Nancy Guthrie Update: Detective Offers Hope In Search For Savannah's Mum After 50 Days Of Silence

Fifty days after Nancy Guthrie vanished from her home near Tucson, Arizona, veteran cold case detective Brian Martin has said the case still appears solvable, with DNA evidence likely to offer the clearest route forward in the search for the 84 year old mother of Today presenter Savannah Guthrie. Martin's comments were reported on Sunday as the investigation entered its seventh week without an arrest or a confirmed suspect.​

Nancy Guthrie was last seen on the night of 31 January and was reported missing the following day after failing to appear at church, with investigators later treating the case as a possible abduction. In the weeks since, the case has drawn national attention, partly because of her daughter's public profile, but also because the inquiry has produced a string of dramatic developments without the one thing that matters most, which is a break that holds up.

Nancy Guthrie Case Still Has Active Leads

Martin, who helped solve the 1988 killing of April Tinsley decades after the crime, told the New York Post he would not regard the Nancy Guthrie investigation as cold. He said cases are generally not treated that way unless they sit inactive for years without new leads or evidential movement, and this one, in his view, is nowhere near that point.​

That view comes as patience in southern Arizona wears thin. A recall effort is under way against Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos after weeks of false alarms, dead ends and criticism over the handling of the inquiry, including complaints about resisting an FBI takeover. But public anger does not mean the forensic trail has run dry.

Martin's optimism rests on what investigators may already have. He said police likely recovered an item at the scene that did not belong in the house and may have been left by the suspect. In a case like this, the breakthrough may come not from drama, but from one trace that should never have been there.

Search Turns Again To DNA

Investigators have disclosed some of what they are working with. They recovered clear footage of at least one masked, armed suspect disabling Guthrie's doorbell camera, and found DNA inside the house and on a glove discarded nearby that matched the suspect's description.

Even so, the evidence has not yet produced a clean breakthrough. The glove that briefly looked significant apparently belonged to the owner of a nearby restaurant, while several persons of interest identified through anonymous tips and mobile tower records were later released and cleared.

The case also swept up members of Guthrie's family. Her daughter Anne and son in law Tommaso Cioni were cleared after weeks of public suspicion fuelled by online commentators and amateur sleuths, a familiar consequence when hard facts are scarce.

DNA still appears to be the strongest line of inquiry. Nanos said last month that testing some of the remaining samples could take up to a year, and the material already examined did not match anyone in the federal CODIS database. The sheriff's office has also said it is exploring investigative genetic genealogy to identify relatives through public databases and narrow in on a suspect.

Martin pointed to that method in the April Tinsley case, saying his team solved that decades old investigation within weeks once genetic genealogy was brought in. For now, no one has been charged over Nancy Guthrie's disappearance, and much of the case remains unconfirmed beyond official statements. Savannah Guthrie and her siblings say they still believe someone in Tucson or the wider southern Arizona community holds the answer.