Tim Steller's column: Spotlight on Tucson exposes sheriff, global gossips

The news vehicles have been lining Tucson-area streets again.

That’s never a good sign.

You can even hear reports in languages other than English and Spanish as they’re sent out from the winding roads of the Catalina Foothills.

It’s Tucson’s turn in the barrel again. A local family has been suffering. The world is wondering. Local officials have been struggling. Speculation is abounding. 

It may feel sadly familiar. We suffered through similar spasms of local despair and national attention in 2011, when Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot, and six people were killed; in 2012, when six-year-old Isabel Celis disappeared; and in 2002, when three faculty members were killed at the UA nursing school.

Now, 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie has disappeared, possibly abducted, putting this community and one local family under an unwanted spotlight. Once again, outsiders are looking in at Tucson and how Tucson responds.

It hasn't been ideal, on our part or theirs. 

Sheriff flails

At the official level, the response has not been especially reassuring. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos did a day full of news-media interviews on Monday, spending some of the time talking in "generalities" or "figuratively" in ways that some reporters took as fact.

The next day, at a news conference, he apologized for speaking that way. 

“I'm not used to everybody hanging onto my words and then trying to hold me accountable for what I say,” Nanos said.

That was not an edifying turn of phrase. It made Nanos look bad because he should have expected to be accountable for his words. It also made those of us in the local press look bad, since we’re among those who would be expected to hold him accountable. Over the years, our coverage of him has often been critical, but maybe we're just more used to his off-the-cuff speaking style.

Sgt. Aaron Cross, president of the Pima County Deputy Sheriffs Association, told me he and others have been disappointed in the sheriff's performance.

“This has been humiliating for our agency on a national level,” said Cross, who strongly opposed Nanos' re-election and has frequently tangled with him. “We were hoping we would get professionalism and poise. Instead we got flailing, ramblings, tears and emotions, and a lot of handwaving press conferences.”'

"You see the juxtaposition between when he’s there and when he turns it over to the federal agents," Cross added. "We all wish he could channel a little of what the federal agents do in their prepared remarks. That’s what we wish we had. Unfortunately, we don’t."

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Whether that has affected the outcome of the case is unclear yet, but Nanos acknowledged Thursday that he probably should have kept the home of Nancy Guthrie closed as a crime scene, rather than returning the home to her family. That allowed members of the press and others to walk up to the home, disturbing the crime scene until it was closed again two days later.

I sympathize with the sheriff being unexpectedly under the magnifying glass, but I would have hoped for better. 

Unfairly accused

I swung by the two main clusters of news reporters Thursday afternoon to get a feeling for the situation. There has not only been a long line of vehicles, photographers, videographers and reporters doing their stand-ups near Nancy Guthrie's house, but also near her daughter Annie's house a few miles away. 

That's in large part because, once again, a family member of a disappeared Tucsonan has been labeled a suspect.

On Monday, former cable news anchor Ashleigh Banfield said on her podcast that Guthrie's son-in-law, Tommaso Cioni, was investigators' "prime suspect." This claim set off a worldwide chain of claims and excitement about Cioni, heretofore another relatively anonymous Tucsonan. Even after Nanos denied there was any suspect, Cioni's name and image filled the world's need for a suspicious person to focus on. 

People were so excited to find something unsavory about Cioni, who has a clean record after 20 years of living in Arizona, that some as far away as India have pointed to a routine power of attorney document filed with the Pima County Recorder's Office last year as a sign of something suspicious. In fact, it's a common document filed for real estate transactions. 

You may recall the harsh light of suspicion also turned on Sergio Celis, the father of 6-year-old Isabel Celis, after she disappeared from the family's midtown home in 2012. The family's pain was compounded by the fact that many people, most prominently Nancy Grace on CNN, insisted he was the most likely perpetrator of his own daughter's disappearance.

In 2018, Christopher Clements, a stranger, was indicted on charges including the murder of Isabel, which he was convicted of in 2024. He also murdered another Tucson girl, Maribel Gonzales.

Tucsonan Sergio Celis had been unfairly accused and lived with a shadow over him all that time. If only the photographers arrayed outside Cioni's house realized they may well have the wrong guy and be unnecessarily exacerbating the family's pain. 

Spotlight still on us

Late Friday, the Pima County Sheriff's Department moved the journalists and their cars off the block that Guthrie lives on, near North Campbell Ave. and East Skyline Drive.

"The roadway in front of the home is currently restricted to provide investigators the space needed to complete their work," a department spokesman said.

But the attention will be on us for some time longer, hopefully ending with a happy reunion between a Tucson grandma and her family. Then, let's hope, many more years pass before another sensational crime puts the spotlight back on us.