Authorities investigating the disappearance of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie have uncovered DNA at the missing grandmother’s property that does not belong to her or anyone “close” to her, it has been revealed.
As the 13th day in the search for the missing mother of three drew to a close, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department announced the investigators collected DNA “other than Nancy Guthrie’s and those in close contact to her” from her Tucson-area property.
They are currently “working to identify who it belongs to,” a spokesperson confirmed in an email update sent to Realtor.com. Authorities are “not disclosing where that DNA was located,” the email added.
News of the DNA discover comes hours after it was revealed that the FBI had removed a Nest camera bracket from the front door of Nancy’s home on Thursday, after erecting a white tent around the entrance to the property for several hours while the evidence was collected.
Its removal came just hours before White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared on Fox News to assure the public that the federal government is doing everything in its power to assist in the case and “bring Nancy Guthrie home.”
“I spoke with FBI Director Kash Patel late last night, and he assured me the FBI has been on the ground…” she said, while standing in front of the White House.
“We are offering the full resources and weight of the federal government to help local authorities bring this case to an end, to bring Nancy Guthrie home.”
She further noted that President Donald Trump immediately offered the full support of the federal government to Nancy’s daughter, “Today” host Savannah Guthrie, as soon as he became aware of the case.
“Our hearts break every day that this goes on,” she continued. “Again, the FBI is on the ground wanting to assist in any way that they can, and they have.”
The FBI was present at Nancy’s $1 million house on Thursday, when they are understood to have removed the Nest camera bracket. It is unclear whether any other items were retrieved from the property.
Anyone with any information about Nancy Guthrie’s case should call 1-800-CALL-FBI, 520-351-4900, 88-CRIME, or visit https://tips.fbi.gov/.
Images obtained by the New York Post, which show the front door to the missing 84-year-old’s home before and after the white tent was put in place, reveal that a bracket that was previously mounted to the frame of the door had been taken off during the time that the structure was up.
It’s thought that the bracket previously held a Nest security camera that captured a masked, armed intruder approaching the property in the early hours of the morning on Feb. 1, the same day that Nancy is believed to have been taken from her home.
Authorities have previously stated that they do not know the whereabouts of the camera, which appears to have been removed by Nancy’s alleged kidnappers.
Footage from the camera was later obtained by the FBI and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, and shared publicly by FBI Director Patel on his X account.
The three video clips show a person in a knitted ski mask and thick gloves approaching the entrance to her home with a gun in a holster around their waist.
Authorities had previously stated that they were unable to retrieve any footage from the Nest camera that was taken from the doorway of Nancy’s property because she did not have a subscription that enables archival video to be stored.
However, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department revealed in a statement issued on Tuesday that the video was ultimately “recovered from residual data located in backend systems.”
“Over the last eight days, the FBI and Pima County Sheriff’s Department have been working closely with our private sector partners to continue to recover any images or video footage from Nancy Guthrie‘s home that may have been lost, corrupted, or inaccessible due to a variety of factors, including the removal of recording devices,” the statement read.
“The video was recovered from residual data located in backend systems. Working with our partners—as of this morning—law enforcement has uncovered these previously inaccessible new images showing an armed individual appearing to have tampered with the camera at Nancy Guthrie’s front door the morning of her disappearance.”
On Thursday, the FBI has released key new details about the masked, armed intruder caught on the security camera—while announcing that it has increased its reward for information leading to her safe return to $100,000.
In a post shared to the FBI Phoenix X account, the agency highlighted several “identifying details” about the person in the sinister footage.
“New identifying details about the suspect in the kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie have been confirmed after a forensic analysis of the doorbell camera footage by the FBI’s Operational Technology Division,” the post stated.
“The suspect is described as a male, approximately 5’9” – 5’10” tall, with an average build. In the video, he is wearing a black, 25-liter ‘Ozark Trail Hiker Pack’ backpack.”
Minutes earlier, it was reported that the FBI was “actively investigating” a video of a man captured carrying a backpack near Nancy’s home on the same night that she disappeared—however it has since been revealed that he has been cleared in the investigation.
Authorities have now asked all residents who live within a two-mile radius of Nancy’s $1 million home to pass over any available footage taken on two days leading up to her disappearance—including one date more than two weeks before she was taken from her Arizona property.
Investigators have asked told residents in the Catalina Foothills neighborhood to submit any and all surveillance footage taken by doorbell cameras between the hours of 9 p.m. and midnight on Jan. 11, as well as videos from 9:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. on Jan. 31, the morning before the 84-year-old disappeared.
Additionally, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department has asked that residents with any video footage taken between Jan. 1 and Feb. 2 that includes “vehicles, vehicle traffic, people/pedestrians, and anything neighbors deem out of the ordinary or important to our investigation” hand those videos over.
A webpage has been set up where neighbors can upload their video footage—while the sheriff’s department has revealed it will be using the Neighbors App to communicate updates to anyone living within a two-mile radius of Nancy’s home.
One man who lives around the corner from Nancy also said he was asked by detectives about whether he had seen a truck in the area.
While investigators did not reveal why they are asking for the information, David Romano, told NBC News that detectives had asked his family about the vehicle on two occasions.
Meanwhile, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos has hit back at reports that he has been accused of withholding key physical evidence from the FBI involved in the investigation.
On Thursday evening, Reuters published a report, citing unnamed law enforcement sources, in which it was claimed that Nanos had insisted evidence found inside Nancy’s home and in the search of the surrounding area be processed at a private lab in Florida, rather than at the FBI’s national crime lab in Quantico, VA.
Speaking to local news network KVOA, Nanos said there is no truth to any claims of tension between his department at the FBI.
“Not even close to the truth,” he said. “Actually, the FBI just wanted to send the one or two [pieces of evidence] 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.”
When asked about the gloves that had been found in and around the crime scene—including one that was located on a roadside around a mile and a half away from Nancy’s home—Nanos said that “quite a number” of the items have been discovered, but downplayed the importance of them in the investigation.
“We don’t even know the true value of these gloves,” he said.
What is the full timeline of Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance?
Sheriff Nanos noted during a media briefing on Feb. 5 that, while times are approximate, his team has pieced together several pieces of evidence that indicate Nancy’s movements—and the timeline of her apparent abduction.
Nancy, 84, was reported missing at around 12 p.m. local time on Feb. 1, around 14 hours after she was dropped off at the property following a family dinner. When she failed to turn up at her usual church gathering on Sunday, her friends alerted her family, who found her home was empty.
SATURDAY, JAN. 31
5:32 p.m. Nancy travels to daughter Annie’s house in an Uber for “dinner and playing games with the family.”
9:48 p.m. A garage door at Nancy’s house opens when she was dropped off at the property by her son-in-law, Tommaso Cioni.
9:50 p.m. The garage door closes, indicating that Nancy was inside the home.
SUNDAY, FEB. 1
1:47 a.m. Nancy’s doorbell security camera is disconnected.
2:12 a.m. Movement is detected on a security camera at the home.
2:28 a.m. Nancy’s pacemaker app indicates that the device has been disconnected from her phone.
11:00 a.m. Nancy fails to arrive at the home of a friend, where she had been due to watch a church service livestream.
11:56 a.m. Nancy’s family travels to her home to check on her and finds the property empty.
12:03 p.m. The family calls 911 to report Nancy missing.
12:14 p.m. Police officers arrive at Nancy’s home.