Arizona teacher ‘scared numb’ after online sleuths wrongly accuse him of being suspect in Nancy Guthrie kidnapping
An Arizona couple says they are living a real-life nightmare after online sleuths wrongly suggested the husband was a suspect in the kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie.
Fifth-grade teacher Dominic Evans, 48, told the New York Times that he and his family have been hiding in their Tucson home with the lights off, constantly afraid of being followed ever since his name became linked to the mysterious case.
“He’s going through hell and it is horrible,” said Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos about the false claims surrounding the married father of three. “I don’t know what to tell him except that he probably should speak with attorneys and consider suing some of these people for libel.”
Evans said the rumors escalated online after amateur investigators discovered he had played in a band with Tommaso Cioni, Nancy Guthrie’s son-in-law and the last person to see her before she disappeared on February 1. Authorities have since cleared the entire Guthrie family of suspicion.
Online sleuths also pointed to Evans’ resemblance to a masked man captured on security footage tampering with Guthrie’s doorbell camera, as well as an old arrest from 1999 for drunkenly taking a calculator from a bar. These coincidences fueled the false theory that he was involved in the disappearance.
Once the speculation spread, Evans’ home address circulated online, prompting dozens of people to gather outside at night, trying to link him to the case.
Evans and his wife, Andrea, a nearby school principal, told their teenage son not to come home and avoided picking up their two youngest children from their grandparents’ house out of fear of being followed. “It was all night looking through the window, trying not to let any light out,” Andrea said. She added that the ordeal has left her “scared numb.”
The harassment forced Evans to take time off work. He was later interviewed by the FBI and Pima County Sheriff’s Department during their investigation but was never officially named as a suspect.
Evans said he had only met Nancy Guthrie once in 2011, despite knowing the family for nearly 20 years, and has only recently returned to teaching. Authorities have not yet identified any suspects or persons of interest.
The Guthrie family raised the reward for information leading to Nancy to $1 million Tuesday, more than three and a half weeks after she went missing.
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