As the investigation into the disappearance of Savannah Guthrie’s mom, Nancy Guthrie, rolls into its third week, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos was asked whether Nancy’s suspected abduction may be connected to her famous daughter.
Nancy, 84, has been missing since the early hours of February 1, when police suspect she was taken against her will from her home in the Catalina Foothills outside of Tucson, Arizona.
In an interview on Tuesday, February 17, NewsNation’s Brian Entin asked Nanos, “Savannah Guthrie, Nancy’s daughter, obviously very famous, loved around the country … is this really random, or do you think someone may have had a grievance against Savannah?”
“Anything’s possible,” Nanos responded. “There was talk [that] this was a burglary gone bad, this was that … those things have never come out of this office. We recognize that anything is possible and we’ll allow that evidence to show us what that is.”
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The sheriff continued, “The time to ask that question [about] motive is when we actually know who’s done this.”
“I get the speculation, but for me, I just looked at it and said from day one that Nancy was removed from her home against her will. We need to find her,” he added.
On Tuesday, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department confirmed that DNA on a pair of gloves found two miles from Nancy’s home did not match DNA profiles in the FBI’s CODIS database.
“The DNA that was submitted to CODIS was from the set of gloves found 2 miles away. It did not trigger a match in CODIS & did not match DNA found at the property,” the department said via X.
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More DNA evidence found at Nancy’s property, meanwhile, is “being analyzed & further testing needs to be done as part of the investigation,” Pima County police said.
Investigators also confirmed they will now try to match the DNA found using investigative genetic genealogy, which was previously used to identify University of Idaho convicted murderer Bryan Kohberger. (Investigators in the Kohberger case connected DNA on a knife sheath left at the crime scene to a family member who had used a commercial genealogy tracing service.)
Today show host Savannah, 54, has been off air since early February after it was first reported that her mom had gone missing on February 1. Nancy was last seen on the night of January 31 when she was dropped off at home by her daughter, Annie Guthrie, following a family dinner.
Earlier this week, Nanos confirmed that the Guthrie family were ruled out as suspects “in the first few days” of the police investigation into Nancy’s disappearance. He said that the family — which also includes Savannah’s brother, Camron, and Annie’s husband, Tommaso Cioni — have been “100 percent cooperative” with authorities.
“Not one single person in the family is a suspect,” Nanos told local Tucson outlet KOLD News 13 on Monday, February 16. “So I am telling everyone, effective today, you guys [media] need to knock it off, quit. People are hurting. They are victims. I am saying they are clear. We have cleared them.”
Earlier on Monday, the sheriff insisted that the Guthrie family was not being treated as suspects.
“To be clear … the Guthrie family — to include all siblings and spouses — have been cleared as possible suspects in this case. The family has been nothing but cooperative and gracious and are victims in this case,” Nanos said in a statement shared via X. “To suggest otherwise is not only wrong, it is cruel. The Guthrie family are victims, plain and simple.”
