A local sheriff is impeding FBI access to key evidence in the Nancy Guthrie abduction probe, a law enforcement official with knowledge of the case says.
Guthrie, the mother of TV journalist Savannah Guthrie, went missing on February 1 from her residence in Arizona’s Catalina Foothills.
The official says the FBI asked Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos for physical evidence, including a glove and DNA from the home, to be processed at the FBI’s national crime laboratory in Quantico, Virginia.
However, Nanos has instead insisted on using a private Florida lab, effectively denying the FBI access to crucial evidence, the official said.
A spokesperson for the sheriff did not immediately respond to an email request for comment.
In a daily press update released earlier in the day, the sheriff’s department said investigators had “recovered several items of evidence, including gloves,” adding that all viable evidence is submitted for analysis.
The agency did not elaborate.
The Pima County sheriff has primary jurisdiction over the case, and FBI assistance must be officially requested by the county, otherwise the FBI is legally precluded from taking part in the investigation. The official said that the county has spent some $200,000 so far to send evidence in the Guthrie case to the the Florida lab.
“It risks further slowing a case that grows more urgent by the minute,” the official said, citing unspecified “earlier setbacks” in the investigation.
The official also criticized the sheriff for not seeking FBI assistance in the investigation sooner.
“It’s clear the fastest path to answers is leveraging federal resources and technology. Anything less only prolongs the Guthrie family’s grief and the community’s wait for justice,” the official said.
Signs of friction between the FBI and sheriff’s department emerged as the search for Nancy Guthrie stretched into its 12th day, as investigators intensified their search for clues in the presumed kidnapping for ransom.
Nancy Guthrie was last seen on January 31 when family dropped her off at her home following an evening dinner with them, and relatives reported her missing the following day, authorities said.
The sheriff has said the elder Guthrie had extremely limited mobility and could not have wandered off far from home unassisted, leading investigators to conclude early on that she had been abducted by force.
Children plead for help
Traces of blood found on Guthrie’s front porch were confirmed by DNA tests to have come from the grandmother, officials said last week.
Law enforcement and family members have described her as being in frail health and in need of daily medication to survive.
At least two purported ransom notes have surfaced since Nancy Guthrie vanished, both of them delivered initially to news media outlets and setting two deadlines that have since lapsed. But no proof of life is known to have surfaced following her abduction.
Savannah Guthrie, 54, co-anchor of the popular NBC News morning show Today, has posted several video messages with her brother and sister, appealing to their mother’s captors for her return, pleading for the public’s help in solving the case, and even asserting a willingness to meet ransom demands.
In a major break in the case on Wednesday, authorities released video footage captured from the doorbell camera of Nancy Guthrie’s home near Tucson, showing an armed prowler in a ski mask and gloves trying to disable the camera. The video was taken at about the time that Guthrie is believed to have been taken from her residence by force.
Investigators were likely seeking to bring facial recognition analysis to bear on the video to produce a composite image of a suspect that they can run against a national database that includes all U.S. drivers with RealID licenses, according to a former FBI agent.
Law enforcement officials said on Thursday that a black latex glove was found discarded on a roadside was recovered and undergoing forensic examination.
The FBI on Thursday doubled the reward offered for information leading to the location of Nancy Guthrie, or arrest and conviction of a suspect in her abduction, to $100,000.
