A glove recovered near the Arizona home of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie — missing since early February — appears to match the gloves worn by the masked suspect captured on her doorbell camera, the FBI confirmed Sunday.
DNA was found on the glove. Out of 16 gloves collected by investigators in various areas near the Guthrie residence, this one was different from the rest — and it matched the description of what the suspect was wearing when he approached her front door and covered the camera with a gloved hand.
According to the Washington Examiner, the FBI is now waiting for confirmation on preliminary results before entering the male suspect's DNA profile into its national criminal database. The case is entering its third week with no arrest, no named suspect, and Nancy Guthrie still missing.
Late Friday, a SWAT team carried out a law enforcement operation near Guthrie's home in Tucson. Three people were detained for questioning. None remained in custody afterward. No charges have been filed.
The details remain thin. No names were released. No explanation was given for why the three were detained or what connection, if any, they have to the case. For a story that has gripped national attention — Nancy Guthrie is the elderly mother of NBC's Today co-host Savannah Guthrie — the information vacuum is striking.
What is known: the suspect is believed to be a man, wore a black "Ozark Trail Hiker Pack" backpack, and moved with enough intent to disable the doorbell camera before proceeding. This was not a crime of opportunity. Someone planned this.
The Pima County Sheriff's Office sent the collected gloves to a private lab in Florida overnight Thursday, with a stated turnaround of roughly 24 hours for DNA processing. That decision drew scrutiny — reports surfaced of tensions between federal and local authorities, with accusations that Sheriff Chris Nanos was blocking the FBI from accessing key evidence and routing forensic work away from the FBI's own national crime lab.
Nanos pushed back hard. Speaking to KVOA, he called those claims:
"Not even close to the truth."
He offered his own account of the decision-making process:
"Actually, the FBI just wanted to send the one or two they found by the crime scene, closest to it — mile, mile and a half. I said, 'No, why do that? Let's just send them all to where all the DNA exist, all the profiles and the markers exist.' They agreed, makes sense."
In Nanos's telling, it was his initiative that expanded the scope of the forensic analysis — and the FBI went along with it. If that's accurate, the reported friction may be overblown. But the fact remains: the Pima County Sheriff's Office is leading this investigation. The FBI provides assistance as requested by local officials. That structure matters when the case involves a potential abduction that has generated intense national media scrutiny.
This is a dynamic worth watching. When a case this high-profile lands in the lap of a local sheriff's office, two things happen simultaneously: the pressure to produce results becomes enormous, and the institutional pride that comes with leading the investigation makes it harder to cede control.
Whether Nanos is running this investigation competently or whether the FBI should be taking a larger role is a question that only results can answer. Three weeks in, with no suspect identified, no charges filed, and an 84-year-old woman still missing, the clock is the only metric that matters.
An FBI spokesperson confirmed to Fox News reporter Michael Ruiz the significance of the glove finding:
"The one with the DNA profile recovered is different and appears to match the gloves of the subject in the surveillance video."
That's a meaningful forensic development — potentially the most significant break in the case so far. But "appears to match" is not a confirmed match, and the FBI is still waiting on final confirmation before the DNA profile enters the national database. Until that happens, this remains a lead, not a solution.
Nancy Guthrie has been missing since the start of February. The surveillance footage shows a masked figure approaching her home. Sixteen gloves were scattered near the property. One of them carried someone's DNA and matched what the suspect was wearing.
Three people were detained Friday and released. A SWAT team mobilized and stood down. The FBI has a DNA profile it hasn't yet entered into its own database. The local sheriff says everything is under control. The national media is circling.
Somewhere in the gap between all of these facts is an 84-year-old woman who hasn't been seen in weeks. Every day that passes without answers makes the next day harder — for the investigators, for the family, and for any hope of bringing her home alive.
The glove may be the thread that unravels this case. Or it may be one more data point in a growing file that still leads nowhere. What it cannot be is slow-walked. Not at three weeks. Not with a life hanging in the balance.
