FBI analyzes DNA in Nancy Guthrie disappearance after 100 days

The case of Nancy Guthrie now hinged on a strand of DNA moving through FBI hands in Quantico, Virginia, as investigators hit the 100-day mark without publicly naming a suspect. For the 84-year-old mother of Today co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, that biological evidence was no longer a side detail. It had become the piece that could decide whether the disappearance became a solvable named case or slipped back into uncertainty.

Nancy Guthrie was last seen on Jan. 31, 2026, after dinner at one daughter’s home in Tucson, Arizona, and was reported missing on Feb. 1. Investigators believe she was forcibly taken from her home in the middle of the night. The timeline has grown tighter with each disclosure: her garage door closed at 9:50 p.m., the doorbell camera disconnected at 1:47 a.m. on Feb. 1, and a pacemaker app showed a disconnect at 2:28 a.m. Those details, along with doorbell-camera video of an apparent suspect, pushed the case toward an abduction theory rather than a routine missing-person search.

The suspect seen in the video was described as a man of average build, about 5-foot-9 or 5-foot-10, wearing a face mask, gloves, and a black Ozark Trail Hiker Pack backpack. A black glove found near Guthrie’s home also contained DNA evidence and appeared to match the glove worn in the video. The FBI said it was waiting for confirmation before entering an unknown male profile into CoDIS, the national DNA database, a step that could turn a fragment of evidence into a searchable identity.

That DNA thread had already been worked for months. The sample recovered from Guthrie’s Tucson home was first sent to a private laboratory in Florida, then transferred to the FBI laboratory in Quantico for further analysis. Investigators also turned to genetic genealogy after authorities said the DNA from the property appeared to come from more than one person, raising the risk that it might not yield a clean profile for database comparison. One sheriff’s update said it could take up to six more months to separate the strands and isolate what investigators need.

The broader probe remained active, with as many as five other labs around the country also involved and about two dozen Pima County and FBI investigators still on the case. Family members and their spouses had been cleared as suspects, while investigators continued to take seriously two emails, including what appeared to be a ransom note demanding bitcoin. At the 100-day mark, though, the central question stayed the same: whether the DNA now under FBI analysis will finally put a name to the person who took Nancy Guthrie, or leave the case waiting for the next break.