Nancy Guthrie kidnapping: FBI examines /DNA recovered from her home

The FBI has recently obtained and is currently examining potentially significant DNA evidence that was collected months earlier from the Tucson, Arizona, residence of Nancy Guthrie, according to sources familiar with the investigation, News.Az reports, citing ABC News.

Nancy Guthrie, 84, the mother of "Today" show host Savannah Guthrie, was abducted from her home in the early hours of Feb. 1.

Sources said that a private laboratory based in Florida, which collaborates with the Pima County Sheriff's Department, forwarded the DNA sample to the FBI in recent weeks. Investigators at the bureau are now applying newly developed technology to carry out an advanced analysis of the sample in hopes of identifying the individual responsible for the abduction.

An FBI official confirmed that the agency recently received a hair sample that had originally been collected in February.

"There is no new DNA evidence in the Nancy Guthrie case. The FBI requested this material over two months ago," an FBI official said. "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."

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.

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.

The sheriff also said as many as five other labs around the country are working on the Guthrie case. It was not immediately clear which ones, what their roles are or whether there are additional DNA samples that are potentially relevant.

About two dozen Pima County and FBI investigators are still actively working the Guthrie case. After investigators released key evidence, like images from Nancy Guthrie's doorbell camera, early on, seemingly little progress has been made on her whereabouts or the person or people who abducted her.

Last month, Savannah Guthrie spoke out in her first interview, telling her friend and former co-host Hoda Kotb that it's "too much to bear to think that I brought this to her bedside, that it's because of me."

"I'm so sorry, Mommy, I'm so sorry," Savannah Guthrie said.

But she added, "We still don't know ... Honestly, we don't know anything."

Savannah Guthrie said her family "cannot be at peace" without answers.

"Someone can do the right thing," she said. 

News.Az 

By Nijat Babayev