As the chief medical examiner for a county that stores the most human remains in the nation, Greg Hess has for decades been accustomed to the many that arrive at his office every year after being found in the vast and rugged southern Arizona desert.
People traveling through the remote Sonoran Desert die from its extreme heat, harsh conditions and rough terrain. Most of the people who are found dead there every year are assumed to be migrants, Hess says, because of the desert’s location on the southern border.
But ever since Nancy Guthrie disappeared from her home in Tucson nearly seven months ago, the first question Hess says he asks himself when a set of human remains arrives at his office in Pima County for examination is whether they could be hers.
“Every time somebody found a body in the wash or somewhere else in southern Arizona over the past few months, there’s speculation that it’s the person everybody’s interested in,” Hess told CNN.
Questions swirled last week when human remains were found in the desert about 15 miles from where the mother of NBC “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie lived.
