Viral gloves found during the search for Savannah Guthrie’s missing mother, Nancy Guthrie, “have nothing to do with the incident.”
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos confirmed this in a Monday update to KVOA on Tuesday, one month after the 84-year-old woman disappeared from her Arizona home.
“It turned out that the owner of the gloves worked at a restaurant across the street,” officials explained.
“There was talk and discussion that the officers who were there were just disposing of them, but that couldn’t be further from the truth,” he added. “We knew it then.”
In fact, Nano’s claimed that it “sincerely believed that the gloves belonged to the restaurant (employee).”
The gloves were discovered in February, and an FBI spokesperson said at the time that they matched those seen on surveillance footage worn by the suspect who kidnapped Nancy and that they contained different DNA than others found at the crime scene.
However, the results did not match records in the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) database.
“There were no hits,” Nanos confirmed to Fox News on February 17.
He said Monday that other gloves found near Nancy’s residence were being sent to a lab in Florida for testing and may be a match.
“This is difficult because we know we have DNA, but now we have to deal with that mixture and how to separate it,” Nanos explained.
He went on to mention a small talk about the suspect that was captured on Nancy’s Ring camera in the early morning hours of February 1st.
“There’s a lot of speculation about, ‘He’s wearing this now and he’s not wearing this,’ but he looks this way, but he doesn’t look the same,” Nanos said, adding that he “understands” the temptation to analyze footage for clues.
He continued, “We can’t make assumptions. We need evidence.”
Nancy was last seen on January 31st and has since disappeared, with Savannah admitting in an Instagram video last week that her mother “may already be gone”.
The Today show co-host broke down in tears as he visited a memorial outside Nancy’s home on Monday, confirming to his followers that she had “accepted” her fate.
In an urgent plea to Nancy’s captors, the journalist added: “We need to know where she is. We need her to come home.” The family is offering a $1 million reward for any information leading to Nancy’s “miraculous” return.
