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The influencer circus around Nancy Guthrie’s home

Are they harming the investigation — or just doing the same thing as CNN?

Nancy Guthrie, mother of Today host Savannah Guthrie, has been missing for over a month now. While the investigation remains active, with no new breaks over the past several weeks, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department in Arizona has returned some of its police officers back to their previous positions. The media circus outside of Nancy’s house left with them.

That isn’t the case for everybody, however. There are social media influencers still milling around the missing Guthrie’s home, waiting for a break in the case. And they’re not just waiting — but trying to actually solve the case. They’re looking for clues while their followers give their own theories that can verge into outrageous.

Slate’s Luke Winkie told Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram that he “thinks people think that this case could be solved despite the fact that it’s not, and that has driven a lot of the speculation.”

Below is an excerpt of Winkie’s conversation with Today, Explained, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

Tell us where you went and tell us what it looked like.

I flew into Phoenix, Arizona, jumped in a rental car, took out my phone, and I tapped in Nancy Guthrie’s address. I drove to Tucson, about an hour and a half away, all pretty ordinary. And then I took this one right turn onto a street, and immediately, there were all these cars parked on the side of the road. There were drones overhead — media people just kind of wandering around. There’s people filming front-facing camera videos and talking to their streaming setups. There’s not a police barricade or anything. Anyone can just........

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