Chris Nanos, the Arizona sheriff leading the search for Nancy Guthrie, thought his team had cracked the case this week when officers swarmed an unincorporated community in southern Arizona where they had detained a delivery driver.
“This has to to be it, the evidence, everything’s there,” Sheriff Nanos of Pima County said in an interview on Friday, reflecting on what he called a fleeting high in the 13-day search. “Then you talk to people, you learn, you do your search, and you think, ‘Maybe not.’”
The detained man was released from custody, a blow to investigators sifting through some 32,000 leads as of Friday. They had found little sign of Ms. Guthrie, 84, the mother of the “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie.
“It’s exhausting, these ups and downs,” Sheriff Nanos said. “But we will keep moving forward.”
After several days without a news conference, the sheriff sat for a parade of news media interviews on Friday. He did not offer new information about potential suspects, but said investigators had obtained DNA from Ms. Guthrie’s property. A department statement said the DNA did not belong to anyone in close contact with Ms. Guthrie.
Sheriff Nanos said investigators had obtained DNA swabs from Ms. Guthrie’s family and workers who had been at her home.
He said a lab was also running DNA tests on gloves that investigators found about two miles from Ms. Guthrie’s house. Doorbell-camera video of a suspect in her abduction shows a masked figure wearing dark gloves as well as a backpack and what appears to be a holstered handgun.
Sheriff Nanos said he had “no way” of knowing whether the gloves were the same ones the masked man wore in the black-and-white video recorded on Feb. 1, the night officials say she was abducted.
As the search for Ms. Guthrie stretches into its third week, Sheriff Nanos said there are some 400 people on the case, and investigators are still “looking hard.” He said he was certain of finding Ms. Guthrie and her abductor — just not when.
“Maybe it’s an hour from now,” he said. “Maybe it’s weeks or months or years from now. But we won’t quit. We’re going to find Nancy. We’re going to find this guy.”
Jack Healy is based in Colorado and covers the west and southwest.
The post After a Misstep, Sheriff Says Persistence Will Solve the Guthrie Case appeared first on New York Times.
