Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos insists the Nancy Guthrie abduction remains an active investigation nearing a break, but six months without an arrest have left a family desperate and a community watching.

Nanos sat down with KGUN 9 on Wednesday and disclosed that DNA evidence collected from Guthrie's Tucson-area home is being processed at multiple laboratories across the country, including the FBI's own facility. He confirmed that investigators are now using familial DNA genealogy, the same technique that helped identify the Golden State Killer, to try to connect crime-scene evidence to a suspect through relatives.

Nancy Guthrie, 84, was taken from her home in Tucson's Foothills neighborhood on February 1. The case is officially classified as a kidnapping for ransom, a designation Nanos said both his office and the FBI agree on. Nearly six months later, no suspect has been publicly identified, and no arrest has been made.

Nanos projects confidence, but the clock keeps running

The sheriff struck an optimistic tone during the interview, pushing back against any suggestion the case has gone cold.

"There's so much being put into this case. I just have all the confidence in the world that we'll get there."

He described familial DNA genealogy as a tool that has already proven its worth in high-profile investigations nationwide.

"(It's) what we've seen in some of the cases across the country that were solved. Where you find a relative. And even though it may not be who you're looking for, it gives you a starting point. Somebody to go talk to."

Nanos also said he stays in daily contact with his investigative team and communicates regularly with the Guthrie family through text messages and phone calls. Savannah Guthrie, a family member, has remained in direct communication with the sheriff throughout the investigation.

But confidence and results are different things. The DNA collected from the home came from more than one person, the New York Post reported, and up to five additional labs beyond the FBI's facility are devoting resources to analysis. The evidence is not newly discovered, it has been in hand for months, yet no match has emerged from CODIS, the national criminal DNA database.

That CODIS dead end is what pushed investigators toward genealogy databases in the first place. AP News reported that the Pima County Sheriff's Department confirmed it is exploring investigative genetic genealogy options beyond the federal system. Ruth Ballard, a geneticist, told AP that the technique can produce results quickly if the DNA sample is high quality. But Barbara Rae-Venter, an expert genealogist who has worked cold cases, cautioned that timelines vary wildly.

"I've solved cases in less than eight hours where people shared a lot of DNA with the suspect. Other cases, you're still working on them two years later. This could take awhile."

For a family approaching half a year without answers, "awhile" is a hard word to hear.

Roughly two dozen investigators, and still no public suspect

The scale of the investigation is not in question. Some two dozen investigators remain assigned to the case. The FBI recovered cached recordings from Nancy Guthrie's Nest doorbell camera, footage that Fox News reported was facing imminent deletion in a Google back-end system. That footage showed a masked, armed individual outside Guthrie's home the night she vanished.

The internal disagreements over how evidence has been handled have complicated the investigation from the start. FBI Director Kash Patel stated publicly that the Pima County Sheriff kept the FBI out of the investigation early on, a claim Nanos has disputed. Nanos allegedly declined an FBI request for a glove and DNA evidence, routing forensics to a Florida lab instead of the FBI's Virginia facility.

That jurisdictional friction has been a recurring theme. Nanos has publicly pushed back against Patel's characterization of his cooperation with federal investigators, and the tension has drawn scrutiny from observers who worry it may have cost the case precious time in its earliest days.

In February, a person was detained for questioning south of Tucson by the sheriff's department with FBI assistance. Patel confirmed at the time that investigators had made "substantial progress" and identified multiple persons of interest. Newsmax reported that Patel said the progress came thanks to "the technical capabilities of the FBI and our partnerships." But no charges followed that detention, and the trail, at least publicly, went quiet again.

Savannah Guthrie's plea signals a family running out of patience

On July 27, Savannah Guthrie released a new Instagram video plea directed at her mother's captors. She coordinated the message with law enforcement before posting it, a detail that suggests investigators may see public pressure as a useful tool at this stage.

"We are in a nightmare that will not end. I'm asking you, begging you. Make the right choice. Help us find her."

The emotional weight of that plea sits alongside a grim detail that has shadowed the case for months: a ransom note reportedly claimed Nancy Guthrie "perished shortly after she was taken." The FBI has hedged on the credibility of those ransom communications, and questions about their authenticity remain unresolved.

Jason Pack, a retired FBI supervisory agent, told Fox News that the high-profile nature of the case works against whoever took Guthrie. "It's a lot of pressure on criminals to keep such a hard secret, especially something so high profile," he said. Pack also noted that Savannah Guthrie's public language, pleading rather than demanding, may reflect a deliberate strategy. "People who have leverage do not apologize," he said. "They demand."

Whether the family has leverage is the question no one in authority has answered plainly. No proof of life has been made public. No suspect has been named. The credibility of the ransom notes themselves remains under scrutiny.

DNA genealogy worked before, but guarantees nothing here

Sheriff Nanos is betting heavily on the same forensic approach that broke open the Golden State Killer case in 2018 and helped solve the 2022 University of Idaho murders. In both instances, investigators uploaded DNA profiles to genealogy databases and traced family trees until they identified a suspect. The technique is powerful when it works, and painfully slow when the DNA sample is degraded or the suspect's relatives have not submitted their own profiles to public databases.

The Pima County Sheriff's Department has confirmed it is exploring options beyond CODIS, but has not disclosed which genealogy platforms or private databases are being used. The tensions between local and federal investigators over evidence handling raise a fair question: has the routing of DNA evidence through multiple labs, including a Florida facility chosen over the FBI's own lab, slowed the process or introduced complications that a more unified chain of custody might have avoided?

Nanos has not addressed that question directly. He told KGUN 9 that more of his interview will air Friday, and his tone throughout was resolute. He said he remains in daily contact with his team and insists the case is nowhere near cold.

But resolve is not a result. An 84-year-old woman has been missing for nearly six months. The DNA is at the labs. The genealogists are working. The family is pleading on social media. And the sheriff says he has "all the confidence in the world."

Confidence is fine. What Nancy Guthrie's family needs now is an answer.