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The Pima County Sheriff’s Department—which is leading the investigation into Nancy Guthrie‘s abduction—was working on a reality TV show just months before her disappearance that offered producers in-depth access to the inner workings of its officers, a new report has revealed.
According to a trove of more than 200 emails obtained by Fox News, deputies working across multiple departments were instructed in June 2025 to work with producers from the A&E show “Desert Law,” which aired in January of this year, just weeks before Nancy, 84, was taken from her Arizona home.
The exchanges—several of which took place between producer Amanda Riley and Capt. Robert Koumal, who works in the community services division—also reveal that there had been multiple staffing changes made across the department in the months leading up to Nancy’s disappearance.
Five units, including the homicide and cold case departments, underwent a “reassignment” of leadership, according to an email sent to Riley by Koumal, who wrote: “The department has experienced some rotational reassignments since last year.”
The most recent email in the tranche of messages was sent in December 2025—less than two months before Nancy vanished from her Tucson-area home. At the time of publication, the grandmother remains missing and no suspects have been named in her case.
However, the messages also reveal the department’s concerns about certain body cam footage being used in the show.
Anyone with any information about Nancy Guthrie’s case should call 1-800-CALL-FBI, 520-351-4900, 88-CRIME, or visit https://tips.fbi.gov/.
A&E producers requested multiple clips throughout the emails and, while it’s unclear what exactly was handed over by the PCSD, one of Koumal’s colleagues notes in one email to the captain that he was worried about the use of a video in which an officer used “profanities constantly” during a conversation with a subject.
Referring to a separate piece of body cam footage, the same colleague admitted that an officer had “punch[ed] the suspect several times in the face,” while noting that the deputy did not “activate his body camera until well after the fight [was] over.”
Producers had previously highlighted the importance of the body cam footage in the show, with one email sent by a member of the production team, Tom Olney, noting: “There is one area we’ve struggled with which would be great to get your input on.
“To show the breadth of work the deputies and detectives do, we have been looking at creating compelling narratives purely from body worn camera footage at incidents we didn’t film at—we are calling them retrospective incidents.”
The email then asked that members of the PCSD highlight specific “incidents” that might make for the “right type” for the show.
Olney also praised the department for being so supportive, saying: “Thank you as ever for all your continued support, it’s amazing and absolutely the best I’ve ever received from any law enforcement department!”
However, he later raised concerns about the wait time for requested body cam footage and asked the PCSD to reprioritize which clips they were seeking to procure to focus on those that producers deemed most important.
The TV crew also went on several ride-alongs with the department and requested a public information officer be available to drive an SUV to obtain B-roll footage, to which Koumal agreed.
According to the emails, the A&E team also zeroed in on one historic case—the 1996 murder of Gary Triano, who died in an explosion in the Catalina Foothills after his wife, Pamela Phillips, enlisted a hitman to bomb his vehicle.
Phillips was convicted in 2014 and is serving life in prison. The bomber, Ron Young, was arrested in 2005 following an episode of “America’s Most Wanted.”
Producers requested access to Triano’s vehicle, asking to film additional B-roll using the car, which was being held by the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, according to the messages.
Koumal also encouraged deputies to talk to the show producers “if any incidents occur.”
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos, who has been overseeing the investigation into Nancy’s disappearance, is not referenced in any of the messages.
However, Nanos—and his department—have come under increasing scrutiny in recent weeks as the investigation into Nancy’s whereabouts appears to have hit several significant roadblocks.
Earlier this month, FBI sources attempted to address at least one of those hurdles, telling NewsNation and ABC News that its official laboratory had finally received a DNA sample taken from Nancy’s home, which had been undergoing testing in a private lab in Florida.
The insider noted that this DNA evidence is not new, but had rather been extracted from a variety of materials that were collected from Nancy’s Tucson-area dwelling in early February. That evidence had previously been sent to a laboratory in Florida by the Pima County Sheriff’s Department and had only just been returned to the FBI bureau.
“There is no new DNA evidence in the Nancy Guthrie case. The FBI requested this material over two months ago,” an FBI official told ABC News.
“The Pima County Sheriff’s Office sent it to a private lab in Florida. Eleven weeks later, that lab has now transferred an original hair sample to the FBI Laboratory for testing. We remain fully committed to this investigation.”
According to the outlet, the FBI is now using “new technology to conduct advanced analysis on the DNA sample” to see whether it might provide information about Nancy’s alleged kidnappers.
Nanos—who has come under heavy criticism over his handling of the case—previously stated in March that authorities had collected a number of DNA samples from Nancy’s home, but that authorities were struggling to extract individual profiles from that evidence.
“It’s a challenge because we know we have DNA, but now we have to deal with that mixture and how we’re going to separate it,” he said.
Sheriff Nanos has previously admitted that authorities were still trying to separate out cross-contaminated DNA discovered inside Nancy’s home, revealing that investigators had run into some “challenges” in their examination of the evidence.
“We listen to our lab, and our lab tells us that there’s challenges with it, and we understand those challenges,” he told NBC News.
“But our lab also knows that the technology is moving so fast and in such a frenzy that they think some of this stuff will resolve itself just in a matter of weeks, months or maybe a year, to allow them to do better with, say, a mixture of that kind of thing.”
At the time, Nanos also noted that previous DNA samples that had been submitted to the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), a database used by the FBI to track convicted criminals, have not resulted in a match, but that the additional evidence would be analyzed when they were “sorted out.”
“We believe that we may have some DNA there that may be our suspect, but we won’t know that until that DNA is separated, sorted out, maybe admitted to CODIS, maybe through genetic genealogy,” Nanos added.
What is the full timeline of Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance?
Sheriff Nanos noted during a media briefing on Feb. 5 that, while times are approximate, his team has pieced together several pieces of evidence that indicate Nancy’s movements—and the timeline of her apparent abduction.
Nancy, 84, was reported missing at around 12 p.m. local time on Feb. 1, around 14 hours after she was dropped off at the property following a family dinner. When she failed to turn up at her usual church gathering on Sunday, her friends alerted her family, who found her home was empty.
SATURDAY, JAN. 31
5:32 p.m. Nancy travels to daughter Annie’s house in an Uber for “dinner and playing games with the family.”
9:48 p.m. A garage door at Nancy’s house opens when she was dropped off at the property by her son-in-law, Tommaso Cioni.
9:50 p.m. The garage door closes, indicating that Nancy was inside the home.
SUNDAY, FEB. 1
1:47 a.m. Nancy’s doorbell security camera is disconnected.
2:12 a.m. Movement is detected on a security camera at the home.
2:28 a.m. Nancy’s pacemaker app indicates that the device has been disconnected from her phone.
11:00 a.m. Nancy fails to arrive at the home of a friend, where she had been due to watch a church service livestream.
11:56 a.m. Nancy’s family travels to her home to check on her and finds the property empty.
12:03 p.m. The family calls 911 to report Nancy missing.
12:14 p.m. Police officers arrive at Nancy’s home.
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