NANCY GUTHRIE’S SON-IN-LAW MISSING FOR A WEEK WHILE A LEGAL LOOPHOLE ALLOWS POLICE TO SEARCH HIS HOME WITHOUT CONSENT — WHAT IS HE HIDING AND WHY WAS HE THE LAST TO SEE NANCY?! Tommaso Cioni, Nancy Gu

Nancy Guthrie’s son-in-law has not been seen in a week, but police and the FBI are able to search his home without his consent, even without a warrant.

Tommaso Cioni was the last person to see Nancy Guthrie, the missing mother of NBC anchor Savannah Guthrie, before she disappeared in the early hours of February 1. He and his wife, Annie Guthrie, who is Savannah’s sister, live in a sprawling $675,000 ranch-style house about four miles from Nancy’s home in Tucson, Arizona. Annie Guthrie was with Savannah when the NBC anchor appealed for more information on Tuesday and shared horrifying new footage showing a masked figure wearing latex gloves outside Nancy’s door on the night she vanished.

Cioni, 50, has not been seen since February 3, when the Daily Mail spotted him and Annie leaving and returning to their home. Despite his absence, Pima County Sheriff’s deputies have searched Cioni’s home multiple times, including a nighttime examination on Saturday. Annie was seen at the home supervising officers as they rummaged through the property, but Cioni was not present.

Police do not need Cioni’s permission to search the house, even without a warrant, as long as Annie is there to allow them access. This legal principle was established in the 2006 Georgia v. Randolph case, where a couple disagreed about allowing police access to their home. If another resident is physically present when police arrive to conduct a search and refuses access, officers would need to return with a warrant. However, if the other resident is not physically present, their refusal would not prevent another occupant from granting police entry. A second case in 2014, Fernandez v. California, affirmed this rule after a woman, beaten in a domestic violence attack, allowed police to search their shared apartment despite her boyfriend initially refusing access. He was in custody when officers returned to conduct the search. Pima County and federal records do not show any applications for warrants to search Annie and Cioni’s property, indicating that permission was granted.

It is unknown whether Cioni objected to police searching the house he shares with Annie, or if he may have already told police they could look inside whenever they wanted. Cioni and Annie have been married since 2006 and have one young child. Investigators were seen searching Annie’s home, including taking photographs inside the property for several hours, though it is unclear what, if any, evidence had been collected.

Drone footage was also released showing investigators removing a floodlight from Nancy’s home amid revelations that a ransom note specifically referenced the fixture. A security camera was also removed from the exterior of the property on Monday. Such activity is expected to continue.

Last week, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos stated that he had not ruled out Cioni or anyone else as a suspect in the investigation into Nancy’s kidnapping.

Nancy had dinner at the home of Annie and Cioni before Cioni dropped her off at about 9:45 PM on January 31. Cioni stated that he watched his mother-in-law enter her home through the garage before he drove off. Less than 30 minutes later, her security camera detected movement. Her pacemaker stopped transmitting data to her Apple Watch and phone shortly afterwards, suggesting she had been taken out of the devices’ range.

Police on Tuesday released images of a suspect tampering with Nancy’s security camera on the night she disappeared. Clad in a ski mask, the figure was filmed tampering with Nancy’s Nest doorbell camera. It is unclear if the individual is male or female, but some images appear to show facial hair above the top lip. In releasing the images, FBI Director Kash Patel said that teams with the bureau and Pima County Sheriff’s Department worked to recover the data from backend systems. “As of this morning, law enforcement has uncovered these previously inaccessible new images showing an armed individual appearing to have tampered with the camera at Nancy Guthrie’s front door the morning of her disappearance,” he said.

What looks like a gun inside a holster appears to be clipped to the individual, and one image shows what looks like a penlight in the suspect’s mouth. The masked assailant appeared to rip the Nest camera from its holder on the door frame. It was missing by the time sheriff’s deputies arrived on the scene the morning of February 1. Nancy did not have a subscription to Nest, which would have uploaded the images and saved them to a cloud storage platform. This meant investigators took longer to extract the images from her camera.

The images were released after investigators asked Nancy’s household staff to submit DNA swabs, which they intend to check against samples found inside the grandmother’s home. Savannah Guthrie shared the haunting stills to her own Instagram page, saying: “We believe she is still alive. Bring her home.”