Nancy Guthrie had been missing less than three days when family members and reporters, and even an Amazon delivery worker, could be seen wandering onto her property, with drops of her blood still staining the front entryway.

It’s been nearly two weeks since the 84-year-old mother of “Today” host Savannah Guthrie was abducted. With no suspects in custody as of Saturday, scrutiny is growing over how authorities have handled the case.

Some questions have focused on Pima County (Ariz.) Sheriff Chris Nanos and his department, which was the first to respond when Guthrie was reported missing from her Tucson home Feb. 1. Since then, Nanos has been the leading law enforcement communicator on the investigation, including after reports emerged of ransom notes demanding millions of dollars in cryptocurrency for Guthrie’s return.

The global spotlight is now on him.

“I’m not used to everyone hanging on to my every word and then holding me accountable for what I say,” Nanos said at a news conference early in the probe. “This is really, for me, pretty new.”

Critics pointed out his department opened up the crime scene a day after Guthrie was reported missing and sent vital evidence across the country to be analyzed for free, and the sheriff was seen at a weekend college basketball game while a ransom deadline still hung over the family.

A member of the FBI departs from the entrance of Nancy Guthrie’s residence after surveilling the area on Feb. 11 in Tucson.

(Brandon Bell / Getty Images)

President Trump has even weighed in on the issue.

“It was a local case originally, and they didn’t want to let go of it, which is fine,” Trump said when asked about the case at the White House on Friday. “It’s up to them, it’s really up to the community, but ultimately where the FBI got involved, I think, you know, progress has been made.”

Guthrie was discovered missing after she didn’t show up at a friend’s house to watch a church service. She was taken from her home without any of her heart medication, and it’s unclear how long she can survive without it.

Though she initially was considered missing, the urgency to quickly find Guthrie pulsed through the first days of media coverage because of her heart condition. So it came as a surprise to some observers that just a day after she’d been reported missing, Nanos declared the crime scene clear and released the home back to the family.

News broadcasters are stationed outside Nancy Guthrie’s residence Feb. 12. .

(Brandon Bell / Getty Images)

Forensic workers had processed the ranch-style home for evidence, including DNA and fingerprints, but could not recover images from a camera because the family did not pay for a subscription to back up the recordings, Nanos said.

Afterward, as the home stood unguarded, reporters, photographers and others wandered the property, walking to the front door and capturing video of blood drops along the porch.

The crime scene eventually was closed again so the FBI could conduct its own search, and Nanos told reporters opening the scene up the first time may have been premature.

“Monday morning quarterback. Absolutely. I probably could have held off on that,” Nanos said at a news conference, with top FBI agents flanking him.

Sheriff‘s deputies eventually were stationed outside the home, but even so, a pizza delivery driver walked food that had been ordered for someone in the neighborhood up to the door of the Guthrie home. On Friday, a company showed up to service Guthrie’s backyard pool, which was accommodated at the “request of the Guthrie family,” the Sheriff’s Department said.

Breaks in the investigation have come in fits and starts.

After searching the home last week, FBI technicians have been processing evidence from in and around it. Testing revealed the blood drops outside the door belonged to Guthrie.

Then, a series of ransom notes arrived in the tip boxes of two Tucson television stations and TMZ, seeking $4 million and $6 million in bitcoin, and included details about Guthrie’s home.

The fact that law enforcement announced Guthrie disappeared and then publicly gave credence to reports she was being held for ransom put authorities at a disadvantage, said Adam Bercovici, who has worked multiple kidnappings as the former supervisor of the Los Angeles Police Department’s special investigations unit.

“It is a debacle,” he said. “This kidnapping is one of the worst cases of incompetence I have seen.”

A person visits a makeshift memorial at the entrance to Nancy Guthrie’s home.

(Brandon Bell / Getty Images)

With so much information floating around, Bercovici said, it would be difficult to verify a legitimate ransom demand. Indeed, not long after news about the ransom notes broke, officials said a man in Hawthorne sent an imposter demand to the Guthries. He has been charged with a federal crime.

Much is still unknown about the details inside the investigation and exactly what evidence detectives have collected. Because of this, it will take time to fully assess their tactics and truly understand the complexity of the case.

The first big break in the case came Tuesday, when the FBI released surveillance videos of someone approaching Guthrie’s door wearing a holstered gun, ski mask and backpack. The videos, recovered by Google engineers, provided the first look at Guthrie’s kidnapper and last less than a minute. More than 4,000 tips flooded law enforcement agencies in the 24 hours after the images were broadcast.

By the following evening, sheriff‘s investigators were detaining a 36-year-old man after a traffic stop south of Tucson. Sheriff’s officials announced they obtained a court-approved search warrant for his Rio Rico home, immediately raising expectations among those closely watching the case.

But those hopes soon were deflated.

Surrounded by the throng of cameras and reporters, investigators and FBI forensic technicians swarmed the man’s home. His mother-in-law, under the glare of camera lights, declared him innocent, saying she didn’t know who Savannah Guthrie was, and told them “you won’t find anything here, we have nothing to hide.”

By the next morning, the man was free and his house cleared of investigators. The Times is not naming him because he has not been arrested or accused of any wrongdoing.

“I hope they get the suspect because I am not it,” the man told reporters. “And they better do their job and find the suspect that did it so they can clear my name.”

FBI agents watch as a vehicle is towed from the parking lot of a Tucson restaurant amid the Guthrie investigation.

(Brandon Bell / Getty Images)

On Friday night, authorities served a search warrant at a home in Tucson and swarmed a parked Range Rover. In the end, officials said no arrests were made.

Investigators are casting an even wider net to find photos, videos and any other clues. Other people in the area should expect to be detained and questioned, Nanos told local station KOLD.

On Thursday, authorities revealed a series of images of men in the dark with backpacks near cars and homes. About two miles from the Guthrie home, investigators discovered a glove on the ground, then several others farther from the home, the Sheriff’s Department announced Friday. They’ll all be analyzed for DNA in hopes it leads to the 84-year-old grandmother. The department said other DNA found at the home did not match Guthrie or anyone in close contact with her, and investigators are working to identify who it belongs to.

Meanwhile, the FBI doubled its reward for information this week to $100,000 and released a description of the person seen at her front door.

“The suspect is described as a male, approximately 5’9” – 5’10” tall, with an average build. In the video, he is wearing a black, 25-liter ‘Ozark Trail Hiker Pack’ backpack,” the bureau said. More than 13,000 tips have flowed into the bureau.

On Friday, the Sheriff’s Department sought to quash rumors that there was a divide between local and federal investigators, centered on the handling of evidence and which lab it should be sent to.

“Our strong partnership is critical, and we remain fully committed to this collaborative investigation. To ensure consistency and streamline testing, evidence requiring forensic analysis is being sent to the same out-of-state lab that has been utilized since the beginning of this case,” the Pima County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement. “This decision was discussed with and agreed upon by local FBI leadership.”

But Nanos himself expressed frustration about the pace of the probe.

“It’s exhausting, these ups and downs. But we will keep moving forward,” he told the New York Times. “Maybe it’s an hour from now. Maybe it’s weeks or months or years from now. But we won’t quit. We’re going to find Nancy. We’re going to find this guy.”

KARACHI, Pakistan — For the past decade, Sughra Ayaz has traveled door to door in southeastern Pakistan, pleading with parents to allow children to be vaccinated against polio as part of a global campaign to wipe out the paralytic disease. She hears their demands and fears. Some are practical – families need basics like food and water more than vaccines. Others are simply unfounded – the oral doses are meant to sterilize their kids.

Amid rampant misinformation and immense pressure for the campaign to succeed, Ayaz said, some managers have instructed workers to falsely mark children as immunized. And the vaccines, which must be kept cold, aren’t always stored correctly, she added.

“In many places, our work is not done with honesty,” Ayaz said.

The World Health Organization and partners embarked on their polio campaign in 1988 with the bold goal of eradication — a feat seen only once for human diseases, with smallpox in 1980. They came close several times, including in 2021, when just five cases of the natural virus were reported in Pakistanand Afghanistan. But since then, cases rebounded, hitting 99 last year, and officials have missed at least six self-imposed eradication deadlines.

Afghanistan and Pakistan remain the only countries where transmission of polio — which is highly infectious, affects mainly children under 5, and can cause irreversible paralysis within hours — has never been interrupted. The worldwide campaign has focused most of its attention and funding there for the past decade.

But in its quest to eliminate the disease, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative has been derailed by mismanagement and what insiders describe as blind allegiance to an outdated strategy and a problematic oral vaccine, according to workers, polio experts and internal materials obtained by The Associated Press.

Officials have falsified vaccination records, selected unqualified people to dole out drops, failed to send out teams during mass campaigns, and dismissed concerns about the oral vaccinesparking outbreaks, according to documents shared with AP by staffers from GPEI – one of the largest and most expensive public health campaigns in history, with over $20 billion spent and nearly every country in the world involved.

In Afghanistan and Pakistan – which share a border, harbor widespread mistrust of vaccines, and have weakened healthcare systems and infrastructure – local staffers like Ayaz have for years flagged problems to senior managers. But those issues, along with concerns by staffers and outside health officials, have long gone unaddressed, insiders say.

Officials tout the successes – 3 billion children vaccinated, an estimated 20 million people who would have been paralyzed spared – while acknowledging challenges in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Remote villages are hard to reach, some cultural and religious authorities instruct against vaccination, and hundreds of polio workers and security staff have been killed because of their alignment with a Western-led initiative.

Dr. Jamal Ahmed, WHO’s polio director, defended progress in those two countries, citing workers’ tailored response in resistant pockets.

“There’s so many children being protected today because of the work that was done over the past 40 years,” he said. “Let’s not overdramatize the challenges, because that leads to children getting paralyzed.”

Ahmed said he believes authorities will end the spread of polio in the next 12 to 18 months. Its latest goal for eradication is 2029. The campaign says about 45 million children in Pakistan and 11 million in Afghanistan must be vaccinated this year. Children typically need four doses of two drops each to be considered fully immunized.

Dr. Zulfiqar Bhutta, who has served on advisory groups for WHO, the Gates Foundation and others, said campaign officials should listen to the criticism of its tactics.

“Continuing blindly with the same strategies that we have relied on since eradication began is unlikely to lead to a different result,” he said.

Internal WHO reports reviewing vaccination drives in Afghanistan and Pakistan over the past decade – given to AP by current and former staffers – show that as early as 2017, local workers were alerting significant problems to senior managers.

The documents flagged multiple cases of falsified vaccination records, health workers being replaced by untrained relatives and workers improperly administering vaccines.

On numerous occasions, WHO officials noted, “vaccinators did not know about vaccine management,” citing failure to keep doses properly cold. They also found sloppy or falsified reporting, with workers noting “more used vaccine vials than were actually supplied.”

According to an August 2017 report from Kandahar, Afghanistan, local government authorities and others interfered in choosing vaccinators, “resulting in the selection of underage and illiterate volunteers.”

Vaccination teams worked “in a hurried manner,” reports said, with “no plan for monitoring or supervision.” A team in Nawzad, Afghanistan, covered just half of the intended area in 2017, with 250 households missed entirely. Village elders said no one visited for at least two years.

Vaccine workers and health officials in Afghanistan and Pakistan confirmed the issues in the documents and told AP it’s hard for campaign leadership to grasp the difficulties in the field. Door-to-door efforts are stymied by cultural barriers, unfounded stories about vaccines, and the region’s poverty and transience.

“Most of the time when we go to vaccinate and knock on the door, the head of the house or the man is not at home,” said one worker, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk to the press. “Many people find it offensive that a stranger knocks on the door and talks to a woman.”

Some workers find families have moved. Occasionally, they say, the encounter abuse.

“We have shared these problems with our senior officials,” the worker told AP. “They know about it.”

In an email response to AP’s questions about officials’ knowledge of the issues, WHO polio director Ahmed noted “operational challenges” in Afghanistan and Pakistan and said the program has “robust monitoring and evaluation processes.”

Worker Ayaz described “fake finger marking” — placing the ink used to show a child is vaccinated on their pinky even when no vaccine has been given.

“There is so much pressure,” Ayaz said.

Before the first polio vaccine was developed in 1955, the disease — spread mostly from person to person, through contaminated water and via fecal particles — was among the world’s most feared, paralyzing hundreds of thousands of children annually. People avoided crowded places during epidemics, and hospital wards filled with children encased in iron lungs after the virus immobilized their breathing muscles.

Polio is mainly spread when people are exposed to water infected with the virus. In countries with poor sanitation, children often become infected when they come into contact with contaminated waste.

WHO says that as long as a single child remains infected, kids everywhere are at risk.

Eradication demands near-perfection – zero polio cases and immunizing more than 95% of children.

But public health leaders and former WHO staffers say campaign efforts are far from perfect, and many question the oral vaccine.

The oral vaccine – proven to be safe and effective — has been given to more than 3 billion children. But there are some extremely rare side effects: Scientists estimate that for every 2.7 million first doses given, one child will be paralyzed by the live polio virus in the vaccine.

In even rarer instances, the live virus can mutate into a form capable of starting new outbreaks among unimmunized people where vaccination rates are low.

Worldwide, several hundred vaccine-derived cases have been reported annually since at least 2021, with at least 98 this year.

Most public health experts agree the oral vaccine should be pulled as soon as possible. But they acknowledge there simply isn’t enough injectable vaccine — which uses no live virus and doesn’t come with the risks of the oral vaccine — to wipe out polio alone. The injectable vaccine also is more expensive and requires more training to administer.

More than two dozen current and former senior polio officials told AP the agencies involved haven’t been willing to even consider revising their strategy to account for some of the campaign’s problems.

Dr. Tom Frieden, a former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who sits on an independent board reviewing polio eradication, said it would be impossible to eliminate polio without the oral vaccine. But he’s urged authorities to find ways to adapt, such as adopting new methods to identify polio cases more quickly. Since 2011, he and colleagues have issued regular reports about overall program failures.

“There’s no management,” he said, citing a lack of accountability.

Last year, former WHO scientist Dr. T. Jacob John twice emailed WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus calling for a “major course correction.” John shared the emails with AP and said he’s received no response.

“WHO is persisting with polio control and creating polio with one hand and attempting to control it by the other,” John wrote.

In his response to AP, WHO polio director Ahmed said the oral vaccine is a “core pillar” of eradication strategy and that “almost every country that is polio-free today used (it) to achieve that milestone.”

“We need to step back and really care for the people,” he said. “The only way we can do that in large parts of the world is with oral polio vaccine.”

Ahmed also pointed to the success WHO and partners had eliminating polio from India, once considered a nearly impossible task. In the four years before polio was wiped out there, health workers delivered about 1 billion doses of the oral vaccine to more than 170 million children.

Today, nearly all of the world’s polio cases — mostly in Africa and the Middle East — are mutated viruses from the oral vaccine, except for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Scott Barrett, a Columbia University professor, called for an inquiry into how things went so wrong – particularly with a failed effort in 2016, when authorities removed a strain from the oral vaccine. They miscalculated, leading to outbreaks in more than 40 countries that paralyzed more than 3,000 children, according to an expert report commissioned by WHO. Last year, a mutated virus traced to that effort paralyzed a baby in Gaza.

“Unless you have a public inquiry where all the evidence comes out and WHO makes serious changes, it will be very hard to trust them,” he said.

With an annual budget of about $1 billion, the polio initiative is among the most expensive in all of public health. This year, the U.S. withdrew from WHO, and President Donald Trump has cut foreign aid. WHO officials have privately admitted that sustaining funding would be difficult without success.

Some say the money would be better spent on other health needs.

“We have spent more than $1 billion (in external polio funding) in the last five years in Pakistan alone, and it didn’t buy us any progress,” said Roland Sutter, who formerly led polio research at WHO. “If this was a private company, we would demand results.”

Villagers, too, have protested the cost, staging hundreds of boycotts of immunization campaigns since 2023. Instead of polio vaccines, they ask for medicine, food and electricity.

In Karachi, locals told AP they didn’t understand the government’s fixation on polio and complained of other issues — dirty water, heroin addiction. Workers are accompanied by armed guards; Pakistani authorities say more than 200 workers and police assigned to protect them have been killed since the 1990s, mostly by militants.

The campaign also is up against a wave of misinformation, including that the vaccine is made from pig urine or will make children reach puberty early. Some blame an anti-vaccine sentiment growing in the U.S. and other countries that have largely funded eradication efforts and say it’s reaching even remote areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In suburban southwest Pakistan, Saleem Khan, 58, said two grandchildren under 5 were vaccinated over his family’s objections.

“It results in disability,” said Khan, without citing evidence for his belief. “They are vaccinated because officials reported our refusal to authorities and the police.”

Svea Closser, professor of international health at Johns Hopkins University, said Pakistan and Afghanistan were less resistant to immunization decades ago. Now, people are angry about the focus on polio and lack of help for diseases like measles or tuberculosis, she said, spurring conspiracy theories.

“Polio eradication has created a monster,” Closser said. It doesn’t help, she added, that in this region, public trust in vaccine campaigns was undermined when the CIA organized a fake hepatitis drive in 2011 in an attempt to get DNA and confirm the presence of Osama bin Laden or his family.

Workers see that continued mistrust every day.

In a mountainous region of southeastern Afghanistan where most people survive by growing wheat and raising cows and chickens, a mother of five said she’d prefer that her children be vaccinated against polio, but her husband and other male relatives have instructed their families to reject it. They believe the false rumors that it will compromise their children’s fertility.

“If I allow it,” the woman said, declining to be named over fears of family retribution, “I will be beaten and thrown out.”

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Cheng reported from London.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

This year’s Super Bowl commercials went for easy laughs and nostalgia, largely steering clear of controversy and leaving the surprises on the football field, where the Philadelphia Eagles dominated the Kansas City Chiefs.

Eugene Levy’s eyebrows flew off and buzzed around after he ate some Little Caesars. Four old ladies went on a joy ride in a commercial for WeatherTech, while sloths had a case of the Mondays in an ad for Coors Light. And British singer Seal became an actual seal, sad that he couldn’t hold Mountain Dew with his flippers.

Actor Glenn Powell did a take on Goldilocks for Ram Trucks, while comedian Nate Bargatze cloned himself and hired an opera singer because he saved so much money using DoorDash. Shaboozey took a lighthearted stroll through New Orleans for Nerds, while the stars of the “Fast and Furious” franchise took a slow cruise in a convertible so they could enjoy Häagen-Dazs ice cream bars.

Tim Calkins, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, said this was a complicated Super Bowl for advertisers.

Most ads were in development during last fall’s U.S. presidential election race, so avoiding controversy was even more of a priority than usual, Calkins said. The finalized crop of commercials feature a lot of simple humor, nostalgia and few creative risks, he said. But even that approach can backfire.

“That’s the challenge this year. Everybody wants to be safe, but you also want to be interesting,” Calkins said. “Safe advertising isn’t the advertising you notice or remember.”

And advertisers can’t afford not to be noticed. Some of the roughly 80 Super Bowl ads spots cost a record $8 million for 30 seconds this year.

Here are some of the themes of this year’s Super Bowl ads:

Budweiser brought back its Clydesdales for its Super Bowl ad, including a foal that wants to join the delivery team. Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal reenacted their famous deli scene from 1989’s “When Harry Met Sally,” except this time Sally was expressing her enthusiasm for Hellmann’s mayonnaise.

Harrison Ford was reflective in an ad for Jeep, talking about freedom and personal choices. “This Jeep makes me happy, even though my last name is Ford,” he said.

The Muppets searched for accommodations with Booking.com, while an Instacart ad featured a parade of familiar mascots like Mr. Clean, the Jolly Green Giant and the Pillsbury Doughboy. Disney asked what the world would be like without the iconic characters it owns, like Elsa from “Frozen,” Bart Simpson and the Marvel superheroes.

Advertisers are leaning on nostalgia more than they used to in Super Bowl ads, according to Kimberly Whitler, a marketing professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. Nods to the past can broaden the appeal of an ad to different generations and connect products to positive cultural moments, she said.

Putting celebrities together in unexpected combinations can broaden the appeal of a commercial. In their Super Bowl ad for Michelob Ultra, actors Catherine O’Hara and Willem Dafoe are pickleball champs. Soccer star David Beckham and actor Matt Damon are long-lost twins who bond over Stella Artois. Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay and comedian Pete Davidson teamed up for a HexClad commercial, while Post Malone, Shane Gillis and Peyton Manning had a block party with Bud Light. A slew of celebrities, including Matthew McConaughey, Martha Stewart, Greta Gerwig and Charlie XCX, appeared in an ad for Uber Eats.

Linli Xu, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, said celebrity endorsements can get people talking. But with dozens of brands using them, there’s a risk of diminishing returns.

Celebrities can also get so much attention that viewers don’t remember which brand they’re advertising, Xu said.

“There is a balancing act in terms of having celebrities in the ads,” she said.

Multiple ads put a spotlight on women and girls. Pharmaceutical company Novartis promoted early detection for breast cancer, while Lay’s had a heart-warming spot featuring a little girl who grows her own potato.

Women’s sports were also a big focus. Nike featured Caitlin Clark, Sha’Carri Richardson, Sabrina Ionescu, Jordan Chiles, A’ja Wilson and Sophia Wilson in a commercial talking about how often female athletes face the word, “can’t.” The ad’s conclusion: “You can’t win. So win.”

The NFL ran a commercial calling for girls’ flag football to become a varsity sport in all 50 states. But Dove also offered a sobering statistic: half of girls who quit sports have been criticized for their body type.

“Clearly the advertisers are trying to target the female audience, given the rising number of female viewers for the big game and the NFL in general in recent years,” Xu said.

Charles Taylor, a marketing professor at Villanova University’s School of Business, noticed more gross-out humor than usual.

In a commercial for Dunkin’, actor Jeremy Strong emerged from a can of coffee covered in grounds and brown liquid. A man’s tongue started dancing to celebrate cold foam from Nestlé Coffee Mate. And in a star-studded ad for Pringles, Chiefs head coach Andy Reid, L.A. Clippers’ James Harden and actor Nick Offerman all watch their iconic mustaches jump off their faces and soar through the sky to help deliver cans of the chips.

Taylor said the ads do get attention, but the yuck-factor could backfire.

It wasn’t all fun and games at the Super Bowl this year. Pharmaceutical company Pfizer promoted its efforts to cure cancer. Hims & Hers, a telehealth company, talked about America’s obesity epidemic. The Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, founded by New England Patriots Chairman and CEO Robert Kraft, ran an ad featuring Snoop Dogg and Tom Brady saying what they hate about each other, in an effort to show how pointless hate is.

An ad from Rocket showed people dreaming of home and aimed to get the Super Bowl crowd to sing along to “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” Xu said she expected more ads promoting that unifying message, but thought most advertisers went with humor instead.

“We just had an election year and there’s a lot of discussion around divisiveness,” she said. “People might be wanting to see some unity, everybody coming together as a country.”

For the third consecutive year, the religious-themed He Gets Us commercial returned to the Super Bowl. This year’s ad featured Johnny Cash’s cover of “Personal Jesus” and showed everyday people being helpful and heroic. Come Near, a nonprofit that says it aims to share “the love and message of Jesus in disruptive and personally engaging ways,” funded the ad this year and last year after taking over the effort from a previous group.

Several Super Bowl ads made the case for AI as a helpmate. Chris Pratt, Chris Hemsworth and Kris Jenner teamed up for an ad wearing Meta ‘s smart glasses, which use artificial intelligence to answer questions about what wearers are seeing. Actor Walton Goggins pitched GoDaddy Airo, which uses AI to help build websites and social content. And Google’s “50 States, 50 Stories” campaign is showing viewers a small business from their state that’s using Google’s Gemini AI assistant. But Cirkul, a water bottle brand, poked fun at AI, showing comedian Adam Devine accidentally ordering 100,000 bottles using the AI assistant on his phone.

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This story has been corrected to show that previous Super Bowl ads in the “He Gets Us” campaign were run by a different group.