Mexican 'searching mothers' join Arizona hunt for Nancy Guthrie

TUCSON — Lupita Tello poked the dirt outside Nancy Guthrie’s home on Feb. 22 with a sharp metal rod soldered to a handle. After wiggling the rod in the dirt, Tello pulled it out and smelled the sharpened metal tip.“If it smells bad like something decomposed, that’s where we start,” Tello said in Spanish, showing reporters and true crime streamers the main tool she uses in her searches for missing people in Mexico.Tello is member of Madres Buscadoras de Sonora, a nonprofit search collective based in northern Mexico.

Known in English as the Searching Mothers of Sonora, the group was founded in 2019 to search for tens of thousands of missing people across Mexico. In 2021, members uncovered more than 20 bodies in clandestine graves near Hermosillo and had previously located at least 42 bodies near Puerto Peñasco.

The nonprofit is planning an official search for Guthrie later in the week, Tello said. It will be the first time the group will conduct a search in the United States, she said.

Tello said her group was told about Guthrie’s case on Feb. 17 by a journalist friend of Guthrie’s daughter Savannah Guthrie and were asked to make flyers and search for her.On Feb. 22, she and her colleague Raquel Navarro weren’t in the area just for Guthrie. An anonymous tipster had sent them a coordinate of a potential dead body unrelated to the Guthrie case.  

Tello and Navarro wore white T-shirts stamped with the photo of a purple-and-white missing persons poster ubiquitous with their group.“We know the pain, we can relate,” Tello said about why she wanted to help find Guthrie. Tello's son disappeared in Mexico in 2020. After six years of experience in finding people in the Sonoran Desert, Tello says she and members of the Buscadoras can bring their years of expertise to the search.Those searches have “taught us about the dirt and the area,” Tello said. “At times even the air smells different when there’s a body.”

Navarro joined the group after her brother, Jesús, went missing five years ago. She said the work was difficult and often emotional, but she and hundreds of other volunteers remained determined to help families searching for answers.

Volunteers were not required to obtain a permit to help but were asked to give investigators space.

“We appreciate their concern and we all want to find Nancy, but this work is best left to professionals,” said Angelica Carrillo, Pima County Sheriff's Department spokesperson. She said the department had volunteer opportunities for those who wanted to assist.

Carrillo said the group must abide by private property laws and get permission from homeowners if they search on someone's property. 

Despite a 22-day search and desperate pleas from the Guthrie family for her return, few leads have publicly emerged about where Nancy Guthrie is or who may have taken her.

Guthrie's Tucson-area home is about an hour and a half north of the United States-Mexico border.

No evidence exists that Guthrie may have been taken to Mexico.

In a Feb. 18 statement posted on X, the Sonora state prosecutor’s office said it had not received a formal request for collaboration, assistance or information exchange from U.S. investigators in the Guthrie case but expressed its willingness to help.

(This story was updated with new information.)

Reach reporter Helen Rummel at [email protected].