Slate writer Luke Winkie was on the ground in Tucson, Arizona, where he joined the scores of media on the street of Nancy Guthrie's home, including social media influencers.
He walked through the latest developments in the case, including the dead end in the search for a suspect and the DNA evidence from a glove found on the property that did not match anyone in the FBI database. A few people have been detained and questioned, but they were released, and no suspects are publicly known.
"It is hard to define why, exactly, Guthrie’s disappearance became the biggest story in America, but there are certainly some obvious factors," wrote Winkie.
The first is that Savannah Guthrie is a nationally known television host. The second is that her core audience is older and skews female, closely matching the demographic that is especially drawn to true crime.
However, the main reason the case has gripped the country, Winkie argued, is that “it has become its own kind of content engine, stimulating a growing belief that crucial puzzle pieces have yet to be properly interrogated, perhaps due to bumbling detective work.”
The true crime aspect of the story has delivered a belief that people can crack the case based on years of watching Netflix murder shows.
"It was those influencers I found most disquieting during my time in Tucson. Guthrie’s disappearance remained a mystery during my visit. But I did get to see, firsthand, how the true-crime cultural ecosystem metastasizes off of the internet, and into our chilling new reality," the Slate writer said.
True-crime content creator John DePetro told Winkie, “I feel like I’m on a crime vacation." He, too, is on the ground in Arizona along with social media influencers who view it as an opportunity to score easy views.
“Last week I had 22,000 people watching me live,” DePetro said. “I haven’t booked my return flight yet.”
“Sometimes when I cover a crime scene in Rhode Island, it’s just me and the local NBC and CBS affiliate,” he said. “You basically become the third television channel.”
Another person on the ground is a "convicted scammer" and "a veteran troll," Winkie described. Johnathan Lee Riches has rebranded himself as an investigative journalist after finishing a prison term for wire fraud. He refused to speak to Winkie.
Ex-construction worker Jimmy Williams is another one who has become a true crime YouTuber.
“It’s a really interactive thing,” he told Slate. “I think it’s the new version of media. If you really want to be an independent journalist, now is the time to do it.”
The show Inside Edition did a report walking through all of the amateurs on the ground in the neighborhood, trying to create profitable content for an audience glued to the Guthrie story.
Meanwhile, residents are still trying to live their lives by walking dogs, riding bikes, and navigating a media circus on their doorsteps. Winkie ends by noting that after three days on the story, another bombshell broke that might finally push the Guthrie kidnapping off the front page: Andrew Mountbatten‑Windsor was arrested.