Nancy Guthrie's neighbors flag camera glitching as experts explain Wi-Fi jamming

FBI investigators reportedly ask neighbors about internet outages during Savannah Guthrie's mother's abduction, sparking Wi-Fi jammer speculation. Nancy Guthrie Nancy Guthrie's neighbors flag camera glitching as experts explain Wi-Fi jamming Investigators reportedly asking about internet outages the morning Nancy Guthrie was taken from her Tucson home By Michael Ruiz Fox News Published March 6, 2026 4:29pm EST Facebook Twitter Threads Flipboard Comments Print Email Add Fox News on Google close Video Cellebrite expert breaks down digital clues in Nancy Guthrie abduction Heather Barnhart, a Cellebrite digital forensics expert who helped land Bryan Kohberger in prison for life, explains his big smartphone mistake and new clues in Nancy Guthrie’s suspected kidnapping. NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! TUCSON, Ariz. — The task force investigating the February abduction of "Today" co-host Savannah Guthrie's mother has reportedly begun asking neighbors about a potential internet outage the morning of her abduction, prompting speculation that the kidnapper may have used a Wi-Fi jamming device. A move like that would add a layer of sophistication for the masked suspect who appeared on 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie's front steps carrying a Walmart backpack and oddly placed holster."It shows an astounding amount of planning if they were used," said Joshua Ritter, a Los Angeles defense attorney and Fox News contributor. Neighbors told Savannah's network, NBC, that a team of investigators re-sweeping the neighborhood Thursday asked specifically about internet outages. Savannah Guthrie and her mother Nancy Guthrie. (Courtesy of NBC) According to NBC News, a couple that lives adjacent to Guthrie's home said they have four cameras on their property, noting the one closest to the missing 84-year-old's home was "not available" during the overnight hours of Feb. 1, when she disappeared.The neighbor said it seemed "uncanny" that the security video wasn't available during that timeframe. "That’s really weird, isn’t it?" they said. That prompted speculation about the so-called Wi-Fi jammers, which are illegal in the United States under Federal Communications Commission guidelines.They're not particularly high-tech. And they can be obtained online — which is potentially something investigators could track. But the fact that the FBI and Google were able to recover video from Guthrie's Nest doorbell camera, when the device was physically missing, and she did not have a cloud subscription, indicates a Wi-Fi jammer may not have been deployed at her front door. DID NANCY GUTHRIE'S ABDUCTOR RETURN TO THE CRIME SCENE? A Wi-Fi jammer used in an alleged residential burglary in February 2025. (West University Place Police)"If they were using Wi-Fi jammers, then I would expect that we would not be able to see any video from the front-door cameras," said Morgan Wright, the CEO and founder of the National Center for Open and Unsolved Cases. "I took a look at some of the videos with the other gangs that use Wi-Fi jammers, and had one been up and running and persistent, you wouldn’t have gotten the clear pictures that we did from the front."Guthrie's router wouldn't detect the presence of a signal jammer, either, unless its internal logs recorded the sudden disconnects of multiple devices at the same time, like Guthrie's exterior cameras, Wright said. "The router won’t see the jammer as a device," he told Fox News Digital. "It’s not attempting to connect… All an RF (radio frequency) jammer does is flood a frequency band with noise so legitimate signals cannot be decoded."FOX NEWS TRUE CRIME NEWSLETTER: NEW NANCY GUTHRIE VIDEO, CALEB FLYNN'S CHARGES, MISSING MOM ARRESTED These two images were released by the FBI, recovered from Nancy Guthrie's Nest doorbell camera. It's unclear whether they show the same person. (FBI)So unless the router in Guthrie's home logged the disconnects, which not every make and model does, the jammer wouldn't have a digital footprint for investigators to uncover, he said. "Whether investigators could detect a jammer — the answer is almost certainly no," Wright said. "It operates at the radio layer. The router records events at the network layer." Jammers function by spamming the airwaves on the same frequencies as Wi-Fi devices, interrupting their connections to the internet.DNA IS STILL PENDING AS VOLUNTEERS FIND ANOTHER GLOVE IN THE SEARCH FOR NANCY GUTHRIE Annie Guthrie, her husband Tommaso Cioni, and Savannah Guthrie at their missing mother Nancy Guthrie's home on Monday, March 2, in Tucson, Arizona. (Fox News) Early adopters to home Wi-Fi may have seen similar interruptions if they took a call on a wireless landline phone while surfing the internet. People who live in densely populated apartment buildings can also face interference from their neighbors. More advanced routers are more resilient to conflicting signals.Commercial jammers have a range of about 10 to 30 yards, Wright said, and they get more effective the closer they are to the victim's router. From a distance, they can cause lag and glitching — but might not black out a camera's signal entir