Six months after 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie was taken from her Tucson-area home by a masked man, the Pima County sheriff says forensic testing on hair recovered from the scene came back empty, and the only remaining biological evidence may be too tangled to read.
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told ABC News Thursday that testing on the hair found at Guthrie's home is complete. It produced nothing useful. No DNA profile. No match to any suspect. The sample was sent to a California laboratory, and the result was a dead end, though Nanos said the hair itself has been preserved for future comparison if a suspect is eventually identified.
That leaves investigators with one known piece of biological evidence: a mixed DNA sample recovered from the residence that contains genetic material from as many as four people. At least five, possibly six, forensic labs across the country, including the FBI's facility in Quantico, Virginia, and labs in Kansas, Florida, California, and Arizona, are working to untangle it. Whether the technology even exists to separate a four-person mixture remains an open question.
No arrests, no suspects, and a six-month clock still running
Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of "Today" show host Savannah Guthrie, was taken from her home in the early hours of February 1. A masked man was captured on her doorbell camera. That footage, later recovered and released by the FBI, showed an armed individual who appeared to tamper with the camera before the abduction. DNA tests confirmed that blood found on Guthrie's porch was hers.
In the days that followed, a person was detained for questioning south of Tucson, and the FBI reported "substantial progress." But nearly six months later, no arrest has been made. No suspect has been publicly named. Nancy Guthrie's whereabouts remain unknown.
Nanos was blunt about the hair results in his interview with ABC News.
"The hair was done... and there was nothing."
He added that the hair sample's failure to produce a profile does not necessarily mean it belonged to someone unconnected to the crime. Fox News reported that Nanos said investigators would not destroy the sample, because its value might change once they have someone to compare it against.
The sheriff framed the distinction plainly: a hair that fails to yield a DNA profile is not the same as a hair ruled out. It is simply a hair that, for now, tells them nothing.
Mixed DNA sample spreads across half a dozen labs
With the hair result exhausted, the mixed DNA sample is the investigation's best remaining forensic hope. Nanos described the scope of the effort to ABC News.
"My understanding is there are at least five, maybe six, labs across the country that are working on all of this."
The path that evidence has traveled raises its own questions. The New York Post reported that a DNA strand recovered from Guthrie's home was initially sent to a private lab in Florida by Pima County detectives, even though the FBI had offered early on to analyze it at their own facility. Federal investigators were kept out of the forensic loop for several weeks, a delay that drew criticism from former FBI agents and outside observers.
That friction between local and federal authorities has been a recurring theme in the case. FBI Director Kash Patel stated publicly that the sheriff kept the bureau out early in the investigation. Nanos disputed that characterization. The disagreement has played out in public statements for months, even as retired FBI agents have pointed to significant internal disagreements over how evidence was handled.
Gloves found roughly two miles from Guthrie's home, believed to match those worn by the masked man on the doorbell footage, were also tested. The Pima County Sheriff's Office confirmed that DNA from those gloves produced no matches in CODIS, the FBI's national criminal database. Additional DNA evidence found at the residence itself remains under analysis.
Retired FBI special agent Jason Pack, speaking to the New York Post at the investigation's 100-day mark, cautioned against reading too much into the pace of testing.
"That kind of work is slow because it has to be right."
Investigators are also pursuing investigative genetic genealogy, the same technique that cracked the Golden State Killer case, as part of their broader DNA strategy. But with a four-person mixture and no clean profile from the hair, the technical challenge is steep.
Nanos still says the case can be solved
Despite the forensic setbacks, Nanos projected confidence. He told ABC News the case remains solvable and praised the caliber of the people working on it.
"We have some of the brightest minds in the nation, if not the world, working on this."
He also acknowledged the uncertainty about how many people were involved in the abduction. Investigators have not determined whether the masked man on the doorbell camera acted alone.
"I don't think anybody's here ready to say it's one guy, it's 10 guys. Did he have help? Could have."
That ambiguity, no confirmed suspect count, no motive, no public theory of the case, defines the investigation six months in. The ransom note demanding Bitcoin and threatening death that surfaced earlier in the case added a financial dimension, but it has not led to a public break.
Nanos ended his ABC News interview with a direct appeal to the public.
"Somebody in our community, somebody out in this world knows something. Call us, tell us, give us that information. Somebody knows where Nancy's at. We need their help."
Savannah Guthrie keeps the pressure on
Savannah Guthrie has used her public platform to keep her mother's case visible. Just this week, the "Today" show host posted on Instagram about the investigation, continuing a pattern of public pleas that has stretched across the full six months. In one earlier post, she wrote that her family is living in "a nightmare that will not end" and urged her mother's captor to "make the right choice" and return her.
Sheriff Nanos applauded those efforts, crediting Savannah Guthrie with keeping public attention on the case. Public tips surged after the FBI released the recovered doorbell camera footage earlier in the investigation, and investigators appear to be counting on continued attention to generate the break they have not been able to produce in the lab.
Other public figures have added their voices. Elizabeth Smart urged the public not to give up on finding Nancy Guthrie 25 weeks after the abduction, drawing on her own experience as a kidnapping survivor to argue that hope is not lost.
But hope is not evidence. And right now, the Pima County Sheriff's Office has a preserved hair that told them nothing, a DNA mixture that may be too complex to decode, gloves that matched no one in the federal database, and a second ransom note that claimed the 84-year-old is dead.
Six months is a long time for an 84-year-old woman to be missing. The forensic trail is running cold. If someone out there knows where Nancy Guthrie is, the clock is not on her side.
