Six months after 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie vanished from her Tucson home, investigators have hit another forensic wall, a hair sample recovered from the crime scene produced no usable DNA, the Pima County sheriff told Fox News Digital.
Sheriff Chris Nanos disclosed the setback in an interview this week, confirming that a California laboratory working with the FBI returned the result just weeks ago. The finding narrows one of the few physical leads in a case that has drawn hundreds of federal agents and detectives, generated thousands of tips, and still produced no arrest.
Nanos stressed that the hair itself has not been discarded. Investigators preserved it in case it proves useful once a suspect is identified, if that day comes.
Nanos told Fox News Digital that the hair was prioritized for DNA testing as a matter of standard procedure.
"Yes, there was a hair. We had it and thought, 'OK, well, we'll do the DNA first,' right? You're going to do DNA before something else."
The result was blunt.
"It came back... there's no DNA."
But the sheriff pushed back against the idea that the finding eliminates the hair's value. He noted that the sample could still matter if investigators eventually identify a suspect and need to compare physical evidence.
"But does that mean the hair isn't that of the suspect? We won't know that till we have the suspect's hair. You don't just destroy it."
Nanos said the hair was "only one part of the broader DNA work underway." Investigators continue working with multiple crime labs to analyze other evidence collected from the home, and they are using investigative genetic genealogy, a technique that builds family trees from DNA databases to generate leads.
Whether that genealogy work has produced any actionable leads remains unclear. Nanos did not say.
Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of "Today" co-host Savannah Guthrie, disappeared from her Tucson home on February 1. She failed to appear for virtual church services that day. She was last seen the night before at her daughter Annie's home in Tucson. Her medication was left behind, and her limited mobility made a voluntary departure unlikely.
The home showed signs of forced entry. Blood was found at the front entrance. Nanos told Newsmax early in the investigation that DNA recovered from the home had been confirmed as belonging to Nancy Guthrie herself. A retired bloodstain pattern analyst who reviewed publicly available information described the blood evidence as a "drip trail," meaning a continuous source of blood dripping from a person or object.
As of this week, no suspect or person of interest has been publicly identified. A combined reward of more than $1.2 million remains unclaimed.
For a case involving a vulnerable 84-year-old woman, an apparent forced entry, blood evidence, and surveillance footage of an armed figure at her door, the absence of a single named suspect after half a year raises hard questions about the pace and coordination of the investigation. Five months in, the Guthrie family was still waiting, and that wait continues.
One of the most significant breaks in the case came when the FBI and the Pima County Sheriff's Department recovered previously inaccessible surveillance footage from Nancy Guthrie's Nest doorbell camera. She did not have an active camera subscription, which initially prevented investigators from retrieving the recordings. Technicians pulled the images from residual data stored in backend systems after the recording devices had been removed or tampered with.
FBI Director Kash Patel released the images, which showed an armed individual appearing to tamper with the camera at Guthrie's front door at 1:47 a.m. on February 1, the morning of her disappearance. The figure wore a mask, carried a backpack, and appeared to have a holstered weapon. The FBI estimated the individual stood between 5 feet 9 inches and 5 feet 10 inches tall with a medium build.
The release of those images generated more than 4,000 calls to the FBI tip line, AP News reported. Several hundred detectives and agents were assigned to the investigation, which expanded across the Tucson area. FBI teams combed desert terrain for physical evidence.
A man detained near the U.S.-Mexico border was questioned and released after denying involvement. That lead went nowhere.
The case took a darker turn when ransom notes surfaced. Multiple notes were sent to media outlets including KOLD-TV, KGUN, and TMZ, demanding first $4 million and then $6 million in Bitcoin. The deadlines passed without payment.
Investigators determined that at least two of the notes were legitimate. The Washington Examiner reported that the second note came from the same IP address as the first and contained details about Nancy Guthrie's home and personal belongings that had not been made public. That second note made a grim claim: Nancy Guthrie had died accidentally shortly after being abducted and was "buried with nature now."
At least one fraudulent ransom demand also surfaced. It led to the arrest of Derrick Callella, 42, of Hawthorne, on two federal charges. The ransom notes remain a central and unresolved element of the investigation.
Savannah Guthrie made an emotional public appeal for anyone with information to come forward.
"Somebody knows something. We are in agony. We cannot be at peace."
Sheriff Nanos told Fox News Digital he remains hopeful the case will be solved, pointing to the ongoing DNA work and genetic genealogy research.
"That's really where some of my optimism is, that I just know that we're gonna get this thing resolved."
He urged the public to call in tips, echoing the family's belief that someone in the community holds a missing piece.
"We believe, just as the family does, just as Savannah does, somebody knows something. We need that person to call us."
Optimism, however, is not a substitute for results. Six months have passed. The hair sample, one of the few pieces of physical evidence that might have pointed toward a suspect, returned nothing usable. No person of interest has been named. The surveillance footage produced thousands of tips but no identification. The ransom notes raised more questions than they answered. And earlier claims that investigators were closing in on unidentified DNA have not yet led to a public breakthrough.
The investigation has also been marked by friction between agencies. FBI Director Patel publicly faulted the sheriff's initial response to the disappearance, a dispute that added a layer of institutional tension to a case already defined by its lack of answers.
Anyone with information is urged to call 1-800-CALL-FBI or the anonymous tip line at 520-88-CRIME, which is tied to the reward for information leading to an arrest.
An 84-year-old woman was taken from her home. Her blood was found at the door. An armed figure was caught on camera. And after six months, the people responsible for solving this case are still asking the public to do the work for them.