The FBI has finally received a hair sample collected months ago from the Tucson home where 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie was abducted, and the bureau is now running advanced analysis on it, sources told ABC News. The sample was gathered in February. It took eleven weeks to reach the FBI Laboratory.
That gap, between when the evidence was collected and when the nation's premier crime lab got its hands on it, is the kind of detail that should trouble anyone following this case. Nancy Guthrie, the mother of "Today" show host Savannah Guthrie, was taken from her home early on February 1. Months later, seemingly little progress has been made on her whereabouts or the identity of whoever took her.
An FBI official confirmed the bureau was recently sent the hair sample but pushed back on the suggestion that it constituted a new break in the case:
"There is no new DNA evidence in the Nancy Guthrie case. The FBI requested this material over two months ago. The Pima County Sheriff's Office sent it to a private lab in Florida. Eleven weeks later, that lab has now transferred an original hair sample to the FBI Laboratory for testing. We remain fully committed to this investigation."
Read that timeline again. The FBI asked for the material more than two months ago. The Pima County Sheriff's Office routed it to a private lab in Florida instead. Only after eleven weeks did that lab hand the original sample over to the FBI. For a case involving the kidnapping of an elderly woman from her own bedroom, the pace of evidence handling raises hard questions about coordination between local and federal investigators.
A DNA sample tangled from the start
The Pima County Sheriff's Department has previously described the DNA recovered from Nancy Guthrie's home as a sample that came from more than one person and therefore needed to be untangled. That complexity is real, mixed DNA profiles are notoriously difficult to interpret, but it does not explain why the FBI's own lab waited weeks longer than necessary to begin work.
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos recently told a Neighborhood Watch group that it could take six more months to separate the strands and isolate what investigators need. Six months. For a family already enduring the worst kind of uncertainty, that estimate lands like a sentence of its own.
Earlier in the investigation, Nanos indicated investigators had "workable" DNA in the case. The question has always been whether that material would lead anywhere fast enough to matter.
The sheriff also said as many as five other labs around the country are working on the Guthrie case. About two dozen Pima County and FBI investigators remain actively assigned to it. Those numbers suggest resources are being deployed. But resources without speed can amount to motion without progress.
Blood on the porch, a glove, and no suspect
Some forensic results have come back. The New York Post reported that blood found on the front steps of Nancy Guthrie's home was matched to her through expedited DNA testing. Sheriff Nanos confirmed the result at a press conference: "The blood on the porch, that was one we did, it came back to Nancy. That's what we know." That was the first completed forensic result in the case. Additional forensic items had been submitted for analysis but remained pending.
Other early leads have not panned out. Fox News reported that earlier DNA testing, including a CODIS database comparison and analysis of a glove found near the home, did not produce a match to any suspect. The Pima County Sheriff's Department posted on X that it "has worked with the FBI since the beginning of the Guthrie investigation. This is not new information." The department added simply: "DNA analysis remains ongoing."
That statement, "this is not new information", is worth pausing on. If the collaboration between local and federal investigators has been seamless from the start, why did the FBI have to wait eleven weeks for a sample it requested two months prior? The department's own public messaging and the FBI official's timeline do not sit comfortably together.
Savannah Guthrie breaks her silence
Last month, Savannah Guthrie spoke publicly for the first time about her mother's disappearance, sitting down with her friend and former co-host Hoda Kotb. The interview was raw. Guthrie expressed guilt over the possibility that her own public profile may have made her mother a target.
"It's too much to bear to think that I brought this to her bedside, that it's because of me."
She also described her anguish in simpler terms: "I'm so sorry, Mommy, I'm so sorry." And she added: "If it is me, I'm so sorry."
No family should have to carry that weight, the fear that fame itself invited a predator to their mother's door. Whether or not that theory proves correct, the emotional toll is plain. Guthrie told Kotb she "cannot be at peace" and appealed directly to the public: "Someone can do the right thing."
As for what investigators have told the family, Guthrie's answer was blunt: "We still don't know... Honestly, we don't know anything."
That admission, from a woman with every resource and connection available to her, tells you something about the state of this investigation. If the Guthrie family knows nothing after four months, the public knows even less. And the cruel notes and hoaxes that have targeted the family during this period only compound the suffering.
Questions the forensic trail has not answered
The FBI says it is using "new technology" to conduct "advanced analysis" on the DNA sample. What that technology is remains unclear. Whether additional DNA samples beyond the hair are relevant to the case is also an open question, ABC News reported it "was not immediately clear."
The identity of the private Florida lab that held the sample for weeks has not been disclosed. Nor has anyone explained why the Pima County Sheriff's Office chose to route the material through an outside lab rather than send it directly to the FBI, which had specifically requested it.
These are not trivial procedural details. In a kidnapping case involving an 84-year-old woman, every week of delay narrows the window for a rescue. Evidence degrades. Witnesses forget. Trails go cold. The decision to send a critical hair sample on an eleven-week detour through a private lab, when the FBI was asking for it, deserves a clear public explanation from the Pima County Sheriff's Department.
Concerns about the early handling of this case are not new. Questions have been raised about the experience level of the first responder at the kidnapping scene, and the FBI's own field activity near the Guthrie home has drawn scrutiny as well.
A case that demands accountability
Nancy Guthrie was taken from her bed in the middle of the night. Her blood was found on her own porch. A tangled DNA sample sat in a Florida lab for weeks while the FBI waited. The sheriff says full results could take another half year. No suspect has been named. No arrest has been made.
About two dozen investigators are working the case. Multiple labs are engaged. The FBI says it remains "fully committed." Those are the right words. But words without results are just press releases.
The FBI's earlier focus on a vacant home near the Guthrie residence showed the kind of urgency the public expects. That urgency needs to be matched by the forensic pipeline. When a kidnapping victim's family is told it might be six more months before investigators can even process the DNA, something in the system is failing.
Anyone with information is urged to call 911, the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI, or the Pima County Sheriff's Department at 520-351-4900.
An 84-year-old woman is missing. Her family is begging for answers. The least the system owes them is speed.
