The disappearance of Today show co-host Savannah Guthrie’s mother Nancy Guthrie remains unsolved even after investigators retrieved video footage of a possible suspect in front of her doors on the night she disappeared.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has revealed on Monday, February 16, that the agency would use Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) to analyze the DNA found in a pair of gloves near Nancy’s house.
CODIS is managed by the FBI and contains profiles of over 19 million offenders. If investigators find a match on the database for the gloves, that would mark a significant breakthrough in the case.
Colleen Fitzpatrick, the president and founder of Identifinders Forensic Genealogy commented on the approach that the FBI is now taking and said, “They’re waiting to see if they have a CODIS hit or if they do not. If they do, okay that way; if they don’t, then my guess is they’re gonna do the genealogy.”
EXCLUSIVE: Scene of Nancy Guthrie private lab testing. I’m outside DNA Labs International where the DNA Testing of evidence is happening right now.
I traveled to Deerfield Beach, Florida where lab technicians have been testing critical evidence in the investigation — including… pic.twitter.com/9mxcWiDtq3
— Laura Ingle (@lauraingle) February 17, 2026
Fitzpatrick said, “Our ability to sense DNA, detect DNA, is getting better and better. So it could be quite a tiny bit of DNA, or you know, it could be a lot if somebody held it for a long time.”
Given the way DNA testing has now improved, Fitzpatrick mentioned that even if the DNA found on the gloves has thinned, finding a match would not be an issue. She explained, “At least with genealogy, we’ve been very successful at very highly degraded DNA. I call it ‘DNA confetti’ — little tiny pieces. That doesn’t bother us because the markers we use are very small, so we can use little small pieces of DNA.”
The most helpful part of getting the DNA tested through CODIS is that even if it does not come up with a single match, there can be potential matches found through ancestry databases. Fitzpatrick said, “It’s not just one person — do you match or not? You have a whole network of people that you can kind of put together in a big Sudoku puzzle. If they’re related to you, they’re related to each other through marriage or blood. So you start building the trees, connecting them.”
Family members of Nancy Guthrie, including her children and their spouses, have been ruled out as suspects in her disappearance, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department said Monday. https://t.co/j7zoLTmEft
— FOX6 News (@fox6now) February 17, 2026
As DNA testing is now offering new hope to the case, a report published in Reuters mentioned that the members of the Guthrie family have now been cleared of the suspect list. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos confirmed the same on Monday, adding, “To suggest otherwise is not only wrong, but it is also cruel. The (members of) Guthrie family are victims, plain and simple.”
Nancy’s case stands out as a bizarre one mostly because of her age and as investigators are not being able to find a clear motive.
Nancy’s family, including Savannah and her other children, had previously uploaded videos on social media addressing the abductor for the safety of their mother. However, there has been no response from the person or people responsible for this and it now remains to be seen what new results this DNA search brings forth.
