
1:47 a.m. Nancy’s doorbell security camera is disconnected.
2:12 a.m. Movement is detected on a security camera at the home. No footage of this is currently available.
2:28 a.m. Nancy’s pacemaker app indicates that the device has been disconnected from her phone.
11:00 a.m. Nancy fails to arrive at the home of a friend, where she had been due to watch a church service livestream.
11:56 a.m. Nancy’s family travels to her home to check on her and finds the property empty.
12:03 p.m. The family calls 911 to report Nancy missing.
