Nancy Guthrie's kidnapping is latest abduction case to capture America's attention

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Authorities have not identified any suspects or persons of interest in a desperate, five-day search for the missing mother of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie. But even without proof, investigators are holding out hope that 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie is alive.

Police think she was taken against her will from her home in Tucson, Arizona, where they found blood on the porch that was a match to her. Investigators said they are taking seriously ransom notes sent to a handful of media outlets.

The uncertainty surrounding Nancy Guthrie’s kidnapping has attracted the attention of the American public, much like other famous abductions throughout U.S. history.

Here's a look at some of those cases.

The 20-month-old son of the renowned American aviator was kidnapped from the second-floor nursery of their New Jersey home in 1932, a few years after the elder Lindbergh completed the first nonstop, solo trans-Atlantic flight. After a dozen ransom notes and multiple meetings between a middleman and someone who identified himself only as “John,” a driver found the baby's body partially buried only a few miles from the family's home. Investigators eventually identified the mystery man as a German-American carpenter, who was convicted and died by electric chair in 1936.

The 19-year-old son of the famous singer was kidnapped from a Lake Tahoe lodge in 1963, a couple weeks after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Two days later, the elder Sinatra paid a $240,000 ransom and his son was released by one of the three abductors, who all were later convicted.

The 19-year-old granddaughter of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst was abducted in 1974 by a little-known militant group, becoming one of the most sensational cases of the era. She later joined her captors in a series of crimes.

A group called the Symbionese Liberation Army said it was holding her as a “prisoner of war” and demanded donations for poor people in exchange for her release, though she remained a captive even after her family met the ransom.

Two months after her abduction, the case took a startling turn when Hearst declared her allegiance to the far-left group. Her declaration of loyalty introduced much of the nation to Stockholm syndrome, a term describing the bond that victims of kidnappings sometimes develop with their captors as a psychological coping mechanism.

Hearst took part in the robbery of a San Francisco bank in 1974 and was sentenced to seven years in prison. President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence after she had served 22 months, and President Bill Clinton pardoned her years later.

An 11-year-old Dugard was abducted off the street in Meyers, California, in 1991, and remained missing for over 18 years. One of her abductors drew suspicion in 2009 when he visited the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, with two adolescent girls, who were later discovered to be Dugard's daughters. Dugard resurfaced that year, and the couple that took her pleaded guilty to kidnapping and rape charges.

The 14-year-old girl was kidnapped at knife-point from her home in Salt Lake City in 2002 and held captive by a couple for about nine months. Her sister, who had been pretending to sleep when Smart was taken from their shared bedroom, later identified the abductor's voice as that of a man the family had hired to work on their roof. He and his wife were identified through widely shared sketches and photos, leading to Smart's recovery.

The still-unsolved 1996 abduction and murder of 9-year-old Hagerman in Arlington, Texas, spurred the development of the AMBER (America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response) Alert system, which rapidly disseminates information about missing children in the U.S.

The three young women were abducted by a man in Cleveland, Ohio, between 2002 and 2004 and held captive for more than a decade. In 2013, Berry escaped with her 6-year-old daughter, fathered by her captor, and sent police to rescue the other women.

The abduction and murder of the 11-year-old Navajo girl in 2016 led to the passage of a federal law that carved out funding to help tribal communities establish emergency alert systems.

At the time of Mike's kidnapping in the Navajo Nation, tribal law enforcement did not have its own notification system, and communication gaps between tribal and local law enforcement caused a multihour delay in issuing an AMBER Alert.

The federal Ashlynne Mike AMBER Alert in Indian Country Act was enacted in 2018.

/// Neighbors of Nancy Guthrie, the daughter of "Today" host Savannah Guthrie, show support for the family in metro Tucson, Ariz., on Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026, as the search continues to find Nancy who was reported missing. (AP Photo/Sejal Govindarao)

CAIRO (AP) — Iranians began to regain internet access on Wednesday after authorities ended a monthslong shutdown. But users said service was slow and spotty in some areas, with apps like YouTube and Instagram heavily restricted, as they were before the cutoff began during nationwide protests in January.

Authorities justified the outage as a military imperative after the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. Their decision to lift some restrictions this week came as negotiators appeared to be closing in on a more permanent truce. But many Iranians feared access could be cut off again at a moment's notice.

Internet tracking company Netblocks said Iran’s connectivity, which measures the ability of devices to connect to the internet, is at around 86% of capacity from before the cutoff. Internet analysis firm Kentik said internet traffic, which measures the amount of data transferred and is a good illustration of usage, was at around 40%.

Amir Rashidi, an Iranian cybersecurity analyst, said there were still widespread disruptions. “It's too early to say the shutdown is over,” he wrote on X.

Iran’s roughly 90 million people have been cut off from the internet for most of 2026, one of the world’s longest and strictest national shutdowns. Young people with online careers saw their incomes evaporate. Job losses and the closure of online businesses added to the war's steep economic costs.

The cutoff made it difficult for Iranian families to communicate through months of unrest and war. At some points, phone lines were also cut off, though they were later restored.

A woman living in Tehran said that for months she was barely able to speak to her sons living abroad. She couldn't believe authorities had restored access, saying she had assumed they would find some justification to prolong the outage.

A taxi driver said service was restored but weak. He expressed hope it would improve so he could use messaging apps with family and friends. Both spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Prices spiked during the shutdown, with residents in Tehran at times paying around $7.50 per gigabyte. Prices are back down to around $2.25 for 30 gigabytes, roughly where they were before the protests.

Even then, Iran tightly controlled access to popular social media sites, leading many to rely on virtual private networks, or VPNs. The cost of those workarounds soared during the shutdown, making them unaffordable for many as the economy was battered.

Businesses have started reappearing online, announcing their return with posts on sites like Instagram and Telegram.

A gamer and tech influencer in the central city of Isfahan said the shutdown had caused him to lose a lot of his audience on YouTube and Instagram, where he had spent years building up a large following.

“All my views and interactions are way down. I’ve been erased from the algorithm,” he said in a voice note sent by WhatsApp, adding that his internet connection was still slower than before the shutdown.

“The situation is such that many content producers have had their income reduced to zero, have moved on to other jobs, or have been forced to sell their equipment to survive,” he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Iranian authorities first shut down the internet in January during mass anti-government protests that were eventually stamped out in a violent crackdown. Thousands of people were killed and tens of thousands detained.

That cutoff was just starting to ease when the government imposed a complete internet blackout after the start of the war, when U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iran's supreme leader and other top officials.

The government faced criticism for the prolonged shutdown, which caused even more harm to an economy devastated by inflation, strikes on key industries and a U.S. blockade on Iranian ports.

The internet cutoff cost an estimated $30-40 million daily, with indirect losses likely twice that much, a member of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, Afshin Kolahi, told a local newspaper last month. About 10 million people have jobs that depend on internet connectivity, according to Communications Minister Sattar Hashemi.

Iranians still had access to a national net, but that has a far narrower reach, and users complained of poor service and heavy censorship. Senior government officials are given SIM cards granting them access to the global internet. Under pressure, the government expanded access to the SIM cards to some professions during the shutdown.

A woman checks her smartphone while sitting on a bench along a sidewalk in northern Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, May 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)